Kiss of Death tmv-8

by Rachel Caine

  Claire pulled the heavy silver-coated stake out of her pocket and held it in her left hand as she opened the door with her right, ready to attack if she had to ... but the hallway was empty.

  She could hear running footsteps, though. Noise upstairs. That didn’t mean there weren’t bad guys down here, however. Thanks to a thorough education in Morganville—Survival 101—she always assumed there were bad guys around every corner.

  There was a lot of chaos going on upstairs—furniture crashing, thumping, running feet. People yelled—Claire tried not to think of it as screaming—and it sounded like that might be where Oliver had chosen to go after Morley.

  But where was Michael?

  Claire opened another door and found an office, with a desk and a computer and an old cup of molding coffee sitting on top of some papers. Nobody there. She tried the next door—same result, only no coffee.

  In the third one, she found a woman slumped in the corner. She was unconscious, not dead, thankfully, as Claire discovered on checking her pulse, which proved to be strong. Claire moved the woman into a more comfortable position, rolled over on her side; recovery position, it was called. Shane had taught it to her—he was good at first aid.

  The woman was older, kind of heavy, and she looked tired and pale.

  Pale.

  Claire checked her neck on both sides, but found nothing. Then she checked the woman’s wrists and found a slowly bleeding wound, and not a neat one, either. Claire shuddered, breathed in a few times to steady herself, and then looked around for something to use to tie up the wound. There was a scarf on the woman’s desk; Claire carefully wrapped it around her wrist and tied it tight, and checked the woman again. She was still unconscious, but didn’t seem to be in any trouble.

  “It’ll be okay,” Claire promised, and went on. The thing that was worrying her now was that while she certainly wouldn’t put it past Morley and his crew to be snacking on random people, this hadn’t just happened. The blood streaking the woman’s hand had been mostly dried and flaking off, the wound had been half healed, and Morley’s party bus had only just arrived in town.

  That didn’t sound right at all.

  Out in the hall, the fight was still going on upstairs, and as Claire carefully edged toward the stairs, trying to get a look, there was a sudden thump-rattle-crash, and a body came flying into view, hit the wall, and tumbled down the big, scarred wooden steps to sprawl at her feet.

  It was a vampire.

  It was not one of Morley’s vampires. She’d gotten a look at every one of them on the bus, and they’d all been typical Morganville folks. None of them had looked Shane’s age, or been wearing a bloodstained, tattered old football jersey that smelled like dead feet even from twenty yards away.

  This was not a Morganville vampire.

  This was something else.

  And it rolled up, bared terrifying lengths of fangs, and came after her with a roar full of fury, hunger, and delight.

  10

  Claire yelped, backed up, and got the stake level just in time to bury it in his chest. His momentum drove him onto the silver-coated wood, and pushed her into the wall behind her with a bruising slam. Her head hit the bricks, and she felt a hot yellow burst of pain, but she was more concerned by his bloody red eyes, crazy with rage, and those sharp, sharp fangs....

  Then he slumped against her; she shoved, and he toppled off her and down to the floor with a crash, hands thumping out to either side. Man, he really stank, as if he hadn’t bathed or washed his clothes in a year. And he smelled like old blood, which was sick.

  His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but Claire knew he wasn’t dead—not yet. The silver in the stake was hurting him, and the stake itself was keeping him immobilized for now. Whether or not the silver would kill him was a question of how old he was, but somehow she didn’t think he was one of the ancient ones, like Amelie and Oliver and Morley. He was more like some bully who’d turned vamp a few years back, if that.

  The silver was burning him. She saw black around the wound now.

  He tried to kill me. She swallowed hard, her hand tentatively touching the stake, then dropping away. I should let him die.

  Except she really needed that stake. Without it, she was unarmed. And she knew—because Michael had told her—that getting staked was painful. Getting staked with silver was agony.

  Claire reached for the stake to pull it out. She’d just grabbed hold when a voice behind her said, in a rich, rolling English accent, “You don’t want to be doing that.”

  Morley. He must have come down the stairs while she was otherwise occupied. He was bloody, clothes ripped even worse than they had been before, and he had open scratches across his pale face that were healing even as Claire turned to stare at him.

  She tightened her grip on the stake and yanked it free as she rose out of her crouch, turning to fully face him.

  Morley sighed. “Do any of you fools actually ever listen? I said don’t do that!”

  “He’s hurt,” Claire said. “He’s not getting up any time soon.”

  “Wrong,” Morley said. “He’s not getting up at all. But then, he doesn’t really have to.”

  She felt something cold brush her aching ankle, then wrap hard around it. The teen vamp had grabbed her and was pulling himself toward her.

  Morley reached out, grabbed the stake from her hand, and stabbed the vampire again, with easily three times the strength Claire had used. She heard the crunch as the stake pushed through bones and into the wooden floor beneath.

  The boy, no older than Shane, went limp again. His skin started to smolder from the silver.

  “You can’t—,” she began, and Morley turned on her, his face hard.

  “It might have dawned on you by now that I can,” he snapped. “It might also have occurred to you that this boy is not one of my little flock. Doesn’t that make you at all alarmed, Claire?”

  “I—”

  “It should,” he said, “because apart from those vampires gathered in Morganville, there shouldn’t be more. Amelie, whatever you think of her, is a thorough sort. Those who didn’t agree to participate in her social experiment in Morganville were put down. There are no vampires still walking that I don’t know.” He nudged the boy with one worn boot. “But I don’t know him, or his pack of jackals who just ate my supplies!”

  “Pack?” Claire looked up, startled, at another thump and crash from upstairs. Morley ignored her and dashed for the stairs, racing in a blur. There was screaming up there. “Hey, wait! Ate your—supplies—you don’t mean—”

  Morley got to the top of the stairs and disappeared before she could manage another word. “My friends?” she finished lamely, and then blinked, because two seconds after Morley had crossed out of sight, Michael emerged from the shadows up there, with Shane beside him.

  Michael was carrying Eve, who still seemed unconscious.

  They came down the stairs fast, and Claire didn’t like the tense worry she saw on Michael’s face—or on Shane’s. “We have to go,” Michael said. “Now. Right now.”

  “What about Oliver? And Jason?”

  “No time,” Michael said. “Move it, Claire.”

  “My stake—”

  “I’ll make you a shiny new one,” Shane promised. He sounded short of breath, and he grabbed her hand and towed her at a fast limp after Michael, who was heading down the hall for the broken window where they’d entered. “You all right?”

  “Sure,” she said, and controlled a wince as she came down wrong, again, on her ankle. But in the great scheme of things, yeah, she was all right—more all right than the people upstairs, from what Morley had said. “What is going on up there?”

  “Morley’s having a very bad day,” Michael said. “Tell you later. Right now, we need to get out of here before—”

  “Too late,” Shane said, in a flat, quiet voice, and the four of them stopped in the middle of the hall as two vampires glided out of the shadows at either end, blocking them in. One
was a shuffling, twisted old man with crazy eyes and drifting white hair. The other was a young man, wearing a football jersey—teammate of the vamp Claire had already staked, she guessed. This one was broader than Shane, and taller. Like the old man, he looked ... weird; crazy, even for a vampire.

  “Give,” the old man said in a rusty, strange voice. “Give.”

  “Holy crap, that’s creepy,” Shane said. “Okay, plans? Anybody?”

  “In here.” Michael slammed his foot against the door on the opposite side of the hall and blew it back on the hinges with a splintering crash. Shane hustled Claire ahead of him into the room, and Michael jumped in after, slamming the door in the faces of the two vampires and shoving his back against it. “Barricade!”

  “On it!” Shane said, and nodded for Claire to grab the other end of a heavy wooden desk, which they slid across the floor to block the door as Michael, with Eve in his arms, jumped effortlessly up onto the desk’s top and then lightly down as it slid past. “Think that’ll hold?”

  “Hell no,” Michael said. “Did you see that guy?” Eve stirred in his arms, murmuring, and he looked down at her, his face going still with concern. As she restlessly turned her head, Claire saw a matted spot in her hair—blood, almost invisible against the black.

  “What happened?” Claire blurted.

  Michael shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “She got on Morley’s bad side,” Shane said. “He backhanded her into a wall. She hit her head on the corner. I thought—” He went quiet for a second. “Scared the shit out of me. But she’s okay, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael said.

  “Well, use your superpowers or something!”

  “I’m a vampire, idiot. I don’t have X-ray vision.”

  “Some supernatural monster you are,” Shane said. “Remind me to trade you in for a werewolf, bro. Probably be more useful right now.”

  Claire ignored the two of them and moved to the other side of the room. There was a window, but as she unlocked it and threw up the sash—which didn’t want to move, and was caked with dust and old, dead bugs—she discovered that the grime had disguised a thick set of iron bars on the other side. “Michael,” she said, “can you break these?”

  “Maybe. Here.” Michael handed Eve over to Shane, who balanced her with a lot more difficulty. He looked at the bars, which were in full, blazing sunlight. “That—could be a problem.”

  He was still wearing his leather coat, but his gloves were ripped—it looked as if somebody had shredded them with claws. Pale strips of skin showed through on the backs of his hands.

  Shane, who was leaning against the desk that blocked the door, was almost knocked over as the vampires on the other side slammed into the barrier, sliding the desk nearly a foot before Shane dug in his feet and shoved back. The desk slid toward the door, inch by slow inch, until he’d jammed it hard against the old vampire’s grabbing hands caught in the doorway. “Decide quick!” he yelled. “We’re running out of time!”

  Michael took a deep breath, grabbed one of the ancient, dusty drapes on the side of the window, and yanked it down. He wrapped it over both hands, then grabbed the bars. Even then, the sleeves on his coat rode up, and Claire saw the strips of reddened skin, already burned from before, start to smoke and turn black. Michael shook with effort, but the sun was too much for him. He let go of the bars and stumbled backward, panting, eyes gone red and wild. “Dammit!” he yelled, and tried kicking the bars. That worked better; his booted feet and jeans protected him better, and the first kick landed solidly, bending the bars and rattling the bolts.

  He didn’t have time for another one, because the vampires on the other side of the door hit it again, sliding the desk halfway into the room and sending Shane stumbling into Claire. Michael whirled in time to face the first vamp in, which was the younger one in the ragged football jersey.

  Michael was fast, but his multiple exposures to the sun had slowed him down, and the other vamp hit first and hard in a blocking tackle, and Michael was thrown all the way into the back wall. He shook it off and rolled back to his feet just as the bloodsucking jock reached out for Claire.

  Michael wrapped a fist in the back of the boy’s jersey and yanked him off his feet, throwing him down with a bang flat on his back. He planted a knee on the guy’s chest, holding him down, but that wasn’t a permanent solution, and as Claire watched, the other vampire, the twisted old man, shuffled into the room, grinning with one side of his mouth. He looked even more dead than most vampires, and there was something familiar about the disorganized way he was moving, something—

  She didn’t have time to think about it, because the old man jumped at them like some creepy hunting spider, hands outstretched and hooked into claws. Shane dived one way, burdened by Eve; Claire dived the other. That put Shane and Eve closer to the door, and with a tormented look back, Shane ducked out.

  “Claire, go!” Michael said. “Run!”

  “I can’t run,” she said, very reasonably. Hobbling wasn’t really an option; either one of these vamps could take her down in seconds. One slow, sliding step at a time, she backed away from the approaching old vampire, heading for the window.

  He didn’t seem to get her plan until he’d followed her into the sunlight and begun to burn. Even then, it seemed to take a few seconds to really sink in that he was in trouble. He kept coming in that awkward crab walk even as his clay white skin turned pink, then red, then began to smoke.

  Then, finally, he howled and ducked away into the shadows.

  Claire, pressed up against the windowsill and bathed by the hot sun, breathed a sigh of relief. Briefly.

  “Smart,” Michael said. He stayed where he was, holding Vamp Boy down, and watching the older vampire shuffle around and stalk Claire. “Stay where you are. He may try to grab you and pull you out of the sun. If I let this one go—”

  “I know,” Claire said. “I’ve got it.” She didn’t, really, but what choice did she have? She looked around frantically for something, anything, to use, and blinked. “Can you throw that over here?” she asked, and pointed. Michael looked around and picked up something off the floor, frowning.

  “This?”

  “Throw it!”

  He did, and Claire snatched it out of the air just as the older vampire made his run at her, howling.

  Claire buried the pencil in his chest. She got lucky, sliding it between his ribs just as Myrnin had taught her to do in his occasional, completely random self-defense classes, and the older vamp’s eyes went wide and he fell at her feet, in the sun. Claire rolled him out of the way, but she left the pencil in his chest.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Michael said, and shook his head. “That is just embarrassing.”

  “Have you noticed something about them?” Claire asked, shaking now that the surge of adrenaline was passing. The vampire Michael was leaning on swiped at him, but Michael easily avoided the blow.

  “These guys? They’re not too smart.”

  “They’re sick,” she said. “I recognize the way the older one moved. Notice that they’re not really talking? They can’t. They’ve been broken down to basic levels. Hunt and kill. Like the worst-off vampires in Morganville when I got there.”

  Michael clearly hadn’t thought of that. His whole body language changed, and for a second Claire thought he was going to get up and move away from the other vampire, but sense won out over fear, and he stayed put. Michael had never gotten sick from the disease the rest of the vampires had carried; as the youngest, he’d never had the chance. But he’d seen what it had done to some of the others in Morganville. He’d seen the creatures they’d become, confined for their own protection in cells in an isolated prison.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had the shot, Michael. I don’t think you can get it now.”

  She hoped that was true, anyway. If this was some new strain of the disease, then that was worse. Lots worse, especially if—as she suspected, from the condi
tion of these two vampires, and the one she’d staked in the hall—they were actually getting sicker a lot faster than the typical Morganville vampire had.

  Shane came pelting into the room, almost tripped over the pencil-staked vampire, and looked around, lost. “Uh—what happened?”

  “Where’s Eve?”

  “I left her next door,” he said. “She’s okay.”

  “You left her?” Michael snapped. “Oh, you’d better tell me you didn’t just say that.”

  “She’s fine, Mike. She’s awake, kind of. I left her with a letter opener, hiding under a desk. She’s safer than any of us right now.” Shane looked down at the staked vamp at his feet. “Claire?”

  “Yes?”

  “You staked a vampire with a number two pencil.”

  “I didn’t actually check the number.”

  “Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?”

  She tried to smile, but her heart was fluttering in her chest now, and not in a good way. “Compliments later. We really need to get out of here and get to the car. Any ideas?”

  “Find another pencil and I’ll pin this one down, too,” Michael said.

  “You know how weird that sounds, right?” Shane said. “Right, never mind. Number two pencil, coming up. Why do I feel like we’re taking a test?”

  “Claire.” Michael looked past Shane, at her. “Go to Eve. Make sure she’s okay.”

  Claire nodded and hobbled out the door, across the hall. The door was shut but not locked, and she pushed it open ...

  Only to have to duck an awkward lunge from Eve, who was standing up, clinging to a chair and holding a glittering silver letter opener in one deathly tight-gripped hand. Eve yelped and opened her fingers to drop the knife when she saw what she’d almost done, and fell into Claire’s arms with a sob of relief. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Eve whispered, and hugged her with feverish, shaking strength. “God, so sorry. I thought you were one of the creeps.”

  “Not today,” Claire said, and winced at the blood trickling down the side of Eve’s face. “That must hurt.”