The Morganville Vampires

by Rachel Caine

  Eve angrily wiped tears from her face, glaring at him. “She’ll come. And I’ll come with her. You don’t own jack. This is our town, and we’re going to kick you out if it’s the last thing we do.”

  The assembled vampires all laughed. Bishop said, “Then come. We’ll be waiting. Won’t we, Claire?”

  “Yes,” she said, and went to sit down on the steps by his feet. “We’ll be waiting.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Then let’s begin our celebration, and in the morning, we’ll talk about how Morganville will be run from now on. According to my wishes.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I had an especially great track list to help me through this book, and I thought you might enjoy listening along. Don’t forget: musicians need love and money, too, so buy the CDs or pay for tracks.

  Read on for an exciting excerpt

  from Rachel Caine’s next

  Morganville Vampires novel,

  CARPE CORPUS

  Coming in June 2009 from NAL Jam

  “Claire,” Bishop said. He didn’t sound pleased. “Did I summon you?”

  Claire’s heart jumped as if he’d used a cattle prod. She willed herself not to flinch. “No sir,” she said, and kept her voice low and respectful. “I came to ask a favor.”

  Bishop—who was wearing a plain black suit today, with a white shirt that had seen brighter days—picked a piece of lint from his sleeve. “The answer is no. Anything else?”

  Claire wet her lips and tried again. “I wanted to see Shane, sir. Just for a few—”

  “I said no,” Bishop snapped, and she felt his anger crackle through the room. Michael and a strange vamp both looked up at her, eyes luminously threatening. Myrnin—dressed in some ratty assortment of Goodwill reject pants and a frock coat from a costume shop, plus several layers of Mardi Gras beads—just seemed bored. He yawned, showing lethally sharp fangs.

  “Oh, don’t be so harsh,” Myrnin said, and rolled his eyes. “Let the girl have her moment. It’ll hurt her more in the end. Parting is such sweet sorrow, according to the bards. I wouldn’t know, myself.”

  Claire forgot to breathe. She hadn’t expected Myrnin, of all of them, to take up her cause—not that he had, really. But he’d given Bishop pause, and she kept very still, letting him think it over.

  Bishop finally crossed his arms, and Michael and the other vampire relaxed in their seats, like puppets with their strings loosened. “This will need supervision,” he said. “Myrnin, it’s your pet. Clean up after it.”

  Myrnin gave Bishop a lazy salute. “As my master commands.” He stood with that unconscious vampire grace that made Claire feel heavy, stupid, and slow, and his bright black eyes locked with hers for a long moment. If he was trying to tell her something, she had no idea what it was. “Out, girl. Master Bishop has work to do here.”

  Before she could even start to back away, Myrnin crossed the room and closed ice-cold fingers around her arm. She pulled in a breath for a gasp, but he didn’t give her time to react; she was yanked along with him down the hall, moving at a stumbling run.

  Myrnin stopped only when there were two closed doors, and about a mile of hallway, between them and Mr. Bishop.

  “Let go!” Claire spat, and tried to yank free. Myrnin looked down at her arm, where his pale fingers were still wrapped around it, and raised his eyebrows as if he couldn’t quite figure out what his hand was doing. Claire yanked again. “Myrnin, let go!”

  He did, and stepped back. She thought he looked disappointed for a flicker of a second, and then his loony smile returned. “Will you be a good little girl?”

  She glared at him.

  “Ah. Probably not. All right, then, on your head be it, little Claire. Come. I’ll take you to the boy.”

  He turned, and the skirts of his frock coat flared. He was wearing flip-flops again, and his feet were dirty, though he didn’t smell bad in general. Layers of cheap metallic beads clicked and rattled as he walked, and the slap of his flip-flops made him just about the noisiest vampire Claire had ever heard.

  “Are you taking your medicine?” she asked. Myrnin sent her a glance over his shoulder, and once again she didn’t know what his look meant at all. “Is that a no?”

  “I thought you hated me,” he said. “If you do, you really shouldn’t care, should you?”

  He had a point. Claire shut up and hurried along as he walked down a long, curved hallway to a big wooden door. There was a vampire guard at the door, a tall man who’d probably been Asian in his regular life but was now the color of old ivory. He wore his hair long, braided in the back, and he wasn’t much taller than Claire.

  Myrnin exchanged some Chinese words with the other vampire—who, like Michael, sported Bishop’s fang marks on his neck—and the vampire unlocked the door and swung it open.

  This was as far as Claire had ever been able to get. She felt a wave of heat race through her, and then she shivered. Now that she was here, actually walking through the door, she felt faintly sick with anticipation. If they’ve hurt him . . .

  Another locked door, another guard, and then they were inside a plain stone hallway with barred cells on the left side. No windows. No light except for blazing fluorescent fixtures far overhead. The first cell was empty. The second held two humans, but neither was Shane. Claire tried not to look too closely. She was afraid she might know them.

  The third cell had two small cots, one on each side of the tiny room, and a toilet and sink in the middle. Nothing else. There was an old man with straggly gray hair asleep on one of the beds, and it took Claire a few seconds to realize that he was Frank Collins, Shane’s dad. She was used to seeing him awake, and it surprised her to see him so . . . fragile.

  Shane was sitting on the other bed.

  He looked up from the book he was reading and jerked his head to get the hair out of his eyes. The guarded, closed-in look on his face reminded Claire of his father, but it shattered when Shane saw her.

  He dropped the book, surged to his feet, and was at the bars in a little under two seconds. His hands curled around the iron, and his eyes glittered wildly until he squeezed them shut.

  When he opened them again, he’d gotten himself under control. Mostly.

  “Hey,” Shane said, as if they’d just run into each other in the hallway. As if months hadn’t gone by since they’d parted. “So . . . happy birthday.”

  Claire felt tears burn in her eyes, but she blinked them back and put on a brave smile. “Thanks,” she said. “What’d you get me?”

  “Um . . .” Shane looked around and shrugged. “Must have left it at the club. You know how it is, out all night partying, you get baked and forget where you parked the car.”

  She stepped forward and wrapped her hands around his. She felt tremors race through him, and Shane sighed, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against the bars. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Shutting up now.”

  She pressed her forehead against his, and then her lips, and it was hot and sweet and desperate, and the feelings that exploded inside her made her shake in reaction. Shane let go of the bars and reached through to run his fingers through her soft, short hair, and the kiss deepened, darkened, took on a touch of yearning that made Claire’s heart pound.

  When their lips finally parted, they didn’t pull away from each other. Claire threaded her arms through the bars and around his neck, and his hands moved down to her waist.

  “I’m really sick of kissing you through bars,” Shane said. “I’m all for restraint, but self-restraint is so much more fun.”

  Claire had almost forgotten that Myrnin was still there, so his soft chuckle made her flinch. “There speaks a young man with little experience,” he said, yawned, and draped himself over a bench on the far side of the wall. He propped his chin up on the heel of one hand. “Enjoy that ignorance while you can.”

  Shane held on to her, and his dark eyes stared into hers. Ignore him, they seemed to say. Stay with me.

  She did.

  “I�
��m trying to get you out,” she whispered. “I can’t stand knowing you’re in here with him.”

  Shane’s eyebrows rose just a little. “Dad? Yeah, well . . . He’s okay.”

  And that, Claire realized, was what she was afraid of—that Shane had forgiven his father for all his crazy stunts. That the Collins boys were together again, united in their hatred of Morganville.

  Shane read it in her face. “Not like that,” he said, and shook his head. “We had to either get along in here, or kill each other. We decided to get along, that’s all.”

  “Yeah,” said a deep, scratchy voice from the other bunk. “It’s been one big, sloppy bucket of joy, getting to know my son.”

  “Shut up, Frank,” Shane said.

  “That any way to talk to your old man?”

  “This is the two of you getting along?” Claire whispered.

  “You see any bruises?”

  “Good point.” This was not how she’d imagined this moment to go, except for the kissing. Then again, the kissing was better than her imagination. “Shane—”

  “Shh.” He kissed her forehead. “How’s Michael?” She didn’t want to talk about Michael, so she just shook her head. Shane swallowed hard. “He’s not . . . dead?”

  “Define dead around here,” Claire muttered. “No, he’s okay. He’s just, you know.”

  “Bishop’s, yeah.” He knew. “What about Eve?”

  “She’s working. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.” Eve, like everyone else in Morganville, treated Claire like the enemy these days, and Claire honestly couldn’t blame her. Not that she was about to load Shane up with that knowledge, though. “She’s busted up about Michael.”

  “No doubt,” Shane said softly. He seemed to hesitate for a heartbeat. “Have you heard anything about us? What Bishop has planned?”

  Claire shook her head. Even if she knew—and she didn’t, in detail—she wouldn’t have told him. “Let’s not talk about it. Shane, I’ve missed you so much.”

  He kissed her again, and the world melted into a wonderful spinning blend of heat and bells, and it was only when she finally, regretfully pulled back that she heard Myrnin’s mocking, steady clapping.

  “Love conquers all,” he said. “How quaint.”

  Claire turned on him, feeling fury erupt like a volcano in her guts. “Shut up, Myrnin!”

  He didn’t even bother to glance at her, just leaned back against the wall and smiled. “You want to know what he’s got planned for you, Shane? Do you really?”

  “Myrnin, don’t!”

  Shane reached through the bars and grabbed Claire’s shoulders, turning her back to face him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “This matters, right now. Claire, we’re going to get out of this. We’re going to live through it. Both of us.”

  “Both of us,” she repeated. “We’re going to live.”

  Myrnin’s cold hand closed around her wrist, and he dragged her away from the bars. The last thing she let go of was Shane’s hand.

  “Hey!” Shane yelled as Claire fought, lost, and was pulled through the door. “Claire! We’re going to live!”

  Myrnin slammed the door, rolled his eyes, and said, “Theatrical, isn’t he? Come on, girl. We have work to do.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  Myrnin didn’t give her a choice; he half dragged, half marched her away from the first vampire guard, then the second, and then pulled her into an empty, quiet room off the long hallway. He shut the door with a wicked boom and whirled to face her.

  Claire grabbed the first thing she saw—it happened to be a heavy candlestick—and swung it at his head. He ducked, rushed in, and effortlessly took it away from her. “Girl. Claire!” He shook her into stillness. His eyes were wide and very dark. Not at all crazy. “If you want the boy to live, you’ll stop fighting me. It’s not productive.”

  “Why should I help Bishop?” she said, and twisted to throw him off. It was like trying to throw off a granite statue.

  “Who says you would be?” Myrnin asked, very reasonably. “Who says I work for him?”

  She wouldn’t have believed him, not for a second, except that a section of the wall opened, there was a flash of white-hot light, and a woman stepped through, followed by a long line of people.

  Amelie, though she didn’t look anything like the perfect white queen whom Claire had always seen. Amelie had on black pants, a black zip-up hoodie, and running shoes.

  And behind her was the frickin’ vampire army. Led by Oliver, all in black, looking scarier than Claire could remember having ever seen him—he usually at least tried to look nondangerous, but today he obviously didn’t care.

  He crossed his arms and looked at Myrnin and Claire as if they were something slimy on his coffee-shop floor.

  “Myrnin,” Amelie said, and nodded graciously. He nodded back, as though they were passing on the street. As if it were a normal day. “What’s the girl done?”

  Myrnin looked at Claire, grinned, and let go of her.

  “Oh, she’s been quite difficult,” he said, “which helped convince Bishop that I am, indeed, his creature. But I think it’s best if you leave us behind now. We have more work to do here, work that can’t be done in hiding.”

  Claire opened her mouth, and then closed it without having thought of a single coherent question to ask. Oliver dismissed both of them with a shake of his head and signaled for his vampire shock troops to fan out around the room on either side of the door to the hallway.

  “Can you protect her, Myrnin?” Amelie asked, and her pale gray eyes bored into his, colder than marble. “I will hold you to your answer.”

  “With my last breath,” he promised, and clasped his hand dramatically to his ragged frock coat. “Oh, wait. That doesn’t mean much, does it? Sorry. I mean, yes. Of course. With what’s left of my life.”

  “I’m not joking, jester.”

  “And I’m not laughing, my lady.”

  Claire’s head was spinning. She looked from Myrnin to Amelie to Oliver, and finally thought of a decent question to ask. “Why are you here?”

  “They’re here to rescue your boyfriend,” Myrnin said. “Happy birthday, my dear.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  In addition to the Morganville Vampires series, Rachel Caine is the author of the popular Weather Warden series, which includes Ill Wind, Heat Stroke, Chill Factor, Windfall, Firestorm, Thin Air, and Gale Force. Rachel and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Popeye and Darwin; a mali uromastyx named (appropriately) O’Malley; and a leopard tortoise named Shelley (for the poet, of course).

  Please visit her Web site at www.rachelcaine.com and her MySpace, www.myspace.com/rachelcaine.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  TRACK LIST

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “Addictive and hypnotic. If Rachel Caine is

  not on your autobuy list, put her there

  immediately, if not sooner.”

  —The Eternal Night

  Praise for the Morganville Vampires Series

  Feast of Fools

  “Fast-paced and filled with action . . . fans of the series will appreciate Feast of Fools.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Thrilling. . . . In sharing her well-imagined world, Ms. Caine gives readers the danger-filled supernatural moments they crave while adding friendship, romance, and teen issues to give the story a realistic feel. A fast-moving series where there’s always a surprise just around every dark corner.”—Darque Reviews

  “Very entertaining . . . I could not put Feast of Fools down. . . . T
here is a level of tension in the Morganville books that keeps you on the edge of your seat; even in the background scenes you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it always does.”—Flames Rising

  “I thoroughly enjoyed reading Feast of Fools . . . it was fantastic. . . . The excitement and suspense . . . is thrilling and I was fascinated reading about the town of Morganville. I greatly look forward to reading the next book in this series and catching up with the other books. I highly recommend Feast of Fools to paranormal readers for a delightful and fun read that you won’t want to put down.”—Fresh Fiction

  Midnight Alley

  “A fast-paced, page-turning read packed with wonderful characters and surprising plot twists. Rachel Caine is an engaging writer; readers will be completely absorbed in this chilling story, unable to put it down until the last page. . . . For fans of vampire books, this is one that shouldn’t be missed!”—Flamingnet

  “Weaves a web of dangerous temptation, dark deceit, and loving friendships. The nonstop vampire action and delightfully sweet relationships will captivate readers and leave them craving more.”—Darque Reviews

  The Dead Girls’ Dance

  “It was hard to put this down for even the slightest break . . . forget what happens to the kid with the scar and glasses, I want to know what happens next in Morganville. If you love to read about characters with whom you can get deeply involved, Rachel Caine is so far a one hundred percent sure bet to satisfy that need. I love her Weather Warden stories, and her vampires are even better.”—The Eternal Night

  “Throw in a mix of vamps and ghosts, and it can’t get any better than Dead Girls’ Dance.”