by Rachel Caine
“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 condition 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.”
“Not so much now.” Eve’s eyes looked kind of vague and unfocused, but she was staying on her feet. That had to be a good sign. “I thought—I thought I saw Michael. But then Shane was here, and—”
“Michael’s here,” Claire said. “He was carrying you, but he had to fight. He’s coming, Eve. I told you he would.”
Eve squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing deep. “Okay,” she said then, and her voice sounded stronger. “Okay. We’ll be okay.”
From the other room, Claire heard the sound of metal bending, and then a loud clang. “Yo!” It was Shane’s voice, ringing off stone and wood. “Girls, the party’s over. We are leaving!”
“Come on,” Claire said, and put her arm under Eve’s shoulders to keep her upright. “Time to go.”
“Where’s Jason?” Eve almost sounded in focus now, and on just the wrong topic. “We have to find him! ”
“He’s with Oliver,” Claire said. “We’ll find him. First, we have to make sure we stay alive, okay? Very important.”
The two of them staggered together across the hall into the room where two vampires were lying on the floor, pinned by pencils, and Michael and Shane were standing at the window. The bars were broken out. Michael was sensibly off to the side, away from the sun, and he’d draped one of the thick, dusty curtains over his shoulders. Claire supposed he was going to use it to cover his head.
But neither he nor Shane was moving.
“What?” Claire asked, and as she came to the window and looked out, she realized what the problem was.
The police car was on fire.
And so was the bus, with big, crackling, very public flames.
And nobody, nobody had come out to gawk. No police had come running. Not even the volunteer fire department.
Blacke was a dead town—literally.
“We are screwed,” Shane said, very matter-of-factly. “Plan B?”
“There isn’t one,” Michael said.
“You know, I kind of saw that one coming,” Eve said. “Even with a concussion.”
They stood there for a moment, watching the car and bus burn, and for a few seconds nobody said anything. Then Michael said, “Morley didn’t do that. Morley isn’t that stupid.”
“It damn sure wasn’t Oliver,” Shane added. “So what the hell is going on around here?”
“You should tell us. You were riding with Morley; we just got here.”
“Yeah, funny thing, getting tied up and hustled around by hungry vampires made me not notice the little things. All I know is that we got into the building, Morley was making some speech, and next thing I knew, one of Morley’s crew was yelling that we were being attacked. I grabbed Eve and tried to get her under cover, but she got clocked by Morley when she got between him and some guy he was fighting. She hit her head.” Shane paused and glanced at Michael. “What’s your excuse?”
&n
bsp; “I lost track a while ago,” Michael said. “Right about the time Oliver detoured us into Crazytown for no good reason. Unless this is what he was looking for all along.”
“What, a town full of sick vampires?” When Claire said it, suddenly it made sense. “He was. He knew they were here. Somewhere, anyway. He was looking for them!”
“He thought they were in Durram,” Michael agreed. “That’s why he went off in the middle of the night searching. But if they ever were there, they moved on, to here. Smaller town. Easier to control, before they got too sick to care.”
“But these dudes are not exactly historical,” Shane said, and nodded toward the kid in the football jersey. “That’s not some vintage outfit he’s wearing; he can’t have been vamped more than a few months ago, a year at the most. So how did he—”
“Bishop!” Claire interrupted. “Bishop was looking for Amelie. And he was making new vampires all the time, just making them and leaving them.” She shuddered. “He must have come through here, or someplace close.” Bishop was Amelie’s father—both physically, and in a vampire sense, apparently. And in neither sense was he going to win a Father of the Year award. Or get a humanitarian plaque, either. He’d snacked on necks, and this was what he’d left behind him.
Scary, and disgusting.
“If Oliver was looking for them, he must have some kind of plan,” Eve said. She was leaning against the wall now, holding one hand to her must-be-aching head, and she still looked kind of vague and unfocused. “Find him. He’ll know what to do.”
“He might have had a plan, but that was before Morley and his merry bunch of idiots crashed into it,” Shane said. “Now we’re in the middle of a three-sided vampire war. Which would be an awesome video game, but I’m really not interested in playing for real. I like my reset buttons.”
“Then we have to find another car,” Michael said. “One that runs.”
“No, man, I have to find another car,” Shane said. “And black out the windows. And get it back here so you don’t combust strolling around town shopping for one. So here’s an idea: You take care of the girls; I’ll get the wheels.”