by Rachel Caine
“Chatty Batty,” Eve said. “Hey, it fits.”
“I like it.”
Claire shook off Michael’s hand. He let her. “Then let’s go, before he gets himself killed.”
Shane probably didn’t mean it when he said, “Wait, that was an option? Because I could still stay.”
Myrnin was already well ahead of them, of course, and they had the guards to deal with, but since Claire had already been admitted once today, with Theo, they let her in.
But only her.
“We’re with the band,” Shane said, and tried to push his way past. That got him an iron-hard vampire grip on his arm that made him wince and stopped him cold. “Claire, don’t. Stay with me. He’ll be okay.”
But in her bones Claire didn’t really think he would be. She looked at the guard holding Shane’s arm and asked, “Is Oliver still in there, too?”
“He’s gone to find the doctor,” the guard said. “Myrnin just went in.”
“So he’s alone?” She felt a surge of anxiety. “Well, he wants us with him.”
“Us?” The vampire wasn’t buying that one. “You, maybe. The others stay here. They’re not on the list.”
“There’s a list? And I’m not on it?” Eve said. “I’m deeply hurt. I’m always on the list.”
“It’s not a club,” Michael said.
“Still.”
Claire backed away, down the hall, mouthed, Sorry, to Shane, and hurried on. From the look on his face, she knew they’d be having a serious conversation about this later, but she couldn’t wait to try to talk it out now.
Myrnin was in trouble. She could just feel it.
Inside the room, Claire shut the heavy door but didn’t lock it behind her; the anteroom was a sitting area, hushed and airless. It reeked of the damp and sickness, and it also seemed a little like a museum … as if someone had created it for show, not for use. This is how vampires lived in the twenty-first century, the exhibit card would read. Pretending that everything was normal.
Claire took in a slow, calm breath and opened the bedroom door. She half expected to find it empty, but Myrnin was there, standing stock-still a few feet from the bed.
Looking at Amelie.
She looked like her own statue—immobile and white, lying exactly in the center of the bed with her hands folded over her stomach. The sheets were drawn up and folded back just below her arms. It looked as if she was wearing some kind of thick white nightgown, with incredibly delicate lace at the collar and cuffs. Her hair was loose, and it spilled over the pillow in a pale silk fan.
There was a thick bandage on her throat, but it was soaked through with dark, wet blood.
Seeing her like this was … strange. She looked very young, and vulnerable, and somehow very sad. Claire remembered seeing pictures of the tombs of queens, of the marble images carved to top them that were replicas of the bodies below. Amelie looked just like that … an eternal monument to her own mortality.
Myrnin raised his head and saw Claire standing there, and his expression turned from blank to tormented. “Get out,” he said. “Get out now, while you still can!”
He sounded absolutely serious, and Claire took a step backward, intending to follow his instructions.
And then Amelie opened her eyes.
It was sudden, a flash of movement that made Claire’s heart skip a beat. Amelie’s eyes were a paler gray than they’d always been, more like dirty ice.
“Someone’s here,” she whispered. “Someone …”
“Claire, get out,” Myrnin said, and took a step closer to the bed. “I’m here, Amelie. Myrnin. Right here.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. Her voice was thin as silk, and just as soft. “Where is Oliver?”
“Gone, for the moment,” Myrnin said. “Oh, my dearest. You are far too pale. Let me get something for you to eat.” He meant blood, Claire thought. Amelie had no color under her skin. She looked almost translucent.
“Don’t you mean someone?” Amelie asked. It was nearly a joke, but it wasn’t funny. “I asked Oliver to end my suffering. I didn’t mean to make him so angry, but he really must face facts, soon. Will you do it for me, Myrnin? As my friend?”
“Not yet,” he said, and took her hand in his. “I am not quite ready to let you go. None of us are.”
“All things die, even vampires.” That same distant tone, as if none of it mattered any longer. “If it was only death I faced, I would go gladly. But I can feel it now, inside me. The pull of the sea. The tides. The hunger.” Amelie’s eyes focused on Myrnin again, and there was a strangely luminous glow to them. “The seas came first. All life flowed from them and must in the end return there. As I’m returning. As you will. I was a fool to believe the draug could be defeated. They are the tide. The sea. The beginning and end of us.” The glow intensified, and Claire found herself oddly … calmed by it. Amelie seemed so peaceful, lying there. And being around her seemed so safe. Myrnin must have felt the same; he sank to a sitting position on the edge of her bed. “There’s no escaping the tides, don’t you see? Not for me, or you, or Morganville. Because the tide always comes.”
Myrnin pulled in a sharp gasp, and looked down at his hand, held in hers. He tried to pull free, but couldn’t. “Stop,” he said, in a voice only half as strong as it should have been. “Amelie, stop. You must not do this.”
“I’m not,” she said, sounding very sad. “There’s so much inside that isn’t me any longer. You shouldn’t have come. Either of you.”
Her ice-pale gaze captured Claire’s, and Claire knew she was walking forward, drawn by forces she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. She couldn’t stop herself. Didn’t really want to stop herself.
And then she stretched out her hand and Amelie’s pale, strong fingers locked over hers.
She felt the tingle, and then the burning, like a million needles piercing her skin.
She watched the bitter cold of Amelie’s skin change, take on warmth.
Blood.
Blood drawn out of Claire. By a touch.
The same was happening to Myrnin, Claire realized. He was panting now, mumbling frantic pleas, trying to pry her hand free from his but failing.
Amelie no longer needed fangs to feed. Like the draug, she fed at a touch.
And it was happening so fast. Claire felt light-headed, pleasantly tired, even though somewhere deep inside she was shrieking in protest.
Just close your eyes, Amelie’s voice was saying gently, far away. Just close your eyes and sleep now.
And then something hit her and knocked her away, halfway across the room and into a heavy wooden table with a gigantic bowl of dried flowers. It all crashed to the carpet, spilling shattered glass and broken petals, and Claire was lying on her side, staring up at the wall. There was a painting there, something famous, with dark paint and bright bursts of color all done in furious layers and peaks. She blinked slowly, not quite comprehending what had just happened, and saw a bright spot of red closer to her than the painting.
Blood. Blood on her hand—no, on her fingers, welling out as if she’d been stabbed with a hundred pins.
It hurt in a sudden, blazing ignition of feeling, and she realized what had just happened. It crashed in on her fast and hard, and she felt terror rip through her. She squirmed back and up, sitting against the corner, holding her injured hand close to her chest.
Oliver was helping Myrnin unwrap Amelie’s fingers from his wrist. As soon as it was done, Myrnin fell to the floor and half crawled, half slid into another corner, cradling his wrist just as Claire was holding her own injured fingers. He looked … appalled. And scared.
Oliver was standing between the two of them and the bed. Amelie hadn’t moved. Not at all. Oliver looked as furious as Claire had ever seen him, face as sharp and pale as bone, eyes like coals smoldering red beneath the black. “You idiots,” he snapped, and came toward Claire. When she flinched, he looked even angrier. “I’m not set to hurt you, stupid girl. Let me see your h
and.”
She was all too aware of the red pooling in her palm, but he didn’t wait for her consent; he snatched her arm, vamp fast, and stretched it out to inspect the wound. If the blood itself affected him at all, he showed no signs of it. He took a moment, then let her go, strode away, and came back with a small white towel, which he pitched into her lap. “Clean yourself,” he said. “I told you very clearly you were not to enter this room. I never took you for this much of a fool. And you, Myrnin. What the devil were you thinking?”
“We need the key,” Claire said. Her teeth were inexplicably chattering, and she felt ice-cold inside, as if she’d lost a lot of blood, not just a little. Maybe it was shock. “The k-k-key to the armored truck, downstairs. W-we need to use it to g-get to the water plant. Myrnin said she had it.”
“The key?” Oliver almost laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t only the key, was it?”
Myrnin raised his head then. “I needed to find out just how much you’ve been lying to me about her condition. A considerable amount, it seems to me.”
Claire never saw Oliver hit him; she just inferred that it happened from the blur, and Myrnin’s head snapping back. He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one hand, never looking away from Oliver, and said, “You said that she was holding her own. She just asked me to kill her.”
“She fights,” Oliver said. “And she fights it better without these ridiculous distractions. Take the girl and get out. You risked yourself, and her, for nothing. I thought you liked the child better than that.”
“I like both of them better than that. But I came for a reason, and the reason still holds.”
“Your curiosity is an addiction that will kill you one of these days. I’m not Amelie. I’ll not put up with your whims. Consider this fair warning, Myrnin: when I tell you to stay away, stay away, and keep your pets on leashes.”
Myrnin looked past him at Claire. “Are you all right?” He still seemed shaken, but he was pulling himself together fast. He stood up and helped her rise as well. She didn’t think she was all right, exactly, but she nodded anyway. Bruises, for sure, but nothing broken. Her hand was the worst of it, and the towel Oliver had thrown at her was soaking up the blood. “Oliver. We still need those keys.”
“Keys?” Oliver interrupted, and barked out a laugh. “Keys to what?”
“The Founder’s transport car. The armored one. I require them,” Myrnin said.
“Be off with you. I don’t have them.”
“No, the Founder has them.” Myrnin stressed the noun a bit more than necessary, and it seemed to make Oliver angrier still, if that was even possible. “And the Founder will give them to me, if she’s still herself at all. She knows that I wouldn’t ask for no reason.”
“Myrnin.” Amelie’s quiet, gray voice hardly broke the surface of the silence, but both of them turned toward her instantly. There was a flash of something in Oliver’s face, something like—fear, Claire thought. It was gone too fast for her to be certain.
“I am sorry, but I cannot control this,” Amelie said. “It’s best that you leave now. All of you. Leave me to this. I fight it as I can.” Her eyes slowly closed, then opened again. “Keys. Keys are in the black box in my desk. Take them.” It hurt her to do whatever she was doing—even Claire could see it—but she even smiled, just a little, through the pain. “I don’t want to hurt my friends. Oliver has been trying to protect you, you should know that.”
“Oh, my dear,” Myrnin said, and blinked back tears. “Amelie, hold. You must hold. I’ll be back and we will find a way to stop this.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t come back. Never come back, Myrnin. Or I’ll have you.” She suddenly looked toward Claire, and the impact of it made Claire take in a sharp, painful breath. “I’ll remember the taste of you. Don’t let me get so close again.”
It was a naked, chilling warning, and Claire took it seriously. So, she saw, did Myrnin.
But Oliver had to drive it home. “If you do come back,” he said, “I’ll kill you before she gets you. It would be a kindness.”
Myrnin shook his head. “She’ll get you first, you know that.”
“I’m not as easy as all that.” Oliver held the door for them, and his eyes brushed over Claire, then came to rest on Myrnin. “You of all people should know.”
Then he let the door slam shut behind them.
“Let me see,” Myrnin said, in the sudden silence of the anteroom, and she realized he was asking about her hand. She unwrapped it and held it out, and flinched as his cool fingers touched her hot, bloodied ones. “They’ve swollen a bit, but that’s good. Your body is fighting the infection. You’ll be all right.” His hand came away with a smear of blood on it, and he looked at it, then sighed and wiped it on the towel. “That is a great waste.”
“What, the blood?”
“Of course not.” He sighed. “Amelie, of course. We shall not see her like again in these weak times.”
He set a wicked fast pace down the hall; Claire grimly trudged along for her enforced aerobic workout and wondered if her hand might feel better if she just hit him. He was so far ahead she almost missed which turns he’d taken; this building always got her turned around, as she suspected it was supposed to do. There were no signs, no names on doors, just those expensively generic paintings. She supposed that if she could tell one old masters landscape from another, she’d know her way around, but her brain wasn’t really wired that way.
“Slow down!” she finally yelled, as Myrnin disappeared around a distant corner. She was tired, shaky, and irritable, and the bruises she’d collected were making themselves felt, definitely. She also had a hot pinpoint headache forming in the center of her forehead.
Myrnin popped his head—just his head—back around the corner at a very weird angle to say, “Oh, just hurry up!” and then he vanished. If Claire had been in the habit of cursing like, say, Shane, she’d have scorched the carpet with it. Instead, she just set her teeth together, hard, and moved faster.
Amelie’s office, without its usual complement of guards, was halfway down the next hall, or at least that was the door that Myrnin was in the act of kicking open. It took several attempts, which must have meant that Amelie had built her security against vampires, not humans—sensible, really. Before Claire reached him, Myrnin had beaten the locks, and the heavy wooden door splintered open with a crash. “Faster would be better,” he said, “given that her guards are not fully off duty, and they may not appreciate that I took dire measures, even with permission. They have to fix the doors eventually, you know.”
He zipped inside, kicked open Amelie’s inner sanctum door with a few more violent blows, and by the time Claire got there he was at the desk, ripping open another (locked) drawer and removing a black box.
He hissed and dropped it on the desktop in surprise. His fingers looked burned—in fact, there was a faint wisp of smoke coming from them. But it was a black box, not …
Claire picked it up, or tried to. It was very heavy. When she scratched it with her thumbnail, the paint peeled off and bright metal was revealed.
Silver.
“Locked,” she said. “Do you have the key?”
“Cherub, do I look like I have any keys to anything in this room? The doors I just knocked down would argue against that, I’d think. Here.” He snatched up a letter opener—steel, not silver—and set it against the lock. “Hold the box still.”
She did, and he hit the letter opener sharply on the end with the heel of his hand, and it drove into the lock and snapped it. Claire folded back the hinged top and said, “Oh, no.”
Because there were literally dozens of keys in the box, and not a one of them was labeled. They had colored tags, but that didn’t mean anything to her or, she could tell, to Myrnin. He shook his head and said, “Bring the box. Damnation, I believe her security is coming.” He glared at her injured right hand, then took hold of a heavy velvet curtain over the window and ripped it down. It didn’t make the room th
at much lighter, since darkness was falling fast. Myrnin smothered the box in the thick velvet and scooped it up. “Well? What are you waiting for? Run!”
She didn’t know what they were really running from, and wasn’t in any mood to find out. She’d memorized turns this time—right out the door, down the hall, left, then another left—and then she spotted the vampire guards at the end of the long stretch of corridor.
And her friends, waiting.
“Why is there a bloody towel on your hand?” Shane demanded, and then he spotted Myrnin behind her. “Maybe that question’s for you, asshole. What happened?”
“She touched something she shouldn’t have, and we don’t have time for this. Here.” Myrnin shoved the curtain-swaddled box at Eve, who yelped at how heavy it was. Michael took it from her. “It’s full of keys. Find the ones we need. Careful of the silver, there’s a good lad.” He didn’t pause, just hurried on with Michael and Eve in his wake. “To the garage!”
That left Shane still holding Claire. He didn’t let go. “What happened to your hand?” he asked. “Because if it was him—”
“It wasn’t.” Well, that was debatable, but she wasn’t about to tell Shane; there was enough tension between him and Myrnin already. “It was Amelie. She’s turning into … one of them. The draug.” She stripped off the towel and showed him her hand, and the red pinpricks of bite—or stings—that covered her fingers. He winced. “We don’t have much time to save her.”
“If we can,” he said, and lifted her injured hand to his lips. His kiss felt so good that it washed relief all the way through her. “I know you. You’re going to try like hell to make everything right again.”
“Hell’s what’s coming,” she said. “I’m just trying to avoid it. Come on.”
As soon as the elevator doors opened, they heard the sound of an engine coughing, catching, and taking up a heavy thrumming idle. Shane cocked his head in that direction. “That’s our cue,” he said. “You ready?”