by Rachel Caine
Hannah cocked her head. She was standing at the end of the alley, shotgun held in her arms in a way that was both casual and scarily competent. “What?”
“You don’t hear it?”
Claire did. Somebody’s phone was ringing. A cell phone, with an ultrasonic ringtone—she’d heard that older people couldn’t hear those frequencies, and kids in school had used them all the time to sneak phone calls and texts in class. It was faint, but it was definitely there. “I thought the networks were down,” she said, and pulled her own phone out.
Nope. The network was back up. She wondered if Richard had done it, or they’d lost control of the cell phone towers. Either one was possible.
They found the phone before the ringing stopped. It was Eve’s—a red phone, with silver skull cell phone charms on it—discarded in the shadow of a broken, leaning doorway. “Who was calling?” Claire asked, and Shane paged through the menu.
“Richard,” he said. “I guess he really was looking for her after all.”
Claire’s phone buzzed—just once. A text message. She opened it and checked.
It was from Eve, and it had been sent hours ago; the backlog of messages was just now being delivered, apparently.
It read, 911 @ GERMANS. Claire showed it to Shane. “What is this?”
“Nine one one. Emergency message. German’s—” He looked over at Hannah, who pushed away from the wall and came toward them.
“German’s Tire Plant,” she said. “Damn, I don’t like that; it’s the size of a couple of football fields, at least.”
“We should let Richard know,” Claire said. She dialed, but the network was busy, and then the bars failed again.
“I’m not waiting,” Shane said. “Let’s get the car.”
9
The tire plant was near the old hospital, which made Claire shudder; she remembered the deserted building way too well. It had been incredibly creepy, and then of course it had also nearly gotten her and Shane killed, too, so again, not fond.
She was mildly shocked to see the hulking old edifice still standing, as Shane turned the car down the street.
“Didn’t they tear that place down?” It had been scheduled for demolition, and boy, if any place had ever needed it . . .
“I heard it was delayed,” Shane said. He didn’t seem any happier about it than Claire was. “Something about historic preservation. Although anybody wanting to preserve that thing has never been inside it running for their life, I’ll bet.”
Claire stared out the window. On her side of the car was the brooding monstrosity of a hospital. The cracked stones and tilted columns in front made it look like something straight out of one of Shane’s favorite zombie-killing video games. “Don’t be hiding in there,” she whispered. “Please don’t be hiding in there.” Because if Eve and Myrnin had taken refuge there, she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to go charging in after them.
“There’s German’s,” Hannah said, and nodded toward the other side of the street. Claire hadn’t really noticed it the last time she’d been out here—preoccupied with the whole not-dying issue—but there it was, a four-story square building in that faded tan color that everybody had used back in the sixties. Even the windows—those that weren’t broken out—were painted over. It was plain, big, and blocky, and there was absolutely nothing special about it except its size—it covered at least three city blocks, all blind windows and blank concrete.
“You ever been inside there?” Shane asked Hannah, who was studying the building carefully.
“Not for a whole lot of years,” she said. “Yeah, we used to hide up in there sometimes, when we cut class or something. I guess everybody did, once in a while. It’s a mess in there, a real junkyard. Stuff everywhere, walls falling apart, ceilings none too stable, either. If you go up to the second level, you watch yourself. Make sure you don’t trust the floors, and watch those iron stairs. They were shaky even back then.”
“Are we going in there?” Claire asked.
“No,” Shane said. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here and getting Richard on the phone and telling him where we are. Me and Hannah will check it out.”
There didn’t seem to be much room for argument, because Shane didn’t give her time; he and Hannah bailed out of the car, made lock-the-door motions, and sprinted toward a gap in the rusted, sagging fence.
Claire watched until they disappeared around the corner of the building, and realized her fingers were going numb from clutching her cell phone. She took a deep breath and flipped it open to try Richard Morrell again.
Nothing. No signal again. The network was going up and down like a yo-yo.
The walkie-talkie signal was low, but she tried it anyway. There was some kind of response, but it was swallowed by static. She gave their position, on the off chance that someone on the network would be able to hear her over the noise.
She screamed and dropped the device when the light at the car window was suddenly blocked out, and someone battered frantically on the glass.
Claire recognized the silk shirt—her silk shirt—before she recognized Monica Morrell, because Monica definitely didn’t look like herself. She was out of breath, sweating, her hair was tangled, and what makeup she had on was smeared and running.
She’d been crying. There was a cut on her right cheek, and a forming bruise, and dirt on the silk blouse as well as bloodstains. She was holding her left arm as though it was hurt.
“Open the door!” she screamed, and pounded on the glass again. “Let me in!”
Claire looked behind the car.
There was a mob coming down the street: thirty, forty people, some running, some following at a walk. Some were waving baseball bats, boards, pipes.
They saw Monica and let out a yell. Claire gasped, because that sound didn’t seem human at all—more the roar of a beast, something mindless and hungry.
Monica’s expression was, for the first time, absolutely open and vulnerable. She put her palm flat against the window glass. “Please help me,” she said.
But even as Claire clawed at the lock to open it, Monica flinched, turned, and ran on, limping.
Claire slid over the front seat and dropped into the driver’s seat. Shane had left the keys in the ignition. She started it up and put the big car in gear, gave it too much gas, and nearly wrecked it on the curb before she straightened the wheel. She rapidly gained on Monica. She passed her, squealed to a stop, and reached over to throw open the passenger door.
“Get in!” she yelled. Monica slid inside and banged the door shut, and Claire hit the gas as something impacted loudly against the back of the car—a brick, maybe. A hail of smaller stones hit a second later. Claire swerved wildly again, then straightened the wheel and got the car moving more smoothly. Her heart pounded hard, and her hands felt sweaty on the steering wheel. “You all right?”
Monica was panting, and she threw Claire a filthy look. “No, of course I’m not all right!” she snapped, and tried to fix her hair with trembling hands. “Unbelievable. What a stupid question. I guess I shouldn’t expect much more from someone like you, though—”
Claire stopped the car and stared at her.
Monica shut up.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Claire said. “You’re going to act like an actual human being for a change, or else you’re on your own. Clear?”
Monica glanced behind them. “They’re coming!”
“Yes, they are. So, are we clear?”
“Okay, okay, yes! Fine, whatever!” Monica cast a clearly terrified look at the approaching mob. More stones peppered the paint job, and one hit the back glass with enough force to make Claire wince. “Get me out of here! Please!”
“Hold on, I’m not a very good driver.”
That was kind of an understatement. Eve’s car was huge and heavy and had a mind of its own, and Claire hadn’t taken the time to readjust the bench seat to make it possible for her to reach the pedals easily. The only good thi
ng about her driving, as they pulled away from the mob and the falling bricks, was that it was approximately straight, and pretty fast.
She scraped the curb only twice.
Once the fittest of their pursuers had fallen behind, obviously discouraged, Claire finally remembered to breathe, and pulled the car around the next right turn. This section of town seemed deserted, but then, so had the other street, before Monica and her fan club had shown up. The big, imposing hulk of the tire plant glided by on the passenger side—it seemed like miles of featureless brick and blank windows.
Claire braked the car on the other side of the street, in front of a deserted, rusting warehouse complex. “Come on,” she said.
“What?” Monica watched her get out of the car and take the keys with uncomprehending shock. “Where are you going? We have to get out of here! They were going to kill me!”
“They probably still are,” Claire said. “So you should probably get out of the car now, unless you want to wait around for them.”
Monica said something Claire pretended not to hear—it wasn’t exactly complimentary—and limped her way out of the passenger side. Claire locked the car. She hoped it wouldn’t get banged up, but that mob had looked pretty excitable, and just the fact that Monica had been in it might be enough to ensure its destruction.
With any luck, though, they’d assume the girls had run into the warehouse complex, which was what Claire wanted.
Claire led them in the opposite direction, to the fence around German’s Tire. There was a split in the wire by one of the posts, an ancient curling gap half hidden by a tangle of tumbleweeds. She pushed through and held the steel aside for Monica. “Coming?” she asked when Monica hesitated. “Because, you know what? Don’t really care all that much. Just so you know.”
Monica came through without any comment. The fence snapped back into place. Unless someone was looking for an entrance, it ought to do.
The plant threw a large, black shadow on the weed-choked parking lot. There were a few rusted-out trucks still parked here and there; Claire used them for cover from the street as they approached the main building, though she didn’t think the mob was close enough to really spot them at this point. Monica seemed to get the point without much in the way of instruction; Claire supposed that running for her life had humbled her a little. Maybe.
“Wait,” Monica said, as Claire prepared to bolt for a broken-out bottom-floor window into the tire plant. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for my friends,” she said. “They’re inside.”
“Well, I’m not going in there,” Monica declared, and tried to look haughty. It would have been more effective if she hadn’t been so frazzled and sweaty. “I was on my way to City Hall, but those losers got in my way. They slashed my tires. I need to get to my parents.”’ She said it as though she expected Claire to salute and hop like a toad.
Claire raised her eyebrows. “Better start walking, I guess. It’s kind of a long way.”
“But—but—”
Claire didn’t wait for the sputtering to die; she turned and ran for the building. The window opened into total darkness, as far as she could tell, but at least it was accessible. She pulled herself up on the sash and started to swing her legs inside.
“Wait!” Monica dashed across to join her. “You can’t leave me here alone! You saw those jerks out there!”
“Absolutely.”
“Oh, you’re just loving this, aren’t you?”
“Kinda.” Claire hopped down inside the building, and her shoes slapped bare concrete floor. It was bare except for a layer of dirt, anyway—undisturbed for as far as the light penetrated, which wasn’t very far. “Coming?”
Monica stared through the window at her, just boiling with fury; Claire smiled at her and started to walk into the dark.
Monica, cursing, climbed inside.
“I’m not a bad person,” Monica was saying—whining, actually. Claire wished she could find a two-by-four to whack her with, but the tire plant, although full of wreckage and trash, didn’t seem to be big on wooden planks. Some nice pipes, though. She might use one of those.
Except she really didn’t want to hit anybody, deep down. Claire supposed that was a character flaw, or something.
“Yes, you really are a bad person,” she told Monica, and ducked underneath a low-hanging loop of wire that looked horror-movie ready, the sort of thing that dropped around your neck and hauled you up to be dispatched by the psycho-killer villain. Speaking of which, this whole place was decorated in Early Psycho-Killer Villain, from the vast soaring darkness overhead to the lumpy, skeletal shapes of rusting equipment and abandoned junk. The spray painting—decades of it, in layered styles from Early Tagger to cutting-edge gang sign—gleamed in the random shafts of light like blood. Some particularly unpleasant spray-paint artist had done an enormous, terrifying clown face, with windows for the eyes and a giant, open doorway for a mouth. Yeah, really not going in there, Claire thought. Although the way these things went, she probably would have to.
“Why do you say that?”
“Say what?” Claire asked absently. She was listening for any sound of movement, but this place was enormous and confusing—just as Hannah had warned.
“Say that I’m a bad person!”
“Oh, I don’t know—you tried to kill me? And get me raped at a party? Not to mention—”
“That was payback,” Monica said. “And I didn’t mean it or anything.”
“Which makes it all so much better. Look, can we not bond? I’m busy. Seriously. Shhhh.” That last was to forestall Monica from blurting out yet another injured defense of her character. Claire squeezed past a barricade of piled-up boxes and metal, into another shaft of light that arrowed down from a high-up broken window. The clown painting felt like it was watching her, which was beyond creepy. She tried not to look too closely at what was on the floor. Some of it was animal carcasses, birds, and things that had gotten inside and died over the years. Some of it was old cans, plastic wrappers, all kinds of junk left behind by adventurous kids looking for a hideout. She didn’t imagine any of them stayed for long.
This place just felt . . . haunted.
Monica’s hand grabbed her arm, just on the bruise that Amelie’s grip had given her earlier. Claire winced.
“Did you hear that?” Monica’s whisper was fierce and hushed. She needed mouthwash, and she smelled like sweat more than powder and perfume. “Oh my God. Something’s in here with us!”
“Could be a vampire,” Claire said. Monica sniffed.
“Not afraid of those,” she said, and dangled her fancy, silver Protection bracelet in front of Claire’s face. “Nobody’s going to cross Oliver.”
“You want to tell that to the mob of people chasing you back there? I don’t think they got the memo or something.”
“I mean, no vampire would. I’m Protected.” Monica said it like there was simply no possibility anything else could be true. The earth was round, the sun was hot, and a vampire would never hurt her because she’d sold herself to Oliver, body and soul.
Yeah, right.
“News flash,” Claire whispered. “Oliver’s missing in action from Common Grounds. Amelie’s disappeared. In fact, most of the vampires all over town have dropped out of sight, which makes these bracelets cute fashion accessories, but not exactly bulletproof vests or anything.”
Monica started to speak, but Claire frowned angrily at her and pointed off into the darkness, where she’d heard the noise. It had sounded odd—kind of a sigh, echoing from the steel and concrete, bouncing and amplifying.
It sounded as if it had come out of the clown’s dark mouth.
Of course.
Claire reached into her pocket. She still had the vial of silver powder that Amelie had given her, but she was well aware that it might not do her any good. If her friend-vampires were mixed in with enemy-vamps, she was out of luck. Likewise, if what was waiting for her out there was trouble of a human variety, inste
ad of bloodsuckers . . .
Shane and Hannah were in here. Somewhere. And so—hopefully—was Eve.
Claire eased around a tattered sofa that smelled like old cats and mold, and sidestepped a truly impressive rat that didn’t bother to move out of her way. It sat there watching her with weird, alert eyes.
Monica looked down, saw it, and shrieked, stumbling backward. She fell into a stack of ancient cartons that collapsed on her, raining down random junk. Claire grabbed her and pulled her to her feet, but Monica kept on whimpering and squirming, slapping at her hair and upper body.
“Oh my God, are they on me? Spiders? Are there spiders?”
If there were, Claire hoped they bit her. “No,” she said shortly. Well, there were, but they were little ones. She brushed them off Monica’s back. “Shut up already!”
“Are you kidding me? Did you see that rat? It was the size of freaking Godzilla!”
That was it, Claire decided. Monica could just wander around on her own, screaming about rats and spiders, until someone came and ate her. What. Ever.
She got only about ten feet away when Monica’s very small whisper stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Please don’t leave me.” That didn’t sound like Monica, not at all. It sounded scared, and very young. “Claire, please.”
It was probably too late for being quiet, anyway, and if there were vampires hiding in German’s Tire Plant, they all knew exactly where they were, and for that matter, could tell what blood type they were. So stealth didn’t seem a priority.
Claire cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled, very loudly, “Shane! Eve! Hannah! Anybody!”
The echoes woke invisible birds or bats high overhead, which flapped madly around; her voice rang from every flat surface, mocking Claire with her own ghost.
In the whispering silence afterward, Monica murmured, “Wow, I thought we were being subtle or something. My mistake.”