by Rachel Caine
“Screw you,” he said in a ragged pant and gave Hannah a defiant grin.
She raised the gun, all right.
She pointed it at Claire.
Shane froze in place, his grin fading fast. “You’re bluffing.”
“Probably seems that way,” Hannah said. “But you know me well enough to know I don’t point a weapon unless I’m ready to shoot to kill. I like you, Shane. I like your girl, here. But you’re testing me, and I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He stayed still. The deputy got hold of him and wrenched his bound hands up high enough to make Shane stand on tiptoe, his face twisted in pain. He put a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “Walk, punk,” the man growled.
Shane walked.
Claire did, too. Eve had fallen into a watchful silence, but even so, Hannah had her zip-tied as well. That was almost certainly a wise move. People underestimated Eve a lot, because of her funny sarcasm and cute-as-a-button face, but they did it at their peril.
They left Dr. Anderson handcuffed and silent in the car behind them, and Claire wondered about that.
Someone had put in a fresh sidewalk to the door of the warehouse, and there were newly planted bushes and sprigs of trees around it. Even so, walking up to it felt like walking up the steps to one of those old-time gallows; she didn’t know what was going to happen to them once they were inside. The thick glass doors had the rising sun symbol on them, and the words THE DAYLIGHT FOUNDATION beneath it.
And, in gold lettering, ALL ARE WELCOME IN THE LIGHT. That sounded nice . . . unless you’d met their followers under less well-lit circumstances. Say, in a lab where they were ripping vampires apart.
Hannah opened one of the double doors, and a breath of chilled air raised goose bumps on Claire’s bare arms. She had expected cavelike darkness, but as her eyes adjusted from the bright outdoor sun, she realized that it was nearly as bright inside, thanks to a giant skylight over the central atrium in which they stood. Bathed in the glow was a wooden desk with the Daylighters symbol on the front of it, and a well-dressed older woman who smiled kindly at them.
“Mrs. Hodgson?” Claire blurted. She knew the woman; she was a neighbor on Lot Street, where their old Victorian house was located. A nice lady, always puttering in her garden with her flowers and waving to them pleasantly. She’d brought over cookies for Christmas a couple of times. Snickerdoodles.
“Claire? Eve? And oh, my, Shane, too.” Mrs. Hodgson looked politely distressed at the sight of their restraints. “Now, don’t you worry at all. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of here. You’re in the light now. You’re safe.” She got up from the desk, revealing that she was wearing a fitted suit that was straight out of the 1960s, complete with a strand of shiny pearls, and came around to clip badges on their shirts. “I’ll just take care of putting your IDs on. Can’t let you in here without identification, can we? There, now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Thanks, Doreen,” Hannah said. “Let him know we’re here, won’t you?”
“Absolutely. Can I get y’all anything? Some water, maybe?”
“Beer,” Shane said. “Shiner Bock if you’ve got it.”
“Oh, now, you stop that,” Mrs. Hodgson said. “You’re far too young to drink, you scamp.”
This wasn’t a situation where any of them were inclined to be smiling, but Shane did, a little, and shook his head. He mouthed the word scamp to Claire, his eyebrows raised.
She raised hers back.
“Just some water might be nice,” Hannah said. “Thank you kindly.”
She led Claire over to a padded chair nearby and pressed her into it; Eve got seated next to her. The deputy kept Shane standing.
The anteroom was pretty plain, dominated mostly by the desk manned by Mrs. Hodgson, but there were some photos on the walls—Claire squinted against the glare from the skylight and made out the shapes of several people in one of the pictures, standing in front of this very building—but in the early stages of renovation, it looked like. She could make out that one was Hannah, and one was the new Morganville mayor, Flora Ramos. Apart from that, the others were a mystery—except that she noticed a pattern, and a recurring face. A short man, slight build, nothing really remarkable about his features.
Doreen Hodgson came back bearing water bottles, and following behind her was the same man, in the flesh.
He wasn’t very imposing in real life, either—shorter than Shane by at least four inches. He wore a plain black suit and a white shirt; the only spots of color on him were his very blue eyes—almost the same startling shade as Michael’s—and a red silk tie and pocket square. His face had a vaguely Eastern European shape to it, but that was really all that Claire could tell about him.
That, and the fact that his Daylight Foundation pin gleamed like real gold.
He nodded to Hannah and said, “You can let them go now. I’m sure that we’re all going to be civilized. Besides, they can hardly drink their water if their hands are tied. It’s important to start this conversation with trust.”
Hannah nodded to her deputy, and as he unfastened Shane’s handcuffs, she pulled out a utility knife and sliced through the zip-tie cuffs on Claire’s wrists, and then Eve’s. Doreen hurried to put bottles of water into their newly freed hands—cold, sweating bottles that reminded Claire how long it had been since she’d had anything to drink.
“Thanks,” she said, and put the bottle down on the chair where she’d been sitting. “Not thirsty.” It was a lie, but she didn’t know enough yet to trust anything about this situation—not even a sealed water bottle.
The man’s pale eyebrows raised just a touch. “It’s a name brand,” he said. “I can promise you that it hasn’t been tampered with.” He extended his hand toward her. “I’m Rhys Fallon. And you must be Claire Danvers.”
“Are you in charge here?” Claire asked him, without shaking the hand he was holding out. He lowered it to his side, not visibly offended.
“I suppose you could say that,” he said. “Although I like to think that it’s more a collaboration, not a dictatorship.”
“If you’re in charge, you can take us to our friends, right now,” she said.
“Your friends . . . ?”
“Michael,” Eve said. “Oliver, Myrnin, Jesse. You know. The ones you had shot and carried off.”
“Ah.” Rhys clasped his hands behind his back and, for the first time, studied Eve. He spent a strangely long time at it, and there was something about his body language that altered, just a little. “Eve Rosser, is it not?”
“Eve Glass,” she said, and raised her chin to make the point more forcefully. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m delighted to meet someone who is so . . . legendary in Morganville. The descriptions I’ve heard don’t do you justice.” He smiled at her, and that was a little too much wattage to direct at a married woman—an angry married woman at that. “Well, I am very sorry, and I wish I could grant your request, but it isn’t possible just now. Michael and your other friends are being well looked after, and after they’re completely recovered, they’ll be placed into protective custody. You’ll be able to visit later, perhaps.”
“I want to see my husband, and there’s no later and there’s no perhaps. I want to see him right the hell now. I don’t care who you think you are, you can’t—”
“Yes, I can,” he said, and Claire was struck by the fact that he stated it without emphasis. It wasn’t a bluff; it wasn’t a boast. It was just . . . fact. It even had a tinge of regret to it. “I’m sorry, Miss Rosser—”
“Mrs. Glass!” Eve’s face was flushed now, and her fists clenched.
“—but you must accept that things are different here than when you left town. I believe for the better, but you may not agree quite yet. I hope you will, in the end. I sincerely do.” He cleared his throat and glanced away for the first time, at Hannah Moses. “We’ll have to discuss the . . . legitimacy of your marriage at a later time.”
“What?” E
ve almost went for his throat, right there, but Hannah restrained her with a cautionary hand on her shoulder. “What are you talking about? We were married! In the church!”
“As I said, a conversation for a later time, perhaps. I am sorry to upset you.”
He might have been sorry, but he had definitely upset her, big-time. Eve’s cheeks had gone from flushed to pale now, and she looked shaky. She hadn’t expected that, at all . . . not that.
Claire said, “I want to see Amelie.”
That got his immediate undivided attention. His eyes were very blue, and in fact not at all warm. Not cold, either. Just . . . expressionless. “I’m sorry, perhaps you didn’t understand,” he said. “It simply isn’t possible. And it will not be anywhere in the near future. If you want to talk to the person in charge of Morganville, it is no longer a vampire. It is Mayor Flora Ramos, the duly elected representative, which is as it should be. Or don’t you agree that humans should govern themselves? Your reputation was . . . somewhat different. I thought that you had stood up for the free will and rights of humans in this town.”
“Depends on the human,” Claire said. “As far as I know, Hitler had a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t vote him to be in charge.”
That earned her a slow, warm smile. “You think Mayor Ramos is Adolf Hitler?”
“You’re drawing false connections, and I don’t know who you are. But I’m betting that Mayor Ramos answers to you.”
“That’s an interesting inference, and I think you might be surprised about how much free will the mayor has. Shane? You’re unaccountably silent.” He suddenly turned and looked at her boyfriend, who stared back without any shift in his guarded expression and said nothing. “Are you going to let your girlfriend do all the work?”
“Yeah,” Shane said. “Why? Is it bugging you, Rhys? What kind of name is that, anyway?”
“Irish. I meant no disrespect, I simply thought you’d be more—” Rhys just shrugged. “Well. Forceful.”
Shane just smiled his sweetest, nicest smile, but his eyes were hard. And dangerous.
“He is,” Claire said. “So am I. So’s Eve. You’d better start answering our questions, right now.”
“You know, I appreciate your passion, but you betray your very young age when you speak that way to me, because I am not your prisoner, Claire. You would do well to note that fact very carefully.”
There was menace in his tone now, something subtle but all the more serious for it. Fallon held Claire’s stare for a long moment, and then, without looking away, said, “Ah, Irene. How fare you, my friend?”
Claire turned just as the glass door closed behind Dr. Irene Anderson, who stood there blocking their way out. Once, Dr. Anderson had been Claire’s professor at MIT; once, Claire had trusted her, even liked her. Now she just loathed the sight of her—especially free, armed, and with a pale gleam of hatred in her slightly deranged eyes.
Dr. Anderson racked the shotgun she held, just for emphasis. “I’m fine, Rhys, thank you,” she said. “Which is more than I can say for all our compatriots back in Cambridge. They killed them. They killed them all.”
“Even Dr. Davis?”
“He’s dead. They’re all dead.” She aimed the shotgun at Claire, Shane, and Eve. “Hannah, step aside. We can’t leave these collaborators alive.”
“Irene!” Fallon’s voice was an unmistakable whipcrack of command, and she flinched and looked at him, startled. “No one is doing anything so reckless here. Put that down, now.”
“But—”
“Did you hear what I said? What is wrong with you, woman? You’d take a shotgun to three people hardly older than children?”
“Trust me, they’re adults,” she said. “And they didn’t hesitate to kill us when they had the chance. You’re making a mistake, Rhys, a big one. You can’t deal mercifully with these . . . vampire lovers. I’ve told you before, the world is better off if you just end all this once and for all. No half measures. Do not underestimate them.”
That was kind of a compliment, Claire supposed, but it was also terrifying when combined with the loaded shotgun and the half-crazy look on her face. Dr. Anderson would very much like to kill them. And apparently, the only thing that was really standing in her way was Fallon, and as far as Claire could tell, he was thinking about his options.
Hannah had quietly removed her handgun from its holster and was holding it at her side. Now she said, “Irene, please put the shotgun down.”
That startled Dr. Anderson, and her eyes widened when she took in the fact that Hannah had her own weapon ready. “You’d shoot me?”
“I’m here to keep the peace,” Hannah said. “You seem to be threatening it. So I’m asking you nicely, please put that down and let’s all be civil.”
Fallon seemed to make his decision. He took three steps forward and put himself squarely in the line of fire—a position where Irene couldn’t miss him if she happened to shoot. “This isn’t like you, my dear,” he said. “Now let me have that thing before someone gets hurt.”
Irene hesitated, but she lowered the shotgun from firing position and handed it over to him. Fallon broke it open and held it comfortably in the crook of his arm, as if he was long acquainted with proper gun safety procedures. “Thank you,” he said. “Mrs. Hodgson, could you please show Dr. Anderson to her quarters? I believe she could use a comfortable rest and a meal, and perhaps some calming medication. Thank you so much.”
It was all very warm and kindly, but Claire still felt chilled as she watched their nice old neighbor lady take Dr. Anderson by the arm and lead her off through the far door, patting her and murmuring in a calm, grandmotherly sort of way. If the last scorching glance Dr. Anderson sent back toward them was any indication, it wasn’t working.
“I’d apologize for that, but it appears to me that there might be some justification for how much she dislikes the three of you,” Fallon said. “Would you like to tell me your side of it? Or shall I just take her at her word? If I do that, you may very well be on your way to jail, charged with murder.”
“We didn’t murder anyone,” Claire said quickly, as Eve took in a hot breath, ready to start yelling. “We were abducted. We were held prisoner, at gunpoint. We fought our way free, and yes, people died, but we didn’t have a choice.”
“They tortured Michael,” Eve said. “They were going to kill us all when they were done with us. They were using Myrnin, Oliver, and Jesse as lab rats, too.”
“But you did kill them,” Fallon said.
“Ever heard of self-defense?” Shane asked. He sounded as calm and measured as Eve was angry. “It was a bad scene, and trust me, whether they were friends of yours or not, they were not good people. They kidnapped Claire’s roommate, who didn’t have diddly to do with anything, and nearly got her killed in the process. They did kill another guy who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A human guy.”
Fallon considered that for a moment, then looked at Hannah, who shrugged. “We’ve only got their word versus Anderson’s,” she said. “Irene may be a friend of yours, but I know these kids, and they generally try to do the right thing. I’m inclined to believe them.”
“Sweet. Does that mean I get to hold the shotgun?” Shane asked.
“Perhaps some other time,” Fallon said. “In any case, whatever crimes were committed, they were not committed here, and thus would be outside of Chief Moses’s jurisdiction. But please don’t misunderstand; I take the deaths of my people seriously, and it counts against you. Your earnest cooperation is required to avoid any further unpleasantness. Because if there happens to be any trouble here in Morganville, it will not be so easily overlooked, do you understand? These are not the old rules, the Founder’s rules. These are rules of law, and justice, and they will be enforced regardless of who you are or who you know.”
Fine words, Claire thought. She wondered if that was what had gotten Hannah on board his train. “I see that your rule of law and justice doesn’t extend to vampires,” she said. “Seein
g as how you’re willing to have them shot on sight.”
“Non-fatally, you might have noticed.” Fallon’s voice was mild, but firm. “Everyone will get a fair chance in Morganville. That is why the mayor has joined us, and the police chief”—said with a polite nod toward Hannah—“and most of the other prominent citizens and families. You see, once Amelie’s threat to those in Morganville was removed, no one hesitated to speak their minds about how radically the situation needed to change.”
There was only one part of that Claire paid attention to—once Amelie’s threat to those in Morganville was removed? Well, she should have already guessed that; if Amelie was still in charge, she’d have wasted no time in shutting all this Daylight Foundation stuff down—no matter what the cost in lives. What worried Claire was that Amelie was old and clever and ruthless, but somehow she hadn’t seen this coming.
What had happened to her? Where was she now?
“Where are you keeping her?” That was Shane asking, as if he’d read Claire’s mind; it was also unusual for him to be concerned about the fate of vampires, but then, Amelie had been mostly on their side lately. “Or did you just cut to the chase and kill her already?”
“Of course not,” Fallon said. “I’m not here to kill. I’m here to protect the human population of Morganville, and to make sure that they gain the control over their lives that they deserve—that is my first priority. But the vampires are residents of this town as well, and we are working for their long-term good, too.”
“So Amelie’s not dead, then,” Shane said. “You know that as long as she’s still alive, you’re never going to have control of this town, right? It’s hers; she built it. She sees herself as a queen, and she’s not the type to just walk away.”
Claire felt as if the temperature in this warm, sunlit room had dipped by twenty degrees. Was Shane really somehow warning Fallon to kill the Founder of Morganville? Shane’s father had been radically anti-vampire; he’d convinced Shane to hate them, too, at least for a while. But she thought he was over that. Mostly.