by Rachel Caine
Fallon, however, watched Shane with steady eyes, and shook his head. “Like Amelie herself, you overestimate how fond people in this town are of her and her kind. Now that they are free of the fear, of the threats and reprisals, they’ve simply turned their backs on her and forgotten she ever existed. No one will listen to her, or rally to her cause, even if she should decide to make this some sort of a fight. They don’t fear her enough.”
“Why are we even talking about Amelie?” Eve asked in a low, harsh voice. “They’ve got Michael. And he’s who we ought to be worried about!”
Shane didn’t answer her. His gaze had fixed on Fallon’s, and Claire felt a deep surge of unease. Something was off about him. This wasn’t the usual, challenging way Shane confronted someone who had—at the very least—done his friends harm. She couldn’t exactly pinpoint how it was different, but . . . it was. Definitely. “Shane,” she said, and put her hand on his arm. “Shane.” That got to him, and the blankness in him faded away. When he looked at her, he was normal again. Well, normal for Shane, anyway.
He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, about that, we’re going to need our friend Michael back. Intact.”
“Or?” Fallon asked. It wasn’t confrontational, really, just an interested question.
“Look, you clearly do not know who you’re screwing with,” Eve said, and she was definitely confrontational, a whole lot. “I want my husband back, Osama bin Crazy, right the hell now! And don’t give me any shit about how you don’t want to call him my husband, because he is, and he always will be!” She was so angry now that tears welled up in her eyes, but with a huge effort of will, she refused to give in to the sobs.
Fallon took the red silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it into Eve’s hand. He even patted her fingers gently as they closed around the fabric. “I’m so very sorry to upset you,” he said. “Believe me, that isn’t my intention. I came to Morganville to bring a peace that has never existed here, and not just a fear-enforced peace on the streets, but real peace in the hearts of those who live here. I’m certain that Michael would not want you to feel such distress on his behalf.”
“Don’t you dare talk about what Michael would want! You don’t even know him!”
And Fallon, without a flicker of resentment, suddenly smiled at Eve—a sweet, disarming sort of smile. “Of course you’re right,” he said. “I don’t know him, but I have a very real kinship to him. You see, as I understand it, Michael was attacked by a vampire and, well, killed. Isn’t that true?”
Eve, taken aback, couldn’t quite get her words together, so Claire said, “He wasn’t killed, exactly.”
“Oh, no, I assure you he was. Yet that extraordinary house of yours saved him, didn’t it? Gave him a pale half-life of an existence as some kind of ghost? He had very little choice in becoming a vampire at all, and I do understand that. I had very little choice in what happened to me, either, and that is why I established the Daylight Foundation—not to destroy vampires, but to rehabilitate them. To save them. You’ve seen the motto on the door: ALL ARE WELCOME IN THE LIGHT. And I most sincerely mean that. I think that if you asked him, really asked, he would tell you that he has no real desire to be a vampire. Only the monsters enjoy that existence.”
Eve sucked in a steadying breath and said, “Michael’s still Michael, no matter what his diet is, and I want to be with him. Don’t tell me it isn’t safe. He won’t hurt me!”
“I see. I think you honestly believe that. Well, I really must let Michael tell you himself, mustn’t I? Perhaps it is best if you see him, then. Hannah will take you for a short visit, and we’ll hear no more about it after.”
He had a certain draw to him, Claire thought. She could see how he could convince people to follow him . . . even Hannah, who definitely was not born gullible. He had a fire in him, and strength, and courage. It was right there, for anyone who looked hard enough.
God, she thought, suddenly and coldly alarmed. Even I’m falling for it a little. That wasn’t normal. Not for her. Maybe when she’d first arrived in Morganville she might have bought into that kind of charisma, but she’d grown since then. She’d learned how to distrust a nice face and a winning smile.
It was odd, but something about him reminded her of vampires, and the charm they could deploy in the cause of gaining what they wanted. What unsettled her was that Fallon quite clearly wasn’t a vampire—she could see the pulse beating in his throat, his color was good, and there was none of that strange sense of other that she almost always got from the fanged gang.
She was so caught up in her own reactions that she almost missed what Fallon said, and it took a few seconds to penetrate that he had, in fact, just agreed.
He was going to let them see Michael, which should have been, by any measure, a victory.
Why did it feel so much like a trap?
TWO
Once upon a time—well before Claire had come to Morganville, and probably before she’d entered puberty—there had been a mall in town. It hadn’t been a huge one, not like the sprawling temples of shopping that you could find in the bigger cities like Dallas or Houston, or even Midland. It also had never had any of the major chain stores in it, mainly because (as Eve had speculated, probably correctly) Amelie didn’t want to have regular traffic in and out of town or to encourage visitors. And as humble as a Sears store might be, it would have still been better than anything else within a hundred miles, and it would have made people—people who weren’t in the know—come to Morganville.
So the mall had housed only local stores, and it had struggled along for a few years in the mid-1980s until the last business had failed and bailed, leaving behind one of the largest empty structures in Morganville—which said a lot, considering how many empty structures there were around town. The old tire factory, and the even older hospital, for example, were fairly gigantic. But the biggest difference to Claire was that she had never been forced to run for her life in the old mall. It had always seemed more of a sad place than an actively evil one.
As the police cruiser pulled up to one of the parking spaces in the cracked, deserted lot, she thought that was about to change.
“Right,” Hannah said, and turned around in the front seat to look at them. The three of them had been crammed together in the backseat this time, which actually was comforting; Claire loved the warmth and solidity of Shane sitting in the middle, even if it pushed her uncomfortably into the hard plastic of the door. “Rules, people. We’ve got them, and you’ll obey them. First rule is, you do exactly what my officers tell you, without hesitation or question. If they tell you to get down on the floor, you eat dirt. If they tell you to stop, you become a statue. Are we understood?”
“What the hell happened to you?” Shane asked her. “Because I’m pretty sure you used to be cool, Captain Obvious.”
“So did you,” Hannah shot back. “So be cool now, or end up back in handcuffs. Fallon said you’d get to see Michael, and I’m going to make that happen, but you be cool.”
No one had a comeback for that. Eve looked tense, her dark eyes huge, as if she was afraid to do anything to screw up the chance to see the man she loved—but also, Claire thought, as if she was ready to gnaw through steel bars to get to him, if necessary. At moments like these, Eve looked exactly like what she was: strong and determined.
Fallon would almost certainly see that as a threat, that kind of devotion.
“Watch her back,” Claire whispered to Shane, and got a nod as Hannah exited the police cruiser and opened Eve’s door.
“I’m watching yours first,” Shane whispered back, then scooted over toward the exit. Claire followed, blinking at the harsh desert daylight again; the tint on the cruiser’s windows wasn’t vampire-dark, but it had lulled her into a false sense of being in a kinder, gentler place until the dry, dusty reality hit her full on.
The mall was on two floors, and it was built of bricks the color of dried mud. No windows. It was shaped like a rectangle—no fancy arc
hitectural touches here. The rusted steel letters still clung to the side of the building, or at least most of them did: BITTER CREEK MALL. Only a few letters had fallen away, or been ripped off, so the sign actually read BIT ER EEK MA L. Which seemed weirdly appropriate somehow.
Two uniformed police officers stood at parade rest outside the double doors that led into the mall, and Claire recognized one of them. He’d arrested Shane once—though that wasn’t exactly a small club of people.
Hannah gave them both brisk nods, and like the most intimidating doormen ever, the cops opened the entrance and stood aside to let them go in.
It smelled abandoned.
That was the first thing Claire noticed—the musty reek of old carpet, dust, mold—the aroma of a place that humans had long ago rejected. A faint undertone of rot, too.
And quiet. So very, very quiet. The sound of their footsteps echoed around an open atrium floored with cracked, dirty ceramic tiles in a brightly colored style that must have been hot back in the dark ages when the place was built, but just looked dated and clumsy now. A dry three-tiered fountain sat lifeless in the corner. The light coming in was dim at best; the skylights, Claire found as she looked up, were filthy, and the plastic had aged to a dull, opaque yellow. It gave all of them a sickly pallor.
“Cozy,” Shane said. “Going for the homeless heroin addict market with this place, are you?”
“We worked with what we had,” Hannah said. She sounded just a touch defensive. “We’re getting it cleaned and made more livable, but they don’t seem to care all that much about the decor.”
They being the vampires, Claire realized, because despite the hush, they were most definitely not alone. Silent figures loomed in the shadows like abandoned mannequins. Even when the figures moved, it was more like ghosts walking—silent and eerie. So many vampires. But none of them came out into the open tiled square of the atrium.
Eve took in a sudden sharp breath. “Jesus!” she gasped, and Claire knew she’d spotted them, too. There was something deeply unsettling about the way they were being watched. Like prey.
Like enemies.
“Stay where you are,” Hannah said, as Eve took a step out toward them. “They know the rules; they stay out of the atrium unless we specifically call their names.”
“Or what?” Shane asked tightly. He didn’t like this any more than Claire did. “What kind of punishments have you been dishing out?”
Hannah didn’t answer that—didn’t want to, Claire thought. But she had her hand on what Claire had originally thought was some kind of radio on her belt—a black box with buttons along the top and a flickering green light.
Maybe it wasn’t a radio after all.
“Michael Glass,” Hannah said. She didn’t raise her voice, but then, in a mall full of vampires, she really didn’t need to do that. “We’re here for Michael Glass. Michael, step forward, please.”
He didn’t. Amelie did.
It was as if somehow the shadows parted around her, but Claire knew that wasn’t the case; Amelie had simply moved forward without seeming to move at all, and suddenly she was standing at the edge of the tiles, her pointed-toe pumps lined up very precisely with the boundary. The Founder of Morganville was dressed in impeccable white, impossibly clean and pure in the dirty, yellowed glow. Her pale silvery eyes seemed almost colorless, and from experience Claire knew that meant Amelie was at her most dangerous.
“What do you want with Michael?” she asked. Her hands were folded in front of her, a calm, resting position, and her body language was watchful.
“Eve wants to see him, to be sure he’s all right.”
That made Amelie smile, just a little. It was a shivery kind of expression, and she lowered her chin just enough to make it seem terrifying. “Yes, I’m sure all of you are simply brimming with concern for our well-being.”
“He’s my husband!” Eve said sharply. “Look, I just had to fight to get this far. Don’t be a jerkface, Amelie.”
That broke Amelie’s concentration, and she looked a little puzzled as she worked out the word. “Jerkface?” she said slowly, as if testing the syllables. “Ah. You think I am the one at fault? You have quite a lot to learn, Eve. But if you wish to see Michael, I will send him out—as soon as Chief Moses assures me that he will remain unharmed and will be returned in the same state.”
“Returned to you? What about to me?”
“It’s clear you don’t understand the slightest thing about what is happening in Morganville,” Amelie said. “So I will forgive you for not comprehending how much danger you put Michael in by separating him from my protection.” She nodded slightly, and on the other side of the atrium, Oliver stepped up. He was holding Michael by the arm. Michael broke free, and for just a heartbeat Claire saw him clearly in the dim light: a shock of golden hair wild around his face, clear blue eyes fixed on Eve. Of all of them, he looked the least like a vampire, except for the pallor of his skin. He looked like a Renaissance angel come to life, if angels wore jeans and witty T-shirts.
He was wearing something black around his throat, and for a second Claire thought it was one of Eve’s chokers, the dog-collar type, though that would be a strange thing for him to put on. She could barely see it, and then he was a blur, heading at vamp speed across the tiles.
Hannah pressed a button on the box on her belt, and Michael stopped. No, not just stopped—he broke stride, stumbled, and fell to his knees, shaking. “Slowly,” Hannah said. “Don’t make me take it up to the next level, Michael. Move slowly.”
“Yes,” Amelie said from the shadows. “Pray do as she says, Michael.”
Eve, after a white-hot glare at Hannah, threw herself out into the open space and down next to Michael. “What did you do to him?” she demanded. “He’s hurt! Michael, baby, are you okay? Michael!”
“He’s fine,” Hannah said, and took her finger off the button. “No permanent damage, I promise. But I have to make sure everybody obeys the rules. It’s the only way this works.”
The vampires hadn’t moved, but there was a new feeling in the air, Claire thought. A kind of tension that was reinforced by what sounded almost like a low whisper of sound.
A growl.
“I’m fine,” Michael said. He sounded shaky, but he wrapped his arms around Eve and held on tight. “God, there you are. All in one piece. I was so worried.”
“Me? I’m not the one who got an arrow to the chest, bucko.”
“I didn’t know what happened to you.” He raised his hands to cup her face, and brushed her black hair back. It was growing longer again, and she hadn’t braided it, so it fell in a sleek curtain. “I was so scared they’d—they’d done something to you. Not hurt?”
“Just my feelings,” Eve said. “Seeing as how our old friend there stuck a knife between our collective shoulder blades.” She followed her statement up with a rude gesture, to which Hannah didn’t bother to react. “Honey—” She reached out toward the collar around his neck. He captured her hands in his and held on when she tried to pull away. “Honey, what is that thing around your neck?”
“Shock collar,” Shane said. “Isn’t it, Hannah? Like you’d put on a dog. You’ve got them on all of them.”
“We have to maintain order,” Hannah replied. “It’s the least violent way we could come up with to do it. They need to stay inside this building for their own protection, and we need to have order for the safety of my officers.”
Amelie had the same collar on, Claire realized. So did Oliver, standing with his graying hair loose and wild around his shoulders.
And where was Myrnin? Her heart skipped a beat and then sped up. She didn’t see him anywhere. Surely he’d be here if he was able to, which meant that he wasn’t able to make an appearance. That something had gone wrong with him.
Michael had steadied by now, and he kissed Eve’s hands and then leaned forward to press his lips to hers—a soft, gentle sort of kiss that made her let out a cry when it was over, and bury her face in the crook of his
neck. He held on to her, but his blue eyes remained fixed on Hannah. Hard to read his expression. Claire had never seen him look quite that closed off. “Eve can’t stay here,” he said. “You can’t let her stay here with me, you know that. Not even if she wants to.”
“I wouldn’t,” Hannah said. “I know how dangerous it would be, even if she refuses to admit it.”
“Are you crazy?” Eve said. Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, but Claire still heard it clearly. “No, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not letting you stay trapped in here without me. They don’t get to put you in some kind of—vampire petting zoo. You’re coming home where you belong. With us. With me.”
“He can’t,” Amelie said. “If he leaves this place, he will be killed. Not by us, of course. By those who are our . . . protectors.” The irony of that wasn’t lost on her, Claire thought, noticing the twist of her lips. The taste of it must have been bitter.
“Is that true?” Shane turned to look at Hannah, but she continued to do a middle-distance stare. “Hey. Talking to you, lady!”
“I heard you,” she said. “He’s right that it isn’t safe for vampires outside of this enclave.”
“Enclave?” Claire heard the outrage in her own voice, even though she tried to hold it back. “I don’t care what kind of cool name you want to give it to make yourself feel better. It’s a prison camp.”
“They’re here for their own protection.”
“Bullshit!” she spat back, and Shane put his hand on her shoulder. It surprised her enough to stop her from uttering the rest of what she’d been about to say, which probably wouldn’t have been quite so nice.
“Claire,” he said, “let’s take a breath. Maybe—maybe this isn’t a bad thing.”
“What?”
“Maybe we need to just think a little more,” he said. “I mean, having vampires obeying the rules . . . what’s so wrong with that? They damn sure don’t obey any unless they’re scared of something. Not even the rules they make themselves. Right, Amelie?”