by Rachel Caine
“What the hell is going on here?” Shane asked, as the sound of Monica’s convertible faded. “Because I guess you were right that it’s something.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But the house was reaching out to me, really distressed. I can’t believe you don’t feel it.”
“It doesn’t like me. Never did. I think it always thought I was trouble for Michael, and you know what, that house is a pretty damn good judge of character because I totally was when I got here, wasn’t I? So, back door or front?”
“I saw whoever it is around back,” she said. “Front makes more sense.”
“No point in being subtle,” Shane agreed, and gave her a brief, crazy smile before he ran for the front door. She caught up with him as he slowed down and braced for a door-busting kick. She managed to stop him, put a finger to her lips, and then took the key from her pocket. She quietly unlocked the door and eased inside.
Shane was disappointed that he couldn’t make a grand entrance, of course, but he slipped in after her and shut and relocked the door. Nothing looked wrong in the front hallway, and she took a couple of steps forward to peer into the front parlor. Nothing there, either. The extinguishers were still exactly where she’d left them, and she didn’t see anything that indicated there had been an intruder.
But she felt it, knotted and tangled in her guts. The house was angry and violated and afraid, and it needed her.
She just didn’t know why. Or what it expected her to do.
“Claire,” Shane whispered, and made a series of hand gestures she was surprised she actually understood: he was telling her to go down the hall, up the stairs, and check the hidden room. He was right, too; it was, in many ways, the heart of the house, and if something was going on, it was probably happening there.
She pointed at him and raised her eyebrows in question. He pointed off to the kitchen, then made another of those utterly mysterious gestures that somehow made perfect sense to her, as if they were sharing some invisible playbook. He was going to retrieve the hidden weapons from the pantry.
She gave him a thumbs-up and headed down the hall.
The living room didn’t look disturbed, either. It was silent, completely silent, and she felt her skin shiver into goose bumps at just how eerie it seemed . . . as if the whole house was holding its breath.
The stairs always creaked if you were careless, but she knew how to get around it. She balanced her weight carefully on the balls of her feet as she stayed on the left side, close to the wall. There was only one slight moan of wood near the top, and she froze, listening for any change—but she heard nothing. The hallway with their bedrooms on it stretched out in front of her, and she was nearly in the middle, heading for the hidden door, when the creature stepped out of the bathroom, right into her path.
Her brain reported creature because it couldn’t think of anything to match what she was looking at—upright, bipedal like a man, but wrong, proportioned in strange ways. The arms were too long, the face too sharp and all the wrong shape, as if bones were broken under the skin. An oddly muscled back hunched forward under the straining white tee it wore.
She’d never figured that a monster in her house would be wearing blue jeans and cross-trainer Nikes, either.
The worst of it, though, the absolute worst, were the eyes—gleaming acid-yellow eyes, with slitted pupils—and the hands, because they sprouted claws that looked big and terrifying enough to make Wolverine feel inadequate.
Then it opened its mouth and snarled, and all the rest of it faded into insignificance beside the rows of gleaming, razor-sharp teeth.
Claire stumbled back and turned to run, but there was another one coming out of Michael and Eve’s bedroom, blocking her escape. This one seemed smaller, but still twice her size, and it somehow also looked female—probably because it was wearing a dress, a bright summery yellow dress, and why would a monster wear a dress, anyway? It made no sense . . .
And as she watched, it twisted, and twisted, and changed, and she felt her stomach rebelling as the creature snarled and ripped at the clothes. It pinned her with brilliant, alien, insane eyes that were straight out of hell.
What was it Shane had said?
Hellhounds.
They were still changing, but they were looking more like dogs all the time.
Her brain was babbling because it was unable to find a single thing useful to say about this situation. She was caught between two things that looked like they’d escaped from the monster vaults, and they were coming closer, trapping her between them.
And then they were sniffing her.
She threw her hands over her head and hunched down into a ball—instinct, not strategy—and the next thing she realized was that they were all over her, taking in great, noisy breaths through their noses. That was alarming and gross and somehow terrifying all over again, because it seemed so wrong. She could smell them now—a kind of sickening mix of animal musk and the kind of body spray that was supposed to make the opposite sex crawl all over you. It was a vile combination, and she found herself gagging a little, but silently, because she couldn’t manage so much as even a scream. Some instinct had locked her voice down tight. Stay quiet, stay small, close your eyes, and make it all go away.
And, surprisingly, it did. The loud snuffling stopped, and when she dared to glance up, she saw that the two things had dismissed her and were moving off down the hallway, using all four legs now. The hallway was littered with shredded, cast-off clothes. They stopped, snuffling the walls, and then glided into Shane’s room like ghosts.
Claire let out a sudden, explosive breath, shot to her feet, and fought a very strong impulse that wanted her to run for the stairs and get the hell out of this house, away from these things, before it was too late.
Instead, she ran forward, her vision fixed on the place on the wood she needed to press to open the hidden door.
She hit it and raced inside as the panel sighed open, pulling it shut with a hard slam just as she saw the first gleam of yellow eyes from the shadows of Shane’s bedroom turning her way. She raced up the stairs, her heart pounding hard, and stopped only when she’d reached the top and entered Amelie’s hidden lair—Miranda’s bedroom.
No Miranda, but there was someone lying on the sofa.
It was Amelie, and she was dressed in red, a dull crimson that seemed completely wrong for her, and her skin was alabaster white, and all Claire could think at first was why is she wearing that color? before she realized that it wasn’t a color at all.
It was blood, soaking her shredded white dress.
Amelie’s eyes opened, carnelian-red to match her dress of blood, and she said, “You need to flee, Claire. You can’t help me. If you go now, they will ignore you. You’re not the prey they’re tracking.”
“What happened?” Claire asked, and came closer. Amelie’s frail white hand rose, trembled, and gestured for her to stop, and Claire obeyed, because when a vampire who’d lost that much blood said to stay away it was probably a good idea to listen. “What are those—things?” But she knew. She remembered Hannah, and the bite on Shane’s arm, and it felt like gravity reversed under her feet.
“They are not things,” Amelie said. “They are humans, modified to track vampires, to harry us until we are too weak to fight or run. They are Fallon’s loyal dogs, with no will of their own. But they will not harm you if you go now.” She sounded alert, but horribly weak. Claire swallowed hard and edged closer. “Did you not hear me? Leave, Claire. They will not kill me. They’ll save that honor for their master.”
“I can’t. I can’t just leave!”
“I made a terrible mistake,” Amelie whispered. She closed her eyes again, and her hand dropped back to her chest. “I thought—I thought I could reason with him. He was one of mine, once. One of us. I never believed he could turn against us so thoroughly. My folly, Claire, only mine. I brought this on us. If I had killed him when I had the chance . . .”
“How do I stop them?” Claire asked
, and grabbed Amelie’s hand now, squeezing it to get her attention. Amelie’s eyes flickered open again, but stared straight up, avoiding hers. “Amelie! You can’t just give up—you have to tell me what I can do!”
“You can do only one thing,” Amelie said, and suddenly Claire wasn’t holding Amelie’s hand . . . Amelie was holding hers, in an unbreakable grip. “You can help Myrnin. Do nothing for me, do you understand? Let them have me. They won’t kill me, as I said. But you must stand aside or they will tear through you to reach me.” Her head turned, just a little, as if she was listening. Claire heard nothing, but she felt something inside—a kind of shifting, a pain that went beyond any physical senses. The house was hurting.
And the hidden door was being shredded under the attack of six-inch claws.
“I want to help you,” Claire said. “Please.”
“There’s no escape from this room. Myrnin’s portals are broken, and the only way out now is through the creatures below. You can’t help me. All you can do is escape, and I want you to escape, Claire. I want you to go. Gather your friends and those you love. Leave the Glass House, and never come back. Leave Morganville. Go. My cause is lost, and it’s a cause you could never understand in any case.” Amelie attempted a smile. It didn’t look right. “Never forget that I’m the monster.”
“I can’t just leave you here to die, Amelie. You’re not—” She swallowed hard. “You’re not the monster.”
Amelie studied her directly for a few seconds, and the power and hunger and strength of the woman behind that stare left Claire feeling light-headed. It was like looking into history somehow . . . history hundreds of years deep. “You’re so young,” Amelie said. “And so stubborn. It’s served you well, but it will not serve you now. There is one thing you can do for me, then. One last service you can perform.”
Claire nodded. She was afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of Amelie, really. She was afraid of what would happen when Amelie was gone.
When there was nothing at all to stop Fallon.
“Hold still,” Amelie said, and pulled Claire’s wrist to her lips.
The pain of her fangs going in was brief, and Claire felt an instant unsteadiness take hold, a kind of unreal, whispering faintness that made it necessary for her to fall to her knees beside the sofa. She didn’t try to pull away; there wasn’t any point. Amelie would drink as much as she wanted, and maybe that would be everything, and maybe not. But either way, nothing Claire could do would change the outcome.
Being bitten by Amelie wasn’t like being bitten by any of the others she’d survived before. It was surprisingly easy somehow, as if Amelie’s bite injected some kind of Valium along with it. She felt peaceful, which was very strange; she ought to have felt horrified, or angry, or anything at all except stupidly relaxed.
It went on for a long moment, and then Amelie let her go with a soft sigh, and the peace that had been echoing through Claire’s head evaporated like ice in the desert sun and panic kicked in again, hard and very real. She was weak and drained, and her head was spinning, and when she tried to get up she couldn’t. All she could do was edge slowly back, scooting with her hands until she’d put a respectable distance between her and the queen dressed in blood who lay on the couch.
Amelie sat up. Blood drops ran down her arms like red fringe, and she looked down at herself with a frown, then stood as a hollow sound came from the door below. It wasn’t down, not yet, but they’d clawed through the wood and reached the metal behind it. “Wipe my blood from your hands,” she told Claire. “They will smell it on you, and that would be a dangerous thing. When they come for me, go down the stairs. Get Shane and leave. Promise me you will do this.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
“They will hurt me,” Amelie said flatly. “I will fight them, but they will take me. Don’t interfere. You can’t save me. I thank you for the gift of your blood, Claire, and I will honor it. But you must honor me as well now.”
It came to Claire in a blinding flash that there was one possibility that Amelie hadn’t thought about—a dangerous one. Potentially fatal.
But maybe, just maybe, one that could work.
“If you get out of here, can you hide?” Claire asked her. “Is there someplace you can go?”
“Morley has promised me safety in the town of Blacke, if I can reach the borders of Morganville,” Amelie said. “From there, perhaps we can find a way to strike at Fallon. But it’s of no use to speculate. I will never leave this attic except in their hands.”
This, Claire thought, was going to require two things: precision timing and a whole lot of luck. The house was on her side, though; she could feel it anxiously waiting for any chance to help. And Shane would be armed and dangerous and looking for her, very soon.
She heard the shriek of metal warping and being ripped apart, and waited another few seconds, staring at Amelie. She couldn’t hear these creatures, because they moved like ghosts, but in her peripheral vision she saw one of them on the stairs. As it reached the top, she saw the blur of the second one close behind it.
“Sorry,” Claire said. “I’m not giving up on you just yet.”
She rushed forward, and before Amelie could stop her, she wrapped the Founder of Morganville in a hug.
It was weird and nauseating. The blood from Amelie’s dress squelched wetly between them, smearing Claire, and beneath the garment the vampire felt like a cold marble statue, stiffly unyielding. It lasted only a second, and then Amelie’s shock cracked, and she shoved Claire backward. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but there wasn’t time to explain, because the hellhounds were coming.
Claire threw herself sideways, across the couch, knocked over the lamp, and jumped the low railing to land awkwardly on the steps below. She lost her footing and fell, tumbling down the rest of the way, and caught herself just before she would have rolled into a nasty jagged metal mess that used to be the hidden panel’s door.
Claire shoved it out of the way, panting with fear and adrenaline, and saw one of the monsters leap down behind her on the stairs. It sniffed the air, and those yellow eyes widened, fixed straight on her, and took on an unholy shimmer as it opened its mouth to snarl.
Then it let out a howl that froze her bones, and Claire didn’t wait to see if it was going to give chase.
She just left Amelie behind, and ran.
SEVEN
She was halfway to the stairs when the creature burst out of the door, still giving that eerie, wailing howl, and Claire plunged the rest of the way at a dead run. She couldn’t let it catch her. It was following the scent of Amelie’s blood on her, and it would treat her like a vampire—it would rip her to shreds, assuming that she would heal.
But she wouldn’t, of course. If it caught her, it was all over. Her calculated risk would have failed. She’d thought that if Amelie had only one of these things to deal with, she might be able to fight her way free. That was Claire’s theory, anyway. She hoped she hadn’t just sacrificed herself for nothing.
“Shane!” Claire yelled as she reached the stairs and began racing down them. She didn’t feel the scrapes and bruises and muscle strains she was sure she’d earned with that first tumble down the hidden room’s steps. She’d pay for it later, but for now her panic was overriding all the normal responses. Nothing was broken, at least; she could still put her weight equally on both legs. That was all that mattered.
Shane was at the bottom of the stairs, standing there with the heavy duffel bag of weapons, staring up at her. He wasn’t moving. He looked . . . odd.
“Shane!” she called again, and looked back over her shoulder. She saw the monster coming into view, all yellow eyes and gleaming claws and the remains of that ridiculous sundress. “Shane, I need a weapon!” She didn’t even care what it was, not yet. There wasn’t time to be scientific just now.
But Shane wasn’t moving. No. Now he was, to drop the duffel with a crash to the wood floor.
Something was happening to him. His eyes . .
.
He was changing.
No. She’d forgotten in the crush of events, forgotten what the effect could be if he came face-to-face with a vampire . . .
...or someone who smelled like one.
He closed his eyes and when they opened, they gleamed acid yellow, with pupils that shrank into vertical slits.
Claws burst bloodily out of his fingertips, like some nightmare version of a superhero, but what he was becoming was something else, something far worse, and the howl that came out of his throat was nothing but rage and animal fury.
Claire screamed back, a full-throated cry of heartbreak and rage and fury and fear, and did the only thing she could—she rushed down, trying to get past him before he was fully changed. They’d gotten Shane. What was even worse was that he was close, he was fast, and she had only the tiniest chance of evading him. The only thing in her favor was that the change had just started on him, and he was still confused and in pain.
She had no choice but to try to get by him.
“Please,” she whispered. There were tears of sheer terror in her eyes, and heartache, because even now she couldn’t help but feel horror at what was happening to him, at the pain he was feeling. “Please, Shane, it’s me. It’s Claire.”
He was changing fast, and there was nothing of Shane left in his eyes, just pure instinct and rage. His clothing hampered his shift, but that wasn’t going to last long; his claws were even now ripping at the tough cloth of his jeans to shred them.
Claire took in a deep breath, grabbed the railing with both hands, and vaulted over it, the way she’d seen Shane do a million times. She landed on the bounce of Michael’s armchair and launched half a dozen feet into the air, to come to an awkward, stumbling landing still on her feet in front of the darkened TV.
Shane howled behind her, and when she looked back she saw he was almost completely hellhound now, muscles bunching and shifting and driving him to all fours. His body didn’t look human anymore.