by Rachel Caine
Claire held the woman’s hand for a moment. It felt cool and unresponsive.
Michael was back a few minutes later, and when she looked up she was thrown off balance by the color in his skin, and the flush in his cheeks and on his lips. He looked like a young man who’d been locked away from the sun for too long, but he was definitely, unmistakably human.
It still seemed impossible.
“She doesn’t know where the antidote is,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.” He didn’t say how he knew, which was probably for the best for everyone. “How is Ayesha?”
“I don’t know. Not dead, I guess. Like Oliver. But not alive, like you.”
He nodded slowly, watching the vampire woman with a slight frown between his brows. “We should get them out of here,” he said. “Her and Oliver, anyway.”
“What about the other ones who, you know, made it back to human?” Eve pointed vaguely at the other three survivors, who were still trying to get used to breathing for a living. “Shouldn’t we take them, too?”
“Fallon won’t hurt them. They’re his success stories.” Michael shook his head, still frowning. “I suppose I’m grateful to him for what he did, in a way. I wanted to get back to human, but I was afraid it wouldn’t work for me. I was afraid I’d lose you, Eve, and I couldn’t stand that.”
“You’ll never lose me,” Eve said. She sounded totally confident of that. “Just make sure I don’t lose you.”
“Promise,” he said, and kissed her again.
“Guys?” Claire hated to pop their private bubble, but she pointed to the silent form of Ayesha lying on the table. “If we’re taking them, we’d better get going.”
“The tables have wheels,” Eve said. “They unlock.” She stepped on a metal lever and pushed, and the table slid smoothly out a few inches before she stopped it with her hand. “We’ll need transportation once we get them outside, though. Even in Morganville, rolling gurneys with half-dead vamps through the streets might seem a little out of the ordinary.”
“Especially in the new, improved Morganville,” Claire agreed. “Michael, go scout ahead, see if there is some kind of car we can grab. No, wait.” She spotted a coatrack near the door. On it dangled a couple of purses. She sprinted over and dug inside, searching for keys. She came up with a set. There was a photo key ring on it, and it looked like Amanda really was a big fan of Michael’s, because the photo was one of the promotional ones he used for gigs. Black-and-white, very moody.
She tossed him the keys, then almost laughed at his puzzled expression when he spotted the photo. “Get used to it, rock star. Wait until you’re famous outside of town,” she said. “Hurry. We’ll be right behind you.”
He kissed the back of Eve’s hand, which was sweet, and then he took off out the door. Claire hoped he wouldn’t run into any trouble, because she was afraid his human instincts for survival hadn’t quite kicked in yet. He was still thinking of himself as a vampire. It would take time—and probably one or two wounds—for him to develop the caution that came with being mortal again.
Eve sighed. “Do you know how much I hate it that this turned out well for the two of us? Because now—now how am I supposed to feel about it?”
“Think about Oliver,” Claire said. “And Ayesha. And all of these people lying on the tables who didn’t make it. Fallon’s perfectly okay with killing three-quarters or more of the people he experiments on. That’s just not okay, even if Michael was in the lucky bracket.”
“I know,” Eve said. She took a deep breath, leaned over, and quickly pulled the IV tube from Ayesha’s arm—it immediately sealed, which was interesting—and nodded to Claire. “You grab Oliver. Meet you up front.”
“You can do this? You’re sure? Even though she’s—” Claire used the universal finger-fangs-in-neck symbol for vampire, and Eve gave her a pale, broken smile.
“As long as I don’t have to do anything but push the gurney,” she said.
Claire took her at her word, and moved on to do her part. Getting the limp body of Oliver up and onto the bed was a lot more trouble than she had reckoned. She finally got him in a fireman’s carry over her shoulder and staggered the few steps to flop him crookedly onto the gurney. Not a neat job, but it would do to roll him down the hall, as long as she didn’t encounter too many bumps along the way.
Eve was already rolling Ayesha toward the door.
As she left the lab, though, things went wrong. She’d just managed to prop the second door open for the gurney when alarms started shrieking—deafening alarms, designed to paralyze and panic, and it definitely had the second effect on her, if not the first. Her heart was pounding as she steered Oliver’s gurney out. She heard the lock snapping shut behind her. Lockdown. She hoped Eve had kept the front door open.
She had. She’d jammed an empty gurney into it, and as Claire arrived, breathless, she saw that Michael had carried Ayesha down the steps and was putting her in the backseat of the car they’d liberated from lab rat Amanda. “Help me,” Claire panted as she grabbed Oliver’s shoulders. “We don’t have much time!”
Eve just shook her head and stepped away, trying to control nausea with both hands over her mouth. Claire wondered how she was going to feel once it came down to getting into the car with a couple of vampires.
Probably wouldn’t be pleasant.
Michael came running back. She nodded toward him. “Grab Oliver’s legs,” she said. He did, and the sheet around Oliver slipped, revealing way too much pale, ashy skin.
“Uh . . . have you noticed he’s not wearing much?” Michael asked. “At least I got to keep my pants.” He’d thrown a lab coat on over his bare chest, but it didn’t fit very well.
Claire hadn’t noticed, actually, until that very moment, and while it was more than a little distracting, she just ignored all of it as they carried Oliver’s heavy, limp form to the car and jammed it in next to Ayesha. There was a shout from the door, and Claire looked up to see one of the men from Eve’s treatment room—if you could call it that—standing in the doorway, trying to force his way past the jammed empty gurneys. “Get in!” she yelled. She saw the furious face of Dr. Anderson behind the orderly. “We have to go!”
Michael started the car as Eve piled into the front next to him, which left Claire no choice but to climb into the backseat with two half-naked comatose vampires. She tried not to think about that, about the cool, dead-feeling bodies pressed against her.
Eve was gagging again, which was miserable for her, and potentially miserable for everybody else.
Michael jammed the car in reverse just as one of the orderlies—who must have scavenged a gun from one of the fallen guards—took a shot at them. It smashed the windshield into blinding cracks, with a neat hole high in the center, and it took a second for the delayed reaction to kick in. Claire checked herself for leaks, but the bullet had gone through the back without hitting anyone.
“I can’t see!” Michael yelled. Eve, with barely a pause to flinch, braced herself and began to kick the front windshield. Somewhere in the confusion she’d switched out her paper house shoes for a too-large pair of men’s boots, and they came in handy now as she smashed the whole shattered mess out, leaving them with a makeshift convertible. “Claire, get the back!”
That was a lot harder, because she had no leverage and no room. Claire felt around on the floor and found a kid’s baseball bat rolling under her feet; Amanda must have had a son or daughter in Little League.
She smashed at the back window until it broke out into a heap on the trunk. Not clean, but good enough to allow Michael visibility.
Claire lost her hold on the bat as he accelerated backward, and it rolled off, thumped down the slope of the metal, and clattered to the parking lot as Michael swerved, shifted gears again, and roared out at the top speed Amanda’s car could manage.
The cool breeze felt good, and it wiped some of the blank shock from Claire’s mind. There were no more shots from the build
ing behind them, which was lucky. “Where are we going?” Claire asked. Unfortunately, Michael asked it at the same time, which meant none of them had any good ideas . . . and behind them, not more than a couple of blocks back, police lights began strobing. “They’re on us!”
“I see them,” Michael said tightly. “I—holy shit!”
He hit the brakes so hard that Claire—not belted in, for obvious reasons—had to grab his seat back in a death grip to keep from being catapulted through the front open window. The two limp vampires in the back with her slammed forward like crash dummies as the car skidded, tires smoking, and came to a shuddering halt.
Shane was standing in the road.
He looked violent and savage and crazy, and his eyes were that terrifying shade of gold. He was missing a shirt, his pants were ripped and bloody, and underneath it Claire could see that he’d been hurt—cuts and bruises.
But he was mostly human.
As the car stopped just inches from his thighs, he wavered, lost his balance, and slapped both palms on the hood for support as his knees went out from under him.
“Shane!”
“Claire, don’t—,” Michael yelled, but it was too late, she was already out of the car and racing toward him. He won’t hurt me, she thought. He didn’t hurt me before and he won’t hurt me now.
And he didn’t.
Shane’s hands were back to normal human hands, though they looked bloody and bruised, and when he raised his head to meet her gaze, the hot golden color was fading out of his eyes. “Claire?” He sounded lost and scared. “I was looking for you. For Amelie—I smelled her blood . . .”
Michael had opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, watching them. Ready, Claire thought, to come to her defense if necessary . . . or to Shane’s, if he needed it, too. Now he came up and put his weight under Shane’s other arm as her boyfriend threatened to drop completely.
“Hey, bro, you found me instead,” Michael said. “You been fighting without me?”
“You’re—you’re not a— Mikey, what the hell . . . ?” Shane was just beginning to realize the magnitude of what had happened, but nobody had much time to explain it. The sirens were wailing behind them. Granted, those cop cars would be making straight for the asylum, but they would definitely have the description of Amanda’s car in minutes, and then it would be almost impossible to make it out of town.
“Got to go,” Claire said, and on Shane’s other side, Michael nodded.
“Let’s get you in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”
“On the way to where?” Shane asked. “Can’t go home. They’re in the house.”
Claire wanted to ask about that, badly, but they were out of time. Instead, she helped Michael drag Shane around to Eve’s side of the car. Eve squished over, and Shane got his customary shotgun seat.
The door just barely squeezed shut.
Michael and Claire dove back in, and Michael hit the gas hard, peeling out with a screech that probably would have drawn attention if it hadn’t been for the unholy racket of sirens a few streets over.
Sunset was painting the skies a bloody mess of red and orange.
“Um . . . are you okay? Is she okay?” Shane asked, looking at Eve, who was trembling and looking green around the edges.
“She’ll be okay. Where are we going?” Claire asked, holding on to Michael’s seat for dear life.
“We’re getting the hell out of Morganville,” he said. “We’re going to Blacke.”
* * *
Blacke, Texas, was a little town (small even by Morganville standards) about two hours away as the crows flew . . . but crows didn’t build roads, and the road builders had no reason to want to go to Blacke. Most people didn’t. Morganville was practically a tourist trap by comparison.
But the little place had the distinction—the secret distinction—of being the only other town where vampires lived in peace with humans. That wasn’t because of the unselfishness of the vampires who’d moved there; the leader of that ragged band, Morley, didn’t have even a hint of altruism in him. What he did have was a burning desire to run his own life and to not live by Morganville’s rules . . . and a healthy fear/respect for Mrs. Grant, the town’s librarian. Blacke had been overrun by a vampire plague brought on by a visit from another, much nastier predator who didn’t care about the consequences, and Mrs. Grant had organized the town’s survivors into an armed camp. Morley had intended to come to Blacke as a conqueror, but instead he’d become its protector and savior.
He seemed to find that oddly thrilling. Or maybe he’d just found Mrs. Grant thrilling. He’d had a hot-for-teacher thing going on when last they’d seen him. Their partnership running the town—and protecting the citizens of Blacke who’d been unwillingly turned into vampires—seemed to work better than anyone expected.
Or so Claire had heard. She hadn’t visited since she’d left the town behind to return to Morganville.
“You’re sure?” she asked Michael.
“Do you think we’ve got a choice?” They were heading fast for Morganville’s town limits; she could see the silhouette of the billboard ahead. “If we don’t get the hell out of here, then Fallon will have me, and he’ll have Oliver. If Amelie’s still free, he’ll have what he needs to bring her back in. Plus, whatever else happens, he is never going to touch Eve again.” Wow. Michael was usually a calm guy, but Fallon’s attack on Eve had put him on the edge, for sure.
“That’s sweet,” Eve said. She was pressed up against him, a situation Claire was sure she didn’t mind, and now she let her head rest lightly on his shoulder. “Sweetie, I’m sorry I lost my ring.”
“Didn’t lose me.”
“I know.” She gave a happy sigh and wiggled closer. “Is it weird to say this is nice?”
“Yeah,” Shane said, but he was smiling. He looked . . . more himself, Claire thought. “Pretty weird, weirdo.”
Eve turned her head toward him, considering him carefully. “Speaking of. What the hell happened to you? I mean, your eyes . . . they’re okay now, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t have a night-light feature before. Unless you swallowed your phone, your eyes really shouldn’t do that.”
He shrugged. “Dog bite, remember?”
“So now you’re what, a hellhound?”
“Would it be too much if I said, Bitch, please?”
“Probably.”
“Consider my manly silence an answer, then.”
The banter sounded normal, but underneath there was fear—fear from both of them. For each other, and maybe even about each other. After a second or two of silence, Shane said, “Hey, Mikey?”
“Yeah, man.”
“So you’re not a vampire.”
“I’d have let you know ahead of time, but it happened pretty fast.”
“I think that just saved your life,” Shane said, and leaned his head back against the seat. “They sent me to hunt Amelie down, but you’ve got her blood in you—had her blood in you. I can still kind of smell it, but it’s faded now.”
“You’d have killed me?”
“I’d have tried really hard not to, if that’s any help.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He looked tired, Claire thought, and her heart ached for him. “Can’t swear I wouldn’t have, though. It was hard enough holding off to let Claire go, and let Amelie escape.”
“She got out?” Claire leaned forward and put her hand against his face. He still felt feverishly hot. “I know that was hard for you. I saw how much it hurt you to let me go when I—”
“Yeah, about that . . . Next time you decide to take a bath in the Founder’s blood when you know there are hellhounds like me out to track her—”
“Wait, what?” Eve interrupted, and twisted, as much as she could, to look at Claire. “What did you do?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Claire asked, and smiled, just a little. “It gave her a chance to get away.”
And Shane smiled back. “Yes. Yes, it did.”
The car flashed by t
he billboard. Claire didn’t know how fast they were going, but she was willing to bet it was approaching the speed of sound from the wind buffeting they were taking. She’d had no idea Amanda’s beater of a vehicle could go this fast, and she was fairly sure it had never tried it before, because it was shimmying something awful.
She didn’t even see the police cruiser parked in the shadows beneath the sign until it came careening out onto the road behind them, trailing an airborne plume of dust. The flashers popped on, and the howl of a siren split the night.
“Hold on!” Michael said, and the car seemed to go even faster. It hardly mattered, though; the police cruiser was built for intercepts, and it was gaining on them. It was another two miles to the next intersection, but all of the roads out here were straight and boring, with nowhere to hide, no traffic to use for cover.
“You’re going to blow the engine on this thing!” Shane yelled over the roar of the wind. Claire felt like her hair was lashing her face raw. “Mike, you can’t outrun him!”
“Can’t outgun him, either!” Michael shot back. “And I’m not bulletproof anymore. Are you?”
“No, but they are,” Shane said, and pointed behind him at the unresponsive forms of Oliver and Ayesha. “Wake them up.”
“How?” Claire yelled back.
“Have you tried blood?”
Crap. She hadn’t even thought about that, but it made sense. They would be hungry, and maybe, just maybe, they needed a blood catalyst to fight their way out of their comas.
And maybe when they woke up, they wouldn’t stop at just a taste, either. It was risky, but they needed an advantage, fast, and it was the only thing Claire could think of at the moment. “Glove compartment,” she said. “I need something sharp.”
Shane was way ahead of her, pulling a knife from his belt. She hadn’t even known it was there, but of course he was armed. Wasn’t he always? “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t trust them, and use that knife if you have to.”