by Rachel Caine
“Hey,” Eve said. “Michael, remember? What are we doing for transpo, cabbing it?”
There was exactly one taxicab in Morganville, and he didn’t work at night, so that wasn’t much of an option. They didn’t even bother to discuss it. “Well,” Claire said, very reluctantly, “there’s another way. But you won’t like it.”
“I’ll like it less than getting molested by a vampire in a flasher raincoat who smells like graveyards? Try me.”
“I could open a portal,” Claire said. “But I’ve never been to the radio station, so I can’t risk doing it blind. I have to go someplace close that I know. What’s around it?”
“Hang on a second,” Shane said, and dropped the weapons bag to the wood floor with a thump. “What about Ada? You said she was out for blood, right?”
“I said you wouldn’t like the idea.”
“So just to recap—Ada wants to kill you, and you’re going to walk through a portal she controls?”
“Well—”
“No, Claire. Next.”
“But—”
“Not happening.”
She sighed. “What if I get Myrnin to open it for us? He’s better at it. I don’t think she dares mess with him directly.”
“And tell Myrnin what’s happening? Bad idea. The dude is half crazy all the time.”
“So what’s your bright idea?” Claire asked. Shane spread his hands out. “That’s what I thought.”
She pulled her cell phone out and checked the screen. Her battery was getting low; she hadn’t had a chance to charge it up recently, although that was Morganville Survival 101. She picked up the old-fashioned landline phone on the hall table and dialed Myrnin’s lab.
It rang, and rang, and rang, and finally, Myrnin picked up. “What?” he snapped. “I was in the middle of dinner.”
Claire was afraid to ask who that was. “I need help,” she said.
“Claire, you are my assistant. Not the other way around. Perhaps it would be helpful if I prepared an organizational chart you could keep on your person. Possibly tattooed on your arm.”
He was in a mood. Claire bit her lip. “Please,” she said. “It’s a little favor.”
“Oh, all right. What?”
“You know the old radio station outside of town? KV—” Her mind blanked. She looked at Eve, who mouthed the answer. “KVVV. Could you open me a portal?”
“Hmmm,” he said. She heard the sound of liquid being poured in the background, and him swallowing it, and him smacking his lips. “Well, I suppose I could get you close, if not inside the building. Would that do?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“And why can you not do this yourself?”
“Ada . . . ?”
Myrnin was silent for a long few seconds. “She’s better,” he said. “I don’t know what got into the old girl. But I’ve had a talk with her, and really, she’s much better now. Much better.”
“That’s good.” It would be, if it were true, but Claire didn’t trust Myrnin’s judgment when it came to Ada. “Um, about that portal—”
“Yes, fine, coming right up. I will be there in a moment.”
“No, Myrnin—”
He hung up before she could explain that she didn’t actually need him to come along. Not that he was going to listen to her, anyway. Claire replaced the phone on its cradle.
“Crazy boss is coming,” Shane interpreted, just from the expression on her face. “Lovely. This ought to be fun.”
About five seconds later, Claire felt a psychic wave sweep through the house, so strong she was surprised neither Shane nor Eve seemed to feel it, and then a dark opening formed in the far wall of the living room, and Myrnin stepped over the threshold.
“I so want his wardrobe,” Eve sighed. “Is that shallow, or just strange?”
“Don’t sell yourself short. It’s both,” Shane said, and cocked his head to take in Myrnin’s latest effort at blending in. It was . . . interesting. Claire couldn’t decide if it was some deliberate, unholy mix of Victorian lord and hippie, or just what had been on the floor of his closet.
He had on his bunny slippers.
These had fangs.
They all stared at them in silence for about a heartbeat, and then Shane said, “That is impressively wicked. Crazy, but wicked.”
Myrnin frowned at him, then looked down at his shoes. He seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh. Those. I thought—well, they’re appropriate, I suppose.”
“Wouldn’t want to be inappropriate,” Claire said. “You really didn’t have to come. I’m sorry.”
“I did, in fact. I tried to open the portal to the radio station, and I couldn’t do so.” Myrnin’s dark eyes were wide and gleaming, clearly fascinated. “Claire, do you know what this means?” He paced, the bunny slippers flopping their ears in a very distracting way. “Someone locked down the area. And it wasn’t me.”
“Who else could?”
“No one.”
“But—”
“Exactly!” He smacked his hands together in glee. “A mystery! Thank you for calling and imposing on me for a favor; this is very exciting stuff, you know. Chaos, mayhem, someone stealing a march against me—ah, I’ve missed it these past few months, haven’t you?”
“No,” they all said, exactly together. Claire took Shane’s hand and said, “Myrnin, who else could lock down areas of town and freeze out portals?”
“Amelie,” he said, “but it’s not her. There’s a certain signature to her work, and by the way, she’s been here recently, did you know? She reeks of pain these days. It’s most disturbing.”
“Dude, focus,” Eve said. “Who else?” She threw Claire a why-am-I-even-asking look, but Myrnin got hold of himself and nodded as he thought about it.
“There have been a total of six others in the history of Morganville,” he said. “But they’re all dead. All but you, Claire.”
They all looked at her. She blinked. “Well, I didn’t do it!”
“Oh. Pity. Then I have no idea.”
She cleared her throat. “What about Ada?”
“Ada is not the boogeyman behind every shadow, my dear,” Myrnin said, and flopped himself down in Michael’s chair, taking hold of the acoustic guitar and picking out a surprisingly competent series of chords. “Ada does as she’s told. Unlike you, I might add, which is not an attractive quality in a lab assistant.”
“Could she do it?”
He stilled the strings with one hand, and looked up. His dark hair fell back from his pale face, and for a moment, he looked entirely serious. “Ada can do anything,” he said. “I don’t think even she understands that. But I find it highly unlikely—”
“You’re a vampire wearing bunny slippers with fangs. Highly unlikely kind of goes with the territory,” Eve said. “How close can you get us? To the radio station?”
“Why do you want to go there? It’s hardly safe for untagged blood donors to roam around out there after dark. Even Claire would be at risk, and she’s wearing the strongest protection available. I don’t advise it.” He put the guitar aside and steepled his fingers together. “But you’re not quite foolish enough to be doing it for the thrill, I think, so you do have a reason. Tell me.”
Claire exchanged a quick look with her friends, and then said, “Michael went alone out there. We need to help him.”
“Michael is a vampire. Vampires go out at night.” Myrnin shrugged and dusted a bit of fluff from his black velvet jacket, which was pretty elegant, if you were heading off to a costume party. “Why concern yourself, unless you think there will be trouble? Stop lying by omission, Claire. Tell me everything. Now.”
Eve shook her head, a tiny spasm that was probably involuntary. Even Shane looked like he thought it was a terminally bad idea. Claire said, “We can trust him. We have to trust him.”
“Oh, this sounds interesting,” Myrnin said, and leaned forward in Michael’s chair. “Please continue.”
She did. She even brought down one of the wireless cam
eras, showed it to him, and explained how it worked, which was a complete delight to his obsessively scientific side. “But this is amazing,” he said, turning the little device over in his nimble fingers. “This girl, she’s quite the enterprising little thing. How many of these, you say?”
“We think seventy-two.”
He lost his smile, focused on the object in his hand. “She can’t be doing it alone, then. There must be a larger purpose. A larger plan. Still, this Kim, she may be using it for her own purposes; have you thought about that?”
“We know she’s getting her own thing out of it,” Claire said. “But you’re saying . . . she didn’t come up with it in the first place?”
“Exactly.”
So, maybe Kim had been recruited to put cameras out, and then hijacked it for her own reality-show dream project . . . but that meant someone else was in charge.
Someone smart enough to not get caught. Or even suspected.
“You really should tell Oliver,” Myrnin said. “I know he’s not the most pleasant of allies, but he is effective in the right circumstances. Rather like one of those nuclear bombs.”
“If we tell Oliver, Kim’s dead,” Eve said. “She may be an epic bitch, but I don’t want her executed, either.”
“Valid,” Myrnin agreed. “However, if this goes wrong, she’s dead in any case. I will come along. You need an adult chaperone.”
“Once again, bunny slippers,” Shane said. “I’m just pointing that out.”
“I suppose they would get dirty. I’ll be right back.” Myrnin jumped out of the chair and dashed for the portal. It snapped shut behind him with a flare of energy.
“Do you think—”
Before Shane could finish the question, the portal opened again, and Myrnin hopped out on one foot, pulling on serious pirate boots, the knee-high kind with the cuff of leather. He finished tugging the left one on and did a runway pose for Claire. “Better?”
“Um . . . yeah. I guess.” He now looked like a demented version of that pirate captain from the rum bottles.
“Then let’s go.”
As he turned to concentrate on the portal, Eve tugged on Claire’s shirt.
“What?”
“Ask him where he got the boots.”
“You ask.” Personally, Claire wanted the vampire bunny slippers.
12
The closest Myrnin could get them was a few blocks away. Claire was glad, actually, that he hadn’t warned her where they were going; she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to step through if he had.
German’s Tire Plant had closed at least thirty years ago, and the gigantic, multi-story facility was basically one big gold mine of creepy. Claire had been in it exactly twice before, and neither visit held pleasant memories—and those had been daytime excursions. At night, the terror level went way, way up.
The only reason she knew they were at German’s Tire Plant was that the weapons bag Shane had brought contained flashlights, and one of the first things Claire’s lit up was the spooky clown face graffitied around a big open maw of a doorway. She’d never forget that stupid clown face. Ever.
“Oh man,” Shane breathed. He wasn’t fond of this place, either.
“Buck up,” Eve said. “At least you didn’t get locked in a freezer here like next month’s entrée. I did.”
Myrnin, blue-white in the flashlight beams, looked offended. “Young lady, I put you there for safekeeping. If I had meant to eat you, I would have.”
“That’s comforting,” Eve said. And then, under her breath, “Not.”
“This way.” Myrnin put out his hand to shield his eyes from their flashlights, and picked his way around a pile of tottering, empty beer cans left by adventurous high schoolers, a stained, torn mattress, and some empty crates. “Someone’s been here.”
“No kidding?”
“I mean, recently,” he said. “Not humans. Vampires. Many of them.” He sounded a little puzzled. “Not my creatures, either. They all died, you know. The ones I turned.”
Back in his crazy (crazier?) days, Myrnin had experimented on some hapless victims, trying to turn them into vampires but failing as his illness took hold. The results hadn’t been pretty—more like zombies than vampires, and not focused on anything but killing. Claire wondered how they’d died, and decided she really didn’t want to know. Myrnin was a scientist. He was used to putting down lab animals at the end of a test.
“Are these vampires hanging around now?” Shane asked. He had a stake in his left hand, and a silver-coated knife in the other—a steak knife he’d used a car battery and a fish tank full of chemicals to electroplate. Stinky, but cheap and effective. “Because a heads-up would be nice.”
“No, they’re gone.” Myrnin continued to hesitate, though. “I wonder. . . .”
“Wonder later. Move now,” Eve said. She sounded nervous, and she kept shining the light around erratically, reacting to every rustle in the dark. There were a lot of those. Rats, birds, bats—the place was full of wildlife. Claire kept her own light trained on the path ahead of her, making sure she didn’t trip or cut herself on rusty juts of metal as Myrnin led the way. Shane’s warmth behind her felt good. So did the weight of the Super Soaker in her arms.
Myrnin threw open a metal door with a snap, shattering the lock and scattering links of the big chain that had secured it all over the pitted concrete outside. “There,” he said, and pointed as they gathered around him. The clouds thinned a little, allowing some diffuse moonlight to paint the ground with cool blue and silver, and a mile or so away sat a concrete block of a building, and a tall, skeletal metal tower. Big white letters on the tower said KV V; one of the Vs was long gone, and the other was tilting drunkenly to one side, not far from dropping off entirely to join its missing mate. The place looked deserted. Wind rattled over the flat landscape, whipping up dust and scattering trash, and made an eerie whistling sound through the metal of the tower.
“I don’t see Michael’s car.”
“One way to be sure,” Myrnin said. “Let’s go.”
The closer they came, the creepier the place was. Claire wasn’t a fan of blighted industrial buildings, and Morganville was full of them—the half-destroyed hospital, German’s Tire Plant, even the old City Hall had its decaying side.
This one looked so . . . grim. It was just a cinder block building, not very large, and the one window in front had been long ago broken out and boarded over. Someone had spray-painted KEEP OUT on the bricks, and part of it was heavily decorated in multicolored swirls of graffiti. Beer cans, cigarette butts, empty plastic bags—the usual stuff.
“I don’t see a way in,” Eve whispered.
“Why are you whispering?” Myrnin whispered back. “Vampires can hear us, anyway.”
“Is there a vampire in there?” Claire asked.
“I’m not psychic. I have no idea.”
“You could tell in the tire plant!”
He tapped his nose. “Five senses. Not six. It’s not so easy to sniff them out standing outside the building.” He gently moved the business end of her Super Soaker away from himself. “Please. I bathed already, and I’d rather not do it in the vampire equivalent of pepper spray.”
“Sorry.”
They made their way around the side of the building, closer to the tower, and there they found Michael’s dark sedan sitting in the shadows.
Empty.
“Michael?” Eve called. “Michael!”
“Hush,” Myrnin said sharply, and flashed supernatu rally fast across the open space to grab the knob of a door Claire could barely see. It sagged open, and he disappeared inside.
“Wait!” Claire blurted, and darted after him. She switched on the flashlight as soon as she reached the door, but all it showed her was an empty hallway, with peeling paint and a floor covered in mud from some old flood. “Myrnin, where are you?”
No answer. She yelped when Shane’s hand closed over her shoulder; then she pulled in a breath and nodded. Eve crowded in behind
them.
Down the hallway was a dead end, with more hallways stretching left and right. The fading paint had some kind of mural on it, something West Texas-y with cows and cowboys, and the letters KVVV in big block capitals.
The whole place smelled like mold and dead animals. “This way,” Myrnin’s voice said quietly, and with a hum, electricity turned on in the hall. Some of the bulbs burned out with harsh, sizzling snaps, leaving parts of the space in darkness.
Claire followed the hall to the end, which took a right turn into a small studio with some kind of engineering board. The equipment looked ancient, but clean; somebody had been here—presumably Kim—and had taken care to put everything in working order. Microphones, a chair, a backdrop, lighting . . . everything in the studio needed for filming, including a small digital video camera on a tripod.
On the other side of the room was a complicated editing console, which had a bank of monitors set up. They obviously weren’t original to the setup—decades more modern than the soundboard—and Claire identified different components that had been Frankensteined into the system.
These included an array of fat black terabyte drives, all portable.
Michael was sitting at the console. “Michael!” Eve blurted, and threw herself on him; he stood up to catch her in his arms, and hugged her close. “You incredible jerk!”
He kissed her hair. “Yeah, I know.”
She smacked his arm. “Really. You are a jerk!”
“I get that.” He pushed her off a little, to look at her. “You’re okay?”
“No thanks to you. You had to go running off in the middle of the night and not even say boo . . .”
“I should have known you guys wouldn’t stay put.”
“Where’s Detective Hess?” Claire asked. “I thought you were meeting him here.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Where did he go?”
“I’ll tell you that in a minute.” Michael seemed preoccupied, as if he were trying to figure out how to tell them something they weren’t going to like at all. “This is Kim’s data vault. At least, most of it. Claire, that’s a router, right? I think this is her receiving station for the signals.”