by Rachel Caine
And then it was over, and she slid at an angle out of the metal pipe, and a pair of strong, pale hands grabbed her flailing wrists to pull her up and onto her feet. Claire blinked and in the dim light made out the glossy red hair and razor-sharp smile of her friend from Cambridge, Jesse. Lady Grey, as Myrnin called her. She’d been a bartender when Claire had met her, but that was before Claire had realized she was a vampire. She’d probably been a lot of things during her long, long life, and nearly all of them interesting.
“Well,” Jesse said, raising her eyebrows to a skeptical height. “I admit I didn’t really expect this.” She let Claire go, and turned toward the pipe again to offer a helping hand to Myrnin, who was clambering out under his own power. Claire was sorry to lose the support, because her legs were still shaking, and she grabbed for a handy plastic chair to collapse into. What did I just crawl through? She supposed it really was better that she didn’t know, but she desperately needed a shower, a scrub brush, and some bleach. And new clothes, because no matter how hard she washed these, she would never, ever wear them again.
Jesse was talking as Myrnin came sliding the rest of the way out of the pipe. “You brought her here? I have to ask, did you just crave a snack, or do you have some clever plan to save her life? Because you know the mood in here.”
“I do,” he agreed. “I also know her life wasn’t worth a dried fig out there in Morganville. Better here where her allies might be able to protect her than out there, dodging enemies all alone.”
“As if she doesn’t have any enemies here?”
He shrugged. “None that matter. Oliver is not unfond of the girl, and there are many who have some graceful experience of her. She might have a few who’d be happy to feast, but not so many we can’t stop them.”
“We?” Jesse crossed her arms and stared at him, her head cocked. “Assuming a lot, aren’t we, dear madman?”
“A fair amount,” he admitted. “But needs must, from time to time, assume things. And I believe that I can count on you, my lady.” He gave her a very elegant bow that was only a little spoiled by the slime that covered him. Jesse, for her part, didn’t laugh. Much. She responded with a curtsy only a little spoiled by the fact that she was wearing blue jeans and a tight T-shirt instead of fancy court clothes.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll play along and help keep fangs out of our little friend. Bad news: Fallon’s here. He blew in like a bad wind a few moments ago. I think he’s discovered that Amelie made it out alive.”
“Then he’s not pleased.”
“Oh, no,” Jesse said, with a broad, tight smile. “We’ve all been summoned to the bottom floor for questioning. You’ll need to clean yourself off before they discover how it is you’re getting out, though I think you’ve ruined all the extra clothes by now.”
He shrugged that off with magnificent indifference. “I’ll find something.”
“I’m quite sure you will,” she agreed. “Let me scrounge something for you. I might do a better job of matching colors, at least.”
He gave her a wry slice of a smile, and between one blink and the next, Jesse was just . . . gone. It was her and Myrnin, alone in a room that was, Claire realized, sort of a bedroom. There were two camp beds in it, at least, each with a neatly folded thin blanket on it. Nothing else in the room, though—no personal effects of any kind. It could have been anybody’s room, or no one’s.
“Jesse will be back in a moment,” Myrnin said. “She’s right. If they’ve ordered us below, then I need to clean up quickly. If anyone comes to bite you while I’m gone—well, try not to attract attention. Die quietly.”
“I can defend myself, you know.”
“With your bare hands, against hungry, bored, angry vampires? Claire. You know I think well of you, but that is really not your best problem-solving work.” He shook his head as if very disappointed with her lack of vision. “At least the offal you’re covered in will disguise the scent of your blood for now. Just stay quiet and still, and you ought to be fine. Besides, I doubt anyone’s hungry enough to bite you while you’re quite so . . . filthy.”
She was pretty sure there was something insulting in there, but it was also comforting.
Myrnin disappeared, just as Jesse had, and Claire was left standing alone in the dim, quiet room. She hadn’t seen him do it, but Myrnin had replaced the grate over the pipe they’d used to enter; she went over and tested it, but it didn’t budge, and she realized that he’d bent it into place. Nobody would realize it was anything but solid, not even on close inspection. It would take vampire strength to even begin to pry it loose.
Was that how Amelie had gotten out? Through the slime? Somehow Claire couldn’t imagine Her Immaculateness sliding through the ooze on her way out, or making her way across Morganville looking like a refugee from the Nickelodeon Awards. One thing vampires were big on was dignity.
She was deep in contemplation of the vent and its implications when she realized that she had a visitor. It wasn’t Myrnin. It wasn’t even Jesse.
It was Michael.
She flinched, because he was just right there, no warning, no sound. He wasn’t usually like that, so . . . vampiric. In the house, Michael always took special care to make sure they heard him coming, and she’d never bothered to wonder before if that took a lot of extra effort for him—if he felt as if he was forced to be embarrassingly clumsy around them, just to avoid scaring the crap out of them in the kitchen or the hallway.
Then in the next split second she realized that he certainly hadn’t bothered this time, and there was something in the way he was watching her—the utter stillness of his body and face—that made her feel deeply uneasy.
“Michael?” She almost blurted out you scared me, but that was blindingly obvious from the way she’d jumped and from the no doubt deafening sound of her racing heartbeat. Her pulse should have been slowing down after the first instant of alarm/recognition, but instead it continued drumming right on, as if her body knew something her mind didn’t.
She didn’t move. That took a lot of effort, actually, because those same instincts insisting to her that she was scared were also wanting her to take at least a couple of steps back. Large steps, at that.
Michael said, “I lied to Eve.”
As totally confusing openings went, that was a new one—both unexpected and ominous. “Um . . . okay. About what?”
“I said they were feeding us, but they like us weak. The weaker, the better. They do give us blood, but it’s soured, somehow. Drugged. It doesn’t really help,” Michael said. His soft, measured voice sounded oddly soothing to her, and she felt her heartbeat slowing down, finally. He was her friend, after all. One of her very best and sweetest friends. “I heard your voice. I knew you were here.”
“It’s good to see you,” she said. Her own voice sounded strange now, oddly calm and flat. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he said. “He brought Eve. He’s going to use her against me. I’m very hungry. And you shouldn’t be here, Claire. I don’t want you to be here, because . . .” A twitch of a smile, like a spasm of pain, came across his lips and then was immediately gone again. “You smell terrible, you know.”
“Sorry. It’s the slime.”
“But I still want you.”
She opened her mouth and realized she had nothing to say to that. Nothing at all. Because it was shocking and wrong and so very wrong and this was Michael saying it, and despite the fact that everything seemed weirdly okay, as if she was soaking in a soothing bath and everything was a dream . . . she understood two things: he didn’t mean it as sexually as it sounded, and also, it was so not okay.
He was closer to her now, and she didn’t see him move. He was just . . . closer. Watching her. She didn’t like that. Inside the calm cocoon, something in her twisted and pushed and tried to break free of the sticky, syrupy layers of calm she’d become wrapped in.
Please don’t do this.
He was too close now. She could have reached out and put her hand
on his chest, and what was her hand doing rising like that, as if she had no real control over it, and why were his eyes turning so red . . .
“Michael.”
The voice was low and cold, and Claire felt the tone stab straight through that cocoon that wrapped her so tightly and rip it open. The air suddenly felt heavy on her skin, and too thick, and she couldn’t get her breath. Her pulse kick-started faster again, and she stumbled backward until her shoulders touched a wall.
Jesse was in the doorway. She looked wild and dangerous and angry, and when Michael took another step in Claire’s direction Jesse came at him, wrapped a fist in the fabric of his T-shirt, and threw the younger vampire ten feet toward the exit. When he tried to lunge for Claire again, Jesse caught him, steadied him, and held on when he tried to pull free. “Nope,” she said, and patted his shoulder. “You’re going to thank me later when you have a chance to think about it. Not your fault, kid. Believe me. But you’d take it hard if this went badly.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he growled, and Claire saw his fangs then, down and sharp and glittering. “She’s my friend. I know what I’m doing. I’d only take a little.”
“Just a sip. Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t work. At times like these, the only thing to do is just say no.”
He didn’t like it, but he let Jesse turn him around and lead him away. She shut the door behind him as she pushed him.
Jesse looked frustrated and angry, and there was a flash of red in her eyes, like distant lightning on the edge of a storm. She began stalking the room with long, restless strides. As she walked, she gathered up her long red hair and twisted it into a rope at the back of her head, then ripped a piece of her shirt off to tie it in place. It wasn’t in the best repair, her shirt. Claire wondered how many times she’d cannibalized it for hair ties already.
“They’re dosing our blood,” Jesse told her. “I’m not certain what they’re using, but it seems to cut the effectiveness of our meals to almost nothing. We eat, but it doesn’t nourish, and the hunger . . . the hunger won’t stop. I’m not sure why they’re doing it, and it worries me. Why would they want ravenous vampires?”
It was a very good—and scary—question. “I don’t know.”
“Why in the world did you decide to throw yourself in the middle of all this?”
“Well,” Claire said, and tried a smile, “it was this or jail.”
“Were they actively trying to eat you in jail?”
“Myrnin has a job for me, and he seemed to think you could keep me safe,” she said. “Can you?”
Jesse let out an entirely humorless dry chuckle. “Depends on the circumstances,” she said. “But against most of my fellow vampires I have a better than average chance, yes. The only ones able to shut me down would be Amelie and Oliver, and neither one of them seem likely to come against me. Amelie’s vanished, and Oliver . . .”
“Fallon’s got him,” Claire guessed. “Downstairs. What is he doing to him?”
“Nothing Oliver can’t endure,” Jesse said. “He’s been through worse—I can almost guarantee it.”
“What about Eve? Fallon has Eve. He brought her—”
“I saw her through the door,” Jesse said. “Outside, still locked in his car. She seems . . . impaired?”
“Drugged,” Claire shot back, angry on Eve’s behalf. “She’s okay?”
“So far.” Jesse was grasping her hands behind her back as if she felt the need to be restrained, and Claire wondered just how hungry she actually was. Probably quite very hungry. Myrnin would have fed outside, but Jesse hadn’t had a chance, and that meant she was just as hungry as Michael—maybe even more. Oliver wouldn’t have fed, either—even if he’d had the chance, he’d have made sure others went first, because he was the ruler, even if a temporary one, of this very sad little kingdom. “It’s lucky that you have so little blood in you to go around, you know. That helps make you less . . . attractive.”
Finally, a use for being smaller than normal. “I thought you needed me. Myrnin said he needed human hands to help him disable your shock collars.”
“He’s dreaming,” Jesse said, and shook her head. “They’re fitted with sensors from those monitors modern courts force felons to wear under house arrest, but significantly modified. If you so much as try to open the case, it’ll stun a vampire into submission—and probably flash-fry a human brain.”
“Myrnin said he could handle the shocks.”
That made Jesse smile, but it was a sad sort of expression. “That’s because he’s mad as a hatter.”
“I never understood that. Hatters, I mean.”
“In the old days, people who made hats used mercury to produce felt,” Jesse said. “They often went mad. And Myrnin’s just as crazy if he thinks you can help us get these things off. At best, he’d electrocute you. At worst, he’d blow his head and your hands right off.” She came closer as she circled the room, and an expression of disgust twisted her face as she retreated. “Right, we need to get you washed off. You smell like what a sewer would vomit up as too disgusting.”
That was a tremendously colorful image, and Claire was glad her nose had gone too numb to notice anything. “Myrnin told me to wait here,” she said.
“Myrnin did indeed, and you obeyed,” Myrnin told her, just as he walked through the doorway. He was wearing some kind of threadbare floral silk robe held together by a leather belt—with studs—along with an untied pair of oversized rain boots. But he was clean. Just . . . ridiculous. “Go on, then, girl. She’s right about the stench. Jesse will stand guard for you. You’ll come to no harm. Shoo.” He let out an exasperated sigh when she hesitated, then took her firmly by the shoulders and steered her to the door, where Jesse waited with her arms crossed. “Out,” he said.
“Myrnin,” Jesse said, “that wasn’t too bright, was it? Now you’ve got slime all over your hands again.”
“Oh,” Myrnin said, staring crestfallen at his palms. “Damn.”
Jesse grinned, but it looked more feral than friendly right at this moment. “Come on, Claire, before he tries to wipe it on me and I have to remove his limbs.”
Outside the little room—which turned out to be what must have been some kind of staff room for a store, Claire guessed—there were more cots. Some were messy, some were neat, and a few were occupied . . . but the vampires lying there didn’t so much as stir as they passed. Jesse was, Claire noticed, keeping an eye on them anyway. Maybe, she was afraid that they, like Michael, could smell the fresh blood under the stench of slime and decay.
What am I going to do when I’m clean? she wondered, and it was a valid question, but the truth was she wanted to be clean so badly that it really didn’t matter what came after. She just had to trust that somehow Myrnin and Jesse could protect her.
And what about Oliver? What is Fallon doing to him?
The washroom was just that—a toilet with multiple sinks and stalls, not showers. There were stacks of faded old towels in the corner, all colors and sizes as if they’d come from some Goodwill bag, and she grabbed a couple and began to strip off the sticky layers of her clothing. Jesse held out a plastic bag at arm’s length as Claire put in shirt, pants, and then underwear, face turned away as if she couldn’t even stand the sight of the mess, much less the smell. “Well,” Jesse said, “I feel like I hardly know you, Claire, but would you like me to pick you out some clothes while you wash?”
“Thanks,” Claire said. She felt icy cold now, and incredibly vulnerable. She watched Jesse tie the plastic bag, and move away to a bin where—evidently—old clothes were kept. Claire took a ragged washcloth and wet it in the water—cold, of course—then scraped it over the old soap in the dish until it was brimming with suds. Cleaning off the slime wasn’t so bad, but washing her hair was awful; it meant bending over the sink naked and scrubbing soap through it, all the while terrified that a vampire, any vampire, might be silently drifting up behind her to take a bite.
None did, though. Claire finished wringing out her
hair, flipped it back with a wet slap against her neck, and grabbed a towel to dry herself off.
Jesse was sitting in a folding camp chair, blocking the doorway in case anyone else tried to intrude. “Clothes are on the second sink,” Jesse said. “Sorry, the choices weren’t great.” They really weren’t. The panties were too big, the bra threadbare and stretched, and the shirt looked like something even a grandmother might have thought too boring. At least the pants fit, even if they were several inches too long; Claire pegged the hems, shoved her feet into old, frayed, once-blue Keds that lacked any kind of laces, and said, “I guess I’m done.”
Jesse put aside the book she was reading and looked over her shoulder. Her eyebrows rose just enough to make Claire think she was struggling not to laugh. “Good look for you, kid. Kind of a homeless hipster thing going on.”
“Are you really some kind of—lady?” Claire asked her. “Because no offense, but you don’t sound like one.”
“I was once. I was a queen, too,” Jesse said. “Don’t take that too seriously; it didn’t last long. But I spent my entire life talking as everyone thought I should, dressing to everyone else’s standards, never having an opinion or a thought of my own. It was exhausting, being everyone’s dress-up doll, and once I got the chance to be my own person, I never looked back. Myrnin likes the thought that I used to be a lady, but don’t let it fool you. I’m not one. Not anymore. And in truth, I think that’s what he likes about me the most—the change.”
Probably, Claire thought. He’d been in love with a vampire named Ada who—according to everyone who’d known her in life—had lived to defy the expectations of those around her, even while looking prim and proper. And I might fit that definition, too, she thought. From time to time, Myrnin had looked at her with something that might actually be longing . . . but he’d been pretty definite from the beginning that his fascination was with her mind, not her body.
