Daylighters: The Morganville Vampires

by Rachel Caine

  “Never thought I’d say that, but, yeah, she’s our friend, too,” Shane agreed. He dumped the armload of blood bags on the floor next to the fountain, and Claire added her own to the pile.

  “Then the faster we get the blood in, the faster you can go find her,” Hannah said. “Help move it.”

  Myrnin, despite the shock collar still crackling around his neck, despite the intense sunlight outside, helped them carry the rest of the blood into the atrium, running back and forth, until the pile of bags was waist-high, and the trunk and backseat of the cruiser were empty.

  Claire remembered, despite the frantic pace, that they still had a problem—a big one. “The hellhounds,” she said. “Fallon could activate them at any time. If Hannah turns against us—”

  “I’ve been working on adapting Fallon’s filthy cure to the purpose,” Myrnin said. “During my time outside this prison. I have a small supply made up in my lab. It’s hidden in the back by my armchair, behind a pile of books. Enough for three more doses, if you’re careful. Oh, and while you’re there, do feed Bob. He’s been hunting on his own lately, but he does enjoy being shown a little kindness.”

  And that, Claire thought, was Myrnin in a nutshell. He was capable of wild mood swings that went from murder to concern for a spider in under five minutes. In the end, loving Myrnin, really loving him, would be like living with an unexploded bomb—sooner or later it was bound to go off, and for someone fragile and human, it would be fatal.

  It didn’t make her love him any less, but she knew better than to think that she could fix him . . . or survive him, if she let him get too close.

  “Mrs. Grant,” Hannah said, “get your folks out of here. Take the prisoners with you. I’m going to release them.”

  Mrs. Grant nodded and gave quick instructions. Each team of four took one of the guards and escorted them out. Most looked relieved to be going, honestly.

  “We’re going to wait the rest of this out in Blacke,” Mrs. Grant said. “Morganville’s your town, not ours. We said we’d help free the vampires, and we have. Now it’s up to you.” She looked at Claire and Shane, and for a moment she looked as if she was going to reverse that, or at least regret it. She came to Shane and gave him a hug, then embraced Claire. “You two, you take care. I’ve gotten fond of you.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Grant,” Shane said. “You’ve done enough. You’re right. This is Morganville business now.”

  Then they were headed out, back to their bus. Knowing Mrs. Grant and Morley, Claire was pretty sure that Blacke would already be prepared for an all-out war with the Daylighters, just in case. Armed to the teeth.

  She and Shane looked at Hannah, who nodded and backed up toward the doorway. “You two, get in the car,” she said. “Once I hit the releases for their collars, they’ll be shaking it off and getting up fast.”

  Myrnin didn’t follow them. He stood where he was, staring blindly at the pile of blood bags. Claire didn’t think he was really seeing them, though. “Find her,” he said. “Find Jesse. I’ll lead the rest of them once they’re fed. Leave Fallon to me.”

  “Myrnin—Fallon’s a zealot. He played on people’s fears. He made them believe that killing all of you was the only way to stay safe. Don’t prove him right,” Claire said. “Please. Don’t prove him right.”

  She didn’t know if he heard her, or understood; he didn’t give even the slightest indication. But there wasn’t time. Hannah was hustling them out the door, and Claire saw her thumb come off the button. “In the car,” she ordered, and practically shoved them inside.

  They were already driving away when the first vampires, collars off their necks and drained blood bags in their hands, appeared in the doorway of the Bitter Creek Mall.

  • • •

  Myrnin’s lab was located in a cul-de-sac at the end of a small, run-down neighborhood. It was next door to a Founder House—the Day House, built along the same plan as the Glass House.

  Only the Day House wasn’t there anymore. There was a pile of old timbers, and some construction equipment.

  Fallon was making good on his threat to destroy the Founder Houses.

  Claire swallowed hard. “What happened to them? Gramma Day?”

  “Moved,” Hannah said. “She was grateful to be going, in the end. The Day family never were too comfortable with that house, though they stayed in it for the better part of a hundred years. But she’s fine. Got a brand-new place over on the other side of town, where the new development is going in.”

  “And Lisa—did she join the Daylighters?” Claire wouldn’t have been at all surprised by that from the Day granddaughter, who’d been totally anti-vamp for as long as she’d known her . . . but Gramma Day, ancient as she was, had a broader view of things.

  “Lisa did. Gramma declined,” Hannah said. “Gramma said it reminded her of all those speeches out of Germany in the war. I don’t think she was so far off.”

  Claire didn’t, either. The image of those banners around Founder’s Square still gave her a chill.

  She led the way to the entrance to Myrnin’s lab. It was locked up by an iron grate and a shiny new padlock, but Hannah had the keys. “Fallon had it secured,” she explained. “I have no idea how Myrnin would have gotten into it.”

  Myrnin always had his ways, but Claire didn’t explain that; she didn’t think Hannah needed any more nightmares. As they descended the steps, the lights came up, responding to motion, revealing . . . a wreck. Well, even more of a wreck than it normally was. The equipment was mostly shattered, the books ripped apart, the furniture broken. Either Myrnin had thrown an epic tantrum—which frankly wasn’t all that unlikely—or Fallon’s goons had been in here making damn sure nothing useful would be coming out of the lab again.

  Claire climbed over the piles of rubble, careful of the broken glass, and made her way to the back of the lab. Myrnin’s armchair had been broken, but the remains of it were more or less where they’d originally been. Bob the Spider’s tank had been turned on its side, but not broken. There was no sign of him in the webs, but he certainly wasn’t starving; plenty of unfortunate insects had been cocooned into his pantry.

  Claire combed through the wreckage, and under a pile of books that included a battered first edition of Alice in Wonderland and two sketchy-looking volumes written longhand in a language she didn’t even recognize, she found a box. It didn’t look like much—old, battered, not very clean. She flipped the lid off, and inside, packed carefully in old newspapers, was an old-style syringe full of brownish liquid.

  “Got it!” she called back to Hannah and Shane, and scrambled over the piles to them. Hannah was already unbuttoning her uniform shirt.

  “Hurry,” she said. “Something’s happening.” Something was. Hannah’s eyes looked different, lighter, and between blinks Claire saw them quickly shifting to yellow.

  “Crap,” Shane said. He took hold of Hannah’s arm and held it steady. “He’s activated her. Do it fast.”

  “In the bite?” Because Hannah’s bite was raised and inflamed and prominent, just as Shane’s had been.

  “Yes! Go!” Shane yelled, just as Hannah let out a vicious snarl.

  Claire jammed the needle home, and depressed the plunger—but only about a third of the way. She hoped Myrnin was right about the dosage; if she undermedicated Hannah, that might be worse than not doing it at all.

  Hannah’s snarl turned to a startled yip, and then she was collapsing to her knees, trembling, mouth open in a silent scream. Her eyes were wild and yellow, but only for a moment. Then her skin took on a muted silvery glow as the cure took hold.

  Claire held her breath. Myrnin had adapted this from Fallon’s cure, but what if it had the same shortcomings? What if it only worked part of the time?

  It seemed to take forever. Hannah never quite collapsed completely, but she trembled, clearly very ill, and as the silvery glow finally faded under her skin, she looked up at Claire. Her eyes, after one last acidic pulse of yellow, settled back to their normal huma
n brown color.

  Hannah pulled in a few hard, quick breaths, and nodded. Shane let go of her. She made a face. “Tastes funny,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse. “Aches, too.”

  “It’ll pass,” he said, and helped her up. “You took it a lot better than I did.” He wasn’t looking at her face, though, he was examining her arm. The bite was looking a little better. “I think I screamed like a baby.”

  “Give me a minute and I might just get there,” Hannah said, and attempted a smile. It wasn’t quite right, but it was brave. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Claire would have, but as they turned for the stairs, she caught sight of a fuzzy black spider about the size of her palm sitting on top of a book, watching her with eight bright, beady eyes. He looked almost cute.

  “Hey, Bob,” she said. She reached down, and he climbed up on her hand. “Let’s get you back in your tank, okay?”

  He didn’t seem unhappy with that. She carried him back over the rubble, and he clung to her hand easily, riding all the uneven progress without much concern. She righted his tank and held out her hand, and he scuttled off and settled into the gauzy webs, looking perfectly comfortable.

  She resisted the urge to pat him on the head. Thorax. Whatever. “Good boy, Bob. I’ll be back soon.”

  He hopped up and down a little in the webs, then turned his attention to one of his stored insects.

  She was happy to skip that part, actually.

  As she came back to them, Hannah already seemed much better, and Shane looked relieved. “Swear to God, I don’t get you and that spider,” he said. “But if you’re done playing Dr. Dolittle . . .”

  “I know where they’ll have Jesse,” Claire said. “Let’s go.”

  • • •

  But she was wrong.

  The asylum—mental hospital—whatever the current politically correct term might be—was closed and locked. Nobody there. Claire went around back to check windows, but she didn’t find anything. Just to be thorough, Hannah broke in (though according to her it was an emergency entry), but she came back shaking her head. She looked disturbed, though. “Bodies,” she said. “Quite a few. He’s been processing vampires through his conversion faster than I thought. But Jesse’s not in there.”

  “Then where?” Shane asked.

  Claire thought frantically. It could be anywhere, absolutely anywhere in Morganville, but Fallon seemed to be a man who enjoyed sticking the knife in and twisting it just a little bit more. That meant if he’d moved Jesse, he’d moved her for a reason.

  “I think he’s got her with him,” Claire said. “At Founder’s Square. Don’t you?”

  “Well,” Hannah said, “we have to go there anyway. Hop in.”

  • • •

  The ride back to Founder’s Square wasn’t as easy as leaving, mainly because the alerts about Hannah had gone out; they heard it on the police radio in the car when the news dropped. Chief Hannah Moses to be arrested on sight. Armed and dangerous.

  “That,” Hannah said, “is code for Killing her would be just fine. Most of my folks won’t feel that way. I hire good people, mostly, though some of them got forced on me, like Sullivan. But Fallon’s Daylighters will be out for blood, and they won’t hesitate.”

  Not good news, Claire thought. They needed Hannah by their side. “So how are we going to get there?”

  “On foot,” Hannah said. She stopped the car and parked it in front of the City Lights Washateria, where only a couple of people sat inside, looking depressed and watching the dryers spin. “Give me two minutes.”

  She went in, had a short exchange with the woman sitting there, opened the dryer, and pulled out some clothes.

  “Um . . . ,” Claire said, and poked Shane in the ribs. “Is she changing clothes?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Normally, if we weren’t in mortal danger, I would really find this fascinating.”

  It was actually less than two minutes before Hannah was back, carrying a bundle with her uniform and gun belt. She’d found a slightly large pair of dress pants that weren’t really long enough (but flood pants were in, Claire remembered) and a too-frilly pink shirt that was also a little big, but surprisingly cute. The only things that seemed far out of place were her shoes, which were typical police issue, but at a glance she could pass easily as a civilian.

  She’d also taken the Daylighters pin from her uniform collar and was wearing it on the shirt.

  “Camouflage,” she said, when Claire pointed at it. She opened the doors. “We’ll be walking from here on in. Shane, you’re familiar with this.” She tossed him the shotgun from the rack in front. “Claire—take the Taser.”

  “What about you?”

  Hannah slipped her sidearm into a pancake holster at the small of her back, and flipped the shirt down over it.

  “Unless it’s take-your-shotgun-to-work day, I’m going to get noticed,” Shane said. “Not that it isn’t a great late birthday present, though.”

  Hannah looked around the other stores on the block, and grinned. “I can fix that.”

  And she did.

  • • •

  “I hate this,” Shane complained, and sneezed. Turned out he was allergic to roses. And he was carrying a thick bundle of them to conceal the shotgun. It was kind of bizarrely clever, because nobody thought a guy carrying roses was dangerous in the least, did they? Especially one who was sneezing.

  Claire could tell from how hard he was gritting his teeth that he really did hate it. A lot.

  They walked quickly but calmly the short distance to Founder’s Square. Hannah must have thought ahead, because they went to one of the side entrances; it was guarded by a police officer, but as Hannah got closer, she locked stares with the woman and said, “Get on the right side, Gretchen. Semper Fi.”

  Gretchen—a trim woman with thick white-blond hair—nodded, gave them all a quick glance, and swung the gate open. “I never saw you, boss,” she told Hannah.

  “Affirmative.”

  And then they were in, approaching from the side. There was a school choir onstage, singing something that it took Claire a moment to realize was “Here Comes the Sun.” They weren’t very good.

  “That’s a little on the nose,” Shane said. “I think maybe ‘Black Hole Sun’ might be more appropriate.”

  He was right, of course. The audience Fallon had gathered, though, seemed entranced; they were swaying to the music, holding hands, looking for all the world like they were having a religious experience.

  Amelie, Oliver, and Morley were still motionless on the stage, blistering and steaming in the sun. It must have been agonizing, waiting for their chance. Claire wondered why they hadn’t done it already, but then she realized they were waiting for word that the vampires in the mall had been rescued.

  It was up to her, and Shane, to let them know.

  She spotted Eve and Michael. They were sitting in chairs onstage next to Fallon, pretty much held there by the two Daylighter guards standing behind them. Maybe that was another reason why Amelie hadn’t moved; Eve and Michael would be the first in danger if she did.

  The choir was still singing when the vampires began to arrive at Founder’s Square.

  Some were covered by blankets, coats, whatever they’d been able to scavenge along the way from the mall. Some, the older ones, had made do with a hat or some kind of cap. They came over the walls in a silent stream, landing quietly in the bushes and moving forward to gather at the edges of the crowd. It was done very calmly. Nobody threatened. Nobody attacked.

  Then someone in the crowd must have noticed that a vampire was standing right beside him. He yelled, and a flurry of confusion erupted. People began drawing back, flinching from the sudden appearance of the bogeymen all around them . . . and as their false sense of security shattered into chaos, and the crowd began to stampede in all directions.

  Faith in the sunlight wasn’t enough in the face of real danger, apparently.

  The choir was still singing, but it was falling ap
art, too, and Fallon shoved through them to get to the microphone. “Don’t run!” he shouted, and his voice rang out over the square, echoing back from the buildings with their fluttering banners. “Don’t run from them! Stand up to them! Fight for your town. You have the advantage—they are few, and they are weak. Take Morganville back!”

  “Go,” Hannah said. “Get Michael and Eve out of there! I need to make sure nobody does anything stupid.” She was already gone, running flat out for two of her own cops, one of whom was drawing his sidearm but not quite sure where to aim it.

  Shane grabbed Claire’s arm and towed her quickly toward the stage. That wasn’t easy, because a lot of the crowd was running in that direction, as if Fallon’s presence was somehow going to protect them from about vampires gathering on the other side of the folding chairs. Fallon was right—the humans outnumbered them. But the fear of vampires was so ingrained that it didn’t seem to be making a difference.

  Myrnin was in front of the rank of vampires, Claire saw, but he didn’t move forward. He held up his hand, and the others stayed behind him, ready to move. She’d seen them in army mode before, fighting the draug, but it was still eerie and terrifying, knowing how much hell they could unleash.

  “Myrnin,” Fallon said. His voice held so much, just in saying the name—so much anger, and so much pain. “Come to mourn your fallen?”

  “This doesn’t have to end this way,” Myrnin said. “I have no quarrel with you, Rhys. I never have.”

  “You destroyed my life, spider. You preyed upon me and blackened my soul, and it took me hundreds of years to claw my way back to the light. Well, I’ve done it. And now I’m going to drag you into the light, too.”

  “I’m standing in the light now,” Myrnin said. “Lest it escaped your notice. Not even a hat on my head. What makes you think I fear it?”

  Fallon pointed at the sizzling bodies of Amelie, Morley, and Oliver. “Ask them,” he said. “They’re proof of your damnation. Proof that the sun itself hates and rejects your kind.” He shifted his gaze away from Myrnin to the people crowding around the stage. “We will stand in the sunlight and they will be defeated! The sun makes us strong. Stand together!”