by Rachel Caine
“Ah!” François jerked his head back. “You little peasant.” He used a fold of her shirt to take hold of the silver chain around her neck, and broke it with a sharp twist.
Claire caught the cross in her hand as it fell.
“May it comfort you,” Bishop said, and smiled. “My child.”
And then François bit her.
“Claire?” Somewhere, a long way off, Eve was crying. “Oh my God, Claire? Can you hear me? Come on, please, please come back. Are you sure she’s got a pulse?”
“Yes, she’s got a pulse.” Claire knew that voice. Richard Morrell. But why was he here? Who called the police? She remembered the accident with the truck—no, that was before.
Bishop.
Claire slowly opened her eyes. The world felt very far away, and safely muffled for the moment. She heard Eve let out a gasp and a flood of words, but Claire didn’t try to identify the meaning.
I have a pulse.
That seemed important.
My neck hurts.
Because a vampire had bitten her.
Claire raised her left hand slowly to touch her neck, and found a huge wad of what felt like somebody’s shirt pressed against her neck.
“No,” Richard said, and forced her hand back down. “Don’t touch it. It’s still closing up. You shouldn’t move for another hour or so. Let the wounds close.”
“Bit,” Claire murmured. “He bit me.” That came in a blinding flash, like a red knife cutting through the fog. “Don’t let me turn into one.”
“You won’t,” Eve said. She was upside down—no, Claire’s head was in her lap, and Eve was leaning over her. Claire felt the warm drip of Eve’s tears on her face. “Oh, sweetie. You’re going to be okay. Right?” Even upside down, Eve’s look was panicked as she appealed to Richard, who sat on her right.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. He didn’t look much better than Claire felt. “I have to see to my father. Here.” He moved out of the way, and someone else sat in his place.
Shane. His warm fingers closed over hers, and she shivered when she realized how cold she felt. Eve tucked an expensive velvet blanket over and around her, fussing nervously.
Shane didn’t say anything. He was so quiet.
“My cross,” Claire said. It had been in her hand. She didn’t know where it was now. “He broke the chain. I’m sorry—”
Shane opened her fingers and tipped the cross and chain into her hand. “I picked it up,” he said. “Figured you might want it.” There was something he wasn’t saying. Claire looked at Eve to find out what it was, but she wasn’t talking, for a change. “Anyway, you’re going to be okay. We’re lucky this time. François wasn’t that hungry.” He closed her fingers around the cross and held on.
His hands were shaking. “Shane?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t move. I just stood there.”
“No, he didn’t,” Eve said. “He knocked Franny clear across the room and he would have staked him with a chair leg, except Bishop stepped in.”
That sounded like Shane. “You’re not hurt?” Claire asked.
“Not much.”
Eve frowned. “Well—”
“Not much,” Shane repeated. “I’m okay, Claire.”
She kind of had to take that at face value, at least right now. “What time—”
“Six fifteen,” Richard said, from the far corner of the small room. This, Claire guessed, had been some kind of dressing area for Amelie. She saw a long closet to the side. Most of the clothes were shredded and scattered in piles on the floor. The dressing table was a ruin, and every mirror was broken.
François had had his fun in here, too.
“The storm’s heading for us,” Eve said. “Michael never got to Richard, but he got to Joe Hess, apparently. They evacuated the shelters. Bishop was pretty mad about that. He wanted a lot of hostages between him and Amelie.”
“So all that’s left is us?”
“Us. And Bishop’s people, who didn’t leave. And Fabulous Frank Collins and his Wild Bunch, who rolled into the lobby and now think they’ve won some kind of battle or something.” Eve rolled her eyes, and for an instant was back to her old self. “Just us and the bad guys.”
Did that make Richard—no. Claire couldn’t believe that. If anyone in Morganville had honestly tried to do the right thing, it was Richard Morrell.
Eve followed Claire’s look. “Oh. Yeah, his dad got hurt trying to stop Bishop from taking over downstairs. Richard’s been trying to take care of him, and his mom. We were right about Sullivan, by the way. Total backstabber. Yay for premonitions. Wish I had one right now that could help get us out of this.”
“No way out,” Claire said.
“Not even a window,” Eve said. “We’re locked in here. No idea where Bishop and his little sock monkey got off to. Looking for Amelie, I guess. I wish they’d just kill each other already.”
Eve didn’t mean it, not really, but Claire understood how she felt. Distantly. In a detached, shocked kind of way.
“What’s happening outside?”
“Not a clue. No radios in here. They took our cell phones. We’re”—the lights blinked and failed, putting the room into pitch darkness—“screwed,” Eve finished. “Oh man, I should not have said that, should I?”
“Power’s gone out to the building, I think,” Richard said. “It’s probably the storm.”
Or the vampires screwing with them, just because they could. Claire didn’t say it out loud, but she thought it pretty hard.
Shane’s hand kept holding hers. “Shane?”
“Right here,” he said. “Stay still.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t have gotten angry with you, before, about your dad. . . .”
“Not important,” he said very softly. “It’s okay, Claire. Just rest.”
Rest? She couldn’t rest. Reality was pushing back in, reminding her of pain, of fear, and most important, of time.
There was an eerie, ghostly sound now, wailing, and getting louder.
“What is that?” Eve asked, and then, before anybody could answer, did so herself. “Tornado sirens. There’s one on the roof.”
The rising, falling wail got louder, but with it came something else—a sound like water rushing, or—
“We need to get to cover,” Richard said. A flashlight snapped on, and played over Eve’s pallid face, then Shane’s and Claire’s. “You guys, get her over here. This is the strongest interior corner. That side faces out toward the street.”
Claire tried to get up, but Shane scooped her in his arms and carried her. He set her down with her back against a wall, then got under the blanket next to her with Eve on his other side. The flashlight turned away from them, and in its sweep, Claire caught sight of Mayor Morrell. He was a fat man, with a politician’s smooth face and smile, but he didn’t look anything like she remembered now. He seemed older, shrunken inside his suit, and very ill.
“What’s wrong with him?” Claire whispered.
Shane’s answer stirred the damp hair around her face. “Heart attack,” he said. “At least, that’s Richard’s best guess. Looks bad.”
It really did. The mayor was propped against the wall a few feet from them, and he was gasping for breath as his wife (Claire had never seen her before, except in pictures) patted his arm and murmured in his ear. His face was ash gray, his lips turning blue, and there was real panic in his eyes.
Richard returned, dragging another thick blanket and some pillows. “Everybody cover up,” he said. “Keep your heads down.” He covered his mother and father and crouched next to them as he wrapped himself in another blanket.
The wind outside was building to a howl. Claire could hear things hitting the walls—dull thudding sounds, like baseballs. It got louder. “Debris,” Richard said. He focused the light on the carpet between their small group. “Maybe hail. Could be anything.”
The siren cut o
ff abruptly, but that didn’t mean the noise subsided; if anything, it got louder, ratcheting up from a howl to a scream—and then it took on a deeper tone.
“Sounds like a train,” Eve said shakily. “Damn, I was really hoping that wasn’t true, the train thing—”
“Heads down!” Richard yelled, as the whole building started to shake. Claire could feel the boards vibrating underneath her. She could see the walls bending, and cracks forming in the bricks.
And then the noise rose to a constant, deafening scream, and the whole outside wall sagged, dissolved into bricks and broken wood, and disappeared. The ripped, torn fabric around the room took flight like startled birds, whipping wildly through the air and getting shredded into ever-smaller sections by the wind and debris.
The storm was screaming as if it had gone insane. Broken furniture and shards of mirrors flew around, smashing into the walls, hitting the blankets.
Claire heard a heavy groan even over the shrieking wind, and looked up to see the roof sagging overhead. Dust and plaster cascaded down, and she grabbed Shane hard.
The roof came down on top of them.
Claire didn’t know how long it lasted. It seemed like forever, really—the screaming, the shaking, the pressure of things on top of her.
And then, very gradually, it stopped, and the rain began to hammer down again, drenching the pile of dust and wood. Some of it trickled down to drip on her cheek, which was how she knew.
Shane’s hand moved on her shoulder, more of a twitch than a conscious motion, and then he let go of Claire to heave up with both hands. Debris slid and rattled. They’d been lucky, Claire realized—a heavy wooden beam had collapsed in over their heads at a slant, and it had held the worst of the stuff off them.
“Eve?” Claire reached across Shane and grabbed her friend’s hands. Eve’s eyes were closed, and there was blood trickling down one side of her face. Her face was even whiter than usual—plaster dust, Claire realized.
Eve coughed, and her eyelids fluttered up. “Mom?” The uncertainty in her voice made Claire want to cry. “Oh God, what happened? Claire?”
“We’re alive,” Shane said. He sounded kind of surprised. He brushed fallen chunks of wood and plaster off Claire’s head, and she coughed, too. The rain pounded in at an angle, soaking the blanket that covered them. “Richard?”
“Over here,” Richard said. “Dad? Dad—”
The flashlight was gone, rolled off or buried or just plain taken away by the wind. Lightning flashed, bright as day, and Claire saw the tornado that had hit them still moving through Morganville, crashing through buildings, spraying debris a hundred feet into the air.
It didn’t even look real.
Shane helped move a beam off Eve’s legs—thankfully, they were just bruised, not broken—and crawled across the slipping wreckage toward Richard, who was lifting things off his mother. She looked okay, but she was crying and dazed.
His father, though . . .
“No,” Richard said, and dragged his father flat. He started administering CPR. There were bloody cuts on his face, but he didn’t seem to care about his own problems at all. “Shane! Breathe for him!”
After a hesitation, Shane tilted the mayor’s head back. “Like this?”
“Let me,” Eve said. “I’ve had CPR training.” She crawled over and took in a deep breath, bent, and blew it into the mayor’s mouth, watching for his chest to rise. It seemed to take a lot of effort. So did what Richard was doing, pumping on his dad’s chest, over and over. Eve counted slowly, then breathed again—and again.
“I’ll get help,” Claire said. She wasn’t sure there was any help, really, but she had to do something. When she stood up, though, she felt dizzy and weak, and remembered what Richard had said—she had holes in her neck, and she’d lost a lot of blood. “I’ll go slow.”
“I’ll go with you,” Shane said, but Richard grabbed him and pulled him down.
“No! I need you to take over here.” He showed Shane how to place his hands, and got him started. He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and tossed it to Claire. “Go. We need paramedics.”
And then Richard collapsed, and Claire realized that he had a huge piece of metal in his side. She stood there, frozen in horror, and then punched in the code for the walkie-talkie. “Hello? Hello, is anybody there?”
Static. If there was anybody, she couldn’t hear it over the interference and the roaring rain.
“I have to go!” she shouted at Shane. He looked up.
“No!” But he couldn’t stop her, not without letting the mayor die, and after one helpless, furious look at her, he went back to work.
Claire slid over the pile of debris and scrambled out the broken door, into the main apartment.
There was no sign of François or Bishop. If the place had been wrecked before, it was unrecognizable now. Most of this part of the building was gone, just—gone. She felt the floor groan underneath her, and moved fast, heading for the apartment’s front door. It was still on its hinges, but as she pulled on it, part of the frame came out of the wall.
Outside, the hallway seemed eerily unmarked, except that the roof overhead—and, Claire presumed, all of the next floor above—was missing. It was a hallway open to the storm. She hurried along it, glad now for the flashes of lightning that lit her way.
The fire stairs at the end seemed intact. She passed some people huddled there, clearly terrified. “We need help!” she said. “There are people hurt upstairs—somebody?”
And then the screaming started, somewhere about a floor down, lots of people screaming at the same time. Those who were sitting on the stairs jumped to their feet and ran up, toward Claire. “No!” she yelled. “No, you can’t!”
But she was shoved out of the way, and about fifty people trampled past her, heading up. She had no idea where they’d go.
Worse, she was afraid their combined weight would collapse that part of the building, including the place where Eve, Shane, and the Morrells were.
“Claire?” Michael. He came out of the first-floor door, and leaped two flights of stairs in about two jumps to reach her. Before she could protest, he’d grabbed her in his arms like an invalid. “Come on. I have to get you out of here.”
“No! No, go up. Shane, they need help. Go up; leave me here!”
“I can’t.” He looked down, and so did she.
Vampires poured into the stairwell below. Some of them were fighting, ripping at one another. Any human who got between them went down screaming.
“Right. Up it is,” he said, and she felt them leave the ground in one powerful leap, hitting the third-floor landing with catlike grace.
“What’s happening?” Claire twisted to try to look down, but it didn’t make any sense to her. It was just a mob, fighting one another. No telling who was on which side, or even why they were fighting so furiously.
“Amelie’s down there,” Michael said. “Bishop’s trying to get to her, but he’s losing followers fast. She took him by surprise, during the storm.”
“What about the people—I mean, the humans? Shane’s dad, and the ones who wanted to take over?”
Michael kicked open the door to the third-floor roofless hallway. The people who’d run past Claire were milling around in it, frightened and babbling. Michael brought down his fangs and snarled at them, and they scattered into whatever shelter they could reach—interior offices, mostly, that had sustained little damage except for rain.
He shoved past those who had nowhere to go, and down to the end of the hall. “In here?” He let Claire slide down to her feet, and his gaze focused on her neck. “Someone bit you.”
“It’s not so bad.” Claire put her hand over the wound, trying to cover it up. The wound’s edges felt ragged, and they were still leaking blood, she thought, although that could have just been the rain. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
A gust of wind blew his collar back, and she saw the white outlines of marks on his own neck. “
Michael! Did you get bitten, too?”
“Like you said, it’s nothing. Look, we can talk about that later. Let’s get to our friends. First aid later.”
Claire opened the door and stepped through . . . and the floor collapsed underneath her.
She must have screamed, but all she heard was the tremendous cracking sound of more of the building falling apart underneath and around her. She turned toward Michael, who was frozen in the doorway, illuminated in stark white by a nearby lightning strike.
He reached out and grabbed her arm as she flung it toward him, and then she was suspended in midair, wind and dust rushing up around her, as the floor underneath fell away. Michael pulled, and she almost flew, weightless, into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered faintly. “Thanks.”
He held on to her for a minute without speaking, then said, “Is there another way in?”
“I don’t know.”
They backed up and found the next office to the left, which had suspicious-looking cracks in its walls. Claire thought the floor felt a little unsteady. Michael pushed her back behind him and said, “Cover your eyes.”
Then he began ripping away the wall between the office and Amelie’s apartments. When he hit solid red brick, he punched it, breaking it into dust.
“This isn’t helping keep things together!” Claire yelled.
“I know, but we need to get them out!”
He ripped a hole in the wall big enough to step through, and braced himself in it as the whole building seemed to shudder, as if shifting its weight. “The floor’s all right here,” he said. “You stay. I’ll go.”
“Through that door, to the left!” Claire called. Michael disappeared, moving fast and gracefully.
She wondered, all of a sudden, why he wasn’t downstairs. Why he wasn’t fighting, like all the others of Amelie’s blood.
A couple of tense minutes passed, as she stared through the hole; nothing seemed to be happening. She couldn’t hear Michael, or Shane, or anything else.
And then she heard screaming behind her, in the hall. Vampires, she thought, and quickly opened the door to look.
Someone fell against the wood, knocking her backward. It was François. Claire tried to shut the door, but a bloodstained white hand wormed through the opening and grabbed the edge, shoving it wider.
