by Rachel Caine
“Not so much now.” Eve’s eyes looked kind of vague and unfocused, but she was staying on her feet. That had to be a good sign. “I thought—I thought I saw Michael. But then Shane was here, and—”
“Michael’s here,” Claire said. “He was carrying you, but he had to fight. He’s coming, Eve. I told you he would.”
Eve squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing deep. “Okay,” she said then, and her voice sounded stronger. “Okay. We’ll be okay.”
From the other room, Claire heard the sound of metal bending, and then a loud clang. “Yo!” It was Shane’s voice, ringing off stone and wood. “Girls, the party’s over. We are leaving!”
“Come on,” Claire said, and put her arm under Eve’s shoulders to keep her upright. “Time to go.”
“Where’s Jason?” Eve almost sounded in focus now, and on just the wrong topic. “We have to find him! ”
“He’s with Oliver,” Claire said. “We’ll find him. First, we have to make sure we stay alive, okay? Very important.”
The two of them staggered together across the hall into the room where two vampires were lying on the floor, pinned by pencils, and Michael and Shane were standing at the window. The bars were broken out. Michael was sensibly off to the side, away from the sun, and he’d draped one of the thick, dusty curtains over his shoulders. Claire supposed he was going to use it to cover his head.
But neither he nor Shane was moving.
“What?” Claire asked, and as she came to the window and looked out, she realized what the problem was.
The police car was on fire.
And so was the bus, with big, crackling, very public flames.
And nobody, nobody had come out to gawk. No police had come running. Not even the volunteer fire department.
Blacke was a dead town—literally.
“We are screwed,” Shane said, very matter-of-factly. “Plan B?”
“There isn’t one,” Michael said.
“You know, I kind of saw that one coming,” Eve said. “Even with a concussion.”
They stood there for a moment, watching the car and bus burn, and for a few seconds nobody said anything. Then Michael said, “Morley didn’t do that. Morley isn’t that stupid.”
“It damn sure wasn’t Oliver,” Shane added. “So what the hell is going on around here?”
“You should tell us. You were riding with Morley; we just got here.”
“Yeah, funny thing, getting tied up and hustled around by hungry vampires made me not notice the little things. All I know is that we got into the building, Morley was making some speech, and next thing I knew, one of Morley’s crew was yelling that we were being attacked. I grabbed Eve and tried to get her under cover, but she got clocked by Morley when she got between him and some guy he was fighting. She hit her head.” Shane paused and glanced at Michael. “What’s your excuse?”
“I lost track a while ago,” Michael said. “Right about the time Oliver detoured us into Crazytown for no good reason. Unless this is what he was looking for all along.”
“What, a town full of sick vampires?” When Claire said it, suddenly it made sense. “He was. He knew they were here. Somewhere, anyway. He was looking for them!”
“He thought they were in Durram,” Michael agreed. “That’s why he went off in the middle of the night searching. But if they ever were there, they moved on, to here. Smaller town. Easier to control, before they got too sick to care.”
“But these dudes are not exactly historical,” Shane said, and nodded toward the kid in the football jersey. “That’s not some vintage outfit he’s wearing; he can’t have been vamped more than a few months ago, a year at the most. So how did he—”
“Bishop!” Claire interrupted. “Bishop was looking for Amelie. And he was making new vampires all the time, just making them and leaving them.” She shuddered. “He must have come through here, or someplace close.” Bishop was Amelie’s father—both physically, and in a vampire sense, apparently. And in neither sense was he going to win a Father of the Year award. Or get a humanitarian plaque, either. He’d snacked on necks, and this was what he’d left behind him.
Scary, and disgusting.
“If Oliver was looking for them, he must have some kind of plan,” Eve said. She was leaning against the wall now, holding one hand to her must-be-aching head, and she still looked kind of vague and unfocused. “Find him. He’ll know what to do.”
“He might have had a plan, but that was before Morley and his merry bunch of idiots crashed into it,” Shane said. “Now we’re in the middle of a three-sided vampire war. Which would be an awesome video game, but I’m really not interested in playing for real. I like my reset buttons.”
“Then we have to find another car,” Michael said. “One that runs.”
“No, man, I have to find another car,” Shane said. “And black out the windows. And get it back here so you don’t combust strolling around town shopping for one. So here’s an idea: You take care of the girls; I’ll get the wheels.”
“Did you just tell me to stay with the girls?” Michael said, and grinned. Shane did, too.
“Yeah,” he said. “In your face, man. How does it feel?”
They tapped fists. Eve sighed. “You are both morons and we’re all going to die, and my head hurts like crazy,” she said. “Can we please just get out of here? Please?”
Michael went to her and put his arms around her, and Claire heard her let out a little, sad sob as she melted against him. “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s okay, baby.”
“So not,” Eve said, but she’d lost her edge. “And where the hell were you while I was getting dragged along on the party bus, nearly getting fanged?”
“Racing after you,” he said. “Jumping onto the bus? Breaking out windows? Almost rescuing you?”
“Oh yeah,” Eve said. “But I was unconscious for all that part, so I couldn’t really appreciate how brave you were. This is all right, though. Being with you.”
Shane exchanged a look with Claire, made a gagging sound, and got her to laugh. Then he took her hand, held it for a second, then lifted it to his lips. His mouth felt so warm, so soft, that she felt every muscle in her body shiver at the touch. His thumb brushed over the claddagh ring, their secret little promise.
“Wait for me,” he said. “Any requests on the kind of car?”
“Something with armor?” she said. “Oooh, and headrest DVD. Bonus for surround sound.”
“Rocket launchers,” Michael said.
“One hot yellow Hummer with optional mass destruction package, coming up.” Shane squeezed her fingers lightly, one more time, then ducked out the window. Claire watched him drop to the grass, roll to his feet, and take off at an angle through the afternoon glare.
The glare, she realized, was at a lower level than before.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was heading west, fast.
“Nightfall,” she said. Michael stepped up near her, out of range of the sun still flooding the window. “We don’t have too long before it gets dark, right?”
“Right,” he said. “But if we stay here in this building, I think we’re going to have even less time. There are a lot of these... other vampires. And they’re not exactly shy.”
He grabbed the two fallen vampires and dragged them out into the hallway, where he dumped them next to the one still decorated with Claire’s silver stake—that one was definitely dead now, burned by the silver. She tried not to look too closely.
Michael barricaded the doors again and sat Eve down in a somewhat-secure chair, in the corner. “Stay,” he told her. “Rest.” He ripped down the other half of the dusty, thick curtain and wrapped it around Eve; one of those cute romantic gestures that was a little spoiled by her bout of uncontrollable sneezing as a gray cloud floated up around her face.
Claire stayed by the window, staring out. Not that it would help; even if she saw Shane, even if she saw he needed help, what was she going to do? Nothing, because she was human,
slow, and had a torn-up ankle on top of all that.
But somehow, it was important that she stand there and watch for him, as though it were some agreement they’d made, and if she didn’t keep it, something bad would happen.
Superstition. Well, I’m standing in some kind of pseudo-Gothic castle thingy with a bunch of vampires fighting in the halls. Maybe superstition just makes sense.
“Did you see Jason?” Eve was asking Michael. “Was he okay?”
Michael acted as if he didn’t hear her. He came to join Claire at the window, although just to the dark side of the sunlight. “Anything?”
“Nothing yet,” she said. “Did you see him? Jason?”
“Not really.”
“That’s not really an answer, is it?”
Michael shot her a look. Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a thump from overhead—a hard one, followed by what sounded like scratching. Lots of scratching, like very sharp claws. Maybe knives.
Like something was digging down through the floor-boards from the second floor.
“Okay, that’s not a good sound,” Eve said. “Michael?”
He was standing very still, staring upward, his face marble white in the shadows.
Dust filtered down from the ceiling. Pieces of old plaster rained down in flakes, like snow. Claire backed away from the window, away from that sound—all the way back to the heavy desk blocking the door leading into the room.
Suddenly the door shoved against her, as someone outside the room hit the door with a shocking crash and howled. More scraping, this time at the wooden door. Michael lunged forward and slammed the desk back in place and held it there as the door shook under the force of the battering. “Dammit,” he hissed. “Where is he?”
Overhead, something snapped with a dry crack—boards, being broken and peeled away, ripped free, and tossed aside.
They were digging through.
Eve stood up, bracing herself on the wall, and kicked loose the leg of a rickety smaller table lying near her chair. It broke loose with a splintered end, not as sharp as a spear, but not as blunt as a club, either. She gripped it in both hands, dividing her attention between the ceiling, which was now snowing plaster like a blizzard, and Michael, who was struggling to hold the desk in place as a barricade at the door.
We’re going to die here, Claire thought. It came to her with terrifying clarity, as if she’d already seen the future through an open window in time. Eve would be lying there, her eyes wide and empty, and Michael would die trying to protect her. Her own body would be a small, broken mess near the window, where Shane would find it....
No.
The thought of Shane’s finding her, more than just the dying itself, made Claire refuse to accept it. He’d seen enough; suffered enough. Adding this on top of it—no. She wouldn’t do it to him.
“We have to live,” she said out loud. It sounded half crazy. Michael glanced at her, and Eve outright stared.
“Well, duh,” Eve said. “And I’m the one who got clocked today.”
The ceiling gave way with a low groan of wood and a flood of plaster and debris, and three bodies, covered in blood where they weren’t white with plaster dust, dropped through the opening. They looked like monsters, and as the taller one turned to Claire and she caught the glint of fangs, she screamed.
The scream lasted for about a heartbeat, and then recognition flooded in—and relief. “Oliver?” Great. She was relieved to see Oliver. The world was officially topsy-turvy, cats were living with dogs, and life as she knew it was probably over.
Oliver looked ... well, like a monster—like a monster who’d fought his way out of hell, inch by inch, actually, and, weirdly, loved every minute of it. He grinned at Claire, all wickedly pointy fangs, and whirled toward Eve as she lunged at him with the business end of her broken stick. He took it away from her with contemptuous ease and shoved her into Michael, who had checked himself before attacking, but was clearly just as stunned as Claire felt.
“At ease, soldiers,” Oliver said, and it was almost a laugh. Next to him, Morley slapped white dust from his clothes, raising a choking cloud that made Claire’s eyes water as she coughed. “I think we’re still allies. At least for now.”
“Like Russia and England during the Second World War,” Morley agreed, then looked thoughtful. “Or was that the first? So difficult to remember these things. In any case, enemies with a common worse foe. We can kill each other later.”
The third person in the group was Jason, who looked just as bad as the other two, and not nearly as fine with it. He was shaking, visibly shaking, and there were rough bandages wrapped around his left wrist and hand that were soaked through with blood.
Eve finally, belatedly, recognized her brother, and reached out to grab him into a hug. Jason stayed frozen for a moment, then patted her on the back, awkwardly. “I’m okay,” he said. That was a lie, Claire thought, but a brave one. “You’ve got blood on your face.”
“Hit my head,” Eve said.
“Oh, so, no damage, then,” Jason said, which was such a brother thing to say that Claire smiled. “Seriously, that looks bad, Eve.”
“No broken bones. My head hurts, and I feel dizzy. I’ll live. What the hell happened to you?”
“Don’t ask,” Jason said, and stepped away. “Need some help, man?”
Michael had grabbed hold of the desk and shoved it back against the door again, and he was now struggling to keep it in place. “Sure,” he said. Not that Jason’s muscle power was going to work any miracles, Claire thought; he was stringy and strong, but not vamp-strong.
“Let them in,” Morley said, and finished redistributing dust from his clothes to the rest of them with a final slap. “It’s my people. Unless you don’t trust us?”
“Now, why wouldn’t we?” Eve said sweetly, and turned to Michael. “Don’t you dare!”
“You’d rather leave them out there to be torn apart?” Morley asked, without any particular emphasis, as though it didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. “I would have thought someone with so much compassion would be less judgmental.”
“Excuse me, but you tied us to seats. And put needles in our arms. And drank our blood. So no, I’m not really seeing any reason to get all trusty with you!”
Morley shrugged. “Then let them die. I’m sure you’ll have no problem listening to their screams.”
Someone was, in fact, shouting on the other side of the door now, not so much battering on it as knocking. “Michael! Michael, it’s Jacob Goldman! Open the door! They’re coming!”
Michael exchanged a quick look with Claire, then Eve, then Oliver. Oliver nodded briskly.
Michael grabbed the desk and pulled it backward, nearly knocking Jason to the ground in the process. “Hey!” Jason protested. “A little warning next time, man!”
“Shut up.” Michael shoved him back as the door pushed open from the outside, and vampires started flooding into the room.
Morley’s people. They, like Morley, hadn’t come through this unharmed; every one of them, including Jacob and Patience Goldman, looked as if they’d fought for their lives. A few were wounded, and Claire knew from experience that it took a lot to hurt a vampire, even temporarily.
Jacob was cradling his right arm, which was covered in blood. Patience was supporting him from the other side. Even Eve looked a little concerned at the sight of his ice white face and blind-looking eyes. He seemed to be in serious pain.
Patience settled him against the wall and crouched next to him as Morley and Oliver, with Michael’s help, engineered some kind of barrier for the door when the last of Morley’s people were crammed into the small room.
There weren’t nearly so many as before.
“What happened?” Claire asked Patience. The vampire girl looked up at her, and there was a shadow of fear in her face that turned Claire cold inside.
“They wouldn’t stop,” Patience said. “They came for our prisoners. They wouldn’t—we couldn’t make the
m stop. Even when we destroyed one, two came out of the shadows. It was—we couldn’t stop them.” She looked down at Jacob, who had closed his eyes. He looked dead—more dead than most vamps. “Jacob almost had his arm torn off trying to protect them. But we couldn’t help.”
She sounded shocked, and deeply distressed. Claire put a hand on her shoulder, and Patience shuddered.
“You’re okay,” Claire said. “We’re okay.”
“No, we’re not,” she said. “Not at all. These are not vampires, Claire. They are animals—vicious beasts. And we—we are just as much prey for them as you are.”
“Right,” Morley said, raising his voice over the rising babble of conversation. “Everybody, shut it! Now, we can’t stay here—”
“The bus is burning,” someone said from near the window. Morley seemed to pause, obviously not expecting that, but he moved past it at light speed.
“Then we don’t use the bus, clot-for-brains. We find another way out of this accursed graveyard of a town.”
“In the sunlight?” Jacob asked. His voice was soft and thready with pain. “Not all of us will survive for long, and those who do will suffer. You know that.”
“Your choice—go and burn; stay and be torn apart.” Morley shrugged. “For my part, burns heal. I’m not sure that my disconnected pieces would, and I’d prefer not to find out.”
“Something’s coming,” a voice called from the window. “A truck. A delivery van!”
Claire shoved through the crowd of vampires, ignoring the cold touch of skin and the hisses of annoyance, and managed to get a clear space right in front of the window, where a solid couple of feet were still bathed in sunlight. Eve had already claimed it, but she let Claire squeeze in beside her.
The van was a big yellow thing, some kind of bread truck, with a boxy, windowless back. As Claire watched, it jumped the curb and bounced up onto the lawn, charged forward, and knocked down the leaning iron fence around the Civic Hall. It missed the statue of what’s-his-name, the town’s patron saint, but the vibrations caused the whole thing to wobble uncertainly, and as Claire watched, it toppled over that last couple of inches, and gravity took over, slamming the smug statue’s face into the grass once and for all.
