by Rachel Caine
He didn’t hurt them. He didn’t have to.
Morley did that way-too-fast vampire thing and was suddenly at the weapons rack ahead of Mrs. Grant, baring his fangs and grinning. He made a little finger-wagging gesture, and she skidded to a stop and backed off, breathing fast. Scared to death, of course, and Claire didn’t blame her.
Michael, meanwhile, was already at Eve’s side. She threw her arms around his neck. “How did you get out?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shirt. He rubbed her back gently and rested his chin against her hair.
“The building across the way casts a pretty big shadow,” he said. “We bailed as soon as we could. From there it wasn’t hard. They thought they had everybody they needed to worry about.”
“You didn’t—”
“No,” Michael said. “We didn’t hurt anybody. Patience made sure of that.”
The townspeople of Blacke—all twenty or thirty of them—were gathering together in a tight block now, with their kids safely in the center. They looked about to make their last stand. Not one of them, Claire realized, thought they were going to live through this.
“Hey,” she said to Mrs. Grant. “Please. Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Morley laughed. “We’re not?”
“No, we’re not,” Oliver said, and piled the weapons on the table. “Shane, get the silver.”
“Can I keep some?”
Oliver smiled grimly. “If it makes you happy.”
“You have no idea.”
“Distribute the chains to everyone else. Make sure they’re wearing silver at their necks and wrists. It’ll help protect them, should some of us, Morley, suffer a lapse of character.” He checked each shotgun for shells, and tossed them to specific individual vampires, who snatched them out of the air with lazy accuracy. “Right. I’m afraid Mrs. Grant is quite right; we can’t allow this infection—and it is an infection—to spread any farther than it has already. We must hunt down and dose everyone who’s contracted the disease, or destroy them. That’s as much for our kind as yours, you see.”
“Dose them?” Mrs. Grant blurted. “What are you—”
Patience Goldman opened up a small black satchel—her father’s doctor bag, Claire realized—and inside were dozens of vials of liquid, as well as some bottles of red crystals. Claire herself had helped develop those; the liquid contained a cure for the bloodborne disease that Bishop had spread here, or at least she hoped it did. The crystals would help restore people’s sanity, temporarily. It worked best doing the crystals, then giving the shot. It had for the far-gone vampires in Morganville.
“They can be saved,” Oliver said. “Your family and friends can be restored to sanity, we believe. But they can’t be restored to human. You understand? What’s done is done on that score. But you can have them back, if you can adjust to that small difference.”
“This is insane,” one of the guards said, a little wildly. His crossbow was now in the hands of one of Morley’s vampires, a little guy with a lined, twisted face and a limp. “We have to fight! Lillian—”
“We’re not here to fight you,” Oliver said. “And we’re not here to save you. I am here to stop the spread of this infection by any means necessary, which, as I see it, aligns with your goals. My other friends,” he said, putting some irony into that last word, “are just passing through your fine town. None of us have any reason to want to harm you.”
“You’re vampires,” Mrs. Grant said blankly.
“Well, obviously. Yes.” Oliver snapped another fully loaded shotgun closed and tossed it through the air.
To Mrs. Grant.
“Any questions?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and looked around. There were a lot of vampires—just about as many as there were humans. And none of them were making threatening moves. Shane walked around, handing out silver chairs to people, smiling his best I’m-a-nice-guy smile. Even Jason seemed to be doing his best to be non-threatening, which wasn’t exactly easy for him.
“Then let’s sit down,” Oliver said, and pulled out a chair at the table. “I, for one, have had a very hard day.”
12
Night fell as tensions gradually eased; the people of Blacke never quite got comfortable, but they loosened up enough to put on some stew in the library’s small kitchen, which had a miniature stove that ran on gas. Apparently, the gas was still flowing, even though the electricity was out. As the light faded outside the windows, Mrs. Grant and three of her burly cowboy-hatted guards—Claire guessed the cowboy hats were a kind of uniform—made the rounds to barricade the doors and windows.
Morley joined them, and after a long, uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Grant decided to ignore his presence. The guards didn’t. Their knuckles were white on their weapons.
“May I assist?” he asked, and put his hands behind his back. “I promise not to eat anyone.”
“Very funny,” Mrs. Grant said. Morley gave her a grave look.
“I wasn’t joking, dear lady,” he said. “I do promise. And I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep. You should feel quite secure.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said. “You’re just—”
“Too overwhelmingly dashing and attractive?” Morley grinned. “A common problem women face with me. It’ll pass. You seem like the no-nonsense sort. I like that.”
Claire smiled at the look on Mrs. Grant’s face, reflected in the white LED light of the lantern she was holding. “You are really—odd,” the older woman said, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was even having the conversation.
Morley put his hand over his heart and bowed from the waist, a gesture that somehow reminded Claire of Myrnin. It reminded her she missed him, too, which was just wrong. She should not be missing Morganville, or anyone in it. Especially not the crazy boss vampire who’d put fang marks in her neck that would never, ever go away. She was doomed to high-necked shirts because of him.
But she did miss him. She even missed Amelie’s dry, cool sense of power and stability. She wondered if this was a kind of vacation for Amelie, too, not worrying about Oliver, or Claire, or Eve, or any of them.
Probably. She couldn’t imagine Amelie was losing any sleep over them—presuming she slept, which Claire really wasn’t sure was the case, anyway.
“Hey.” Shane’s hip nudged her chair, and he bent over, putting his mouth very close to her ear. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Stop.”
“Stop thinking?”
“You’re doing way too much of it. It’ll make you go blind.”
She laughed and turned her face toward his. “I think you’re thinking of something else.”
“I’m definitely thinking of something else,” he said, and bent over to kiss her. It was a long, sweet, slow kiss, full of gentle strokes of his tongue over her lips, which parted for him even though she was sure she hadn’t exactly told them to do that. Warmth swept over her, making her oddly shivery, and she grabbed the neck of his shirt when he tried to pull away and kissed him some more.
When she let go, neither of them moved far. Shane sat down in the chair next to her, but scooted it over and leaned in so they were as close together as possible. There weren’t many lights here in the corner, where Claire had retreated to eat her cup of stew and think, and it felt wildly romantic sitting together by candlelight. Shane’s skin looked golden in the glow, his eyes dark, with only a hint of shimmering amber when the light hit them just right. His chin was a little dark and rough, and she felt it with her palm, then smiled.
“You need a shave,” she said.
“I thought you liked me scruffy.”
“Scruffy is for good dogs and bad rockers.”
“Oh yeah? And which am I, again?” He was so close to her, and in this little bubble of candlelight it felt as if everything happening around them, all the craziness, all the bad things, was taking place a world away. There was something about Shane that just
made it all okay, for as long as she was with him, for as long as he was looking at her with that wonderful, fascinated glow in his eyes.
He moved a little strand of hair back from her face. “Some road trip, eh?”
“I’ve had worse,” Claire said. His expression was priceless. “No, really. I have. I went on a trip with my parents all the way to Canada once. A week in the car, with my folks, having educational experiences. I thought I’d go nuts.”
“I thought you liked educational experiences.”
“Bet you could teach me a few things.”
He kissed her again, hungrily, and there was such focus in him that it took her breath away. She wanted—yeah, she knew what she wanted. She knew what he wanted, too. And she knew it wasn’t going to happen, not here, not tonight—too bad, because if she got killed before getting some privacy with Shane again, she was going to be really upset with Oliver.
Somebody coughed out in the shadows, at the edges of their candle, and Shane sat back. Claire licked her damp lips, tasting him all over again, and struggled to try to focus on something else, such as whoever was interrupting them. “What?” That came out a little harsh.
“Sorry.” That was Jason, and he didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded kind of amused. “If you want to go on with the porn show, please. I’ll wait.”
“Shut up,” Shane growled.
“You know, we could get into this make-me-no-you-make-me kind of thing, but I think we have better things to do,” Jason said. “I’m not talking to you, anyway. I need Claire.”
She needed a lot of things, all from Shane, and she couldn’t think of a blessed thing right now that she needed from Jason Rosser. It made her voice go even colder. “Why?”
He rolled his eyes, just like his sister, which was creepy. She didn’t even like to think they came from the same gene pool, much less shared things she thought were cute and funny in Eve. “Because Oliver wants you, and what Oliver wants, Oliver gets, right? So get your sweet little butt up already.”
“Hey,” Shane said, and stood up. “I’m not telling you again, Jase. Stop.”
“What, because I said she had a sweet little butt? You don’t think she does? Hard to believe, since you spend so much time staring at it.”
Shane’s hands closed into fists, and Claire remembered Jason on the street in the dark outside Common Grounds, coming after them—after her and Eve, specifically, at least that was what he’d said to Shane.
Shane didn’t forget.
“You and me, man, one of these days, we’re going to finish this,” he said softly. “Until that day, you stay the hell away from my girl. You understand?”
“Big tough guy,” Jason said, and laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Personally, she’s too skinny for me, anyway.”
He walked off, and Claire saw a tremor go through Shane, something she figured was an impulse to slam into Jason and knock him flat, and then pound him.
But Shane didn’t move. He let out a slow breath and turned back to face her. “That guy,” he said, “is not normal; I don’t care what Eve says. And I don’t like him around you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, I know.” He forced a smile. “It’s just that—” This time, he shrugged and let it go. “Oliver, huh?”
“I guess.” Claire picked up the candle and headed through the stacks for the unofficial—or official?—command desk, where Oliver was now sitting, talking to a couple of vampires whose faces glowed blue-white in the light of the fluorescent lamp.
“About time,” Oliver said. “I need you to see if you can get a message out on this thing.” He nodded to the computer, which sat there dead and unresponsive.
“There’s no electricity.”
“They’ve been trying to use this,” he said, and pointed toward the pedal generator. “They tell me it should work, but there’s some problem with the computer. Fix it.”
“Just like that.”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “Just like that. Whine about it quietly, to yourself.”
She seethed, but Shane just shrugged and looked at the pedal generator, which was sort of like an exercise bike. “This thing could be a real workout,” he said. “Tell you what: I’ll pedal; you do the magic. Sound fair?”
She liked that he was willing to help. Their fingers intertwined, and he kissed her again, lightly.
“Sounds fair,” she agreed.
She turned the laptop over and took a look at it. Nothing obviously wrong jumped out—nothing cracked or broken, anyway. Shane climbed on the seat and started turning the pedals—which must have been harder than it seemed, because even he seemed to be working at it. The resistance built up energy, which translated into electricity, which went into a power strip with some kind of backup battery built into it. Immediately, the battery began beeping and flickering a red light. “Right, that’s working,” Claire said. “It’ll probably take a while to recharge the backup, though.”
“How much time are we talking?” Shane asked.
She grinned. “Slacker.”
“Well, yeah, obviously.”
In a few moments, the computer’s power light finally came on, and she booted up and started looking into the computer problem. It took her thirty minutes of diagnostics before she located the problem and got the operating system booted up.
Shane, poor thing, kept pedaling. He stopped wasting his breath with quips after a while. When the power strip’s battery finally clicked over to green, he stopped, gasping for breath, slumped over the handlebars. “Okay,” he panted, “let’s not screw it up, shall we? Because I do not want to do that again. Next time, get a vamp. They don’t need to breathe.”
Claire looked over at Oliver, who was ignoring them and jotting down notes on a map of Blacke.
But he was smiling a little.
“It’s booting up,” she said, watching the lines scroll by. “Here goes....”
The Windows tones sounded, and it felt like everybody in the library jumped. Mrs. Grant and Morley abandoned their security sweep and came back to stand by Claire’s elbow as the operating system load finished, and the desktop finally appeared. She let it finish, then double-clicked the Internet icon.
“Four oh four.” She sighed.
“What?” Morley peered over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“Page not found,” she said. “It’s a four oh four error. Let me try something else.” She tried for Google. Then Wikipedia. Then Twitter. Nothing. “The ISP must be down. There’s no Internet service.”
“What about e-mail? It is e-mail, yes?” Morley asked, leaning even closer. “E-mail is a kind of electronic letter. It travels through the air.” He seemed very smug that he knew that.
“Well, not exactly, and would you please either back off or go find a shower? Thanks. And to send e-mail you have to have Internet service. So that doesn’t work.”
“I pedaled for nothing,” Shane said mournfully. “That deeply bites.”
“Does anyone else think it’s too quiet?” Oliver asked, and looked up from the map.
There was a moment of silence, and then Mrs. Grant said, “Sometimes they don’t come at us for a few hours. But they always come. Every night. We’re all there is for them.”
Oliver nodded, stood up, and gestured to Morley. The two vampires stalked off into the dark, talking in tones too quiet for human ears to catch at all.
Mrs. Grant stared after them, eyes narrowed. “They’ll turn on us,” she said. “Sooner or later, your vampires will turn on us. Count on it.”
“We’re still alive,” Claire said, and pointed to herself, Shane, Jason, and Eve. Eve was sitting a few feet away, curled in Michael’s arms. “And we’ve been at this a whole lot longer than you.”
“Then you’re deluded,” Mrs. Grant said. “How can you possibly trust these—people?” She acted as if that wasn’t the word she wanted to use.
“Because they gave you back your guns,” Claire said. “And because they could have ki
lled you in the first couple of minutes if they’d really wanted to. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us, sometimes. But right now, you need to believe what they’re telling you.”
Mrs. Grant frowned at her. “And when exactly do I stop believing them?”
Claire smiled. “We’ll let you know.”
There weren’t a lot of kids in the library, but there were a few—seven total, according to Claire’s count, ranging from babies who were still being bottle-fed to a couple of trying-to-be-adult kids of maybe twelve. Nobody was too close to Claire’s own age, though. She was kind of glad; it would have been just too creepy to see the kind of blank fear in their faces that she saw in the younger kids. Too much like seeing herself, in the beginning of her Morganville experience.
She wound up thinking about the kids because Eve had brought over a lantern, gotten them in a circle, and started reading to them. It was something familiar, from the few words Claire could hear; it finally clicked in. Eve was reading Where the Wild Things Are. All the kids, even the ones who would probably have said they were too old for it, were sitting quietly, listening, with the fear easing away from their expressions.
“She’s got the touch, doesn’t she?” That was Michael, standing behind Claire. He was watching Eve read, too. “With kids.” There was something quietly sad in his voice.
“Yeah, I guess.” Claire glanced over at him, then away. “Everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Just another day for us Morganville brats.” Now the smile was quietly sad, too. “I wish I could take her away from all this. Make it all—different.”
“But you can’t.”
“No. I can’t. Because I am who I am, and she is who she is. And that’s it.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug so small it almost didn’t even qualify. “She keeps asking me where we’re going.”
“Yeah,” another voice said. It was Shane, pulling up a chair beside Claire. “Girls do that. They’ve always got to be taking the relationship somewhere.”
“That’s not true!”
“It is,” he said. “I get it; somebody’s got to be looking ahead. But it makes guys think they’re—”
