by Rachel Caine
Richard nodded. “Already done,” he said. “My mom and dad are at City Hall. Monica’s headed there, too.” He paused, thinking about it. “You’re right. I should make sure she gets there all right, before she becomes another statistic.” His face had tightened, and there was a look in his eyes that didn’t match the way he said it. He was worried.
Given what Claire had just heard from Gramma Day, she thought he probably ought to be. Joe Hess and Travis Lowe sent each other looks, too, and she thought they were probably thinking the same thing. She deserves it, Claire told herself. Whatever happens to Monica Morrell, she earned it.
Except the pictures from Gramma Day’s book kept coming back to haunt her.
The front door banged shut, and she heard Hannah’s voice—not an alarm, just a welcome. She spun around and went to the door of the kitchen . . . and ran directly into Shane, who grabbed her and folded his arms around her.
“You’re here,” he said, and hugged her so tightly that she felt ribs creak. “Man, you don’t make it easy, Claire. I’ve been freaking out all damn day. First I hear you’re off in the middle of Vamptown; then you’re running around like bait with Eve—”
“You’re one to talk about bait,” Claire said, and pushed back to look up into his face. “You okay?”
“Not a scratch,” he said, and grinned. “Ironic, because I’m usually the one with the battle scars, right? The worst thing that happened to me was that I had to pull over and let a bunch of vampires off the bus, or they’d have ripped right through the walls. You’d be proud. I even let them off in the shade.” His smile faded, but not the warmth in his eyes. “You look tired.”
“Yeah, you think?” She caught herself on a yawn. “Sorry.”
“We should get you home and catch some rest while we can.” He looked around. “Where’s Eve?”
Nobody had told him. Claire opened her mouth and found her throat clenching tight around the words. Her eyes filled with tears. She’s gone, she wanted to say. She’s missing. Nobody knows where she is.
But saying it out loud, saying it to Shane, that would make it real, somehow.
“Hey,” he said, and smoothed her hair. “Hey, what’s wrong? Where is she?”
“She was at Common Grounds,” Claire finally choked out. “She—”
His hands went still, and his eyes widened.
“She’s missing,” Claire finally said, and a wave of utter misery broke over her. “She’s out there somewhere. That’s all I know.”
“Her car’s outside.”
“We drove it here.” Claire nodded at Hannah, who’d come in behind Shane and was silently watching. He acknowledged her with a glance; that was all.
“Okay,” Shane said. “Michael’s safe, you’re safe, I’m safe. Now we’re going to go find Eve.”
Richard Morrell stirred. “That’s not a good idea.”
Shane spun on him, and the look on his face was hard enough to scare a vampire. “Want to try and stop me, Dick?”
Richard stared at him for a moment, then turned back to the map. “You want to go, go. We’ve got things to do. There’s a whole town of people out there to serve and protect. Eve’s one girl.”
“Yeah, well, she’s our girl,” Shane said. He took Claire’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Hannah leaned against the wall. “Mind if I call shotgun?”
“Since you’re carrying one? Feel free.”
Outside, things were odd—quiet, but with a suppressed feeling of excitement in the air. People were still outside, talking in groups on the streets. The stores were shut down, for the most part, but Claire noticed with a stir of unease that the bars were open, and so was Morganville’s gun shop.
Not good.
The gates of the university had opened, and they were issuing some kind of passes to people to leave—still sticking to the emergency drill story, Claire assumed.
“Oh, man,” Shane muttered, as they turned down one of the streets that led to the heart of town, and Founder’s Square—Vamptown. There were more people here, more groups. “I don’t like this. There’s Sal Manetti up there. He was one of my dad’s drinking buddies, back in the day.”
“The cops don’t like it much, either,” Hannah said, and pointed at the police cars ahead. They were blocking off access at the end of the street, and when Claire squinted, she could see they were out of their cruisers and arranged in a line, ready for anything. “This could turn bad, any time. All they need is somebody to strike a match out there, and we’re all on fire.”
Claire thought about Shane saying his father was coming to town, and she knew he was thinking about that, too. He shook his head. “We’ve got to figure out where Eve might be. Ideas?”
“Maybe she left us some clues,” Claire said. “Back at Common Grounds. We should probably start there.”
Common Grounds, however, was deserted, and the steel shutters were down. The front door was locked. They drove around back, to the alley. Nothing was there but trash cans, and—
“What the hell is that?” Shane asked. He hit the brakes and put the car in park, then jumped out and picked up something small on the ground. He got back in and showed it to Claire.
It was a small white candy in the shape of a skull. Claire blinked at it, then looked down the alley. “She left a trail of breath mints?”
“Looks like. We’ll have to go on foot to follow it.”
Hannah didn’t seem to like that idea much, but Shane wasn’t taking votes. They parked and locked Eve’s car in the alley behind Common Grounds and began hunting for skull candies.
“Over here!” Hannah yelled, at the end of the alley. “Looks like she’s dropping them when she makes a turn. Smart. She went this way.”
After that, they went faster. The skull candies were in plain sight, easy to spot. Claire noticed that they were mostly in the shadows, which would have made sense, if Eve was with Myrnin or the other vampires. Why didn’t she stay? Maybe she hadn’t had a choice.
They ran out of candy trail after a few blocks. It led them into an area where Claire hadn’t really been before—abandoned old buildings, mostly, falling to pieces under the relentless pressure of years and sun. It looked and felt deserted.
“Where now?” Claire asked, looking around. She didn’t see anything obvious, but then she spotted something shiny, tucked in behind a tipped-over rusty trash can. She reached behind and came up with a black leather collar, studded with silver spikes.
The same collar Eve had been wearing. She wordlessly showed it to Shane, who turned in a slow circle, looking at the blank buildings. “Come on, Eve,” he said. “Give us something. Anything.” He froze. “You hear that?”
Hannah cocked her head. She was standing at the end of the alley, shotgun held in her arms in a way that was both casual and scarily competent. “What?”
“You don’t hear it?”
Claire did. Somebody’s phone was ringing. A cell phone, with an ultrasonic ringtone—she’d heard that older people couldn’t hear those frequencies, and kids in school had used them all the time to sneak phone calls and texts in class. It was faint, but it was definitely there. “I thought the networks were down,” she said, and pulled her own phone out.
Nope. The network was back up. She wondered if Richard had done it, or they’d lost control of the cell phone towers. Either one was possible.
They found the phone before the ringing stopped. It was Eve’s—a red phone, with silver skull cell phone charms on it—discarded in the shadow of a broken, leaning doorway. “Who was calling?” Claire asked, and Shane paged through the menu.
“Richard,” he said. “I guess he really was looking for her after all.”
Claire’s phone buzzed—just once. A text message. She opened it and checked.
It was from Eve, and it had been sent hours ago; the backlog of messages was just now being delivered, apparently.
It read, 911 @ GERMANS. Claire showed it to Shane. “What is this?”
“Nine one
one. Emergency message. German’s—” He looked over at Hannah, who pushed away from the wall and came toward them.
“German’s Tire Plant,” she said. “Damn, I don’t like that; it’s the size of a couple of football fields, at least.”
“We should let Richard know,” Claire said. She dialed, but the network was busy, and then the bars failed again.
“I’m not waiting,” Shane said. “Let’s get the car.”
9
The tire plant was near the old hospital, which made Claire shudder; she remembered the deserted building way too well. It had been incredibly creepy, and then of course it had also nearly gotten her and Shane killed, too, so again, not fond.
She was mildly shocked to see the hulking old edifice still standing, as Shane turned the car down the street.
“Didn’t they tear that place down?” It had been scheduled for demolition, and boy, if any place had ever needed it . . .
“I heard it was delayed,” Shane said. He didn’t seem any happier about it than Claire was. “Something about historic preservation. Although anybody wanting to preserve that thing has never been inside it running for their life, I’ll bet.”
Claire stared out the window. On her side of the car was the brooding monstrosity of a hospital. The cracked stones and tilted columns in front made it look like something straight out of one of Shane’s favorite zombie-killing video games. “Don’t be hiding in there,” she whispered. “Please don’t be hiding in there.” Because if Eve and Myrnin had taken refuge there, she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to go charging in after them.
“There’s German’s,” Hannah said, and nodded toward the other side of the street. Claire hadn’t really noticed it the last time she’d been out here—preoccupied with the whole not-dying issue—but there it was, a four-story square building in that faded tan color that everybody had used back in the sixties. Even the windows—those that weren’t broken out—were painted over. It was plain, big, and blocky, and there was absolutely nothing special about it except its size—it covered at least three city blocks, all blind windows and blank concrete.
“You ever been inside there?” Shane asked Hannah, who was studying the building carefully.
“Not for a whole lot of years,” she said. “Yeah, we used to hide up in there sometimes, when we cut class or something. I guess everybody did, once in a while. It’s a mess in there, a real junkyard. Stuff everywhere, walls falling apart, ceilings none too stable, either. If you go up to the second level, you watch yourself. Make sure you don’t trust the floors, and watch those iron stairs. They were shaky even back then.”
“Are we going in there?” Claire asked.
“No,” Shane said. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here and getting Richard on the phone and telling him where we are. Me and Hannah will check it out.”
There didn’t seem to be much room for argument, because Shane didn’t give her time; he and Hannah bailed out of the car, made lock-the-door motions, and sprinted toward a gap in the rusted, sagging fence.
Claire watched until they disappeared around the corner of the building, and realized her fingers were going numb from clutching her cell phone. She took a deep breath and flipped it open to try Richard Morrell again.
Nothing. No signal again. The network was going up and down like a yo-yo.
The walkie-talkie signal was low, but she tried it anyway. There was some kind of response, but it was swallowed by static. She gave their position, on the off chance that someone on the network would be able to hear her over the noise.
She screamed and dropped the device when the light at the car window was suddenly blocked out, and someone battered frantically on the glass.
Claire recognized the silk shirt—her silk shirt—before she recognized Monica Morrell, because Monica definitely didn’t look like herself. She was out of breath, sweating, her hair was tangled, and what makeup she had on was smeared and running.
She’d been crying. There was a cut on her right cheek, and a forming bruise, and dirt on the silk blouse as well as bloodstains. She was holding her left arm as though it was hurt.
“Open the door!” she screamed, and pounded on the glass again. “Let me in!”
Claire looked behind the car.
There was a mob coming down the street: thirty, forty people, some running, some following at a walk. Some were waving baseball bats, boards, pipes.
They saw Monica and let out a yell. Claire gasped, because that sound didn’t seem human at all—more the roar of a beast, something mindless and hungry.
Monica’s expression was, for the first time, absolutely open and vulnerable. She put her palm flat against the window glass. “Please help me,” she said.
But even as Claire clawed at the lock to open it, Monica flinched, turned, and ran on, limping.
Claire slid over the front seat and dropped into the driver’s seat. Shane had left the keys in the ignition. She started it up and put the big car in gear, gave it too much gas, and nearly wrecked it on the curb before she straightened the wheel. She rapidly gained on Monica. She passed her, squealed to a stop, and reached over to throw open the passenger door.
“Get in!” she yelled. Monica slid inside and banged the door shut, and Claire hit the gas as something impacted loudly against the back of the car—a brick, maybe. A hail of smaller stones hit a second later. Claire swerved wildly again, then straightened the wheel and got the car moving more smoothly. Her heart pounded hard, and her hands felt sweaty on the steering wheel. “You all right?”
Monica was panting, and she threw Claire a filthy look. “No, of course I’m not all right!” she snapped, and tried to fix her hair with trembling hands. “Unbelievable. What a stupid question. I guess I shouldn’t expect much more from someone like you, though—”
Claire stopped the car and stared at her.
Monica shut up.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Claire said. “You’re going to act like an actual human being for a change, or else you’re on your own. Clear?”
Monica glanced behind them. “They’re coming!”
“Yes, they are. So, are we clear?”
“Okay, okay, yes! Fine, whatever!” Monica cast a clearly terrified look at the approaching mob. More stones peppered the paint job, and one hit the back glass with enough force to make Claire wince. “Get me out of here! Please!”
“Hold on, I’m not a very good driver.”
That was kind of an understatement. Eve’s car was huge and heavy and had a mind of its own, and Claire hadn’t taken the time to readjust the bench seat to make it possible for her to reach the pedals easily. The only good thing about her driving, as they pulled away from the mob and the falling bricks, was that it was approximately straight, and pretty fast.
She scraped the curb only twice.
Once the fittest of their pursuers had fallen behind, obviously discouraged, Claire finally remembered to breathe, and pulled the car around the next right turn. This section of town seemed deserted, but then, so had the other street, before Monica and her fan club had shown up. The big, imposing hulk of the tire plant glided by on the passenger side—it seemed like miles of featureless brick and blank windows.
Claire braked the car on the other side of the street, in front of a deserted, rusting warehouse complex. “Come on,” she said.
“What?” Monica watched her get out of the car and take the keys with uncomprehending shock. “Where are you going? We have to get out of here! They were going to kill me!”
“They probably still are,” Claire said. “So you should probably get out of the car now, unless you want to wait around for them.”
Monica said something Claire pretended not to hear—it wasn’t exactly complimentary—and limped her way out of the passenger side. Claire locked the car. She hoped it wouldn’t get banged up, but that mob had looked pretty excitable, and just the fact that Monica had been in it might be enough to ensure its destruction.
&n
bsp; With any luck, though, they’d assume the girls had run into the warehouse complex, which was what Claire wanted.
Claire led them in the opposite direction, to the fence around German’s Tire. There was a split in the wire by one of the posts, an ancient curling gap half hidden by a tangle of tumbleweeds. She pushed through and held the steel aside for Monica. “Coming?” she asked when Monica hesitated. “Because, you know what? Don’t really care all that much. Just so you know.”
Monica came through without any comment. The fence snapped back into place. Unless someone was looking for an entrance, it ought to do.
The plant threw a large, black shadow on the weed-choked parking lot. There were a few rusted-out trucks still parked here and there; Claire used them for cover from the street as they approached the main building, though she didn’t think the mob was close enough to really spot them at this point. Monica seemed to get the point without much in the way of instruction; Claire supposed that running for her life had humbled her a little. Maybe.
“Wait,” Monica said, as Claire prepared to bolt for a broken-out bottom-floor window into the tire plant. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for my friends,” she said. “They’re inside.”
“Well, I’m not going in there,” Monica declared, and tried to look haughty. It would have been more effective if she hadn’t been so frazzled and sweaty. “I was on my way to City Hall, but those losers got in my way. They slashed my tires. I need to get to my parents.”’ She said it as though she expected Claire to salute and hop like a toad.
Claire raised her eyebrows. “Better start walking, I guess. It’s kind of a long way.”
“But—but—”
Claire didn’t wait for the sputtering to die; she turned and ran for the building. The window opened into total darkness, as far as she could tell, but at least it was accessible. She pulled herself up on the sash and started to swing her legs inside.
