by Rachel Caine
Not. Claire was struggling against the ropes, but Jason had done his job pretty well; she was hurting herself more than accomplishing anything else. Ysandre grabbed Claire’s shoulder and wrenched her upright against the wooden wall, hard enough to bang Claire’s injured head. For a dazed second, it looked like Ysandre’s ripe, red smile floated in midair, like some undead Cheshire cat.
“Now,” Ysandre said, “ain’t this nice, sweetie? It’s too bad we couldn’t get Mr. Shane to join us, but my little helper here, he’s a bit worried about tackling Shane. Bad blood and all.” She laughed softly. “Well, we’ll make do. Amelie likes you, I hear, and you’ve got on that pretty little gold bracelet. So you’ll do just fine.”
“For what?”
“I ain’t telling you, sweetie.” Ysandre’s smile was truly scary. “This town’s going to have a wild night, though. Real wild. And you’re going to get to see the whole thing, up close. You must be all atingle.”
Eve would have had a quip at the ready. Claire just glared, and wished her head would stop aching and spinning. What had he hit her with? It felt like the front end of a bus. She hadn’t thought Jason could hit that hard, truthfully.
Don’t try to find me, Shane. Don’t. The last thing she wanted was Shane racing to the rescue and taking on a guy who’d stabbed him, and a vampire who’d led him around by a leash.
No, she had to find her own way out of this.
Step one: figure out where she was. Claire let Ysandre ramble on, describing all kinds of lurid things that Claire thought it was better not to imagine, considering they were things Ysandre was thinking of doing to her. Instead, she tried to identify her surroundings. It didn’t look familiar, but that was no help; she was still relatively new to Morganville. Plenty of places she’d never been.
Wait.
Claire focused on the crate that Jason was sitting on. There was stenciling on it. It was hard to make it out in the dim light, but she thought it said BRICKS BULK COFFEE. And now that she thought about it, it smelled like coffee in here, too. A warm, morning kind of smell, floating over dust and damp wood.
And she remembered Eve laughing about how Oliver bought his coffee from a place called Bricks. As in, tastes like ground-up bricks, Eve had said. If you order flavored, they add in the mortar.
There were only two coffee shops in town: Oliver’s place, and the University Center coffee bar. This didn’t look like the UC, which wasn’t that old and was mostly built of concrete, not wood.
That meant . . . she was at Common Grounds? But Common Grounds didn’t make any sense; there wasn’t any kind of portal leading to it.
Maybe Oliver has a warehouse. That sounded right, because the vampires seemed to own a lot of the warehouse district that bordered Founder’s Square. Brandon, Oliver’s second-in-vampire-command, had been found dead in a warehouse.
Maybe she was close to Founder’s Square.
Ysandre’s cold fingers closed around Claire’s chin and jerked it up. “Are you listening, honey?”
“Truthfully, no,” Claire said. “You’re kind of boring.”
Jason actually laughed, and turned it into a fake cough. “I’m going outside,” he said. “Since this is going to get all personal now.” Claire wanted to yell to him not to go, but she bit her tongue and turned it into a subsonic whine in the back of her throat as she watched him walk away. His footsteps receded into the dark, and then finally a small square of light opened a long way off.
It was a door, too far for her to reach—way too far.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Ysandre said, and put her cold, cold lips on Claire’s neck, then yelled in shock and pulled away, covering her mouth with one pale hand. “You bitch!”
Ysandre hadn’t seen the silver chain Claire was wearing in the dim light, as whisper-thin as it was. Now there were welts forming on the vampire’s full lips—forming, breaking, and bleeding.
Fury sparked in Ysandre’s eyes. Playtime was over.
As Claire squirmed away, the vampire followed at a lazy stroll. She wiped her burned lips and looked at the thin, leaking blood in distaste. “Tastes like silver. Disgusting. You’ve just ruined my good mood, little girl.”
As she rolled, Claire felt something sharp dig into her leg. The knife. They’d found the stake, but she guessed their search hadn’t exactly been thorough; Jason was too crazy, and Ysandre too careless and arrogant.
But the knife wasn’t going to do her any good at all where it was, unless . . .
Ysandre lunged for her, a blur of white in the darkness, and Claire twisted and jammed her hip down at an awkward angle.
The knife slipped and tore through the fabric of her jeans—not much of it, just a couple of inches, but enough to slice open Ysandre’s hand and arm as it reached for her, all the way to the bone.
Ysandre shrieked in real pain, and spun away. She didn’t look so pretty now, and when she turned toward Claire again, from a respectful distance this time, she hissed at her with full cobra fangs extended. Her eyes were wild and bloodred, glowing like rubies.
Claire twisted, nearly yanking her elbow out of its joint, and managed to get the ropes around her wrist against the knife. She didn’t have long; the shock wouldn’t keep Ysandre at bay for more than a few seconds.
But getting a silver knife to cut through synthetic rope? That was going to take a while—a while she didn’t have.
Claire sawed desperately, and got a little bit of give on the bonds—enough to almost get her hand into her pocket.
But not.
Ysandre grabbed her by the hair. “I’m going to destroy you for that.”
The pain in her head was blinding. It felt like her scalp was being ripped off, and on top of that, the massive headache roared back to a new, sickening pulse.
Claire loosened the rope enough to plunge her aching hand into her pocket and grab the handle of the knife. She yanked it out of the tangle of fabric and held it at a trembling, handicapped en garde—still tied up, but whatever, she wasn’t going to stop fighting, not ever.
Ysandre shrieked and let her go, which made no sense to Claire’s confused, pain-shocked mind. I didn’t stab her yet. Did I? Not that she wanted to stab anybody, even Ysandre. She just wanted—
What was going on?
Ysandre’s body slammed down hard on the wooden floor, and Claire gasped and flinched away . . . but the vampire had fallen facedown, limp, and weirdly broken.
A small woman dressed in gray, her pale hair falling wild around her shoulders, dropped silently from overhead and put one impeccably lovely gray pump in the center of Ysandre’s back, holding her down as she tried to move.
“Claire?” The woman’s face turned toward her, and Claire blinked twice before she realized whom she was looking at.
Amelie. But not Amelie. Not the cool, remote Founder—this woman had a wild, furious energy to her that Claire had never seen before. And she looked young.
“I’m okay,” she said faintly, and tried to decide whether this version of Amelie was really here, or a function of her smacked-around brain. She decided it would be a good idea to get her hands and feet untied before figuring anything else out.
That took long minutes, during which Amelie (really?) dragged Ysandre, whimpering, into the corner and fastened her wrists to a massive crossbeam with chains. The chains, Claire registered, had been there all along. Lovely. This was some kind of vamp playpen/storage locker—probably Oliver’s. And she felt sick again, thinking about it. Claire sawed grimly at the ropes binding her and finally parted one complete twist around her hands. As she struggled out of the loops of rope, she saw deep white imprints in her skin, and realized that her hands were red and swollen. She could still feel them, at least, and the burn of circulation returning felt as if she were holding them over an open flame.
She focused on slicing the increasingly dulled knife through the rope on her feet, but it was no use.
“Here,” Amelie said, and bent down to snap the rope with one twist of
her fingers. It was so frustrating, after all that hard work, to see just how easy it was for her. Claire stripped the ties away and sat for a moment breathing hard, starting to feel every cut, bump, and bruise on her body.
Amelie’s cool fingers cupped Claire’s chin and forced her head up, and the vampire’s gray eyes searched hers. “You have a head injury,” Amelie said. “I don’t think it’s too serious. A headache and some dizziness, perhaps.” She let go. “I expected to find you. I did not expect to find you here, I confess.”
Amelie looked fine. Not a prisoner. Not a scratch on her, in fact. Claire had lots more damage, and she hadn’t been dragged off as Bishop’s prisoner. . . .
Wait. “You—we thought Bishop might have gotten you. But he didn’t, did he?”
Amelie cocked an eyebrow at her. “Apparently not.”
“Then where did you go?” Claire felt a completely useless urge to lash out at her, crack that extreme cool. “Why did you do this? You left us alone! And you called the vampires out of hiding—” Her voice failed her for a second as she thought about Officer O’Malley, and the others she’d heard about. “You got some of them killed.”
Amelie didn’t respond to that. She simply stared back, as calm as an ice sculpture—calmer, because she wasn’t melting.
“Tell me why,” Claire said. “Tell me why you did that.”
“Because plans change,” Amelie replied. “As Bishop changes his moves, I must change mine. The stakes are too high now, Claire. I’ve lost half the vampires of Morganville to him. He’s taking away my advantage, and I needed to draw them to me, for their own safety.”
“You got vampires killed, not just humans. I know humans don’t mean anything to you. But I thought the whole point of this was to save your people!”
“And so it is,” Amelie said. “As many as can be saved. As for the call, there is a thing in chess known as a blitz attack, you see—a distraction, to cover the movement of more important pieces. You retrieved Myrnin and set him in play again; this was most important. I need my most powerful pieces on the board.”
“Like Oliver?” Claire rubbed her hands together, trying to get the annoying tingle out of them. “He’s hurt, you know. Maybe dying.”
“He’s served his purpose.” Amelie turned her attention toward Ysandre, who was starting to stir. “It’s time to take Bishop’s rook, I believe.”
Claire clutched the silver knife hard in her fist. “Is that all I am, too? Some kind of sacrifice pawn?”
That got Amelie’s attention again. “No,” she said in surprise. “Not entirely. I do care, Claire. But in war, you can’t care too much. It paralyzes your ability to act.” Those luminous eyes turned toward Ysandre again. “It’s time for you to go, because I doubt you would enjoy seeing this. You won’t be able to return here. I’m closing down nodes on the network. When I’m finished, there will be only two destinations: to me, or to Bishop.”
“Where is he?”
“You don’t know?” Amelie raised her eyebrows again. “He is where it is most secure, of course. At City Hall. And at nightfall, I will come against him. That’s why I came looking for you, Claire. I need you to tell Richard. Tell him to get all those who can’t fight for me out of the building.”
“But—he can’t. It’s a storm shelter. There are supposed to be tornadoes coming.”
“Claire,” Amelie said. “Listen to me. If innocents take refuge in that building, they will be killed, because I can’t protect them anymore. We’re at endgame now. There’s no room for mercy.” She looked again at Ysandre, who had gone very still, listening.
“Y’all wouldn’t be saying this in front of me if I was going to walk out of here, would you?” Ysandre asked. She sounded calm now. Very still.
“No,” Amelie said. “Very perceptive. I wouldn’t.” She took Claire by the arm and helped her to her feet. “I am relying on you, Claire. Go now. Tell Richard these are my orders.”
Before Claire could utter another word, she felt the air shimmer in front of her, in the middle of the big warehouse room, and she fell . . . out over the dusty trunk in the Glass House attic, where Oliver had been. She sprawled ungracefully on top of it, then rolled off and got to her feet with a thump.
When she waved her hand through the air, looking for that strange heat shimmer of an open portal, she felt nothing at all.
I’m closing the portals, Amelie had said.
She’d closed this one, for sure.
“Claire?” Shane’s voice came from the far end of the attic. He shoved aside boxes and jumped over jumbled furniture to reach her. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said, and realized she was still holding the bloody silver knife. She carefully put it back in her pocket, in the makeshift holster against her leg. It was so dull she didn’t think it would cut anything again, but it made her feel better. “Oliver?”
“Bad.” Shane put his hands around her head and tilted it up, looking her over. “Is everything okay?”
“Define everything. No, define okay.” She shook her head in frustration. “I need to get the radio. I have to talk to Richard.”
Richard wasn’t on the radio. “He’s meeting with the mayor,” said the man who answered. Sullivan, Claire thought his name was, but she hadn’t really paid attention. “You got a problem there?”
“No, Officer, you’ve got a problem there,” she said. “I need to talk to Richard. It’s really important!”
“Everybody needs to talk to Richard,” Sullivan said. “He’ll get back to you. He’s busy right now. If it’s not an emergency response—”
“Yes, okay! It’s an emergency!”
“Then I’ll send units out to you. Glass House, right?”
“No, it’s not—” Claire wanted to slam the radio down in frustration. “It’s not an emergency here. Look, just tell Richard that he needs to clear everybody out of City Hall, as soon as possible.”
“Can’t do that,” Sullivan said. “It’s our center of operations. It’s the main storm shelter, and we’ve got one heck of a storm coming tonight. You’re going to have to give me a reason, miss.”
“All right, it’s because—”
Michael took the radio away from her and shut it off. Claire gaped, stuttered, and finally demanded, “Why?”
“Because if Amelie says Bishop’s got himself installed in City Hall, somebody there has to know. We don’t know who’s on his team,” Michael said. “I don’t know Sullivan that well, but I know he never was happy with the way things ran in town. I wouldn’t put it past him to be buying Bishop’s crap about giving the city back to the people, home rule, all that stuff. Same goes for anybody else there, except maybe Joe Hess and Travis Lowe. We have to know who we’re talking to before we say anything else.”
Shane nodded. “I’m thinking that Sullivan’s keeping Richard out of the loop for a reason.”
They were downstairs, the four of them. Eve, Shane, and Claire were at the kitchen table, and Michael was pacing the floor and casting looks at the couch, where Oliver was. The older vampire was asleep, Claire guessed, or unconscious; they’d done what they could, washed him off and wrapped him in clean blankets. He was healing, according to Michael, but he wasn’t doing it very fast.
When he’d woken up, he’d seemed distant. Confused.
Afraid.
Claire had given him one of the doses she’d gotten from Dr. Mills, and so far, it seemed to be helping, but if Oliver was sick, Myrnin’s fears were becoming real.
Soon, it’d be Amelie, too. And then where would they be?
“So what do we do?” Claire asked. “Amelie said we have to tell Richard. We have to get noncombatants out of City Hall, as soon as possible.”
“Problem is, you heard him giving instructions to the Civil Defense guys earlier—they’re out telling everybody in town to go to City Hall if they can’t make it to another shelter. Radio and TV, too. Hell, half the town is probably there already.”
“I think it’s gone past that,” Claire said. “I don’t know if she has any choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not in chess,” Claire replied. “Unless your choice is to lie down and die.”
In the end, the only way to be sure they got to the right person was to get in the car and drive there. Claire was a little shocked at the color of the sky outside—a solid gray, with clouds moving so fast it was like time-lapse on the Weather Channel. The edges looked faintly green, and in this part of the country, that was never a good sign.
The only good thing about it was that Michael didn’t have to worry about getting scorched by sunlight. He brought a hoodie and a blanket to throw over his head, just in case, but it was dark outside, and getting darker fast. Premature sunset.
Drops of rain were smacking the sidewalk, the size of half-dollars. Where they hit Claire’s skin, they felt like paintball pellets. As she looked up at the clouds, a horizontal flash of lightning peeled the sky in half, and thunder rumbled so loudly she felt it through the soles of her shoes.
“Come on!” Eve yelled, and started the car. Claire ran to open the backseat door and piled in beside Shane. Eve was already accelerating before she could fasten her seat belt. “Michael, get the radio.”
He turned it on. Static. As he scanned stations, they got ghosts of signals from other towns, but nothing came through clearly in Morganville—probably because the vampires jammed it.
Then one came in, loud and clear, broadcasting on a loop.
Attention Morganville residents: this is an urgent public service announcement. The National Weather Service has identified an extremely dangerous storm tracking toward Morganville, which will reach our borders at six twenty-seven this evening at its present speed. This storm has already been responsible for devastation in several areas in its path, and there has been significant loss of life due to tornadic activity. Morganville and the surrounding areas are on tornado watch through ten p.m. this evening. If you hear an alert siren, go immediately to a designated Safe Shelter location, or to the safest area of your home if you cannot reach a Safe Shelter. Attention Morganville residents—
