by Rachel Caine
“I don’t,” she said, and wiped trickles of tears from her face. “I don’t want to know anything anymore. I think I’m going crazy.”
“Well, it’s always a possibility.” He shrugged. “Ada is a living mind inside an artificial form. A brilliant woman—a former assistant of mine, actually. This preserved the best parts of her. I have never regretted taking the steps to integrate technology and humanity.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t. I have,” Ada said, from nowhere in particular. Claire shuddered. There was something not quite right about that voice, as if it was coming out of some old, cheap AM radio speakers that had been blown out a few times. “Tell your new friend the truth, Myrnin. It’s the least you can do.”
He closed his eyes. “Ada was dying because I had a lapse.”
“In other words,” the computer said acidly, “he killed me. And then he trapped me inside this box. Forever. The fact that he doesn’t regret it only proves how far from human he is.”
“You are not trapped in the box forever,” Myrnin said, “as you well know. But I still need you, so you will simply have to stop your endless wailing and get on with things. If you want an escape, research your way out.”
“Or you’ll what?”
Myrnin’s eyes snapped open, and he bared his fangs—not that he could bite the computer. It was just a reaction of frustration, Claire thought. “Or I’ll disconnect your puzzle sets,” he said, “and you can read the works of Bulwer-Lytton for entertainment for the next twenty years before I take pity on you.”
Ada was notably silent in response to that, and Myrnin folded up his fangs and smiled. “Now,” he said to Claire, “let me explain Ada. She is the life force that powers the town, of course; without her, we could not operate the portals, and we could not maintain the invisible fields that ensure Morganville residents stay put, and suffer memory loss if they manage to make their way out of town. The drawback is that Ada is a living being, and living beings have . . . moods. Feelings. She has been known to grow fond of people, and to sometimes interfere. Such as with your friend Michael.”
“Michael?” Claire blinked, intrigued despite everything. She didn’t want to know more. . . . Oh, hell, yes she did. She really did. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Ada interceded to keep Michael alive, because she could. Ada’s presence is most felt in the Founder Houses, which are closely linked to her; she can, with enough of an effort, manifest in them, or anywhere there is a portal, for short periods of time. In Michael’s case, she chose to save his life by storing him in the matrix of the Glass House rather than allowing him to die when Oliver attempted, and failed, to turn him into a vampire.”
“She didn’t just save him, she saved him,” Claire said. “Like a computer saving a crashed file.”
“I suppose, if you want to put it in mundane terms.” Myrnin yawned. “I told her to let him go. She ignored me. She does that.”
“Frequently,” Ada’s disembodied voice said. “And with great satisfaction. So. You are the girl from the Glass House. Myrnin’s new pet.”
“I . . .” Claire wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she settled for a quick shrug. “I guess.”
“You’ve done well,” Ada said. “You work the portals without much understanding of how they function or how to create them, but I suppose that most modern children couldn’t begin to construct the toys with which they play.”
Claire’s cell phone suddenly rang, its cheerful electronic tone startling in the silence. She jumped, flailed, and fished it out of her pocket, only to have it immediately go dark.
“Did you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?” Ada asked, but there was a dark, amused edge to the words. “Oh, do forgive. I’ve got little enough to occupy me down here in the dungeon. In my box.”
“Ada.” Myrnin sighed. “I brought her here so you could explain to her how to maintain your functions, not to have her listen to your endlessly inventive complaints.”
Ada said nothing. Nothing at all. In the silence, Claire heard the steady whir and click of gears turning, and the hiss of steam—but Ada stayed quiet.
“She’s pouting,” Myrnin said, and heaved himself up to a sitting position. “Don’t worry, my dear. You can trust Claire. Here, let me introduce you properly.”
Myrnin’s idea of a proper introduction was to grab Claire by the arm and haul her over in front of the machine. Before she could yell at him to let go, he slipped back a metal cover and pushed her hand down on a metal plate . . . and something pierced her palm, lightning fast, like a snakebite. Claire tried to snatch her hand back, but something—some force—held it in place.
She could feel blood trickling out of the hot, aching wound. “Let go!” she yelled, and kicked the machine in fury. “Hey! Hey!”
Ada giggled. It was a weirdly metallic sound; up close, she really didn’t sound human at all, more like parts grinding together inside.
The force holding Claire’s hand in place suddenly let go, and she stumbled back, clutching her burning hand to her chest and trying—without much success—to stop herself from gasping for breath. She was afraid to look, but she forced herself to open her left hand.
There was a small puncture wound in the middle of her palm, a red circle about the size of a pencil point; there was a whiter circle all around it, like a target. As Claire watched, the white faded.
Blood trickled out of the hole in her skin in fat red drops. Claire looked at Myrnin, who was standing a few feet away; he was gazing at her hand with fascination.
Ewwwwww.
Claire made a fist, willing the bleeding to stop. “What the hell was that?”
“That?” Myrnin didn’t seem to be able to take his gaze off of her fist. “Oh, it’s simple enough. Ada needed to know who you were. She’ll know you now, and she’ll follow your orders.”
Ada made a sound suspiciously like a strangled cough.
“That doesn’t explain why she bit me!” Claire said.
Myrnin blinked. “Blood is the fuel that drives the engine, my dear. As with us all. Ada requires regular infusions of blood to operate.”
“You never heard of plugging her in? My God, Myrnin, you made a vampire computer?”
“I . . .” He seemed honestly unsure how to answer that, and finally gave up. “She requires about a pint of blood each month—not refrigerated blood; it should be warmed to at least room temperature, preferably to body temperature, of course. I generally feed her close to the beginning of the month, though she can, in a pinch, go weeks without nourishment. Oh, and do feed her at night. Blood is less effective when offered under the influence of the sun. We do work according to hermetic rules here, you know.”
“You’re insane,” Claire said. She backed up against a wall and stood there staring at him. “Seriously. Insane.”
He didn’t pay any attention to her at all. “You also need to recalibrate her once on each solstice day, winter and summer, to accommodate the shifting influences of sun and moon. You do remember the hermetic symbology I taught you, don’t you? Well, the formula is quite simple. I’ve noted it down for you, here.” Myrnin patted his jacket pockets, and finally came up with a much-scratched-out, torn scrap of grimy paper, which he offered to Claire.
She didn’t take it. “This is crazy,” she said again, as if it was really important that he understand it. Myrnin slowly raised his eyebrows. “You built a vampire computer. Out of wood. And glass. You’re not . . . This isn’t . . .”
He patted her gently on the shoulder. “This is Morganville, dear Claire. You should know by now that it would not be what you expect.” With a sudden burst of energy, Myrnin took Claire’s unwilling hand, slapped the paper into it, and bounced to his feet. “Ada!”
“What?” The computer sounded surly. Hurt. She’s not even real, Claire told herself. Yeah. She’s not real, and she drinks blood. She just drank mine.
“You will accept all commands from Claire Danvers as my own. Do you understand
me?”
“All too clearly.” Ada sighed. “Very well. I shall record her essence for future reference.”
Myrnin turned back to Claire and folded her hand over the scrap of paper. His fingernails were filthy and sharp, and she shuddered at how cold his touch was. “Please,” he said. “You must keep this safe. It’s the only record of the sequence. I made it to remind myself, in case . . . when I forgot. If you get the sequence wrong, you could risk killing her. Or worse.”
Claire shuddered. “What could be worse than her being here at all?”
“Turning her against us,” Myrnin said. “And believe me, dear, you wouldn’t want that to happen.”
6
By the time they made their way out of Ada’s cavern, it was night—full, dark night.
Which was a problem.
“We can’t walk,” she told Myrnin, for about the eleven hundredth time. “It’s not safe out there. You really don’t get it!”
“Of course I get it,” he said. “There are vampires a-roaming the dark. Very frightening. I’m quaking in my beach sandals. Come on; buck up, girl. I’ll protect you.” And then he leered like a total freak show, which made Claire feel not so much reassured. She didn’t trust him. He was starting to get that jittery, manic edge she dreaded, and he kept insisting that he couldn’t take the serum yet—or even the maintenance drug, the red crystals that Claire kept in a bottle in her backpack.
Past a certain point, Myrnin was crazy enough that he thought he was normal. That was when things got really, really dangerous around him.
“We could take the portal,” Claire said. Myrnin, halfway up the stairs, didn’t so much as pause.
“No, we can’t,” he said. “Not from this node. I’ve shut it down. I don’t want anyone else coming here anymore. They’ll ruin my work.”
Claire took a look around at the wreckage—the smashed glass, the shredded books, the broken furniture. In her view, there wasn’t anything left for vandals to destroy, and even if there was, sealing up the portal wouldn’t stop them; it would only inconvenience her (and Myrnin) from getting here.
Only . . . maybe that was what he intended. “What about the entrance to the cave?” she asked. He snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten all about it.
“Excellent point.”
Myrnin dragged the largest, heaviest table over, top down, and covered up with it the hole he’d made in the floor. Then he took handfuls of broken glass and mounded it up on all sides.
“What if they move the table?” she asked.
“Then they’ll find Ada, and my countermeasures will likely eat them,” he said happily. “Speaking of that, I really must find some lunch. Not you, dear.”
Claire would have been happier if he’d had some magical way to repair it, but she supposed that would have to do. It looked like the bad guys had been through this place a dozen times already, anyway; they probably wouldn’t be back and in the mood to redecorate.
Claire unzipped her backpack. At the bottom, rattling around loose, were two sharpened wooden stakes. She took one out and slipped it into her pocket. It wouldn’t kill a vampire by itself, but it would paralyze one until it was removed . . . and it would weaken one enough to die by other means.
If trouble came—even if it was Myrnin himself—she’d settle for slowing it down long enough for her to run for her life.
Myrnin artistically sprinkled some more broken glass. “There,” Myrnin said, and backed off to the stairs again. “What do you think?”
“Fabulous.” She sighed. “Brilliant job of camouflage.”
“Normally, I’d add a corpse,” he said, “just to keep people at bay. But that might be good enough.”
“Yeah, that’s . . . good enough,” she said. “Can we go now?” Before he decided to go with the corpse idea.
As she followed Myrnin out of the wreck of a shack that covered the entrance to his lair, he took the time to carefully close and padlock the door. Which was really ridiculous, because Claire could have kicked right through the rotten old boards, and she wasn’t exactly She-Hulk.
Claire pulled her phone out and flipped it open, scrolling for Eve’s number.
Myrnin batted it right out of her hand, straight up into the air like a jump ball, and caught it with ease. He grinned smugly, all sharp teeth at crazy angles, and put the phone in his jacket pocket. “Now, now,” he chided her. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Off on a beach somewhere with your sanity? We can’t do this. You know what happens out on the streets at night.”
“I can’t help that. I need some air, and besides, walking is very healthy for humans, you know.” With that, Myrnin dismissed her and started walking down the narrow alley into the dark. Claire gaped for a second, then hurried after him, because the being-left-behind option didn’t seem all that fantastic a choice. On her right, over the high wooden fence, she saw the looming dark bulk of the Day House. It was deserted these days. Gramma Day had moved out, temporarily, and her daughter had gone into hiding—probably for good, considering that she’d thrown in her lot with the antivampire forces in town, and that had not gone well for anybody.
Claire slowed for a second, staring at the unlit windows of the house. She could have sworn that in the cold star-light she’d seen one of those white lace curtains move. “Myrnin,” she said. “Is there somebody in there?”
“Very likely.” He didn’t slow down. “People are hiding out in dozens of places all over Morganville, waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“God to descend from on high and save them? Who knows?”
From the other side of the fence, Claire heard a faint, breathless giggle. She came to a stop, staring at Myrnin, who paused and looked at the fence, shook his head, and shrugged. He moved on.
But Claire was convinced that whatever was on the Day side of the fence was pacing them now, and when they got to the end of the row . . . Bad. That will be bad.
“Myrnin, maybe we should call somebody. You know, get a cab. Or Eve, we could call Eve—”
Myrnin turned on her.
It happened fast, so fast, and she barely had time to gasp and duck as he came at her, a white blur in the star-light. There was a sense of hard impact, of falling, and then everything went a little soft around the edges.
Myrnin was stretched out on top of her, and as the world stopped wobbling, she realized she was flat on her back on the ground. “Get off!” she yelped, and battered at his chest with both fists. “Off!”
He put his cold hand over her mouth and lifted a single finger of his other hand to his lips. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she saw the gesture, and it made the panic in her shift directions from oh my God, Myrnin’s going to bite me to oh my God, Myrnin’s trying to save me.
Myrnin dipped his head low, so low he was well within critical vein range, and she heard him whisper, “Don’t move. Stay here.”
Then he was gone, just like that. As noisy as he could be at times, he could also be as silent as a shadow when he wanted.
Claire raised her head just a little to look around, but she saw nothing. Just the alley, the fence, the sky overhead with wispy clouds moving across the stars.
And Myrnin’s flip-flops, which he’d left behind, lying sad and abandoned on the ground.
There was a sudden, enraged shriek from the other side of the fence, and something crashed against the wood with enough force to splinter heavy boards. Claire rolled to her feet, heart pounding, and gripped the stake in her hand hard. Funny, I didn’t think to use it on Myrnin. . . . Maybe she’d known, deep down, that he was acting to protect her.
She hoped so. She hoped it wasn’t that she couldn’t see the threat in him anymore, because that would eventually get her killed.
Whatever was happening on the other side of the fence, it was bad. It sounded like tigers fighting, and as she backed up from the snarls and howls and sounds of bodies slamming around, the boards of the fence broke again, and a whit
e hand—not Myrnin’s, this was a woman’s—clawed the air.
Reaching for Claire.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Myrnin called. He sounded eerily normal. “Do go on and run, Claire. I’ll catch up. This may take a few moments.”
She didn’t wait. She grabbed up her fallen backpack and ran for the exit of the alley, where it dumped out into the cul-de-sac next to the Day House.
A vampire car was parked there, door open, engine idling. Nobody around.
Claire hesitated, then looked inside. In the glow of the instrument panel, she couldn’t see much: dark upholstery, mainly. She didn’t think there was anybody inside, although it was tough to see into the back. She ducked into the cabin and flipped on the overhead light, then bounced back on her heels with the stake held in her most threatening way possible. (Which, she had to admit, probably wasn’t very intimidating at all.)
Luckily, nothing lunged at her from the backseat.
Claire threw herself behind the wheel, dumped her backpack on the floorboard of the passenger side, and slammed the door. She leaned on the horn, a long blast, and yelled, “Myrnin! Come on!”
It was a risk. There was every possibility that whoever won that fight back there, it wouldn’t be Myrnin opening the car door, but she had to try. He’d taken on another vampire—more than one, she thought—to save her life. The least she could do was give him fair warning that she was about to speed away and leave him behind.
It was impossible to see through the dark tinting on the windshield and windows. Claire counted to ten, slowly and deliberately, and got to a whispered seven before there was a casual knock on the passenger window. She yelped, fumbled, and found the switch that rolled down the glass.
Myrnin leaned in and smiled at her. “Fair lady, may I ride with you in your carriage?”
“God—get in!” He looked . . . messy. Messier than usual, anyway; his coat was shredded in places, he had bloodless scratches on his face, and his eyes were still glowing a dull, muddy red. As he slid into the passenger seat, she caught a sharp scent from him—fresh vampire blood. In the dashboard glow, she saw traces of it around his mouth and smeared on his hands. “Who was it?”
