by Rachel Caine
As she was dragged out of the room, into the dark open area of Common Grounds, Claire passed the stranger she’d seen in Bishop’s office on her birthday. He—she? it was hard to tell—walked past Claire as if she didn’t exist, heading into the room where the Goldmans were being held.
“Wait!” Claire yelled. “What are you going to do?”
Pennywell didn’t even pause. Ysandre looked back and winked at her.
“Don’t you worry about any of this, now,” she cooed with false sympathy. “You’ve got plenty of your own problems to worry about. Good-bye, Claire.”
7
There was a hidden ladder down to a surprisingly large, well-lit tunnel underneath Common Grounds. It had a false brick wall that led into one of the maze of tunnels that was big enough for cars—and there was one waiting, a big idling limousine. One of Claire’s vampire captors opened the back and pushed her inside before getting in with her. The other one took the front seat, and before more than a few seconds passed, they were driving on into the hidden world underneath Morganville. “Hey,” Claire said. The vampire sitting next to her in the back glanced at her, then away. He was about twice her size, and she had a feeling that he could have broken her in half with a harsh word and his little finger. “What’s going to happen to them?”
He shrugged, not like he didn’t know—more like he just flat didn’t care enough to tell her. The Goldmans didn’t mean much to him. Claire meant even less.
“What’s your name?” she asked, and surprised herself. But for some reason, she wanted to know. Dean’s brother—he hadn’t been just some nameless Bad Guy Number Four. This vampire wasn’t, either. He had a name, a history, maybe even people who cared what happened to him.
“My name is none of your business,” he said, and continued to stare out the window, even though there was nothing but blurry brick out there.
“Can I call you None for short?” It was an Eve joke, but Claire didn’t think she delivered it very well, because the vampire didn’t even blink. He just shut her out.
She concentrated on not thinking about what might have happened to Shane.
The car burst out of the tunnel at a high rate of speed, rose up a ramp, and exited from what looked like an industrial building—another of Morganville’s secret roads. They turned onto a residential street near Claire’s parents’ house—she recognized two of the burned-out homes and the carefully clipped hedge animals in front of the yellow clapboard house on the corner. She’d always thought the squirrel looked kind of crazy.
They didn’t slow down as the limousine sped through the streets. People got out of the way—bikes, cars, even one or two pedestrians hurrying home into the sunset. The vampire driver had a blacked-out windshield, but he was still wearing sunglasses, gloves, and had most of his face covered as well. Young, Claire thought. Older vampires wouldn’t care about the sun that much. It hurt them, but it wouldn’t kill them. So maybe Bishop had recruited some new guys.
Before she could think of anything else to say that wouldn’t get her killed, the limousine took a turn down a shaded wide street. At the end of it, Claire saw familiar buildings, and the big green expanse of Founder’s Square.
They were taking her to Bishop.
She slid over to the far side, taking her time about it, and as the car slowed for the next turn, she tried to open the door and throw herself out.
Locked. Of course. The vampire in the back didn’t even bother to look at her.
Another ramp, this one leading down under the streets, and thirty seconds later they were parked underground. Claire tried to come up with a plan, but honestly, she didn’t have much. She’d lost her cell phone when Theo had crashed into her, not that she had even a vague idea of who she could call, anyway. There was a stake hidden at the bottom of her backpack that maybe, maybe she could use—but only if it was one-on-one, and the one was a lot less scary than the two currently escorting her around.
“Get out,” the vampire in the back said, as the door locks clicked open. “Don’t try to run.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to save her strength for something more useful.
Whatever that useful thing was, it didn’t become clear as they headed for the elevator and crowded inside. Phony not-really-music was piped into the steel-and-carpet box, making it seem that much more like a nightmare.
The elevator doors opened in a big formal room, the round one where she and Myrnin had circulated in their costumes before Mr. Bishop’s welcome feast, the one that had been the starting point for everything going so wrong in Morganville. The doors to the banquet hall were closed, and her vampire guards marched her up the hallway to Bishop’s office instead.
Michael opened the door. He hesitated, and almost lost his cool, then nodded and stepped aside for the three of them to come inside. There was nobody else in the room.
Not even Mr. Bishop.
“What’s going on?” Claire asked. “I thought . . . Where is he?”
“Sit down and shut up,” her vampire backseat guardian snarled, and shoved her into a chair. Michael looked like he might have been tempted to come to her defense, but she shook her head. Not worth it. Not yet, anyway.
The office door opened, and Mr. Bishop came in, wearing what looked like the same black suit and white shirt he’d been wearing the day before. There was something savage in the look he threw Claire, but he didn’t pause; he walked to his desk and sat down.
He never did that. She couldn’t imagine it was a good sign.
“Come here,” he said. Claire didn’t want to, but she felt the power woven into the tattoo on her arm snap to life. It responded to Bishop’s voice—only to his—and the harder she tried to resist it, the worse it was going to hurt. But Patience Goldman was right . . . it hurt a lot less than it had before. Maybe it really was fading.
Better not to fight it and tip him off, if that was the case. She took a deep breath and let it pull her closer, right in front of his desk. Bishop leaned forward, staring up at her with cold, empty eyes, elbows braced on the polished wood surface. “Did you know what Goldman was going to do?” he asked. “Did you put him up to it?”
“No,” she said. She wasn’t sure whether it would help Theo if she took the blame, anyway.
Bishop stared a hole into her, then sat back and let his eyes drift half closed. “It hardly matters,” he said. “I knew those people could not be trusted for any length of time. I kept watch on them. And you—I know you can’t be trusted, either, little girl. I tethered you, but I didn’t tame you. You’re harder than you look, like my daughter, Amelie. No wonder she took you under her Protection.”
“What are you going to do to the Goldmans?”
Bishop slapped his palm down on the desk, hard enough to leave his imprint half an inch deep in the wood. “I am done with restraint. This town will learn I am not to be taunted, not to be toyed with, not to be mocked. You will learn.”
Claire wanted to shoot back some smart-ass remark, but she could see the vicious anger in him, and knew it was just waiting to pounce. She stood there, silent, watching him, and then he slowly relaxed. When she started to back away, he said, “Stay there. I have something for you.”
He snapped his fingers, and when the door opened, Shane walked in. She hadn’t noticed it in the cell, but he was thinner than he’d been a few months ago—and he was also bruised and simmering with fury. When he saw Bishop, he lunged for him.
“No!” Claire yelled. “Shane, stop!”
He didn’t, but he also didn’t have to. Michael flashed across the room and got in his way, wrapping Shane in a bear hug and bringing him to a sudden halt.
“Let go!” Shane’s voice was ragged, splitting and tearing under the strain of his anger. “Screw you, Michael; let go!”
He tried to break free. Michael didn’t let him. He pushed him back, all the way to the wall, and held him there. Claire couldn’t see Michael’s face, but she could see part of Shane’s, and she saw something change in it.
Shane stopped fighting, as if he’d received some message she hadn’t seen.
“I am a good master,” Bishop said, as if none of that had happened. “You asked me for a birthday favor, Claire. I granted you a visit. Today, I have decided that it was a poor gift. I will give you what you want. Shane will be free to go.”
Claire didn’t dare to breathe, blink, move. She knew this was a trick, a cruel way to crush her hopes, and Shane’s, too. “Why?” she finally said. Her lips felt numb. “Why now?”
“Because I intend to teach you both what it means to defy me, once and for all, and let you carry the tale for me,” Bishop said. “Michael. Hold them, but make sure the two of them see everything. I won’t have my students failing their lessons.”
Bishop’s control let go, and Claire stumbled backward into Michael. His arm went around her waist, and she felt the pressure of his lips close to her ear. “Stay still,” he whispered. “No matter what happens, just stay still. Please. I’ll protect you.”
On Michael’s other side, Shane was very, very quiet. He wasn’t looking at Bishop. He was looking across at Claire, and he was scared—scared that something was going to happen to her, she realized. She tried for a smile, but wasn’t sure how it came out.
Shane opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, a vampire guard came in, bringing a thin, scraggly man with a mess of graying, curling hair and a nasty scar down his face.
Shane’s dad. He looked older, thinner, and even more vulnerable than he had back in his cell—nothing like the big, scary monster who’d terrified her when she’d first met him.
“Are you watching, Shane?” Bishop asked. “I want you to learn, so that you don’t make the same mistakes again.”
“Dad,” Shane said. “Dad?”
Frank Collins put his hand out to stop Shane from trying to break free. “It’s all right. Nothing he can do to me now.” He faced Bishop straight on. “Been there, done that, not scared of anything you can bring to this party, bloodsucker. So just kill me and get it over with.”
Bishop slowly rose from his chair, staying behind the desk.
“But, Mr. Collins, you mistake me. I’m not going to kill you. I’d never do such a thing. You’re far too valuable to me.”
His pale hands flashed out, grabbed Shane’s dad, and jerked him forward over the desk. Claire shut her eyes as the fangs came out, and Bishop’s eyes flashed red. She didn’t see the actual biting, but she heard Shane screaming.
It was over in about thirty seconds. Shane never stopped fighting to get free of Michael’s hold.
Claire didn’t fight at all. She just couldn’t.
She heard a thud as Mr. Collins’s body hit the floor, and when she opened her eyes she realized that she’d been wrong about everything. Very wrong.
Bishop wasn’t finished.
He gnawed at his wrist, pried open Frank Collins’s mouth, and poured blood into it as he spread his other hand over the top of the man’s head. Claire had seen this before—Amelie had done it to Michael—but Amelie had found it difficult and exhausting to make a new vampire.
For Bishop, it seemed easy.
“No,” Shane said. “No, stop.”
Right there, right in front of them, Frank Collins coughed, choked, and came back to life. It looked painful, and it seemed to take forever for the thrashing and screaming to stop.
When it did, he wasn’t Frank Collins. Not anymore.
He opened his eyes, and they were red.
“You see?” Bishop said, and wiped excess blood from his wrist on his black jacket. “I am not cruel. You’ll never lose your father, Shane. Never again.”
Claire could hear Shane’s breath coming fast and ragged—more sobbing than gasping—but she couldn’t look at him. She knew him; she knew he wouldn’t want her to see him like this. That’s Shane. Always trying to protect me.
Michael let Claire go. After a quick glance at her, he turned to Shane. “Don’t freak out on me,” he said. “Don’t. This isn’t the time, and it isn’t the place.”
Shane wasn’t even looking at him. He was looking at his dad.
Frank Collins, standing next to Bishop, kept staring back at his son, and Claire didn’t think that look was concern.
More like hunger.
“I hope everyone learned something today,” Mr. Bishop said. “First, I know everything that goes on in Morganville. Second, I don’t tolerate foolish attempts at rebellion. Third . . . well. I am so kind and merciful that no one else will die for it today. No, not even the Goldmans, before you bleat the question at me. They have been confined somewhere safe, for now, until I decide on a fitting punishment.” He flicked his fingers at Michael. “See your friends home, boy. It would be a dreadful irony if they should be drained along the way by some passing stranger. Or relative.”
Emphasis on the dreadful, Claire thought. She grabbed Shane’s cold, shaking hand and forced him to look at her.
“Let’s go,” she said. “We have to go, Shane. Right now.”
She wasn’t really sure he understood her, but Michael helped nudge him along when he slowed down.
It was a long ten seconds until they were on the other side of the closed door, being eyed by Bishop’s vampire guards. Claire felt like the last sandwich on the lunch counter.
Shane broke out of his trance when they got into the elevator.
Unfortunately.
Michael was pushing the garage button on the elevator panel, and he didn’t quite see it coming. Shane got in a lucky shot to his face, fast and vicious, as Michael turned. It was hard enough that Michael, even with vampire strength, felt it, and crashed back against the wall, denting it in an uneven outline of his shoulders.
When Shane tried to follow up with a second punch, Michael caught his fist in an open palm. “There was nothing I could do, Shane,” he said, but there was something behind the words. Something far kinder. “Let’s wait to do the cage match when Claire isn’t trapped in the middle, all right?”
She wasn’t exactly in the middle, but close enough. No way could she come out of it unbruised if Shane and Michael decided to really go at it in a small, enclosed space.
Shane stopped, and, as if he’d forgotten that she was there at all, he turned to look at her. For a second there was no expression on his face, and then it all flooded in—pain, fury, relief.
And then horror.
He lowered his fist, gave Michael a look that pretty clearly said, Later, and turned toward Claire. There were two feet of space between them, and about a mile of separation.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “God, Shane, I am so sorry.”
He shuddered and stepped forward to put his arms around her. As hugs went, it was everything wrapped together in a tangled mess—tight, a little desperate, filled with need. He needed her. He really did.
He didn’t say anything as the elevator slowly descended. She listened to his breathing, and finally, he made a faint, wordless sound of pain, and pulled away from her. She held on to his hand.
“Come on,” she said, and Michael held the door as the two of them stepped out into the darkened garage. Claire knew there were probably threats out there in the dark, but she didn’t care. She was tired, and right now, she hated all of them so much for hurting Shane that she would have staked anybody. Amelie. Sam. Michael. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t done anything to stop it from happening. She was just now realizing that he’d stood by and . . . watched.
Shane was eerily quiet. Michael moved around them and opened the back door of his Morganville-standard vampmobile; Claire climbed in with Shane, leaving Michael alone in the front seat.
If he had any objections to the seating arrangements, he kept them to himself.
Shane held her hand tightly all the way—through the dark tunnels, then as they traveled the darkened streets. She didn’t pay attention to where they were going. Right now, one place was as good as the next, as long as she still had his hand in hers. As long as they stayed together. Hi
s misery was a thick black cloud, and it felt like it was smothering them both, but at least they could cling to each other in the middle of it. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like all alone.
When Michael braked the car and opened the back door, though, Claire realized that he’d taken Bishop’s instructions literally.
He’d brought them home.
The decaying Victorian glory of the Glass House stretched up into the night. Live oaks fluttered their stiff little leaves in the breeze, and in the distance black, shiny grackles set up a loud racket of shrieks and rattles in a neighbor’s tree. Grackles loved dusk, Claire remembered. It was their noisiest time of the day. The whole neighborhood sounded like broken glass in a blender.
She got Shane out of the car and opened the front gate. As they moved up the steps, the front door opened, and there stood Eve—not in black tonight, but in purple, with red leggings and clunky black platform shoes. She had a stake in one hand and a silver knife in the other, but as she saw them coming up the steps, she dropped both to the floor and lunged to throw herself on Shane.
He caught her in midair, out of self-defense.
“You’re out!” she cried, and gave him an extra-hard squeeze before jumping back to the top of the steps and doing a victory dance that was a cross between something found in an end zone and a chorus line. “I knew you’d beat the rap, Collins! I just knew it! High five . . . ”
She held up her hand for him to smack, but he just looked at her. Eve’s smile and upraised palm faltered, and she looked quickly at Claire, then Michael.
“Oh God,” she said, and lowered her hand. “What is it? What happened?”
“Not out here. Let’s get inside,” Michael said. “Now.”
Shane didn’t make it very far. In fact, five steps down the hallway, he gave up and just . . . stopped. He put his back to the wall, slid down to a sitting position, and sat there, staring down at his hands.
