by Rachel Caine
“No exploring on your own, Dora,” he said.
She felt lonely and exposed, even here with all the lights burning brightly, once his voice was gone from the call. She considered calling Shane, but honestly, what good would it do? He’d come running, but he needed his job, and Michael was already on the way.
Ten minutes.
Claire decided to get the Bob thing over with. Bob’s terrarium sat on Myrnin’s rolltop desk, amid stacks of books and some pens—quills, fountains, and rollerballs. Bob looked bigger than she remembered. And blacker. And hairier. Claire shuddered, looking in at him; all eight of his beady eyes looked back. He stayed very still.
There was a small bottle on the table that contained insects—live ones. Claire made a retching sound and tried not to look too hard; she just opened the top of the terrarium and tipped the contents of the jar into the cage.
Bob leaped on her hand.
Claire shrieked, and the bottle went flying to shatter against the wall. Bob didn’t budge when she violently shook her hand, trying to get rid of him; he clung to her like Velcro, and he felt different, somehow—heavier. Yes, he was larger. Claire batted at him with her right hand, and his fangs glittered as he lunged for her, skittering up her left arm.
She grabbed a book in her right hand.
Bob leaped from her arm, headed to her face.
She smacked him out of the air with the book, and he landed on his back, all eight legs wriggling in the air. Before she could slam the book down on top of him, Bob flipped himself over and skittered underneath the table.
It was not her imagination. Bob was getting bigger. In the space of just a few seconds, he’d gone from the size of a walnut to her palm, and now he was almost as big as the book she’d used to smash him out of the air.
“Ada!” she screamed. “Ada, I need you!”
Her cell phone came on, and gave an unearthly screeching noise . . . and then a soft, ghostly laugh.
Something knocked over a pile of papers at the edge of the table, and Claire saw a long black leg waving in the air. She backed away, fast.
When Bob climbed up on top of the table, he was the size of a small dog. His fangs were clearly visible, and if she’d thought he was ugly at small size, he was terrifying now.
“Hi—Bob—,” Claire said. Her voice was shaking, and sounded very small. “Nice Bob. Heel?”
Bob bounced off the table, landed lightly on the floor, and skittered toward her, racing incredibly fast. Claire screamed and ran, knocking over anything she could behind her to slow him down. Not that it did, but when she looked back as she reached the stairs, Bob had stopped chasing her.
He was sitting on a table in the center of the lab, trembling. She could actually see him shaking, as if he were having some kind of a fit . . . and then he rolled over on his back, and his legs curled in, and . . .
And he was dead.
“Bother,” Ada said. Claire jumped in reaction, bit back a curse, and saw Ada glide out of a solid wall to her left. Ada’s image went right up to Bob’s motionless body, leaning over him, and shook her head. “So disappointing. I truly thought he’d be able to sustain the change.”
“Change?” Claire swallowed hard. “Ada, what are you doing? What did you do to Bob?”
“Unfortunately, I believe I exploded his organs. So fragile, living things. I forget sometimes.”
“You did this. Made him grow.”
“It was an experiment.” Ada’s image slowly revolved toward Claire, and her smile was small and cold and terrifying. “We’re both scientists, are we not?”
“You call that science?”
“Don’t you?” Her hands folded primly at her waist, Ada was the image of one of those schoolteachers from the old days. “All science requires sacrifice. And you didn’t even like Bob.”
Well, that was true. “Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I want to see it die horribly!”
“Really? I find that . . . not very interesting at all, actually. Sentimentality has no place in science.”
Just like that, poof, Ada was pixels and vapor, gone. Claire ventured slowly forward, to where Bob the Giant Spider was curled up on the table. She half expected him to suddenly flip upright in true horror-movie style, but he stayed still.
Claire wasn’t falling for it. No way. She backed up to the steps that led out of the lab, and sat down on the cold stone, wrapping her arms around her for warmth.
Minutes ticked by.
The dead spider didn’t move, which meant that either he wasn’t faking it, or he was really, really good at it.
“Claire?”
She shrieked and jumped, and Michael, standing about a foot behind her, jumped backward, as well. Being a vampire, he somehow made it look cool. She, not so much. “God, don’t do that! Warn me!”
“I did!” He sounded wounded. “I said your name.”
“Say it from across the room next time.”
But Michael wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was staring past her, at the dead spider. “What the hell is that?”
“Bob,” she said. “I’ll tell you later. Come on.”
“Where?”
“Ada’s cave.”
Which was why she’d called him, because, of course, there were no stairs. Vampires didn’t need them. They could jump twelve feet onto solid stone and not even feel a twinge; Claire figured she was sure to have a broken bone, at the very least. She wasn’t a superhero, a magical vampire slayer, or even a particularly coordinated athlete. Michael was her way in—and, hopefully, out.
Of course, having a friend with her going down into the dark, that was a plus, too.
Luckily, Michael didn’t seem too bothered at being asked to stand in for a ladder; he looked down into the darkness for a few moments, craning to see every detail of what, to Claire, was pitch-blackness. “Looks clear,” he said. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“She won’t say where Myrnin is. Well, he’s not up here, and the carpet was rolled back. He must have gone down there.”
“And there’s a reason why we can’t just wait for him to come back?”
“Yeah. Ada’s tried to kill me twice now, and who knows what she’s tried to do to him. There’s something wrong with her, Michael.”
“Then maybe we should call somebody for help.”
Claire laughed a little wildly. “Like who, Amelie? You saw her at the cemetery. You really think we should rely on her right now?”
Whether Claire had a point or not, Michael must have realized that debating wasn’t getting anything done. He shrugged and said, “Fine. If you get me killed, I’m haunting you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
He winked at her, and stepped off the edge, dropping soundlessly into the dark. Claire rushed forward, grabbing up the flashlight along the way, and shone its glow down into the trapdoor. A dozen feet below, Michael’s pale face looked up. His blue eyes looked supernatu rally bright as his pupils contracted in the glare.
“Right,” he said. “Jump.”
She’d been through this with Myrnin, but it still never felt exactly comfortable. Still, it was Michael, and if any vampire was trustworthy . . .
She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and plummeted, straight into his cool, strong arms. Michael let her slide down, already looking past her into the dark. “There are things down here,” he said.
“Vampires.”
“Not—sure I’d call them vampires. Things is pretty accurate.” Michael sounded a little nervous. “They’re just—watching us.”
“They’re sort of guard dogs. Watch them right back, okay?”
“Doing that, yeah. Which way?”
“This way.” It was easy to get turned around in the dark, but Claire had a pretty good memory, and there were enough strange shapes in the rocks of the walls that she’d picked some out as signposts. Her flashlight’s beam bounced and glittered on granite edges, and pieces of broken glass scattered on the floor. There were s
ome bones. She didn’t think these were human, though that was probably wishful thinking.
“Whoa,” Michael said, and held her shoulder as the room opened up. She knew what he was seeing—the big cavern where Ada was housed. He’d been here before, but not through the tunnel; it was kind of a shock, the way it opened up into this vast, echoing space.
“Lights,” Claire said. “To the left, on the wall.”
“I see them. Stay here.”
She did, clutching the metal of the Maglite more tightly, until a sudden hum of power accompanied the dazzling arrival of lights overhead. Claire blinked away glare and saw that Ada—the computer, not the flat, generated image she liked to present—was in full-power mode, gears clanking like giant teeth, steam hissing from pipes, liquid bubbling here and there in huge glass retorts.
Myrnin was slumped against the giant keyboard, face-down.
“Oh no,” Claire breathed, and raced to his side. Before she could touch him, Michael flashed to her and caught her hand.
“No,” he said, and picked up a stray piece of metal from the floor, which he flicked at Myrnin’s back, where it landed, electricity arcing, and sizzling. “I can smell the ozone. She’s got him wired. If you touch him, it’ll kill you.”
9
“Is he dead?” Claire’s heart was racing, and not just because she’d nearly gotten herself barbecued. . . . Myrnin was just getting better, just becoming himself again. For Ada to do this to him, now . . .
But Michael was shaking his head. “More like he’s unconscious. I don’t think he’s hurt too badly. We just have to break the circuit.”
Claire hunkered down, trying to get a look at Myrnin’s face; his head was turned to the side, but his black hair had fallen over his eyes, so she couldn’t see if they were open or closed. He wasn’t moving. “We need something wood or rubber to push him off the metal,” she said. “See if you can find something.”
And with a snap, the lights went off. Claire’s breath went out of her, and she felt her heart accelerate to about two hundred beats a minute when she heard Ada’s cell-phone-speaker voice whisper, “I don’t think you should do that.”
“Michael?”
“Right here. The circuit’s still on to the keyboard; I can feel it.” His hand touched her shoulder, and even though she flinched, she felt reassured. “Here. Take this.”
He handed her something. It took her a second to figure out what it was—a hunk of wood? It felt odd. . . . “Oh God,” Claire blurted, “is that a bone?”
“Don’t ask,” Michael said. “It’s sharp on one end. Organic, like wood, so it makes a good weapon against vampires. Just don’t stab me, okay?”
She wasn’t making any promises, really. “Help me with Myrnin.” She carefully reversed the bone in her hands to the non-sharp end, and used the flashlight to check that Michael had something nonconductive, as well. He did, and it was more bone. It might have been a rib. She tried not to think about that too much. “You push from that side; I’ll push from here. Push hard. We need to knock him completely away from the panel.”
Claire’s cell phone screamed so loudly that it seemed like the speaker was melting from the force of it; the sound dissolved into high-pitched static, and Claire took a deep breath and put the end of the bone against Myrnin’s shoulder. He was wearing a black velvet jacket, and the bone looked very white against it, almost blue in the Maglite beam.
She saw Michael as a shadow in the backwash of the light. “Ready,” Michael said.
“Go!”
They pushed. Michael, of course, had vampire strength, so it was over in a flash—Myrnin’s body flying backward from the console, crashing on its back in the darkness. A glittering, frustrated arc of blue sparks from the keyboard snapped toward Claire and fell short.
Claire almost dropped the bone as she turned it in her hand so the sharp end was ready to use, then got on one knee next to Myrnin’s motionless body. She carefully brushed hair away from his marble-pale face. His eyes were open, and fixed. They looked dry, but as she watched, moisture flooded over them, and he blinked, blinked again, gasped, and came bolt upright. His gaze fixed on Claire’s face, and he grabbed her arm in a tight, grinding grip.
“Let go,” she said. He didn’t. “Myrnin!”
“Hush,” he whispered. “I’m thinking.”
“Yeah, great—can you do it without breaking my arm?”
“No.” He didn’t even try to explain that, but just got to his feet while still clamped on to her wrist like a person-sized handcuff. “That hurt.”
“You need to shut her down; she just tried to kill you!”
Myrnin’s eyes flashed a bloody red. “You will not tell me what to do!” He shoved her abruptly at Michael, and the glare was even angrier for him. “What are you doing here?”
“Talk later. Go now,” Michael said, and grabbed Claire up in his arms before she could protest. “Those things are coming for us.”
Myrnin looked around into darkness that hid whatever it was that scared Michael so much. Claire didn’t think she wanted to know; she put her arms around his neck and hung on for dear life as she felt his muscles tense. Things moved past, and she noticed a sense of air pressing against her. The tunnel, she thought, because things felt closed in, sounds seemed muffled and strange. “Myrnin?” she called behind them, but got no reply. Then she felt Michael jump, and for a breathless second she was weightless, suspended in midair as the light seemed to rush over her.
Michael landed perfectly just beyond the trapdoor set into the lab’s concrete and stone, and quickly spun around, backing away at the same time.
Myrnin seemed to almost levitate up out of the hole in the floor, graceful as a cat. As his coat swirled like black fog, he turned in midair, reached out, and slammed the trapdoor shut.
Then he landed on it, light and perfectly balanced, and leaned over to slam his palm down on a red panel on top. It lit up, and a metallic clunk echoed through the lab. Myrnin stepped off the door, stared at it for a second, and then carefully unrolled the carpet and smoothed it back over the entrance to Ada’s cave.
Claire let go of Michael and slid to her feet. She was still gripping her sharp-pointed bone weapon, and she didn’t really feel inclined to put it down. Not yet. “What just happened?”
“I set the lock,” Myrnin said, and tapped a toe on the carpet, in case she’d missed the point. “It’s quite clever, you know. Electromagnetic. Keyed to my own handprint.”
“Yeah, that’s great. Why were you down there in the first place? You know she’s not—well.”
Myrnin fussily adjusted the lapels of his velvet coat, frowned at his bright blue vest as if he didn’t remember wearing it, and shrugged. “Something to do with adjusting her emotional responses. Unfortunately, she was ready for me, it seems. She’s quite clever, you know.” He seemed almost proud. “Now—was there something you wanted, Claire?”
“A thank-you might be nice.”
He blinked. “Whatever for? Oh, that. The electricity was only to keep me immobilized. She’d have had to let me go, eventually.”
“Not really. She could have just kept you like that until you starved, right?”
“I can’t die. Not like that. I can be made very uncomfortable, and very hungry, and quite a bit mad, but not dead. She’d have to have one of her creatures—cut my head—off. . . .” Myrnin’s voice trailed away, and he seemed very distant for a few seconds; then he said, “I see. Yes, you’re quite correct. She would have options. But she wouldn’t kill me.”
“Why not?”
“I think we both know why, Claire.”
“You mean, because she loves you? I’m not really seeing it right now.”
“Ada needs me as much as I need her,” Myrnin snapped, suddenly—and very un-Myrnin-like—offended. “You know nothing about her, or me, and I am ordering you to stay out of my affairs where they concern Ada.” He suddenly staggered, and had to put out a hand to steady himself against the nearest lab table. “A
nd fetch me some blood, Claire.”
“Get it yourself.” She couldn’t believe she’d said it, but he’d really stung her. “Also, your precious Ada killed Bob by supersizing him and trying to get him to bite me. So maybe you don’t know anything about Ada.”
“Get me blood, or I’ll have to take what’s available,” Myrnin said softly. He didn’t seem dramatic about it, and it wasn’t a threat. He raised his head and looked at her, and she saw that shine there—lunatic and focused and very, very scary. “I’m very hungry.”
“Claire, go,” Michael said, and moved to stand between her and Myrnin. “He’s not faking it.”
He really wasn’t, because Myrnin lunged for her. He was faster than she or Michael could have expected, and Michael was off balance and nowhere near the right place as Myrnin shoved him out of the way and sent him crashing into the nearest stone wall. . . .
Then he grabbed Claire by her shoulder and a fistful of hair. He wrenched her head painfully to the side, exposing her neck, and she felt the cool puff of his breath against her skin, and she knew she had only one move left.
She touched the tip of the bone stake to his chest, right over his heart, and said, “I swear to God I’ll stake you and cut your head off if you bite me.” Her hands were shaking, and so was her voice, but she meant it. She couldn’t live in fear of him; it hurt her to see him lose control like this. There was something shining and good in Myrnin, but there were times it just drowned in the darkness. “If I let you do this, you’ll never forgive yourself. Now let go, and get yourself a bag of blood.”
She could actually feel his fangs pressing dimples into her skin. And Myrnin himself was trembling now, a very fine vibration that told her just how much he was in trouble—well, that and the fact he was about to kill her.
She pressed harder with the stake, and felt the blue satin tapestry vest give way to the point.
She didn’t see Michael move, but in only a few breathless seconds he was at her side, carefully putting in her free hand a squishy bag of blood. It was straight out of the refrigeration; he hadn’t taken time to warm it, which was probably lifesaving.
