by Rachel Caine
“Did you just tell me to stay with the girls?” Michael said, and grinned. Shane did, too.
“Yeah,” he said. “In your face, man. How does it feel?”
They tapped fists. Eve sighed. “You are both morons and we’re all going to die, and my head hurts like crazy,” she said. “Can we please just get out of here? Please?”
Michael went to her and put his arms around her, and Claire heard her let out a little, sad sob as she melted against him. “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s okay, baby.”
“So not,” Eve said, but she’d lost her edge. “And where the hell were you while I was getting dragged along on the party bus, nearly getting fanged?”
“Racing after you,” he said. “Jumping onto the bus? Breaking out windows? Almost rescuing you?”
“Oh yeah,” Eve said. “But I was unconscious for all that part, so I couldn’t really appreciate how brave you were. This is all right, though. Being with you.”
Shane exchanged a look with Claire, made a gagging sound, and got her to laugh. Then he took her hand, held it for a second, then lifted it to his lips. His mouth felt so warm, so soft, that she felt every muscle in her body shiver at the touch. His thumb brushed over the claddagh ring, their secret little promise.
“Wait for me,” he said. “Any requests on the kind of car?”
“Something with armor?” she said. “Oooh, and headrest DVD. Bonus for surround sound.”
“Rocket launchers,” Michael said.
“One hot yellow Hummer with optional mass destruction package, coming up.” Shane squeezed her fingers lightly, one more time, then ducked out the window. Claire watched him drop to the grass, roll to his feet, and take off at an angle through the afternoon glare.
The glare, she realized, was at a lower level than before.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was heading west, fast.
“Nightfall,” she said. Michael stepped up near her, out of range of the sun still flooding the window. “We don’t have too long before it gets dark, right?”
“Right,” he said. “But if we stay here in this building, I think we’re going to have even less time. There are a lot of these... other vampires. And they’re not exactly shy.”
He grabbed the two fallen vampires and dragged them out into the hallway, where he dumped them next to the one still decorated with Claire’s silver stake—that one was definitely dead now, burned by the silver. She tried not to look too closely.
Michael barricaded the doors again and sat Eve down in a somewhat-secure chair, in the corner. “Stay,” he told her. “Rest.” He ripped down the other half of the dusty, thick curtain and wrapped it around Eve; one of those cute romantic gestures that was a little spoiled by her bout of uncontrollable sneezing as a gray cloud floated up around her face.
Claire stayed by the window, staring out. Not that it would help; even if she saw Shane, even if she saw he needed help, what was she going to do? Nothing, because she was human, slow, and had a torn-up ankle on top of all that.
But somehow, it was important that she stand there and watch for him, as though it were some agreement they’d made, and if she didn’t keep it, something bad would happen.
Superstition. Well, I’m standing in some kind of pseudo-Gothic castle thingy with a bunch of vampires fighting in the halls. Maybe superstition just makes sense.
“Did you see Jason?” Eve was asking Michael. “Was he okay?”
Michael acted as if he didn’t hear her. He came to join Claire at the window, although just to the dark side of the sunlight. “Anything?”
“Nothing yet,” she said. “Did you see him? Jason?”
“Not really.”
“That’s not really an answer, is it?”
Michael shot her a look. Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a thump from overhead—a hard one, followed by what sounded like scratching. Lots of scratching, like very sharp claws. Maybe knives.
Like something was digging down through the floor-boards from the second floor.
“Okay, that’s not a good sound,” Eve said. “Michael?”
He was standing very still, staring upward, his face marble white in the shadows.
Dust filtered down from the ceiling. Pieces of old plaster rained down in flakes, like snow. Claire backed away from the window, away from that sound—all the way back to the heavy desk blocking the door leading into the room.
Suddenly the door shoved against her, as someone outside the room hit the door with a shocking crash and howled. More scraping, this time at the wooden door. Michael lunged forward and slammed the desk back in place and held it there as the door shook under the force of the battering. “Dammit,” he hissed. “Where is he?”
Overhead, something snapped with a dry crack—boards, being broken and peeled away, ripped free, and tossed aside.
They were digging through.
Eve stood up, bracing herself on the wall, and kicked loose the leg of a rickety smaller table lying near her chair. It broke loose with a splintered end, not as sharp as a spear, but not as blunt as a club, either. She gripped it in both hands, dividing her attention between the ceiling, which was now snowing plaster like a blizzard, and Michael, who was struggling to hold the desk in place as a barricade at the door.
We’re going to die here, Claire thought. It came to her with terrifying clarity, as if she’d already seen the future through an open window in time. Eve would be lying there, her eyes wide and empty, and Michael would die trying to protect her. Her own body would be a small, broken mess near the window, where Shane would find it....
No.
The thought of Shane’s finding her, more than just the dying itself, made Claire refuse to accept it. He’d seen enough; suffered enough. Adding this on top of it—no. She wouldn’t do it to him.
“We have to live,” she said out loud. It sounded half crazy. Michael glanced at her, and Eve outright stared.
“Well, duh,” Eve said. “And I’m the one who got clocked today.”
The ceiling gave way with a low groan of wood and a flood of plaster and debris, and three bodies, covered in blood where they weren’t white with plaster dust, dropped through the opening. They looked like monsters, and as the taller one turned to Claire and she caught the glint of fangs, she screamed.
The scream lasted for about a heartbeat, and then recognition flooded in—and relief. “Oliver?” Great. She was relieved to see Oliver. The world was officially topsy-turvy, cats were living with dogs, and life as she knew it was probably over.
Oliver looked ... well, like a monster—like a monster who’d fought his way out of hell, inch by inch, actually, and, weirdly, loved every minute of it. He grinned at Claire, all wickedly pointy fangs, and whirled toward Eve as she lunged at him with the business end of her broken stick. He took it away from her with contemptuous ease and shoved her into Michael, who had checked himself before attacking, but was clearly just as stunned as Claire felt.
“At ease, soldiers,” Oliver said, and it was almost a laugh. Next to him, Morley slapped white dust from his clothes, raising a choking cloud that made Claire’s eyes water as she coughed. “I think we’re still allies. At least for now.”
“Like Russia and England during the Second World War,” Morley agreed, then looked thoughtful. “Or was that the first? So difficult to remember these things. In any case, enemies with a common worse foe. We can kill each other later.”
The third person in the group was Jason, who looked just as bad as the other two, and not nearly as fine with it. He was shaking, visibly shaking, and there were rough bandages wrapped around his left wrist and hand that were soaked through with blood.
Eve finally, belatedly, recognized her brother, and reached out to grab him into a hug. Jason stayed frozen for a moment, then patted her on the back, awkwardly. “I’m okay,” he said. That was a lie, Claire thought, but a brave one. “You’ve got blood on your face.”
“Hit my head,” Eve said.
“Oh,
so, no damage, then,” Jason said, which was such a brother thing to say that Claire smiled. “Seriously, that looks bad, Eve.”
“No broken bones. My head hurts, and I feel dizzy. I’ll live. What the hell happened to you?”
“Don’t ask,” Jason said, and stepped away. “Need some help, man?”
Michael had grabbed hold of the desk and shoved it back against the door again, and he was now struggling to keep it in place. “Sure,” he said. Not that Jason’s muscle power was going to work any miracles, Claire thought; he was stringy and strong, but not vamp-strong.
“Let them in,” Morley said, and finished redistributing dust from his clothes to the rest of them with a final slap. “It’s my people. Unless you don’t trust us?”
“Now, why wouldn’t we?” Eve said sweetly, and turned to Michael. “Don’t you dare!”
“You’d rather leave them out there to be torn apart?” Morley asked, without any particular emphasis, as though it didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. “I would have thought someone with so much compassion would be less judgmental.”
“Excuse me, but you tied us to seats. And put needles in our arms. And drank our blood. So no, I’m not really seeing any reason to get all trusty with you!”
Morley shrugged. “Then let them die. I’m sure you’ll have no problem listening to their screams.”
Someone was, in fact, shouting on the other side of the door now, not so much battering on it as knocking. “Michael! Michael, it’s Jacob Goldman! Open the door! They’re coming!”
Michael exchanged a quick look with Claire, then Eve, then Oliver. Oliver nodded briskly.
Michael grabbed the desk and pulled it backward, nearly knocking Jason to the ground in the process. “Hey!” Jason protested. “A little warning next time, man!”
“Shut up.” Michael shoved him back as the door pushed open from the outside, and vampires started flooding into the room.
Morley’s people. They, like Morley, hadn’t come through this unharmed; every one of them, including Jacob and Patience Goldman, looked as if they’d fought for their lives. A few were wounded, and Claire knew from experience that it took a lot to hurt a vampire, even temporarily.
Jacob was cradling his right arm, which was covered in blood. Patience was supporting him from the other side. Even Eve looked a little concerned at the sight of his ice white face and blind-looking eyes. He seemed to be in serious pain.
Patience settled him against the wall and crouched next to him as Morley and Oliver, with Michael’s help, engineered some kind of barrier for the door when the last of Morley’s people were crammed into the small room.
There weren’t nearly so many as before.
“What happened?” Claire asked Patience. The vampire girl looked up at her, and there was a shadow of fear in her face that turned Claire cold inside.
“They wouldn’t stop,” Patience said. “They came for our prisoners. They wouldn’t—we couldn’t make them stop. Even when we destroyed one, two came out of the shadows. It was—we couldn’t stop them.” She looked down at Jacob, who had closed his eyes. He looked dead—more dead than most vamps. “Jacob almost had his arm torn off trying to protect them. But we couldn’t help.”
She sounded shocked, and deeply distressed. Claire put a hand on her shoulder, and Patience shuddered.
“You’re okay,” Claire said. “We’re okay.”
“No, we’re not,” she said. “Not at all. These are not vampires, Claire. They are animals—vicious beasts. And we—we are just as much prey for them as you are.”
“Right,” Morley said, raising his voice over the rising babble of conversation. “Everybody, shut it! Now, we can’t stay here—”
“The bus is burning,” someone said from near the window. Morley seemed to pause, obviously not expecting that, but he moved past it at light speed.
“Then we don’t use the bus, clot-for-brains. We find another way out of this accursed graveyard of a town.”
“In the sunlight?” Jacob asked. His voice was soft and thready with pain. “Not all of us will survive for long, and those who do will suffer. You know that.”
“Your choice—go and burn; stay and be torn apart.” Morley shrugged. “For my part, burns heal. I’m not sure that my disconnected pieces would, and I’d prefer not to find out.”
“Something’s coming,” a voice called from the window. “A truck. A delivery van!”
Claire shoved through the crowd of vampires, ignoring the cold touch of skin and the hisses of annoyance, and managed to get a clear space right in front of the window, where a solid couple of feet were still bathed in sunlight. Eve had already claimed it, but she let Claire squeeze in beside her.
The van was a big yellow thing, some kind of bread truck, with a boxy, windowless back. As Claire watched, it jumped the curb and bounced up onto the lawn, charged forward, and knocked down the leaning iron fence around the Civic Hall. It missed the statue of what’s-his-name, the town’s patron saint, but the vibrations caused the whole thing to wobble uncertainly, and as Claire watched, it toppled over that last couple of inches, and gravity took over, slamming the smug statue’s face into the grass once and for all.
Thankfully, not in the way of the van.
The van reversed, turned, and then backed up fast toward the window. It stopped a few feet away, and Shane hopped down from the driver’s side. He ran to the window and grinned at Eve and Claire.
His grin faded fast as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, and he saw all the vampires in the room. “What—”
“Morley’s people,” Claire said. “I guess we’re all in this together right now.”
“I’m ... not loving that.”
“I know. But we all need to get out of here.”
Shane shook his head, shaggy hair sticking in damp points to his face, but he turned and opened up the back doors of the van. Inside, there wasn’t much space, but there was enough to hold all the vamps—maybe. “I’ll take as many as can fit,” he said. “But seriously, once they’re out of here, all bets are off.”
“Agreed,” Morley said, and stepped forward into the sun. If it bothered him, it was only to make him narrow his eyes a little. He grabbed the frame of the window and, with one hard pull, ripped it right out of the stone and tossed it out into the overgrown grass. “Right, youngest first. Go, now.”
There was a hesitation, until Morley gave a low-decibel growl, and then vampires started stepping up, quickly throwing themselves out into the sunlight and moving fast to the sheltering darkness of the van. In only a few seconds it was just her, Michael, Jason, Eve, Morley, and Oliver, with Shane standing outside the window.
“I said youngest first,” Morley said, glowering at Michael. Michael raised pale eyebrows at him. “Idiot.”
“I stay with my friends.”
“Then it would appear you get to tan with them, as there’s no more room in the back.”
“No,” Oliver said. “Michael goes in the back. You and I ride outside.”
Morley let out a black bark of a laugh. “Outside?”
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.” Oliver, without even looking at him, grabbed Michael by the shoulder and almost threw him across the open space to the back of the van. Michael crashed into the small open space left and was pulled inside by Patience Goldman, who looked anxious, almost frightened. Shane slammed the back doors of the truck and ran to the front. “Right. Move it, ladies.”
Jason didn’t wait for girls first; he jumped out and went. Oliver boosted Eve up to the window, and she ran for the cab of the truck, where Jason was already climbing inside. Claire followed, avoiding any help from Oliver, and as she pulled herself up on the truck’s mounting step, she saw Oliver and Morley jump out of the building and flatten themselves on top of the truck, in full sun, arms and legs spread wide for balance. She banged the door shut behind her and squeezed in next to Eve, with Jason on the other side next to Shane.
“We couldn’t ha
ve done this boy/girl?” Shane complained, and started up the car. “Back off, freak!” That last was for Jason, who was pushing too close for Shane’s comfort, evidently. Claire tried wiggling closer to the passenger door, but the cab wasn’t made for four, no matter how relatively skinny they might be. And Shane wasn’t small.
“Just drive, smart-ass,” Jason snapped. Shane looked like he was considering hitting him. “Unless you want the two on top baked golden brown.”
“Crap,” Shane spat, and glared at the steering wheel as if it had personally offended him. He put the truck in gear, ground the gears, and got it roaring through the grass. It bumped hard over the curb, sending Claire into the dashboard, and she flailed to regain her balance as the truck slewed back and forth, got traction, and roared off down the street.
“Where the hell are you going?” Jason yelled.
“Your sister gets to talk. You don’t.”
“Fine,” Eve said. “Where the hell are you going, Shane?”
“The library,” he said. “I promised I’d bring the truck back.”
Claire blinked, looking over at him, and Eve, wide-eyed, shook her head.
“You know it’s desperate,” she said. “Shane is going to the library. ”
And in spite of everything, that was actually funny.
11
The library was about a block down, on the left. They passed a lot of empty, blank buildings, broken windows, destruction that seemed like the aftermath of a good looting. It didn’t seem recent, though.
The library’s windows were all intact, and there were people patrolling outside it—the first living people Claire had seen in Blacke, actually. She counted four of them, armed with shotguns and crossbows.
“My kind of library,” Shane said. “What with all the weapons and everything. I tried to boost the truck, and they finally let me have it, but I had to bring it back. This looks like the place to be. At least we can find out what the hell is going on, maybe get a bus or something.”
The guards outside the library were certainly paying attention. The guys with shotguns tracked the truck as it approached, and they looked really serious about firing, too. Claire cleared her throat. “Uh, Shane—?”
