by Rachel Caine
“Then it’s come to it,” Naomi said. “It’s time for us to fight him. Good. For my sister’s sake, I’ll be happy to face him again.” Naomi’s cool hand stroked Claire’s cheek. “Pretty child. You smell warm.”
Claire shuddered. “Yeah, well, I, uh, am. I guess.”
“Warm as sunlight. So was I, once.” Naomi’s sigh brushed Claire’s skin, and then the vampire was gone, moving in a blur. The vampires were all moving faster now—recovering, Claire guessed. Growing stronger.
Dr. Mills was looking at them in satisfaction, but Claire couldn’t quite get there from here. Great, they were feeling better; she could get behind that.
But now they were healthy vampires. Which meant they could make more vampires, and that changed everything. It changed the entire dynamic of Morganville.
Didn’t it?
Her phone rang. No number displayed on the caller ID. Claire flipped it open and said, “What, Ada?”
“You must take Dr. Mills and leave,” Ada said. “I will dial the portal for you. Go now.”
“Would you mind telling me what—”
“Do as I say or I will leave you both alone in a room full of vampires who may crave an instant hot meal.”
Myrnin’s computer was such a bitch.
Claire snapped the phone shut. “Grab what you need,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
Dr. Mills nodded. He’d loaded the individual doses into a couple of duffel bags, and he handed one to her as he hefted the other. He opened up a padded silver box and checked the contents.
Two syringes.
“Those are the last two doses of the serum, right?” Claire asked. “Maybe I’d better . . . ?”
He handed them over. “Make sure Myrnin gets one, and Amelie gets the other,” he said. “Oliver will try to hijack one for himself. Don’t let him.”
Like she stood a chance of saying no to Oliver on her own, but she nodded anyway. Dr. Mills seemed relieved to have the stuff out of his hands. He looked around at the vampires, who were all turning toward them. “Maybe we should be going,” he said. “I’m sure they’re all grateful, but—”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “Let’s.”
Walking through the crowd was like walking through a giant pride of lions. They might be calmly observing, but there was no mistaking the predatory gleam in their eyes as they did it. Claire caught the glitter of fangs in one or two mouths, and made sure not to make eye contact.
Naomi stepped into her path. The young vampire—well, young-looking—blocked the way out. “May I beg a favor?” she asked. “A small one, I assure you.”
Claire licked her lips. “Sure.”
“Give this to my sister Amelie,” she said, and lifted a silver necklace off of her alabaster neck. It was a beautiful little thing, thin as a whisper, and it had a white cameo dangling from it. “Tell her that we are with her if she requires it.”
Claire put the necklace in her pocket, and nodded. “I’ll tell her.” Naomi didn’t move. “Did you want something else?”
“Oh, yes,” Naomi said faintly. “Very badly. But you see, I know my sister. I know she would not forgive me if I did anything untoward. So you and your kind doctor must go, before we forget our promises.”
Still, she didn’t move.
Claire went around her. Naomi turned to watch her.
Stepping through the stone illusion seemed a whole lot easier this time, maybe because she knew staying was definitely not a good idea at all.
Ada’s ghost stood in the hallway, looking furiously out of sorts with the delay. She turned and glided away at top speed. Claire broke into a run to keep up, and Dr. Mills kept pace. Ada suddenly stopped and spun her image to face them like a flat cardboard cutout, and the speaker on Claire’s phone shrieked with static.
Dr. Mills went down.
“Run!” Ada screamed through the speakerphone, but Claire couldn’t. She couldn’t leave him behind.
Claire stopped to reach down to help him up, but he wasn’t moving. There was a cut on his head, and although he was breathing, he was completely unconscious.
The cut was on the back of his head. He hadn’t fallen that way.
Someone had hit him.
Ada tried to tell her to run away, but she stayed where she was. Ada’s ghostly image screamed silently in frustration and burst into a storm of misty static.
Gone.
In the darkness, Claire felt fingers brush her hair.
“Naomi?” she asked in a faint whisper.
A dry chuckle sounded next to her ear, shockingly close. “Never met the lady. You know who I am,” a male voice said. “Don’t you, Claire?”
She closed her eyes.
“Hello,” she said, “Mr. Collins.”
9
Shane’s dad turned on an electric light overhead, and the sudden glare made Claire wince and blink. She looked down quickly at Dr. Mills to confirm that he was still breathing, and not moving. Good. She needed all her concentration right now.
Frank Collins looked the same as he had the last time she’d seen him alive, there in Bishop’s office—thin, lean, with his long graying hair down around his face, only now he was paler. He looked like a man who’d lived hard and died the same way—and there was definitely a shadow in him that hadn’t been there before. A crazy, scary shine in his eyes, like a silver film. He had a few things in common with Oliver, but where Oliver came across as tough, frightening, and ultimately rational, Collins missed that last one entirely.
He was way too close. Claire stayed very still, trying not to let her pulse pound too hard.
“I see what my son likes about you,” Frank Collins said. “You’re tougher than you look.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Now back off.”
He laughed again. It echoed off of the stone, as if he’d brought three or four copies of himself to enjoy the show. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Never done it before. Never will.” He paused “I’d like to talk to my son.”
“Never going to happen,” Claire said. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Mr. Collins’s smile showed more than teeth. His fangs slowly unfolded, and the edges caught the dim light. “You think he’d want you sucking plasma, too, sweet-heart? It would kill him if something like that happened. So you might try to be a little more polite.”
She wanted to vomit at the thought of Frank Collins biting her. “He’ll kill you,” she said. “You know he would.”
“Maybe he’d try.” Frank shrugged. “He wouldn’t hurt you, though. I know my boy well enough to know how head over heels he is for you. He’d never touch a hair on your pretty little head. You’re his weakness, Claire.”
That was sickeningly true. Shane would do anything to save Claire. He’d even let his father turn him into a vampire—which might be what Freaky Frank was thinking about.
She couldn’t let that happen. No way.
Claire slowly let the duffel bag she was holding thump down to the floor, and took stock of what she had to work with. Not much. Frank Collins had been turned by Bishop; he wasn’t sick. She had no hope of curing him, or even treating him. This was his natural state of crazy.
Her backpack.
Claire let it slide down her arm, hoping that he’d think she was getting ready to make a run for it. It’d be useless to do that; she’d never make it.
Plus, he’d enjoy the chase.
As her backpack caught in the crook of her elbow, she grabbed the front zipper. Gravity helped her pull it down as the weight sagged forward.
Oh, crap.
The stakes weren’t in the front pocket. She’d put them in the bigger interior, with her books. There was nothing in the front pocket but some paper clips, a highlighter, and half a candy bar. She didn’t think bribing him with chocolate would get it done.
“Relax,” Shane’s dad said. “I’ll let you go.”
That seemed . . . too good to be true, but Claire was willing to take it and run. “Thanks,” she said, a
nd bent to grab Dr. Mills to pull him toward the portal.
“I didn’t say he could go,” Frank said, his smile full-tilt crazy. “I deserve a little bonus for being so accommodating.”
Claire could feel her heart pounding now, even through the layers of calming drugs that Hannah had dosed her with before. Everything seemed to slow down. She didn’t pause to think. She threw all her strength into grabbing the pack in both hands, twirling in place like a shot-putter, and slamming the pack into Frank Collins’s back.
There were a lot of books in there, and physics was something not even vampires could ignore, especially when it hit them full force. Frank went sprawling. Claire grabbed Dr. Mills by one arm and dragged him toward the spot where Ada had been standing.
Ada flickered back into existence as she approached. The speaker in Claire’s phone activated and Ada shouted, “Leave the man; get the bags!”
“Bite me,” Claire snapped. She heaved, got Dr. Mills up to a sitting position, and rolled him through the portal.
Then she dashed back for the duffel bags.
Frank Collins’s pale hand grabbed her wrist. She looked up, right into his scarred face and silvery eyes, and screamed. There was no way she could break free, not without leaving her hand behind. He was just that strong.
Shane’s dad yanked her down to her knees on the floor. He pulled the strap of her backpack off her shoulder and ripped the tough fabric open, spilling the contents all over the floor. Advanced Particle Physics slipped off into the dark, along with Fundamentals of Matrix Computations . Out spilled two sharp-pointed wooden stakes. Out of sheer desperation, she made a grab for them, but his foot came crashing down to pin them to the floor before she could get there.
He stood there, staring at the stakes, and she saw something move over his face, like a ripple of real human pain. “Christ,” he murmured. “I used to carry some just like that when I was starting out hunting them. What the hell am I doing?”
She knew what that pain was, and all of a sudden she knew how to hurt him. “You’re hunting,” Claire said. Her heart was beating so hard, it felt as if it would break her ribs. “That’s what vamps do. Hunt people.”
He shook his head silently, then looked up at her. He almost looked sane again, or as sane as Shane’s father ever got. “I’ve been fighting vampires a long time,” he said. “Killed a couple; did you know that?”
She knew. He and Shane had almost been executed for killing Brandon, even though Shane hadn’t had anything to do with it. He stared down again at the hand-carved stakes sticking out from under his big, scuffed boot.
“Never ended up using stakes all that much,” he said, and looked her right in the eyes. “You know why?”
She was afraid to ask.
“Because if you don’t kill a vampire, it just makes them angrier,” he said. “You think you can kill me with something like this?”
She swallowed hard. “Sure. Not that you’re going to let me try.”
“Truth is, the worst thing I ever feared was this. Being this. Shane tell you that?” She slowly nodded. “I’m sorry he had to see what happened to me. I’m sorry for all the things I did to make his life hell over the years. You understand?”
She shook her head, because she really didn’t.
“You tell Shane I love him,” Frank said. “I always did. Didn’t show it right, I know that, but that was never his fault. I’m glad he found you. He deserves something good in his life.”
And then he lifted up his boot and picked up the stakes. Claire opened her mouth, but her voice caught in her throat.
He didn’t hurt her.
“You go home,” he said. “You tell my son his father says good-bye. Wish I’d gotten to see him one more time, but you’re right. It’s probably not a good idea.”
He turned away toward the darkness, with the stakes in his hand.
“I guess you should know that he loves you, too. He can’t help it.” Her voice echoed from the stone. She didn’t know why she said it, except that she knew, with sad certainty, that she wouldn’t see him again.
She thought Shane’s dad hesitated, but then he shuffled on, until he was out of sight.
The instant he was gone, Claire grabbed the duffel bags, and lunged to her feet, heading for the open portal.
She stumbled out on the other side, tripped over Dr. Mills’s motionless body, and fell into Oliver’s arms.
He looked at her with an absolutely disgusted expression, and dropped her on her butt on the plushly carpeted floor of Amelie’s study.
“It’s gone,” Claire said for the four hundredth time, as Oliver turned her arm this way and that, holding it under a light so bright it felt like a laser cutting into her skin. “Hey! I said it’s gone!”
Oliver held her in place with a grip so hard she knew it would leave its own kind of tattooing. In blue, purple, and black. “And I said that Bishop would very much like us to think that it’s gone,” he snapped. “You were told to stay where you were. As usual, you ignored that instruction, and now you’ve placed us all at extreme risk of—”
“Let her go, Oliver,” Amelie said from the other side of the vast, polished desk. She drummed her perfect fingernails on the surface, making a light, dry tapping sound like bones dropped on marble. “The girl could have betrayed us a dozen times or more by now. She hasn’t. I believe we can give her the benefit of the doubt, for now.”
He let Claire go and stalked away, arms folded. This, Claire thought, was Amelie’s war council—Sam Glass sat next to her in a side chair, looking more like Michael all the time as his red hair grew out into a mess of waves and curls. Oliver paced. Richard Morrell stood nearby, looking as if he wanted to pace, but was too tired to make the attempt.
Michael moved up next to Claire, put his hand on her shoulder, and led her off to the side, near where Hannah Moses leaned against the wall, looking fascinated and worried. Claire knew just how she felt. Being plunged into the deep end—and this was it—meant swimming for your life, with sharks. Even the supposedly friendly ones could turn and take your leg off when they felt like it.
“Where’s Myrnin?” Claire whispered. Michael shook his head. “Isn’t he here? Somewhere?”
“No idea,” Michael whispered back. “Amelie stashed him someplace; I just don’t know where. He’s not—”
“Michael,” Amelie said, “I said I would give her the benefit of the doubt, not the full story. Please be quiet.” She stood up, and Claire saw that she’d changed clothes again, this time to a flawless pale pink suit, something that looked like it belonged on a runway in Paris. Not what Claire would have thought you’d wear to a show-down. “Claire. Thank you for bringing the supplies that I requested from Dr. Mills. Thank you also for retrieving the good doctor. I am told that he will recover from his wound.” Her light-colored, cool eyes focused on Claire, and shot right through her. “May I also see your arm?”
Always polite. That was when Amelie was the most dangerous, Claire knew. She slowly extended her arm, still holding Michael’s hand on the other side for comfort. Amelie’s touch was cold and light. She didn’t study the skin, like Oliver had; she ran her fingertips over the surface, and then lowered Claire’s arm back to her side.
“Michael,” she said,“please take Claire to your friends. I am sure you would both prefer to be with them now.”
“But . . .” Claire licked her lips. “Don’t you want me here? To help?”
“You’ll help when it’s needed,” Amelie said. “For now, you should be elsewhere. We will be bringing in some of my people to remove them from Bishop’s influence. The process can be somewhat unsettling to witness.”
Oliver made a rude noise as he continued his relentless pacing. “It’s far worse when it fails,” he said. “I hope you’re not fond of this carpet.”
Amelie ignored that. “Myrnin and Dr. Mills had told me that the work could not continue on the serum without more of Bishop’s blood. Is that correct?” Claire nodded. “Difficult to achie
ve, I’m afraid, but I will include that in our calculations.”
“We talked about drugging him.”
“So Myrnin said.” Amelie wasn’t going to tell her anything. “It’s no longer your concern. I will rely on you and your friends to be in attendance this evening. You should come prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” Claire asked.
Amelie’s eyebrows rose. “Anything. We are no longer following a plan. We are facing the final moves on the chessboard, and who wins will very much depend on nerve, skill, and the ability to do the unexpected. You may count on my father being ready to do his worst. We must be just as ruthless.”
Claire thought about that moment in the tunnels, with Frank Collins. She hadn’t felt ruthless at the end. She’d felt sad.
She didn’t suppose Amelie, Oliver, or any of the rest of them would have hesitated for a second. Frank Collins was a bad guy. He’d been a bad guy as a human, right? But still . . . there was just that one moment when she’d seen him as a man who loved his son.
Maybe everybody had those moments. Even the worst people.
Maybe it didn’t matter, except to her.
The door opened at the far end of the room, and two of Amelie’s favorite vamp bodyguards came in, dragging a beat-up human. At least, Claire thought he was human; it was hard to tell, under all the dirt and bruises.
Oh. She knew him. It was Jason Rosser, Eve’s crazy-ass brother. He looked like he’d been living in a garbage dump for months—for all Claire knew, he had been. Eve had said he’d been coming by the house, maybe even acting less insane, but right now, Claire couldn’t see it. He looked like a rabid sewer rat, and as he scanned the room, he was all gleaming, crazy eyes and bared teeth.
When the guards let him go, at a nod from Amelie, Jason lunged for the Founder of Morganville. She didn’t raise a hand to defend herself. She didn’t have to.
Oliver met him halfway, grabbed Jason by the throat, and slammed him down onto the carpet flat on his back.
“You see?” Oliver said, and gave Amelie a freakishly calm smile. “You really should have thought about the carpet; you’ll never get the smell of him out of it. Really, Amelie, you do insist on bringing home strays.”
