by Rachel Caine
“What’s wrong with him?” Claire whispered.
Shane’s answer stirred the damp hair around her face. “Heart attack,” he said. “At least, that’s Richard’s best guess. Looks bad.”
It really did. The mayor was propped against the wall a few feet from them, and he was gasping for breath as his wife (Claire had never seen her before, except in pictures) patted his arm and murmured in his ear. His face was ash gray, his lips turning blue, and there was real panic in his eyes.
Richard returned, dragging another thick blanket and some pillows. “Everybody cover up,” he said. “Keep your heads down.” He covered his mother and father and crouched next to them as he wrapped himself in another blanket.
The wind outside was building to a howl. Claire could hear things hitting the walls—dull thudding sounds, like baseballs. It got louder. “Debris,” Richard said. He focused the light on the carpet between their small group. “Maybe hail. Could be anything.”
The siren cut off abruptly, but that didn’t mean the noise subsided; if anything, it got louder, ratcheting up from a howl to a scream—and then it took on a deeper tone.
“Sounds like a train,” Eve said shakily. “Damn, I was really hoping that wasn’t true, the train thing—”
“Heads down!” Richard yelled, as the whole building started to shake. Claire could feel the boards vibrating underneath her. She could see the walls bending, and cracks forming in the bricks.
And then the noise rose to a constant, deafening scream, and the whole outside wall sagged, dissolved into bricks and broken wood, and disappeared. The ripped, torn fabric around the room took flight like startled birds, whipping wildly through the air and getting shredded into ever-smaller sections by the wind and debris.
The storm was screaming as if it had gone insane. Broken furniture and shards of mirrors flew around, smashing into the walls, hitting the blankets.
Claire heard a heavy groan even over the shrieking wind, and looked up to see the roof sagging overhead. Dust and plaster cascaded down, and she grabbed Shane hard.
The roof came down on top of them.
Claire didn’t know how long it lasted. It seemed like forever, really—the screaming, the shaking, the pressure of things on top of her.
And then, very gradually, it stopped, and the rain began to hammer down again, drenching the pile of dust and wood. Some of it trickled down to drip on her cheek, which was how she knew.
Shane’s hand moved on her shoulder, more of a twitch than a conscious motion, and then he let go of Claire to heave up with both hands. Debris slid and rattled. They’d been lucky, Claire realized—a heavy wooden beam had collapsed in over their heads at a slant, and it had held the worst of the stuff off them.
“Eve?” Claire reached across Shane and grabbed her friend’s hands. Eve’s eyes were closed, and there was blood trickling down one side of her face. Her face was even whiter than usual—plaster dust, Claire realized.
Eve coughed, and her eyelids fluttered up. “Mom?” The uncertainty in her voice made Claire want to cry. “Oh God, what happened? Claire?”
“We’re alive,” Shane said. He sounded kind of surprised. He brushed fallen chunks of wood and plaster off Claire’s head, and she coughed, too. The rain pounded in at an angle, soaking the blanket that covered them. “Richard?”
“Over here,” Richard said. “Dad? Dad—”
The flashlight was gone, rolled off or buried or just plain taken away by the wind. Lightning flashed, bright as day, and Claire saw the tornado that had hit them still moving through Morganville, crashing through buildings, spraying debris a hundred feet into the air.
It didn’t even look real.
Shane helped move a beam off Eve’s legs—thankfully, they were just bruised, not broken—and crawled across the slipping wreckage toward Richard, who was lifting things off his mother. She looked okay, but she was crying and dazed.
His father, though . . .
“No,” Richard said, and dragged his father flat. He started administering CPR. There were bloody cuts on his face, but he didn’t seem to care about his own problems at all. “Shane! Breathe for him!”
After a hesitation, Shane tilted the mayor’s head back. “Like this?”
“Let me,” Eve said. “I’ve had CPR training.” She crawled over and took in a deep breath, bent, and blew it into the mayor’s mouth, watching for his chest to rise. It seemed to take a lot of effort. So did what Richard was doing, pumping on his dad’s chest, over and over. Eve counted slowly, then breathed again—and again.
“I’ll get help,” Claire said. She wasn’t sure there was any help, really, but she had to do something. When she stood up, though, she felt dizzy and weak, and remembered what Richard had said—she had holes in her neck, and she’d lost a lot of blood. “I’ll go slow.”
“I’ll go with you,” Shane said, but Richard grabbed him and pulled him down.
“No! I need you to take over here.” He showed Shane how to place his hands, and got him started. He pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt and tossed it to Claire. “Go. We need paramedics.”
And then Richard collapsed, and Claire realized that he had a huge piece of metal in his side. She stood there, frozen in horror, and then punched in the code for the walkie-talkie. “Hello? Hello, is anybody there?”
Static. If there was anybody, she couldn’t hear it over the interference and the roaring rain.
“I have to go!” she shouted at Shane. He looked up.
“No!” But he couldn’t stop her, not without letting the mayor die, and after one helpless, furious look at her, he went back to work.
Claire slid over the pile of debris and scrambled out the broken door, into the main apartment.
There was no sign of François or Bishop. If the place had been wrecked before, it was unrecognizable now. Most of this part of the building was gone, just—gone. She felt the floor groan underneath her, and moved fast, heading for the apartment’s front door. It was still on its hinges, but as she pulled on it, part of the frame came out of the wall.
Outside, the hallway seemed eerily unmarked, except that the roof overhead—and, Claire presumed, all of the next floor above—was missing. It was a hallway open to the storm. She hurried along it, glad now for the flashes of lightning that lit her way.
The fire stairs at the end seemed intact. She passed some people huddled there, clearly terrified. “We need help!” she said. “There are people hurt upstairs—somebody?”
And then the screaming started, somewhere about a floor down, lots of people screaming at the same time. Those who were sitting on the stairs jumped to their feet and ran up, toward Claire. “No!” she yelled. “No, you can’t!”
But she was shoved out of the way, and about fifty people trampled past her, heading up. She had no idea where they’d go.
Worse, she was afraid their combined weight would collapse that part of the building, including the place where Eve, Shane, and the Morrells were.
“Claire?” Michael. He came out of the first-floor door, and leaped two flights of stairs in about two jumps to reach her. Before she could protest, he’d grabbed her in his arms like an invalid. “Come on. I have to get you out of here.”
“No! No, go up. Shane, they need help. Go up; leave me here!”
“I can’t.” He looked down, and so did she.
Vampires poured into the stairwell below. Some of them were fighting, ripping at one another. Any human who got between them went down screaming.
“Right. Up it is,” he said, and she felt them leave the ground in one powerful leap, hitting the third-floor landing with catlike grace.
“What’s happening?” Claire twisted to try to look down, but it didn’t make any sense to her. It was just a mob, fighting one another. No telling who was on which side, or even why they were fighting so furiously.
“Amelie’s down there,” Michael said. “Bishop’s trying to get to her, but he’s losing followers fast. She took him by surpris
e, during the storm.”
“What about the people—I mean, the humans? Shane’s dad, and the ones who wanted to take over?”
Michael kicked open the door to the third-floor roofless hallway. The people who’d run past Claire were milling around in it, frightened and babbling. Michael brought down his fangs and snarled at them, and they scattered into whatever shelter they could reach—interior offices, mostly, that had sustained little damage except for rain.
He shoved past those who had nowhere to go, and down to the end of the hall. “In here?” He let Claire slide down to her feet, and his gaze focused on her neck. “Someone bit you.”
“It’s not so bad.” Claire put her hand over the wound, trying to cover it up. The wound’s edges felt ragged, and they were still leaking blood, she thought, although that could have just been the rain. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
A gust of wind blew his collar back, and she saw the white outlines of marks on his own neck. “Michael! Did you get bitten, too?”
“Like you said, it’s nothing. Look, we can talk about that later. Let’s get to our friends. First aid later.”
Claire opened the door and stepped through . . . and the floor collapsed underneath her.
She must have screamed, but all she heard was the tremendous cracking sound of more of the building falling apart underneath and around her. She turned toward Michael, who was frozen in the doorway, illuminated in stark white by a nearby lightning strike.
He reached out and grabbed her arm as she flung it toward him, and then she was suspended in midair, wind and dust rushing up around her, as the floor underneath fell away. Michael pulled, and she almost flew, weightless, into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered faintly. “Thanks.”
He held on to her for a minute without speaking, then said, “Is there another way in?”
“I don’t know.”
They backed up and found the next office to the left, which had suspicious-looking cracks in its walls. Claire thought the floor felt a little unsteady. Michael pushed her back behind him and said, “Cover your eyes.”
Then he began ripping away the wall between the office and Amelie’s apartments. When he hit solid red brick, he punched it, breaking it into dust.
“This isn’t helping keep things together!” Claire yelled.
“I know, but we need to get them out!”
He ripped a hole in the wall big enough to step through, and braced himself in it as the whole building seemed to shudder, as if shifting its weight. “The floor’s all right here,” he said. “You stay. I’ll go.”
“Through that door, to the left!” Claire called. Michael disappeared, moving fast and gracefully.
She wondered, all of a sudden, why he wasn’t downstairs. Why he wasn’t fighting, like all the others of Amelie’s blood.
A couple of tense minutes passed, as she stared through the hole; nothing seemed to be happening. She couldn’t hear Michael, or Shane, or anything else.
And then she heard screaming behind her, in the hall. Vampires, she thought, and quickly opened the door to look.
Someone fell against the wood, knocking her backward. It was François. Claire tried to shut the door, but a bloodstained white hand wormed through the opening and grabbed the edge, shoving it wider.
François didn’t look even remotely human anymore, but he did look absolutely desperate, willing to do anything to survive, and very, very angry.
Claire backed up, slowly, until she was standing with her back against the far wall. There wasn’t much in here to help her—a desk, some pens and pencils in a cup.
François laughed, and then he growled. “You think you’re winning,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I think you’re the one who has to worry,” Michael said from the hole in the wall. He stepped through, carrying Mayor Morrell in his arms. Shane and Eve were with him, supporting Richard’s sagging body between them. Mrs. Morrell brought up the rear. “Back off. I won’t come after you if you run.”
François’ eyes turned ruby, and he threw himself at Michael, who was burdened with the mayor.
Claire grabbed a pencil from the cup and plunged it into François’ back.
He whirled, looking stunned . . . and then he slowly collapsed to the carpet.
“That won’t kill him,” Michael said.
“I don’t care,” Eve said. “Because that was fierce.”
Claire grabbed the vampire’s arms and dragged him out of the way, careful not to dislodge the pencil; she wasn’t really sure how deep it had gone, and if it slipped out of his heart, they were all in big trouble. Michael edged around him and opened the door to check the corridor. “Clear,” he said. “For the moment. Come on.”
Their little refugee group hurried into the rainy hall, squishing through soggy carpet. There were people hiding in the offices, or just pressed against the walls and hoping not to be noticed. “Come on,” Eve said to them. “Get up. We’re getting out of here before this whole thing comes down!”
The fighting in the stairwell was still going on—snarling, screams, bangs, and thuds. Claire didn’t dare look over the railing. Michael led them down to the locked second-floor entrance. He pulled hard on it, and the knob popped off—but the door stayed locked.
“Hey, Mike?” Shane had edged to the end of the landing to look over the railing. “Can’t go that way.”
“I know!”
“Also, time is—”
“I know, Shane!” Michael started kicking the door, but it was reinforced, stronger than the other doors Claire had seen. It bent, but didn’t open.
And then it did open . . . from the inside.
There, in his fancy but battered black velvet, stood Myrnin.
“In,” he said. “This way. Hurry.”
The falling sensation warned Claire that the door was a portal, but she didn’t have time to tell anybody else, so when they stepped through into Myrnin’s lab, it was probably kind of a shock. Michael didn’t pause; he pushed a bunch of broken glassware from a lab table and put Mr. Morrell down on it, then touched pale fingers to the man’s throat. When he found nothing, he started CPR again. Eve hurried over to breathe for him.
Myrnin didn’t move as the refugees streamed in past him. He was standing with his arms folded, a frown grooved between his brows. “Who are all these people?” he asked. “I am not an innkeeper, you know.”
“Shut up,” Claire said. She didn’t have any patience with Myrnin right now. “Is he okay?” She was talking to Shane, who was easing Richard onto a threadbare rug near the far wall.
“You mean, except for the big piece of metal in him? Look, I don’t know. He’s breathing, at least.”
The rest of the refugees clustered together, filtering slowly through the portal. Most of them had no idea what had just happened, which was good. If they’d been part of Frank’s group, intending to take over Morganville, that ambition was long gone. Now they were just people, and they were just scared.
“Up the stairs,” Claire told them. “You can get out that way.”
Most of them rushed for the exit. She hoped they’d make it home, or at least to some kind of safe place.
She hoped they had homes to go back to.
Myrnin glared at her. “You do realize that this was a secret laboratory, don’t you? And now half of Morganville knows where it is?”
“Hey, I didn’t open the door; you did.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm, looking up into his face. “Thank you. You saved our lives.”
He blinked slowly. “Did I?”
“I know why you weren’t fighting,” Claire said. “The drugs kept you from having to. But . . . Michael?”
Myrnin followed her gaze to where Eve and Michael remained bent over the mayor’s still form. “Amelie let him go,” he said. “For now. She could claim him again at any time, but I think she knew you needed help.” He uncrossed his arms and walked over to Michael to touch his shoulder. “It�
��s no use,” he said. “I can smell death on him. So can you, if you try. You won’t bring him back.”
“No!” Mrs. Morrell screamed, and threw herself over her husband’s body. “No, you have to try!”
“They did,” Myrnin said, and retreated to lean against a convenient wall. “Which is more than I would have.” He nodded toward Richard. “He might live, but to remove that metal will require a chirurgeon.”
“You mean, a doctor?” Claire asked.
“Yes, of course, a doctor,” Myrnin snapped, and his eyes flared red. “I know you want me to feel some sympathy for them, but that is not who I am. I care only about those I know, and even then, not all that deeply. Strangers get nothing from me.” He was slipping, and the anger was coming back. Next it would be confusion. Claire silently dug in her pockets. She’d put a single glass vial in, and miraculously, it was still unbroken.
He slapped it out of her hand impatiently. “I don’t need it!”
Claire watched it clatter to the floor, heart in her mouth, and said, “You do. You know you do. Please, Myrnin. I don’t need your crap right now. Just take your medicine.”
She didn’t think he would, not at first, but then he snorted, bent down, and picked up the vial. He broke the cap off and dumped the liquid into his mouth. “There,” he said. “Satisfied?” He shattered the glass in his fingers, and the red glow in his eyes intensified. “Are you, little Claire? Do you enjoy giving me orders?”
“Myrnin.”
His hand went around her throat, choking off whatever she was going to say.
She didn’t move.
His hand didn’t tighten.
The red glow slowly faded away, replaced by a look of shame. He let go of her and backed away a full step, head down.
“I don’t know where to get a doctor,” Claire said, as if nothing had happened. “The hospital, maybe, or—”
“No,” Myrnin murmured. “I will bring help. Don’t let anyone go through my things. And watch Michael, in case.”
She nodded. Myrnin opened the portal doorway in the wall and stepped through it, heading—where? She had no idea. Amelie had, Claire thought, shut down all the nodes. But if that was true, how had they gotten here?
