by Rachel Caine
“Then stop him,” I said. Oliver nodded and headed for the door. “Wait. Do it quietly, and don’t hurt Myrnin unless you have to.”
“Sentimental,” he said, and shook his head again, smiling that razor-edged smile. “I find that oddly beautiful in you, princess.”
I sat down, and stared out the windows at my fatally ill town, and wondered why I always realized too late what I wanted.
And why what I wanted was never good for me.
FIVE
CLAIRE
The alarm on her phone beeped, and Claire flinched and pulled it out of her pocket. She shut it off and looked at the reminder. “Crap,” she said. “I have to go. I have a meeting with a professor about my grade.”
“Wait, what? Are you trying to get something higher than an A?” Shane tossed back the rest of his coffee. “Don’t try to tell me you’re in trouble in a class, because I won’t believe it. You never met a class you could fail. You’re the book whisperer.”
Claire felt herself blushing furiously, and tossed a wadded-up napkin at him. “No, seriously! I blew a test off because—you know, Morganville stuff. So I wanted to make it up, and he said I couldn’t, and I got a note. I have to give him the note so he’ll let me take it.”
“And keep your golden four point oh.”
“I still want to go to MIT. Eventually. If I can’t keep a four-oh at this school . . .” Claire’s voice faded, because obviously MIT would never call her again if she had that humiliation on her record. She’d always, always wanted to go to MIT. The fact that she’d turned down an invitation once purely because of fascination with the crazy-dangerous-yet-brilliant stuff Morganville had to offer . . . Well, it wasn’t her final answer.
“Let me see the note.”
She dug it out of her backpack and handed it over. He whistled as he looked at the heavy cream-colored envelope, the fancy embossed gold seal on the back. “A note from Amelie? You don’t screw around when you want an excuse, do you?” He pulled the paper out and read it, eyebrows climbing higher. “Excused on town business. Wow. You realize that I’ve lived here my whole life, and I can hardly get the Founder to remember my name. She’s writing frickin’ makeup notes for you.”
Claire snatched it back from him and put the paper back in the envelope. “Well, I was on town business when I missed the test. I didn’t make that up.”
Shane was smiling at her in that warm, knowing kind of way, eyes half closed. “I know you didn’t,” he said, “because you just . . . don’t. Which is so weird, by the way. I must have forged twenty excuse notes in my not-very-glorious school career, but I’ll bet you never even tried it.”
Claire’s face still felt hot, so she drained the last of her mocha to stall for time. Then she stood, gathered up her things, and said, “Yes, I was boring. I’ve been boring all my life.”
“I didn’t mean that.” He stood up, too, and bent and kissed her. The sweet mocha on her lips mingled with the bitter coffee on his, but that wasn’t why she licked her lips when they parted, and she knew it. Shane just had that effect on her. “You are anything but boring, Claire Bear. Believe that.”
She had no idea why he thought that, because from her perspective, Shane was the exciting one, the one with all the fire and fury. She had . . . what? A history of being sheltered, a flawless academic record, and a bad habit of trying to make everything better. Not as exciting as all that, surely.
“I’ll try,” she replied. “See you at home!”
“Adios,” he said. “Text if you can’t stand being away.”
“Dork.” She blew him a kiss, which he air-caught and theatrically slapped over his heart.
Claire stepped out into the chilly wind and looked up at the clouds. Dark, and getting darker. Big, wet plops of rain were already falling to darken the concrete sidewalk. She flipped up the hood of her jacket and jogged, trying to beat the storm, but it caught up with her halfway through the TPU campus. Students dashed around, covering their heads, clutching books and papers to their chests to try to protect them. It was no use. Everything was going to get soaked in this downpour; it was as bad as Claire had ever seen, a torrential silver curtain that limited her visibility to no more than a few feet. She had to cut across the big open spaces to head for the science building, and very quickly realized that leaving the path was a bad idea; it wasn’t just the rapidly forming mud that sucked at her shoes, but the loss of landmarks. She couldn’t tell where the sun was, and the buildings were invisible behind the thunderous curtain. A big tree loomed on her right, but she couldn’t remember where it was placed in relation to anything else.
Besides, standing near a tree probably wasn’t the best idea, she thought, as a brilliant stab of lightning ripped across the sky. The one advantage of that eye-burning glare was that it showed the structures in the distance, just for a second, and Claire adjusted her course to head for them, blinking away the afterimages.
She almost ran into Myrnin, who came up on her out of nowhere. He was still wearing his black leather duster, but he’d lost his hat somewhere, and his shoulder-length black hair was plastered flat around his pale, sharp face. His eyes were wide and blank, and she took a step back from him, startled and wary.
He grabbed her as she slipped, and held her at arm’s length. “Where is Shane?” he asked. It wasn’t quite a shout, though he’d raised his voice to be heard over the loud hiss of the storm. She was so startled by the question that she didn’t answer, and Myrnin shook her, not too gently. “Where is he?”
“Why?” She found her balance and twisted out of his grip—or more likely, he let her go, because Myrnin was about a hundred times stronger than she was, and she didn’t think she had Shane’s skill at fighting hand to hand. “Since when do you care about Shane?”
There was something very strange about Myrnin’s expression, about the way he was acting. It wasn’t just the weirdness of him standing there getting soaked, as if he didn’t feel it; it was the way he was watching her, with an odd mixture of fear and impatience. “I’m trying to help you!” Myrnin said. “Just tell me where he is, Claire!”
“Help me? Why, what’s wrong? Is Shane in trouble?” All thoughts of meeting with her professor vanished, swept away on a torrent of anxiety. “Myrnin, tell me!”
“I have to find him,” he said. “I have to find him quickly. Tell me where he is!”
“I’ll come with you!”
“No,” he said. Had he ever looked this pale to her before? This . . . alien? “Just tell me, Claire. I travel faster alone.”
Something inside her warned her not to say, not to trust him . . . but it was Myrnin. For all his faults, all his oddities, he wouldn’t hurt her. Or Shane.
Still, she hesitated. “Just tell me why,” she said, and shivered as the rain soaked through her jacket and began to crawl cold over her skin.
“He’s in danger. Now, Claire, before it’s too late!”
She couldn’t banish that tingle of doubt, but she couldn’t take the chance that he was telling the truth, either. Not if Shane was really in danger. “He was at Common Grounds,” she said. “I think he was headed home. . . .”
Before she finished saying it, Myrnin was a flash through the rain, a shadow . . . and gone.
Claire fumbled in her pocket, pulled out her cell phone, and bent over to protect it from the rain as she quickly texted Shane. Get home fast, she sent. Something wrong. Run.
That was all she could do. There was a gnawing, terrible fear in her now. Myrnin wasn’t playing around, hadn’t been since he’d seen that message out in the desert. There was something more wrong than she’d ever seen it.
She hesitated, torn, and then ran for the science building. Another flash of lightning put her back on course, and she pounded up the steps, shivering from the chill, and skidded into the relatively dry shelter of the lobby. Hers weren’t the only wet footprints, but they were definitely going to be the muddiest. She wiped her shoes as best she could on the mats, threw back her sodden hoo
d, and ran down the hall to the stairs, then up to the offices. Professor Howard’s door was shut. She knocked twice, didn’t wait for an answer, and opened it to see him look up from his paperwork.
“Sorry,” she said. “Got caught in the storm.”
“I can see that, Miss Danvers. Have a seat; the chairs are plain wood for a reason.”
“I can’t, sir.” She let her backpack slide off her shoulder—waterproof, luckily, with the rain still beaded up on its surface—and opened up the compartment to grab the envelope inside. She passed it over, her damp fingers leaving smudges on the surface. “I have to go. I’m so sorry, but it’s an emergency!”
“What, another one?” Professor Howard eyed her cynically over the top of his reading glasses, unfolded the note, and then glanced back up at her with an entirely different expression. He carefully folded it again, slipped it into the envelope, and handed it back. “I’ll expect you here to take the test tomorrow at noon, Danvers. No excuses other than death—do you understand me? Hospitalization will not cut it.”
“Yes, sir! Thanks!” She hastily stuffed the note back in her pack, shouldered it, and hurried out of the office. She banged the door shut behind her and nearly flew down the steps again, down the hall, and yanked her almost-useless hood back up before plunging out into the rain again.
And ran into another vampire on the sidewalk.
Oliver.
What was this, Vampires Take Strolls Day? It was way out of character for Myrnin to be on campus, and now Oliver, too? This was starting to be less weird than outright terrifying.
“Where’s Shane?” Oliver demanded. “I thought he’d be with you.”
Suddenly, everyone wanted Shane. Claire blinked as rain dripped in her eyes. Oliver hadn’t bothered with a raincoat or a hat, so he looked about as drowned as she felt. He also looked like he wasn’t going to let that—or anything else—stop him. He had that same look, like Myrnin’s—focused, intense, committed. But without that edge of sadness. Oliver’s was all business.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded. “Myrnin said—”
Oliver stepped into her personal space, chin lowered. That was, to put it mildly, intimidating. “Myrnin found you,” he said. “Of course he did. He’s tasted your blood—he can always find you if he wants to. What did he say to you?”
“He said Shane was in danger and he needed to find him.”
“Did you tell him?”
She slowly nodded, not taking her gaze from Oliver’s eyes. They were dark and unreadable, and rain dripped from his lashes.
“Then I have to hurry if you want me to save him,” he said.
“Who? Myrnin?”
“Shane. Where is he?”
“Heading home from Common Grounds.” She grabbed him by the arm, suddenly terrified he was going to bolt off like Myrnin, lost in the rain before she could draw a breath. “Wait! If you’re going, take me! Please!”
“Bother,” Oliver sighed, but he grabbed her around the waist, and suddenly she was being lifted, thrown with bruising force over his shoulder, and then . . .
. . . Then the world smeared around her into a blur. Rain whipped her like stinging lashes, and Claire hid her face as the wind rippled her clothes under its force. Too fast, too fast . . . She couldn’t get her breath to protest, not that Oliver would listen to it anyway. She’d always known vampires could move fast, but this was insane. It was like being trapped in a wind tunnel, and if it hadn’t been for his iron grip holding her legs, she’d have been torn away from him like some flapping piece of paper in a tornado.
It seemed to take forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two at most before Oliver slowed and stopped, and Claire’s whole body lurched as they decelerated. The change in speed threw her backward, and she felt him let go, but only enough to catch her as she tumbled off. He set her on her feet, and she stumbled as she tried to get her disorientation under control. There was a brick wall within reach, so she leaned on it, gasping.
Oliver stalked forward toward . . .
Toward Myrnin, in his thick black coat, who was holding Shane against the alley’s other wall with his right hand, and drawing back with his left, claws catching the light in sharp angles. He hesitated as he spotted Oliver, and froze as he saw Claire’s shuddering form.
“No,” he whispered, then turned a glare on Oliver. “Damn you! She shouldn’t have to see this!”
“Let the boy go,” Oliver said. “Now.”
Myrnin turned his attention back to Shane, who was fighting for his life but failing to break Myrnin’s hold on his throat. His face was turning purple. “I can’t do that,” he said. He sounded sad and miserable, but determined. “I made a bargain. I intend to keep it.”
Oliver didn’t argue about it. He hit Myrnin from the side, like a freight train, and the two vampires flew off-balance through the air, then bashed into a giant rusty Dumpster, which rang like a bell from the impact. Myrnin jumped, snarling, and his coat flared like bat wings as he leaped for Oliver.
Oliver met him in midjump, slammed him against a wall, then down flat on the flooded alley floor with a splash of gray water.
Claire staggered over to Shane, who’d slumped down to a crouch. He was gagging for breath, and she could see the red marks on his throat where Myrnin had choked him. She put her arms around him, and Shane hugged her back with a desperation that surprised her.
“Get him out of here!” Oliver shouted, trying to hold Myrnin down. “Go home and stay there! Run!”
Claire grabbed Shane’s hand and pulled him up to his feet, then yanked him into a stumble. The alley had protected them from some of the rain, but as they made it out into the street, the lash of the icy downpour took her breath away. No time for questions; Oliver had sounded utterly serious, and she didn’t intend to take a risk. Not with Shane’s life.
It took another couple of minutes to run through the blinding rain the remaining blocks to Lot Street. She half expected someone else—Amelie, maybe?—to jump out at them before they got to the shelter of the porch, but the streets were deserted. Morganville wasn’t set up for heavy rains, and the gutters were already overflowing. The street was a lake, and the water was creeping inexorably into the yard under the picket fence.
Claire’s hands were shaking, but she managed to get her key in the lock, open the door, and shove Shane inside. She slammed it behind them and shot all the bolts and locks home before she slumped down on the cheerful rag rug that Eve had put in the entry hall.
Shane collapsed next to her, just as drenched, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of their raw gasps.
Claire leaned against him, and he put his arm around her. “Are you okay?” she asked in a small voice. She saw him swallow, and it looked painfully red all around his neck now.
His voice came out raspy and deeper than normal. “Thought he was going to kill me,” he said. “What the hell did I do to piss him off?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.” Claire chewed her lip, feeling sick inside. “He told me he had to find you, that someone was after you. I—I told him where you were. God, Shane, I trusted him! I told him where you were!” The enormity of Myrnin’s betrayal stunned her, and she felt as if a perfectly sound floor had suddenly broken under her feet, sending her plummeting down a rabbit hole where everything was wrong. “How could he do that? Why?”
Shane put his arm around her and hugged her close. “It’s okay,” he told her hoarsely. “I’m okay. Not your fault.”
It was, though. It was her fault for trusting Myrnin. Shane could have died. Claire could imagine that all too well—arriving too late, seeing Shane’s blood drifting through the water in that flooding alley. Red on Myrnin’s sharp fingernails. Shane’s body facedown in the puddle.
And she could imagine turning on him, on all of them, because if Shane died, if the vampires killed him, she would hunt down every single one of them. Claire knew it wasn’t rational, wasn’t right, but she didn’t care.
If the vampires came after Shane, they came after her, and she’d fight back any way she could.
“Something’s wrong,” Shane croaked. “Really wrong.”
She gulped down tears, and nodded silently. She rested her head against his chest, closed her eyes, and listened to the strong, sure beat of his heart.
The one she’d almost stopped, by trusting Myrnin.
Shane stroked her wet hair, trying to comfort her, her, when he was the one who’d been knocked around. “It was my fault,” she managed to say. “Really. I told him. . . . What did he say?”
“To me?” Shane asked. She nodded. “Nothing. I turned around and he was right there, and he didn’t say a single word except Sorry.” He swallowed and winced. His voice had a raspy burr at the edges. “Look, I’ve fought before—you know that—but he wasn’t fighting. He was there to kill me, plain and simple, no hesitation. Assassination. Like he was under orders.”
“Orders,” Claire repeated. And whom did Myrnin take orders from? Nobody, really. Nobody except . . . “Amelie.” She said it out loud, very softly, and it sounded sad to her own ears. “Amelie ordered it.” But that didn’t really matter, not as an immediate thing; Claire felt the burn of outrage, but she’d never really been under any illusions about Amelie’s loyalty toward her. What really hurt was Myrnin. After all that she’d been through for him, done for him, he’d turned on her. He’d tried to take Shane away.
Didn’t he understand how that would tear her apart?
“Hey,” Shane said. “Hey, Claire, I’m here. I’m right here.” His fingers stroked her wet, cold cheek, and she struggled to focus on his face. “It’s all right.”
It wasn’t. She clung to him fiercely, until they both stopped shivering from the cold, until she felt the warmth of their bodies drying the soaking-wet fabric of their clothes. It wasn’t like Shane to just sit like this with her, not when they ought to be getting up, drying off... but he didn’t seem to have any more will to move on than she did. Maybe, deep down, he was just as shocked and scared as she felt.
