by Rachel Caine
Her two vamp guards went with her. Smoke and silence. There was no sound on the stairs after. Claire swallowed. “Um…what did we just do?” she asked.
“Pretty much all we could,” Shane said. “I’m checking the street.”
They ended up going down together, in a group—Shane with the bat, Eve with the knife Jennifer had abandoned, and Claire armed with a broken chair leg sharp on one end.
The house was deserted. The front door was standing open, and out on the street, cop cars were pulling away from the curb around the big black Cadillac. A limousine was leaving, too. Its tinted windows cast back blinding reflections of the sun.
It was all over in seconds. No cars, no vampires, nobody hanging around. No Monica. No Richard. No Oliver.
“Crap,” Shane said. He was standing on the porch, looking at what was hanging next to the doorbell. It was a black lacquered plaque with a symbol on it. The same symbol that had been on the book cover he’d sent to Oliver. “Does that mean she wrote the damn book, too?”
“I’ll bet she did, for backup,” Eve said. “You know, the symbol’s also on the well in the center of town. It’s the Founder symbol.”
“She’s the Founder,” Shane said.
“Well, somebody had to be.”
“Yeah, but I figured it was a dead somebody.”
“Funny,” Claire said, “but I think it is a dead somebody.”
Which made Shane laugh, and Eve snort, and Shane slung his arm over her shoulders. “You still quitting school?” he asked.
“Not if I can’t leave town.” Claire smacked herself in the head. “Oh my God! I can’t leave town! I can’t ever leave town? What about school? Caltech? My parents?”
Shane kissed her on the forehead. “Tomorrow’s problems,” he said. “I’m going with let’s just be glad there’s a tomorrow, at this point.”
Eve closed the front door. It swung open again in the breeze. “I think we’re going to need a new door.”
“I think we’re going to need Home Depot.”
“Do they sell stakes at Home Depot here?” Claire asked. Shane and Eve looked blank. “Dumb question. Never mind.”
Chapter 17
C leanup took pretty much all day, what with the broken furniture, the shattered windows, the front and back doors, and hauling Claire’s damaged mattress out to the curb. They were just sitting down to dinner when the sun went behind the horizon, and Claire heard the sound of a body hitting the floor, followed by dry retching.
“Michael’s home,” Eve said, as if he’d just come back from school. “You guys dig in.”
It took a while before she came back with Michael. Holding hands. Shane got up, smiling, and held up his hand. Michael high-fived it.
“Not bad, brother,” Michael said. “The girls gave you enough time for the switch.”
“Even though they didn’t know. Yeah. Worked out,” Shane said, pleased. “See? My plans don’t all suck. Just most of them.”
“So long as we keep on being able to tell the difference.” Michael pulled up a chair. “What’s for—oh, you’re kidding me. Chili?”
“Nobody wanted to go to the store.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Michael closed his eyes. “I’m saying a prayer. Maybe you ought to, too. It’s going to take us a miracle to get through this.”
Whether he was serious or not, Claire sent the prayer up toward heaven, and she thought the others did, too. So it seemed kind of miraculous when the doorbell rang.
“At least they’re getting more polite when they try to kill us,” Shane said. Michael got up and went to the door. After a second’s hesitation, they all got up and followed.
Michael swung the new door open. Outside, in the glow of the porch light, stood a middle-aged man with a scraggly beard and a huge scar down one side of his face, dressed in black motorcycle leather. Behind him were two more guys, not quite as old and a whole lot bigger and meaner-looking.
Bikers. Claire nearly choked on her bite of chili.
The man nodded.
“Son,” he said, looking past Michael right at Shane. “Got your message. Cavalry’s here.” He walked right in, past the threshold, and ignored Michael like he wasn’t even there. “About time you got your ass in gear. Been waiting for you to call for six damn months. What kept you? Took you this long to find the head bloodsucker?”
They followed him into the living room. Michael turned to look at Shane, who was turning red. Not meeting anybody’s eyes, really. “Things have changed, Dad,” he mumbled.
“Nothing’s changed,” Shane’s dad said, and turned to face them, hands on hips. “We came to kick us some ass and kill us some vampires, just like we planned all along. Time to get some payback for Alyssa and your mother. Nothing’s going to change that.”
“Dad, things are different now, we can’t—”
Shane’s father grabbed him by the hair, quick as a snake. There were tattoos on his hand, ugly dark blue smudges, and he forced Shane’s head back. “Can’t? Can’t? We’re going to burn this town down, boy, just like we agreed. And you’re not changing your mind.”
“Hey!” Michael said sharply, and reached out for Shane’s dad. When he touched him, something happened, something like an electric shock that flared blue white in the room and raised the hair on Claire’s arms. Michael flew back and hit the wall, too stunned to do anything.
“No!” Shane yelled, and tried to pull free. He couldn’t. “Dad, no!”
Shane’s dad nodded to one of his biker buddies. “Yep. He’s one of them,” he said. “Take care of it.”
The biker guy nodded back, pulled a knife from his belt, and advanced on Michael.
“No!” Shane screamed it this time. Claire took a hesitant step forward, and stopped when Michael’s wide blue eyes locked on hers. Eve was screaming, and so was Shane.
Miranda saw this, she thought. Michael was even standing on the rug Miranda had pointed to when she’d said, And he died…right…there. It hadn’t been his first death.
It was his second.
“Guys, stay out of it!” Michael said sharply when Eve tried to lunge toward him and get between him and the biker. He was still backing away, and this time, he looked afraid. He hadn’t been afraid of the vampires and all their minions, but this time…
The biker moved faster than anybody Claire had ever seen, except vampires; she didn’t even see what happened, just heard the heavy thud as Michael hit the floor. The biker went down with him, holding him flat with one huge hand while the other one raised the knife.
“No, Dad, God, I’ll do whatever you want!”
“Shut up,” Shane’s dad said, and threw Shane toward the sofa. He sprawled there, and Claire ran over to him and put her arms around him. “You bet you will. You three are going to tell me which vamps to strike first. Because it’s us against them now, and don’t you forget it.”
“Three?” Eve said faintly. Her huge eyes were locked on Michael, and the biker, and the knife.
“Three,” said Shane’s dad, and nodded to the biker.
They all screamed as the knife came down.
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