Rachel Caine - [The Morganville Vampires 05]

by Lord of Misrule (lit)

  Shane nodded. “I’m thinking that Sullivan’s keeping Richard out of the loop for a reason.”

  They were downstairs, the four of them. Eve, Shane, and Claire were at the kitchen table, and Michael was pacing the floor and casting looks at the couch, where Oliver was. The older vampire was asleep, Claire guessed, or unconscious; they’d done what they could, washed him off and wrapped him in clean blankets. He was healing, according to Michael, but he wasn’t doing it very fast.

  When he’d woken up, he’d seemed distant. Confused.

  Afraid.

  Claire had given him one of the doses she’d gotten from Dr. Mills, and so far, it seemed to be helping, but if Oliver was sick, Myrnin’s fears were becoming real.

  Soon, it’d be Amelie, too. And then where would they be?

  “So what do we do?” Claire asked. “Amelie said we have to tell Richard. We have to get noncombatants out of City Hall, as soon as possible.”

  “Problem is, you heard him giving instructions to the Civil Defense guys earlier—they’re out telling everybody in town to go to City Hall if they can’t make it to another shelter. Radio and TV, too. Hell, half the town is probably there already.”

  “Maybe she won’t do it,” Eve said. “I mean, she wouldn’t kill everybody in there, would she? Not even if she thinks they’re working for Bishop.”

  “I think it’s gone past that,” Claire said. “I don’t know if she has any choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Not in chess,” Claire replied. “Unless your choice is to lie down and die.”

  In the end, the only way to be sure they got to the right person was to get in the car and drive there. Claire was a little shocked at the color of the sky outside—a solid gray, with clouds moving so fast it was like time-lapse on the Weather Channel. The edges looked faintly green, and in this part of the country, that was never a good sign.

  The only good thing about it was that Michael didn’t have to worry about getting scorched by sunlight. He brought a hoodie and a blanket to throw over his head, just in case, but it was dark outside, and getting darker fast. Premature sunset.

  Drops of rain were smacking the sidewalk, the size of half-dollars. Where they hit Claire’s skin, they felt like paintball pellets. As she looked up at the clouds, a horizontal flash of lightning peeled the sky in half, and thunder rumbled so loudly she felt it through the soles of her shoes.

  “Come on!” Eve yelled, and started the car. Claire ran to open the backseat door and piled in beside Shane. Eve was already accelerating before she could fasten her seat belt. “Michael, get the radio.”

  He turned it on. Static. As he scanned stations, they got ghosts of signals from other towns, but nothing came through clearly in Morganville—probably because the vampires jammed it.

  Then one came in, loud and clear, broadcasting on a loop.

  Attention Morganville residents: this is an urgent public service announcement. The National Weather Service has identified an extremely dangerous storm tracking toward Morganville, which will reach our borders at six twenty-seven this evening at its present speed. This storm has already been responsible for devastation in several areas in its path, and there has been significant loss of life due to tornadic activity. Morganville and the surrounding areas are on tornado watch through ten p.m. this evening. If you hear an alert siren, go immediately to a designated Safe Shelter location, or to the safest area of your home if you cannot reach a Safe Shelter. Attention Morganville residents—

  Michael clicked it off. There was no point in listening to the repeat; it wasn’t going to get any better.

  “How many Safe Shelters are there?” Shane asked. “University dorms have them, the UC—”

  “Founder’s Square has two,” Michael said, “but nobody can get to them right now. They’re locked up.”

  “Library.”

  “And the church. Father Joe would open up the basements, so that’ll fit a couple of hundred people.”

  Everybody else would head to City Hall, if they didn’t stay in their houses.

  The rain started to fall in earnest, slapping the windshield at first, and then pounding it in fierce waves. The ancient windshield wipers really weren’t up to it, even at high speed. Claire was glad she wasn’t trying to drive. Even in clear visibility she wasn’t very good, and she had no idea how Eve was seeing a thing.

  If she was, of course. Maybe this was faith-based driving.

  Other cars were on the road, and most of them were heading the same way they were. Claire looked at the clock on her cell phone.

  Five thirty p.m.

  The storm was less than an hour away.

  “Uh-oh,” Eve said, and braked as they turned the last corner. It was a sea of red taillights. Over the roll of thunder and pounding rain, Claire heard horns honking. Traffic moved, but slowly, one car at a time inching forward. “They’re checking cars at the barricade. I can’t believe—”

  Something happened up there, and the brake lights began flicking off in steady rows. Cars moved. Eve fell into line, and the big, black sedan rolled past two police cars still flashing their lights. In the red/blue/red glow, Claire saw that they’d moved the barricades aside and were just waving everyone through.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “We can’t get people out. Not fast enough! We’d have to stop everybody from coming in first, and then give them somewhere to go. . . .”

  “I’m getting out of the car here,” Michael said. “I can run faster than you can drive in this. I’ll get to Richard. They won’t dare stop me.”

  That was probably true, but Eve still said, “Michael, don’t—”

  Not that it stopped him from bailing out into the rain. A flash of lightning streaked by overhead and showed him splashing through thick puddles, weaving around cars.

  He was right; he was faster.

  Eve muttered something about “Stupid, stubborn, bloodsucking boyfriends,” and followed the traffic toward City Hall.

  Out of nowhere, a truck pulled out in front of them from a side street and stopped directly in their path. Eve yelled and hit the brakes, but they were mushy and wet, and not great at the best of times, and Claire felt the car slip and then slide, gathering speed as it went.

  Glad I put on my seat belt, she thought, which was a weird thing to think, as Eve’s car hydroplaned right into the truck. Shane stretched out his arm to hold her in place, anyway—instinct, Claire guessed—and then they all got thrown forward hard as physics took over.

  Physics hurt.

  Claire rested her aching head against the cool window—it was cracked, but still intact—and tried to shake it off. Shane was unhooking himself from the seat belt and asking her if she was okay. She made some kind of gesture and mumbled something, which she hoped would be good enough. She wasn’t up to real reassurances at the moment.

  Eve’s door opened, and she got dragged out of the car.

  “Hey!” Shane yelled, and threw himself out his own door. Claire fumbled at the latch, but hers seemed stuck; she navigated the push button on her seat belt and opted for Shane’s side of the car instead.

  As she stumbled out into the shockingly warm rain, she knew they were really in trouble now, because the man holding a knife to Eve’s throat was Frank Collins, Shane’s father and all-around badass, crazy vampire hater. He looked exactly like she remembered—tough, biker-hard, dressed in leather and tattoos.

  He was yelling something at Eve, something Claire couldn’t hear over the crash of thunder. Shane threw himself into a slide over the trunk of the car and grabbed at his dad’s knife hand.

  Dad elbowed him in the face and sent him staggering. Claire grabbed for the silver knife in her jeans, but it was gone—she’d dropped it somewhere. Before she could look for it, Shane was back in the fight, struggling with his dad. He moved the knife enough that Eve slid free and ran to grab on to Claire.

  Frank shoved his son down on the hood of the car and raised the knife. He froze
there, with rain pouring from his chin like a thin silver beard, and off the point of the knife.

  “No!” Claire screamed, “No, don’t hurt him!”

  “Where’s the vampire?” Frank yelled back. “Where is Michael Glass?”

  “Gone,” Shane said. He coughed away pounding rain. “Dad, he’s gone. He’s not here. Dad.”

  Frank seemed to focus on his son for the first time. “Shane?”

  “Yeah, Dad, it’s me. Let me up, okay?” Shane was careful to keep his hands up, palms out in surrender. “Peace.”

  It worked. Frank stepped back and lowered the knife. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you, boy.” And then he hugged him. Shane still had his hands up, and froze in place without touching his father. Claire shivered at the look on his face.

  “Yeah, good to see you, too,” he said. “Back off, man. We’re not close, in case you forgot.”

  “You’re still my son. Blood is blood.” Frank pushed him toward the truck, only lightly crushed where Eve’s car had smacked it. “Get in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so!” Frank shouted. Shane just looked at him. “Dammit, boy, for once in your life, do what I tell you!”

  “I spent most of my life doing what you told me,” Shane said. “Including selling out my friends. Not happening anymore.”

  Frank’s lips parted, temporarily amazed. He laughed.

  “Done drunk the suicide cola, didn’t you?” When he shook his head, drops flew in all directions, and were immediately lost in the silver downpour. “Just get in. I’m trying to save your life. You don’t want to be where you’re trying to go.”

  Strangely enough, Frank Collins was making sense. Probably for all the wrong reasons, though.

  “We have to get through,” Claire shouted over the pounding rain. She was shivering, soaked through every layer of clothing. “It’s important. People could die if we don’t!”

  “People are going to die,” Collins agreed. “Omelets and eggs. You know the old saying.”

  Or chess, Claire thought. Though she didn’t know whose side Frank Collins was playing on, or even if he knew he was being manipulated at all.

  “There’s a plan,” Frank was saying to his son. “In all this crap, nobody’s checking faces. Metal detectors are off. We seize control of the building and make things right. We shuffle these bastards off, once and for all. We can do it!”

  “Dad,” Shane said, “everybody in that building tonight is going to be killed. We have to get people out, not get them in. If you care anything about those idiots who buy your revolutionary crap, you’ll call this off.”

  “Call it off?” Frank repeated, as uncomprehending as if Shane were speaking another language. “When we’re this close? When we can win? Dammit, Shane, you used to believe in this. You used to—”

  “Yeah. Used to. Look it up!” Shane shoved his father away from him, and walked over to Eve and Claire. “I’ve warned you, Dad. Don’t do this. Not today. I won’t turn you in, but I’m telling you, if you don’t back off, you’re dead.”

  “I don’t take threats,” Frank said. “Not from you.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Shane said. “And I tried.”

  He got back in the car, on the passenger-side front seat where Michael had been. Eve scrambled behind the wheel, and Claire in the back.

  Eve reversed.

  Frank stepped out into the road ahead of them, a scary-looking man in black leather with his straggling hair plastered around his face. Add in the big hunting knife, and cue the scary music.

  Eve let up on the gas. “No,” Shane said, and moved his left foot over to jam it on top of hers. “Go. He wants you to stop.”

  “Don’t! I can’t miss him, no—”

  But it was too late. Frank was staring into the headlights, squarely in the center of the hood, and he was getting closer and closer.

  Frank Collins threw himself out of the way at the last possible second, Eve swerved wildly in the opposite direction to miss him, and somehow, they didn’t kill Shane’s dad.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Eve yelled at Shane. She was shaking all over. So was Shane. “You want to run him over, do it on your own time! God!”

  “Look behind you,” Shane whispered.

  There were people coming after them. A lot of people. They’d been hiding in the alley, Claire guessed. They had guns, and now they opened fire. The car shuddered, and the back window exploded into cracks, then fell with a crash all over Claire’s neck.

  “Get up here!” Shane said, and grabbed her hands to haul her into the front seat. “Keep your head down!”

  Eve had sunk down on the driver’s side, barely keeping her eyes above the dashboard. She was panting hoarsely, panicked, and more gunshots were rattling the back of the car. Something hit the front window, too, adding more cracks and a round, backward splash of a hole.

  “Faster!” Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower-moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. “You see why I didn’t want you to stop?”

  “Okay, your father is officially off my Christmas list!” Eve yelled. “Oh my God, look at my car!”

  Shane barked out a laugh. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s what’s important.”

  “It’s better than thinking about what would have happened,” Eve said. “If Michael had been with us—”

  Claire thought about the mobs Richard had talked about, and the dead vampires, and felt sick. “They’d have dragged him off,” she said. “They’d have killed him.”

  Michael had been right about Shane’s dad, but then, Claire had never really doubted it. Neither had Shane, from the sick certainty on his face. He wiped his eyes with his forearm, which really didn’t help much; they were all dripping wet, from head to toe.

  “Let’s just get to the building,” Shane said. “We can’t do much until we find Richard.”

  Only it wasn’t that simple, even getting in. The underground parking was crammed full of cars, parked haphazardly at every angle. As Eve inched through the shadows, looking for any place to go, she shook her head. “If we do manage to get people to leave, they won’t be able to take their cars. Everybody’s blocked in,” she said. “This is massively screwed up.” Claire, for her part, thought some of it seemed deliberate, not just panic. “Okay, I’m going to pull it against the wall and hope we can get out if we need to.”

  The elevator was already locked down, the doors open but the lights off and buttons unresponsive. They took the stairs at a run.

  The first-floor door seemed to be locked, until Shane pushed on it harder, and then it creaked open against a flood of protests.

  The vestibule was full of people.

  Morganville’s City Hall wasn’t all that large, at least not here in the lobby area. There was a big, sweeping staircase leading up, all grand marble and polished wood, and glass display cases taking up part of one wall. The License Bureau was off to the right: six old-time bank windows, with bars, all closed. Next to each window was a brass plaque that read what the windows were supposed to deliver: RESIDENTIAL LICENSING, CAR REGISTRATION, ZONING CHANGE REQUESTS, SPECIAL PERMITS, TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS, FINE PAYMENTS, TAXES, CITY SERVICES.

  But not today.

  The lobby was jammed with people. Families, mostly—mothers and fathers with kids, some as young as infants. Claire didn’t see a single vampire in the crowd, not even Michael. At the far end, a yellow Civil Defense sign indicated that the door led to a Safe Shelter, with a tornado graphic next to it. A policeman with a bullhorn was yelling for order, not that he was getting any; people were pushing, shoving, and shouting at one another. “The shelter is now at maximum capacity! Please be calm!”

  “Not good,” Shane said. There was no sign of Richard, although there were at least ten uniformed police officers trying to manage the crowd. “Upstairs?”

  “Upstairs,” Eve agreed, and they squeezed back into the fire stairs and ran up to the next level. The sign in the s
tairwell said that this floor contained the mayor’s office, sheriff’s office, city council chambers, and something called, vaguely, Records.

  The door was locked. Shane rattled it and banged for entrance, but nobody came to the rescue.

  “Guess we go up,” he said.