Rachel Caine - [The Morganville Vampires 05]

by Lord of Misrule (lit)

  Eve raised her eyebrows at Claire, clearly wondering where Monica was.

  “The last time I saw her, she was at school,” Claire said. “But that was before I got the call to come home, so I don’t know. Maybe she’s in shelter in the dorm?” She checked her cell phone. No bars. Reception was usually spotty down here in the lab, but she could usually see something, even if it was only a flicker. “I think the cell towers are down.”

  “Yeah, likely,” Eve agreed. She reached over to tuck the blanket around Mrs. Morrell, who leaned her head back and closed her eyes, as if the strength was just leaking right out of her. “You think this is the right thing to do? I mean, do we even know this guy or anything?”

  Claire didn’t, really, but she still wanted to like Theo, in much the same way as she liked Myrnin—against her better sense. “I think he’s okay. And it’s not like anybody’s making house calls right now.”

  The operation—and it was an operation, with suturing and everything—took a couple of hours before Theo sat back, stripped off the gloves, and sighed in quiet satisfaction. “There,” he said. Claire and Eve got up to walk over as Michael rose to his feet. Shane had been hanging on the edges, watching in what Claire thought looked like queasy fascination. “His pulse is steady. He’s lost some blood, but I believe he will be all right, provided no infection sets in. Still, this century has those wonderful antibiotics, yes? So that is not so bad.” Theo was almost beaming. “I must say, I haven’t used my surgical skills in years. It’s very exciting. Although it makes me hungry.”

  Claire was pretty sure Richard wouldn’t want to know that. She knew she wouldn’t have, in his place.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Morrell said. She got up from the chair, folded the blanket and put it aside, then walked over to shake Theo’s hand with simple, dignified gratitude. “I’ll see that my husband compensates you for your kindness.”

  They all exchanged looks. Michael started to speak, but Theo shook his head. “That’s quite all right, dear lady. I am delighted to help. I recently lost a son myself. I know the weight of grief.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Morrell said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, sir.” She said it as if she didn’t know her husband was lying across the room, dead.

  Tears sparkled in his eyes, Claire saw, but then he blinked them away and smiled. He patted her hand gently. “You are very generous to an old man,” he said. “We have always liked living in Morganville, you know. The people are so kind.”

  Shane said, “Some of those same people killed your son.”

  Theo looked at him with calm, unflinching eyes. “And without forgiveness, there is never any peace. I tell you this from the distance of many centuries. My son gave his life. I won’t reply to his gift with anger, not even for those who took him from me. Those same poor, sad people will wake up tomorrow grieving their own losses, I think, if they survive at all. How can hating them heal me?”

  Myrnin, who hadn’t spoken at all, murmured, “You shame me, Theo.”

  “I don’t mean to do so,” he said, and shrugged. “Well. I should get back to my family now. I wish you all well.”

  Myrnin got up from his chair and walked with Theo to the portal. They all watched him go. Mrs. Morrell was staring after him with a bright, odd look in her eyes.

  “How very strange,” she said. “I wish Mr. Morrell had been available to meet him.”

  She spoke as if he were in a meeting downtown instead of under a sheet on the other side of the room. Claire shuddered.

  “Come on, let’s go see Richard,” Eve said, and led her away.

  Shane let out his breath in a slow hiss. “I wish it were as simple as Theo thinks it is, to stop hating.” He swallowed, watching Mrs. Morrell. “I wish I could, I really do.”

  “At least you want to,” Michael said. “It’s a start.”

  They stayed the night in the lab, mainly because the storm continued outside until the wee hours of the morning—rain, mostly, with some hail. There didn’t seem to be much point running out in it. Claire kept checking her phone, Eve found a portable radio buried in piles of junk at the back of the room, and they checked for news at regular intervals.

  Around three a.m. they got some. It was on the radio’s emergency alert frequency.

  All Morganville residents and surrounding areas: we remain under severe thunderstorm warnings, with high winds and possible flooding, until seven a.m. today. Rescue efforts are under way at City Hall, which was partially destroyed by a tornado that also leveled several warehouses and abandoned buildings, as well as one building in Founder’s Square. There are numerous reports of injuries coming in. Please remain calm. Emergency teams are working their way through town now, looking for anyone who may be in need of assistance. Stay where you are. Please do not attempt to go out into the streets at this time.

  It started to repeat. Eve frowned and looked up at Myrnin, who had listened as well. “What aren’t they saying?” she asked.

  “If I had to guess, their urgent desire that people stay within shelter would tell me there are other things to worry about.” His dark eyes grew distant for a moment, then snapped back into focus. “Ibid nothing.”

  “What?” Eve seemed to think she’d misheard.

  “Ibid nothing carlo. I don’t justice.”

  Myrnin was making word salad again—a precursor to the drugs wearing off—more quickly than Claire had expected, actually, and that was worrying.

  Eve sent Claire a look of alarm. “Okay, I didn’t really understand that at all—”

  Claire put a hand on her arm to silence her. “Why don’t you go see Mrs. Morrell? You too, Shane.”

  He didn’t like it, but he went. As he did, he jerked his head at Michael, who rose from where he was sitting with Richard and strolled over.

  Casually.

  “Myrnin,” Claire said. “You need to listen to me, okay? I think your drugs are wearing off again.”

  “I’m fine.” His excitement level was rising; she could see it—a very light flush in his face, his eyes starting to glitter. “You worry over notebook.”

  There was no point in trying to explain the signs; he never could identify them. “We should check on the prison,” she said. “See if everything’s still okay there.”

  Myrnin smiled. “You’re trying to trick me.” His eyes were getting darker, endlessly dark, and that smile had edges to it. “Oh, little girl, you don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like, having all these guests here, and all this”—he breathed in deeply—“all this blood.” His eyes focused on her throat, with its ragged bite mark hidden under a bandage Theo had given her. “I know it’s there. Your mark. Tell me, did François—”

  “Stop. Stop it.” Claire dug her fingers into her palms. Myrnin took a step toward her, and she forced herself not to flinch. She knew him, knew what he was trying to do. “You won’t hurt me. You need me.”

  “Do I?” He breathed deeply again. “Yes, I do. Bright, so bright. I can feel your energy. I know how it will feel when I . . .” He blinked, and horror sheeted across his face, fast as lightning. “What was I saying? Claire? What did I just say?”

  She couldn’t repeat it. “Nothing. Don’t worry. But I think we’d better get you to the cell, okay? Please?”

  He looked devastated. This was the worst part of it, she thought, the mood swings. He’d tried so hard, and he’d helped, he really had—but he wasn’t going to be able to hold together much longer. She was seeing him fall apart in slow motion.

  Again.

  Michael steered him toward the portal. “Let’s go,” he said. “Claire, can you do this?”

  “If he doesn’t fight me,” she said nervously. She remembered one afternoon when his paranoia had taken over, and every time she’d tried to establish the portal, he’d snapped the connection, sure something was waiting on the other side to destroy him. “I wish we had a tranquilizer.”

  “Well, you don’t,” Myrnin said. “And I don’t like being stuck with your needles, you k
now that. I’ll behave myself.” He laughed softly. “Mostly.”

  Claire opened the door, but instead of the connection snapping clear to the prison, she felt it shift, pulled out of focus. “Myrnin, stop it!”

  He spread his hands theatrically. “I didn’t do anything.”

  She tried again. The connection bent, and before she could bring it back where she wanted it, an alternate destination came into focus.

  Theo Goldman fell out of the door.

  “Theo!” Myrnin caught him, surprised out of his petulance, at least for the moment. He eased the other vampire down to a sitting position against the wall. “Are you injured?”

  “No, no, no—” Theo was gasping, though Claire knew he didn’t need air, not the way humans did. This was emotion, not exertion. “Please, you have to help, I beg you. Help us, help my family, please—”

  Myrnin crouched down to put their eyes on a level. “What’s happened?”

  Theo’s eyes filled with tears that flowed over his lined, kind face. “Bishop,” he said. “Bishop has my family. He says he wants Amelie and the book, or he will kill them all.”

  14

  Theo hadn’t come straight from Common Grounds, of course; he’d been taken to one of the open portals—he didn’t know where—and forced through by Bishop. “No,” he said, and stopped Michael as he tried to come closer. “No, not you. He only wants Amelie, and the book, and I want no more innocent blood shed, not yours or mine. Please. Myrnin, I know you can find her. You have the blood tie and I don’t. Please find her and bring her. This is not our fight. It’s family; it’s father and daughter. They should end this, face-to-face.”

  Myrnin stared at him for a long, long moment, and then cocked his head to one side. “You want me to betray her,” he said. “Deliver her to her father.”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t ask for that. Only to—to let her know what price there will be. Amelie will come. I know she will.”

  “She won’t,” Myrnin said. “I won’t let her.”

  Theo cried out in misery, and Claire bit her lip. “Can’t you help him?” she said. “There’s got to be a way!”

  “Oh, there is,” Myrnin said. “There is. But you won’t like it, my little Claire. It isn’t neat, and it isn’t easy. And it will require considerable courage from you, yet again.”

  “I’ll do it!”

  “No, you won’t,” Shane and Michael said, at virtually the same time. Shane continued. “You’re barely on your feet, Claire. You don’t go anywhere, not without me.”

  “And me,” Michael said.

  “Hell,” Eve sighed. “I guess that means I have to go, too. Which I may not ever forgive you for, even if I don’t die horribly.”

  Myrnin stared at each of them in turn. “You’d go. All of you.” His lips stretched into a crazy, rubber-doll smile. “You are the best toys, you know. I can’t imagine how much fun it will be to play with you.”

  Silence, and then Eve said, “Okay, that was extra creepy, with whipped creepy topping. And this is me, changing my mind.”

  The glee faded from Myrnin’s eyes, replaced with a kind of lost desperation that Claire recognized all too well. “It’s coming. Claire, it’s coming, I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do. I can feel it.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “I know. Please, try. We need you right now. Can you hold on?”

  He nodded, but it was more a convulsive response than confirmation. “In the drawer by the skulls,” he said. “One last dose. I hid it. I forgot.”

  He did that; he hid things and remembered them at odd moments—or never. Claire dashed off to the far end of the room, near where Richard slept, and opened drawer after drawer under the row of skulls he’d nailed to the wall. He’d promised that they were all clinical specimens, not one of them victims of violence. She still didn’t altogether believe him.

  In the last drawer, shoved behind ancient rolls of parchment and the mounted skeleton of a bat, were two vials, both in brown glass. One, when she pried up the stopper, proved to be red crystals.

  The other was silver powder.

  She put the vial with silver powder in her pants pocket—careful to use the pocket without a hole in it—and brought the red crystals back to Myrnin. He nodded and slipped the vial into his vest pocket, inside the coat.

  “Aren’t you going to take them?”

  “Not quite yet,” he said, which scared the hell out of her, frankly. “I can stay focused a bit longer. I promise.”

  “So,” Michael said, “what’s the plan?”

  “This.”

  Claire felt the portal snap into place behind her, clear as a lightning strike, and Myrnin grabbed the front of her shirt, swung her around, and threw her violently through the doorway.

  She seemed to fall a really, really long time, but she hit the ground and rolled.

  She opened her eyes on pitch darkness, smelling rot and old wine.

  No.

  She knew this place.

  She was trying to get up when something else hit her from behind—Shane, from the sound of his angry cursing. She writhed around and slapped a hand over his mouth, which made him stop in midcurse. “Shhhh,” she hissed, as softly as she could. Not that their rolling around on the floor hadn’t rung the dinner bell loud and clear, of course.

  Damn you, Myrnin.

  A cold hand encircled her wrist and pulled her away from Shane, and when she hit out at it, she felt a velvet sleeve.

  Myrnin. Shane was scrambling to his feet, too.

  “Michael, can you see?” Myrnin’s voice sounded completely calm.

  “Yes.” Michael’s didn’t. At all.

  “Then run, damn you! I’ve got them!”

  Myrnin followed his own advice, and Claire’s arm was almost yanked from its socket as he dragged her with him. She heard Shane panting on his other side. Her foot came down on something springy, like a body, and she yelped. The sound echoed, and from the darkness on all sides, she heard what sounded like fingers tapping, sliding, coming closer.

  Something grabbed her ankle, and this time Claire screamed. It felt like a wire loop, but when she tried to bat at it, she felt fingers, a thin, bony forearm, and nails like talons.

  Myrnin skidded to a halt, turned, and stomped. Her ankle came free, and something in the darkness screamed in rage.

  “Go!” He roared—not to them, but to Michael, Claire guessed. She saw a flash of something up ahead that wasn’t quite light—the portal? That looked like the kind of shimmer it made when it was being activated.

  Myrnin let go of her wrist, and shoved her forward.

  Once again, she fell. This time, she landed on top of Michael.

  Shane fell on top of her, and she gasped for air as all the breath was driven out of her. They squirmed around and separated. Michael pulled Eve to her feet.

  “I know this place,” Claire said. “This is where Myrnin—”

  Myrnin stepped through the portal and slammed it shut, just as Amelie had done not so long ago. “We won’t come back here,” he said. “Out. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

  He led the way, long black coat flapping, and Claire had to dig deep to keep up, even with Shane helping her. When he slowed down and started to pick her up, she swatted at him breathlessly. “No, I’ll make it!”

  He didn’t look so sure.

  At the end of the stone hallway, they took a left, heading down the dark, paneled hall that Claire remembered, but they passed up the door she remembered as Myrnin’s cell, where he’d been chained.

  He didn’t even slow down.

  “Where are we going?” Eve gasped. “Man, I wish I’d worn different shoes—”

  She cut herself off as Myrnin stopped at the end of the hallway. There was a massive wooden door there, medieval style with thick, hand-hammered iron bands, and the Founder’s Symbol etched into the old wood.

  He hadn’t even broken a sweat. Of course. Claire windmilled her arms as she stumbled to a halt, and braced herself against
the wall, chest heaving.

  “Shouldn’t we be armed?” Eve asked. “I mean, for a rescue mission, generally people go armed. I’m just pointing that out.”

  “I don’t like this,” Shane said.

  Myrnin didn’t move his gaze away from Claire. He reached out and took her hand in his. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “I will if you take your meds,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I have my reasons, little one. Please. I must have your word.”