Rachel Caine - [The Morganville Vampires 05]

by Lord of Misrule (lit)

  She stepped forward and wrapped her hands around his. She felt tremors race through him, and Shane sighed, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against the bars. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Shutting up now.”

  She pressed her forehead against his, and then her lips, and it was hot and sweet and desperate, and the feelings that exploded inside her made her shake in reaction. Shane let go of the bars and reached through to run his fingers through her soft, short hair, and the kiss deepened, darkened, took on a touch of yearning that made Claire’s heart pound.

  When their lips finally parted, they didn’t pull away from each other. Claire threaded her arms through the bars and around his neck, and his hands moved down to her waist.

  “I’m really sick of kissing you through bars,” Shane said. “I’m all for restraint, but self-restraint is so much more fun.”

  Claire had almost forgotten that Myrnin was still there, so his soft chuckle made her flinch. “There speaks a young man with little experience,” he said, yawned, and draped himself over a bench on the far side of the wall. He propped his chin up on the heel of one hand. “Enjoy that ignorance while you can.”

  Shane held on to her, and his dark eyes stared into hers. Ignore him, they seemed to say. Stay with me.

  She did.

  “I’m trying to get you out,” she whispered. “I can’t stand knowing you’re in here with him.”

  Shane’s eyebrows rose just a little. “Dad? Yeah, well . . . He’s okay.”

  And that, Claire realized, was what she was afraid of—that Shane had forgiven his father for all his crazy stunts. That the Collins boys were together again, united in their hatred of Morganville.

  Shane read it in her face. “Not like that,” he said, and shook his head. “We had to either get along in here, or kill each other. We decided to get along, that’s all.”

  “Yeah,” said a deep, scratchy voice from the other bunk. “It’s been one big, sloppy bucket of joy, getting to know my son.”

  “Shut up, Frank,” Shane said.

  “That any way to talk to your old man?”

  “This is the two of you getting along?” Claire whispered.

  “You see any bruises?”

  “Good point.” This was not how she’d imagined this moment to go, except for the kissing. Then again, the kissing was better than her imagination. “Shane—”

  “Shh.” He kissed her forehead. “How’s Michael?” She didn’t want to talk about Michael, so she just shook her head. Shane swallowed hard. “He’s not . . . dead?”

  “Define dead around here,” Claire muttered. “No, he’s okay. He’s just, you know.”

  “Bishop’s, yeah.” He knew. “What about Eve?”

  “She’s working. I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.” Eve, like everyone else in Morganville, treated Claire like the enemy these days, and Claire honestly couldn’t blame her. Not that she was about to load Shane up with that knowledge, though. “She’s busted up about Michael.”

  “No doubt,” Shane said softly. He seemed to hesitate for a heartbeat. “Have you heard anything about us? What Bishop has planned?”

  Claire shook her head. Even if she knew—and she didn’t, in detail—she wouldn’t have told him. “Let’s not talk about it. Shane, I’ve missed you so much.”

  He kissed her again, and the world melted into a wonderful spinning blend of heat and bells, and it was only when she finally, regretfully pulled back that she heard Myrnin’s mocking, steady clapping.

  “Love conquers all,” he said. “How quaint.”

  Claire turned on him, feeling fury erupt like a volcano in her guts. “Shut up, Myrnin!”

  He didn’t even bother to glance at her, just leaned back against the wall and smiled. “You want to know what he’s got planned for you, Shane? Do you really?”

  “Myrnin, don’t!”

  Shane reached through the bars and grabbed Claire’s shoulders, turning her back to face him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “This matters, right now. Claire, we’re going to get out of this. We’re going to live through it. Both of us.”

  “Both of us,” she repeated. “We’re going to live.”

  Myrnin’s cold hand closed around her wrist, and he dragged her away from the bars. The last thing she let go of was Shane’s hand.

  “Hey!” Shane yelled as Claire fought, lost, and was pulled through the door. “Claire! We’re going to live!”

  Myrnin slammed the door, rolled his eyes, and said, “Theatrical, isn’t he? Come on, girl. We have work to do.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  Myrnin didn’t give her a choice; he half dragged, half marched her away from the first vampire guard, then the second, and then pulled her into an empty, quiet room off the long hallway. He shut the door with a wicked boom and whirled to face her.

  Claire grabbed the first thing she saw—it happened to be a heavy candlestick—and swung it at his head. He ducked, rushed in, and effortlessly took it away from her. “Girl. Claire!” He shook her into stillness. His eyes were wide and very dark. Not at all crazy. “If you want the boy to live, you’ll stop fighting me. It’s not productive.”

  “Why should I help Bishop?” she said, and twisted to throw him off. It was like trying to throw off a granite statue.

  “Who says you would be?” Myrnin asked, very reasonably. “Who says I work for him?”

  She wouldn’t have believed him, not for a second, except that a section of the wall opened, there was a flash of white-hot light, and a woman stepped through, followed by a long line of people.

  Amelie, though she didn’t look anything like the perfect white queen whom Claire had always seen. Amelie had on black pants, a black zip-up hoodie, and running shoes.

  And behind her was the frickin’ vampire army. Led by Oliver, all in black, looking scarier than Claire could remember having ever seen him—he usually at least tried to look nondangerous, but today he obviously didn’t care.

  He crossed his arms and looked at Myrnin and Claire as if they were something slimy on his coffee-shop floor.

  “Myrnin,” Amelie said, and nodded graciously. He nodded back, as though they were passing on the street. As if it were a normal day. “What’s the girl done?”

  Myrnin looked at Claire, grinned, and let go of her.

  “Oh, she’s been quite difficult,” he said, “which helped convince Bishop that I am, indeed, his creature. But I think it’s best if you leave us behind now. We have more work to do here, work that can’t be done in hiding.”

  Claire opened her mouth, and then closed it without having thought of a single coherent question to ask. Oliver dismissed both of them with a shake of his head and signaled for his vampire shock troops to fan out around the room on either side of the door to the hallway.

  “Can you protect her, Myrnin?” Amelie asked, and her pale gray eyes bored into his, colder than marble. “I will hold you to your answer.”

  “With my last breath,” he promised, and clasped his hand dramatically to his ragged frock coat. “Oh, wait. That doesn’t mean much, does it? Sorry. I mean, yes. Of course. With what’s left of my life.”

  “I’m not joking, jester.”

  “And I’m not laughing, my lady.”

  Claire’s head was spinning. She looked from Myrnin to Amelie to Oliver, and finally thought of a decent question to ask. “Why are you here?”

  “They’re here to rescue your boyfriend,” Myrnin said. “Happy birthday, my dear.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  In addition to the Morganville Vampires series, Rachel Caine is the author of the popular Weather Warden series, which includes Ill Wind, Heat Stroke, Chill Factor, Windfall, Firestorm, Thin Air, and Gale Force. Rachel and her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad, live in Texas with their iguanas, Popeye and Darwin; a mali uromastyx named (appropriately) O’Malley; and a leopard tortoise named Shelley (for the poet, of course).

  Please visit her Web site at www.rachelcaine.com an
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