Kiss of Death

10

Claire yelped, backed up, and got the stake level just in time to bury it in his chest. His momentum drove him onto the silver-coated wood, and pushed her into the wall behind her with a bruising slam. Her head hit the bricks, and she felt a hot yellow burst of pain, but she was more concerned by his bloody red eyes, crazy with rage, and those sharp, sharp fangs....

Then he slumped against her; she shoved, and he toppled off her and down to the floor with a crash, hands thumping out to either side. Man, he really stank, as if he hadn’t bathed or washed his clothes in a year. And he smelled like old blood, which was sick.

His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but Claire knew he wasn’t dead—not yet. The silver in the stake was hurting him, and the stake itself was keeping him immobilized for now. Whether or not the silver would kill him was a question of how old he was, but somehow she didn’t think he was one of the ancient ones, like Amelie and Oliver and Morley. He was more like some bully who’d turned vamp a few years back, if that.

The silver was burning him. She saw black around the wound now.

He tried to kill me. She swallowed hard, her hand tentatively touching the stake, then dropping away. I should let him die.

Except she really needed that stake. Without it, she was unarmed. And she knew—because Michael had told her—that getting staked was painful. Getting staked with silver was agony.

Claire reached for the stake to pull it out. She’d just grabbed hold when a voice behind her said, in a rich, rolling English accent, “You don’t want to be doing that.”

Morley. He must have come down the stairs while she was otherwise occupied. He was bloody, clothes ripped even worse than they had been before, and he had open scratches across his pale face that were healing even as Claire turned to stare at him.

She tightened her grip on the stake and yanked it free as she rose out of her crouch, turning to fully face him.

Morley sighed. “Do any of you fools actually ever listen? I said don’t do that!”

“He’s hurt,” Claire said. “He’s not getting up any time soon.”

“Wrong,” Morley said. “He’s not getting up at all. But then, he doesn’t really have to.”

She felt something cold brush her aching ankle, then wrap hard around it. The teen vamp had grabbed her and was pulling himself toward her.

Morley reached out, grabbed the stake from her hand, and stabbed the vampire again, with easily three times the strength Claire had used. She heard the crunch as the stake pushed through bones and into the wooden floor beneath.

The boy, no older than Shane, went limp again. His skin started to smolder from the silver.

“You can’t—,” she began, and Morley turned on her, his face hard.

“It might have dawned on you by now that I can,” he snapped. “It might also have occurred to you that this boy is not one of my little flock. Doesn’t that make you at all alarmed, Claire?”

“I—”

“It should,” he said, “because apart from those vampires gathered in Morganville, there shouldn’t be more. Amelie, whatever you think of her, is a thorough sort. Those who didn’t agree to participate in her social experiment in Morganville were put down. There are no vampires still walking that I don’t know.” He nudged the boy with one worn boot. “But I don’t know him, or his pack of jackals who just ate my supplies!”

“Pack?” Claire looked up, startled, at another thump and crash from upstairs. Morley ignored her and dashed for the stairs, racing in a blur. There was screaming up there. “Hey, wait! Ate your—supplies—you don’t mean—”

Morley got to the top of the stairs and disappeared before she could manage another word. “My friends?” she finished lamely, and then blinked, because two seconds after Morley had crossed out of sight, Michael emerged from the shadows up there, with Shane beside him.

Michael was carrying Eve, who still seemed unconscious.

They came down the stairs fast, and Claire didn’t like the tense worry she saw on Michael’s face—or on Shane’s. “We have to go,” Michael said. “Now. Right now.”

“What about Oliver? And Jason?”

“No time,” Michael said. “Move it, Claire.”

“My stake—”

“I’ll make you a shiny new one,” Shane promised. He sounded short of breath, and he grabbed her hand and towed her at a fast limp after Michael, who was heading down the hall for the broken window where they’d entered. “You all right?”

“Sure,” she said, and controlled a wince as she came down wrong, again, on her ankle. But in the great scheme of things, yeah, she was all right—more all right than the people upstairs, from what Morley had said. “What is going on up there?”

“Morley’s having a very bad day,” Michael said. “Tell you later. Right now, we need to get out of here before—”

“Too late,” Shane said, in a flat, quiet voice, and the four of them stopped in the middle of the hall as two vampires glided out of the shadows at either end, blocking them in. One was a shuffling, twisted old man with crazy eyes and drifting white hair. The other was a young man, wearing a football jersey—teammate of the vamp Claire had already staked, she guessed. This one was broader than Shane, and taller. Like the old man, he looked ... weird; crazy, even for a vampire.

“Give,” the old man said in a rusty, strange voice. “Give.”

“Holy crap, that’s creepy,” Shane said. “Okay, plans? Anybody?”

“In here.” Michael slammed his foot against the door on the opposite side of the hall and blew it back on the hinges with a splintering crash. Shane hustled Claire ahead of him into the room, and Michael jumped in after, slamming the door in the faces of the two vampires and shoving his back against it. “Barricade!”

“On it!” Shane said, and nodded for Claire to grab the other end of a heavy wooden desk, which they slid across the floor to block the door as Michael, with Eve in his arms, jumped effortlessly up onto the desk’s top and then lightly down as it slid past. “Think that’ll hold?”

“Hell no,” Michael said. “Did you see that guy?” Eve stirred in his arms, murmuring, and he looked down at her, his face going still with concern. As she restlessly turned her head, Claire saw a matted spot in her hair—blood, almost invisible against the black.

“What happened?” Claire blurted.

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

“She got on Morley’s bad side,” Shane said. “He backhanded her into a wall. She hit her head on the corner. I thought—” He went quiet for a second. “Scared the shit out of me. But she’s okay, right?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said.

“Well, use your superpowers or something!”

“I’m a vampire, idiot. I don’t have X-ray vision.”

“Some supernatural monster you are,” Shane said. “Remind me to trade you in for a werewolf, bro. Probably be more useful right now.”

Claire ignored the two of them and moved to the other side of the room. There was a window, but as she unlocked it and threw up the sash—which didn’t want to move, and was caked with dust and old, dead bugs—she discovered that the grime had disguised a thick set of iron bars on the other side. “Michael,” she said, “can you break these?”

“Maybe. Here.” Michael handed Eve over to Shane, who balanced her with a lot more difficulty. He looked at the bars, which were in full, blazing sunlight. “That—could be a problem.”

He was still wearing his leather coat, but his gloves were ripped—it looked as if somebody had shredded them with claws. Pale strips of skin showed through on the backs of his hands.

Shane, who was leaning against the desk that blocked the door, was almost knocked over as the vampires on the other side slammed into the barrier, sliding the desk nearly a foot before Shane dug in his feet and shoved back. The desk slid toward the door, inch by slow inch, until he’d jammed it hard against the old vampire’s grabbing hands caught in the doorway. “Decide quick!” he yelled. “We’re running out of time!”

Michael took a deep breath, grabbed one of the ancient, dusty drapes on the side of the window, and yanked it down. He wrapped it over both hands, then grabbed the bars. Even then, the sleeves on his coat rode up, and Claire saw the strips of reddened skin, already burned from before, start to smoke and turn black. Michael shook with effort, but the sun was too much for him. He let go of the bars and stumbled backward, panting, eyes gone red and wild. “Dammit!” he yelled, and tried kicking the bars. That worked better; his booted feet and jeans protected him better, and the first kick landed solidly, bending the bars and rattling the bolts.

He didn’t have time for another one, because the vampires on the other side of the door hit it again, sliding the desk halfway into the room and sending Shane stumbling into Claire. Michael whirled in time to face the first vamp in, which was the younger one in the ragged football jersey.

Michael was fast, but his multiple exposures to the sun had slowed him down, and the other vamp hit first and hard in a blocking tackle, and Michael was thrown all the way into the back wall. He shook it off and rolled back to his feet just as the bloodsucking jock reached out for Claire.

Michael wrapped a fist in the back of the boy’s jersey and yanked him off his feet, throwing him down with a bang flat on his back. He planted a knee on the guy’s chest, holding him down, but that wasn’t a permanent solution, and as Claire watched, the other vampire, the twisted old man, shuffled into the room, grinning with one side of his mouth. He looked even more dead than most vampires, and there was something familiar about the disorganized way he was moving, something—

She didn’t have time to think about it, because the old man jumped at them like some creepy hunting spider, hands outstretched and hooked into claws. Shane dived one way, burdened by Eve; Claire dived the other. That put Shane and Eve closer to the door, and with a tormented look back, Shane ducked out.

“Claire, go!” Michael said. “Run!”

“I can’t run,” she said, very reasonably. Hobbling wasn’t really an option; either one of these vamps could take her down in seconds. One slow, sliding step at a time, she backed away from the approaching old vampire, heading for the window.

He didn’t seem to get her plan until he’d followed her into the sunlight and begun to burn. Even then, it seemed to take a few seconds to really sink in that he was in trouble. He kept coming in that awkward crab walk even as his clay white skin turned pink, then red, then began to smoke.

Then, finally, he howled and ducked away into the shadows.

Claire, pressed up against the windowsill and bathed by the hot sun, breathed a sigh of relief. Briefly.

“Smart,” Michael said. He stayed where he was, holding Vamp Boy down, and watching the older vampire shuffle around and stalk Claire. “Stay where you are. He may try to grab you and pull you out of the sun. If I let this one go—”

“I know,” Claire said. “I’ve got it.” She didn’t, really, but what choice did she have? She looked around frantically for something, anything, to use, and blinked. “Can you throw that over here?” she asked, and pointed. Michael looked around and picked up something off the floor, frowning.

“This?”

“Throw it!”

He did, and Claire snatched it out of the air just as the older vampire made his run at her, howling.

Claire buried the pencil in his chest. She got lucky, sliding it between his ribs just as Myrnin had taught her to do in his occasional, completely random self-defense classes, and the older vamp’s eyes went wide and he fell at her feet, in the sun. Claire rolled him out of the way, but she left the pencil in his chest.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Michael said, and shook his head. “That is just embarrassing.”

“Have you noticed something about them?” Claire asked, shaking now that the surge of adrenaline was passing. The vampire Michael was leaning on swiped at him, but Michael easily avoided the blow.

“These guys? They’re not too smart.”

“They’re sick,” she said. “I recognize the way the older one moved. Notice that they’re not really talking? They can’t. They’ve been broken down to basic levels. Hunt and kill. Like the worst-off vampires in Morganville when I got there.”

Michael clearly hadn’t thought of that. His whole body language changed, and for a second Claire thought he was going to get up and move away from the other vampire, but sense won out over fear, and he stayed put. Michael had never gotten sick from the disease the rest of the vampires had carried; as the youngest, he’d never had the chance. But he’d seen what it had done to some of the others in Morganville. He’d seen the creatures they’d become, confined for their own protection in cells in an isolated prison.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had the shot, Michael. I don’t think you can get it now.”

She hoped that was true, anyway. If this was some new strain of the disease, then that was worse. Lots worse, especially if—as she suspected, from the condition of these two vampires, and the one she’d staked in the hall—they were actually getting sicker a lot faster than the typical Morganville vampire had.

Shane came pelting into the room, almost tripped over the pencil-staked vampire, and looked around, lost. “Uh—what happened?”

“Where’s Eve?”

“I left her next door,” he said. “She’s okay.”

“You left her?” Michael snapped. “Oh, you’d better tell me you didn’t just say that.”

“She’s fine, Mike. She’s awake, kind of. I left her with a letter opener, hiding under a desk. She’s safer than any of us right now.” Shane looked down at the staked vamp at his feet. “Claire?”

“Yes?”

“You staked a vampire with a number two pencil.”

“I didn’t actually check the number.”

“Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?”

She tried to smile, but her heart was fluttering in her chest now, and not in a good way. “Compliments later. We really need to get out of here and get to the car. Any ideas?”

“Find another pencil and I’ll pin this one down, too,” Michael said.

“You know how weird that sounds, right?” Shane said. “Right, never mind. Number two pencil, coming up. Why do I feel like we’re taking a test?”

“Claire.” Michael looked past Shane, at her. “Go to Eve. Make sure she’s okay.”

Claire nodded and hobbled out the door, across the hall. The door was shut but not locked, and she pushed it open ...

Only to have to duck an awkward lunge from Eve, who was standing up, clinging to a chair and holding a glittering silver letter opener in one deathly tight-gripped hand. Eve yelped and opened her fingers to drop the knife when she saw what she’d almost done, and fell into Claire’s arms with a sob of relief. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Eve whispered, and hugged her with feverish, shaking strength. “God, so sorry. I thought you were one of the creeps.”

“Not today,” Claire said, and winced at the blood trickling down the side of Eve’s face. “That must hurt.”

“Not so much now.” Eve’s eyes looked kind of vague and unfocused, but she was staying on her feet. That had to be a good sign. “I thought—I thought I saw Michael. But then Shane was here, and—”

“Michael’s here,” Claire said. “He was carrying you, but he had to fight. He’s coming, Eve. I told you he would.”

Eve squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing deep. “Okay,” she said then, and her voice sounded stronger. “Okay. We’ll be okay.”

From the other room, Claire heard the sound of metal bending, and then a loud clang. “Yo!” It was Shane’s voice, ringing off stone and wood. “Girls, the party’s over. We are leaving!”

“Come on,” Claire said, and put her arm under Eve’s shoulders to keep her upright. “Time to go.”

“Where’s Jason?” Eve almost sounded in focus now, and on just the wrong topic. “We have to find him! ”

“He’s with Oliver,” Claire said. “We’ll find him. First, we have to make sure we stay alive, okay? Very important.”

The two of them staggered together across the hall into the room where two vampires were lying on the floor, pinned by pencils, and Michael and Shane were standing at the window. The bars were broken out. Michael was sensibly off to the side, away from the sun, and he’d draped one of the thick, dusty curtains over his shoulders. Claire supposed he was going to use it to cover his head.

But neither he nor Shane was moving.

“What?” Claire asked, and as she came to the window and looked out, she realized what the problem was.

The police car was on fire.

And so was the bus, with big, crackling, very public flames.

And nobody, nobody had come out to gawk. No police had come running. Not even the volunteer fire department.

Blacke was a dead town—literally.

“We are screwed,” Shane said, very matter-of-factly. “Plan B?”

“There isn’t one,” Michael said.

“You know, I kind of saw that one coming,” Eve said. “Even with a concussion.”

They stood there for a moment, watching the car and bus burn, and for a few seconds nobody said anything. Then Michael said, “Morley didn’t do that. Morley isn’t that stupid.”

“It damn sure wasn’t Oliver,” Shane added. “So what the hell is going on around here?”

“You should tell us. You were riding with Morley; we just got here.”

“Yeah, funny thing, getting tied up and hustled around by hungry vampires made me not notice the little things. All I know is that we got into the building, Morley was making some speech, and next thing I knew, one of Morley’s crew was yelling that we were being attacked. I grabbed Eve and tried to get her under cover, but she got clocked by Morley when she got between him and some guy he was fighting. She hit her head.” Shane paused and glanced at Michael. “What’s your excuse?”

“I lost track a while ago,” Michael said. “Right about the time Oliver detoured us into Crazytown for no good reason. Unless this is what he was looking for all along.”

“What, a town full of sick vampires?” When Claire said it, suddenly it made sense. “He was. He knew they were here. Somewhere, anyway. He was looking for them!”

“He thought they were in Durram,” Michael agreed. “That’s why he went off in the middle of the night searching. But if they ever were there, they moved on, to here. Smaller town. Easier to control, before they got too sick to care.”

“But these dudes are not exactly historical,” Shane said, and nodded toward the kid in the football jersey. “That’s not some vintage outfit he’s wearing; he can’t have been vamped more than a few months ago, a year at the most. So how did he—”

“Bishop!” Claire interrupted. “Bishop was looking for Amelie. And he was making new vampires all the time, just making them and leaving them.” She shuddered. “He must have come through here, or someplace close.” Bishop was Amelie’s father—both physically, and in a vampire sense, apparently. And in neither sense was he going to win a Father of the Year award. Or get a humanitarian plaque, either. He’d snacked on necks, and this was what he’d left behind him.

Scary, and disgusting.

“If Oliver was looking for them, he must have some kind of plan,” Eve said. She was leaning against the wall now, holding one hand to her must-be-aching head, and she still looked kind of vague and unfocused. “Find him. He’ll know what to do.”

“He might have had a plan, but that was before Morley and his merry bunch of idiots crashed into it,” Shane said. “Now we’re in the middle of a three-sided vampire war. Which would be an awesome video game, but I’m really not interested in playing for real. I like my reset buttons.”

“Then we have to find another car,” Michael said. “One that runs.”

“No, man, I have to find another car,” Shane said. “And black out the windows. And get it back here so you don’t combust strolling around town shopping for one. So here’s an idea: You take care of the girls; I’ll get the wheels.”

“Did you just tell me to stay with the girls?” Michael said, and grinned. Shane did, too.

“Yeah,” he said. “In your face, man. How does it feel?”

They tapped fists. Eve sighed. “You are both morons and we’re all going to die, and my head hurts like crazy,” she said. “Can we please just get out of here? Please?”

Michael went to her and put his arms around her, and Claire heard her let out a little, sad sob as she melted against him. “Shhh,” he whispered. “It’s okay, baby.”

“So not,” Eve said, but she’d lost her edge. “And where the hell were you while I was getting dragged along on the party bus, nearly getting fanged?”

“Racing after you,” he said. “Jumping onto the bus? Breaking out windows? Almost rescuing you?”

“Oh yeah,” Eve said. “But I was unconscious for all that part, so I couldn’t really appreciate how brave you were. This is all right, though. Being with you.”

Shane exchanged a look with Claire, made a gagging sound, and got her to laugh. Then he took her hand, held it for a second, then lifted it to his lips. His mouth felt so warm, so soft, that she felt every muscle in her body shiver at the touch. His thumb brushed over the claddagh ring, their secret little promise.

“Wait for me,” he said. “Any requests on the kind of car?”

“Something with armor?” she said. “Oooh, and headrest DVD. Bonus for surround sound.”

“Rocket launchers,” Michael said.

“One hot yellow Hummer with optional mass destruction package, coming up.” Shane squeezed her fingers lightly, one more time, then ducked out the window. Claire watched him drop to the grass, roll to his feet, and take off at an angle through the afternoon glare.

The glare, she realized, was at a lower level than before.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was heading west, fast.

“Nightfall,” she said. Michael stepped up near her, out of range of the sun still flooding the window. “We don’t have too long before it gets dark, right?”

“Right,” he said. “But if we stay here in this building, I think we’re going to have even less time. There are a lot of these... other vampires. And they’re not exactly shy.”

He grabbed the two fallen vampires and dragged them out into the hallway, where he dumped them next to the one still decorated with Claire’s silver stake—that one was definitely dead now, burned by the silver. She tried not to look too closely.

Michael barricaded the doors again and sat Eve down in a somewhat-secure chair, in the corner. “Stay,” he told her. “Rest.” He ripped down the other half of the dusty, thick curtain and wrapped it around Eve; one of those cute romantic gestures that was a little spoiled by her bout of uncontrollable sneezing as a gray cloud floated up around her face.

Claire stayed by the window, staring out. Not that it would help; even if she saw Shane, even if she saw he needed help, what was she going to do? Nothing, because she was human, slow, and had a torn-up ankle on top of all that.

But somehow, it was important that she stand there and watch for him, as though it were some agreement they’d made, and if she didn’t keep it, something bad would happen.

Superstition. Well, I’m standing in some kind of pseudo-Gothic castle thingy with a bunch of vampires fighting in the halls. Maybe superstition just makes sense.

“Did you see Jason?” Eve was asking Michael. “Was he okay?”

Michael acted as if he didn’t hear her. He came to join Claire at the window, although just to the dark side of the sunlight. “Anything?”

“Nothing yet,” she said. “Did you see him? Jason?”

“Not really.”

“That’s not really an answer, is it?”

Michael shot her a look. Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by a thump from overhead—a hard one, followed by what sounded like scratching. Lots of scratching, like very sharp claws. Maybe knives.

Like something was digging down through the floor-boards from the second floor.

“Okay, that’s not a good sound,” Eve said. “Michael?”

He was standing very still, staring upward, his face marble white in the shadows.

Dust filtered down from the ceiling. Pieces of old plaster rained down in flakes, like snow. Claire backed away from the window, away from that sound—all the way back to the heavy desk blocking the door leading into the room.

Suddenly the door shoved against her, as someone outside the room hit the door with a shocking crash and howled. More scraping, this time at the wooden door. Michael lunged forward and slammed the desk back in place and held it there as the door shook under the force of the battering. “Dammit,” he hissed. “Where is he?”

Overhead, something snapped with a dry crack—boards, being broken and peeled away, ripped free, and tossed aside.

They were digging through.

Eve stood up, bracing herself on the wall, and kicked loose the leg of a rickety smaller table lying near her chair. It broke loose with a splintered end, not as sharp as a spear, but not as blunt as a club, either. She gripped it in both hands, dividing her attention between the ceiling, which was now snowing plaster like a blizzard, and Michael, who was struggling to hold the desk in place as a barricade at the door.

We’re going to die here, Claire thought. It came to her with terrifying clarity, as if she’d already seen the future through an open window in time. Eve would be lying there, her eyes wide and empty, and Michael would die trying to protect her. Her own body would be a small, broken mess near the window, where Shane would find it....

No.

The thought of Shane’s finding her, more than just the dying itself, made Claire refuse to accept it. He’d seen enough; suffered enough. Adding this on top of it—no. She wouldn’t do it to him.

“We have to live,” she said out loud. It sounded half crazy. Michael glanced at her, and Eve outright stared.

“Well, duh,” Eve said. “And I’m the one who got clocked today.”

The ceiling gave way with a low groan of wood and a flood of plaster and debris, and three bodies, covered in blood where they weren’t white with plaster dust, dropped through the opening. They looked like monsters, and as the taller one turned to Claire and she caught the glint of fangs, she screamed.

The scream lasted for about a heartbeat, and then recognition flooded in—and relief. “Oliver?” Great. She was relieved to see Oliver. The world was officially topsy-turvy, cats were living with dogs, and life as she knew it was probably over.

Oliver looked ... well, like a monster—like a monster who’d fought his way out of hell, inch by inch, actually, and, weirdly, loved every minute of it. He grinned at Claire, all wickedly pointy fangs, and whirled toward Eve as she lunged at him with the business end of her broken stick. He took it away from her with contemptuous ease and shoved her into Michael, who had checked himself before attacking, but was clearly just as stunned as Claire felt.

“At ease, soldiers,” Oliver said, and it was almost a laugh. Next to him, Morley slapped white dust from his clothes, raising a choking cloud that made Claire’s eyes water as she coughed. “I think we’re still allies. At least for now.”

“Like Russia and England during the Second World War,” Morley agreed, then looked thoughtful. “Or was that the first? So difficult to remember these things. In any case, enemies with a common worse foe. We can kill each other later.”

The third person in the group was Jason, who looked just as bad as the other two, and not nearly as fine with it. He was shaking, visibly shaking, and there were rough bandages wrapped around his left wrist and hand that were soaked through with blood.

Eve finally, belatedly, recognized her brother, and reached out to grab him into a hug. Jason stayed frozen for a moment, then patted her on the back, awkwardly. “I’m okay,” he said. That was a lie, Claire thought, but a brave one. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

“Hit my head,” Eve said.

“Oh, so, no damage, then,” Jason said, which was such a brother thing to say that Claire smiled. “Seriously, that looks bad, Eve.”

“No broken bones. My head hurts, and I feel dizzy. I’ll live. What the hell happened to you?”

“Don’t ask,” Jason said, and stepped away. “Need some help, man?”

Michael had grabbed hold of the desk and shoved it back against the door again, and he was now struggling to keep it in place. “Sure,” he said. Not that Jason’s muscle power was going to work any miracles, Claire thought; he was stringy and strong, but not vamp-strong.

“Let them in,” Morley said, and finished redistributing dust from his clothes to the rest of them with a final slap. “It’s my people. Unless you don’t trust us?”

“Now, why wouldn’t we?” Eve said sweetly, and turned to Michael. “Don’t you dare!”

“You’d rather leave them out there to be torn apart?” Morley asked, without any particular emphasis, as though it didn’t really matter to him one way or the other. “I would have thought someone with so much compassion would be less judgmental.”

“Excuse me, but you tied us to seats. And put needles in our arms. And drank our blood. So no, I’m not really seeing any reason to get all trusty with you!”

Morley shrugged. “Then let them die. I’m sure you’ll have no problem listening to their screams.”

Someone was, in fact, shouting on the other side of the door now, not so much battering on it as knocking. “Michael! Michael, it’s Jacob Goldman! Open the door! They’re coming!”

Michael exchanged a quick look with Claire, then Eve, then Oliver. Oliver nodded briskly.

Michael grabbed the desk and pulled it backward, nearly knocking Jason to the ground in the process. “Hey!” Jason protested. “A little warning next time, man!”

“Shut up.” Michael shoved him back as the door pushed open from the outside, and vampires started flooding into the room.

Morley’s people. They, like Morley, hadn’t come through this unharmed; every one of them, including Jacob and Patience Goldman, looked as if they’d fought for their lives. A few were wounded, and Claire knew from experience that it took a lot to hurt a vampire, even temporarily.

Jacob was cradling his right arm, which was covered in blood. Patience was supporting him from the other side. Even Eve looked a little concerned at the sight of his ice white face and blind-looking eyes. He seemed to be in serious pain.

Patience settled him against the wall and crouched next to him as Morley and Oliver, with Michael’s help, engineered some kind of barrier for the door when the last of Morley’s people were crammed into the small room.

There weren’t nearly so many as before.

“What happened?” Claire asked Patience. The vampire girl looked up at her, and there was a shadow of fear in her face that turned Claire cold inside.

“They wouldn’t stop,” Patience said. “They came for our prisoners. They wouldn’t—we couldn’t make them stop. Even when we destroyed one, two came out of the shadows. It was—we couldn’t stop them.” She looked down at Jacob, who had closed his eyes. He looked dead—more dead than most vamps. “Jacob almost had his arm torn off trying to protect them. But we couldn’t help.”

She sounded shocked, and deeply distressed. Claire put a hand on her shoulder, and Patience shuddered.

“You’re okay,” Claire said. “We’re okay.”

“No, we’re not,” she said. “Not at all. These are not vampires, Claire. They are animals—vicious beasts. And we—we are just as much prey for them as you are.”

“Right,” Morley said, raising his voice over the rising babble of conversation. “Everybody, shut it! Now, we can’t stay here—”

“The bus is burning,” someone said from near the window. Morley seemed to pause, obviously not expecting that, but he moved past it at light speed.

“Then we don’t use the bus, clot-for-brains. We find another way out of this accursed graveyard of a town.”

“In the sunlight?” Jacob asked. His voice was soft and thready with pain. “Not all of us will survive for long, and those who do will suffer. You know that.”

“Your choice—go and burn; stay and be torn apart.” Morley shrugged. “For my part, burns heal. I’m not sure that my disconnected pieces would, and I’d prefer not to find out.”

“Something’s coming,” a voice called from the window. “A truck. A delivery van!”

Claire shoved through the crowd of vampires, ignoring the cold touch of skin and the hisses of annoyance, and managed to get a clear space right in front of the window, where a solid couple of feet were still bathed in sunlight. Eve had already claimed it, but she let Claire squeeze in beside her.

The van was a big yellow thing, some kind of bread truck, with a boxy, windowless back. As Claire watched, it jumped the curb and bounced up onto the lawn, charged forward, and knocked down the leaning iron fence around the Civic Hall. It missed the statue of what’s-his-name, the town’s patron saint, but the vibrations caused the whole thing to wobble uncertainly, and as Claire watched, it toppled over that last couple of inches, and gravity took over, slamming the smug statue’s face into the grass once and for all.

Thankfully, not in the way of the van.

The van reversed, turned, and then backed up fast toward the window. It stopped a few feet away, and Shane hopped down from the driver’s side. He ran to the window and grinned at Eve and Claire.

His grin faded fast as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, and he saw all the vampires in the room. “What—”

“Morley’s people,” Claire said. “I guess we’re all in this together right now.”

“I’m ... not loving that.”

“I know. But we all need to get out of here.”

Shane shook his head, shaggy hair sticking in damp points to his face, but he turned and opened up the back doors of the van. Inside, there wasn’t much space, but there was enough to hold all the vamps—maybe. “I’ll take as many as can fit,” he said. “But seriously, once they’re out of here, all bets are off.”

“Agreed,” Morley said, and stepped forward into the sun. If it bothered him, it was only to make him narrow his eyes a little. He grabbed the frame of the window and, with one hard pull, ripped it right out of the stone and tossed it out into the overgrown grass. “Right, youngest first. Go, now.”

There was a hesitation, until Morley gave a low-decibel growl, and then vampires started stepping up, quickly throwing themselves out into the sunlight and moving fast to the sheltering darkness of the van. In only a few seconds it was just her, Michael, Jason, Eve, Morley, and Oliver, with Shane standing outside the window.

“I said youngest first,” Morley said, glowering at Michael. Michael raised pale eyebrows at him. “Idiot.”

“I stay with my friends.”

“Then it would appear you get to tan with them, as there’s no more room in the back.”

“No,” Oliver said. “Michael goes in the back. You and I ride outside.”

Morley let out a black bark of a laugh. “Outside?”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.” Oliver, without even looking at him, grabbed Michael by the shoulder and almost threw him across the open space to the back of the van. Michael crashed into the small open space left and was pulled inside by Patience Goldman, who looked anxious, almost frightened. Shane slammed the back doors of the truck and ran to the front. “Right. Move it, ladies.”

Jason didn’t wait for girls first; he jumped out and went. Oliver boosted Eve up to the window, and she ran for the cab of the truck, where Jason was already climbing inside. Claire followed, avoiding any help from Oliver, and as she pulled herself up on the truck’s mounting step, she saw Oliver and Morley jump out of the building and flatten themselves on top of the truck, in full sun, arms and legs spread wide for balance. She banged the door shut behind her and squeezed in next to Eve, with Jason on the other side next to Shane.

“We couldn’t have done this boy/girl?” Shane complained, and started up the car. “Back off, freak!” That last was for Jason, who was pushing too close for Shane’s comfort, evidently. Claire tried wiggling closer to the passenger door, but the cab wasn’t made for four, no matter how relatively skinny they might be. And Shane wasn’t small.

“Just drive, smart-ass,” Jason snapped. Shane looked like he was considering hitting him. “Unless you want the two on top baked golden brown.”

“Crap,” Shane spat, and glared at the steering wheel as if it had personally offended him. He put the truck in gear, ground the gears, and got it roaring through the grass. It bumped hard over the curb, sending Claire into the dashboard, and she flailed to regain her balance as the truck slewed back and forth, got traction, and roared off down the street.

“Where the hell are you going?” Jason yelled.

“Your sister gets to talk. You don’t.”

“Fine,” Eve said. “Where the hell are you going, Shane?”

“The library,” he said. “I promised I’d bring the truck back.”

Claire blinked, looking over at him, and Eve, wide-eyed, shook her head.

“You know it’s desperate,” she said. “Shane is going to the library. ”

And in spite of everything, that was actually funny.