He handed the device over to Jason, who stuck it up on the dashboard, angled so he could see the colored road-map display. “Nice,” he said. “Hey, if you could unlock the shotgun, that would be good, too.”
“No,” Oliver said flatly. “The last thing I trust you with is a firearm. Just drive.”
Claire was having trouble focusing, she realized. “You gave Eve a phone?”
“I put it in her pocket,” Oliver said. “Unless they search her again, I doubt they’ll find it. There were plenty of distractions.”
“What about Shane? Is he okay?”
“I don’t know.” Oliver kept staring at Michael. “Was he?”
“I got one of his hands free,” Michael said. “I could have gotten them both out. You just had to give me one more—”
“One more second and you’d have been pulled to pieces, which would have done me no good at all,” Oliver said. “Patience and Jacob were stepping aside. They know a lost cause when they see one, and you couldn’t have gotten Eve and Shane both out in any case. It’s better to leave them together, where they can protect each other. Now, are you going to behave yourself? Or do I need to prove to you, again, who is master here?”
Michael didn’t answer, but he dropped his hands to his sides.
Oliver let him go. “How do you feel?”
Michael let out a brittle little laugh. “What, you’re concerned?” He looked bad, Claire realized, even in the dim light bouncing in from Jason’s side of the front window. He was burned red, his face swollen.
“Not really,” Oliver said. “I’m concerned you’ll be a liability. Which is almost certainly going to be the case, if you continue to act like some lovesick boy instead of a thinking man. Are we understood? If you want to save your fragile little friends, you must be a great deal smarter about when you risk your own safety.”
It was hard to tell what the expression on Michael’s swollen face was, but there was no mistaking the flash of hate in his eyes. Claire swallowed, hard. Michael took a deep breath and turned toward her. “You’re okay?” he asked, and stripped off his gloves. His hands were pale, but just above the line where the gloves had been were vivid black and red burns. He gently touched her face, turning it to one side, then the other. “You’re going to have some action-star bruises, tough girl.” But she knew what he was looking for, really.
“No fang marks,” she said. “Well, none that weren’t already there, from before, you know. Look, not even any needle marks.”
“Needle marks?”
“Patience and Jacob, they insisted that all blood get drawn with a needle. I think they were trying to sort of ration it out.”
“They were trying to keep you alive,” Oliver said, turning back to face the front. “That many vampires in an enclosed space, a feeding frenzy would be inevitable. None of you would have survived it, especially not restrained as you were.”
As Eve and Shane still were. Claire felt sick. She also felt horribly, horribly guilty. “Why me?” she asked. “Why save me, not Eve? Or Shane?”
“You were the closest,” Michael said. “And—you’re the youngest. Eve and Shane would both kick my ass if I tried to save them ahead of you.” But he looked sickly guilty, too, and she knew he was thinking, just as she was, of Eve. “I heard her screaming for me. That was why we—why we decided to go in.”
“It was that or listen to his yowling the rest of the drive,” Oliver said. “I’ve never been in love, and more and more, I’m glad I haven’t. It seems to make you foolish, as well as very tiresome.”
Jason snorted; it might have been a choked laugh. “Yeah, you got that right.”
Oliver smacked Jason in the back of the head. “I don’t need your agreement. Drive.”
Claire tried to pull her head back together. “Wh-what are we going to do?” she asked. “Just follow them? What if—what if something happens on the bus? Are we just going to sit here?”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “Because going back now, we’ve lost the element of surprise, and Morley will be ready for us. In fact, he may try to engineer a provocation, to force us to do something stupid. We follow them until they stop. Once they’re off the bus, we have a much better chance.”
Jason said, “What about, you know, ramming the bus? Out here in the sun, they can’t really chase us down on foot. Not for long.”
“Ramming a bus will simply yield us a car that will no longer drive, and will not ensure the bus is disabled,” Oliver said. “It would take something larger. Much larger. In any case, it’s not prudent. Too much risk of damage to your delicate little humans on board.”
“But—”
“Oh, just shut up and follow,” Oliver snapped. “I am tired of debate. There will be no more.”
Claire knew a door slamming when she heard it. She twisted around a little and pulled up the pant leg over her left ankle. It was puffy and starting to bruise. Yep. That was sprained. “Do we have any first aid stuff in here?”
Oliver dug out a box and passed it through the torn grate on Michael’s side. She found some of that rubberized wrapping bandage stuff, and tried to do it herself, but Michael took it away from her, removed her shoe and sock, and wrapped it for her without saying a word.
“Thanks,” she said softly. It felt better, once that was done, although there was still a dull red ache that flared up every time she moved. “Is there anything—”
“I’m healing,” Michael said. He put the medical kit down and let his head fall back against the seat. “Man. This has not been the trip I planned.”
“Really?” Oliver’s voice was dry. “It’s exactly what I expected. Sadly.”
9
They drove for what seemed like a very long time, but according to the clock built into the cruiser’s dashboard, it was only a couple of hours. The bus kept taking crazy back-road turns, as if they were searching for something. Finally, though, the dot stopped moving. “What is that?” Jason asked, and tapped the screen. It magnified. “Is that a town?” Claire couldn’t see through the grate, other than a dot on a map. “It’s tiny, if it is. Smaller than that last place where you got yourselves jacked.”
“No other roads in,” Oliver said, looking at the display. “They’ll see us coming in any case. The land is as flat as a griddle. And just as hot.”
“Yeah, who ever decided to locate Vampireville in Texas, anyway? Whose good idea was that?” Jason asked.
“Amelie’s,” Oliver said. “And none of your business why she chose it. It’ll do us no good to wait until dark—they will only have sharper senses with which to detect us. Better to strike in the day, if we can. Unfortunately, my army consists of one unreliable criminal, one girl with a disability, and one incredibly foolish young vampire with a tanning issue. I am not confident.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Claire said. “We have to go. Eve and Shane—”
“I am more concerned with what Morley is doing,” Oliver interrupted. “He’s defying Amelie. Defying me. I can’t allow that to go unanswered.”
It boiled down to the same thing, luckily—they didn’t have a choice, and Oliver had to help. He thought about it in silence for a few minutes as the cruiser continued on its path to the dot on the map, then nodded sharply. “All right,” he said. “We go in. Now. But when we do, you must be fast, and you must be ruthless. Michael, since you’re so hell-bent on saving the girl and your friend, that will be your mission. Claire, Jason, you will stay with me. I may require someone to act as distraction.”
“He means bait,” Michael said. “You’re not using Claire.”
“She’s a wounded deer,” Oliver said. “She’s perfect.”
“You’re not using Claire. And that’s not optional. I don’t care if you think you’re the boss; you’re not using her.” Michael sounded utterly, completely dedicated to that proposition, and Oliver, after a second’s frozen silence, nodded.
“Very well. I’ll use the criminal. He’s serviceable, I suppose.”
Jason cleared his throat. “Do I get the shotgun if you’re staking me out for bait?”