He didn’t hurt them. He didn’t have to.
Morley did that way-too-fast vampire thing and was suddenly at the weapons rack ahead of Mrs. Grant, baring his fangs and grinning. He made a little finger-wagging gesture, and she skidded to a stop and backed off, breathing fast. Scared to death, of course, and Claire didn’t blame her.
Michael, meanwhile, was already at Eve’s side. She threw her arms around his neck. “How did you get out?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shirt. He rubbed her back gently and rested his chin against her hair.
“The building across the way casts a pretty big shadow,” he said. “We bailed as soon as we could. From there it wasn’t hard. They thought they had everybody they needed to worry about.”
“You didn’t—”
“No,” Michael said. “We didn’t hurt anybody. Patience made sure of that.”
The townspeople of Blacke—all twenty or thirty of them—were gathering together in a tight block now, with their kids safely in the center. They looked about to make their last stand. Not one of them, Claire realized, thought they were going to live through this.
“Hey,” she said to Mrs. Grant. “Please. Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Morley laughed. “We’re not?”
“No, we’re not,” Oliver said, and piled the weapons on the table. “Shane, get the silver.”
“Can I keep some?”
Oliver smiled grimly. “If it makes you happy.”
“You have no idea.”
“Distribute the chains to everyone else. Make sure they’re wearing silver at their necks and wrists. It’ll help protect them, should some of us, Morley, suffer a lapse of character.” He checked each shotgun for shells, and tossed them to specific individual vampires, who snatched them out of the air with lazy accuracy. “Right. I’m afraid Mrs. Grant is quite right; we can’t allow this infection—and it is an infection—to spread any farther than it has already. We must hunt down and dose everyone who’s contracted the disease, or destroy them. That’s as much for our kind as yours, you see.”
“Dose them?” Mrs. Grant blurted. “What are you—”
Patience Goldman opened up a small black satchel—her father’s doctor bag, Claire realized—and inside were dozens of vials of liquid, as well as some bottles of red crystals. Claire herself had helped develop those; the liquid contained a cure for the bloodborne disease that Bishop had spread here, or at least she hoped it did. The crystals would help restore people’s sanity, temporarily. It worked best doing the crystals, then giving the shot. It had for the far-gone vampires in Morganville.
“They can be saved,” Oliver said. “Your family and friends can be restored to sanity, we believe. But they can’t be restored to human. You understand? What’s done is done on that score. But you can have them back, if you can adjust to that small difference.”
“This is insane,” one of the guards said, a little wildly. His crossbow was now in the hands of one of Morley’s vampires, a little guy with a lined, twisted face and a limp. “We have to fight! Lillian—”
“We’re not here to fight you,” Oliver said. “And we’re not here to save you. I am here to stop the spread of this infection by any means necessary, which, as I see it, aligns with your goals. My other friends,” he said, putting some irony into that last word, “are just passing through your fine town. None of us have any reason to want to harm you.”
“You’re vampires,” Mrs. Grant said blankly.
“Well, obviously. Yes.” Oliver snapped another fully loaded shotgun closed and tossed it through the air.
To Mrs. Grant.
“Any questions?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and looked around. There were a lot of vampires—just about as many as there were humans. And none of them were making threatening moves. Shane walked around, handing out silver chairs to people, smiling his best I’m-a-nice-guy smile. Even Jason seemed to be doing his best to be non-threatening, which wasn’t exactly easy for him.
“Then let’s sit down,” Oliver said, and pulled out a chair at the table. “I, for one, have had a very hard day.”
12
Night fell as tensions gradually eased; the people of Blacke never quite got comfortable, but they loosened up enough to put on some stew in the library’s small kitchen, which had a miniature stove that ran on gas. Apparently, the gas was still flowing, even though the electricity was out. As the light faded outside the windows, Mrs. Grant and three of her burly cowboy-hatted guards—Claire guessed the cowboy hats were a kind of uniform—made the rounds to barricade the doors and windows.
Morley joined them, and after a long, uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Grant decided to ignore his presence. The guards didn’t. Their knuckles were white on their weapons.
“May I assist?” he asked, and put his hands behind his back. “I promise not to eat anyone.”
“Very funny,” Mrs. Grant said. Morley gave her a grave look.
“I wasn’t joking, dear lady,” he said. “I do promise. And I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep. You should feel quite secure.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said. “You’re just—”
“Too overwhelmingly dashing and attractive?” Morley grinned. “A common problem women face with me. It’ll pass. You seem like the no-nonsense sort. I like that.”
Claire smiled at the look on Mrs. Grant’s face, reflected in the white LED light of the lantern she was holding. “You are really—odd,” the older woman said, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was even having the conversation.
Morley put his hand over his heart and bowed from the waist, a gesture that somehow reminded Claire of Myrnin. It reminded her she missed him, too, which was just wrong. She should not be missing Morganville, or anyone in it. Especially not the crazy boss vampire who’d put fang marks in her neck that would never, ever go away. She was doomed to high-necked shirts because of him.
But she did miss him. She even missed Amelie’s dry, cool sense of power and stability. She wondered if this was a kind of vacation for Amelie, too, not worrying about Oliver, or Claire, or Eve, or any of them.
Probably. She couldn’t imagine Amelie was losing any sleep over them—presuming she slept, which Claire really wasn’t sure was the case, anyway.
“Hey.” Shane’s hip nudged her chair, and he bent over, putting his mouth very close to her ear. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Stop.”
“Stop thinking?”
“You’re doing way too much of it. It’ll make you go blind.”
She laughed and turned her face toward his. “I think you’re thinking of something else.”
“I’m definitely thinking of something else,” he said, and bent over to kiss her. It was a long, sweet, slow kiss, full of gentle strokes of his tongue over her lips, which parted for him even though she was sure she hadn’t exactly told them to do that. Warmth swept over her, making her oddly shivery, and she grabbed the neck of his shirt when he tried to pull away and kissed him some more.
When she let go, neither of them moved far. Shane sat down in the chair next to her, but scooted it over and leaned in so they were as close together as possible. There weren’t many lights here in the corner, where Claire had retreated to eat her cup of stew and think, and it felt wildly romantic sitting together by candlelight. Shane’s skin looked golden in the glow, his eyes dark, with only a hint of shimmering amber when the light hit them just right. His chin was a little dark and rough, and she felt it with her palm, then smiled.
“You need a shave,” she said.
“I thought you liked me scruffy.”
“Scruffy is for good dogs and bad rockers.”
“Oh yeah? And which am I, again?” He was so close to her, and in this little bubble of candlelight it felt as if everything happening around them, all the craziness, all the bad things, was taking place a world away. There was something about Shane that just made it all okay, for as long as she was with him, for as long as he was looking at her with that wonderful, fascinated glow in his eyes.