“Michael?”
“Don’t stop!”
He fell behind in the dark after only three or four steps, lost to them. Claire heard something like a snarl behind them, and what sounded like a body hitting the ground.
Then came a scream, high and wild.
Up ahead, she saw a flash of what looked like faded pink. There was a leaning metal sign flapping and creaking in the predawn wind, and Claire wasn’t sure, but she thought the rusty letters might have said GARAGE.
It was a square adobe building with some old-fashioned gas pumps off to the side that looked as if they hadn’t worked since Claire’s mom was a kid. The windows were broken and dark, but they were blocked up with something, so there was no way to see inside.
Shane arrived at the door of the building—abigwooden thing, scarred and faded, with massive iron hinges—and banged on it. “Oliver!” he yelled. “Cavalry!”
Funny, Claire didn’t feel much like the cavalry at the moment. They rode in with guns blazing to save the day, right? She felt more like a hunted rabbit. Her heart was pounding, and even in the cool air she was sweating and shaking. If this is a trap...
The door opened into darkness, and a hand reached out and grabbed Shane by the shirt front, and yanked him inside.
“No!” Claire charged forward, lantern blazing now and held high, and saw Shane being dragged, off balance, out of the way. Not having time or room for the bow, she dropped it, grabbed an arrow out of the bag, and lunged for the vampire who was taking Shane away.
Oliver turned, snarling, and knocked the arrow out of her grip so hard her entire hand went numb. She gasped and drew back, shocked, because Oliver looked ... not like Oliver, much. He was dirty, ragged, and he had blood all down his arm and the front of his shirt.
There was a raw wound in his throat that was slowly trying to heal.
That was his own blood on his clothes, she realized. Something—someone—had bitten him, nearly killing him, it looked like.
“Inside,” he ordered hoarsely, as Eve hovered in the doorway, peering in. “Michael?”
Michael appeared out of the darkness, racing fast. He stopped to grab up Claire’s fallen bow, and then practically shoved Eve inside the building as he slammed the door and turned to lock it. There were big, old-fashioned iron bolts, which he slid shut. There was also a thick old board that Oliver pointed toward; Michael tossed Claire her bow and slotted the bar in place, into the racks on either side of the door.
As he did, something hit the door hard enough to bend the metal bolts and even the thick wooden bar. But the door held.
Outside, something screamed in frustration, and Claire heard claws scratching on the wood.
Michael wasn’t hurt, at least not that Claire could see; he hugged Eve and kept one arm around her as they came toward Claire, who was still in a standoff with Oliver.
And Oliver was still holding Shane with a white, clenched fist twisted in the fabric of his shirt.
“Hey,” Shane said. “Off! Let go!”
Oliver seemed to have forgotten he was even holding him, but as he turned to look at Shane, Claire saw his eyes turn muddy red, then glow hotter when Shane tried to pull away.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “He’s lost a lot of blood; he’s not himself. Stay still, Shane.”
Shane took a deep breath and managed to hold himself steady, but Claire could tell it really cost him. Everything in him must have been screaming to fight, rip free, run away from that glowing red hunger in Oliver’s eyes.
He didn’t. And Oliver, after a few eternal seconds, let go of him and stepped back, then suddenly turned and stalked away.
Shane looked over at Claire, and she saw the real fear in his eyes, just for a second. Then he pushed it away, and smiled, and held up his thumb and index finger, pushed about an inch apart. “Close,” he said.
“Maybe you’re not his type,” Michael said.
“Oh, now you’re just being insulting.” Shane reached out for Claire’s hand, and squeezed it, hard. He didn’t mind letting her feel the nerves that still trembled in him, but he wasn’t going to let Michael see it, obviously. “So what the hell is going on in here?”
A vague shape loomed up behind him out of the shadows. Then another one. Then another. Shane and Claire quickly moved to stand back to back. So did Eve and Michael. Among the four of them, they were covering every angle.
“Lurking isn’t answering,” Shane said. “Oliver? Little help?”
Instead, one of the shapes stepped forward into the light. Morley. Claire felt relieved, and annoyed. Of courseit was Morley. Why had she ever doubted it? He was the champion lurker of all time.
“What did you bring?” Morley rasped.
“Besides charm and beauty?” Eve said. “Why? What did you need? What are you doing here?”
“They’ve been helping us,” whispered someone out of the dark. Eve turned up the power on her lantern to max, and the dim, cold light finally penetrated the shadows enough to show the people lying crumpled on the dirty floor of the garage. Well, peoplemight have been a little bit misleading, because Claire realized they were all vampires; their eyes caught the light and reflected it back.
She didn’t recognize them. And then it finally occurred to her why she wouldn’t.
These were the vampires of Blacke. The sick ones. And there must have been at least ten of them, in addition to another ten or fifteen of Morley’s crew, crammed into the small adobe building.
“We went after them one by one,” Morley said. “We’ve been at it for hours now. Some of them were a damn nuisance to bring here, let alone dose. But your witch potion does seem to work, little Claire. If we can get some of the crystals in them, they become rational enough to accept the cure.”
Claire was stunned. Somehow, having seen how far gone things were, she’d never really expected them to be able to save people—but here they were, lying exhausted on the floor, shaking and confused. Unlike the vampires Claire had dealt with in Morganville, these were newbies, like Michael; people who’d been turned against their will in the first place, and made sick at the same time. For some reason, they’d been more susceptible to getting on the crazy train than Michael; maybe that was because he was originally from Morganville, and had some kind of better resistance. But they’d certainly gotten sick a lot faster, and a lot worse, than any vampires she’d ever seen.
Consequently, they were healing a whole lot more slowly. It hadn’t taken Myrnin and Amelie and Oliver long to recover after taking their doses when Bishop was safely out of the way, but then, they were far older, and had already coped with being vampires.
Claire focused on a boy about her own age. He looked scared, devastated, and alone. He looked guilty,as if he couldn’t forget how he’d been surviving these past few weeks or what he’d done.
“They’re coming around,” Morley continued. “But the more we get of them, the more vulnerable we are; they can’t get up and fight yet, even if we’d trust them to do so. And the others over there, they’ve tracked us here. Oliver did a gallant job, but they’re no doubt on their way here now.”
“Uh, I think we might have pretty much led them straight over,” Eve said. “Sorry. Nobody specified stealthy in the message.”
“I was hoping one would take it as implied,” Oliver snapped. “I should have known better.”
“And where the hellis my brother, you jerk?”
“He has orders,” Oliver said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Children, children, this anger gets us nowhere,” Morley said, in a mocking, motherly tone. “There are about fifteen of them left we haven’t been able to catch and give the cure, and sadly, we have very little left at this point. The ones we can’t cure, we must confine, until we can get the drugs from Morganville.”
Funny, Claire had never really thought of him as being a humanitarian—vampiritarian? Anyway, someone who put the best interests of others first. But getting out of Morganville—and away from Amelie—seemed to have done something good for Morley. He seemed to almost care.