Outside, things were odd--quiet, but with a suppressed feeling of excitement in the air. People were still outside, talking in groups on the streets. The stores were shut down, for the most part, but I noticed with a stir of unease that the bars were open, and so was Morganville's gun shop.
Not good.
The gates of the university had opened, and they were issuing some kind of passes to people to leave--still sticking to the emergency drill story, I assumed.
"Oh, man," Justin muttered, as we turned down one of the streets that led to the heart of town, and Founder's Square--Vamptown. There were more people here, more groups. "I don't like this. There's Sal Manetti up there. He was one of my dad's drinking buddies, back in the day."
"The cops don't like it much, either," Hannah said, and pointed at the police cars ahead. They were blocking off access at the end of the street, and when I squinted, I could see they were out of their cruisers and arranged in a line, ready for anything. "This could turn bad, any time. All they need is somebody to strike a match out there, and we're all on fire."
I thought about Justin saying his father was coming to town, and I knew he was thinking about that, too. He shook his head. "We've got to figure out where Eve might be. Ideas?"
"Maybe she left us some clues," I said. "Back at Common Grounds. We should probably start there."
Common Grounds, however, was deserted, and the steel shutters were down. The front door was locked. We drove around back, to the alley. Nothing was there but trash cans, and--
"What the hell is that?" Justin asked. He hit the brakes and put the car in park, then jumped out and picked up something small on the ground. He got back in and showed it to me.
It was a small white candy in the shape of a skull. I blinked at it, then looked down the alley. "She left a trail of breath mints?"
"Looks like. We'll have to go on foot to follow it."
Hannah didn't seem to like that idea much, but Justin wasn't taking votes. We parked and locked Eve's car in the alley behind Common Grounds and began hunting for skull candies.
"Over here!" Hannah yelled, at the end of the alley. "Looks like she's dropping them when she makes a turn. Smart. She went this way."
After that, we went faster. The skull candies were in plain sight, easy to spot. I noticed that they were mostly in the shadows, which would have made sense, if Eve was with Myrnin or the other vampires. Why didn't she stay? Maybe she hadn't had a choice.
We ran out of candy trail after a few blocks. It led us into an area where I hadn't really been before-- abandoned old buildings, mostly, falling to pieces under the relentless pressure of years and sun. It looked and felt deserted.
"Where now?" I asked, looking around. I didn't see anything obvious, but then I spotted something shiny, tucked in behind a tipped over rusty trash can. I reached behind and came up with a black leather collar, studded with silver spikes.
The same collar Eve had been wearing. I wordlessly showed it to Justin, who turned in a slow circle, looking at the blank buildings. "Come on, Eve," he said. "Give us something. Anything." He froze. "You hear that?"
Hannah cocked her head. She was standing at the end of the alley, shotgun held in her arms in a way that was both casual and scarily competent. "What?"
"You don't hear it?"
I did. Somebody's phone was ringing. A cell phone, with an ultrasonic ringtone--I'd heard that older people couldn't hear those frequencies, and kids in school had used them all the time to sneak phone calls and texts in class. It was faint, but it was definitely there. "I thought the networks were down," I said, and pulled my own phone out.
Nope. The network was back up. I wondered if Richard had done it, or they'd lost control of the cell phone towers. Either one was possible.
We found the phone before the ringing stopped. It was Eve's--a red phone, with silver skull cell phone charms on it--discarded in the shadow of a broken, leaning doorway. "Who was calling?" I asked, and Justin paged through the menu.
"Richard," he said. "I guess he really was looking for her after all."
My phone buzzed--just once. A text message. I opened it and checked.
It was from Eve, and it had been sent hours ago; the backlog of messages was just now being delivered, apparently.
It read, 911 @ GERMANS. I showed it to Justin. "What is this?"
"Nine one one. Emergency message. German's--" He looked over at Hannah, who pushed away from the wall and came toward us.
"German's Tire Plant," she said. "Damn, I don't like that; it's the size of a couple of football fields, at least."
"We should let Richard know," I said. I dialed, but the network was busy, and then the bars failed again.
"I'm not waiting," Justin said. "Let's get the car."
The tire plant was near the old hospital, which made me shudder; I remembered the deserted building way too well. It had been incredibly creepy, and then of course it had also nearly gotten me and Justin killed, too, so again, not fond.
I was mildly shocked to see the hulking old edifice still standing, as Justin turned the car down the street.
"Didn't they tear that place down?" It had been scheduled for demolition, and boy, if any place had ever needed it...
"I heard it was delayed," Justin said. He didn't seem any happier about it than I was. "Something about historic preservation. Although anybody wanting to preserve that thing has never been inside it running for their life, I'll bet."
I stared out the window. On my side of the car was the brooding monstrosity of a hospital. The cracked stones and tilted columns in front made it look like something straight out of one of Justin's favorite zombiekilling video games. "Don't be hiding in there," I whispered. "Please don't be hiding in there." Because if Eve and Myrnin had taken refuge there, I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to go charging in after them.
"There's German's," Hannah said, and nodded toward the other side of the street. I hadn't really noticed it the last time I'd been out here--preoccupied with the whole notdying issue--but there it was, a fourstory square building in that faded tan color that everybody had used back in the sixties. Even the windows--those that weren't broken out--were painted over. It was plain, big, and blocky, and there was absolutely nothing special about it except its size--it covered at least three city blocks, all blind windows and blank concrete.
"You ever been inside there?" Justin asked Hannah, who was studying the building carefully.
"Not for a whole lot of years," she said. "Yeah, we used to hide up in there sometimes, when we cut class or something. I guess everybody did, once in a while. It's a mess in there, a real junkyard. Stuff everywhere, walls falling apart, ceilings none too stable, either. If you go up to the second level, you watch yourself. Make sure you don't trust the floors, and watch those iron stairs. They were shaky even back then."
"Are we going in there?" I asked.
"No," Justin said. "You're not going anywhere. You're staying here and getting Richard on the phone and telling him where we are. Me and Hannah will check it out."
There didn't seem to be much room for argument, because Justin didn't give me time; he and Hannah bailed out of the car, made lockthedoor motions, and sprinted toward a gap in the rusted, sagging fence.
I watched until they disappeared around the corner of the building, and realized my fingers were going numb from clutching my cell phone. I took a deep breath and flipped it open to try Richard Morrell again.
Nothing. No signal again. The network was going up and down like a yoyo.
The walkietalkie signal was low, but I tried it anyway. There was some kind of response, but it was swallowed by static. I gave our position, on the off chance that someone on the network would be able to hear me over the noise.
I screamed and dropped the device when the light at the car window was suddenly blocked out, and someone battered frantically on the glass.
I recognized the silk shirt--her silk shirt--before I recognized Monica Morrell, because Monica definitely didn't look like herself. She was out of breath, sweating, her hair was tangled, and what makeup she had on was smeared and running.
She'd been crying. There was a cut on her right cheek, and a forming bruise, and dirt on the silk blouse as well as bloodstains. She was holding her left arm as though it was hurt.
"Open the door!" she screamed, and pounded on the glass again. "Let me in!"
I looked behind the car.
There was a mob coming down the street: thirty, forty people, some running, some following at a walk. Some were waving baseball bats, boards, pipes.
They saw Monica and let out a yell. I gasped, because that sound didn't seem human at all--more the roar of a beast, something mindless and hungry.
Monica's expression was, for the first time, absolutely open and vulnerable. She put her palm flat against the window glass. "Please help me," she said.
But even as I clawed at the lock to open it, Monica flinched, turned, and ran on, limping.
I slid over the front seat and dropped into the driver's seat. Justin had left the keys in the ignition. I started it up and put the big car in gear, gave it too much gas, and nearly wrecked it on the curb before I straightened the wheel. I rapidly gained on Monica. I passed her, squealed to a stop, and reached over to throw open the passenger door.
"Get in!" I yelled. Monica slid inside and banged the door shut, and I hit the gas as something impacted loudly against the back of the car--a brick, maybe. A hail of smaller stones hit a second later. I swerved wildly again, then straightened the wheel and got the car moving more smoothly. My heart pounded hard, and my hands felt sweaty on the steering wheel. "You all right?"
Monica was panting, and she threw me a filthy look. "No, of course I'm not all right!" she snapped, and tried to fix her hair with trembling hands. "Unbelievable. What a stupid question. I guess I shouldn't expect much more from someone like you, though--"
I stopped the car and stared at her.
Monica shut up.
"Here's how this is going to go," I said. "You're going to act like an actual human being for a change, or else you're on your own. Clear?"
Monica glanced behind them. "They're coming!"
"Yes, they are. So, are we clear?" "Okay, okay, yes! Fine, whatever!" Monica cast a clearly terrified look at the approaching mob. More stones peppered the paint job, and one hit the back glass with enough force to make me wince. "Get me out of here! Please!"
"Hold on, I'm not a very good driver."
That was kind of an understatement. Eve's car was huge and heavy and had a mind of its own, and I hadn't taken the time to readjust the bench seat to make it possible for me to reach the pedals easily. The only good thing about my driving, as we pulled away from the mob and the falling bricks, was that it was approximately straight, and pretty fast.
I scraped the curb only twice.
Once the fittest of our pursuers had fallen behind, obviously discouraged, I finally remembered to breathe, and pulled the car around the next right turn. This section of town seemed deserted, but then, so had the other street, before Monica and her fan club had shown up. The big, imposing hulk of the tire plant glided by on the passenger side--it seemed like miles of featureless brick and blank windows.
I braked the car on the other side of the street, in front of a deserted, rusting warehouse complex. "Come on," I said.
"What?" Monica watched me get out of the car and take the keys with uncomprehending shock. "Where are you going? We have to get out of here! They were going to kill me!"
"They probably still are," I said. "So you should probably get out of the car now, unless you want to wait around for them."
Monica said something I pretended not to hear--it wasn't exactly complimentary--and limped her way out of the passenger side. I locked the car. I hoped it wouldn't get banged up, but that mob had looked pretty excitable, and just the fact that Monica had been in it might be enough to ensure its destruction.
With any luck, though, they'd assume we had run into the warehouse complex, which was what I wanted.
I led them in the opposite direction, to the fence around German's Tire. There was a split in the wire by one of the posts, an ancient curling gap half hidden by a tangle of tumbleweeds. I pushed through and held the steel aside for Monica. "Coming?" I asked when Monica hesitated. "Because, you know what? Don't really care all that much. Just so you know."
Monica came through without any comment. The fence snapped back into place. Unless someone was looking for an entrance, it ought to do.
The plant threw a large, black shadow on the weedchoked parking lot. There were a few rustedout trucks still parked here and there; I used them for cover from the street as we approached the main building, though I didn't think the mob was close enough to really spot us at this point. Monica seemed to get the point without much in the way of instruction; I supposed that running for her life had humbled her a little. Maybe.
"Wait," Monica said, as I prepared to bolt for a brokenout bottomfloor window into the tire plant. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for my friends," I said. "They're inside."
"Well, I'm not going in there," Monica declared, and tried to look haughty. It would have been more effective if she hadn't been so frazzled and sweaty. "I was on my way to City Hall, but those losers got in my way. They slashed my tires. I need to get to my parents."' She said it as though she expected me to salute and hop like a toad.
I raised my eyebrows. "Better start walking, I guess. It's kind of a long way." "But--but--"
I didn't wait for the sputtering to die; I turned and ran for the building. The window opened into total darkness, as far as I could tell, but at least it was accessible. I pulled myself up on the sash and started to swing my legs inside.
"Wait!" Monica dashed across to join me. "You can't leave me here alone! You saw those jerks out there!"
"Absolutely."
"Oh, you're just loving this, aren't you?"
"Kinda." I hopped down inside the building, and my shoes slapped bare concrete floor. It was bare except for a layer of dirt, anyway--undisturbed for as far as the light penetrated, which wasn't very far. "Coming?"
Monica stared through the window at me, just boiling with fury; I smiled at her and started to walk into the dark.
Monica, cursing, climbed inside.
"I'm not a bad person," Monica was saying--whining, actually. I wished I could find a twobyfour to whack her with, but the tire plant, although full of wreckage and trash, didn't seem to be big on wooden planks. Some nice pipes, though. I might use one of those.
Except I really didn't want to hit anybody, deep down. I supposed that was a character flaw, or something.
"Yes, you really are a bad person," I told Monica, and ducked underneath a lowhanging loop of wire that looked horrormovie ready, the sort of thing that dropped around your neck and hauled you up to be dispatched by the psychokiller villain. Speaking of which, this whole place was decorated in Early PsychoKiller Villain, from the vast soaring darkness overhead to the lumpy, skeletal shapes of rusting equipment and abandoned junk. The spray painting--decades of it, in layered styles from Early Tagger to cuttingedge gang sign--gleamed in the random shafts of light like blood. Some particularly unpleasant spraypaint artist had done an enormous, terrifying clown face, with windows for the eyes and a giant, open doorway for a mouth. Yeah, really not going in there, I thought. Although the way these things went, I probably would have to.
"Why do you say that?"
"Say what?" I asked absently. I was listening for any sound of movement, but this place was enormous and confusing--just as Hannah had warned.
"Say that I'm a bad person!"
"Oh, I don't know--you tried to kill me? And get me raped at a party? Not to mention--"
"That was payback," Monica said. "And I didn't mean it or anything."
"Which makes it all so much better. Look, can we not bond? I'm busy. Seriously. Shhhh." That last was to forestall Monica from blurting out yet another injured defense of her character. I squeezed past a barricade of piledup boxes and metal, into another shaft of light that arrowed down from a highup broken window. The clown painting felt like it was watching me, which was beyond creepy. I tried not to look too closely at what was on the floor. Some of it was animal carcasses, birds, and things that had gotten inside and died over the years. Some of it was old cans, plastic wrappers, all kinds of junk left behind by adventurous kids looking for a hideout. I didn't imagine any of them stayed for long.
This place just felt... haunted.
Monica's hand grabbed my arm, just on the bruise that Amelie's grip had given me earlier. I winced.
"Did you hear that?" Monica's whisper was fierce and hushed. She needed mouthwash, and she smelled like sweat more than powder and perfume. "Oh my God. Something's in here with us!"
"Could be a vampire," I said. Monica sniffed.
"Not afraid of those," she said, and dangled her fancy, silver Protection bracelet in front of my face. "Nobody's going to cross Oliver."
"You want to tell that to the mob of people chasing you back there? I don't think they got the memo or something."
"I mean, no vampire would. I'm Protected." Monica said it like there was simply no possibility anything else could be true. The earth was round, the sun was hot, and a vampire would never hurt her because she'd sold herself to Oliver, body and soul.
Yeah, right.
"News flash," I whispered. "Oliver's missing in action from Common Grounds. Amelie's disappeared. In fact, most of the vampires all over town have dropped out of sight, which makes these bracelets cute fashion accessories, but not exactly bulletproof vests or anything."
Monica started to speak, but I frowned angrily at her and pointed off into the darkness, where she'd heard the noise. It had sounded odd--kind of a sigh, echoing from the steel and concrete, bouncing and amplifying.
It sounded as if it had come out of the clown's dark mouth.
Of course.
I reached into my pocket. I still had the vial of silver powder that Amelie had given me, but I was well aware that it might not do me any good. If my friendvampires were mixed in with enemyvamps, I was out of luck. Likewise, if what was waiting for me out there was trouble of a human variety, instead of bloodsuckers...
Justin and Hannah were in here. Somewhere. And so--hopefully--was Eve.
I eased around a tattered sofa that smelled like old cats and mold, and sidestepped a truly impressive rat that didn't bother to move out of my way. It sat there watching me with weird, alert eyes.
Monica looked down, saw it, and shrieked, stumbling backward. She fell into a stack of ancient cartons that collapsed on her, raining down random junk. I grabbed her and pulled her to her feet, but Monica kept on whimpering and squirming, slapping at her hair and upper body.
"Oh my God, are they on me? Spiders? Are there spiders?"
If there were, I hoped they bit her. "No," I said shortly. Well, there were, but they were little ones. I brushed them off Monica's back. "Shut up already!"
"Are you kidding me? Did you see that rat? It was the size of freaking Godzilla!"
That was it, I decided. Monica could just wander around on her own, screaming about rats and spiders, until someone came and ate her. What. Ever.
I got only about ten feet away when Monica's very small whisper stopped me dead in my tracks.
"Please don't leave me." That didn't sound like Monica, not at all. It sounded scared, and very young. "Ana, please."
It was probably too late for being quiet, anyway, and if there were vampires hiding in German's Tire Plant, they all knew exactly where we were, and for that matter, could tell what blood type we were. So stealth didn't seem a priority.
I cupped my hands over my mouth and yelled, very loudly, "Justin! Eve! Hannah! Anybody!"
The echoes woke invisible birds or bats high overhead, which flapped madly around; my voice rang from every flat surface, mocking me with my own ghost.
In the whispering silence afterward, Monica murmured, "Wow, I thought we were being subtle or something. My mistake."
I was about to hiss something really unpleasant at her, but froze as another voice came bouncing through the vast room--Justin's voice. "Ana?"
"Here!"
"Stay there! And shut up!"
He sounded frantic enough to make me wish I'd stuck with the whole quiettime policy, and then Monica stopped breathing and went very, very still next to me. Her hands closed around my arm, squeezing bruises again.
I froze, too, because something was coming out of the mouth of that painted clown--something white, ghostly, drifting like smoke....
It had a face. Several faces, because it was a group of what looked like vampires, all very pale, all very quiet, all heading our way.
Staying put was not such a great plan, I decided. I was going to go with run away.
Which, grabbing Monica's wrist, I did.
The vampires did make sounds then, as their quarry started to flee--little whispering laughs, strange hisses, all kinds of creepy noises that made the skin on the back of my neck tighten up. I held the glass vial in one hand, running faster, leaping over junk when I could see it coming and stumbling across it when I couldn't. Monica kept up, somehow, although I could hear the tortured, steady moaning of her breath. Whatever she'd done to her right leg must have hurt pretty badly.
Something pale landed ahead of me, with a silent leap like a spider pouncing. I had a wild impression of a white face, red eyes, a wideopen mouth, and gleaming fangs. I drew back to throw the vial... and realized it was Myrnin facing me.
The hesitation cost me. Something hit me from the back, sending me stumbling forward across a fallen iron beam. I dropped the vial as I fell, trying to catch myself, and heard the glass break on the edge of the girder. Silver dust puffed out. Monica shrieked, a wild cry that made the birds panic again high up in heaven; I saw her stumble away, trying to put distance between herself and Myrnin.
Myrnin was just outside of the range of the drifting silver powder, but it wasn't Myrnin who was the problem. The other vampires, the ones who'd come out of the clown's mouth, leaped over stacks of trash, running for the smell of fresh, flowing blood.
They were coming up behind us, fast.
I raked my hand across the ground and came up with a palm full of silver powder and glass shards as I rolled up to my knees. I turned and threw the powder into the air between me, Monica, and the rest of the vampires. It dispersed into a fine, glittering mist, and when the vampires hit it, every tiny grain of silver caught fire. It was beautiful, and horrible, and I flinched at the sound of their cries. There was so much silver, and it clung to their skin, eating in. I didn't know if it would kill them, but it definitely stopped them cold.
I grabbed Monica's arm and pulled her close.
Myrnin was still in front of us, crouched on top of a stack of wooden pallets. He didn't look at all human, not at all.
And then he blinked, and the red light went out in his eyes. His fangs folded neatly backward, and he ran his tongue over pale lips before he said, puzzled, "Anastasia?"
I felt a sense of relief so strong it was like falling. "Yeah, it's me."
"Oh." He slithered down off the stacked wood, and I realized he was still dressed the way I'd seen him back at Common Grounds--a long, black velvet coat, no shirt, white pantaloons left over from his costume. He should have looked ridiculous, but somehow, he looked... right. "You shouldn't be here, Anastasia. It's very dangerous."
"I know--"
Something cold brushed the back of my neck, and I heard Monica make a muffled sound like a choked cry. I whirled and found myself facetoface with a redeyed, angry vampire with part of his skin still smoking from the silver I'd thrown.
Myrnin let out a roar that ripped the air, full of menace and fury, and the vampire stumbled backward, clearly shocked.
Then the five who'd chased us silently withdrew into the darkness.
I turned to face Myrnin. He was staring thoughtfully at the departing vamps.
"Thanks," I said. He shrugged.
"I was raised to believe in the concept of noblesse oblige," he said. "And I do owe you, you know. Do you have any more of my medication?"
I handed him my last dose of the drug that kept him sane--mostly sane, anyway. It was the older version, red crystals rather than clear liquid, and he poured out a dollop into his palm and licked the crystals up, then sighed in deep satisfaction.
"Much better," he said, and pocketed the rest of the bottle. "Now. Why are you here?"
I licked my lips. I could hear Justin--or someone--coming toward us through the darkness, and I saw someone in the shadows behind Myrnin. Not vampires, I thought, so it was probably Hannah, flanking Justin. "We're looking for my friend Eve. You remember her, right?"
"Eve," Myrnin repeated, and slowly smiled. "Ah. The girl who followed me. Yes, of course."
I felt a flush of excitement, quickly damped by dread. "What happened to her?"
"Nothing. She's asleep," he said. "It was too dangerous out here for her. I put her in a safe place, for now."
Justin pushed through the last of the barriers and stepped into a shaft of light about fifty feet away. He paused at the sight of Myrnin, but he didn't look alarmed.
"This is your friend as well," Myrnin said, glancing back at Justin. "The one you care so much for." I'd never discussed Justin with Myrnin--not in detail, anyway. The question must have shown in my face, because his smile broadened. "You carry his scent on your clothes," he said. "And he carries yours."
"Ewww," Monica sighed.
Myrnin's eyes focused in on her like laser sights. "And who is this lovely child?"
I almost rolled my eyes. "Monica. The mayor's daughter."
"Monica Morrell." She offered her hand, which Myrnin accepted and bent over in an oldfashioned way. I assumed he was also inspecting the bracelet on her wrist.
"Oliver's," he said, straightening. "I see. I am charmed, my dear, simply charmed." He hadn't let go of her hand. "I don't suppose you would be willing to donate a pint for a poor, starving stranger?"
Monica's smile froze in place. "I--well, I--"
He pulled her into his arms with one quick jerk. Monica yelped and tried to pull away, but for all his relatively small size, Myrnin had strength to burn.
I pulled in a deep breath. "Myrnin. Please."
He looked annoyed. "Please what?"
"She's not free range or anything. You can't just munch her. Let go." He didn't look convinced. "Seriously. Let go."
"Fine." He opened his arms, and Monica retreated as she clapped both hands around her neck. She sat down on a nearby girder, breathing hard. "You know, in my youth, women lined up to grant me their favors. I believe I'm a bit offended."
"It's a strange day for everybody," I said. "Justin, Hannah, this is Myrnin. He's sort of my boss."
Justin moved closer, but his expression stayed cool and distant. "Yeah? This the guy who took you to the ball? The one who dumped you and left you to die?"
"Well... uh... yes."
"Thought so."
Justin punched him right in the face. Myrnin, surprised, stumbled back against the tower of crates, and snarled; Justin took a stake from his back pocket and held it at the ready.
"No!" I jumped between them, waving my hands. "No, honest, it's not like that. Calm down, everybody, please."
"Yes," Myrnin said. "I've been staked quite enough today, thank you. I respect your need to avenge her, boy, but Anastasia remains quite capable of defending her own honor."
"Couldn't have said it better myself," I said. "Please, Justin. Don't. We need him."
"Yeah? Why?"
"Because he may know what's going on with the vampires."
"Oh, that," Myrnin said, in a tone that implied we were all idiots for not knowing already. "They're being called. It's a signal that draws all vampires who have sworn allegiance to you with a blood exchange--it's the way wars were fought, once upon a time. It's how you gather your army."
"Oh," I said. "So... why not you? Or the rest of the vampires here?"
"It seems as though your serum offers me some portion of immunity against it. Oh, I feel the draw, most certainly, but in an entirely academic way. Rather curious. I remember how it felt before, like an overwhelming panic. As for those others, well. They're not of the blood."
"They're not?"
"No. Lesser creatures. Failed experiments, if you will." He looked away, and I had a horrible suspicion.
"Are they people? I mean, regular humans?"
"A failed experiment," he repeated. "You're a scientist, Anastasia. Not all experiments work the way they're intended."
Myrnin had done this to them, in his search for the cure to the vampire disease. He had turned them into something that wasn't vampire, wasn't human, wasn't--well, wasn't anything, exactly. They didn't fit in either society.
No wonder they were hiding here.
"Don't look at me that way," Myrnin said. "It's not my fault the process was imperfect, you know. I'm not a monster."
I shook my head.
"Sometimes, you really are."
Eve was fine--tired, shaking, and tear streaked, but okay. "He didn't, you know," she said, and made twofinger pointy motions toward her throat. "He's kind of sweet, actually, once you get past all the crazy. Although there's a lot of the crazy."
There was, as I well knew, no way of getting past the crazy. Not really. But I had to admit that at least Myrnin had behaved more like a gentleman than expected.
Noblesse oblige. Maybe he'd felt obligated.
The place he'd kept Eve had once been some kind of storage locker within the plant, all solid walls and a single door that he'd locked off with a bent pipe. Justin hadn't been all that happy about it. "What if something had happened to you?" he'd asked, as Myrnin untwisted the metal as though it were solder instead of iron. "She'd have been locked in there, all alone, no way out. She'd have starved."
"Actually," Myrnin had answered, "that's not very likely. Thirst would have killed her within four days, I imagine. She'd never have had a chance to starve." I stared at him. He raised his eyebrows. "What?"
I just shook my head. "I think you missed the point."
Monica tagged along with me, which was annoying; she kept casting Justin nervous glances, and she was now outright terrified of Myrnin, which was probably how it should have been, really. At the very least, she'd shut up, and even the sight of another rat, this one big and kind of albino, hadn't set off her screams this time.
Eve, however, was less than thrilled to see Monica. "You're kidding," she said flatly, staring first at her, then at Justin. "You're okay with this?"
"Okay would be a stretch. Resigned, that's closer," Justin said. Hannah, standing next to him with her shotgun at port arms, snorted out a laugh. "As long as she doesn't talk, I can pretend she isn't here." "Yeah? Well I can't," Eve said. She glared at Monica, who glared right back. "Ana, you have to stop picking up strays. You don't know where they've been."
"You're one to talk about diseases," Monica shot back, "seeing as how you're one big, walking social one."
"That's not pot, kettle--that's more like cauldron, kettle. Witch."
"Whore!"
"You want to go play with your new friends back there?" Justin snapped. "The really pale ones with the taste for plasma? Because believe me, I'll drop your skanky butt right in their nest if you don't shut up, Monica."
"You don't scare me, Bieber!"
Hannah rolled her eyes and racked her shotgun. "How about me?"
That ended the entire argument.
Myrnin, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest, watched the proceedings with great interest. "Your friends," he said to me. "They're quite... colorful. So full of energy."
"Hands off my friends." Not that that statement exactly included Monica, but whatever.
"Oh, absolutely. I would never." Hand to his heart, Myrnin managed to look angelic, which was a bit of a trick considering his LordByrononabender outfit. "I've just been away from normal human society for so long. Tell me, is it usually this... spirited?"
"Not usually," I sighed. "Monica's special." Yeah, in the shortbus sense, because Monica was a head case. Not that I had time or inclination to explain all the dynamics of the MonicaJustinEve relationship to Myrnin right now. "When you said that someone was calling the vampires together for some kind of fight--was that Bishop?"
"Bishop?" Myrnin looked startled. "No, of course not. It's Amelie. Amelie is sending the call. She's consolidating her forces, putting up lines of defense. Things are rapidly moving toward a confrontation, I believe."
That was exactly what I was afraid he was going to say. "Do you know who answered?"
"Anyone in Morganville with a blood tie to her," he said. "Except me, of course. But that would include almost every vampire in town, save those who were sworn through Oliver. Even then, Oliver's tie would bind them in some sense, because he swore fealty to her when he came to live here. They might feel the pull less strongly, but they would still feel it."
"Then how is Bishop getting an army? Isn't everybody in town, you know, Amelie's?"
"He bit those he wished to keep on his side." Myrnin shrugged. "Claimed them from her, in a sense. Some of them went willingly, some not, but all owe him allegiance now. All those he was able to turn, which is a considerable number, I believe." He looked sharply at her. "The call continued in the daytime. Michael?"
"Michael's fine. They put him in a cell."
"And Sam?"
I shook my head in response. Next to Michael, his grandfather Sam was the youngest vampire in town, and I hadn't seen him at all, not since he'd left the Glass House, well before any of the other vamps. He'd gone off on some mission for Amelie; she trusted him more than most of the others, even those she'd known for hundreds of years. That was, I thought, because Amelie knew how Sam felt about her. It was the storybook kind of love, the kind that ignored things like practicality and danger, and never changed or died. I found myself looking at Justin. He turned his head and smiled back.
The storybook kind of love.
I was probably too young to have that, but this felt so strong, so real....
And Justin wouldn't even man up and tell me he loved me.
I took a deep breath and forced my mind off that. "What do we do now?" I asked. "Myrnin?"
He was silent for a long moment, then moved to one of the paintedover firstfloor windows and pulled it open. The sun was setting again. It would be down completely soon.
"You should get home," he said. "The humans are in charge for now, at least, but there are factions out there. There will be power struggles tonight, and not just between the two vampire sides."
Justin glanced at Monica--whose bruises were living proof that trouble was already under way--and then back at Myrnin. "What are you going to do?"
"Stay here," Myrnin said. "With my friends."
"Friends? Who, the--uh--failed experiments?"
"Exactly so." Myrnin shrugged. "They look upon me as a kind of father figure. Besides, their blood is as good as anyone else's, in a pinch."
"So much more than I wanted to know," Justin said, and nodded to Hannah. "Let's go."
"Got your back, Justin."
"Watch Ana's and Eve's. I'll take the lead."
"What about me?" Monica whined.
"Do you really want to know?" Justin gave her a glare that should have scorched her hair off. "Be grateful I'm not leaving you as an afterdinner mint on his pillow."
Myrnin leaned close to my ear and said, "I think I like your young man." When I reacted in pure confusion, he held up his hands, smiling. "Not in that way, my dear. He just seems quite trustworthy."
I swallowed and put all that aside. "Are you going to be okay here? Really?"
"Really?" He locked gazes with me. "For now, yes. But we have work to do, Ana. Much work, and very little time. I can't hide for long. You do realize that stress accelerates the disease, and this is a great deal of stress for us all. More will fall ill, become confused. It's vital we begin work on the serum as quickly as possible."
"I'll try to get you back to the lab tomorrow."
We left him standing in a fading shaft of sunlight, next to a giant rusting crane that lifted its head three stories into the dark, with pale birds flitting and diving overhead.
And wounded, angry failed experiments lurking in the shadows, maybe waiting to attack their vampire creator.
I felt sorry for them, if they did.