Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(118)

“Oh,” Shane said, in a very different sort of tone. “Oh, crap. Michael—I left him alone with Naomi and Hannah. Hannah’s Captain Obvious. I thought Naomi was just working with her, trying to get at Amelie. But its more than that. She was controlling the whole thing. And Michael.”

Which, Claire realized with a sweet surge of relief, was why Michael had turned on them—and why he’d been so cruel to Eve, and to her, and to Shane. He’d had no choice. Thank you. She felt like kissing Shane in pure gratitude for having confirmed her suspicions, but Shane didn’t look especially relieved himself; he looked disturbed. Maybe he’d just realized that he’d spent a whole day hating the guts of a friend who’d been innocent after all.

“She was controlling Oliver, too, though likely that wasn’t quite so difficult,” Myrnin said. “Oliver’s influence on Amelie was a dark thing even without Naomi bending it to her uses. Once she had, though, she used Oliver to corrupt Amelie, agitate the town against her, create chaos and dissension…and then used you, Claire, to unmask him, giving her the chance to act directly while Amelie was distracted. My, if I didn’t loathe her so much, I’d admire her.”

“So how are we going to stop her?” Claire asked.

“We can’t. Perhaps I failed to mention that we’re locked in a cage and about to be burned alive…?”

“Does this cage have a lock?”

“A very good one,” Myrnin said. “Right there, on the other side of the bars. I’m reasonably certain that neither of us is a certified locksmith, however.”

“Well, we can try.”

“It’s silver,” Myrnin said. “I won’t be able to break it.”

“If the lock’s pure silver instead of just plated, it’s soft,” Shane said. “We could use one of these stakes as a lever, maybe.”

“And that will sacrifice our element of surprise,” Myrnin pointed out. “You always seem to have something secreted about your person of a dangerous nature…. Have you nothing to contribute?”

“They took it,” Shane said, “including everything out of my pockets and my belt. Just like jail.”

“Not like jail,” Claire said thoughtfully. “They left you your shoes.”

“And? I’m pretty sure a battered-up pair of kicks isn’t going to get us anywhere….” Shane’s voice faded at the look on her face. “What?”

“Laces,” she said, and bent forward to untie her own shoes and began to pull the cords out. “Give them to me.”

“I hardly think we should consider hanging ourselves, Claire,” Myrnin said, looking a little worried. “And it wouldn’t kill me, you know.”

Claire grabbed the laces from Shane as he held them out, tied them end to end, and began quickly braiding them together with those from her own shoes in a rough twisted rope, which she wrapped around the center of the bars at the back. “Cover me,” she said to Myrnin. He watched her for a few long seconds, then nodded and moved toward the front of the cage, shoving the limp body of Oliver out of the way, and began to loudly sing something in French. It sounded rude.

Claire began twisting the rope as fast as she could, rapidly getting it to the tension point. “I need something to use as a fulcrum,” she said to Shane. “Something that won’t break easily.”

“Only thing in here is one of the stakes,” he said. “Once we pull those, I’m guessing Hannah’s got orders not to wait around for the official barbecue.”

God, all she needed was a stick.…Claire cast her eyes about, frantic to find something, anything she could adapt to the purpose, and her gaze fell on, of all things, the headband that Amelie was wearing to keep her long, loose hair back from her face. It was a nice, wide one, not made of plastic but covered in fabric.

Maybe.

Claire edged over, leaving the rope in Shane’s hand, and pulled the headband from the vampire’s head. She thought Amelie’s eyes flickered, just a little, but the Founder didn’t move. She looked…dead.

Claire flexed the headband in her grip. It had a metal core that bent side to side, but not back to front. And best of all, it didn’t break.

She scooted back, slipped it into the rope, and began using it to twist the strands tighter and tighter around the bars. By the fifth round, she felt the tension; by the tenth, she saw the bars actually starting to bend in the middle, yielding to the slow but inevitable force.

I love you, physics.

“Hey,” Shane said as she muscled another turn out of the makeshift device. “I probably should tell you that after thinking it over, I’m an ass. And I’m—sorry.”

“That must have been hard,” Claire said. It was getting really difficult to turn the thing. The edges of the headband were digging into her hand deeply. She gritted her teeth and turned it again.

“Let me,” he said, and took hold of the headband. For him, the next three turns were pretty effortless, and the bars bent slowly, steadily inward around the rope. “Damn, this really works. No wonder they don’t let you have shoelaces in jail.”

“This isn’t why.”

“I hurt you,” he said, in the same tone of voice, without looking at her. “I swore I’d never do that again, and I did. I fell right for Naomi’s easiest trick, turning us against each other. I should have trusted you, trusted him, and I didn’t. So I’m sorry. And you have every right not to—” He was still turning the headband as he talked, but just then he broke off with a hissing gasp, and Claire saw the flash of red in his hand. Blood soaked quickly through the white fabric of Amelie’s headband, but after a second’s pause, he turned it again. “Not to trust me, or forgive me. But I hope you do.”