Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(63)

“I can see that. Apparently, whoever tried didn’t much care if you were in the way.”

“Cared enough to miss, I guess.”

Hannah nodded and went back to reassembling her gun with graceful, practiced efficiency. It took a breathtakingly short period of time, and then she loaded the weapon, chambered a round, and checked the safety before laying it back on the table. “Claire, we both know I’m sidelined by the vampires, and I won’t have much opportunity to help in an official capacity. So I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure!”

“I want you to leave Morganville.”

Claire fell silent, watching her. “I can’t just run away.”

“Yes, you can. You always could have done it.”

“Okay, then, I won’t do it. My grades—”

“You can’t use a good grade if they’re carving it on your tombstone. Pack up and get out. Go find your folks, get them to pack up, and go somewhere else. Far away. An island, if you can manage it. But get the hell away from the vampires, and keep away.”

“But you’re staying?”

“Yes,” Hannah agreed, “I’m staying. This house has been in my family for seven generations. My grandmother’s too old to go, and they’ve still got my cousin locked up somewhere in their dungeons, if she’s not dead and drained. I was like you. I wanted all this peace and love and cooperation to work, but it’s not going to happen. The vampires are ripping up the agreements. That ain’t on us. It’s on them.”

When Claire didn’t speak, Hannah shook her head, leaned over, and picked up the weapon. She seated it in a holster under her arm. “There’s a war coming,” she said. “A real war. There’s not going to be any room for people like you standing in the middle, trying to make peace. I’m trying to save your life.”

“You always wanted peace.”

“I did. But when you can’t have peace, there’s only one thing you can aim for, Claire, and that’s winning the war the best and maybe the bloodiest way you can.”

“I don’t want to believe it. There has to be a way to make Amelie listen, to stop all this—”

“It’s too late,” Hannah said. “She set up the cage in Founder’s Square again. It’s a clear message. Cross the vampires, and you’ll burn. Everything you worked for, everything I worked for, is going away. You pick a side, or you go. Nothing else to do.”

Claire cleared her throat. “How’s your grandmother?”

“Ancient,” Hannah said, “but she’s been that way as long as I can remember. She’s a hundred and two years old this year. I’ll give her your respects.”

There wasn’t anything else to say, so Claire nodded and left. She closed the gate behind her and glanced back to see Hannah stand up, lean against the porch pillar, and gaze out into the street like a sentry watching for trouble on the horizon.

Anybody who decided to go up against Hannah Moses had to have a death wish. It wasn’t just the gun she’d so expertly assembled and loaded—heck, gun toting in Texas was practically normal. It was in her body language: calm, centered, ready.

And deadly.

If there really was going to be a war, being on the side against Hannah would be a very dangerous place.

Claire headed down the alley, away from the normal world of construction and power tools and Hannah standing sentry. As the wooden walls rose on either side of her, and narrowed from a one-car street into a cart path into a claustrophobic little warren, she hardly noticed; she’d made this walk so many times that doing it in broad daylight held no terrors for her at all.

But something was different when she got to the end of the alley.

The shack, the ancient, leaning thing that had been there ever since Claire had first come here, was just…gone. There was no sign of wreckage, not even a scrap of wood or a rusty nail left in its place. There had been stairs going down into Myrnin’s lab inside the shack itself.

Now, there was a slab of concrete. It was almost dry, but it had been poured only a day ago, Claire was certain of that; concrete dried fast in the Texas desert heat, and this was still just a tiny bit cool and damp to the touch. Someone had left a handprint at the corner of the slab. She put her own hand in the impression; it was a larger hand, longer fingers, but still slender.

Myrnin’s hand, she thought.

He’d sealed up the lab.

Claire felt an odd wave of dizziness pass over her, and she lowered her head and breathed in deeply to combat it. He’d told her that he was going to leave, but she hadn’t really believed it. Not like this. Not this fast.

But sealing your lab with concrete was a pretty definite sign of intent.

Claire left the alley at a run. She blew through the Day House gate and up the steps, and said breathlessly to Hannah, “I need to use your portal.”

“Our what?”

“C’mon, Hannah. I know you’ve got a portal in your house. It’s in the bathroom. I used it to get to Amelie before. I need to see if I can still get into the lab that way.” Hannah’s face remained tight and guarded. “Please!”

The front door creaked open, horror-movie style, and the tiny, wizened form of Gramma Day appeared in the gap. She studied Claire with faded brown eyes that still held the same sharp intelligence that Hannah’s did, and held out a palsied, wrinkled hand. Claire took it. The old lady’s skin was soft as old, fragile fabric, and burning hot, but beneath it was a wiry strength that almost pulled Claire off-balance. “You get in here,” Gramma Day said. “Ain’t no call for you to be standing out on the porch like some beggar. You, too, Hannah. Nobody’s coming today for us.”