Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(92)

When she tried to take a step, she staggered and almost went down. Shane caught her and held her up. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. The cops will be on the case.”

Claire knew he didn’t believe that any more than she did. The cops wouldn’t be on the case; they wouldn’t dare, unless Amelie or Oliver directed them to stop the hunting. After all, Jason—like Michael—had privileges.

And Angel had technically been fair game…unProtected, a stranger.

It meant, though, that there’d be some necessary cover-up with Jenna and Tyler. Either their memories would be altered to explain away Angel’s disappearance or death, or they’d face the same fate. Ten minutes ago you were throwing them out of the house, she reminded herself. They were going to go public about Miranda. About Morganville.

“Check the van,” she said to Shane. “See if Tyler was telling the truth. If they streamed that video to a server in their van…”

“Got it,” he said, and jogged away to the vehicle. It was unlocked—trusting bunch—and he slid back the cargo door to climb inside.

“Hey!” Tyler snapped out of his stunned trance, and color flooded his face. “Hey, get the hell out of there—there’s delicate equipment in there!” He charged for the van, but Michael caught up and stopped him with nothing but a look. That didn’t, however, stop Tyler from talking. “We have rights, you know. You touch anything in that van and I’ll sue your asses off!” It was obviously something he could seize on, something real and reassuring in a world that had drunkenly upended on him. He had to know Miranda was the real thing, but that was at least partly in his comfort zone, or he wouldn’t be doing the After Death show. But being stalked and preyed on by vampires—even if nobody had said they were vampires—was different. And there was a feverishly bright light in his eyes that reflected as much fear as it did anger.

“Easy,” Michael said. “Wait.” He kept a hand outstretched, palm out, to ward Tyler off if he continued his rush forward, but Tyler just paced, staring past Michael at the van.

And then at Shane, who stepped out of it about half a minute later. “Video’s on their server, Mike. What do you want me to do?”

This time, when Michael focused on Tyler, he wasn’t playing around. Red swirled in his irises, and Claire felt a force coming out of him—what it was, she couldn’t say, but it was powerful. “Is that the only copy left?” he asked Tyler. Even his voice sounded different, somehow. Less human.

“Yes,” Tyler said, and blinked. “I mean, no! It streamed to the Internet already….”

“Yeah, that’s a lie.” Michael glanced back at Shane and nodded. “It’s the only copy. Wipe it.”

“No!” Tyler’s cry was furious and agonized, but he didn’t try to go up against Michael, either. He must have sensed how dangerous it was to try.

Jenna didn’t even protest. She slumped down on the ground, sitting cross-legged, and put her head in her hands. “He didn’t believe,” she said. “Angel never really believed. God. I shouldn’t have gotten him into this. I should have made him go home….” She sounded tired, and Claire remembered with a chill what Miranda had said. All around her, invisible here in the real world beyond the Glass House, ghosts were crowded around Jenna, breaking off pieces of her in some strange psychic way and consuming the tasty strength she’d brought to town.

Making themselves stronger.

Silence. Profound silence, broken by the distant, frantic barking of a dog.

“Come on,” Michael said, and took Tyler by the arm. “Let’s get inside.”

Claire went to Jenna and offered her a hand. She looked at it, then her, and finally nodded and rose. “This is crazy,” Jenna told her.

“I know,” she said. “Come inside.”

She paused on the doorstep to watch as Shane jogged back to join them. Nothing loomed out of the darkness to menace him…this time. Once he was in, she closed and locked the door, and took a moment to lean her head against the wood.

I’m sorry, she told the vanished Angel. In his way, he’d been charming. I wish…

But she didn’t even know how to finish the thought.





FOURTEEN





MYRNIN




The trick to doing the impossible, I’ve found, is to simply never think past what is at your fingertips. Do the thing in front of you. Then the next. Then the next. In such ways have men built the pyramids, or climbed mountains, or raced to the moon on rockets.

And that is how I had carved, inch by painful inch, the niches for my hands and feet in the stone wall of the oubliette. I did not look up; I did not look down. I looked only at the task before me, and ignored the pain as a side effect. I’d had enough practice at that, certainly.

With enough concentration, the panic attacks faded into a running babble at the back of my mind, like a fast-rushing river that became background noise I didn’t feel the need to heed. In a way, it was a comforting sort of distraction. It was a bit like not being alone, even if my only real company was my own horribly distorted, screaming mind.

I found out just how far I’d ascended the hard way, when I lost my concentration, and losing my concentration was not my fault. I was remarkably centered, but when suddenly there was a sensation inside my mind that felt like cold, icy fingers shuffling through my thoughts, and…well. One does tend to get distracted when something like that happens.