Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(100)

“Myrnin!” Even without the microphone, his shout was loud enough to be easily heard over the crowd. “You need to live in the same hell you left me to rot in—and that means you will rot alone.” He raised the stake.

Myrnin was too far away. Too far away to save her.

But Claire wasn’t.

She fired the Taser into Fallon’s back.

He convulsed, slumped, and fell with a heavy thud, still shaking.

Myrnin arrived just a second later, traveling at blurred vampire speed, and vaulted up onto the stage to gather Jesse in his arms. “Dear lady, dear lady, what’s he done to you . . .” He took her wrist and nipped at it, drawing just a little blood, which he licked. It must have told him what he needed to know. “He’s given her a sleeping drug. It’ll pass soon. She’s all right. Claire, she’s all right.” He looked up, and there were tears in his eyes as he smiled at her.

She smiled back. Her heart was breaking a little bit, because she felt something changing in Myrnin, and she knew that she would no longer be the center of his gravity. He’d always be there for her, and he’d always be her friend, but there was something in the way he held Jesse, stroked her hair, whispered to her in a way that Claire couldn’t ever see him doing with her.

Shane’s warm weight settled in behind her, and his arms went around her. He’d passed the shotgun over to Eve, who was holding it on the Daylighter guards. Beyond him, Amelie had finally risen to her feet. She looked at the vampires still standing in the sun—a sign of their loyalty to her, Claire thought—and raised the microphone. “Get under cover, friends,” she told them. “Thank you. Today you’ve shown me, and all of Morganville, what we truly can be. It will always be a struggle for us, but we can learn, and we will. Go.”

As soon as they started moving, heading for the shadows on the porches of the buildings, Amelie turned to Oliver, who was still lying on the ground, shaking. She knelt gracefully next to him and took his hand.

“I’m here,” she said. It was what she’d said to Morley, but where that had been compassion, this was something far stronger.

“Fool,” he managed to whisper. “Never trust a human’s good intentions.”

“Perhaps we’ll both learn to do better,” she said, and bent to place a kiss on his lips. “Over time.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t trust my intentions.”

“I never do,” she said, and raised her brows just slightly. “Rest. You can bedevil me later.”

“I will,” he said. “Perhaps you might get me into the shade?”

She laughed and picked him up in her arms—a very odd sight, and one Claire was pretty sure Oliver wouldn’t remember fondly—and carried him away out of the sun.

Michael still guarded Fallon. He stood there with one of the silver stakes, turning it restlessly in his fingers. Fallon was starting to shake off the shock.

The look in his eyes was pure, cold hatred.

“Yo, Mikey,” Shane said. “He ain’t a vampire anymore. If you do that, it’s murder.”

“I know,” Michael said. “I won’t do anything he doesn’t make me do. Please don’t give me an excuse, Fallon. I do owe you for giving me back my life.”

Fallon had recovered enough to say something, but it was faint, and Claire almost missed it. “You were a means to an end, boy,” he whispered. “To hurt her.”

Michael shrugged. “Then I won’t invite you to my wedding.”

“What wedding?” Eve called from where she was standing.

“They annulled our marriage, remember? You don’t think I’d let you walk away, do you?”

She blew him a kiss. “Never ever, rock star. Leave him. Let’s go home.”

Fallon smirked as Hannah Moses put handcuffs on him. “You think you have a home to return to?”

They all stopped and stared at him—at the hot, bitter triumph in his smile.

“Michael,” Shane said, “wouldn’t we know . . .”

“We were out of town,” Michael said, and looked at Claire for confirmation. “We wouldn’t, would we?”

She searched inside herself for that connection to the Glass House, that little thread of feeling that she’d come to recognize.

It was still there . . . but it was weak. Very weak.

“We have to go,” she said. “Right now.”





FOURTEEN




They commandeered a police car from Hannah, and Shane hit the lights and sirens while Michael drove, ignoring stoplights and weaving around other cars as if he’d plunged into a real-life video game. Claire and Eve, on the other hand, just clung to their seats in the back. It didn’t take long to spot their house.

And the massive bulldozer that was heading relentlessly for it.

“Oh, God,” Eve said. As they made the turn, the treads of the giant yellow monster mowed down and crushed their mailbox, hit the white picket fence, splintered it, and crushed it into the nice, neat grass. It wasn’t neat for long. The treads chewed the yard into muck as the bulldozer moved forward, raising its bucket. It was aimed right at the corner of the house, and as Michael brought the car to a screeching halt at the curb Claire saw Miranda’s face at the window, eyes wide in terror, staring at the thing that was coming to destroy their home.