Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(12)

“Yeah,” Eve said. “You’re helping, all right. What is this, Vampire Reeducation Camp? Are you planning on helping them learn to live without blood? Vegan vampires?”

The silence that greeted this was so deep that it made Claire’s already tense muscles ache and tighten. There was something in Hannah’s carefully controlled expression that made her feel sick and scared. “It’s probably time to go now before this gets any messier,” Hannah said. “Wrap it up, kids.”

Eve raised her head from Michael’s shoulder. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She was too angry to cry. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Eve, she’s right. You can’t stay,” he said in a gentle voice. He brushed his hand across her sleek black hair, let it drift through his fingers, and touched her lips just as softly. “You have to go, Eve. You wouldn’t be safe here.”

“Why not? Aren’t they feeding you?”

“They’re feeding us. I’ll be fine,” he said, and kissed her. “Eve, I’ll be fine. Just go, okay? Claire, take her. Please.”

Claire didn’t want to, but she could see that he was serious; when she hesitated, he fixed her with a calm, steady stare until she moved forward and put her hand under Eve’s arm to get her to her feet.

“No,” Eve said. “No, I’m not going, Claire. I can’t—we can’t just leave him here . . .”

“Maybe not, but we also can’t get him out,” Claire said. The words tasted horrible in her mouth, like ashes and iron, and she had to swallow hard to continue. “Not yet. But we will, Eve. I swear to you, this isn’t over.”

Hannah said, “It is for now. Michael, you move back to the line. Go on.”

He got up and walked back to where Oliver was waiting at the edge of the tiles—exactly opposite from where Amelie was standing in her glowing white suit. Oliver put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Maybe he meant to just hold him back, but it looked to Claire like . . . comfort? Odd, if so. Oliver wasn’t much on empathy. Then again, the look on Michael’s face—that lost, hollow, helpless look—would have moved anybody.

Except Hannah, apparently, who marched them straight to the door. As she opened it, though, Amelie said, without moving from where she stood, “Thank you for allowing Eve to see him, Chief Moses. I will not forget your kindness.” It sounded unmistakably chilling, and Hannah’s shoulders stiffened for a second, then deliberately relaxed.

“I’m sure you won’t,” Hannah said. “Anybody moves, everybody gets shocked down to the ground. Clear?”

“Yes,” Amelie said. “You have made yourself very clear indeed.”

None of the vamps moved. It was like looking at a room full of pale, silent statues, but the hate in their eyes was like nothing Claire had ever seen before. No wonder Michael hadn’t wanted Eve to stay. That kind of trapped fury didn’t bother with fine distinctions, and there would be some in that mall who didn’t care whom they killed . . . as long as they got to vent that rage on a human.

Just as the door closed, Claire heard Amelie say, soft as a whisper, “Don’t worry. We will see you very soon.”

The sunlight felt as cold as winter.

Shane was pacing near the cruiser, looking pale and agitated, and he was rubbing his arm as if it hurt him. He stopped and looked at them as Claire walked toward him. “What the hell happened?” He didn’t wait for an answer, though; he grabbed Eve’s other arm and helped to hold her up. “Dammit, Eve—”

“I want to go back,” Eve said. She sounded odd and shaky. “They’re going to kill all of them, I know they are, they’re going to do something terrible to Michael. I have to go back.” She tried to pull away, but Shane and Claire held on to her. Hannah opened the back door of the cruiser. She still wasn’t looking at them—looking anywhere but at them, in fact. Her face could have been carved from stone. “Please, don’t do this, Shane, please let me go—”

“You can’t even come close to getting in there again and you know it,” Shane said. “Eve. You can’t, and Michael doesn’t want you pulling something crazy like that. Come on.”

He put her into the car and walked around to block her from sliding out the other door; Claire took the space on one side of Eve as he crowded in on the other. She wasn’t fighting them, but she wasn’t helping, either. At least she’s not angry, Claire thought, but she wasn’t sure that was an improvement. No tears, no yelling. Just this . . . silence. And then there was Shane, still acting twitchy on Eve’s left, frowning and rubbing his forearm and snapping, as Hannah took the driver’s seat, “Can we just get the hell out of here already?”

That made Hannah give him a long glance in the mirror, but she started the engine. Shane’s tense body language seemed to ease up a little as the car pulled away from the blank, brooding exterior of the mall. Bitter Creek was a good name for it, Claire thought. Definitely not a happy kind of place.

It worried her that she hadn’t seen Myrnin at all.





THREE




Hannah took them home to the Glass House.

It looked different. And it wasn’t just the time Claire had spent away from it that had made it that way. Someone had painted it. Done a good job, too—the exterior was a neat, sparkling white, instead of the faded, peeling mess that had been there before. The trim was a crisp dark blue. It looked almost respectable. The lawn was even neatly mowed.