Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(34)
“My—wait, who?”
He shrugged. “The ghost girl. She seems to find me quite alarming, and she was hardly able to manifest herself at all to explain to me where to find you. I think she’s afraid I’ll try to bite her. I believe she may have, you know, mental issues.” He made an unmistakable circle at his temple, and Claire just stared at him in dumb amazement. That isn’t just pot, meet kettle, she thought. That’s the whole chef’s rack. “Oh, and I also knocked out several people on several different floors, including Mayor Ramos and her assistant. I thought that might nicely confuse the issues while we make our clever escape.”
“About that. Exactly what is the plan for our clever escape?”
“Front door,” he said cheerfully.
Of course.
There wasn’t any chance of talking him out of it, sadly, and she had no choice but to follow close behind him as he shoved open the fire exit door at the top of the stairs, with a fine disregard for whether there might be an ambush waiting beyond. There wasn’t. There were, however, two armed police officers standing outside the front doors, but Myrnin hit them with the force of a neon-colored hurricane and left them unconscious in his wake. “See?” he said as he marched on in his flip-flops. “Successful plan. And I’m being extreme humane. You really can’t fault me.”
A car was idling at the curb, and through the open passenger-side window, she saw Miranda’s pale, anxious face; the girl was gesturing frantically. Next to her, painted an eerie shade of green from the dashboard light’s glow, Claire glimpsed Jenna—the psychic who’d become Miranda’s foster mother, in a way, and from whom Miranda pulled the power to stay alive and together outside the boundaries of the Glass House. She looked tense and very worried.
As she should have been.
Sirens howled, and behind them, the lights suddenly flared on inside City Hall. Their grace period was officially over—and they were too far from the safety of Jenna’s car.
Jenna made a split-second decision and hit the gas, hard. Miranda let out a cry of protest, but it was too late; a few seconds later, Jenna’s car was taking a right turn out of the City Hall parking lot and speeding away.
“Well,” Myrnin said, “that wasn’t in my plan. I suppose it’s time to run.”
He yanked her into a full-tilt race.
It was getting dark, and between gasps for air Claire managed to say, “That hoodie kind of glows in the dark. You might want to take it off!”
“My skin is even more reflective,” he said. “And I quite like the color, don’t you? So festive.”
“Where are we going?”
“Clearly not that way,” Myrnin said, and made an instant course correction when he spotted a police cruiser’s lights heading toward them. He grabbed Claire’s arm and dragged her over the lawn to the shadows of some evergreen trees. “Hush.” He didn’t take the chance she might not agree; he grabbed her and slapped a hand over her mouth. Her protest—faint as she’d meant it to be—disappeared entirely. He was holding her way too tightly against him to break free.
A searchlight from the police car slid over the trees, but they were well concealed by the thicket of branches. Myrnin waited until the danger had passed, then let her loose, and towed her back out onto the open lawn. “Where are we going?” she asked him in an urgent whisper. “Because I am not feeling good about this! We’re both fugitives now, you know!”
“Duly noted. Save your breath now—we have to run. Do keep up.”
She didn’t think she could. Myrnin did hold back a little from genuine vampire speed, but even so, she felt as if she was running faster than was safe in the dim, failing light. Streetlights flickered on as they made it to the shops across the street from City Hall. They ducked into an alley as more police cars moved past and swept the bricks with searchlights. Myrnin didn’t seem bothered by the nasty puddles soaking his feet, but Claire tried to avoid the worst of it. It definitely wasn’t clean water. She wasn’t sure it was water. “Where are we going?”
He hadn’t answered that question the first time, but as he watched the street outside, he said, “Your friend Jenna seems to have offered us some form of safe haven. Pity we missed the ride. I mistrust her, but both Steve and Shane—”
“Eve! Honestly, Myrnin, how long have you known her?”
“It’s a very odd name, you know. Efa, now, that’s a proper sort of name. Or even Aoife,” he said. “Fine. Eve and Shane assure me it is the best we can do at the moment. I believe their alternative was that we’d end up dead in a ditch, which doesn’t sound attractive.”
“Probably wasn’t meant to. Are we clear?”
“Apparently.” Myrnin snatched her hand and dragged her into another flat-out run. This one wasn’t as hard, simply because they were on sidewalks, though when he veered sharply down an alley, that was frankly terrifying, and she decided she’d better just commit to trusting him not to smash her face-first into hidden obstacles.
There were a few worrying moments where she brushed past things that would have definitely been painful, but overall, they emerged into the street on the other side unscathed.
And there were people out on the streets. Myrnin skidded to a stop and backed her up into the shadows. “Damn,” he said. “I had forgotten that the residents here had lost all their well-taught caution. What is the world coming to?”