Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(66)

“What the hell happened to them?” Eve asked. She already knew the answer, Claire thought. There was dread in her voice, real dread.

“Fallon gave them his so-called cure,” she said. “These are the ones who didn’t make it.”

“But—but he’s giving it to Michael!”

“I know,” Claire said. She took a deep breath and turned away from the dead. “And Oliver, and a bunch more of them. I heard Fallon; he was putting Anderson in charge of the cure, and if she’s here that has to mean that Michael and the others are here, too. Maybe behind those locked doors in the hallway. We’ll find them, Eve.”

“You’ve got a Taser,” Eve said. “I feel militantly underdressed.” She looked around the room, then pulled out the drawers. There were knives in them. Saws. All kinds of things that made Claire feel a little bit faint, seeing them.

Eve hesitated, then reached in and took out a thick, wicked-looking knife. Claire snapped the elastic holding her makeshift homemade weapons and traded out for a scalpel that fit inside the cardboard sheath. Then she looked at the shelves, and the ranks of bottles.

“Wait,” she said, and began pulling things down.

“We can’t wait. They’re going to give that poison to Michael!”

“I know. Just wait.”

Eve didn’t want to, but Claire had all the keys. “What the hell are you looking for?”

“Trichloroethylene,” she said. “Hydrogen fluoride and bromine. I’m making anesthetic gas. Halothane.”

“Is that safe?”

“No,” Claire said. “But it’s safer than using knives on people, and we might need to knock out a bunch of people all at once.”

Eve kept her objections silent, at least, though Claire was pretty sure she was screaming them inside. Claire didn’t let it affect her concentration, because doing this wrong would be a very bad idea. Halothane was volatile, and this wasn’t the best-equipped setting in which to be making a gas. She found some breathing masks and put one on, then handed one to Eve, who only complained a little. “They’ll be getting here soon,” Eve reminded her. “One of them is bound to have keys.”

“I know,” Claire said. “Here. Go jam this in the lock.” She handed her the paper clip, bent into an almost unrecognizable shape now from all the uses she’d already put it to. Eve raced off to do it, and Claire began carefully measuring out beakers of fluids. She had the bare minimum equipment necessary to capture the gas once it started to react: tubing and a container. She worked fast, with all her attention on the problem at hand. Her mind was clear, at least, and the picture of the chemical compound seemed so real she could have reached out to touch it. She prepped the burners. The last part would be the problem, because the bromine reaction needed a very high temperature, but she’d just have to do the best she could.

The synthesis of the trichloroethylene and hydrogen fluoride went easily enough; once the temperature reached 130 degrees, the gas progressed to the second stage. She added the bromide and cranked the heat as high as she could. The mixture boiled off into gas, precipitated into the tubing and the container, and Claire quickly stuck a cork in the tube and left it attached to the bottle.

“Are they outside?” she asked Eve, who turned toward her. Eve didn’t need to answer, because Claire could hear the metallic clicking in the lock, followed by a loud bang on the metal door.

“Open up!” someone called. He sounded angry. “Open up now!”

Claire hurried forward and crouched down to uncork the tube. She crimped it in the middle, and then slid the flexible rubber under the door’s bottom edge. “Talk to them!” she said to Eve. “Get them close!”

Eve began spouting something that sounded half crazy about the dead coming back to life and zombies lurching up off the tables, and if Claire hadn’t known it was a lie she might have bought it, too, especially when Eve ended it with “Oh, God, help us, help . . .” and trailed off into a gurgle that sounded especially gruesome.

There was silence on the other side of the door.

“Do you think—,” Eve whispered, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence, because Claire heard a falling body hit the door and slide down. Then another, and another, farther away.

Claire yanked the tube away and rolled the bottle across the room, then pulled off her mask. Eve took hers off as well. “Hold your breath,” Claire warned. She yanked the bent paper clip from the lock and used her key. As she pulled the door open, a man fell in with it—a heavyset older man, mouth loose and open and eyes rolled back in his head. She checked for a pulse and found one, slow but steady. The other two who’d been with him were also down, though one was mumbling sleepily.

Claire grabbed Eve’s hand and pulled her over the bodies at a run, heading down the hall.

“They’ll be okay,” Claire assured her. “The fresh air will wake them up soon.”

“Like I care,” Eve said. “We need to find Michael!”

“Take that side of the hall. Slide the windows open and see if you spot anybody.”

Eve wasted no time, but it didn’t yield any victories. They opened every window on the hall, on both sides, but there were no vampires in the cells. Nobody at all, in fact. Eve sent Claire a despairing, panicked look that didn’t need words to be understood, and they raced through the open reception area to the other side of the building.