Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(92)

Sully shut up. He took Hannah seriously, no question about that. She stood up and looked at Kentworth, who slowly raised both hands in the air. He reached up, took the Daylighter pin from his collar, and dropped it on the ground.

“Happy to help, ma’am,” he said. “Never really liked any of this from the beginning. I only joined them because you did.”

“That was my mistake,” Hannah said. She looked at Claire and Shane. “Amelie’s not really dead, is she?”

“Nope,” Shane said, and held out his hand to her. She shook it and nodded gravely. “Nice to have you back, Hannah.”

“Nice to stop pretending that I’m a true believer,” she said. “Fair warning—I’m not sure I can stay on your side for long, if Fallon sets me to hunting vampires. Can’t control that much at all.”

“The good news is that Fallon’s vampire cure seems to work for whatever we are, too. But word of advice—try biting somebody who survived it. Not Michael, though. He’s been through enough.”

For the first time in a long time, Hannah actually smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Tactical question—what’s Amelie waiting for? Why isn’t she taking Fallon down right now?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure she’d love to, but she wants to be sure that her people are free before she does it. No more hostages. That’s how he got her in the first place—hostages and threats, right?”

“No,” Hannah said. “Not threats. His task force took ten vampires hostage, all right, but his first act when he got Amelie to show up to rescue them was to stake half of them with those booby-trapped stakes. They died when she tried to help them. She gave herself up to stop him from killing the rest the same way.” She hesitated, then continued, “They were all her bloodline. Siblings, and vampires she created. Family, as vampires count these things.”

Amelie had never seemed all that easy to manipulate, but Claire knew how she felt about her people—she’d created Morganville specifically to protect them against all the threats that surrounded them. She would fight and die for them. And when it came to actual family . . . “That’s horrible.”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “But I don’t think Fallon recognizes it anymore.”

Shane exchanged a look with Claire and said, “We need to get Michael and Eve out of the middle of this. Michael isn’t used to being human. He’s going to make a mistake, get himself killed trying to react like a vampire.”

“We can’t,” Claire said. “They’re on the stage. We have to leave them there for now.” She saw the expression that crossed his face, and she sympathized; she didn’t like it, either. But he knew she was right.

“Then we have to hurry,” Hannah said. “Kentworth, you’re in charge of Sully. Keep him quiet.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Be careful.”

“Always.”

Turned out there was no easier way to leave Founder’s Square than in the custody of the Morganville chief of police.





THIRTEEN




Mrs. Grant hadn’t backstabbed them after all. By the time they arrived at the Bitter Creek Mall, the bus from Blacke was idling on the north side of the parking lot, out of sight of the front doors, where the guards were stationed. Claire spotted it from the road, and pointed it out to Hannah, who nodded and turned into the street that looped around the mall. The asphalt was cracked and split, so she took it slow, avoiding the occasional bush that had pushed its way up from the darkness.

Mrs. Grant stepped off the bus as the police car pulled to a halt. She was holding a shotgun, which she pointed at the driver’s-side window.

“No!” Claire yelled, and fumbled at the passenger-side door. She exited fast and waved her arms frantically. “No! She’s on our side!”

The older woman hesitated for only a moment, then nodded and returned the shotgun to a resting position on her shoulder. “Just rock salt, anyway,” she said. “Don’t want to be killing any innocent people, even the ones the Daylighters have got their hooks into. We’re visitors here. Wouldn’t be polite, would it?”

Hannah got out of the cruiser and gave Mrs. Grant a professional threat assessment, then stepped forward to offer her hand. “Chief Hannah Moses,” she said. “You must be Mrs. Grant.”

“Heard of me?”

“You left an impression. You may be the first combat librarian I’ve ever met.”

That earned an almost-full smile from the other woman. “I think most librarians are combat qualified,” she said. “It’s not as peaceful a job as it looks. We were about to go in without you. What about the others?” She meant Amelie, Oliver, and Morley.

“Fallon’s making them a spectacle,” Hannah said. “Good for us, because that means the attention won’t be here. If you want to save these vampires, you’d better do it now. He plans to start his conversion therapy on all of them today. Odds are, three-quarters of them won’t survive.”

“They won’t just let him do it to them. I know vampires. They’re not very biddable.”

“If they resist, he’ll kill them,” Hannah said flatly, “and call it a riot and a necessary defensive measure. He’ll firebomb the place. If there are any survivors, he’ll give them his cure. One thing about Fallon, he’s not squeamish. He’s already got most of his Daylighter guards and my own people in there, armed with things lethal to vampires and ready to use them.”