Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(98)

“I’m standing in the light now,” Myrnin said. “Lest it escaped your notice. Not even a hat on my head. What makes you think I fear it?”

Fallon pointed at the sizzling bodies of Amelie, Morley, and Oliver. “Ask them,” he said. “They’re proof of your damnation. Proof that the sun itself hates and rejects your kind.” He shifted his gaze away from Myrnin to the people crowding around the stage. “We will stand in the sunlight and they will be defeated! The sun makes us strong. Stand together!”

“Come on, we need to get Eve and Michael out of there,” Shane said. He shoved through the crowd, heading for the stairs that led up to the stage. As they took the steps, they were crowded to the edge by the fleeing choir, but he practically body-slammed his way through, heedless of their yells and cries, and he somehow kept hold of Claire and made enough space for her to follow.

Then they were at the top, and Michael spotted them.

It was what he’d been waiting for, apparently, because he turned and threw a sharp elbow right into the jaw of the man behind him and Eve. Eve let out a war yell, threw her chair aside, and kicked the man solidly in the chest as he tried to throw a punch in return. It threw him backward and tangled him in the curtains, and they were ripped loose as he toppled off the stage to the rear.

Eve turned back, color burning in her cheeks, and grabbed Claire’s hand. She didn’t speak, but the pressure of her grip was enough. Michael and Shane exchanged quick nods. “What now?” Michael asked.

“We get the hell out of the way, because hell’s coming,” Shane said. “Come on, man.”

But they didn’t make it. The man Eve had kicked off the stage came scrambling back up, and his companion came back from the other side, dragging the limp body of a red-haired woman that Claire recognized a heartbeat later as Jesse.

He dumped her on the stage beside Fallon’s podium, and even from this far away Claire saw the tremor that went through Myrnin.

She saw his eyes turn bloody crimson.

But if Fallon expected him to attack, he was disappointed. Myrnin said, “You’re a fool, Rhys. You achieved your own mortality. Congratulations. Let your anger go. Let her go.”

“After I send your friends to hell, where they belong,” Fallon said. He crossed to Amelie, reached down, and yanked sharply up on the stake.

He expected it to release silver nitrate and destroy her, of course, and it must have come as an awful shock to him when she opened her eyes, sat up, and said, in a calm, clear voice, “Thank you. That was unpleasant.”

He stumbled backward as Amelie climbed to her feet. She was burned and weak, but moving, and the sight of her sent a ripple through the crowd of vampires that were standing so still. She crossed to Oliver and yanked the stake from his chest, too, then helped him rise. Then Morley.

That’s when Fallon stumbled back to the podium and pulled out a copy of Claire’s VLAD device—the clumsy, bulky gun that she had made and Myrnin had steampunked out. This one looked sleeker, and deadlier, and Fallon aimed it at Amelie.

Of course. Claire had been told that Dr. Anderson had been working on making new models. This was a prototype, something he’d brought today to show the true believers. A real weapon they could use to protect themselves from the vampires.

Claire could tell that it had been pushed to its highest setting. It might not kill Amelie, but it would disable her so badly she’d be utterly helpless. My fault, Claire thought in a sickening rush. My invention.

I’m the villain after all.

She watched helplessly as Fallon pressed the trigger.

Oliver threw himself in the way of the blast. He must have known what it would cost him; he’d been hit with it before, twice, and he understood the pain he was in for. But he didn’t hesitate. Claire saw the beam hit him, and saw him fall to the stage floor. He writhed in agony and then curled into a helpless ball, shaking with fear and horror.

That gave Morley an opportunity. He grabbed Fallon, ripped the gun out of his hands, and shattered it over his knee as easily as if it had been made out of balsa wood. Fluids sprayed, sparks flew, but just like that, he’d reduced Fallon’s ultimate weapon to junk and recycling.

It cost him his life.

The Daylighter who’d dragged Jesse up to the stage pulled out a silver stake and lunged forward to drive it into Morley’s chest. Morley might have survived that, at least for a while, but the man quickly pulled it back out . . . which triggered the release of the liquid silver solution inside.

It flooded into Morley’s chest cavity, and he began to burn, screaming.

Claire clapped hands over her mouth and looked away in horror, knowing there was nothing they could do for him; it was fast, and it was deadly. It was also an awful way to die. She heard him fall, and smelled the bitter stench of ashes.

Amelie ignored Fallon, who was backing away now. She moved in a blur to the man who’d staked Morley, and she threw him off the stage—as far as the wall, into the bushes—and dropped down next to her fallen ally. She took his hand as he trembled, staring into her face as the silver bubbled and hissed in his chest cavity.

“I’m here,” she said. “Morley, I’m here. Thank you, my old friend. May God grant you rest.”

He couldn’t speak, but he held her gaze until he was gone, his chest eaten away to a smoking hole filled with ash.

Then Amelie rose, and looked at Fallon with those calm, ice gray eyes, and Claire knew he was finished, one way or the other. He backed away from her, and it came to Claire that what he feared most in the world was being made into a vampire again. Amelie might find that a fitting punishment. Might even find some satisfaction in it.