This islike in the book where it's from Claire's Point of view, I hope you enjoy.
Claire's change
Chapter one:
Claire came awake feeling sick, wretched, and cold. Someone was pounding on the back of her head with a croquet mallet, or at least that was how it felt, and when she tried to move, the whole world spun around.
"Shut up and stop moaning," somebody said from a few feet away. "Don't you dare throw up or I'll make you eat it."
It sounded like Jason Rosser, Eve's crazy brother. Claire swallowed hard and squinted, trying to make out the shadow next to her. Yeah, it looked like Jason-skanky, greasy, and insane. She tried to squirm away from him, but ran into a wall at her back. It felt like wood, but she didn't think it was the Glass House attic,
He'd taken her somewhere, probably using the portal. And now none of her friends could follow, because none of them knew how.
Her hands and feet were tied. Claire blinked, trying to clear her head. That was a little unfortunate, because with clarity came the awareness of just how bad this was. Jason Rosser really was crazy. He'd stalked Eve. He'd-at least allegedly-killed girls in town. He'd definitely stabbed Shane, and he'd staked Amelie at the feast when she'd tried to help him.
And none of her friends back at the Glass House would know how to find her. To their eyes, she would have just . . . vanished.
"What do you want?" she asked. Her voice sounded rusty and scared. Jason reached out and moved hair back from her face, which creped her out. She didn't like him touching her.
"Relax, shortcake, you're not my type," he said. "I do what I'm told, that's all. You were wanted. So I brought you."
"Wanted?"
A low, silky laugh floated on the silence, dark as smoke, and Jason looked over his shoulder as the hidden observer rose and stepped into what little light there was.
Ysandre, Bishop's pale little girlfriend. Beautiful, sure. Delicate as jasmine flowers, with big, liquid eyes and a sweetly rounded face.
She was poison in a pretty bottle.
"Well," she said, and crouched down next to Claire. "Look at what the cat dragged in. Meeow." Her sharp nail dragged over Claire's cheek, and judging from the sting, it drew blood. "Where's your pretty boyfriend, Miss Claire? I really wasn't done with him, you know. I hadn't even properly started."
Claire felt an ugly lurch of anger mix with the fear already churning her stomach. "He's probably not done with you, either," she said, and managed to smile. She hoped it was a cold kind of smile, the sort that Amelie used-or Oliver. "Maybe you should go looking. I'll bet he'd be so happy to see you."
"I'll show that boy a real good time, when we do meet up again," Ysandre purred, and put her face very close to Claire's. "Now, then, let's talk, just us girls. Won't that be fun?"
Not. Claire was struggling against the ropes, but Jason had done his job pretty well; she was hurting herself more than accomplishing anything else. Ysandre grabbed Claire's shoulder and wrenched her upright against the wooden wall, hard enough to bang Claire's injured head. For a dazed second, it looked like Ysandre's ripe, red smile floated in mid-air, like some undead Cheshire cat.
"Now," Ysandre said, "ain't this nice, sweetie? It's too bad we couldn't get Mr Shane to join us, but my little helper here; he's a bit worried about tackling Shane. Bad blood and all." She laughed softly. "Well, we'll make do. Amelie likes you, I hear, and you've got on that pretty little gold bracelet. So you'll do just fine."
"For what?"
"I ain't telling you, sweetie." Ysandre's smile was truly scary. "This town's going to have a wild night, though. Real wild. And you're going to get to see the whole thing, up close. You must be all a tingle."
Eve would have had a quip at the ready. Claire just glared, and wished her head would stop aching and spinning. What had he hit her with? It felt like the front end of a bus. She hadn't thought Jason could hit that hard, truthfully.
Don't try to find me, Shane. Don't. The last thing she wanted was Shane racing to the rescue and taking on a guy who'd stabbed him, and a vampire who'd led him around by a leash.
No, she had to find her own way out of this.
Step one: figure out where she was. Claire let Ysandre ramble on, describing all kinds of lurid things that Claire thought it was better not to imagine, considering they were things Ysandre was thinking of doing to her. Instead, she tried to identify her surroundings. It didn't look familiar, but that was no help; she was still relatively new to Morganville. Plenty of places she'd never been.
Wait.
Claire focused on the crate that Jason was sitting on. There was stencilling on it. It was hard to make it out in the dim light, but she thought it said BRICKS BULK COFFEE. And now that she thought about it, it smelled like coffee in here, too. A warm, morning kind of smell, floating over dust and damp wood. And she remembered Eve laughing about how Oliver bought his coffee from a place called Bricks. As in, tastes like ground up bricks, Eve had said. If you order flavoured, they add in the mortar.
There were only two coffee shops in town: Oliver's place, and the University Centre coffee bar. This didn't look like the UC, which wasn't that old and was mostly built of concrete, not wood.
That meant . . . she was at Common Grounds? But Common Grounds didn't make any sense; there wasn't any kind of portal leading to it.
Maybe Oliver has a warehouse. That sounded right, because the vampires seemed to own a lot of the warehouse district that bordered Founder's Square. Brandon, Oliver's second in vampire command, had been found dead in a warehouse.
Maybe she was close to Founder's Square.
Ysandre's cold fingers closed around Claire's chin and jerked it up. "Are you listening, honey?"
"Truthfully, no," Claire said. "You're kind of boring."
Jason actually laughed, and turned it into a fake cough. "I'm going outside," he said. "Since this is going to get all personal now." Claire wanted to yell to him not to go, but she bit her tongue and turned it into a subsonic whine in the back of her throat as she watched him walk away. His footsteps receded into the dark, and then finally a small square of light opened a long way off.
It was a door, too far for her to reach-way too far.
"I thought he'd never leave," Ysandre said, and put her cold, cold lips on Claire's neck, then yelled in shock and pulled away, covering her mouth with one pale hand. "You bitch!"
Ysandre hadn't seen the silver chain Claire was wearing in the dim light, as whisper thin as it was. Now there were welts forming on the vampire's full lips-forming, breaking, and bleeding.
Fury sparked in Ysandre's eyes. Playtime was over.
As Claire squirmed away, the vampire followed at a lazy stroll. She wiped her burned lips and looked at the thin, leaking blood in distaste. "Tastes like silver. Disgusting. You've just ruined my good mood, little girl."
As she rolled, Claire felt something sharp dig into her leg. The knife. They'd found the stake, but she guessed their search hadn't exactly been thorough; Jason was too crazy, and Ysandre too careless and arrogant.
But the knife wasn't going to do her any good at all where it was, unless . . .
Ysandre lunged for her; a blur of white in the darkness, and Claire twisted and jammed her hip down at an awkward angle.
The knife slipped and tore through the fabric of her jeans-not much of it, just a couple of inches, but enough to slice open Ysandre's hand and arm as it reached for her, all the way to the bone.
Ysandre shrieked in real pain, and spun away. She didn't look so pretty now, and when she turned toward Claire again, from a respectful distance this time, she hissed at her with full cobra fangs extended. Her eyes were wild and blood red, glowing like rubies.
Claire twisted, nearly yanking her elbow out of its joint, and managed to get the ropes around her wrist against the knife. She didn't have long; the shock wouldn't keep Ysandre at bay for more than a few seconds.
But getting a silver knife to cut through synthetic rope? That was going to take a while-a while she didn't have. Claire sawed desperately, and got a little bit of give on the bonds-enough to almost get her hand into her pocket.
But not.
Ysandre grabbed her by the hair. "I'm going to destroy you for that."
The pain in her head was blinding. It felt like her scalp was being ripped off, and on top of that, the massive headache roared back to a new, sickening pulse.
Claire loosened the rope enough to plunge her aching hand into her pocket and grab the handle of the knife. She yanked it out of the tangle of fabric and held it at a trembling, handicapped en grade-still tied up, but whatever, she wasn't going to stop fighting, not ever.
Ysandre shrieked and let her go, which made no sense to Claire's confused, pain shocked mind. I didn't stab her yet. Did I? Not that she wanted to stab anybody, even Ysandre. She just wanted-
What was going on?
Ysandre's body slammed down hard on the wooden floor, and Claire gasped and flinched away . . . but the vampire had fallen facedown, limp, and weirdly broken.
A small woman dressed in grey, her pale hair falling wild around her shoulders, dropped silently from overhead and put one impeccably lovely grey pump in the centre of Ysandre's back, holding her down as she tried to move.
"Claire?" The woman's face turned toward her, and Claire blinked twice before she realized whom she was looking at.
Amelie. But not Amelie. Not the cool, remote Founder-this woman had a wild, furious energy to her that Claire had never seen before. And she looked young.
"I'm okay," she said faintly, and tried to decide whether this version of Amelie was really here, or a function of her smacked around brain. She decided it would be a good idea to get her hands and feet untied before figuring anything else out.
That took long minutes, during which Amelie (really?) dragged Ysandre, whimpering, into the corner and fastened her wrists to a massive crossbeam with chains. The chains, Claire registered, had been there all along. Lovely. This was some kind of vamp playpen/storage locker-probably Oliver's. And she felt sick again, thinking about it. Claire sawed grimly at the ropes binding her and finally parted one complete twist around her hands. As she struggled out of the loops of rope, she saw deep white imprints in her skin, and realized that her hands were red and swollen. She could still feel them, at least, and the burn of circulation returning felt as if she were holding them over an open flame.
She focused on slicing the increasingly dulled knife through the rope on her feet, but it was no use.
"Here," Amelie said, and bent down to snap the rope with one twist of her fingers. It was so frustrating, after all that hard work, to see just how easy it was for her. Claire stripped the ties away and sat for a moment breathing hard, starting to feel every cut, bump, and bruise on her body.
Amelie's cool fingers cupped Claire's chin and forced her head up, and the vampire's grey eyes searched hers. "You have a head injury," Amelie said. "I don't think it's too serious. A headache and some dizziness, perhaps." She let go. "I expected to find you. I did not expect to find you here, I confess."
Amelie looked fine. Not a prisoner. Not a scratch on her, in fact. Claire had lots more damage and she hadn't been dragged off as Bishop's prisoner. . . .
Wait. "You-we thought Bishop might have gotten you. But he didn't, did he?" Amelie cocked an eyebrow at her. "Apparently not."
"Then where did you go?" Claire felt a completely useless urge to lash out at her, crack that extreme cool. "Why did you do this? You left us alone! And you called the vampires out of hiding-" Her voice failed her for a second as she thought about Officer O'Malley, and the others she'd heard about. "You got some of them killed."
Amelie didn't respond to that. She simply stared back, as calm as an ice sculpture-calmer, because she wasn't melting.
"Tell me why," Claire said. "Tell me why you did that."
"Because plans change," Amelie replied. "As Bishop changes his moves, I must change mine. The stakes are too high now, Claire. I've lost half the vampires of Morganville to him. He's taking away my advantage, and I needed to draw them to me, for their own safety."
"You got vampires killed, not just humans. I know humans don't mean anything to you. But I thought the whole point of this was to save your people!"
"And so it is," Amelie said. "As many as can be saved. As for the call, there is a thing in chess known as a blitz attack, you see-a distraction, to cover the movement of more important pieces. You retrieved Myrnin and set him in play again; this was most important. I need my most powerful pieces on the board."
"Like Oliver?" Claire rubbed her hands together, trying to get the annoying tingle out of them. "He's hurt, you know. Maybe dying."
"He's served his purpose." Amelie turned her attention toward Ysandre, who was starting to stir. "It's time to take Bishop's rook, I believe."
Claire clutched the silver knife hard in her fist. "Is that all I am, too? Some kind of sacrifice pawn?"
That got Amelie's attention again. "No," she said in surprise. "Not entirely. I do care, Claire. But in war, you can't care too much. It paralyzes your ability to act." Those luminous eyes turned toward Ysandre again. "It's time for you to go, because I doubt you would enjoy seeing this. You won't be able to return here. I'm closing down nodes on the network. When I'm finished, there will be only two destinations: to me, or to Bishop."
"Where is he?"
"You don't know?" Amelie raised her eyebrows again. "He is where it is most secure, of course. At City Hall. And at nightfall, I will come against him. That's why I came looking for you, Claire. I need you to tell Richard. Tell him to get all those who can't fight for me out of the building."
"But-he can't. It's a storm shelter. There are supposed to be tornadoes coming."
"Claire," Amelie said. "Listen to me. If innocents take refuge in that building, they will be killed, because I can't protect them anymore. We're at endgame now. There's no room for mercy." She looked again at Ysandre, who had gone very still, listening.
"Y'all wouldn't be saying this in front of me if I was going to walk out of here, would you?" Ysandre asked. She sounded calm now. Very still.
"No," Amelie said. "Very perceptive. I wouldn't." She took Claire by the arm and helped her to her feet. "I am relying on you, Claire. Go now. Tell Richard these are my orders."
Before Claire could utter another word, she felt the air shimmer in front of her, in the middle of the big warehouse room, and she fell . . . out over the dusty trunk in the Glass House attic, where Oliver had been. She sprawled ungracefully on top of it, then rolled off and got to her feet with a thump. When she waved her hand through the air, looking for that strange heat shimmer of an open portal, she felt nothing at all.
I'm closing the portals, Amelie had said.
She'd closed this one, for sure.
"Claire?" Shane's voice came from the far end of the attic. He shoved aside boxes and jumped over jumbled furniture to reach her. "What happened to you? Where did you go?"
"I'll tell you later," she said, and realized she was still holding the bloody silver knife. She carefully put it back in her pocket, in the makeshift holster against her leg. It was so dull she didn't think it would cut anything again, but it made her feel better. "Oliver?"
"Bad." Shane put his hands around her head and tilted it up, looking her over. "Is everything okay?"
"Define everything. No, define okay." She shook her head in frustration. "I need to get the radio. I have to talk to Richard."
Richard wasn't on the radio. "He's meeting with the mayor," said the man who answered. Sullivan, Claire thought his name was, but she hadn't really paid attention. "You got a problem there?"
"No, Officer, you've got a problem there," she said. "I need to talk to Richard. It's really important!"
"Everybody needs to talk to Richard," Sullivan said. "He'll get back to you. He's busy right now. If it's not an emergency response-"
"Yes, okay! It's an emergency!"
"Then I'll send units out to you. Glass House, right?"
"No, it's not-" Claire wanted to slam the radio down in frustration. "It's not an emergency here. Look, just tell Richard that he needs to clear everybody out of City Hall, as soon as possible."
"Can't do that," Sullivan said. "It's our centre of operations. It's the main storm shelter, and we've got one heck of a storm coming tonight. You're going to have to give me a reason, miss."
"All right, it's because-"
Michael took the radio away from her and shut it off. Claire gaped, stuttered, and finally demanded, "Why?"
"Because if Amelie says Bishop's got himself installed in City Hall, somebody there has to know. We don't know who's on his team," Michael said. "I don't know Sullivan that well, but I know he never was happy with the way things ran in town. I wouldn't put it past him to be buying Bishop's crap about giving the city back to the people, home rule, all that stuff. Same goes for anybody else there, except maybe Joe Hess and Travis Lowe. We have to know who we're talking to before we say anything else."
Shane nodded. "I'm thinking that Sullivan's keeping Richard out of the loop for a reason."
They were downstairs, the four of them. Eve, Shane, and Claire were at the kitchen table, and Michael was pacing the floor and casting looks at the couch, where Oliver was. The older vampire was asleep, Claire guessed, or unconscious; they'd done what they could, washed him off and wrapped him in clean blankets. He was healing, according to Michael, but he wasn't doing it very fast.
When he'd woken up, he'd seemed distant. Confused.
Afraid.
Claire had given him one of the doses she'd gotten from Dr Mills, and so far, it seemed to be helping, but if Oliver was sick, Myrnin's fears were becoming real.
Soon, it'd be Amelie, too. And then where would they be?
"So what do we do?" Claire asked. "Amelie said we have to tell Richard. We have to get non-combatants out of City Hall, as soon as possible."
"Problem is, you heard him giving instructions to the Civil Defence guys earlier-they're out telling everybody in town to go to City Hall if they can't make it to another shelter. Radio and TV, too. Hell, half the town is probably there already."
"Maybe she won't do it," Eve said. "I mean, she wouldn't kill everybody in there, would she? Not even if she thinks they're working for Bishop."
"I think it's gone past that," Claire said. "I don't know if she has any choice."
"There's always a choice."
"Not in chess," Claire replied. "Unless your choice is to lie down and die."
In the end, the only way to be sure they got to the right person was to get in the car and drive there. Claire was a little shocked at the colour of the sky outside-a solid grey, with clouds moving so fast it was like time-lapse on the Weather Channel. The edges looked faintly green, and in this part of the country, that was never a good sign.
The only good thing about it was that Michael didn't have to worry about getting scorched by sunlight. He brought a hoodie and a blanket to throw over his head, just in case, but it was dark outside and getting darker fast. Premature sunset.
Drops of rain were smacking the sidewalk, the size of half-dollars. Where they hit Claire's skin, they felt like paintball pellets. As she looked up at the clouds, a horizontal flash of lightning peeled the sky in half, and thunder rumbled so loudly she felt it through the soles of her shoes.
"Come on!" Eve yelled, and started the car. Claire ran to open the backseat door and piled in beside Shane. Eve was already accelerating before she could fasten her seat belt. "Michael, get the radio."
He turned it on. Static. As he scanned stations, they got ghosts of signals from other towns, but nothing came through clearly in Morganville-probably because the vampires jammed it.
Then one came in, loud and clear, broadcasting on a loop.
Attention Morganville residents: this is an urgent public service announcement. The National Weather Service has identified an extremely dangerous storm tracking toward Morganville, which will reach our borders at six twenty seven this evening at its present speed. This storm has already been responsible for devastation in several areas in its path, and there has been significant loss of life due to tornado activity. Morganville and the surrounding areas are on tornado watch through ten p.m. this evening. If you hear an alert siren, go immediately to a designated Safe Shelter location or to the safest area of your home if you cannot reach a Safe Shelter. Attention Morganville residents-
Michael clicked it off. There was no point in listening to the repeat; it wasn't going to get any better. "How many Safe Shelters are there?" Shane asked. "University dorms have them, the UC-"
"Founder's Square has two," Michael said, "but nobody can get to them right now. They're locked up."
"Library."
"And the church. Father Joe would open up the basements, so that'll fit a couple of hundred people."
Everybody else would head to City Hall, if they didn't stay in their houses.
The rain started to fall in earnest, slapping the windshield at first, and then pounding it in fierce waves. The ancient windshield wipers really weren't up to it, even at high speed. Claire was glad she wasn't trying to drive. Even in clear visibility she wasn't very good, and she had no idea how Eve was seeing a thing.
If she was, of course. Maybe this was faith based driving.
Other cars were on the road, and most of them were heading the same way they were. Claire looked at the clock on her cell phone.
Five thirty p.m.
The storm was less than an hour away.
"Uh oh," Eve said, and braked as they turned the last corner. It was a sea of red taillights. Over the roll of thunder and pounding rain, Claire heard horns honking. Traffic moved, but slowly, one car at a time inching forward. "They're checking cars at the barricade. I can't believe-"
Something happened up there, and the brake lights began flicking off in steady rows. Cars moved. Eve fell into line, and the big, black sedan rolled past two police cars still flashing their lights. In the red/blue/red glow, Claire saw that they'd moved the barricades aside and were just waving everyone through.
"This is crazy," she said. "We can't get people out. Not fast enough! We'd have to stop everybody from coming in first, and then give them somewhere to go. . . ."
"I'm getting out of the car here," Michael said. "I can run faster than you can drive in this. I'll get to Richard. They won't dare stop me."
That was probably true, but Eve still said, "Michael, don't-"
Not that it stopped him from bailing out into the rain. A flash of lightning streaked by overhead and showed him splashing through thick puddles, weaving around cars.
He was right; he was faster.
Eve muttered something about "Stupid, stubborn, bloodsucking boyfriends," and followed the traffic toward City Hall.
Out of nowhere, a truck pulled out in front of them from a side street and stopped directly in their path. Eve yelled and hit the brakes, but they were mushy and wet, and not great at the best of times, and Claire felt the car slip and then slide, gathering speed as it went.
Glad I put on my seat belt, she thought, which was a weird thing to think, as Eve's car hydroplaned right into the truck. Shane stretched out his arm to hold her in place, anyway-instinct, Claire guessed-and then they all got thrown forward hard as physics took over.
Physics hurt. Claire rested her aching head against the cool window-it was cracked, but still intact-and tried to shake it off. Shane was unhooking himself from the seat belt and asking her if she was okay. She made some kind of gesture and mumbled something, which she hoped would be good enough. She wasn't up to real reassurances at the moment.
Eve's door opened, and she got dragged out of the car.
"Hey!" Shane yelled, and threw himself out his own door. Claire fumbled at the latch, but hers seemed stuck; she navigated the push button on her seat belt and opted for Shane's side of the car instead.
As she stumbled out into the shockingly warm rain, she knew they were really in trouble now, because the man holding a knife to Eve's throat was Frank Collins, Shane's father and all-around badass, crazy vampire hater. He looked exactly like she remembered-tough, biker hard, dressed in leather and tattoos.
He was yelling something at Eve, something Claire couldn't hear over the crash of thunder. Shane threw himself into a slide over the trunk of the car and grabbed at his dad's knife hand.
Dad elbowed him in the face and sent him staggering. Claire grabbed for the silver knife in her jeans, but it was gone-she'd dropped it somewhere. Before she could look for it, Shane was back in the fight, struggling with his dad. He moved the knife enough that Eve slid free and ran to grab on to Claire.
Frank shoved his son down on the hood of the car and raised the knife. He froze there, with rain pouring from his chin like a thin silver beard, and off the point of the knife.
"No!" Claire screamed, "No, don't hurt him!"
"Where's the vampire?" Frank yelled back. "Where is Michael Glass?"
"Gone," Shane said. He coughed away pounding rain. "Dad, he's gone. He's not here. Dad."
Frank seemed to focus on his son for the first time. "Shane?"
"Yeah, Dad, it's me. Let me up, okay?" Shane was careful to keep his hands up, palms out in surrender. "Peace."
It worked. Frank stepped back and lowered the knife. "Good," he said. "I've been looking for you, boy." And then he hugged him. Shane still had his hands up, and froze in place without touching his father. Claire shivered at the look on his face.
"Yeah, good to see you, too," he said. "Back off, man. We're not close, in case you forgot."
"You're still my son. Blood is blood." Frank pushed him toward the truck, only lightly crushed where Eve's car had smacked it. "Get in."
"Why?"
"Because I said so!" Frank shouted. Shane just looked at him. "Dammit, boy, for once in your life, do what I tell you!"
"I spent most of my life doing what you told me," Shane said. "Including selling out my friends. Not happening anymore."
Frank's lips parted, temporarily amazed. He laughed.
"Done drunk the suicide cola, didn't you?" When he shook his head, drops flew in all directions, and were immediately lost in the silver downpour. "Just get in. I'm trying to save your life. You don't want to be where you're trying to go."
Strangely enough, Frank Collins was making sense. Probably for all the wrong reasons, though.
"We have to get through," Claire shouted over the pounding rain. She was shivering, soaked through every layer of clothing. "It's important. People could die if we don't!"
"People are going to die," Collins agreed. "Omelettes and eggs. You know the old saying."
Or chess, Claire thought. Though she didn't know whose side Frank Collins was playing on, or even if he knew he was being manipulated at all.
"There's a plan," Frank was saying to his son. "In all this crap, nobody's checking faces. Metal detectors are off. We seize control of the building and make things right. We shuffle these bastards off, once and for all. We can do it!"
"Dad," Shane said, "everybody in that building tonight is going to be killed. We have to get people out, not get them in. If you care anything about those idiots who buy your revolutionary crap, you'll call this off."
"Call it off?" Frank repeated, as uncomprehending as if Shane were speaking another language. "When we're this close? When we can win? Dammit, Shane, you used to believe in this. You used to-"
"Yeah. Used to. Look it up!" Shane shoved his father away from him, and walked over to Eve and Claire. "I've warned you, Dad. Don't do this. Not today. I won't turn you in, but I'm telling you, if you don't back off, you're dead."
"I don't take threats," Frank said. "Not from you."
"You're an idiot," Shane said. "And I tried."
He got back in the car, on the passenger side front seat where Michael had been. Eve scrambled behind the wheel and Claire in the back.
Eve reversed.
Frank stepped out into the road ahead of them, a scary looking man in black leather with his straggling hair plastered around his face. Add in the big hunting knife, and cue the scary music.
Eve let up on the gas. "No," Shane said, and moved his left foot over to jam it on top of hers. "Go. He wants you to stop."
"Don't! I can't miss him, no-"
But it was too late. Frank was staring into the headlights, squarely in the centre of the hood, and he was getting closer and closer.
Frank Collins threw himself out of the way at the last possible second, Eve swerved wildly in the opposite direction to miss him, and somehow, they didn't kill Shane's dad.
"What the hell are you doing?" Eve yelled at Shane. She was shaking all over. So was Shane. "You want to run him over, do it on your own time! God!"
"Look behind you," Shane whispered.
There were people coming after them. A lot of people. They'd been hiding in the alley, Claire guessed. They had guns, and now they opened fire. The car shuddered, and the back window exploded into cracks, then fell with a crash all over Claire's neck.
"Get up here!" Shane said, and grabbed her hands to haul her into the front seat. "Keep your head down!"
Eve had sunk down on the driver's side, barely keeping her eyes above the dashboard. She was panting hoarsely, panicked, and more gunshots were rattling the back of the car. Something hit the front window, too, adding more cracks and a round, backward splash of a hole.
"Faster!" Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. "You see why I didn't want you to stop?"
"Okay, your father is officially off my Christmas list!" Eve yelled. "Oh my God, look at my car!"
Shane barked out a laugh. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's what's important."
"It's better than thinking about what would have happened," Eve said. "If Michael had been with us-"
Claire thought about the mobs Richard had talked about, and the dead vampires, and felt sick. "They'd have dragged him off," she said. "They'd have killed him."
Michael had been right about Shane's dad, but then, Claire had never really doubted it. Neither had Shane, from the sick certainty on his face. He wiped his eyes with his forearm, which really didn't help much; they were all dripping wet, from head to toe.
"Let's just get to the building," Shane said. "We can't do much until we find Richard."
Only it wasn't that simple, even getting in. The underground parking was crammed full of cars, parked haphazardly at every angle. As Eve inched through the shadows, looking for any place to go, she shook her head. "If we do manage to get people to leave, they won't be able to take their cars. Everybody's blocked in," she said. "This is massively screwed up." Claire, for her part, though some of it seemed deliberate, not just panic. "Okay, I'm going to pull it against the wall and hope we can get out if we need to."
The elevator was already locked down; the doors open but the lights off and buttons unresponsive. They took the stairs at a run.
The first floor door seemed to be locked, until Shane pushed on it harder, and then it creaked open against a flood of protests.
The vestibule was full of people.
Morganville's City Hall wasn't all that large, at least not here in the lobby area.
There was a big, sweeping staircase leading up, all grand marble and polished wood, and glass display cases taking up part of one wall. The License Bureau was off to the right: six old time bank windows, with bars, all closed. Next to each window was a brass plaque that read what the windows were supposed to deliver: RESIDENTIAL LICENSING, CAR REGISTRATION, ZONING CHANGE REQUESTS, SPECIAL PERMITS, TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS, FINE PAYMENTS, TAXES, CITY SERVICES.
But not today.
The lobby was jammed with people. Families, mostly-mothers and fathers with kids, some as young as infants. Claire didn't see a single vampire in the crowd, not even Michael. At the far end, a yellow Civil Defence sign indicated that the door led to a Safe Shelter, with a tornado graphic next to it. A policeman with a bullhorn was yelling for order, not that he was getting any; people were pushing, shoving, and shouting at one another. "The shelter is now at maximum capacity! Please be calm!"
"Not good," Shane said. There was no sign of Richard, although there were at least ten uniformed police officers trying to manage the crowd. "Upstairs?"
"Upstairs," Eve agreed, and they squeezed back into the fire stairs and ran up to the next level. The sign in the stairwell said that this floor contained the mayor's office, sheriff's office, city council chambers, and something called, vaguely, Records.
The door was locked. Shane rattled it and banged for entrance, but nobody came to the rescue.
"Guess we go up," he said.
The third floor had no signs in the stairwell at all, but there was a symbol-the Founder's glyph, like the one on Claire's bracelet. Shane turned the knob, but again, the door didn't open. "I didn't think they could do that to fire stairs," Eve said.
"Yeah, call a cop." Shane looked up the steps. "One more floor, and then it's just the roof, and I'm thinking that's not a good idea, the roof."
"Wait." Claire studied the Founder's glyph for a few seconds, then shrugged and reached out to turn the knob.
Something clicked, and it turned. The door opened.
"How did you . . . ?"
Claire held up her wrist, and the gold bracelet. "It was worth a shot. I thought, maybe with a gold bracelet-"
"Genius. Go on, get inside," Shane said, and hustled them in. The door clicked shut behind them, and locked with a snap of metal. The hallway seemed dark, after the fluorescent lights in the stairs, and that was because the lights were dimmed way down, the carpet was dark, and so was the wood panelling.
It reminded Claire eerily of the hallway where they'd rescued Myrnin, only there weren't as many doors opening off it. Shane took the lead-of course-but the doors they could open were just simple offices, nothing fancy about them at all.
And then there was a door at the end of the hall with the Founder's Symbol etched on the polished brass doorknob. Shane tried it, shook his head, and motioned for Claire.
It opened easily at her touch.
Inside were-apartments. Chambers? Claire didn't know what else to call them; there was an entire complex of rooms leading from one central area.
It was like stepping into a whole different world, and Claire could tell that it had once been beautiful: a fairy tale room, of rich satin on the walls, Persian rugs, delicate white and gold furniture.
"Michael? Mayor Morrell? Richard?"
It was a queen's room, and somebody had completely wrecked it. Most of the furniture was overturned, some kicked to pieces. Mirrors smashed. Fabrics ripped.
Claire froze.
Lying on the remaining long, delicate sofa was François, Bishop's other loyal vampire buddy, who'd come to Morganville along with Ysandre as his entourage. The vampire looked completely at ease-legs crossed at the ankles, head propped on a plump satin pillow. A big crystal glass of something in dark red rested on his chest.
He giggled and saluted them with the blood. "Hello, little friends," he said. "We weren't expecting you, but you'll do. We're almost out of refreshments."
"Out," Shane said, and shoved Eve toward the door.
It slammed shut before she could reach it, and there stood Mr Bishop, still dressed in his long purple cassock from the feast. It was still torn on the side, where Myrnin had slashed at him with the knife.
There was something so ancient about him, so completely uncaring, that Claire felt her mouth go dry. "Where is she?" Bishop asked. "I know you've seen my daughter. I can smell her on you."
"Ewww," Eve said, very faintly. "So much more than I needed to know."
Bishop didn't look away from Claire's face, just pointed at Eve. "Silence, or be silenced. When I want to know your opinion, I'll consult your entrails."
Eve shut up. François swung his legs over the edge of the sofa and sat up in one smooth motion. He downed the rest of his glass of blood and let the glass fall, shedding crimson drops all over the pale carpet. He'd gotten some on his fingers. He licked them, then smeared the rest all over the satin wall.
"Please," he said, and batted his long lashed eyes at Eve. "Please, say something. I love entrails."
She shrank back against the wall. Even Shane stayed quiet, though Claire could tell he was itching to pull her to safety. You can't protect me, she thought fiercely. Don't try.
"You don't know where Amelie is?" Claire asked Bishop directly. "How's that master plan going, then?"
"Oh, it's going just fine," Bishop said. "Oliver is dead by now. Myrnin-well, we both know that Myrnin is insane, at best, and homicidal at his even better. I'm rather hoping he'll come charging to your rescue and forget who you are once he arrives. That would be amusing, and very typical of him, I'm afraid." Bishop's eyes bored into hers, and Claire felt the net closing around her. "Where is Amelie?"
"Where you'll never find her."
"Fine. Let her lurk in the shadows with her creations, until hunger or the humans destroy them. This doesn't have to be a battle, you know. It can be a war of attrition just as easily. I have the high ground." He gestured around the ruined apartment with one lazy hand. "And of course, I have everyone here, whether they know it or not."
She didn't hear him move, but flinched as François trailed cold fingers across the back of her neck, then gripped her tightly.
"Just like that," Bishop said. "Just precisely like that." He nodded to François.
"If you want her, take her. I'm no longer interested in Amelie's pets. Take these others, too, unless you wish to save them for later."
Claire heard Shane whisper, "No," and heard the complete despair in his voice just as Bishop's follower wrenched her head over to the side, baring her neck.
She felt his lips touch her skin. They burned like ice.
"Ah!" François jerked his head back. "You little peasant." He used a fold of her shirt to take hold of the silver chain around her neck, and broke it with a sharp twist.
Claire caught the cross in her hand as it fell.
"May it comfort you," Bishop said, and smiled. "My child."
And then François bit her