#FLASHBACK#
"Claire? You okay?" Shane asked wearily, he was tired and he'd heard a noise as someone went down the stairs of the Glass House. Getting out of bed he'd gone to see who it was and seen Claire sitting on the sofa, tears filling her eyes slightly.
"Shane? What? - oh, I'm okay. I think, just a little confused. He's gone. He thinks something's going to happen." She looked up at Shane her eyes wide and frightened, it looked a little like she'd just snapped after 3 years of living with the strange abnormalities that the town had to offer, " Are we going to die this year, Shane?" He shoved her lightly along the sofa and climbed next to her, holding her tightly in his arms.
"No, we're not going to die, Claire. We have survived this far, thanks to you, we'll do it again. Who's gone, Claire?"
"Myrnin. He came to see me. Said Amelie and Oliver, they're planning something. Oliver should never have been allowed close to her. Bad things, bad things, Shane. We'll die. He told me, I need to get out, I need to leave Morganville. I said no. Can't leave you." The girl was just muttering now, he face buried in the crook of Shane's neck, tears leaking down under his shirt from her crying. "I don't wanna die."
"I know."
Claire had fallen asleep in his arms, and unaware of what else to do with her, he lay down and cradled her in her sleep, holding tight and never intending to let go.
#END FLASHBACK#
"That was my pathetic moment after you left. I panicked, I thought that if you were scared, that meant we were doomed, but I couldn't leave without them. So I made my decision to die with them." Claire said bitterly, twisting something on her left hand around her finger. Myrnin then noticed what it was for the first time, an engagement and wedding ring. So Claire had married Shane.
"Then what?" He prompted, disappointment rising in his throat before he could stop it.
"Well, then..."
#FLASHBACK#
A Few Months Later
"Bitch!" Eve shouted from the doorway, drawing Claire's attention from the experiment she was conducting. Eve never came to Myrnin's lab unless forced, what was she doing here? "Michael said that tonight there was something going down at the Founder's Council. He's injured and the place really did not sound exactly U rated at the moment. I'd steer clear of it if I were you, if they don't like me, they're not going to like you after what you did with Monica, queen bitch as mayor. They all think you were doing it to manipulate them, they're pissed. Oh, and I bought you coffee." Eve placed the take-away Common Grounds cup on the table and squealed when Bob the spider extended a lazy leg towards her, Eve evidently hadn't noticed the snoozing creature on the work bench. "Uh, Claire, honey, you're wearing Bunny slippers with fangs..." She pointed out carefully.
"I know. They're comfortable, and I miss him." Eve stared incredulously at her, "Don't give me that look, Eve. He was my friend, I had to look after him and, when he wasn't trying to bite me, it was fun. He understood a hell of a lot more of the work that I do than you, Michael and Shane put together!" The Goth considered this and stuck her tongue out at her best friend.
"Love you CB, but something's going down, you know Amelie has a personal vendetta against you now. Chow."
"Eve... It's Chao... Not chow."
"Oh."
#END FLASHBACK#
"Why did Amelie have a personal vendetta against you?" Myrnin found himself asking slowly. Claire's face twisted into a small evil smile.
"Well, basically... I killed about a dozen vampires, with silver. Shane and I were going to her to discuss some new hunting laws she put in and they wouldn't get out of my way. I was angry you see, they were irritating. I stopped being the nice girl you knew that day as soon as people I knew began to die. Hannah Moses, she was the first one they killed, the new hunting laws included Shane and Eve as well, but not me. Mostly because I think she wanted to see me suffer once they were dead because I'd been causing her so much trouble. So I went down to the office with Shane and they wouldn't let me see her to drive a stake through her heart, so I did it to them instead." Myrnin was impressed how the little scrap of a girl could get past over a dozen vampires and to the founder without being torn to shreds.
"She hated you because of that?"
"It didn't take much did it?" Claire smiled bitterly again and frowned slightly. "That's what began the great Morganville war."
Myrnin cocked his head to one side, inviting Claire to continue but she seemed to be struggling. Tears were creating a sheen across her eyes and Myrnin was fairly certain that everything she could see at the moment would be blurry. The vampire sat there awkwardly, not entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing. Should he comfort her? In the end, it seemed he didn't have to because Claire coughed, swallowed the threat of tears and opened her mouth as if to speak. No words came out. Myrnin didn't want to push her, but he would be lying if he said that he wasn't curious as to what had her so upset.
"First..." She began finally, breathing slowly and stopping every few seconds to sniff, "First was the return of Captain Obvious. We never found out who it was this time; the warehouse was burned down after the first message was sent out. 25 people died in the fire, including Monica Morrell. I feel very strange saying this, but that was the one thing that got me out for revenge. I mean, I didn't much like the girl, that's obvious, but she wasn't so bad after Richard passed away, sometimes she'd even come over to the house to check that we weren't being harassed too much or anything by the people that disagreed with... um, my friend's wedding."
"Michael and Eve?" Asked Myrnin, just to make sure he was following correctly. Claire winced but nodded at him.
"... S-Shane and I couldn't go to common grounds anymore, not since the whole thing with Amelie, Oliver was guarding and threatened us every time we went near. It was after about two weeks that the new hunting laws began to affect the town drastically. Shane was the first to be hit. The vampire that got him drained him to within an inch of his life before leaving him to bleed out on the pavement; the vampires couldn't be accountable for the deaths unless they were present at the time of death. This one ran off before Shane would have died and Eve found him a few moments later on her way home from her common grounds shift. She took him to the hospital and contacted Michael and I, we were both at home." Myrnin nodded all the way through her explanations and couldn't help but feel ultra curious why she kept flinching slightly whenever mention of her friends came up. Had something happened to them? He decided not to mention it.
"The humans of the town fought back gradually after that. It was only a matter of time, with all my knowledge of the inner workings of the vampires until we had nearly all of them either dead or captured. By the third year after you'd gone, we'd successfully gotten rid of at least 70 per cent of the vampire population of Morganville, Amelie underestimated the power of thousands of humans working during the day with tons of mirrors. They came outside and even with their skin mostly immune to the suns glares, the mirrors reflected it all over their bodies. It was quite a sight, many of them burst into flames and ran into each other, setting the next vamps on fire. Shane and I were in charge of checking for any that remained, which was quite a few and with the help of other town members, we put them into the jail cells, you know? Where all the ill vampires used to be kept. It was basically quitting blood cold turkey. They didn't like that. You could hear them screaming all over town.
"Amelie was amongst the ones we captured and Oliver... well, I killed him personally. He tried to kill Eve at work and I stuck a silver stake in his chest." She shuddered at the memory, "I still have a scar on my hand, see? Where he sunk one fang into my hand as the silver ate at him. It was very gross. I'll never forget the look on Amelie's face. It was murderous. That was her other reason for doing what she did 2 years ago."
Myrnin saw that Claire was reaching a point that was going to hurt her very much to say out loud but he needed to know what had happened.
"The towns people wouldn't let me find them..." Tears began to pour from her eyes. Tears that she appeared to have been holding back for 2 years at least. "Myrnin... 2 and a half years ago, I married Shane, my name is now Claire C-Collins. 2 years ago, Amelie escaped the confines of the jail and sh-she ran away, went into hiding."
"That's not that bad! She hasn't come back to hurt you has she?" Myrnin asked.
"No. When she left... she took them with her. She knocked them all unconscious and escaped into the night with them. All I got was a note and no one would help me look for them. They're gone, but they're alive. They have to be!"
"Who, Claire?"
"SHANE, EVE AND MICHAEL!" Claire wailed, tears coming faster than ever now and her pixie face was screwed up against the onslaught of water. "They're gone... I have no one. For 2 years I've had no one..."
Myrnin stood up and went around the side of the desk, giving her a very gentle but awkward pat on the back, he said "Well not anymore. Now, you've got me."