Chapter 15 – The Bargain
Myrnin's POV
What a strange occurrence. A very large pillar had just fallen down, and I must say it crushed quite a few people on the way; though fortunately not anyone of importance. I had heard Claire running around whispering the word "pillar" over and over again though I did not comprehend what she had meant. Now, looking at her and the young boy Shane, I now understood what had been on her mind at that particular moment.
I looked around and spotted Morley, his eyes filled with hatred. I didn't usually tend to hold a grudge, but I didn't expect to be forgiving him any time in the future – possession of another person's body is a very hurtful crime. Even after spotting Morley, I could see Sam nowhere.
I felt scared for Claire, and for the young man that stood beside her. When they had pushed the pillar over, they managed to kill almost all of the vampires that had been attacking Amelie, Oliver and I. And even the ones that had not been killed, they were currently distracted. I looked at Claire and tried to catch her eye, but she seemed to be looking into space – and I had no clue where she thought that would get us.
It didn't matter anyway, she and Shane had barely ten seconds from now before the vampires pounced, and I planned to save them.
But before those ten seconds were up, Sam's voice travelled through the room, and it seemed that he had been away fetching himself a cup of tea, meanwhile leaving all of his soldiers to do the dirty work; though it seemed by the look in his eyes that he regretted ever leaving in the first place.
"What in the lord's name has been going on here?" he called out, and the vampires' attention changed from the young couple to their leader.
"It was them, sir," one of the male vampires told him. "They pushed over the pillar, so they did. Almost killed all of us, sir." The man was Irish, or had been Irish before he was turned. The accent was so pure and fresh that you wouldn't believe – had you not been told – that he had been locked in a Crypt for thousands of years; his accent had certainly not fade over time.
"I can figure these things out for myself, Richard. Now..." Sam tilted his head at Claire and Shane as if to discourage them, but they didn't seem to be moved by the sudden glare. "You do realise what you just did, don't you?"
He didn't receive a reply, but it seemed as if he had meant it as a rhetorical question, if it had been a question at all.
"You just knocked over a pillar that existed in the 1200's." The faces that looked back at him didn't seem to care all that much. Well, Shane didn't. Claire seemed as if she was resisting the urge to attempt to stand it back up. "That must have taken some effort that only a vampire usually tends to have." Well, this conversation was definitely taking a turn for the more confusing side of things. He laughed with a sound of strangely true amusement. "You look both uncertain and scared, children." And he seemed to stumble on his words; taking a breath, he corrected himself. "You look both uncertain and scared, just as true opponents should be."
I looked at Claire, and her expression wasn't what I had expected. She wasn't confused; she was in the middle of understanding – though what she understood I hadn't quite figured out for myself.
"No," Claire stated with a dull, blunt voice. "You cannot, and so you will not."
"He cannot what?" Shane and I asked – though his use of grammar was horrendous in comparison.
"We are his rivals, his opponents; though he finds the qualities of people he would like to call his own in us." She looked at Shane as if to see some hint of comprehension in his expression. Where she did not find it in his, she certainly found in mine when she looked toward me.
"No, absolutely and most certainly not," I said.
"I think that you will find that it is not your choice," Sam told me, and then turned back to face Claire and Shane, walking closer to them but stopping a fair distance away to ensure that they did not grow uncomfortable. "And I am afraid, Claire, that you have... grabbed the wrong end of the stick, shall we say. I do not seek for you both, just you. Any vampire can help to thrust a pillar into a group of chaos, but only someone intelligent can think to do it in the first place."
"I have refused this offer before, and I will do it again. I do not want to be a vampire," Claire said.
And when she said this, Shane seemed to grasp on to the topic of conversation and blurted, "What?!"
"You may say that now, but I have an offer that you would not refuse – if I know you as well as I think I do."
Shane began to speak again, possibly with more offensive words this time, but Claire stopped him, seemingly reassuring him by the look in her eyes – set determination.
"Now," Sam said in a louder voice so that every vampire and human in the room could hear what he was saying. "You may think that my side have lost, but I can assure you, you will not win this particular battle as, unfortunately, there are no longer any ancient pillars waiting to be thrown into the fight." And as if on cue, an even bigger group of vampires appeared through the door that we too had come through. "You see, we have backup." And he gestured to the group that stood behind him.
Unfortunately, comparing these vampires to the ones that we were currently fighting, these looked much stealthier and ten times stronger.
"And with this backup, not one of you will leave here alive. Unless..." And he turned back to look at Claire, singling her out of the entire group of us.
"You want to turn me into a vampire," she simply stated.
"Yes I do. And in return for allowing me to take you on as one of my own vampire fighters, I shall allow your friends to travel home safely. I think that is a very lenient, if not overly grateful, bargain. Do you not?"
"Yes I do."
Claire's POV
"No!" Shane shouted.
"Shane..." I whispered to him, but he didn't let me continue.
"No way in hell am I going to let you become a vampire just so that we can surrender and go back to living our stupid Morganville lives. Claire, if you let him turn you into a vampire, you wouldn't be mine anymore." Tears started forming in his eyes, but he pushed them away.
"Shane..." Again, he interrupted me.
"No. Just no. If we need to die, then come on, let's die. We are not letting you become a vampire Claire, and that's the end of it."
"I would still be me, do you not get that? I would still be Claire, and you would still be Shane. I will always be yours. And you will always be mine. This happening, it wouldn't change anything."
"Yes it would. Do you think Amelie was the all powerful ice-queen before she was turned? She would have been just like you, with her scientist dad and all."
"You talk about me as if I am not here," Amelie pointed out, but Shane ignored her completely and focused on me.
"And for Frank, he became more vulnerable, becoming the one thing he hated most in the world. Everything would change Claire, you would change."
"What about Michael?!" I asked, slowly getting worked up at the current situation. "When he was a vampire, did he change? Apart from the fact that you were ice cold to him for weeks before finally coming to terms with what he was. Is that it? That if I was turned you would hate me?"
"No, I could never hate you."
"So then why would you prefer to die than live on in Morganville?" I asked.
"Because you wouldn't be living on, and I wouldn't be able to live on without you."
I turned away from his face, so full of pain that my head had begun to ache. "Have you come to a conclusion?" Sam asked me.
"Yes I have," I answered, and I walked over to him and stood behind. "You can have me."
Shane let out a pained yell of protest, and I tried to mask the tears that fell from her face and onto the floor, one after the other.