Chapter 7:

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Claire's POV:

He knows where Sam is.

Let me repeat that: the missing vampire lover – that's the word – of Amelie is missing… but, according to Myrnin, he isn't really missing… because Myrnin knows where he is!

I stand up and stalk away from him, running my hand through my hair. I can't accept that he knows where Sam is – if he does, then why did he not mention this before, before even Richard had to call Amelie and inform her that his body had been nabbed? If he had known, surely he would have told his best friend, if such a colloquial term can be used to describe the relationship Amelie has with anyone.

"You don't mean that you took him?" an awful thought hits me and I turn back to him in horror. "I mean, surely even you wouldn't sink that low to try and get Amelie to dump Oliver or whatever they have," I continue, rationalising the previous thought with the intense dislike (or hatred perhaps) Myrnin has for the fact that Amelie has moved on with Oliver from Sam.

He looks affronted but I don't know if I can believe him. He does many controversial things so long as they get the end result what he wants. "Dear Claire, what on earth would stealing a dead body do for me getting Amelie and Oliver to, ahem, separate?" he asks, injecting enough innocence into his voice that I could perhaps contemplate believing that he didn't do it. I want to believe him, I really do… but there are so many reasons as to why he would go and nab a dead body from its final resting place that it means the belief in my heart is doubted by the voice of reason in my head.

"Because if Amelie found out Sam was missing, she would remember how much she loves him and therefore would leave Oliver," I shoot back, my expression more furious than I possibly believe I have ever looked before.

He shakes his head and folds his arms, standing up and moving to lean against the doorway to the kitchen. His lips curve into almost a smile and I want to hit him for finding this situation amusing. "I can honestly say, Claire, that I did not steal Sam's body, though your reasoning for why I would do is most true," he says, confirming he has something to do with the body snatching but not so much that I know anything more than he has already told me… which is basically that he has had something to do with it… and, this time, I can believe him.

I grab my jacket and move towards the door. "Right, we have less than three days to find a body… something that you seem to have superior knowledge about," I say coldly, trying to mimic how Amelie was with me less than an hour ago… it seems so strange to realise that only three hours ago, I knew nothing and the only issue I had was Shane.

Shane.

He's out but he's going to be coming back soon. How am I going to be able to explain to him in a note about what's going on? I don't think I should mention any details because he could come up or tell other anti-vampire humans in town and then have everything going even more haywire since nine humans are dead and a vampire's grave – the only buried vampire in the world – has been destroyed.

"Yes?" Myrnin shakes me from my thought tracking to alert me to the fact that I was in the middle of talking and then stopped.

"You can tell me when we get there," I inform him savagely, my voice sharper than nails. Of course Myrnin would have to have something to do with what is going on and I am not sitting around this house for him to try and talk me out of going. "Don't try and tell me here because what if Shane or Eve or Michael come back and see you here? I'm leaving a note to tell them I'm going out and stuff, but I know I don't want to have to explain where I'm going with you!"

He looks hurt for a moment and opens his mouth to talk before closing it again. Then he nods slowly, motioning for me to pick up the piece of paper and pen on the table in front of me and to write the note.

Shane, Michael and Eve

Sorry, I had to go out – I really wouldn't if it wasn't important… it's to do with Amelie; I have to do it.

I will ring you when I'm coming home but it's a bit dangerous, so don't ring me as I won't answer… probably.

I'm safe, so don't worry.

Love you

Claire xx

I leave it in the middle of the table, next to the tv remote so they will definitely see it before picking up the coolbag and my blanket to wait by the door. "Well, are you coming or am I going to have to drive myself in your car?" I call over my shoulder to the man still leaning against the kitchen door. Why the hell he can't hurry up and drive me so that I can find out how on earth he has managed to do something with Sam's body to make him go poof…

"Please stay?" he begs finally, his voice betraying the fact that he knows he cannot get me to stay. There is no chance of it, yet he wouldn't be Myrnin without trying to get me to change my mind, would he?

"No, now hurry up before I have to call Amelie and get her to send out Oliver to accompany us as well… and I would hate that almost as much as you," I threaten, turning to see his face darken at the mention of Oliver. Then he nods and moves forwards, pulling me out of the door with one arm, the other yanking the coolbag and blanket from me so that I no longer have to carry it.

"Quickly," he orders me, slamming the door behind us as he runs with me down to his car. Yet the road is empty, all the vampires evidently still at the party like the good vamps they are… I suppose there will be the vagrant vampires, shunned from society like humans are sometimes, around but they don't come down here… not with our reputation for killing vampires and getting away with it.

He throws me carelessly into the passenger seat, ignoring my grunt of pain as my elbow connects with the handbrake. But I hastily pull my seatbelt on as he enters the driver's seat, having already put my bag and blanket into the boot – vampire speed is quite possibly the most disorientating thing I have ever come across.

"Do you want me to explain now?" Myrnin asks as he puts the car into gear. I instantly turn the blaring radio off, not wanting him to have anything to distract him from driving when he is already so terrible at it.

"No," I answer, trying to stop myself from being both rude and extremely cold. "I want you to concentrate on driving so that you get me to the graveyard in one piece without that then becoming my home for eternity," I explain my abrupt 'no' so that he cannot get upset again, something which is a definite Myrnin tendency to do.

He nods and focuses on driving, gritting his teeth as he does so. Unfortunately, the focus doesn't do much good and we are instantly up the kerb as he tries to drive round the corner, narrowly missing the wheelie bins out front, ready for collection.

Though scared for my life, the drive to the graveyard is deathly silent – no pun intended – with neither of us saying a word. Myrnin takes twists that I doubt even an F1 driver would take at a breakneck speed, deciding that if we are going there (which we are, with no exceptions… well, perhaps to the hospital with his driving) we may as well get there as quickly as possible.

He pulls up in the most open area of the graveyard, the place which has a sort of eerie light coming from the fountain in the centre. There aren't any trees, for which I am grateful because it seems too sinister to go to the graveyard when there is a) a murderer of nine humans around and b) someone who could still be around who nabbed the body of a dead vampire… surely Amelie has troops around as well… and I don't want them getting the wrong idea that I have something to do with it and then haul me in for questioning or something.

Myrnin, without a word, gets out my coolbag and blanket along with about four boxes of his own things and two chairs for us to sit in. Good thinking, since the ground is already beginning to get wet with dew: it must be later (or, really, earlier) than I realised.

"Thanks," I utter my first words in about fifteen minutes as he sets a chair up, complete with a little table, and puts my bag on the table. He smiles wanly in response before doing the same, but leaving his bags on the floor.

"I… this is very sensitive information that not even Amelie knows," he mutters, leaning towards me. As he does so, I forget for a minute that he is telling me something vitally important about Sam and simply loose myself in his scent, the strange way that he seems to appeal to my sensory glands so much more than Shane and in a much more potent manner. I forget that I'm with someone and simply, I'm horrified to admit, imagine leaning further into him and pressing my lips to his softly.

But I shake my head and get out of it, building an invisible wall between us to prevent me from doing anything stupid. "What is it?" I ask, hardening my voice slightly as I get a mug of hot chocolate out to drink whilst Myrnin gives me his answer.

"Before… before Sam died, when we were still fighting back against Bishop, he came to me," Myrnin whispers, his eyes unseeing here but simply reliving moments long gone. It seems as if he is almost being haunted by those times. "I cannot remember all of it well, for I was under the throngs of the disease… but moments stand out with a greater clarity than others…how I wish I could create something to remove the haze of the unknown caused by the disease," he begins to ramble, getting off topic so I tap his leg, forcing myself to believe that the shiver running through me is in direct correlation to the hot chocolate. It is not because I touched him… I know it isn't.

"Back on topic, Myrnin," I say harshly, continuing to construct the wall between us with whatever I can find in my mind: bricks, mortar, debris… anything to keep me with Shane and away from him… the burning in my chest suggests that I want something more than a conversation here, something which I cannot allow… even if just to be faithful to Shane, I can't let myself do anything I could later regret.

He nods slowly and shuts his eyes, closing the portal I have into his soul, to see how he truly feels. "He told me that he knew that, if there was a showdown which he believed there would be, it would always be him who Bishop chose to kill… Oliver was playing the double agent role; Amelie was his daughter and, no matter their differences, he would never kill her… I was the decoy, so the only ones left were you, Michael and him… and, since he ensured Amelie left you and Michael out of this, he knew that it would be him.

"I didn't know what he wanted from me, at first. I thought that he was expecting sympathy or something else along the same lines… something which he wouldn't even get from me now, for he chose the path he took in life… but then he began to quote Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet… "How if, when I am laid in the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo come to redeem me?"" Myrnin begins, but I butt in.

"Isn't that in the bit where she takes the potion?" I ask, grimacing slightly as I remember the torturous times I went through in school, reading Shakespeare plays and analysing them. But… but what is the context here? Unless…but no, surely not!

He nods, taking a moment to get back into his storytelling rhythm which I interrupted. "I still took a little while to comprehend fully, until I realised what he wanted," he pauses for dramatic effect but then continues as I flip him on. "He wanted a potion that would make him appear dead, so that Bishop assume him dead and would move on from his public punishment… of course, there had to be variations on what Juliet did: what I did for him was produce a potion that made him appear as if he was dead when he, in fact, still had enough blood left in him to survive… he then dropped into the vampire equivalent of a coma whilst the world thought he was dead," he explains.

I drop my hot chocolate all over the ground in shock, splashes of brown resting on my jeans, and then cover my mouth with my hand, unable to believe this. For the entire six months since Sam's death, Myrnin has known that he isn't dead… he has actually just been sleeping?

"You mean to tell me," I say, my voice low with fury… I have probably as much fury in my voice as Amelie did when she found out Bishop had escaped and it is directed towards Myrnin, "that you knew Sam wasn't dead and you didn't tell Amelie? You let her struggle on with her depression, almost killing herself to try and be with a man who wasn't dead?" I whisper shout, not wanting to draw attention to us anymore than it already has been.

He nods slowly and ducks his head, his eyes slowly opening. "I did… I thought I was doing it for her; she seemed, in a sense that you cannot see Claire, almost happy that he had died… for it gave her a chance to be able to be close to him, to show she cared in a way that she couldn't when he was alive," he tries to reason with me in an appalling attempt to validate his actions. "Every time I attempted to approach the subject, she pushed me away, not wanting to mention Sam… especially after the issue down at the grave. So I just stopped trying… in my heart, I knew he would come back sometime but I didn't know when."

This makes me even angrier, so much so that my fist is clenched in anger and I want to punch him. "Let me get this straight… you made the guy a potion that'll make him appear dead, then you don't tell anyone, and you don't know when it's going to bring him back?" by the end, my voice is more of a hiss than a snake's is… and a hiss is all a snake can produce, I think.

His face whitens as he looks at me and he nods slowly, causing me to whistle through my teeth and almost failing. "As I told you, Claire, I was under the disease… perhaps I knew then and forgot or perhaps I finished making it under the disease… everything is hazy but I know that I made him it and that this is why he is back…" he trails off, shutting his eyes again and hitting himself over the head. I make no attempts to stop his self harm for he deserves it! "Oh no, it's Sam who has killed the humans!" he pieces the missing humans together with what he has just told me in horror, his eyes flashing open to reveal a panic inside.

I shake slightly, unable to believe that Sam, the good guy, has killed so many people before my brain begins to calculate things. Let's say a seventy year old vampire needs three bottles of blood per week, each bottle being one and a half pints of blood. There's been twenty six weeks since he 'died', approximately, and per week he needs about four point five pints… in total, he needs 117 pints… and let's say that each human is worth nine pints, which could be a little over, and he has had nine… that's eighty one…

…that's another four humans.

"Myrnin, you should have thought it through, have told someone who could have kept an eye on things and had a supply of blood ready for him!" I chastise him, realising that nobody is safe until the next four humans are dead… only then will Sam's body have recovered enough from the blood loss to work well enough to have him recognise me. I bet if he saw me now, he wouldn't be able to stop himself killing me, no matter how much he cares for me… or if Michael were human, the same thing would apply.

He nods slowly and stands up, walking ten metres away and then back again. "Little one, you know I know that now," he says sadly, opening one of his bags and shutting it again. "I regret not telling you, or Amelie, or someone… but I've been collecting blood I take normally but don't need…I've gathered enough up that, according to my calculations that I can tell you have done as well, he should just about have enough blood to return himself to normal," he motions towards two of his bags, evidently both of them filled with blood bags.

"But what are we going to tell Amelie?" I whisper, the thought hitting me. "I mean, she seems to have moved on with Oliver… how is this going to go down, with Sam back?" I throw a question into the open, one with absolutely no chance of being answered by either of us, though we can both take a stab at it.

"I believe that her true love for Sam has been shown by the way she is willing to risk us to get him back," Myrnin answers. "There could be a serial killing vampire body snatcher out here and she would rather lose us if it meant there was a chance that she could have Sam's body back… now that is love."

"But what would you know of love, Myrnin?" I ask spitefully, part of my heart knowing the answer but not wanting to share it. "How do you have this superior knowledge that shows that you know she hasn't moved on enough from Sam with Oliver that she would rather keep things stable?"

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. "I don't know for definite, Claire, but my judgements are based on the fact that I have seen her for centuries, seen her reactions to events. She has turned her back on the most helpless of people without a word; she has turned her back on people or vampires she professed to love without a qualm… but something in her eyes, Claire, at that ball when she found out about Sam… I have never seen it before. It's the thing that shows me that, no matter how much she tried to fool herself, she never stopped loving Sam at all."

Something about his insightfulness, the way that he has read so deeply into the woman he has spent so much time with, draws me to him. This is his sensitive side, one that I never get the chance to see, yet I wish I could see it more often. It's intoxicating, almost, to see him without definite proof, just judging it on gut instinct and knowledge of people he has seen throughout the years…not science.

I nod thoughtfully, accepting this answer. Then I turn back to Myrnin and smile slightly, offering him my hot chocolate… well, the flask of it, since my mug is in pieces on the floor along with a good half of the original flask… good job I brought spares.

"Truce?" I suggest, though he never really said anything. "I'll let you have some hot chocolate?" I continue and he brightens up, taking the pot from me. He then proceeds to swig almost the entire bottle…

… But, somehow, I don't mind.

So, what do you think of the whole Sam thing?

Claire/Myrnin is the focus, but I want some Samelie in here as well…as per usual!

Review please! 15 more reviews & I'll update like ASAP! :D

Vicky xx