Bitter Blood (26 page)

But there was absolutely no trace of Myrnin.

She stopped at the table where she’d left the device she’d been working on; it was still there, covered over with the sheet. Myrnin hadn’t taken it with him, and he hadn’t made any more of his suspiciously accurate adjustments to it, either. For a moment, Claire debated sticking it in her backpack—she couldn’t leave it here, gathering dust, not when she was close to it actually starting to work—but the weight was pretty extreme, and she needed to look around more.

She’d come back, she decided, and flipped the sheet back into place.

Claire edged past a pile of boxes and crates in the corner and opened the door in the back—or tried to. Locked. She rooted around through drawers until she came up with a set of keys, which contained everything from ancient, rusty skeleton models to modern gleaming ones. She sorted through, eyeing the lock, and tried likely candidates until she found one that fit and turned. The door swung silently open on Myrnin’s bedroom. She’d stayed in it before (without him, of course) when she’d been confined to the lab on punishment duty, so she was well familiar with the contents. Nothing seemed different. The bed had been mussed, pillows tossed to the floor, and drawers were hanging open, but she couldn’t tell—as always—if it was normal, or some kind of panic-packing frenzy.

There was no note. Nothing to tell her whether Myrnin was just temporarily out, or gone for good. She couldn’t believe that he’d just…leave. Just like that.

“Frank?” Claire walked out of the bedroom into the main lab. “Frank, can you hear me?” Frankenstein, Shane called him. Frank Collins had, once upon a time, been Shane’s dad—maybe not a good one, but still. Then he’d been turned vampire, against his will. Then he had died, and Myrnin had decided to scavenge his brain and use it to power the town’s master computer.

Maybe Frankenstein wasn’t too bad a name for him, after all.

There was a buzzing sound that seemed to come from all around her, and it coalesced finally into a distorted, drunk-sounding voice. “Yes, Claire,” it said.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” it said, after a long pause. “Hungry.”

Claire swallowed hard and clenched her fists. Frank—Frank Collins, or what was left of him—was hardwired into a computer downstairs, an area that Myrnin hadn’t wanted her to venture into. “I thought your nutrients were delivered automatically.”

“Tank dry,” he said. He sounded terribly tired. “Need blood. Get blood, Claire.”

“I—I can’t do that!” What was she supposed to do—order up a gallon drum from the blood bank? Somehow magically haul it all the way down there herself? She had no idea how Myrnin did these things; he’d never included her on any of that maintenance activity. But she strongly suspected the only one who’d be able to manage it would be a vampire. “Is Myrnin gone?”

“Hungry,” Frank said again, faintly, and then just…stopped talking. The buzz under his voice shut down. She thought he was the equivalent of offline, like a laptop drained of battery shutting down.

If she wanted him to survive, she really did have to figure this out. Clearly, Myrnin wasn’t here to do it.

Claire went to the glass enclosure in the corner. It was hard to see under all the webs, but when she took the top off the tank, Bob the Spider crawled up eagerly to the top of his wispy multilevel construction. He was a big fuzzy spider, and somehow impossibly cute, although part of her still screamed like a little girl at the thought of touching him.

He bounced up and down in his web, all eight eyes staring right at her.

“You’re hungry, too,” she said. “Right? Myrnin didn’t feed you, either?”

That was really strange. Myrnin might neglect Frank, because he and Frank really weren’t a marriage made in heaven (and Frank could be faking it; he had a cruel and weird sense of humor), but leaving Bob on his own and starving wasn’t like her boss at all. He was ridiculously fond of the thing. She still remembered Myrnin’s utter panic the first time Bob had molted. It had been like a normal person freaking out over the birth of a child.

It was not like him to leave Bob behind if he was really leaving.

Something was wrong here. Very wrong.

Claire pulled out her phone and dialed Myrnin’s speed dial. It rang on the phone, and suddenly she heard an echo in the lab, a ringtone composed of scary organ music. She’d given him the phone and had put the ringtone on it herself.

The phone was lying in the shadows next to a stack of books. It had a cracked screen, but it was still working. Claire picked it up and felt stickiness on her fingers.

Blood.

What had happened?

“You shouldn’t have come,” Pennyfeather said from behind
her. His voice, like the rest of him, was colorless, and his odd, lilting accent only made him seem less human, somehow. “But don’t worry. You won’t be leaving.”

Claire stumbled backward in surprise, catching her heel on a pile of discarded volumes, which overbalanced and rained down dusty, heavy tomes on top of her. She yelped and ducked, and realized she had an opportunity as Pennyfeather paused to survey the chaos; she jumped, slid over the top of the nearest lab table, sending books and glass beakers flying, and hit the floor running. She heard soft noises behind her, and in her mind’s eye she saw Pennyfeather leaping effortlessly onto the same table, touching down, and racing after her.

She felt human, solid, clumsy, and utterly outmatched against his eerie grace. Claire was accustomed enough to running from vampires not to be utterly terrified—she’d done it often enough here, in this lab—but Pennyfeather was different from the others. Oliver, Amelie, Myrnin…They all had some kind of humanity to them, some hints of mercy, however hidden. They could be reached.

Pennyfeather was pure vampire-fueled serial killer, and a human, any human, was no match for him.

Claire grabbed for the silver-coated stake in her backpack, but it had rolled to the side, and running and hunting around in a bag and watching treacherous footing weren’t exactly complementary activities. It was inevitable that just as her fingertips brushed the cool metal, her foot would come down on a book that slid greasily to the side, and she’d tumble, off-balance, to the floor.

As she did.

She got a grip on the stake just as Pennyfeather landed on her chest, nimble and startlingly heavy. He easily pinned her arms down. All she could do was rattle the stake ineffectively against
the tile. No way could she get leverage to stab him, or even scratch him. She bucked, trying to throw him off, but he rode it out easily.

It came to her, with cold clarity, that she wasn’t getting out of this. No last-minute brainstorms. No clever little science applications to solve the problem. In the end, she was just going to be another Morganville statistic. Score another one for the vamps.

“Hey,” a scratchy, electronic voice barked over Pennyfeather’s shoulder, and a grayscale, two-dimensional image flickered into existence there. Frank Collins, Shane’s absent/abusive dad, looking scarred and scary, was wielding a tire iron, which he swung at Pennyfeather’s head.

Pennyfeather reacted to the thing coming at him from the corner of his eye, jerking out of the way and letting go of Claire to stop the swing of the blunt object…but his hands went right through Frank’s insubstantial arm, and Pennyfeather pitched forward, off-balance. Claire seized the chance to roll away, and Frank flickered between her and Pennyfeather, confusing the issue.

“Out of my way, spirit!” Pennyfeather snarled, fangs out.

“I’m not a spirit,” Frank countered, and his fangs descended, too, as he returned the snarl. “I’m your worst damn nightmare, Skeletor. I’m a vampire killer with fangs and a grudge.”

That sounded so much like Shane that Claire was actually startled. So was Pennyfeather, as a sudden blaze of fire shot up from one of the Bunsen burners nearby. Claire barely glimpsed it before scooping up the rolling stake and her book bag, and lunging for the dark doorway of the portal.
Concentrate!
she begged herself, shaking all over with adrenaline. She had seconds, at most, before Pennyfeather reached her no matter what kind of distractions Frank might be trying; he didn’t have any actual, physical force to wield on her behalf, even if he was inclined. She needed out of here, fast.

She couldn’t mentally reconstruct the Day House bathroom under this kind of pressure, or anywhere else that Myrnin had established one of his teleportation thresholds. The only one that leaped clearly and instantly to her mind was home—the living room of the Glass House, with its comfy couch and armchair and barely controlled chaos….

It formed in front of her as she plunged forward, trusting somehow, desperately, that she could make it happen.

Pennyfeather lunged forward and caught her foot just as she pushed through the plastic-wrap pressure of the doorway, and she was stuck, mostly out but with her left leg held in a grip so iron-strong, she knew he’d drag her back through.

Or worse. If she was stuck in the portal when it closed, she’d be cut apart.

“Help!” Claire shrieked.

Michael, Eve, and Shane were all in the living room. Michael and Shane dropped the game controllers they’d been holding and twisted around on the sofa to look blankly at her, as Eve—already facing her—clapped hands to her mouth in shock.

“Help me! Pull me out!”

All three of them broke out of their momentary freeze at the same time. Michael scrambled over the back of the sofa and got to her first, grabbing her arm just as Pennyfeather yanked backward, and although Michael held on, they both slid toward the portal.

Claire couldn’t get her breath. “He’s got me; he’s got me; I can’t—!” she shrieked as Pennyfeather yanked hard on her leg, and she felt the strain in her muscles. He was still playing with her. She’d seen an angry vampire rip limbs off a person, and it was frighteningly possible just now.

Shane took hold of Claire and wrapped his arms around her in
a grip so tight it felt as if she’d be crushed. “Go, Mike. I’ll hold her here! Get the bastard off her!”

“It’s the lab!” Claire blurted, “He’s in the lab!”

She wasn’t sure Michael could make it through at all—there wasn’t much room—but she twisted over to the side in hopes of making more space. At least Michael knew what he was doing. He paused for a moment, fixing the lab’s location in his mind, then nodded at her and plunged through in a rush.

Claire felt the disturbance of the thin membrane still holding her leg at the knee like a strange tidal wave, and Pennyfeather’s grip tightened. He started to yank her steadily backward, and all of Shane’s strength wasn’t enough to keep them from sliding forward. If anything, Pennyfeather just seemed to be more intent on taking her with him, not less.

Claire screamed and buried her face in Shane’s chest as she felt the strain on her leg increase, going from painful to intensely agonizing, and in one more second she knew she’d feel muscles tearing loose….

But then a second later, the crushing hold on her ankle released. Shane had braced himself and was pulling with all his strength to counterbalance, and when the pressure let go, they both went crashing to the wooden floor with her on top. She was breathless and frightened, but it was still nice to be body-to-body with him, and she saw the pleasure fire in his eyes, too, just for a moment. He brushed her hair back from her face and said, “Okay?”

She nodded.

“Then let’s do this again later,” he said, “but right now, Michael needs backup. Stay here.” He rolled her off him, got to his feet, grabbed the black canvas bag that Eve threw to him from the kitchen door, and dived into the dark.

Eve hurried to her side as Claire tried to bend her leg, and winced at the shooting pains that went through it. “Don’t,” Eve ordered, and dropped down next to her to run her hands over Claire’s knee. “Damn, I can’t believe Myrnin did that to you. I’ll stake his ass myself, if there’s anything left when the boys get done teaching him manners.”

“Myrnin?” Claire asked, and then realized what she’d done.
“It’s not
Myrnin!”

With a horrible sense of doom, she realized that she hadn’t told them it was Pennyfeather.

And neither of the boys was prepared for that.

I
t was so dark. Dark dark dark dark dark dark.
Darkdarkdarkdar
kdarkdarkdarkdarkcan’tbreathedarrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkk…

I gained control of my clattering, chattering mind with an effort that left me trembling. Had I been still human, still breathing—as I was sometimes in dreams—I thought I would have been drenched in the sweat of fear and gasping. I dreamed that sometimes, too, the sticky moisture on my skin, dripping and burning in my eyes, but in the dreams it wasn’t dark; it was bright, so bright, and I was running for my life, running from the monster behind….

So many years running blackness turning red nothing nothing safe no havens no friends lost all lost until Amelie until this place until home but home was gone gone dead and gone
…I gagged on the taste in the back of my mouth, the excruciating spike of hunger, and sagged against the wet, slick wall.
Don’t remember,
I told myself.
Don’t think.