Carpe Corpus (10 page)

Claire slowed for a second, staring at the unlit windows of the house. She could have sworn that in the cold star-light she’d seen one of those white lace curtains move. “Myrnin,” she said. “Is there somebody in there?”

“Very likely.” He didn’t slow down. “People are hiding out in dozens of places all over Morganville, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“God to descend from on high and save them? Who knows?”

From the other side of the fence, Claire heard a faint, breathless giggle. She came to a stop, staring at Myrnin, who paused and looked at the fence, shook his head, and shrugged. He moved on.

But Claire was convinced that whatever was on the Day side of the fence was pacing them now, and when they got to the end of the row . . .
Bad. That will be bad.

“Myrnin, maybe we should call somebody. You know, get a cab. Or Eve, we could call Eve—”

Myrnin turned on her.

It happened fast, so
fast
, and she barely had time to gasp and duck as he came at her, a white blur in the star-light. There was a sense of hard impact, of falling, and then everything went a little soft around the edges.

Myrnin was stretched out on top of her, and as the world stopped wobbling, she realized she was flat on her back on the ground. “Get off!” she yelped, and battered at his chest with both fists. “Off!”

He put his cold hand over her mouth and lifted a single finger of his other hand to his lips. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she saw the gesture, and it made the panic in her shift directions from
oh my God, Myrnin’s going to bite me
to
oh my God, Myrnin’s trying to save me.

Myrnin dipped his head low, so low he was well within critical vein range, and she heard him whisper, “Don’t move. Stay here.”

Then he was gone, just like that. As noisy as he could be at times, he could also be as silent as a shadow when he wanted.

Claire raised her head just a little to look around, but she saw nothing. Just the alley, the fence, the sky overhead with wispy clouds moving across the stars.

And Myrnin’s flip-flops, which he’d left behind, lying sad and abandoned on the ground.

There was a sudden, enraged shriek from the other side of the fence, and something crashed against the wood with enough force to splinter heavy boards. Claire rolled to her feet, heart pounding, and gripped the stake in her hand hard.
Funny, I didn’t think to use it on Myrnin. . . .
Maybe she’d known, deep down, that he was acting to protect her.

She hoped so. She hoped it wasn’t that she couldn’t see the threat in him anymore, because that would eventually get her killed.

Whatever was happening on the other side of the fence, it was bad. It sounded like tigers fighting, and as she backed up from the snarls and howls and sounds of bodies slamming around, the boards of the fence broke again, and a white hand—not Myrnin’s, this was a woman’s—clawed the air.

Reaching for Claire.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Myrnin called. He sounded eerily normal. “Do go on and run, Claire. I’ll catch up. This may take a few moments.”

She didn’t wait. She grabbed up her fallen backpack and ran for the exit of the alley, where it dumped out into the cul-de-sac next to the Day House.

A vampire car was parked there, door open, engine idling. Nobody around.

Claire hesitated, then looked inside. In the glow of the instrument panel, she couldn’t see much: dark upholstery, mainly. She didn’t think there was anybody inside, although it was tough to see into the back. She ducked into the cabin and flipped on the overhead light, then bounced back on her heels with the stake held in her most threatening way possible. (Which, she had to admit, probably wasn’t very intimidating at all.)

Luckily, nothing lunged at her from the backseat.

Claire threw herself behind the wheel, dumped her backpack on the floorboard of the passenger side, and slammed the door. She leaned on the horn, a long blast, and yelled, “Myrnin! Come on!”

It was a risk. There was every possibility that whoever won that fight back there, it wouldn’t be Myrnin opening the car door, but she had to try. He’d taken on another vampire—more than one, she thought—to save her life. The least she could do was give him fair warning that she was about to speed away and leave him behind.

It was impossible to see through the dark tinting on the windshield and windows. Claire counted to ten, slowly and deliberately, and got to a whispered
seven
before there was a casual knock on the passenger window. She yelped, fumbled, and found the switch that rolled down the glass.

Myrnin leaned in and smiled at her. “Fair lady, may I ride with you in your carriage?”

“God—get in!” He looked . . . messy. Messier than usual, anyway; his coat was shredded in places, he had bloodless scratches on his face, and his eyes were still glowing a dull, muddy red. As he slid into the passenger seat, she caught a sharp scent from him—fresh vampire blood. In the dashboard glow, she saw traces of it around his mouth and smeared on his hands. “Who was it?”

“No idea,” Myrnin said, and yawned. His fangs flashed lazily. “Someone Bishop set to spy on me, no doubt. She won’t be reporting back. Sadly, her companion was too fast for me. And too frightened.”

He was so casual about it. Claire, freaked, made sure all the doors were locked and the windows rolled up, and then realized that they were sitting in an idling car, and she couldn’t see a thing ahead of her. Of course. It was a standard-issue vampire-edition sedan. Not meant for humans at all.

Myrnin sighed. “Please, allow me.”

“Do you have the faintest idea of how to drive a car?”

“I am a very fast learner.”

In fact, he wasn’t.

Myrnin dropped Claire off at her parents’ house well before dawn, tossed her cell phone out of the car to her, and drove off still bumping into curbs and running over mailboxes with cheerful abandon. He seemed to enjoy driving. That terrified her, but he was officially the Morganville police’s problem, not hers.

The weight of the day crashed in on her as she unlocked the front door, and all she wanted to do was crawl onto the sofa in the living room and go to sleep, but she smelled like dirt, old bones, and other things she didn’t really want to think about.
Shower.
Mom and Dad were in bed, she guessed; their door was shut at the top of the stairs. She tiptoed past it to the far end of the hall, dumped her backpack on the bed, and pulled an old thin cotton nightgown from a drawer before heading to the bathroom.

Déjà vu struck her as she locked the door and turned on the water. Mom and Dad’s Founder House was the same layout as the Glass House—which still felt more like home, even though she’d been in both houses for about the same amount of time. Even the countertops and flooring were the same. Only the Mom-approved shower curtain and bath towels were different.
I want to go back.
Claire sat down on the toilet seat and let the sadness well up inside.
I want to go back to my friends. I want to see Shane. I want all this to
stop
.

Not that any genie was going to pop in and grant her wishes, unfortunately. And crying didn’t make anything easier, in the end.

After the long, hot shower, she felt a little better—cleaner, anyway, and pleasantly tired. Claire used the dryer on her hair until it was a tousled mop—it was getting longer now, and brushed her shoulders when she combed it out. Her eyes looked a little haunted. She needed sleep, and about a month with nobody trying to kill her. After that, she could deal with all the chaos again. Probably.

She touched the delicate cross Shane had given her, and thought about him trapped in a cage halfway across town. Amelie had made her a promise, but it had been significantly light on specifics and timing; she also hadn’t really promised to set Shane free, only to keep him from being executed.

Claire was still thinking about that when she turned on the lights in her bedroom and found Michael sitting on the bed.

“Hey!” she blurted, and grabbed a fluffy pink robe from the back of her door to cover herself up, suddenly aware of just how thin her nightgown really was. “What are you
doing
?” After the first surge of embarrassment, though, she felt an equally strong wave of delight. She hadn’t seen Michael—not on his own, away from Bishop—since that horrible day when everything had gone so wrong for all of them.

As she struggled into her robe, he stood up, holding out both hands in a very Michael-ish sort of attempt at calming her down. “Wait! I’m not who you think I am. I’m not here to hurt you, Claire. Please believe me—”

Oh. He thought she still believed he was Bishop’s little pet. “Yeah, you’re working for Amelie, not evil anymore, I get it. That doesn’t mean you can show up without warning when I’m in my nightgown!”

Michael gave her a smile of utter relief and lowered his hands. He looked a million miles tall to her just then, and when he opened his arms, she just about flew into his embrace. She came nearly up to his chin. He was a vampire, so there was no sense of warmth from his body, but there was comfort, real and strong. Michael was his own person. Always.

There was genuine love in him. She could feel it.

“Hey, kid,” he said, and hugged her with care, well aware of his strength. “You doing okay?”

“I’m okay, and man, I wish everybody would stop asking me,” she said, and pulled back to look at him. “What are you doing here?”

Michael’s face took on hard lines, and he sat down on the bed again. Claire climbed up next to him, feeling her happiness bleed away. She picked up a pillow and hugged it absently. She needed something to hold.

“Bishop sent me out to run one of his errands,” he said. “He still thinks I’m one of his good little soldiers. At least, I hope he does. This is probably his idea of a test.”

“Sent you out to do what?”

“You don’t want to know.” Clearly, something that Michael hated. His blue eyes were shadowed, and he didn’t seem to want to look at her directly.“Things are getting too dangerous for you to be in the middle of this. Promise me you won’t come back to Bishop. Not even if he uses that tattoo to call for you. Just stay away from him. Handcuff yourself to a railing if you have to, but don’t go back.”

“But—”

“Claire.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Trust me. Please. You have to stay here. Stay safe.”

She nodded mutely, suddenly more afraid than she’d been all night. “You know something. You heard something.”

“It’s not that simple,” Michael said. “It’s more of a feeling. Bishop’s getting bored, and when he gets bored with something . . . he breaks it.”

“You mean me?”

“I mean Morganville,” he said. “I mean everything. Everybody. You’re just an easy, obvious target.”

Claire swallowed hard. “But you . . . you’re okay, right?”

“Yeah.” He sighed and ran a hand through his curling blond hair. “I’d better be. Not much of a choice anymore. Don’t worry about me—if I need to get out, I will. I’m just trying to stay with it as long as I can.”

Claire hated the sadness in him, and the anger, and she wished she could say something to make him feel better. Anything.

Wait—there was something. “I saw Eve.”

That got an immediate response from him—his head jerked up, and his blue eyes widened. “How is she?” There was so much emotion behind the question it made Claire shiver.

“She’s good,” Claire said, which wasn’t exactly true. “She’s, uh, kind of pissed, actually. I had to tell her. About you being not really evil.”

Michael sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m not sure that was a good idea.”

“It will be if you go see her tonight and tell her . . . well, whatever. Oh, but watch out. She’s gone all Buffy with the stakes and things.”

“Sounds like what she’d do, all right.” Michael was smiling now, happier than she’d seen him in months. “Maybe I’ll try to see her. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She wasn’t sure how much more to say, but she was tired of not telling the truth. “She really loves you, you know. She always has.”

He sat for a few seconds in silence, then shook his head. “I’d better let you rest,” he said. “Remember what I said. Stay here. Don’t go back to Bishop.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” She mock-saluted him. “Hey. I missed you, Fang Boy.”

“You’ve been hanging around Eve too much.”

“Not nearly enough. Not recently, anyway.” And she was sad about that.

“I know,” he said, and kissed the back of her hand. “We’ll fix it. Get some sleep.”

“Night,” she said, and watched him walk toward the door. “Hey. How’d you get in?”

He wiggled his fingers at her in a spooky oogie-boogie pantomime. “I’m a
vampire.
I have
secret powers
,” he said with a full-on fake Transylvanian accent, which he dropped to say, “Actually, your mom let me in.”

“Seriously?
My
mom? Let
you
in my room? In the middle of the night?”

He shrugged. “Moms like me.”

He gave her a full-on Hollywood grin, and slipped out the door.

Claire got under the covers and, for the first time all night, felt like it was safe to sleep.

In the morning—not
too
early—Claire found cereal and juice waiting for her downstairs, along with a note from her mother that she’d gone shopping, and that she hoped Claire would stay home today. It was the same sort of note Mom left every day. At least, the “hope you stay home” part.

Claire intended to, this time. She intended to right up until she looked at her calendar, and realized what day it was, and that it was circled in red with multicolored exclamation points all around it.

“Oh,
crap
!” she muttered, and pawed through her backpack, hauling out textbooks, notebooks, her much-abused laptop, floods of colored markers, and assorted change. She found the purple notebook, the one she kept for important test dates.

Today was the final exam for her physics class. Fifty percent of her grade, and no makeup tests for anything less than life support.