Kiss of Death (19 page)

Eve sighed, slumped against the window, and looked as if she was close, again, to bursting into tears. She didn’t. Claire almost wished she would. It wasn’t like Eve, all this nervous anger. It made
her
nervous, and the last thing she needed right now was more to raise her pulse rate.

“Michael will find us,” Eve said. “They’ll come for us.”

Claire wished she felt that sure about it.

Patience and Jacob distributed all of the collected blood, two vials per vampire, and gave the rest to Morley, who chugged it back like shots at happy hour. It was disgusting, watching all the vampires having their snack; Claire’s stomach turned, and she found it was easier staring down at her feet than actually paying attention.

Some of the blood donors had actually passed out, though whether that was just sleep, low blood pressure, or panic, Claire wasn’t sure. It was quieter, at least. Morley kept driving, and it seemed like hours before he slowed the bus again. He didn’t stop, just geared down and beckoned to a vampire sitting behind him. The vampire nodded, pointed to three others, and gestured for them to follow.

“What’s going on?” Shane asked. “Can you tell?”

“No,” Claire said, and then gasped as Morley opened the bus doors. The bus was still rolling along at maybe thirty-five or forty miles an hour. The four vampires up front put on coats, hats, gloves-sunny-day wear—and lined up on the stairs.

One by one, they bailed out.

“What the hell?” Shane twisted around awkwardly to the limit of his ability. “Eve, can you see anything? What’s going on?”

“I can’t—wait, I think—” Eve squinted, leaned her head against the window, and finally continued. “I think they’re going after something behind us. A car, maybe.”

Four vampires had just bailed out of a moving bus, in broad daylight, to attack a car that was behind them. Following them?

Claire gasped as an electric shock zipped up her spine. Michael. Oliver. It had to be! They’d figured it out. They were right behind them.

Yeah,
her tragic, pessimistic little voice said in her head.
They’re right behind us, and four vampires are about to drag them out of the car and leave them to fry.

“Can you see—” Claire’s voice was shaking now. Eve didn’t answer. “Eve!”

“I’m trying!” Eve snapped. “It’s all just shadows out there, okay? I can barely tell there’s a car! Oh no ...”

“What?” She and Shane blurted it out together, leaning toward Eve as if somehow they could make things out any better.

“The car,” Eve said. “I think—I think it crashed. It’s not behind us now.” She sounded dull again; defeated. “It’s gone.”

“Dammit,” Shane said. “Probably was some farmer driving to market. Didn’t have anything to do with all this crap.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Eve whispered. “They’re not coming now.”

She began to cry, producing wrenching sobs that made her whole body vibrate, and banged her forehead against the window glass—hard. Claire instinctively tried to reach out for her, and came up against her restraints, again. “Hey,” she said, trying hard to sound compassionate and soothing. Her heart just ached for Eve, who sounded so ... lost. “Eve, please don’t. Please don’t do that. It’s going to be okay; it’s all—”

“No, it’s not!” Eve screamed, and turned toward Claire in a tearful fury. “It’s not okay! Michael! Michael!”

She started thrashing against her restraints. Shane tried to calm her down, too, but Eve wasn’t listening anymore—not to anybody.

Patience came and, with a sad but determined look at Claire, leaned over and gave Eve a quick injection in her shoulder. It was so fast Claire couldn’t react to try to stop her, and Eve stopped thrashing to say, in blank surprise, “Ow!”

Then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she went completely limp in her chair, her head tilting toward the window, wild strands of hair covering her face.

“What did you do?” Claire demanded, and tried not to scream it. She’d just seen what screaming got you.

“She’ll sleep,” Patience said. “She’s not injured. It’s better this way. She could hurt herself, otherwise.”

“Yeah, can’t have that,” Shane said bitterly. “Gotta save that for you guys. What was that, with the vamps getting off the bus?”

Patience put the cap back on the needle she’d used to inject Eve and put it in her pocket. “Someone was following,” she said. “They’re not now. That’s all you need to know.” The bus changed its pitch again, air brakes sighing, and slowed to a relative crawl. The doors banged open again, and two vampires got on, wearing hats and gloves and long coats against the sun.

One of them was smoking, even with all the protective gear.

The other one, a little taller and thinner, grabbed Morley by the neck, dragged him out of the driver’s seat, and tossed him right out the door.

“Go!” he shouted, and stripped off his hat.

The tall one was Oliver.

Michael—who was the incoming vampire trailing wisps of smoke—raced down the aisle, slammed into Patience and Jacob, and knocked them out of the way. Nobody else had time to stand up, although a few vampires lunged and caught pieces of his coat as he ran toward the back of the bus. Oliver was right behind him, and as they reached the rows where the humans were, Oliver turned and snarled at the other vampires, who were starting to get to their feet. They were hampered by close quarters, but there were a lot of them.

Jacob bounded up, gave Oliver a second’s dark look, and then jumped up on top of the headrest of the seat next to him, crouching like a bird of prey. Patience did the same on Oliver’s other side.

“No,” she said flatly, as the vampires started to move toward them. “Stay where you are.”

Michael reached them and snapped Claire’s bonds first. It took him a precious few seconds, because the plastic was tougher than he’d thought, and he had to try not to hurt her. As soon as she was free, he leaned over Eve and pushed out the side window with one powerful punch. Metal bent and shrieked, glass shattered, and the whole window assembly fell out onto the road.

Light streamed in, pure and white-hot, and hit him full in the face. Michael jerked back into the shadows with a choked cry. Claire had a blurred impression of burns, but he didn’t give her time to worry about him. “Out!” he yelled, and grabbed her by the waist to boost her toward the window. The inch of skin exposed between his coat and gloves sizzled like frying bacon. Claire grabbed hold of the jagged edge of the window and looked down. The bus was still rolling, and it was picking up speed as it started down the hill. “Claire, jump!”

She didn’t really have a choice.

Claire jumped, hit the hard pavement with a stunning thump, and rolled. She managed to protect her head and curled up in a ball on the white-hot surface.

The bus kept on rolling. She could hear screaming—and fighting. Another window broke, next to Shane.

“Come on,” Claire whispered, and clambered to her feet. She hurt all over, and her ankle felt as if she’d sprained it, but that didn’t matter right now.

She watched the bus.

Nobody came out the window.

Claire started to run after the bus—limped after it—and had to stop when her ankle folded under her after a dozen steps. “Shane!” she screamed. “Shane, come on! Get out!”

Her attention was completely fixed on the bus, but she had good survival instincts, thanks to Morganville’s harsh training; she sensed a shadow behind her, and dropped just in time.

Morley. He was baking in the blazing day—not sizzling like Michael, but definitely turning toxic-sunburn red. And he was angry. His hand blurred through space where she’d been, and if she’d been in the way, he would have broken her neck. She rolled and stumbled back to her feet, felt the left one give way again, and hopped backward.

Morley gave her a feral, awful grin. “Nobody leaves the tour,” he said. “Especially not you, little girl. Amelie wants you back. I’m certain of that. You’re my insurance. No fair limping off on your own.”

He reached for her, and out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw a black shape hurl itself from the shattered bus window and streak toward them. At first she thought it was Michael, but no—Oliver.

He hit Morley like a brick wall and threw him fifty feet down the road in a rolling, slapping mess. Then, after an irritated look at her hopping on one foot, he scooped Claire up in his arms, then turned back to shout, “Michael, leave it! Get out!”

A car was roaring over the hill behind them—a police car, with half the light gear ripped off and dangling, and holes punched in the doors and windows. It had clawlike scrapes in the hood.

It didn’t slow down for Morley, who scrambled to his feet and dived out of the way as the cruiser rocketed past. It screeched to a sliding halt, crossways in the road, and the driver threw the passenger door open, then the back. Oliver tossed Claire into the back of the car, left the door open, and raced back to the bus. He leaped up, clinging to the open window, reached in, and grabbed something—a handful of black coat—and dragged.

Michael toppled out the window and fell heavily on the road. Oliver dropped down, cat-steady, and reached down to pull Michael to his feet. He took off his own hat and jammed it down on Michael’s bare blond head, stripped off his own long black coat, and flung it over him as additional protection.

Michael fought to get free, but as Claire flailed and struggled to sit up, Oliver dragged her friend all the way to the police car, shoved him in the back door, and slammed it, hard, penning Michael inside. The handles didn’t work, of course. Michael landed half on top of her, heavy and smelling like burning hair, but he quickly rolled up and tried to smash out the window glass—which, Claire realized with a shock, was painted over black—spray painted. Only the driver’s side part of the front window was left unaltered.

Oliver got in the front, turned, and drove a fist through the metal grating that separated the back of the squad car from the front. He peeled back the metal, grabbed Michael’s arm, and said, “You can’t help them by dying. You tried. We’ll try again. This isn’t over.”

“Eve’s still in there! I can’t leave her there!” Michael yelled, and yanked free.

Oliver, with a weary, impatient sigh, grabbed him by the neck this time, and pinned him back against the stained vinyl seat. “Listen to me,” he said, and peeled back more of the grate so their eyes could meet, and hold. “Michael, I swear to you that we will not abandon your friends. But you must stop this nonsense. It’s doing nothing to help them, and everything to destroy your usefulness to me and everyone you love. Do you understand?”

Michael was still tense, ready to fight, but Oliver held him there, staring him down, until Michael finally let go of Oliver’s arm and held up both hands in surrender. His whole body slumped. Defeated.

Still, Oliver didn’t let go. “Drive,” he told the man behind the wheel. “Follow the bus. Morley’s already back on board. He’ll keep driving, but we should hang back out of sight.”

“I can’t follow it if I can’t see it!” the driver protested, and Claire knew that voice, but it didn’t sound like the sheriff from Durram, or even his deputy. It sounded ...

No way.

Claire leaned forward and peered through her half of the grate, which was still in place. “Jason?” Jason Rosser? Eve’s brother? “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Oliver needed some support that wouldn’t combust,” Jason said. “Besides, that’s my sister in there, right?”

Eve. Eve was still in the bus—that was why Michael was fighting so hard. Claire felt strangely behind the curve right now; maybe she’d banged her head harder than she’d thought. It ached on the right side. She was starting to feel a whole lot of aches, as the adrenaline started to recede a little.

Shane. Shane was still on the bus, too. Why was he still on the bus?

“Jason. Use this to track them,” Oliver said, and pulled something out of the glove compartment of the cruiser. It looked like a GPS navigation device. “It’s been keyed to follow the bus.”

“You bugged the bus?”

“I bugged your sister. I slipped a cell phone into her pocket during the confusion. Hopefully she’ll have an opportunity to use it.”

He handed the device over to Jason, who stuck it up on the dashboard, angled so he could see the colored road-map display. “Nice,” he said. “Hey, if you could unlock the shotgun, that would be good, too.”

“No,” Oliver said flatly. “The last thing I trust you with is a firearm. Just drive.”

Claire was having trouble focusing, she realized. “You gave Eve a phone?”

“I put it in her pocket,” Oliver said. “Unless they search her again, I doubt they’ll find it. There were plenty of distractions.”

“What about Shane? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.” Oliver kept staring at Michael. “Was he?”

“I got one of his hands free,” Michael said. “I could have gotten them both out. You just had to give me one more—”