Morganville Vampires 11: Last Breath (19 page)

It was, a little, and normally Claire would have been jumping right in, talking about the physics and alchemical theories that made something like that possible, but right now, she just wanted him
out
. Badly. “Isn’t there something you have to do somewhere else?” she said. “Because you got us home. Fine. Now go away.”

Eve had come back to stand next to Shane, eyes wide. She’d shed the high heels, but she still looked like an exotic ghost from the early 1920s, even in bright red. “Wow,” she said. “I didn’t even know you
could
put that tone in your voice, Claire. You haven’t forgotten, this is
Myrnin
, right? As in, your boss? As in, the guy who just covered our asses at the party?”

“Thank you, Eve,” he said, and gave her a very warm smile. “I was happy to do it.” The smile became more tentative when he directed it at Claire. “I do apologize for any wrongs I have done you. Truly, I do. It was—not my first choice, believe me.” He nodded at Shane. “And that goes for you as well.”

“Wrongs?” Eve asked, mystified. “What wrongs? What—”

And then she caught sight of the bruise around the collar of Shane’s turtleneck. It was now one
hell
of a bruise—dark purple, red, blue at the edges. Almost black in the center.
God.
You could see the actual outlines of Myrnin’s fingers. Claire saw Eve’s mind working, and then said, “You did it. Shane said he’d been in a fight, but it was
you
. That’s why she’s so angry.”

Myrnin looked even
more
kicked-puppy sad. “I am sorry for my actions. As I said. I can’t remove bruises, but happily he is recovering fully.”

Now Michael was in on it, too. “Wait a minute—what?
Myrnin
choked you?”

“Dude, it’s over. Done.”

“He tried to kill you!”

“If I’d really tried,” Myrnin said helpfully, “I’m sure I would have succeeded.”

The crazy thing was he actually thought that would be it. That Claire would forget about it—and if he’d come after
her
, she realized, she probably would have done just that. She had forgiven him for all kinds of crazy stuff before.

But this was a cold, calculated attack on Shane, and he’d gotten her to tell him where to find him.

No. Not this.

Myrnin was happily babbling on, oblivious to the mood of the four of them—and the house, whose internal temperature was falling so fast Eve was shuddering in her thin red dress. “The thing is, this house, this
house
! It’s developing, you see. It’s growing stronger. I’ve always suspected that there was something special here—obviously, it saved you once, Michael—and now it seems to be reacting quite strongly… .”

Michael took off his coat and put it around Eve’s shoulders, hugging her close. The four of them were aware now of what Myrnin had done. And united in their anger.

And something
changed
.

Myrnin’s cheerful blather ended in a yelp as the hallway floor literally
rolled
under his feet, a clatter of boards, and sent him reeling forward, toward Shane, Eve, and Michael, who quickly got out of the way. Claire braced herself against the wall, but she could tell this attack wasn’t directed at her, or her friends.

Only at Myrnin, who board-surfed the ripple in the floor, fighting to stay upright, until it ended in a sudden upward rise that snapped him into the air, flinging him—

Toward the wall where Myrnin’s mystical portal lay hidden.

It took time to open the thing—well, normally—but Myrnin had powers that Claire would never possess in that area, and by the time his outstretched arms reached the wall, the wall melted into a swirl of black, and Myrnin fell straight through it.

Gone, except for his shouted plea of “Claire, please listen—”

And then the portal snapped shut, the dark mist faded, and it was just a wall, again.

Claire walked over and put her hand over the surface. Paint, plaster, boards. Nothing magical about it, at least not that she could detect. “House,” she said. She rarely addressed it directly; none of them liked to acknowledge that they were living inside something that had actual consciousness, because that made their privacy iffy, at best. “I need you to keep him out. Lock this portal. Don’t let him inside through the doors, either.”

She felt an odd, deep throb rise up through her feet, and out through the palm of her hand, and although she couldn’t really detect a change, she knew it was done.

Myrnin was locked out.

Her cell phone rang. Claire pulled it from her coat pocket and looked at the screen, which showed a picture of Myrnin’s bunny slippers. She thumbed the connection open and said, “Don’t try coming through again.”

“Claire, listen to me. I need to speak to you privately. There’s something very odd going on, and I need your input to understand exactly what—”

“I quit,” she said. “I thought we were clear on that.”

“The house. Listen to me, the house could be your salvation, in an emergency. I need you all to stay in that house as much as you possibly can. Claire—”

She hung up on him. Myrnin would never tell her what was going on, not in any way that made sense; neither would Amelie, obviously. And Oliver seemed to have come down firmly on the opposite side, too.

She couldn’t trust any of them. Not anymore.

Shane put his arms around her. “Sorry,” he said. “I know this hurts.”

“You’re the one with the bruises,” she said, and turned around to hug him back. “And you’re the one I care about.”

Michael cleared his throat. “Sorry to break the mood, but can we please talk about
what the hell is going on
?”

Claire took in a deep breath. “I guess we should.”

Because no matter what Amelie wanted, Claire couldn’t protect her friends if they didn’t know.

S
taying in the house was possible for only a day or two before they began running out of important survival supplies, like Coke, hot dogs, and toilet paper. Michael insisted on making the supply run the first time, but on the second, Claire and Eve held a whispered meeting upstairs, and declared that they would be going on their own.

“No way,” Michael said. “You heard what Myrnin said, and besides, if Eve wasn’t the most popular girl in Morganville before, she’s on the blacklist now. They’ll lock up when they see you coming, babe. Amelie’s not happy at all.”

“Maybe she should go ahead and arrest me,” Eve said. “Because I’m
not
hiding in this house for the rest of my life. First, I need a haircut. Second—”

“There’s no second,” Shane interrupted her. “You’re not going, girls. Things are getting weird out there.”

“Says who?”

“Me,” Michael said. “The Food King is closed down and locked. They just put an out-of-business sign on Marjo’s Diner, too.”

“What?” Shane blurted. Marjo’s was his favorite place in Morganville, and hey, Claire was pretty fond of it, too. “It might be a cockroach factory, but it’s been around for what, fifty years? Never closed?”

“Well, it’s closed now,” Michael said.

Shane shook his head. He was sitting on the couch, game controller in his hands, but he’d forgotten all about it now. On the TV screen, zombies were ripping his avatar apart. “That’s insane. You know about my job, right?”

“What about it?” Claire asked.

“Fired,” he said. “Well, laid off—they called this morning. They’re closing for renovations, or so they said. Pretty soon, we’re not going to have anyplace open around here. What is up with this crap?”

“What about Common Grounds?” Eve asked anxiously. “I mean, Oliver let me take the week off, but …”

“Still open,” Michael confirmed. “So far, anyway. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This isn’t just some financial problem. There’s more to it.” He hesitated, then said, “And more vampires have gone missing.”

“More? How many more?”

“According to the gossip this morning, at least ten. Naomi hasn’t been seen again. Neither have the others.”

“Well,” Eve was saying, “we still
have
to go to the store. And
we’re
going, not either of you.”

“Why?” Michael asked. He’d folded his arms, and was frowning at her, but not in an angry way. He looked concerned.

Eve sighed. She ticked things off on her fingers. “I need fingernail polish, and neither of you can tell decent lacquer from rubbing alcohol. Next, Claire has a prescription she needs to pick up from the pharmacy, which neither of you really ought to be doing on her behalf, since it’s personal. Last, speaking of personal, there are intimate feminine products that I promise you neither one of you want to be taking up to a register, manly men.”

Shane actually flinched. Michael looked uncomfortable.

Eve grinned. “In case that wasn’t clear, I’m talking about
tampons
.”

“Yeah, pretty clear,” Shane said. “And okay, yeah, maybe you should go. Considering.”

“Damn right,” Eve said. She was in Action Eve mode today, dressed in black jeans, heavy combat boots, and tight-fitting tee with a massive silk-screened Gothic skull wrapped around it. Big spiked bracelets. A leather collar. All her Goth makeup was firmly in place, right down to jet-black lipstick and eye makeup the color of bruises. “Trust me. We’ve got this. Plus, I’m going armed.” She opened a leather pouch hanging from her spiked belt, and pulled out a bottle of silver nitrate, as well as a silver-coated stake. “We’ll be fine. In and out in thirty minutes.”

“Maybe I should go and just wait in the car,” Shane said.

“Maybe you should stop treating us like fragile china dolls,” Eve shot back, and spun the stake expertly in her fingers. “What do you say, CB?”

Claire was smiling, she realized. Unlike Eve, she wasn’t dressed to aggress; she was wearing plain jeans and a simple blue blouse, but she had her backpack, and inside it (instead of books) were a small, compact crossbow, bolts, silver nitrate,
and
stakes.

Plus her wallet, of course. She wasn’t planning on holding the place up.

“We’ll be fine,” Claire said, and held Shane’s eyes. “Trust me.”

He nodded, still frowning. “I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But we can’t hide for the rest of our lives. This is our town, too.”

 

 

The drive to the other store was a little bit longer, but Eve livened it up by blaring death metal and driving with the windows down, which made people not only turn and look, but glare. Oh, Eve was in a
mood
. It was fun.

Eve pulled the hearse up in front of the pharmacy and put it in park. “Don’t get out,” Claire shouted over the music. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Five minutes!” Eve shouted back. “Five minutes and I come to kick ass. That is not a metaphor!”

Claire made an OK sign with her fingers, because it was impossible to yell loud enough to be heard as Eve cranked it up another notch; she escaped from the vibrating hearse, dashed across the empty space, and into the relative silence of Goode’s Drugs (known locally, she had learned from Shane, as Good Drugs, because the pharmacist was known to sell some not-quite-legal stuff under the counter from time to time). The thumping bass from the hearse rattled the glass, but other than that, it seemed deserted.

Claire walked past racks of cold medicines, pain relievers, mouthwash, and foot powders to reach the actual pharmacy counter at the back. No one was in sight at the window, so she rang the bell. It made a clear, silvery note in the air.

Silence.

“Hello?” Claire said, and then louder, leaning over the counter, “Hello? Anybody?”

She caught sight of someone right at the corner of her vision, and turned to look. There, standing behind the counter at the end of a long set of shelves, was a man. Not Mr. Rooney, who ran the pharmacy; not the vampire Claire had seen in there a few times, who probably owned the place. No, this was—

This was the man she’d seen outside Common Grounds. The quiet, nondescript one.

“Hello?” she asked, looking right at him. “Do you work here?” She leaned farther over the counter, trying to get a clearer angle, but when she blinked …

… He was gone.

“Mr. Rooney?” She yelled it this time. “Mr. Rooney, there’s somebody behind the counter! I don’t think he’s supposed to be there! Mr. Rooney, are you all right?” Nothing. Claire felt her mouth dry up and her palms get sweaty. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911. “Hello, I’m at Goode’s Drugs, and I think there’s something wrong—the pharmacist isn’t here, and I saw somebody in the back. Yes. I’ll wait.”

The emergency operator told her a car was on the way; in Morganville, that wouldn’t be a long wait at all. Claire considered going back outside to wait in the hearse with Eve, and in fact was retreating back from the service window when Mr. Rooney suddenly popped up out of
nowhere
behind her and said, “Can I help you?”