Bitter Blood (9 page)

Amelie’s face did show emotion after all—anger. “I have heard
all of the arguments that I am prepared to endure,” she said. “The measure ensures that all Morganville residents have proper care in case of emergency, that their Protectors are properly identified, that they can be found in case they go missing. Whatever resentments you have come from a false sense that you are free to do as you will. You are not, Claire. No one is in this world.”

“I thought you took Sam’s goals seriously. You told me you’d make humans equal partners in Morganville, that we had rights just like vampires. You
told
me that!”

“I did,” Amelie said. “And yet I find that where humans are allowed a little freedom, they will take more, until their very freedom destroys our way of life. If it comes to a choice, I must choose the survival of my own. Yours are certainly far too numerous as it stands. What is the count now, seven billion? You’ll excuse me if I believe we might be at a slight numerical disadvantage.”

“Is that why you’re allowing hunting again?”

Oliver laughed. “A tempting side benefit, but no. Hunting is buried as deep in the vampire nature as the need to reproduce is in humans. It is not simply a thing we can turn off. For some, hunting allows them to control a dark and violent side that would be much more damaging. Think of a dammed-up river, with a flaw in the structure. Sooner or later, that torrent of water will break free, and the damage it does will be considerably worse than a slow and controlled release.”

“You’re talking about water! I’m talking about people’s lives!”

“Enough,” Amelie said flatly. “This is not a human concern. You and your friends need have no fear; the law does not touch you. The things you’ve done in Morganville have ensured my personal patronage for you, as you can see on your cards. And any vampire is free to refuse to hunt. Michael has done it. No doubt many will do so.”

Somehow, relying on the goodwill of individual vampires wasn’t what Claire could see as a positive solution, but it was pretty clear that Amelie wasn’t interested in her opinions. “Then the humans need to know,” Claire said. “They need to understand that going without a Protector means they’re being hunted again. Let them at least have a chance to defend themselves!”

“Tell them if you wish,” Oliver said, and smiled. “If it makes you feel safer to be prepared, tell them to go armed. Tell them to stay in groups. Tell them whatever you wish. It will not make any difference but to make the hunt more challenging.”

“This is your doing, isn’t it?” He just watched her without replying. Claire turned her attention back to Amelie. “You’re going to let him destroy everything,” Claire said, and locked her gaze on the Founder’s. That was dangerous; Amelie had power, a lot of it, and even when she wasn’t trying to project it, there was something truly frightening about looking deep into her eyes. “You’re really going to let him turn this town into his own personal hunting preserve.”

“You’re always free to leave town, Claire,” Amelie said. “I’ve said so before, and I’ve given you more than generous terms. I urge you to take the opportunity before you make me regret having given you so much…consideration. Remember, I can always withdraw Protection.”

“Maybe I will leave! And what are you going to do then? Because I don’t think Myrnin really likes any of your new ideas, and you can’t control him, can you? But anyway, they’re not really
your
ideas.” Claire transferred her stare to Oliver. “Are they?”

Oliver went from standing still as a statue—if statues could smirk—to rushing at her full speed, a blur she instinctively flinched away from.

Michael got in the way, and shoved Oliver violently off course,
into a side table, destroying a probably priceless antique vase. Oliver rolled to his feet, hardly slowed at all by the fall, and came at him.

“Enough,” Amelie said, and Oliver just…froze. So did Michael. Claire felt a crushing sense of pressure in the room and realized that Amelie had just
made
them stop. It must have hurt, because even Oliver’s face contorted in pain for a second. “I’ve had quite enough peasant-style brawling in my presence. Michael, your loyalty is misguided, and I’ve had enough of your thinking that your personal choices outweigh your duty to me. You owe me your
life
. If a choice is to be made, be very careful how you make it. A vampire alone is vulnerable to many things.”

“I know,” Michael said. “You can quit trying to threaten me. I’m not giving up the people I love, no matter what you do. And in the words of my best friend, bite me. Come on, Claire. We’re not getting any favors from her.”

She reached out to him, but in the next instant, his blue eyes went wide and desperately blank, and he went straight to his knees—driven there by the force of Amelie’s fury. It felt like a storm, lashing over Claire as an afterthought, and she found herself on her knees next to him, reaching for his hand and holding it with shaking strength. He was trying not to crush hers, but it still hurt.

Amelie rose from behind her desk, took an elegant silver-coated letter opener from her desk, and walked to look down on Michael. As she turned the knife in her hand, thin wisps of smoke escaped; she wasn’t invulnerable to the silver, just stronger than most.

“Don’t test me,” she whispered. “I have survived my father. Survived the draug. I will survive
you
. Learn your place, or die where you kneel, right now.”

Michael somehow managed to laugh and turn his face up toward her. For the first time, Claire thought, he really looked like one of them.

Like a vampire.

“I know who I am, and I’m not one of
you
,” he said. “Screw you.”

She drove the letter opener down, and Claire had time to gasp in horror; she had a terrible, vivid flashback to the time she’d seen someone else stab Michael—in the earliest days of their friendship. He’d survived that. Not this. Not with silver.
No, I can’t tell Eve this. No, please…

Amelie drove the silver knife into the floor, to the hilt, an inch from Michael’s knee. She rose gracefully, turned her back, and walked away, dismissing them both with a flip of her hand.

Oliver, after a long look at her that Claire couldn’t read, said, “Count yourself lucky. Both of you, get out. Now.”

Claire stumbled to her feet, still holding Michael’s hand, and managed to get him up. He leaned heavily on her. He looked dazed, but his eyes were as crimson as the blood dripping from his nose and ears. He was, Claire thought, ready to go for Oliver’s throat, so it was lucky he was too weak to try it. “Come on,” she whispered to him. “
Michael!
Come on! You’re supposed to be the calm one, remember?”

He closed his eyes, which was about all she sensed she was going to get from him in terms of agreement, so she half carried him to the door.

Which remained closed.

Behind her, Oliver said, “If you come here, you come as supplicants. Anything else, and next time, the knife won’t miss.”

Claire was smart enough to keep her
Screw you
to herself.

G
etting out of Founder’s Square wasn’t quite as bad as getting in, but with Michael staggering and only really able to stand halfway through, Claire was worried that Henrik, or someone else with similar feelings, would step out to finish the job Amelie and Oliver had started. He was hurt…maybe not in terms of the obvious wounds, but she was convinced that the blood that still stained his face near his nose and ears was a sign of some kind of internal hemorrhage. She had no idea what to do for him, but vampires could heal from most things without help.

Still, he probably was going to need blood, and she didn’t want to be the only source standing nearby if a sudden craving came down hard. She’d seen that happen, and the aftermath. It might not ruin their friendship, unless he actually killed her, but it would make things very awkward around the dinner table.

“Can you drive?” she asked him anxiously as they arrived at the garage level. She kept a hand on his arm, though he was moving under his own power now; he hadn’t said much at all, but now he nodded. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been screaming. “Not yet. Will be.”

“You probably need a drink.” She said it the matter-of-fact way she’d heard Eve phrase it, and he seemed relieved that he didn’t have to bring it up. “I don’t mind waiting in the car if you want to stop at the blood bank. Michael…I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would go so…”
Wrong. Violent. Crazy.
But Shane somehow had intuited that, or he wouldn’t have insisted on someone else going with her. Someone strong enough to fight off Oliver and Amelie…or who’d be willing to try.

If I’d had the machine finished, I could have used it. Canceled out her power.
Maybe it would have worked. Maybe it would have even canceled out Oliver’s influence on Amelie, made her go back to the old Founder, the one Claire sorely missed.

And maybe it would have only made things worse.

It humbled her to think how much danger Michael had put himself in, for her. And it showed just how much danger there was for all of them. Hannah had been right after all. There wasn’t any point in trying.

In the car, finally, Claire felt safe enough to broach the subject she’d been frantically turning over in her mind during the long walk. “What’s happened to Amelie? She wasn’t like this. Could the draug have, I don’t know, infected her? Done something to her?”

“Maybe,” Michael said. He coughed, and it was a wet sound. Claire cringed. “Maybe it’s got something to do with Oliver; he has the ability to influence people. She always kept him at a distance before. Now it’s as though they’re channeling Sid and Nancy.”

“Who?”

Michael groaned. “It’s sad how much you don’t know about music, Claire. Sid Vicious? The Sex Pistols?”

“Oh, him.”

“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”

She smiled a little. “Not the least little bit.”

“Remind me to play you some songs later. But anyway, if Myrnin said things were spinning out of control, he’s not wrong. Amelie doesn’t use that power she just pulled out on me, not unless things are really critical. Never just for her own personal amusement.” He shuddered, and finally said, in a quiet voice, “She could have killed me, Claire. At least the part of me that isn’t pure vampire. She could have made me into—I don’t know, her meat puppet or something. She’s got power like nobody else.”

Claire swallowed, suddenly and sharply uneasy again. “But she didn’t do it.”

“This time,” he said. “What if she decides that’s the only way to make me obey the way she wants? I don’t want to live like that, if she crushes everything in me that’s
me.
Promise me, you and Shane, you’ll…take care of it. If it happens.”

“It won’t.”

“Promise.”

“God, Michael!”

He was silent for a second, then said, “I’ll ask Shane.” Because they both knew Shane would understand that request, probably far too well.

And that he’d say yes.

“It’s not going to happen,” Claire said. “No way in hell, Michael. We won’t let it happen.”

He didn’t tell her that it probably wouldn’t be a thing she could
control, but she already knew it anyway. She just felt better, and more in control, for saying it.

The drive to the blood bank was quiet, and Claire faced toward the blacked-out passenger window. In the aftermath of all the adrenaline, she felt numb, and exhausted, and—weirdly enough—really hungry. Michael went inside the back of the blood bank, through the vamps-only entrance, and came back with a small handheld cooler, which he handed her. She put it on the floor between her feet. “Blood supply’s running low,” he said. “They’ll be sending out the Bloodmobile to collect tomorrow. Is Shane paid up?”

“Is he ever?” Claire rolled her eyes. “I’ll get him in voluntarily in the morning. I’ll donate, too.” Claire, by Amelie’s decree, had historically been free of the responsibility of giving blood, which was the tax humans paid in Morganville from age eighteen up; she’d been underage before, but even now that she was legal, she didn’t have to contribute. She still did, mainly because the hospitals, not the vampires, were the ones that ran short in an emergency.

Shane had pointedly
not
been excluded from the tax rolls. Probably because of how much trouble he’d historically been in, in Morganville.

Michael sighed. “Do you mind if I…?”

Claire opened the cooler and took out one of the blood bags. It was slightly warm, and heavy, and she tried to pretend it was a bag of colored water, one of those prop things they used in television shows.

But she still looked away when he bit into it.

It took only about a minute for him to drain it dry, and he looked around for a place to put the empty, then let her take it and return it to the cooler. “Sorry,” he said. His apology sounded genuine.
“I know that’s probably not what you needed to see right now.”

“All eating is gross,” Claire said, “but we all have to do it. Anyway, I’m starving. Is Chico’s still open?”

“You know if I get you Chico’s, I have to get it for the house, right?”