Kiss of Death (26 page)

The Windows tones sounded, and it felt like everybody in the library jumped. Mrs. Grant and Morley abandoned their security sweep and came back to stand by Claire’s elbow as the operating system load finished, and the desktop finally appeared. She let it finish, then double-clicked the Internet icon.

“Four oh four.” She sighed.

“What?” Morley peered over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”

“Page not found,” she said. “It’s a four oh four error. Let me try something else.” She tried for Google. Then Wikipedia. Then Twitter. Nothing. “The ISP must be down. There’s no Internet service.”

“What about e-mail? It is e-mail, yes?” Morley asked, leaning even closer. “E-mail is a kind of electronic letter. It travels through the air.” He seemed very smug that he knew that.

“Well, not exactly, and would you please either
back off or
go find a shower? Thanks. And to send e-mail you have to have Internet service. So that doesn’t work.”

“I pedaled for nothing,” Shane said mournfully. “That deeply bites.”

“Does anyone else think it’s too quiet?” Oliver asked, and looked up from the map.

There was a moment of silence, and then Mrs. Grant said, “Sometimes they don’t come at us for a few hours. But they always come. Every night. We’re all there is for them.”

Oliver nodded, stood up, and gestured to Morley. The two vampires stalked off into the dark, talking in tones too quiet for human ears to catch at all.

Mrs. Grant stared after them, eyes narrowed. “They’ll turn on us,” she said. “Sooner or later, your vampires will turn on us. Count on it.”

“We’re still alive,” Claire said, and pointed to herself, Shane, Jason, and Eve. Eve was sitting a few feet away, curled in Michael’s arms. “And we’ve been at this a whole lot longer than you.”

“Then you’re deluded,” Mrs. Grant said. “How can you possibly trust these—
people
?
”
She acted as if that wasn’t the word she wanted to use.

“Because they gave you back your guns,” Claire said. “And because they could have killed you in the first couple of minutes if they’d really wanted to. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us, sometimes. But right now, you need to believe what they’re telling you.”

Mrs. Grant frowned at her. “And when exactly do I
stop
believing them?”

Claire smiled. “We’ll let you know.”

 

There weren’t a lot of kids in the library, but there were a few—seven total, according to Claire’s count, ranging from babies who were still being bottle-fed to a couple of trying-to-be-adult kids of maybe twelve. Nobody was too close to Claire’s own age, though. She was kind of glad; it would have been just too creepy to see the kind of blank fear in their faces that she saw in the younger kids. Too much like seeing herself, in the beginning of her Morganville experience.

She wound up thinking about the kids because Eve had brought over a lantern, gotten them in a circle, and started reading to them. It was something familiar, from the few words Claire could hear; it finally clicked in. Eve was reading
Where the Wild Things Are.
All the kids, even the ones who would probably have said they were too old for it, were sitting quietly, listening, with the fear easing away from their expressions.

“She’s got the touch, doesn’t she?” That was Michael, standing behind Claire. He was watching Eve read, too. “With kids.” There was something quietly sad in his voice.

“Yeah, I guess.” Claire glanced over at him, then away. “Everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Just another day for us Morganville brats.” Now the
smile
was quietly sad, too. “I wish I could take her away from all this. Make it all—different.”

“But you can’t.”

“No. I can’t. Because I am who I am, and she is who she is. And that’s it.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug so small it almost didn’t even qualify. “She keeps asking me where we’re going.”

“Yeah,” another voice said. It was Shane, pulling up a chair beside Claire. “Girls do that. They’ve always got to be taking the relationship somewhere.”

“That’s not true!”

“It is,” he said. “I get it; somebody’s got to be looking ahead. But it makes guys think they’re—”

“Closed in,” Michael said.

“Trapped,” Shane added.

“Idiots,” Claire finished. “Okay, I didn’t really mean that. But jeez, guys. It’s just a question.”

“Yeah?” Michael’s blue eyes were steady on Eve, watching her read, watching her smile, watching how she was with the kids clustered around her. “Is it?”

Claire didn’t answer. Suddenly,
she
was the one who felt closed in. Trapped. And she understood why Michael was feeling so ... strange.

He was watching Eve with kids, and he was never going to have kids with Eve. At least, she didn’t
think
vampires could.... She’d never really asked. But she was pretty sure she was right about that one. He looked like someone seeing the future, and not liking his place in it one bit.

“Hey,” Shane said, and nudged Claire’s shoulder. “You noticed what’s going on?”

She blinked as she realized that Shane wasn’t figuring out Michael—that he hadn’t even really noticed all the personal stuff at all. He was, instead, looking out into the shadows, where there had been vampires patrolling at the edges.

“What?” she asked. She couldn’t see anyone.

“They’re gone.”

“The vampires. As in, no longer in the building. Unless there’s a big line for the bathroom, all of a sudden. Even Jason’s gone.”

“No way.” Claire slid off her chair and went to the desk. There was no sign of Oliver, or Morley. The map of Blacke was still spread out on the table, anchored with weights on the corners, marked in colored pencils with things she didn’t understand. She grabbed the lantern and went to the library doors, where Jacob Goldman had been standing.

He wasn’t there.

“See?” Shane said. “They’ve bailed. All of them.”

“That’s impossible. Why would they just leave us?”

“You have to ask?” Shane shook his head. “Claire, sometimes I think your head’s not really in the survival game. Think: why would they leave us? Because they can. Because as much as you want to believe the best about everybody, they’re not the good guys.”

“No,” she blurted. “No, they wouldn’t.
Oliver
wouldn’t.”

“The hell he wouldn’t. Oliver is a rock-solid bastard, and you know it. If he added up the numbers and it looked like it might benefit him by adding even a second or two to his life, he’d be out of here, making up some sad story. It’s how he survives, Claire.” Shane hesitated for a second, then plunged on. “And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe if he’s taken off, we should, too. Just—run. Get as far away, as fast as we can.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying ... ,” he began with a sigh. “I’m saying we’re out of Morganville. And Oliver is all that’s stopping us from heading anywhere in the world, other than there.”

She really didn’t want to believe that Oliver was gone. She wanted to believe that Oliver was, like Amelie, someone who took his word seriously, who, once having granted his protection, wouldn’t just walk away because the going got tough.

But she really, really couldn’t be sure. She never was, with Oliver. She had absolutely no doubts about Morley; he was all vampire, all the time. He’d smile at you one minute and rip out your throat the next, and wouldn’t see any contradiction in that at all.

He was right, though. Oliver
was
all that stood between them and a life out in the world; a life free of Morganville.

Except for the people they’d leave behind.

She glanced back at Eve, surrounded by the kids in a circle of light, and at Michael, watching her from the shadows with so much longing and pain in his face.

And it hit her.

“Michael,” she blurted. “Whatever Oliver might do to us, he can’t leave Michael behind to die. He
can’t.
Amelie would kill him.”

No doubt about that. Amelie had deeply loved Sam, Michael’s grandfather, and when she’d turned Michael into a vampire, she’d considered him family—
her
family. If Oliver planned to throw them to the infected wolves, he was going to have to figure out how to do it
and
somehow save Michael, without letting Michael know what had happened to the rest of them.

Michael must have heard her say his name, because he looked over at her. Shane crooked a finger at him. Michael nodded and walked over.

He was much more observant than Claire was, because before he ever reached them, Michael looked around and said, “Where are they?”

“Thought maybe you knew,” Shane said. “They being your fellow fanged ones. Isn’t there some kind of flock instinct?”

“Bite me, blood bank. No, they didn’t tell me anything.” Michael frowned. “Stay here. I’m going to check the rest of the building. Be right back.”

He was gone in a whisper of air, hardly making any sound at all, and Claire shivered and leaned against Shane’s solid, very human warmth. His arms went around her, and he touched his lips lightly to the back of her neck. “How can you smell this good after the kind of crappy day we’ve had?”

“I sweat perfume. Like all girls.”

He laughed and squeezed her. He smelled good, too—more
male,
somehow, a little grungy and edgy and sweaty, and although she loved soap and water and shampoo, sometimes this was better—wilder.

Michael was back in—true to his word—just a few minutes, and he didn’t look at all happy. “I found Patience,” he said. “She and Jacob are guarding the doors from the outside. Oliver went out to do a patrol.”

“And everybody else?” Claire asked.

“Morley took everybody else to go after the enemy. He said he wasn’t going to wait for them to come to us. At least, that’s what he said he was doing. For all Patience knows, Morley may be trying to find another truck or bus and get his people out of town.”

“Did Oliver know about this?”

Michael shook his head. “He’s got no idea, although he might now, if he spotted them outside. Don’t know how he’d stop them on his own, though.”

Claire didn’t, either, but it was
Oliver.
He’d figure out something, and it probably wouldn’t be pretty.

“How long until dawn?”

“A couple of hours,” Michael said. He looked over at Eve, who had finished up the story and was hugging kids who were on their way to their beds. “Mrs. Grant said they always come during the night. That means they’ll be coming soon, if Morley’s people didn’t screw up their whole day. And we’d better be ready.”

When there had been a bunch of vampires running around on
their
side, Claire hadn’t felt too worried, but now she was. And looking at Michael, at Shane, she knew they were, too.

“So let’s hat up, guys,” Shane said. “Nobody gets fanged tonight. New rule.”

He and Michael did a fast high-low five, and went for the weapons.

Claire got Eve and updated her; then they joined the boys to get their vampire-repelling act together. Mrs. Grant had been dozing in an armchair, shotgun across her lap, but she woke up as soon as the four of them started raiding the weapons pile on the table. Claire was impressed; for an old lady, she woke up fast, and the first thing she did was look for trouble. When she didn’t find any immediately, she looked at the four of them and said, “Are they coming?”

“Probably,” Michael said, and picked up a couple of wooden stakes, leaving the silver-coated ones for the humans to handle. He also grabbed up a crossbow and some extra bolts. “We’re going to help with patrols. Looks like we’re a little light on guards.”

“But Morley—” Mrs. Grant’s mouth slammed shut, into a grim line. She didn’t need to be clued in, obviously. “Of course. I never doubted he’d stab us in the back.”

“I’m not saying he has,” Michael said. “I’m just saying he’s not here. So we need to be sure that if things go wrong ...”

Mrs. Grant rose from her chair, winced, and rubbed at a sore spot on her back. She looked tired, but very focused. “I’ll get my men up,” she said. “Should have known we couldn’t do a whole night without some kind of alert. I just hoped for a miracle.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Claire asked. “Fighting them off?”

“It wasn’t all at once,” the older woman said. “At first we thought the people we couldn’t find were just sick—regular human sick. And they were clever at first, good at hiding out, picking off people who weren’t paying attention. Like wolves, going after strays. By the time we knew, they came in force and took out most everybody who could have gotten things organized against them. All told, I guess we’ve been living out of this library for almost three weeks now.” She almost smiled, but it was just a bitter twist of her lips, really. “It seems longer. I can hardly remember what it was like before. Blacke used to be a real quiet town; nothing ever happened. Now ...”

“Maybe we can get it back to that quiet town it used to be,” Claire said.

Mrs. Grant gave her a long look. “Just you and your friends?”

“Hey,” Shane said, snapping a shotgun closed with a flick of his wrist. “We’re just trying to help.”

“And stay alive,” Eve added. “But trust me, this is not the worst situation we’ve ever been in.” She sounded confident about that. Claire raised her eyebrows, and Eve considered it for a few more seconds. “Okay, maybe
tied
for worst. But definitely not the Guinness Record for awfulness.”

Mrs. Grant looked at each of them in turn, and then just walked away to rouse her own men.

“Seriously,” Shane said, “this kind of is the worst situation we’ve ever been in, right?”

“Speak for yourself,” Michael said. “I got myself killed last year. Twice.”

“Oh yeah. You’re right—last year really sucked for you.”

“Boys,” Eve interrupted, when Michael started to make some smart-ass comeback. “Focus. Dangerous vampire attack imminent. What’s the plan?”