Morganville - 10 - Bite Club (32 page)

He cocked his head and listened, then smiled. What was it with vampires and chilling smiles? His made Claire grip her antivampire bag tighter and wish she hadn't stood quite so close. "Ah," he said. "And there he goes. You two wait here."

He dashed off, moving like a flicker of light. Claire looked at Eve, who shook her head and stepped over the threshold into the house. Claire stayed with her. There was some kind of commotion at the back of the house, where she presumed a rear door was located, and as the two girls walked through the deserted, messy living room (what was it with guys and old pizza boxes? Could they not throw them away?) Myrnin reappeared from the back, shoving a pale, skinny man ahead of him. The guy they were looking for, Claire supposed. He looked terrified.

"Sit," Myrnin said, and shoved the guy onto the threadbare couch. He looked around, sighed, and pushed some old pizza boxes and fast-food bags off an end table, then sat down. "You really should look into a maid. Just a thought."

"Are you Harry?" Claire asked. "Harry Anderson?"

The man was not only pale and unshaven; he was also shifty-eyed. He looked like he was lying even when he wasn't talking. When he did finally answer, it looked even worse. "No," he said. "I'm, uh, watching the place for a friend. Harry's my friend, I mean."

Eve reached into her bag and pulled out a crossbow. She stuck a lethal-looking metal bolt on it and cranked back the string. The man watched with increasing worry. "Uh, I'm not a vampire," he said.

"Yeah, I can see that, since you're wearing Oliver's Protection bracelet," Eve agreed.

"That's not the only thing this is good for. You'd be surprised how effective it is on liars, too, Harry."

He licked his lips, staring at her, and then shifted his gaze to Claire. He must have decided she was nicer, because he said, "You're not going to let her do this, are you?

What are you girls, anyway, twelve? Do your parents know you're hanging around with vampires old enough to be your -- "

Eve snapped the trigger, and the bolt whizzed past Harry's head and buried itself in the wall next to him.

He yelped and almost jumped off the sofa, but Myrnin put a hand on his shoulder and held him down as Eve reloaded.

"Now," Eve said. "We've got some questions, Harry, and I'm going to suggest, strongly, that you just go ahead and answer them. If you think Claire is going to be any kinder to you than I am, you're very mistaken. My boyfriend's only missing.

Hers is in your little fight club."

"Oh," Harry said, and then, in an entirely different and much more worried tone, "Oh.

This is about -- "

"ImmortalBattles-dot-com," Claire said. "You helped set it up, so you know these people. You know where they were."

"Uh, sure, but they're not there now."

"Nobody's there, idiot. They blew it up," Eve said. "You see the bruises and cuts on my friend there? That's what your friends did. They tried to blow up the Founder.

How do you think that's going to go over, Harry? Because I'm thinking that you should just take this crossbow bolt straight in the heart and get it over with. She's not the forgiving type."

Harry closed his eyes and sweated, a lot. Claire waited, content to just stand there and look -- well, not menacing, but maybe impatient. Myrnin, on the other hand, looked menacing. He'd shed the hat and coat, and now was perched with inhuman grace on the arm of the couch, staring down at Harry with those glowing, scary red eyes.

"Harry," he said quietly. "Do decide what you want to do. I'm hungry, and if you're going to cooperate, please indicate it immediately, before I assume you're not. I'd hate for you to be trying to utter a dying declaration and be unable to do so."

Harry's eyes snapped open again, full of panic, and he scooted as far away from Myrnin as was possible. That wasn't very far, because the other half of his couch was a rat's nest of piled-up papers, mail, boxes, and wadded-up old clothes. The place was a pit. Claire shuddered and decided not to sit down anywhere.

"Wait," Harry blurted. "Just wait, okay? Uh, right, the fight people. Yeah, they paid me to move everything. You know, the cameras, the equipment, the server, the whole setup. And to run the re-encryption, not that it's going to do any good; somebody cracked it pretty good the first time...."

"Where?" Claire asked. When Harry didn't answer immediately, she opened up her bag and rooted through it. She came up with one of Eve's silver-coated stakes, decorated with shiny crystals in the shape of a Gothic cross. She showed it to Eve.

"Pretty," she said.

Eve smiled. "I like things to be nice," she said. "But you can never get the blood out from between those -- "

"Okay!" Harry interrupted. "Jeez, you're just kids! All right, fine. I moved it all to a place near the edge of town. I can give you the address, and then I'm done, okay?

Done. I pull the phone, grab my stuff, and I move the hell out of here. You won't have any trouble from me -- no, sir."

"I can think of an easier way to ensure that," Myrnin said. "Girls? What do you think?"

Eve stared at Claire, who stared back, twirling the silver stake in her fingers. It was all theater. She wasn't going to kill anybody, and neither was Eve. Myrnin might have, but Claire thought they could hold him back. Maybe.

"I think we should give him a chance," Claire said. "Mr. Anderson, you understand that if you give us the wrong information, or if you do anything to warn them we're coming...well, it won't be nice. Will it?"

"I knew it: you're the nice one," he said. "You called me Mr. Anderson."

Claire stabbed the stake in the coffee table, point down, with all her strength. It sank in, not as deeply as she wished, but enough to hold it upright on its own, with its red Gothic cross shining in the dim light.

"Harry," she said. "I'm really not that nice."

He swallowed and nodded and reached for a piece of paper and a pencil. He scribbled down an address and sketched out a map. He even noted on there which doors were safe to go into. He looked at her, then Myrnin, then Eve, and finally handed the paper to Myrnin.

Who smiled. "Why thank you, Harry. What a good decision you've made." He jumped down with a loud thump, pulled on his trench coat, and slapped the hat on his head. "I think we can go now."

"No," Eve said. She held out her hand. "Cell phone."

Harry dug in his pockets and came up with one, which she dropped to the floor and stepped on, a lot, until it was just pieces of glittering junk.

"Your computer?"

"Back there." He pointed.

"Myrnin, would you mind?"

"Of course not. I told you I was useful."

"Then go rip it up. Claire, find his landlines."

In the end, they left Harry sitting miserably in his filthy living room, with a pile of broken phones and shattered computer equipment, and instructions to stay out of things, or else. Claire was pretty sure he'd gotten the message. Loudly. But just to make sure, Eve had tied him up with duct tape. He looked like a silver mummy.

"Don't worry," Eve said. "I'm going to call the cops and ask them to look in on you in about, oh, three hours. None of those cockroaches look hungry -- that's the good news. They're all about the pizza, not the human flesh. So you'll be just fine, Harry."

She patted his head and smiled so brightly that Harry looked momentarily dazzled.

Eve was pretty, and she could be totally stunning when she smiled like that.

"Bye," she said. He mumbled something around the duct tape, and that was that.

Eve did do what she'd promised; as Myrnin drove (another terrifying, in-the-dark experiment), she called Hannah Moses's office and reported the whole thing.

"Wait," Hannah said. Claire could see why, as head of the Morganville police department, she was a little puzzled about this whole thing. "You're telling me you just assaulted and terrorized a Protected citizen of Morganville and left him tied up, and you want me to check on him for you? Did I get that right?"

"Yeah," Eve said. "Well, it sounds bad when you say it like that, but that's pretty much it. Just so he doesn't choke or have a heart attack or something. Also, there are a lot of cockroaches. I worried about that."

"You realize that you're admitting to crimes, Eve."

"No," she said. "Because we're sort of doing stuff for Amelie. Following up a lead.

She'll, ah, back us up." She raised her eyebrows at Claire, a clearRight? in her expression. Claire shrugged. "Besides, Oliver's his Protector, and Oliver won't care what we did. If he'd gotten to him first, I'm pretty sure you'd be doing a whole lot more clean up."

Hannah was quiet for a few seconds and then said, "I remember when this was a quiet little town. That was nice."

"It was never quiet, Hannah. You just went off to Afghanistan."

"And it was quieter there, too. All right. I'll check in on your prisoner. What are you girls up to?"

"Do you want to know?"

"Shouldn't I?"

"Uh...I don't think you should," Claire said. "Seeing as how you'd think you needed to do something about it, and staying out of the way is probably a whole lot safer right now."

"Are you going to take your own advice?"

"We can't," Claire said. "Shane and Michael are in trouble. We're going to get them out."

"You're sure I can't help with that?"

"Yeah," Eve said. "I'm sure. We've got all the help we can handle already."

Myrnin whipped the wheel in a sharp movement that made tires squeal, and threw the girls around in the backseat of the car. Eve almost dropped her phone.

"Are you in the car that's almost caused three accidents on North Vance?" Hannah asked. "Because I'm following you with my lights flashing, and whoever's driving isn't pulling over."

"Let him go," Claire said. "Trust me. You aren't going to get him to stop."

"Oh, God. It's Myrnin, isn't it?"

"Tell that police lady to stop chasing me," Myrnin said, annoyed, from the front seat.

"Really, I'm not that bad at this."

All evidence to the contrary. But Hannah hung up on her end, and the wail of her siren died away. Claire supposed that at the moment, that was as much of a win as they might reasonably hope for. So here they were, hurtling into the dark on the tip of a terrified thief who might or might not be screwing with them, and they'd just refused police assistance.

This was turning out so well. But Claire had to admit, Eve was all kinds of awesome, when she had the chance to shine. She glittered and flared and was sharp enough to cut, just like a diamond. All Claire had to do was look reasonably intense, which right now wasn't a problem. She felt intense, because she couldn't stop thinking about Shane. Where he was. What he was doing. What was being done to him.

Gloriana.

Claire's cell phone rang, and she jumped and looked at the screen.

Mr. Radamon, MIT.

Oh, God.

She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and answered. "Hello?"

"Ms. Danvers, hello. This is Mr. Radamon from MIT. I'm very sorry to bother you, but I need to check in and see how things are going. With your arrangements. As you can imagine, these places are very difficult to hold, and I do need your answer fairly soon to -- "

"I know," Claire said, and tried not to let her voice shake. She felt like she was being squeezed in a vise now, and her head was about to explode. "I'm sorry, I'm kind of in the middle of something. I promise, I'll call you as soon as I can, sir. Thanks."

"All right, thank you -- "

She hung up. Fast. Silence in the car. Eve gave her a curious look.

"Well," Myrnin said quietly from the front seat. "I would suggest we focus on the problem at hand. The fewer distractions, the better, I believe."

His tone of voice was entirely different than it had been before, and Claire realized that he'd heard the conversation. Heard every word on the other end of the line, too.

No secrets from someone like Myrnin.

She couldn't tell what he was thinking, but he was unnaturally still.

"Myrnin -- " she began. He held up one stiffened hand in a sharp gesture.

"No," he said. "We don't discuss this now. Later, perhaps." He glanced at her in the rearview mirror, and his eyes were dark and very troubled. "We should be at the address Mr. Anderson gave us in just a moment. You should be ready."

"About that..." Claire forced herself to stop marveling at the incredibly bad timing, and remembered just what it was they were doing. "We know the safe entrances, but how are we going to do this? Go in

together? Separately?"

"I assume the priority is to find your friends and remove them from the premises first, before calling in Amelie and Oliver -- that being equivalent to summoning a nuclear strike. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Eve said. "Shane and Michael, first priority. Oh, and not getting killed. That one's big, too." She frowned and grabbed Claire's cell phone back. "Hey, is this thing Internet ready?"

"Yeah, it's a smart phone," Claire said. "Why?"

"I think we should see what's going on at the Web site," Eve said. She worked with the phone for a minute or so, then held it out so Claire could also see the small but clear screen. The Immortal Battles site loaded slowly, but it loaded, and Eve expanded the part that talked about upcoming bouts.

There was a countdown counter going, and it was winding down fast. The banner read live event. There was a video embedded next to it that started playing when Claire clicked it.

Vassily again, dressed in his dumb Halloween interpretation of a vampire (although, truthfully, Myrnin wasn't costumed so differently right now). Vassily looked excited and a bit nervous as he leaned toward the camera, enough that it caught glimpses of his long, white teeth. "Hello, members," he said. "We have a very special treat for you, so get ready to place those bets. On one side, we have our reigning champion, Shane „The Hammer' Collins." And Vassily drew back to show Shane sitting there in a chair, stripped to the waist, all those awful bruises showing. He wasn't tied up or anything. He seemed fine, but very focused.

Vassily moved on, and the camera moved with him. They went through some kind of a door, very walk-and-talk, and all of a sudden the camera fumbled and focused on another familiar face. Michael. He seemed okay, but unlike Shane, he was tied up --