Morganville Vampires 11: Last Breath (24 page)

How fast it had all changed. Opening the front door, I was still whole, still alive, still sane. Ten steps later, I was … “Home,” I said. It came out in a raw, ragged whisper. “She’s at home.”

“God defend me,
you idiot
!” Myrnin bounced to his feet, and dragged me with him. Literally, dragged. I stumbled to my feet after being pulled like a toy for a couple of feet, and had to run to keep up as he darted forward, kicking books and chairs out of his way with shattering force. He took the most direct route to where he was going, which meant ripping an entire lab table up out of the floor and tossing it end over end across the room to smash against the far wall.

We stopped in front of a door set in the wall. It was locked. Myrnin stared at the padlock for only a single second, then reached out and ripped it off.

Then he ripped the entire door off its hinges.

The blackness beyond was a portal. I knew that, and I knew it could go directly to our house. Claire had fallen right in front of it, probably trying to make it out.

Myrnin went still, and concentrated. There was a ripple of color over the dark, but it quickly faded. He tried again, and again.

Nothing happened.

“You think you can save her,” I said. I felt dull and heavy inside with grief, beaten down with it. And I knew it was only going to get worse. “You can’t. She’s gone, Myrnin.”

“The
house
, you idiot, the
house
has saved her. It’s done it before, and with the four of you living inside it, it’s grown more powerful than ever…. It
must
have tried!”

Michael. The house had saved Michael, once. I felt a wild, crazy, painful spike of hope, like a shaft of sunlight hitting eyes that had never seen day, but it was gone almost immediately. Burned-out. “Michael’s body disappeared,” I said. “When the house saved him, his body vanished—he told me that. Hers is still there. If the house tried, it didn’t work.” And I would have known. I would have felt something if she’d still been there, trapped. I would have
known
, because what did it say about me if I couldn’t feel that?

Myrnin wasn’t listening. He was muttering under his breath, something in a language I didn’t know, but from the sound of it, he was cursing like a drunken sailor as he stared murderously at the black portal. Then he switched to English. “All right,” he said. “Kill me, then, you faithless pile of lumber and nails. Kill me if you have to, but I am
coming through
.”

I’d thought he was talking to me, but he wasn’t. He was talking to the Glass House.

He lunged forward into the dark portal. Even I knew that wasn’t a good idea; Claire had been really clear about that. He hit the blackness, and it swallowed him up like a pool of ink. Ripples of color spread and faded.

Nothing else.

I stared, waiting, but I didn’t see anything. Maybe he was just … gone. Dead. Maybe we were all going to die today. I didn’t really see any downside with that, except that I seemed to be the one left behind. Always.

That just couldn’t keep happening. It couldn’t.

I was sensible enough to go back, pick up my vampire kit, and
then
jump blindly into the dark. I had one thing in my mind as I did.

Because that was all I wanted now, before the end.

T
he portal suddenly swelled out of the wall like a black balloon, and Claire heard Eve’s startled cry as she saw it happen.

She felt the door opening like a strange pressure blowing through the house; the whole world seemed to shudder as if it were a pond into which a rock had been dropped, and then there was a sharp, cracking sound, like a bell breaking in half.

And Myrnin came tumbling out of the portal.

He overbalanced and fell flat, landing right next to Old Claire’s body. He raised himself up and froze, staring right into that still, silent face. New Claire, floating close by, saw the look that came over him, and realized something she never really, truly had let herself know before.

Myrnin cared about her. Really, really cared. That wasn’t the kind of expression someone had for the death of a person who was unimportant, replaceable, just another warm body in a lab coat. That was genuine grief.

It broke her heart, just a little.

Myrnin had just risen to his feet when
Shane
came crashing through, pale and coated with a layer of frost; he collapsed in a heap, panting and shivering. Eve cried out and went to him.

Michael was busy watching Myrnin, wary and ready for anything. There was a red glow in his eyes, a predatory warning.

“Shane—?” Michael asked, without taking his gaze off the other vamp. “You okay, bro?”

Shane didn’t answer him. Eve reached down to help him up, but he avoided her reaching hands and crawled—
crawled
—to Old Claire’s empty body.

He sat up and carefully, so carefully, lifted her up in his arms. When her head lolled in an awful sort of way, he gasped and braced her, holding her against him.

Rocking slowly back and forth.

No,
Claire said.
No, don’t. I’m here; please don’t do that, please don’t feel so bad—
She tried touching him, but her hands passed straight through. He looked so horribly lost and desperate now, and she didn’t know how to help him.

Let me go!
She screamed it at the house, and battered ineffectually at the walls. Her fists passed right through them, too.
God, please, just let me go to him!

Eve choked and turned away, hands curling into fists. She was struggling not to cry, again.

But Myrnin—Myrnin was staring off into space, not watching Shane at all. He turned in a slow circle, hand outstretched.

Claire drifted closer, and held her own hand out. His passed right through it.

He kept moving. Searching.

He couldn’t feel her, either.

Frustrated, Claire moved her incorporeal body forward, right into the middle of Myrnin’s. Weird didn’t cover
that
; she could see
inside
him, the layers of flesh and bone and muscle, the odd pale veins, a heart that looked gray and still….

She was way too creeped out to stay there, and quickly moved away. If she’d been capable of shaking, she would have done it.

But it
worked
. Myrnin stopped moving and stood very, very still. He closed his eyes. “Claire?”

Michael’s mouth opened, then closed, and the red glare disappeared from his eyes. He looked as if someone had sucker punched him in the face—too shocked to react immediately. And then a new expression came over him. A new tension.

“Oh God,” he breathed. “I didn’t think—but her body’s still here. Why would it still be here if she—?”

“Shhh,” Myrnin said. “Claire, if you can hear me, do that again.”

She didn’t like it, but any chance at communication was better than nothing. She moved forward and stayed there, trying
not
to think about all of Myrnin’s innards she was inhabiting. She managed to hold herself there for almost a full minute before instinct drove her away. Letting go of him was a total relief.

And it didn’t work.

Myrnin stayed where he was, waiting tensely, until he finally relaxed. She’d never seen him look so … devastated. “I thought—I thought for a moment that she—but she
must
be here. She
must
be! Perhaps she’s weaker than I’d thought, perhaps if I had some instruments to magnify—”

“Go away,” Shane said, his voice muffled and dull. “Get out.”

“But it’s possible that she’s still—”

Shane finally did look up, and oh
God
, the numb hurt on his face, the loss, the
loneliness
. “She’s dead,” he said. “Now go away. Stop pretending you can fix this. You can’t.”

Myrnin didn’t seem to know what to say now. He kept turning, seeking, and it seemed frantic now. “But I
know
she must be here. She’s not one to give up, you see? She would hold on, whatever the cost. You believe that, don’t you? She’s strong, our Claire. Very strong.”

Michael’s head slowly bent, and he took a deep breath, then walked away as he pulled out his cell phone. Claire followed, drifting in his wake, as he moved to stand in the middle of the parlor. He dialed and waited as he stared blankly out the window at the falling rain. “Amelie,” he said. “It’s Michael. Something—something bad has happened. To Claire.” His voice failed, and for a moment, he held the phone against his chest. Then he raised it again and continued. “She’s dead,” he said. “Shane’s—I don’t know, he’s pretty bad off.” He listened, then sank down on the sofa. “What do you mean,
leave
? I can’t leave. Did you hear what I said?
Claire is dead!
She’s dead on our floor!”

Silence. Michael listened and finally said, “No.” It was simple, and final, and then he hung up the call and sat there, still staring at the blank screen.

Then he called 911. “There’s been a murder,” he said. “At 716 Lot Street. The Glass House. Please send somebody. We need—we need help.”

Then he dropped his phone to the carpet, put his face in his hands, and sat in bitter silence.

 

 

Hannah Moses came herself, with a police detective Claire didn’t recognize; an ambulance came, too, but the paramedics waited outside in their truck while the police took photos, measurements, talked with Michael and Eve and Shane. Shane wouldn’t let go until Hannah herself crouched down and talked to him in a low, soothing voice. She knew what that horror felt like, Claire realized. She’d been through it, maybe during the war, or even here in Morganville.

Anyway, she got Shane to lay Claire’s body down again, and took him to the parlor to sit down. Someone made coffee, and she pressed a warm mug into Shane’s hand. He didn’t drink. He didn’t seem to notice it was there.

“I should go back,” he said. “I shouldn’t leave her alone.” He tried to get up, but Hannah managed to settle him down again. “It wasn’t Myrnin who did it. I thought it was him, but it wasn’t. Someone else came in here, in our
house
.”

Myrnin, Claire realized, was being taken away, under protest, by two black-suited men in sunglasses. Amelie’s guards. She must have sent them. “Wait!” He was shouting it, digging in his heels as he shouted at Shane. “Wait—
listen
—she’s here. I know she must be. I can help—Claire, if you can hear me, don’t despair. I’ll help! I’ll find a way!”

“Get him out of here!” Hannah said sharply, and the bodyguards physically picked Myrnin up and carried him, still shouting and struggling. The noise faded, and the house seemed appallingly quiet now. Michael and Eve were somewhere else—kitchen, Claire realized; she could sense where people were in the house, just as if it was a part of herself.
Wow. I’m like Frank, only instead of being a brain in a jar, I’m a soul in a house.
Floating and trapped.

Just as Michael had been. Only Michael couldn’t seem to sense her, and neither could any of the others. As trapped as he’d been, her prison sentence was much, much worse.

Hannah was talking to Shane in a low, soothing voice, but he wasn’t responding. He seemed to be trapped again in that dark, lightless place without any hope or help, and there was nothing Claire could do to make him understand.

She couldn’t just watch him suffer; it was too awful. She drifted away, through the kitchen door, and found Michael and Eve sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over steaming mugs of some kind of hot drink. Without color to shade things, and—she realized—without a sense of smell, she couldn’t really tell whether it was coffee or a really dark tea.

Come on, Michael,
she thought, and stretched out her hand to pass it through his body, again and again.
Come on, you know I’m here; you have to know! This was you once!

As if she’d heard Claire’s thoughts, Eve said, “You don’t think—what Myrnin said, you don’t think that the house could have, you know, saved her? Like it saved you?”

Michael didn’t look up. “I’m a Glass,” he said. “She’s not. I don’t think it could do that for her, but even if it could, do you feel anything? Any sign that she’s really still here?”

“Like what?”

“Cold spots,” he said. “We’d feel cold spots where she was standing. And you know Claire; she wouldn’t be just standing around. She’d be in our faces, telling us she’s here.”

He was right. Claire was, in fact, jumping in and out of his body, screaming at the top of her lungs, all through that speech. Michael didn’t feel it.

Not at
all
.

“Maybe she’s just not, you know, as strong as you were,” Eve said. “But if she’s really still here—”