Daylighters

EIGHT

“We need to be doing something,” Claire said, pacing the floor. They were back in the room where Myrnin had waited—she still didn’t know if it was his bedroom, or someone else’s, or even if the vamps cared where they slept at all. If they bothered. “If Fallon’s got Oliver, and we should be doing something!”

“Fallon’s quite busy trying to find out what Oliver knows about Amelie’s escape,” Myrnin said. He was sitting on the bed perusing a decades-old water-wrinkled magazine that apparently featured Princess Diana’s wedding on the cover. Probably the only reading material left at the Bitter Creek Mall, Claire guessed. “And what Oliver knows is absolutely nothing. He didn’t even know she’d escaped. So there’s nothing Fallon will learn from him.”

“He could kill him!”

“She’s right,” Jesse said from where she leaned against the wall, arms folded. “He could.”

“He won’t. He needs Oliver, especially if Amelie’s nowhere to be found. Oliver is the only authority he has left that everyone respects. He’s afraid enough of us now; if there’s no one we all follow, then it’s that much harder to keep us in line.” Myrnin shrugged. “And as long as we can hear him screaming, then he’s all right.”

Claire flinched, and looked from him to Jesse, who nodded soberly. “Best you can’t hear it,” she said.

“Help him!”

Myrnin moved, with that eerie vampire speed and grace, and before she could finish saying the two words, he was kneeling next to her, chin raised. “Then help me,” he said, and pointed to the collar. “Help me take this off!”

“No,” Jesse said, coming off the wall to stand next to Claire. “Myrnin, you’ll get her killed, and yourself along with her. You’ve seen how deadly these things can be if you tamper with them.”

“Wait,” Claire said. Her thoughts were racing, and she couldn’t understand what she was trying to think of until an image resolved in her mind, vivid and bloody and sharp. Amelie.

Amelie hadn’t been wearing a collar.

“I’m waiting,” Myrnin said, looking just barely patient.

“How did Amelie take hers off?”

“She didn’t,” he said. “I staked her dead so that she would not feel the burns as they activated the shock collar automatically when we went beyond the border. I only woke her up once we were well beyond the effective range, and then I set her loose. But I had no way to take it off without setting off the explosive.”

“She did,” Claire said. “She wasn’t wearing it when I saw her at the Glass House.”

“The Glass—” Myrnin looked utterly astounded. “She was supposed to go straight for the border, leave this town. Why in the world was she at the Glass House?”

“I think the more urgent question is how did she get the collar off by herself?” Jesse asked.

Myrnin nodded. “Claire, take a look at mine. See if there’s something we’ve missed.”

“Okay,” Claire said. He went to one knee, chin upraised and head tilted, and Claire bent over to study the latch. There wasn’t much to study, really. It was featureless, almost seamless, and there was a keyhole lock. The casing of the collar was hard black plastic. “I . . . don’t see anything that can help. Hold on . . . Do you mind if I . . . ?”

“Not at all,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Which should be obvious to you after all this time, Claire.”

She hesitantly reached out and felt around the collar, looking for any hidden switches, catches, or other weird features that might have given her a clue. It felt smooth and regular, until she found a slightly rougher patch toward the back of the circle. She pressed harder, and felt it give.

A section of the collar’s plastic casing snapped out, exposing wiring and a green circuit board. Claire sucked in her breath and carefully, carefully turned the collar around to expose the rest.

She saw a blinking red light and a gray string of rubbery material that ran through the middle. She stared hard at it, and realized that the gray stuff was probably the explosive that the Daylighters had built into the collars. The stuff designed to remove a vampire’s head. Being this close to the compound was bad, and the smell of ozone and the faintly oily stench of it made her feel even worse, but she pushed that aside. Focus! The circuitry looked pretty straightforward at least, but as she reached in toward it, she saw the red light blink faster. Some kind of proximity alert, maybe a motion detector . . . She forced herself to freeze but not draw her hand back, then take in deep, even breaths as she watched the light.

It slowed down. Motion detector. Move too quickly, and it would activate. She didn’t know whether it would administer a shock—which, as Myrnin had said, would probably fry her brain—or whether it would just blow up, taking her hand with it. Either way, not an outcome she wanted.

It seemed to take forever, but she moved very slowly, pushing her fingertip forward a quarter inch at a time, waiting for the light to slow down, until her fingertip brushed the bottom of the circuit board. She traced the line of the motion detector’s wire to the processor, and spent another few seconds staring at the rest of the configuration to be certain she hadn’t missed anything. It looked like there was only one connection going to the explosive.

“I’m going to try something,” she told Myrnin. “It could go wrong.”

“More wrong than it already has?” he asked. “Do what you must. I won’t know if it explodes.”

That was a grim thought, but she took a breath, held it, and slowly, slowly inched her finger toward the wire. Then she edged it underneath, and gave it a quick, sharp tug to sever the connection.

The blinking light went off.

Claire sighed and pulled back. Just a heartbeat after she did, the stun activated, a sharp blue hissing spark that zapped between the contacts underneath the collar and into Myrnin’s skin, and he fell, convulsing. She smelled burned flesh and leaned forward toward him, but Jesse stopped her with both hands on her shoulders.

“No,” she said sharply. “Wait. Just wait.”

It took a few seconds, but the charge stopped, and Myrnin relaxed, eyes open and blank for a moment before he blinked, reached up, and fumbled the compartment shut. “Well,” he said, “I think that’s enough experimentation for today. By the way, Oliver’s stopped screaming.”

Jesse let go of Claire, after a reassuring squeeze not quite strong enough to hurt. “Fallon must have decided Oliver didn’t know anything,” she said. “That might be good news.”

“It so rarely is,” Myrnin said. “I’ve told you, we need to destroy the human guards. Rip them to pieces. I can take down at least a few now that they can no longer explode me like a piñata, and I assume you—”

“No,” Jesse said, and reached a hand down to him. He took it and got to his feet. “They can still take you down. Besides, you don’t want to die in a bathrobe, do you? So undignified.”

“Has dignity ever been my outstanding characteristic, do you think?” he asked, as he flipped his still-damp, curling hair out of his face. “I’m talking about freeing the rest of us. I can act. You can act, to a point. We must do something. Claire’s proven that given enough time we might be able to deactivate these collars—”

“I didn’t prove that,” she protested. “I just proved I could pull one wire—and even that shocked you senseless. What if I’d move too fast and set off the explosive?”

“You’d need another bath,” he said. “And I fear this bathrobe would never be the same.”

“Myrnin—”

He held up a hand and turned toward the door. So did Jesse. Claire heard a quiet knock a few seconds later, and it opened to show the pale, silent face of a vampire woman, who nodded and stepped away.

“We’re summoned,” Myrnin said. “Claire, I should put you back down that pipe. Do you think you can make your own way out to—”

“I’m not going,” she said.

“You can’t stay.”

“I’m not going until I find out what he’s doing with Eve!”

“Claire, you can’t—”

She locked eyes with him and said it again, quietly, fiercely. “I’m. Not. Going. Eve’s in danger. If Fallon’s willing to hurt Oliver like that, what do you think he’ll do to Michael? To her?”

They were going to argue with her—she could see it—but then an odd stillness came over them, and Jesse broke out of it to say, “There’s no time. We have to take her with us.”

They took her downstairs, walking between them down the wide, curling staircase to the atrium. On the ground floor, ringing that open center of tile, was a solid wall of vampires, standing shoulder to shoulder. They surrounded the open space where she’d first entered this place with her friends. On the surface, it looked like some kind of vampire town hall meeting.

Oliver was lying crumpled on the tile a few feet from Fallon. He looked dead, until he moved just a little, trying to rise. He couldn’t manage it.

Myrnin’s hand pulled her to a stop and held her there, hidden by the crowd. “Silence,” he warned her, and bent down to stare directly into her eyes. “On your life, silence.”

A petite little vampire lady glanced over at them and fixed a hungry gaze on Claire’s neck, but then moved aside as Jesse pushed in to guard her. She stood with Myrnin and Jesse on either side, totally surrounded by unbreathing bodies.

And she felt that every single one of them wanted to take a bite out of her . . . but not a single one of them dared to try.

The outer door opened, and two cops half dragged Eve in. She’d recovered a bit, because she was fighting—not effectively, but it took them some muscle to subdue her enough to move her to the center of the tiled atrium beside the dry fountain, where Fallon stood. They weren’t alone—apparently even Fallon wasn’t that sure of his prison. A full dozen armed Daylighters stood ranged around them, looking as tense and vigilant as Secret Service agents in a shooting gallery.

Eve stopped flailing and settled for glaring. She knew what kind of danger she was in, but she also kept studying the ranks of vampires, looking for Michael.

Who didn’t seem to be present.

“Oliver has assured me that he had nothing to do with Amelie’s disappearance, but someone here knows. Someone here helped.” Fallon’s voice, calm and confident, rang off the tiles and distant spaces. “And I can promise you that in the coming days, each one of you will be questioned, at length, about your involvement, so you may look forward to your turn, unless you want to confess it now. Anyone?”

Dead—pun intended—silence. Claire glanced around, but nobody moved. Not even a twitch.

“Then let me assure you that the offer I made you last night still holds today. Whatever you have done in your past, whatever atrocities, from this moment on, I can make you whole. I can make you clean. You can be forgiven and your crimes forgotten. You all know me; you know what I was. I made a new start in my life, and each of you can as well—all you need do is take a step. Just one single step.”

Oliver was still lying on the floor, too weak to get up, but when he spoke, it sounded as if he somehow towered a dozen feet over Fallon and his people. “You’ll get no volunteers here,” he said. “Be off with you, and take the girl away. She’s meat for the dogs if she stays here, and you know it. You’ve not forgotten what it feels like to starve, Fallon, and you’re not so saintly as you pretend.”

“Neither are you, for all you pretend to be a leader.”

“I’m no leader,” Oliver said, with a short, bitter bark of a laugh. “And you’re no kind of holy man.”

“I’ve never claimed that.”

“You claim to offer salvation.”

“Your salvation is your own affair. What I offer is a chance at redemption, pure and simple, and you’ll never get such an offer again. You know that to be true.” Fallon seemed to be almost pleading. “I know you think your cause is true, Oliver. Has there ever been a time you didn’t? But even you must remember that the faith we share holds that vampires are damned. Cut off from heaven, doomed to walk the earth and drain the living of their hope and their eternal rewards because of their own sin of pride. You are not immortal. You are lost. And I am showing you the way home.” He meant every word; Claire could see that. There were even tears shimmering in his eyes. He really did believe he was their savior.

“You’re showing me to the grave,” Oliver said. “A cold homecoming, indeed. The answer is no. You’ll get no volunteers here.”

“Not even Michael Glass? Not even when that would reunite him with his lovely girl, who’s been so brave in pleading for his release?”

“Wife,” Eve said. Her voice sounded husky and wrong somehow—dazed, drugged, and deeply afraid. But she was still standing. Still fighting. “I’m his wife.”

“You’re his bait,” Oliver said, and rolled painfully to his feet. Guards tensed, and Fallon hovered his thumb over the control on the box he held. “Michael won’t be biting, Fallon, so take her out of here before something unfortunate happens.”

“To her?”

“To you,” Oliver said, and there was a deep, dark purr in his voice that made Claire’s skin crawl with a strange mix of dread and anticipation. “No more games, you pathetic shell of a man. You haven’t been saved—you’ve been hollowed out, emptied, made into a shadow of what you were. You’re walking dead, and you know it. Go shamble toward the grave alone. You’ll find no followers among Amelie’s people.”

Amelie’s people, as Claire well knew, had never been unanimous about anything, but in this, at least, they kept their differences to themselves. It was just an unmoving, silent block of eerily posed statues, all eyes aimed at Fallon, Eve, and the guards.

Fallon looked defeated, Claire thought . . . but then he said, “Michael, I know you’re here. Oliver’s restrained you somehow, but I know you’re listening to me. Watching. I know you can see Eve, hear her heartbeat, feel her anguish. She loves you, and even I can feel it. Don’t pretend to be indifferent.”

More silence. Fallon didn’t seem surprised; he only paused for effect, Claire thought, before he dropped his bombshell. “She says she is your wife, but she isn’t, you know. There can be no marriage between the living and the dead, neither in the eyes of God nor the eyes of the state. Morganville’s mayor has passed a new law today, one that invalidates any marriages between vampires and humans. Your marriage has been officially dissolved.”

“What?” Eve turned on him, her mouth open, and in the next second, fury splashed color over her cheeks and she slapped him. Hard. All her fuzziness was gone. “You son of a bitch! You lied to me!”

“Yes,” he said. The mark of her handprint was red on his skin, but he hadn’t moved an inch. “It was necessary. Now, you get to choose. Michael’s made his choice; he could have stepped forward to take the cure, and join you again as your husband, but he’s rejected it, and he’s rejected you along with it. I’ll offer you now the opposite: reject him. Take off that ring and throw it away. Tell them all that you are proudly human and will stay human, and in return you’ll find a welcome home here in Morganville, with us.”

“Go to hell,” Eve said. Claire hadn’t expected to hear anything else, but the ring of loneliness under the anger surprised her. But of course Eve felt alone; she would. The humans of Morganville had turned against her completely after she’d married Michael, and none of the residents of the Glass House had ever been accepted, not really accepted, because they hadn’t fit into the framework in the first place.

The ground kept shifting around them, around their little island of misfits, and Claire couldn’t help but feel this terrible sense, again, that what she was doing in helping the vampires . . . might all be wrong. But what was right? Fallon? The Daylighters? She couldn’t believe that. She wouldn’t.

Fallon was shaking his head. “Refuse to accept the facts, cling to this fantasy of loving a creature that cannot love you in return. . . . Well, then you’ll end up in a cell, and we’ll have to treat you for this mental illness you suffer from until you’re cured of it.”

“Listen to yourself. You’re going to put me in an asylum?” Eve said. “For loving someone?”

“You don’t love Michael. Michael died. You love a thing that once was him, and loving a corpse has always been a thing of horror to anyone with a shred of decency in them. So, yes. Call it an asylum if you wish, but that’s what faces you if you won’t renounce him. I’m not unkind; I’m giving you a chance to avoid that fate. Take off the ring and throw it away. Show them that you stand with me. With humanity. Become a Daylighter, Eve.”

Eve took a step forward, right into his face, and looked him straight in the eyes to say, “Screw you, Fallon. If you want my wedding ring, I’ll mash it into your face deep enough to leave a permanent tattoo.”

Fallon didn’t flinch. He just . . . smiled.

“Take her,” he said, and one of the Daylighters grabbed Eve by the shoulder.

She spun into it, moving with limber grace, and slammed the heel of her right hand into his nose, jammed her shoulder into his chest, and knocked him right off his feet into a sprawl on the dirty tile. She still looked dazed and vulnerable, and she might have wavered a little on her feet, but Claire’s heart swelled to about twice its normal size, because in that moment she was so proud of Eve she wanted to let out a war cry. “Who’s next?” Eve yelled it for her, and pointed at another of the Daylighter guards. “You. Come on, sunshine, let’s do it!”

At Fallon’s nod, that guard stepped forward—but he wasn’t caught by surprise, and he was more than a match for Eve, who landed a couple of punches but ended up off balance, which was all the man needed to sweep her feet out from under her and send her crashing to the floor, facedown. In the next second he had his knee in the small of her back and was twisting her hands behind her.

Eve was screaming, but not in pain. That was pure rage boiling out of her, and now Claire tried to move forward to help—but Myrnin put a heavy, strong hand on her shoulder to keep her in place, and she couldn’t twist free.

“Get her ring off,” Fallon said to the guard, and the man nodded, wrenched Eve’s left hand up, and slid her wedding band off to hold it up for Fallon’s inspection. “Now throw it away.”

“No!” Eve screamed, but it was too late. The man pitched it through the air, and for a second it caught the diffused light from above and a red glint shone from the ruby in its center, and then it was heading for the shadows.

A pale hand caught it.

Michael Glass stepped out of the crowd and into the open space.

“No, you fool.” It was just a soft, angry whisper from Oliver, but Claire felt Myrnin’s fingers close tight on her skin, and she knew things had just shifted in a way she couldn’t really define.

Michael stood there, staring at Fallon with the ring in his hand, and said, “Let her go. It isn’t her you want. It’s me.”

“Amelie’s child,” Fallon agreed. “Yes. It’s you I need, Michael, because you’re a symbol. You’re Amelie’s weakness. And I know you need this girl just as much as she needs you. I can give her back to you—and you to her, in ways that neither of you have ever imagined possible. All you need do is agree to take the cure.”

The cure. Of course. Fallon’s salvation hadn’t been some religious allegory; he’d been offering the vampires humanity. A change back to a regular, breathing, mortal life. And isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t it be?

He’d needed a volunteer, and here was Michael, standing in front of him with Eve’s wedding ring clutched in his fist, looking at his wife with so much love and desperation that Claire felt a little faint from it. There was a kind of restless whisper that moved through the vampires . . . something beneath her hearing, beneath even her vision, but a sensation like nothing she’d ever felt before.

“No,” Oliver whispered again. There was anger in that word, and there was also fear. If there was ever a moment when events were turning, when something monumental was happening, this was it. She could feel it, and so could they.

From the look on Fallon’s face, he knew it, too. He was waiting for his triumph.

“I never wanted to be a vampire,” Michael said. “You know that, Eve. I never asked for it.”

The guard had let her get up to her knees now, but he held one wrist behind her back tight enough that it must have been painful. She didn’t make a sound. Her gaze was locked on Michael’s, breathlessly waiting.

“I love you,” he said. “I always did, even when I was an idiot too stupid to admit it. By the time I could, it was too late, and I was . . . something else. I never had the chance to be with you when I was human. And I’m sorry for that. You deserve better.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Eve said. Her voice was shaking, but she managed to smile. “It’s not like I’m Jane Normal in the first place. Love you, too, Mike. Always and forever, no matter what you are.”

Michael nodded to her, just a little, and his smile was heartbreakingly lovely. Something personal and private, just between the two of them. Then he turned to look directly at Fallon. Unafraid.

He opened his hand and let Eve’s ring fall from his fingers.

It tumbled through the air, wobbling and spinning, and hit the tile with a sound like breaking hearts. It rolled to a stop at Fallon’s feet.

“Do what you want,” Michael said. “But with or without the ring, with or without the law, Eve’s my wife, and there’s nothing you or anybody else can do about it. I’m not volunteering. If you want to give me your cure, you’ll have to force me, just like the vampire who ripped my throat out in the first place.”

“That’s a grave mistake,” Fallon said. “It will greatly diminish your chances of survival if you fight the therapy. Take it willingly. Please.”

“You heard my wife. Go fuck yourself.”

Fallon’s face . . . changed. It went from a mask of calm friendliness to something so twisted with rage that it was very nearly demonic, and Claire felt terror bolt through her—not for herself but for her friends, so alone and vulnerable and brave.

Fallon rounded on the guard holding Eve. “Take this deviant to the hospital. Tell Dr. Anderson that I want her given a complete course of aversion therapy until she loathes the very sight of vampires. Don’t be gentle about it.”

Michael lunged, but Fallon was faster—he had the remote control to the collars, and it must have been turned up to bone-splitting levels of pain because it knocked Michael out of the air in a graceless heap, his back arched as he convulsed against the current.

And not just him. All of them. The vampires dropped like bags of cement, and Claire realized in that single clear instant that if she didn’t go with them, she’d be as obvious as a bug on a wedding cake—the only one left standing in the middle of the captives. Luckily, Myrnin helped with that, even if it was unintentional; his hand crushed down on her, shoving her toward the floor, and she let herself drop. His weight fell on top of her, hiding her almost completely from sight. She managed to squirm just a little and gain some air, and a sightline toward Fallon.

He turned down the intensity of the collars, but Claire could still feel the current running through Myrnin’s body—enough to make his whole body twitch uncontrollably in pain. She was lucky that it wasn’t transmitting through to her, except as a slight tingle.

Fallon obviously wanted his audience to see, but he also wanted them quiet.

Compliant.

Eve was pulled to her feet and hustled toward the door, screaming Michael’s name. Fallon put a toe of his shoe under Michael’s body and rolled him over on his back, then leaned down to stare at him. That horrible smile was still firmly in place.

“I did warn you. You’ll be cured, whether you want it or not. I’ll have you changed or I’ll have you dead. As for your girl’s unfortunately painful future, you brought that on her, Michael. I want you to remember that when the cure is coursing through your veins and everything you are is stripped away, never to return. I want you to remember who remade you in their image this time. Not Amelie. Me.”

There was nothing Claire could do. Nothing but watch, concealed by Myrnin’s body, as Michael was hauled away. But she had only one thought, one burning and utterly clear thought: We’re going to take you down. Not just because what he was doing was wrong, but because he’d just made it personal. She might be wrong in helping the vampires over the humans; she might be wrong in thinking that Fallon had no right to shove his cure down their throats. But that didn’t matter now.

This was about her friends.

Fallon was talking to the cop standing next to him. With a shock, Claire recognized the straight carriage, the blond hair. Officer Halling. “Valerie, pick twenty of them for the cure, please, and make sure Michael is among them. Have them shipped directly to the hospital and tell Dr. Anderson to start the treatment immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing,” Fallon said. “We’ll have to move up our timetable, since Amelie’s evaded us. I can’t take the risk that she’ll be able to form some kind of resistance. Find the hungriest, most amoral sons of bitches in this building, pick ten, and let them loose tonight.”

Even Halling seemed disturbed by that order. “Let them . . . loose? You mean free? We’re not supposed to shock them, or—”

“I want you to disable their collars before you let them out to hunt.”

“Sir, I don’t mean disrespect, but why—”

“Morganville’s forgotten its fear of the dark,” he said. “They need a reminder just why vampires need to be cured, or put down. Too many in town have started questioning me, complaining about the imprisonment of the vampires. We need to demonstrate there’s only one proper way to handle such wretched creatures: our way.”

Halling didn’t look happy, but she nodded and stepped back. She made sure Michael was securely bound and had him dragged out, and then she began counting off, pointing at bodies until she’d reached twenty. “Right, take those to the hospital,” she said. “These lucky bastards are getting the cure. They might be moving into their own homes in Morganville tomorrow, safe and sound.”

But Claire knew—maybe they all knew—that the odds of that were pretty slim. Four to one.

The chosen twenty—including Michael—were dragged still twitching from the room. Claire held her breath and stayed very still as one of them walked near her; Myrnin’s weight felt like bricks on top of her, and the pain in her arm was growing sharper and sharper with every second. She shut her eyes, concentrating on not reacting or moving, and the guard nudged Myrnin with his foot. His body rolled off of Claire and thumped limply to the tile floor.

“What the hell is up with this one?” the guard asked. “He’s wearing some kind of women’s bathrobe.”

Fallon glanced over, and then focused in on Myrnin. He took several steps toward them. “I’d been wondering where the old spider had been hiding. Careful—he’s dangerous even when he’s sane, and from the looks of him, this isn’t his best period of mental health.” The cop backed away, and Fallon closed in and leaned down. He smoothed dark hair away from Myrnin’s face. “Can you hear me, Spider?”

“Yes,” Myrnin whispered. “I hear you.”

“I’m not doing this for you,” Fallon said. “Despite what you did to me, killing me, dragging me through hell to make me a blood-drinking demon. I’m not doing this to hurt you, Myrnin. I’m doing it to help.” Maybe he believed it, but Claire could see his face through the gap, and what she saw in him was cruel. It was angry. And it was personal. “I’m saving you for last, dear blood-father. I’m going to make you the last living vampire in all the world, before I unmake you.”

“I saved you,” Myrnin said. “You know I did. You were dying.”

“I was in God’s arms, and you ripped me out of heaven. Did you think I’d ever forget? Or forgive?” Fallon pushed Myrnin, and next to him, Jesse tried to stir. He grabbed her red braid and forced her head up at a painful angle. “Who’s this? A friend of yours?”

“Leave her,” Myrnin said, and clumsily slapped toward Fallon. He fell short. “Please—”

“This one,” Fallon said, and dragged Jesse out onto the tile. “Take her for the cure.”

“No!” It was just a whisper from Myrnin, but it was full of anguish and horror, and Claire tried to think what she could do to stop it. Maybe she’ll make it, Claire thought. Maybe Jesse could be—What? Saved? Jesse liked who she was. She was a good person. She used her strength to help others.

She didn’t need saving.

I have to do something.

She didn’t get the chance, because Oliver lurched to his feet and said raggedly, “Take me.”

Fallon turned slowly to look at him. “Excuse me?”

“I. Volunteer. To take. Your cure.” Oliver said it with precision, biting the words off in clean, sharp, cutting edges. “You need a volunteer. A symbol. Who better than me?”

“It’s not like you, Oliver, all this self-sacrifice,” Fallon said, but he shrugged. “You’d be useful, if you survive. You likely won’t, you know.”

“Then you’ll have your way, and I won’t have to look upon you again. We both win.”

Fallon gestured, and the cops handcuffed him and took him away. Claire found herself wondering how they deactivated the collars. They must have, since they didn’t remove it before removing him . . . but she also knew that problem was just a way for her brain to throw up an emotional shield to keep her panic at bay.

They were taking Michael, and Eve, and Oliver, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. The enormity of it crashed in on her then, and panic pressed down. Her lungs were burning, and she risked taking in a single, quick, trembling breath.

Fallon saw the movement.

His eyes widened, and he gestured at one of his black-jacketed Daylighter guards, who crossed the atrium, bent, and grabbed her by the arm.

Claire was ready.

She came straight up, launching herself at him with all the fury that had been building up inside her since she saw how Fallon treated Eve and Michael, and the top of her skull collided so hard with his nose that she saw stars. He let go of her and reeled back, and she charged forward, suddenly and icily calm, sliding into that empty space Shane had taught her to occupy when her life was on the line. She went low, dodging the man’s wild one-fisted swing as he held his gushing nose with the other hand, and whirled like a dancer to come up inside his defense and smash another elbow right into the damage she’d already done. He screamed—a high-pitched scream that sounded as much surprised as pained—and went down hard on his back. He writhed to get to what looked like some kind of Taser, but Claire got to it first, yanked it free, and found the switch to turn it on. She shocked him, and left him bleeding and shaking on the floor as she went after Fallon.

He was holding a gun. Claire skidded to a halt, eyes widening, and took her finger off the trigger for the Taser. The menacing, comforting crackling sound stopped.

“Put that down,” Fallon said. He sounded calm, and gently amused. “You Glass House children are vicious when roused, aren’t you? And for what, defense of vampires? Little girl, you really don’t have the slightest idea what you’re protecting, do you? What they are? What they do?”

“I know what you are,” she said. “I’ve seen what you do. That’s enough.”

“When you fight your enemies, you must become them, or become worse. It’s how wars are won, little girl, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand that at your age.” He’d seemed so careful and correct before, but now all she could see was the arrogance underneath all that—the pure, nauseating fanaticism. “You can’t fight evil with peace and love.”

“I thought you were a religious man,” she shot back. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Jesus said to do.”

“Jesus was crucified, and I don’t intend to suffer the same.” He gestured with the gun. “I won’t warn you again. Drop that toy.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me? I thought you were all about protecting humans.”

“You’re only technically human if you collaborate with the enemy.”

She found she was smiling. No idea why, really; it wasn’t a moment for smiling, but then again, it wasn’t happiness driving the expression on her face. It probably wasn’t a very nice look for her. “And thus begins the war,” she said softly. She understood now what Jesse had meant by that. “You’re willing to kill innocent people to save them. Sounds like a real crusade now, doesn’t it?”

“Quiet,” he said. He sounded gratifyingly angry. “Down on your knees. Do it. Hands behind your head.”

She did it, because she didn’t see how getting herself killed would make anything better, but she kept smiling because it seemed to upset him.

She kept smiling even as they grabbed her wrists and handcuffed her—for the second time in a day—and dragged her to her feet.

“You’re going to lose,” she told him.

“Take her out of here,” he said, and this time he forced a smile, too. It didn’t look convincing. “For her own protection, of course.”

“Take her where?” She could barely understand the guard’s voice; he sounded angry and muffled and bloody, and his nose was probably hurting him badly. She almost felt a bolt of guilt for it. Almost.

“The same place you took her friend,” Fallon said. “Tell Dr. Anderson this one needs reeducation, too. And Claire? I’m going to raze your Founder House to the ground. You’ll have no place to go back to. Call it a brand-new start.”

He was going to do it anyway, Claire told herself, just to keep herself from lunging right at him. It doesn’t matter. We’ll find a way to stop him. We have to find a way.

“It’s just a house,” she said, and kept smiling. “And we’re never letting you win.”

But she knew that the first half of that was a lie. The Glass House was never just a house.

Not to them.