Daylighters

TEN

He’s dead, Claire thought numbly. I killed him. It was an incoherent thought, and it had a sound to it like ashes falling, a taste like bitter acid at the back of her throat. I killed him. She hadn’t, but it felt that way. She should have been faster. Better. Stronger.

She should have stopped all this from happening. But she hadn’t, and now Michael was dead.

Eve was staring at him as if she hadn’t realized the truth, as if somehow it would all still come out okay. “Michael?” she asked. His eyes were still open. “Michael?” The horror weighed her voice down, dragged it to a low, uneven whisper. “Please look at me. I love you, please look at me, please . . .”

Claire’s eyes were filling with tears now, and her view of his face became a wash of color—palest possible pink for skin, blue for his eyes, gold for his hair. She blinked, and the tears glided hot down her face, hot as blood. She put her hand on his arm.

It shouldn’t feel like that, she thought, so close to her own skin temperature. So much like he was still alive.

And then her fingertips felt a small whisper of a pulse.

No, I imagined that. I couldn’t have . . . it couldn’t . . .

Another beat. Then another. It wasn’t her pulse.

It was his.

“Michael, you have to look at me,” Eve was saying between tears. She looked pale and sick, facing what was, for her, the end of the world. “You can’t leave me, you can’t, you promised me . . .”

He took a breath.

Eve let out a muffled cry, and fell across his chest to kiss him. It was, Claire thought, maybe a little premature for that, because he seemed too dazed to understand what was happening . . . and then all that changed, and he was kissing her back, really kissing her, and his skin was taking on a skin tone that wasn’t too much darker than before but somehow much more alive. He was gasping for breath when they parted, but smiling, and there was color in his cheeks and lips.

It struck Claire that she’d never seen him alive before. Not really one hundred percent alive, anyway. He looked as he had when she’d first met him, but this time . . . this time, he was simply and only human.

It was . . . She didn’t want to call it a miracle, but that’s what it was. A miracle.

It came to her slowly that he was still strapped to the table, and he was straining to break free. Claire wiped her tears, got hold of herself, and quickly sawed through the webbing on his left wrist, and then his left ankle. By the time she’d reached his right hand, she had to gently but firmly force Eve to back up as she freed him completely . . . and then she was the one getting shoved out of the way as Michael lunged for Eve and enveloped her in a hug so complete that it was as if he’d never really hugged her before.

Which, Claire supposed, he hadn’t. Not like this.

“Can you feel it?” he asked Eve. He was crying. Michael was crying, tears flooding his face. He wiped at them, but he couldn’t seem to stem the tide. “My heart. It’s beating.”

“I feel it,” Eve said, and pressed her hand against his chest. “Oh, God, Michael, I—I should probably say something snarky right now, but I—”

He grabbed her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it. Then he kissed her again, a long and deep kiss that said more than words ever could about how he felt. How they both felt.

Miracle, Fallon had called it. And in Michael’s case he’d been right, because Michael Glass, who’d been various shades of dead ever since Claire had known him, was now himself again. Human. Vital. Alive.

And, Claire thought with a sudden chill, vulnerable.

She turned away from them, and it hit her with breathtaking horror that most of the vampires struggling against their bonds right now around her, glowing from within as Fallon’s medicine did its work . . . most of them wouldn’t make it.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

Claire channeled her anxious, sick frustration into action. She hustled Michael and Eve out of their own private world and put them to work tying up the lab workers, who were starting to rouse. She dragged the two police officers off to the side and covered up the dead one that Oliver had shot. Halling was spitting with fury, but Claire didn’t listen to what she was saying. It would only make her angry, and she was feeling bad enough.

When there was nothing left to do, she crouched down next to the lab attendant who was waking the fastest, and helped her along by rubbing knuckles across her breastbone. That hurt, Claire remembered. And it roused the woman fast.

It didn’t take the woman long to adapt to the new situation. She realized that she was tied up, and that Claire and Eve and Michael were the only ones standing. Not a stupid woman, either—fear flickered across her face before she concealed it beneath a mask of professional distance. “Untie me,” she ordered.

“Bite me, Miss Mengele,” Eve said. “Not that stupid.”

The woman’s eyes fixed on Michael, and she looked . . . elated. “You made it,” she said. “I knew you would, Michael.”

“You know me?” Michael asked. He wasn’t smiling.

“Of course I do! I’m a big fan of your music. I’m Amanda. I work at the hospital.”

He blinked. “But you stuck poison in my arm.”

“To save you!”

He opened his mouth, then looked confused and weirdly embarrassed, and Claire realized he was trying to show fangs he no longer had. Well, that was awkward. “What about them?” He pointed to the others. Some had gone still. Some were still struggling.

Her eyes flickered toward them, then came back quickly to focus on him. “Better they die than live on in that hell,” she said. “We’re saving people. People. Not monsters.”

“The counteragent,” Claire said. “Tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amanda said, but her round face wasn’t made for lying. “What counteragent?”

“The one that used to be locked in the safe and isn’t there anymore,” Claire said. “Where is it now?”

“No idea.”

“Don’t play poker, Mandy,” Eve said, “because you suck at it. Who has it?”

Amanda set her mouth into a flat, stubborn line and glared back. Oh, she didn’t like Eve at all. Which was sharply contrasted with the worshipful way she looked at Michael.

Claire stood up and grabbed her friends. She dragged them off a bit and lowered her voice. “She’s got a crush on you, Michael. Eve, she’s jealous of you. So back off and let Michael charm the info out of her.”

Michael looked a little bit ill. “Do I have to?”

“People are dying. Do you?”

He winced, nodded, and said, “Go do something else. I don’t need you guys staring at me. I feel bad enough already.” Claire knew he was thinking of the fact that he’d survived the process and so many . . . so many weren’t going to. Or maybe he was hating the slimy necessity of charming someone who didn’t see anything wrong with killing to cure.

But she took Eve’s arm and said, “Check Oliver.”

Eve’s eyes went wide. “Claire—I—I can’t. I can’t even go near him.”

“You just went to Michael—”

“That’s different. And—he was changing.”

“So was Oliver,” Claire shot back. “Just go!”

Claire went to check the others. Half were already gone, their light extinguished, their skin left chalky pale and bizarrely hard to the touch, as if it had turned to ash. Those were, unquestionably, dead.

Two others besides Michael had made the transition back to human and were gulping in convulsive breaths, looking panicked and wild, as if they were drowning in a sea of air. One was weeping, and it looked like tears of joy. The other two, though . . . they looked lost and horrified. Claire supposed that after so many years—hundreds, maybe—of existence as a vampire, being plunged back into mortality must have felt a lot more like a punishment than a salvation.

One woman had settled into the state that Oliver had been in—more of a coma than either a recovery or a decline. Her skin had turned chalky, but it was still pliable to the touch, and she didn’t have the fallen-in look of those who’d failed the process completely. The REVs, Claire thought. The ones Miss Amanda would have been happy to euthanize, for their own good. The thought made her ill, thinking of Oliver and this unnamed woman lying there helpless, trapped, unable to defend themselves.

Eve came back to her, looking flushed and scared. “He’s not breathing, but he’s not dead, either,” she said. “I can’t get too close, Claire, it makes me—” She swallowed hard. “I’m hoping this is just the doped blood they gave me, right? It’s not—not permanent?”

“I don’t think so,” Claire said. “Anderson said the treatment needed to be repeated a bunch of times, so I think you’ll be okay.” She hugged Eve, impulsively, and Eve took in a shuddering breath

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t—”

“None of that. We save each other, right? It’s what we do.”

“It’s what we do.” Eve stepped back and offered a fist bump, which they exploded and brought back, just because.

The moment of peace faded, though, as Claire looked again at the still, silent woman lying on the slab. “I don’t know her, do you?”

“Ayesha,” Eve said. “She’s okay. I think she was a lawyer. I used to make a lot of bloodsucking attorney jokes. Not so funny now, I guess.”

The woman was very small—maybe five feet tall—and had a rounded figure perfectly proportioned for her height. Pretty, too, under the unhealthy color of her skin; in human life she must have been of African descent, and she wore her hair in an abundant Afro cut held back with a colorful band. A real person, Claire thought. A real person, caught between life and death. They were all real people. That was what Fallon and his crew couldn’t seem to grasp . . . the cost of what they were doing. The history they were destroying.

Claire held the woman’s hand for a moment. It felt cool and unresponsive.

Michael was back a few minutes later, and when she looked up she was thrown off balance by the color in his skin, and the flush in his cheeks and on his lips. He looked like a young man who’d been locked away from the sun for too long, but he was definitely, unmistakably human.

It still seemed impossible.

“She doesn’t know where the antidote is,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” He didn’t say how he knew, which was probably for the best for everyone. “How is Ayesha?”

“I don’t know. Not dead, I guess. Like Oliver. But not alive, like you.”

He nodded slowly, watching the vampire woman with a slight frown between his brows. “We should get them out of here,” he said. “Her and Oliver, anyway.”

“What about the other ones who, you know, made it back to human?” Eve pointed vaguely at the other three survivors, who were still trying to get used to breathing for a living. “Shouldn’t we take them, too?”

“Fallon won’t hurt them. They’re his success stories.” Michael shook his head, still frowning. “I suppose I’m grateful to him for what he did, in a way. I wanted to get back to human, but I was afraid it wouldn’t work for me. I was afraid I’d lose you, Eve, and I couldn’t stand that.”

“You’ll never lose me,” Eve said. She sounded totally confident of that. “Just make sure I don’t lose you.”

“Promise,” he said, and kissed her again.

“Guys?” Claire hated to pop their private bubble, but she pointed to the silent form of Ayesha lying on the table. “If we’re taking them, we’d better get going.”

“The tables have wheels,” Eve said. “They unlock.” She stepped on a metal lever and pushed, and the table slid smoothly out a few inches before she stopped it with her hand. “We’ll need transportation once we get them outside, though. Even in Morganville, rolling gurneys with half-dead vamps through the streets might seem a little out of the ordinary.”

“Especially in the new, improved Morganville,” Claire agreed. “Michael, go scout ahead, see if there is some kind of car we can grab. No, wait.” She spotted a coatrack near the door. On it dangled a couple of purses. She sprinted over and dug inside, searching for keys. She came up with a set. There was a photo key ring on it, and it looked like Amanda really was a big fan of Michael’s, because the photo was one of the promotional ones he used for gigs. Black-and-white, very moody.

She tossed him the keys, then almost laughed at his puzzled expression when he spotted the photo. “Get used to it, rock star. Wait until you’re famous outside of town,” she said. “Hurry. We’ll be right behind you.”

He kissed the back of Eve’s hand, which was sweet, and then he took off out the door. Claire hoped he wouldn’t run into any trouble, because she was afraid his human instincts for survival hadn’t quite kicked in yet. He was still thinking of himself as a vampire. It would take time—and probably one or two wounds—for him to develop the caution that came with being mortal again.

Eve sighed. “Do you know how much I hate it that this turned out well for the two of us? Because now—now how am I supposed to feel about it?”

“Think about Oliver,” Claire said. “And Ayesha. And all of these people lying on the tables who didn’t make it. Fallon’s perfectly okay with killing three-quarters or more of the people he experiments on. That’s just not okay, even if Michael was in the lucky bracket.”

“I know,” Eve said. She took a deep breath, leaned over, and quickly pulled the IV tube from Ayesha’s arm—it immediately sealed, which was interesting—and nodded to Claire. “You grab Oliver. Meet you up front.”

“You can do this? You’re sure? Even though she’s—” Claire used the universal finger-fangs-in-neck symbol for vampire, and Eve gave her a pale, broken smile.

“As long as I don’t have to do anything but push the gurney,” she said.

Claire took her at her word, and moved on to do her part. Getting the limp body of Oliver up and onto the bed was a lot more trouble than she had reckoned. She finally got him in a fireman’s carry over her shoulder and staggered the few steps to flop him crookedly onto the gurney. Not a neat job, but it would do to roll him down the hall, as long as she didn’t encounter too many bumps along the way.

Eve was already rolling Ayesha toward the door.

As she left the lab, though, things went wrong. She’d just managed to prop the second door open for the gurney when alarms started shrieking—deafening alarms, designed to paralyze and panic, and it definitely had the second effect on her, if not the first. Her heart was pounding as she steered Oliver’s gurney out. She heard the lock snapping shut behind her. Lockdown. She hoped Eve had kept the front door open.

She had. She’d jammed an empty gurney into it, and as Claire arrived, breathless, she saw that Michael had carried Ayesha down the steps and was putting her in the backseat of the car they’d liberated from lab rat Amanda. “Help me,” Claire panted as she grabbed Oliver’s shoulders. “We don’t have much time!”

Eve just shook her head and stepped away, trying to control nausea with both hands over her mouth. Claire wondered how she was going to feel once it came down to getting into the car with a couple of vampires.

Probably wouldn’t be pleasant.

Michael came running back. She nodded toward him. “Grab Oliver’s legs,” she said. He did, and the sheet around Oliver slipped, revealing way too much pale, ashy skin.

“Uh . . . have you noticed he’s not wearing much?” Michael asked. “At least I got to keep my pants.” He’d thrown a lab coat on over his bare chest, but it didn’t fit very well.

Claire hadn’t noticed, actually, until that very moment, and while it was more than a little distracting, she just ignored all of it as they carried Oliver’s heavy, limp form to the car and jammed it in next to Ayesha. There was a shout from the door, and Claire looked up to see one of the men from Eve’s treatment room—if you could call it that—standing in the doorway, trying to force his way past the jammed empty gurneys. “Get in!” she yelled. She saw the furious face of Dr. Anderson behind the orderly. “We have to go!”

Michael started the car as Eve piled into the front next to him, which left Claire no choice but to climb into the backseat with two half-naked comatose vampires. She tried not to think about that, about the cool, dead-feeling bodies pressed against her.

Eve was gagging again, which was miserable for her, and potentially miserable for everybody else.

Michael jammed the car in reverse just as one of the orderlies—who must have scavenged a gun from one of the fallen guards—took a shot at them. It smashed the windshield into blinding cracks, with a neat hole high in the center, and it took a second for the delayed reaction to kick in. Claire checked herself for leaks, but the bullet had gone through the back without hitting anyone.

“I can’t see!” Michael yelled. Eve, with barely a pause to flinch, braced herself and began to kick the front windshield. Somewhere in the confusion she’d switched out her paper house shoes for a too-large pair of men’s boots, and they came in handy now as she smashed the whole shattered mess out, leaving them with a makeshift convertible. “Claire, get the back!”

That was a lot harder, because she had no leverage and no room. Claire felt around on the floor and found a kid’s baseball bat rolling under her feet; Amanda must have had a son or daughter in Little League.

She smashed at the back window until it broke out into a heap on the trunk. Not clean, but good enough to allow Michael visibility.

Claire lost her hold on the bat as he accelerated backward, and it rolled off, thumped down the slope of the metal, and clattered to the parking lot as Michael swerved, shifted gears again, and roared out at the top speed Amanda’s car could manage.

The cool breeze felt good, and it wiped some of the blank shock from Claire’s mind. There were no more shots from the building behind them, which was lucky. “Where are we going?” Claire asked. Unfortunately, Michael asked it at the same time, which meant none of them had any good ideas . . . and behind them, not more than a couple of blocks back, police lights began strobing. “They’re on us!”

“I see them,” Michael said tightly. “I—holy shit!”

He hit the brakes so hard that Claire—not belted in, for obvious reasons—had to grab his seat back in a death grip to keep from being catapulted through the front open window. The two limp vampires in the back with her slammed forward like crash dummies as the car skidded, tires smoking, and came to a shuddering halt.

Shane was standing in the road.

He looked violent and savage and crazy, and his eyes were that terrifying shade of gold. He was missing a shirt, his pants were ripped and bloody, and underneath it Claire could see that he’d been hurt—cuts and bruises.

But he was mostly human.

As the car stopped just inches from his thighs, he wavered, lost his balance, and slapped both palms on the hood for support as his knees went out from under him.

“Shane!”

“Claire, don’t—,” Michael yelled, but it was too late, she was already out of the car and racing toward him. He won’t hurt me, she thought. He didn’t hurt me before and he won’t hurt me now.

And he didn’t.

Shane’s hands were back to normal human hands, though they looked bloody and bruised, and when he raised his head to meet her gaze, the hot golden color was fading out of his eyes. “Claire?” He sounded lost and scared. “I was looking for you. For Amelie—I smelled her blood . . .”

Michael had opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, watching them. Ready, Claire thought, to come to her defense if necessary . . . or to Shane’s, if he needed it, too. Now he came up and put his weight under Shane’s other arm as her boyfriend threatened to drop completely.

“Hey, bro, you found me instead,” Michael said. “You been fighting without me?”

“You’re—you’re not a— Mikey, what the hell . . . ?” Shane was just beginning to realize the magnitude of what had happened, but nobody had much time to explain it. The sirens were wailing behind them. Granted, those cop cars would be making straight for the asylum, but they would definitely have the description of Amanda’s car in minutes, and then it would be almost impossible to make it out of town.

“Got to go,” Claire said, and on Shane’s other side, Michael nodded.

“Let’s get you in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Shane asked. “Can’t go home. They’re in the house.”

Claire wanted to ask about that, badly, but they were out of time. Instead, she helped Michael drag Shane around to Eve’s side of the car. Eve squished over, and Shane got his customary shotgun seat.

The door just barely squeezed shut.

Michael and Claire dove back in, and Michael hit the gas hard, peeling out with a screech that probably would have drawn attention if it hadn’t been for the unholy racket of sirens a few streets over.

Sunset was painting the skies a bloody mess of red and orange.

“Um . . . are you okay? Is she okay?” Shane asked, looking at Eve, who was trembling and looking green around the edges.

“She’ll be okay. Where are we going?” Claire asked, holding on to Michael’s seat for dear life.

“We’re getting the hell out of Morganville,” he said. “We’re going to Blacke.”

Blacke, Texas, was a little town (small even by Morganville standards) about two hours away as the crows flew . . . but crows didn’t build roads, and the road builders had no reason to want to go to Blacke. Most people didn’t. Morganville was practically a tourist trap by comparison.

But the little place had the distinction—the secret distinction—of being the only other town where vampires lived in peace with humans. That wasn’t because of the unselfishness of the vampires who’d moved there; the leader of that ragged band, Morley, didn’t have even a hint of altruism in him. What he did have was a burning desire to run his own life and to not live by Morganville’s rules . . . and a healthy fear/respect for Mrs. Grant, the town’s librarian. Blacke had been overrun by a vampire plague brought on by a visit from another, much nastier predator who didn’t care about the consequences, and Mrs. Grant had organized the town’s survivors into an armed camp. Morley had intended to come to Blacke as a conqueror, but instead he’d become its protector and savior.

He seemed to find that oddly thrilling. Or maybe he’d just found Mrs. Grant thrilling. He’d had a hot-for-teacher thing going on when last they’d seen him. Their partnership running the town—and protecting the citizens of Blacke who’d been unwillingly turned into vampires—seemed to work better than anyone expected.

Or so Claire had heard. She hadn’t visited since she’d left the town behind to return to Morganville.

“You’re sure?” she asked Michael.

“Do you think we’ve got a choice?” They were heading fast for Morganville’s town limits; she could see the silhouette of the billboard ahead. “If we don’t get the hell out of here, then Fallon will have me, and he’ll have Oliver. If Amelie’s still free, he’ll have what he needs to bring her back in. Plus, whatever else happens, he is never going to touch Eve again.” Wow. Michael was usually a calm guy, but Fallon’s attack on Eve had put him on the edge, for sure.

“That’s sweet,” Eve said. She was pressed up against him, a situation Claire was sure she didn’t mind, and now she let her head rest lightly on his shoulder. “Sweetie, I’m sorry I lost my ring.”

“Didn’t lose me.”

“I know.” She gave a happy sigh and wiggled closer. “Is it weird to say this is nice?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, but he was smiling. He looked . . . more himself, Claire thought. “Pretty weird, weirdo.”

Eve turned her head toward him, considering him carefully. “Speaking of. What the hell happened to you? I mean, your eyes . . . they’re okay now, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t have a night-light feature before. Unless you swallowed your phone, your eyes really shouldn’t do that.”

He shrugged. “Dog bite, remember?”

“So now you’re what, a hellhound?”

“Would it be too much if I said, Bitch, please?”

“Probably.”

“Consider my manly silence an answer, then.”

The banter sounded normal, but underneath there was fear—fear from both of them. For each other, and maybe even about each other. After a second or two of silence, Shane said, “Hey, Mikey?”

“Yeah, man.”

“So you’re not a vampire.”

“I’d have let you know ahead of time, but it happened pretty fast.”

“I think that just saved your life,” Shane said, and leaned his head back against the seat. “They sent me to hunt Amelie down, but you’ve got her blood in you—had her blood in you. I can still kind of smell it, but it’s faded now.”

“You’d have killed me?”

“I’d have tried really hard not to, if that’s any help.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He looked tired, Claire thought, and her heart ached for him. “Can’t swear I wouldn’t have, though. It was hard enough holding off to let Claire go, and let Amelie escape.”

“She got out?” Claire leaned forward and put her hand against his face. He still felt feverishly hot. “I know that was hard for you. I saw how much it hurt you to let me go when I—”

“Yeah, about that . . . Next time you decide to take a bath in the Founder’s blood when you know there are hellhounds like me out to track her—”

“Wait, what?” Eve interrupted, and twisted, as much as she could, to look at Claire. “What did you do?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Claire asked, and smiled, just a little. “It gave her a chance to get away.”

And Shane smiled back. “Yes. Yes, it did.”

The car flashed by the billboard. Claire didn’t know how fast they were going, but she was willing to bet it was approaching the speed of sound from the wind buffeting they were taking. She’d had no idea Amanda’s beater of a vehicle could go this fast, and she was fairly sure it had never tried it before, because it was shimmying something awful.

She didn’t even see the police cruiser parked in the shadows beneath the sign until it came careening out onto the road behind them, trailing an airborne plume of dust. The flashers popped on, and the howl of a siren split the night.

“Hold on!” Michael said, and the car seemed to go even faster. It hardly mattered, though; the police cruiser was built for intercepts, and it was gaining on them. It was another two miles to the next intersection, but all of the roads out here were straight and boring, with nowhere to hide, no traffic to use for cover.

“You’re going to blow the engine on this thing!” Shane yelled over the roar of the wind. Claire felt like her hair was lashing her face raw. “Mike, you can’t outrun him!”

“Can’t outgun him, either!” Michael shot back. “And I’m not bulletproof anymore. Are you?”

“No, but they are,” Shane said, and pointed behind him at the unresponsive forms of Oliver and Ayesha. “Wake them up.”

“How?” Claire yelled back.

“Have you tried blood?”

Crap. She hadn’t even thought about that, but it made sense. They would be hungry, and maybe, just maybe, they needed a blood catalyst to fight their way out of their comas.

And maybe when they woke up, they wouldn’t stop at just a taste, either. It was risky, but they needed an advantage, fast, and it was the only thing Claire could think of at the moment. “Glove compartment,” she said. “I need something sharp.”

Shane was way ahead of her, pulling a knife from his belt. She hadn’t even known it was there, but of course he was armed. Wasn’t he always? “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t trust them, and use that knife if you have to.”

It was, of course, edged in silver plate. “What about you? Will you be okay? I mean, they’re vampires and you’re . . .”

“A friggin’ werewolf vampire hunter? Yeah, I know. I’m still primed to go after Amelie, not specifically targeted on these two right now, so it should be relatively okay. If it isn’t, I’ll deal with it. Eve has permission to whack me over the head or something.”

“Goody,” Eve said. “Always wanted your permission for that.”

She was not, Claire noticed, looking as bad as she had been, and the nausea seemed to be subsiding. Maybe whatever they’d spiked the blood with was finally starting to dissipate.

They were chattering because they were scared, and Claire knew it because she was scared, too. She was sweating, her heart was hammering, her mouth felt dry, and her tongue scraped like leather. The wind whipping into her face made it hard to focus, and she wished she had glasses to protect her eyes from the blowing, ever-present dust.

Just do it already.

She put the knife to the meaty part of the palm of her hand, below the thumb, and sliced. Fresh blood spurted out, and she gasped at the hot bite of pain, then turned to Oliver and pried his mouth open. Inside, it was dry and pale.

She squeezed blood into his mouth.

Nothing happened.

Dammit. “Come on,” she said under her breath, her words lost in the roar of the wind hammering through the car. “Come on, swallow, just swallow . . .” She milked more blood from the wound until there was a shallow pool of it in his mouth, then closed his jaw and tilted his head back.

She felt a muscle move beneath his skin, just a twitch . . . and then she saw his Adam’s apple jerk as he swallowed.

Oliver’s eyes opened. He looked confused and disoriented, and then the red flecks began to swirl in his eyes. He blinked and held up a hand to shield himself from the wind.

His gaze fell on Claire, slipped down and focused on her bleeding hand. Without permission, without hesitation, he grabbed it and put it to his mouth. She let out a muffled sound of protest, but he didn’t seem wild or out of control. It was a subtle difference, but one she’d learned to distinguish, with vamps.

And he let go after he’d sucked out two or three more swallows.

Oliver licked his lips clean, cleared his throat, and half whispered, “Thank you.” She couldn’t hear him over the road noise, but she understood anyway.

“Welcome,” she shouted back. “Need your help!”

“Of course you do.” He looked deeply cranky, which wasn’t at all strange for him, but he raised his voice so she could hear him. Barely. “It might have escaped your notice, but I very nearly died!”

“That could still happen,” she shot back. “We need to stop the police car behind us. I think they’ve probably got orders to shoot us on sight—and take you back to Fallon so he can finish what he started!”

Oliver still looked cranky, but now he also looked stronger, and resolved. “Tell Michael to slow down.”

“But—”

“Do it!”

She turned to Michael and screamed the instruction in his ear. He didn’t ask any questions; he just hit the brakes, and the sedan decelerated, fast.

Oliver slithered through the broken back window, got to his feet on the trunk lid, and launched himself onto the hood of the onrushing squad car with hardly a pause—but Claire could tell, from the way he moved, that he was weak, and hurting. His lithe grace was gone, leaving a kind of brutally clumsy strength.

He smashed a fist through the windshield and grabbed the driver, and the police car swerved violently, veered off the road into the desert, and was lost in a plume of erupting sand.

Michael stood on the brakes and brought the car to a complete, tire-smoking halt. He and Shane were out in seconds, heading for where the other vehicle had disappeared, and Claire bailed as well, joining Eve at a dead run to catch up. Eve tripped over her too-large men’s boots and almost went down, but Claire caught her arm and kept her upright and moving. She choked and coughed on the drifting sand, and as it cleared she saw Oliver sliding down from the hood of the cruiser. He was scratched and cut from the broken windshield, but he looked otherwise unharmed. Just . . . really, uncomfortably nearly naked, and Claire wished that she could unsee that.

Shane opened the cruiser’s front driver’s-side door. He crouched and checked the man inside. “He’s alive,” he said. “I’m surprised.”

“I haven’t had time to feed,” Oliver snapped. “Get me something to wear.”

Shane popped the car’s trunk, pulled out a blanket, and tossed it to Oliver without moving any closer. Fighting his instincts, Claire thought. He dived back into the police car and grabbed the keys, which he used to unlock the shotgun behind the seat from its rack; he tossed it to Eve, who caught it with perfect ease. He confiscated the man’s handgun, too. By this time the cop was starting to come around, moaning and shifting in his seat, so Shane took the handcuffs from his belt and locked the man’s right hand to the steering wheel, then patted him on the head. “Cheer up, buddy,” he said. “The good news is, you aren’t dead.”

“You will be,” the cop mumbled. “They’ll hunt you down. Kill you.”

“Then we’ll be going,” Michael said. “Everybody, come on. In the car.”

Claire and Eve started back, and so did Shane and Michael. Oliver, on the other hand, didn’t.

“Hey!” Michael said, without stopping. “You’re losing your ride, Oliver, I don’t think you want to be out here by yourself.”

“A moment,” Oliver replied, and stepped over to the cruiser.

Claire turned and ran back as the vampire leaned in, fangs out and gleaming. “Wait!” she shouted. Oliver turned on her, but she’d had plenty of experience with his particular brand of intimidation. “Please, Oliver. Don’t kill him.”

“Would you rather I take it from you?”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t bite him, just—be careful.”

“Afraid of more blood on your hands?” His fangs were still down, and they made his grin particularly terrifying. “Unhand me, woman, or I’ll unhand you. I’ll decide how much I need.”

“Kill him and you’re walking,” she said.

He stared at her for a long moment, and his anger turned to something oddly like . . . interest. “You know, you are not the mousy little thing I met that morning in Common Grounds,” he said. “You’ve become something else entirely. It’s to your credit, but it’s also extremely inconvenient.”

He raised the policeman’s free arm, ripped the sleeve loose, and pressed the man’s wrist to his mouth. Claire winced at the shriek the cop let out, but it was more surprise than pain. He shut up after that, except for moans of fear, and Oliver ignored him as he continued to draw blood and swallow.

Just when Claire was starting to really worry, he let go of the cop’s arm and stepped back, fastening the blanket around his body. It was one of those soft jersey things, so it looked almost like a toga. She could imagine him back in ancient Rome, presiding over some bloodbath in the Colosseum.

Somehow he made it look like being merciful was his own idea.

“After you, Miss Danvers.”