Daylighters

SIX

Claire ran for the front door.

“No!” Shane got in her way fast and pushed her back. “No, you know they’re looking for us. You can’t—”

“You heard her!” She didn’t try to make an end run around him—he was way too good on defense. She simply reversed course and went the other way. She didn’t know Jenna’s house, but it was square and small, and it made sense that there would be a back door on one of those compass points. She bet on the back, since Morganville architects were more cookie cutter than cutting edge; she spotted the door, set in the right corner of the kitchen, as she plunged into that small room. Jenna kept her kitchen spotless and pretty, and Claire had a moment of pure envy, but just a flicker, because the panic inside her was starting to take over.

She threw open the back door, hit the back porch, launched herself off it at a run, and dashed around the house. She heard Shane calling after her, but he clearly didn’t want to make a public fuss, so it was just the one mention of her name, and then she heard the door thump shut and footsteps on the path behind her.

There was no way she could outrun him, but she wasn’t intending to . . . only to try to lead him most of the way, so that he’d see it was a better idea to go on than turn back.

She’d made it to the brightly lit parking lot of Morganville’s one and only apartment complex (ten whole units, built in an old-fashioned L shape) when he stretched out one long arm and dragged her to an unwilling halt. Then he grabbed her other arm. “Claire. This is crazy. We can’t be out here. You know that!”

“You’re the one making us get noticed,” she said. “I was just a girl out for a jog. Now I’m getting accosted by an angry boyfriend.”

“I’m not—” He took a deep breath and let go. “Okay. Just walk back with me. Calmly. We can do this. Let’s just—”

“No,” she said, and turned on her heel to head toward the Glass House, still several blocks away.

“What is wrong with you?”

He couldn’t feel it. Maybe that was because he was famously blunted to psychic things; maybe he was just blocking it out. But he honestly had no idea that the house was screaming for help, and she couldn’t say no to its need. That house had saved her life at least once. She owed it.

But she came to a sudden and frozen halt as she heard Monica Morrell’s smoky, lazy voice say, “Stop right there or I’ll blow your head off, Preschool. This means you, too, Shane. Don’t get stupid. Well, you know. Stupider.”

Monica was Morganville’s crown princess of mean—a pretty girl who’d grown up rich, powerful, and entitled to whatever she wanted, and she’d wanted it all. She’d grown up a little in the past couple of years, but that had just taken her from actively evil to passively unpleasant, in Claire’s opinion. They’d never been friends, the three of them, but they’d had moments of not-quite-hatred.

This, however, wasn’t one of them.

Claire realized that they’d managed to somehow stage their parking lot argument standing right beside Monica’s shiny red car—the only one like it in Morganville, instantly recognizable if she’d been paying the slightest bit of attention. And, of course, it was parked in front of Monica’s apartment. Monica herself was leaning against the open door’s frame, tall and sleek and party-ready in a peach-colored minidress that fluttered in the wind and threatened to go into R-rated areas at any second.

What mostly concerned Claire wasn’t the dress, but the gun. It was, in Texas terms, a lady’s weapon—a small black automatic that most men would probably dismiss as a purse gun—and Monica had it aimed right at Claire’s chest. At this distance, it wasn’t too likely she’d miss. Purse gun or not, it’d definitely do damage.

Claire slowly put her hands up. Shane said, “Jesus, Monica—”

“Hands up, Collins,” she said, and gave them both an impartially happy smile. “I heard a rumor that you butchered some poor sucker in your house. But unfortunately it wasn’t a bloodsucker, or everybody would have just shrugged and gotten over it. Too bad for you, I mean. I suppose I really ought to make a citizen’s arrest and put you back in jail. You know, public safety and shit. Plus I think there might be a reward. Totally bonus bucks.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Claire said.

“Damn right I am, and I have every right to love seeing the two of you wearing orange jumpsuits. It is just so your color, Shane.”

“Bite me, Bitch Queen.”

Monica blew him an air kiss. “Don’t think I wouldn’t leave a mark.” There was an evil, bright light in her pretty eyes. She’d always had some kind of perverse sadomasochistic crush on Shane, and the fact that Shane had shoved her away repeatedly had set her off in ways he’d never expected. Most people still assumed that Monica had been behind the fire that consumed Shane’s family home and killed his little sister, Alyssa. Claire had never been so sure, and she knew that Shane had mostly given up that conviction, too. Monica wasn’t above trolling in the wake of a tragedy, but she hadn’t started the fire.

It didn’t make her a better person, though.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Shane said, “and I can’t believe I’m saying it at all, so never ever repeat it, but we need your help. Please.”

Monica blinked. That was obviously not what she’d expected—or, truthfully, what Claire had expected, either. Monica was an effortless button-pusher, and Shane was usually way too easy to manipulate . . . but not this time. “Excuse me?” she asked, and cocked her head to one side. “Are you actually pretending that we’re friends?”

“Monica, I am pretty sure you have no idea how to have a friend who isn’t an empty-souled suck-up, but you’re not a fool. You know you’ve built up way too much bad karma around here, and it’s all coming back on you. The vamps are out, humans are in, and you’ve acted like the Queen of All Bitches for half your life. You’d better start counting up your allies. I’m pretty sure you won’t get past your middle finger.”

That got a long, measured look—much more thoughtful and adult than anything Claire could say she’d ever seen in Monica before. Maybe even the eternally self-involved could sometimes grow up, at least enough to recognize their own danger. “I’m listening,” Monica said.

“Could we do this inside?” Claire asked. She’d caught a glimpse in the distance of a Morganville police cruiser, searchlights flaring.

Monica debated a full fifteen seconds before she stepped back and lowered the gun. “Yeah,” she said. “But don’t expect me to go all Southern belle on you and offer an iced tea and cookies. I am not your grandma. And don’t touch my stuff.”

Neither of them hesitated. They moved fast, and were inside and locking the door behind them before she got the last words out. The relief was immense, and Claire turned to put her back against the door.

“Wow,” Shane said. “This is—” He ran out of words. Claire fully understood why.

It was the girliest room Claire had ever seen. Pale carpet, pink satin couch, pale yellow armchair, also silk. Fairy lights strung around the light fixtures. A bookcase filled not with books but with pictures of Monica, in blinged-out pink frames. A giant custom Andy Warhol–style print, only Marilyn Monroe had been replaced with Monica’s face. There was a sharp, high-pitched volley of barking, and Claire looked down to see a tiny little teacup Chihuahua with a frilly pink collar and mean bulging eyes yapping at them from under the yellow chair.

“Channing, hush,” Monica said, and picked up the little thing. It shivered constantly, studying Shane and Claire with frenzied intensity. It stopped barking, but kept growling, in a pitch that wouldn’t have intimidated a butterfly. “This is Channing. Channing, this is Asshat and Nerd Girlfriend.”

“I think that’s my new band name,” Shane said. “Asshat and Nerd Girlfriend. It’s got a ring to it. Did you name your dog after Channing Tatum?”

“He has qualities,” Monica said, and put the Chihuahua down. It immediately attacked Shane’s shoelaces. He watched it with a puzzled frown, as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or . . . really laugh. It really was ridiculous. His shoe was bigger than the whole dog. “Sit. Don’t touch anything.”

Claire perched on the pink sofa; Shane evidently decided that the color might be catching, so he took the yellow armchair, which was marginally more manly, and tried to shake Channing off. That resulted in enthusiastic leg humping. Claire covered her mouth to stop a totally inappropriate burst of giggles, while Monica ignored the drama and poured herself a stiff drink from a bourbon bottle. She didn’t offer to share, not that Claire would have accepted. “So talk,” Monica said, and downed half the drink in one gulp. “Because I can totally still shoot you as home-invasion robbers. Nobody would doubt it, because you’re all jailbreakers and killers and all.”

“We need to get home,” Claire said. As surreal as this whole scene was, from the pastel apartment (was that a pink teapot on the stove?) to Channing having doggy hate-sex with Shane’s leg, the anxiety that had twisted up her guts was sinking deeper. The house needed them. Now. And they were wasting time. “The Daylighters want the Founder Houses destroyed. They’re trying to dismantle everything Amelie’s built, you know that. Myrnin always said the Founder Houses were the heart of Morganville. If they manage to destroy them . . .”

“We’ll have fewer ugly Victorian eyesores to deal with?” Monica asked, and drank the rest of her bourbon. “Okay, anything those idiots with a sunrise fetish want, I’m against, that’s obvious. Even if it means associating with . . . well.” She gestured at the two of them, somehow getting across distaste, disgust, and resignation all with one twist of her mouth. She poured out another generous slug of alcohol. “Everybody’s all warm and fuzzy about how evil is defeated and the sun’s out again, and it’s morning in America or whatever, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe these jerks give a crap about making anybody’s lives better. They just want people on their side. All this new construction and paint and architectural Botox . . . it’s just smoke. It’s the vamps they want. And it’s the vamps they’ve got.”

It was a surprisingly accurate observation, coming from Monica, and even Shane forgot about Channing for long enough to stare.

Channing evidently lost interest, since Shane wasn’t being horrified anymore. The dog sniffed the carpet, then trotted off to munch miniature crumbs of food from a tiny pink bowl that was decorated with a jeweled crown.

“What do you want from me?” Monica asked them. “Because you know I’m not going to get myself arrested or anything. Not for the two of you, for God’s sake. That would just be epically pathetic.”

“First of all, we need a ride,” Shane said. “To our house. Can you manage that, Princess Picky?”

She shot him the finger and finished her bourbon, and Claire winced. That was two shots of bourbon that she’d witnessed, and from the way Monica was moving—not quite wobbling on her high heels, but definitely fluid—there was no way she was sober. “I’ll drive,” she said.

“Oh hell you will not,” Monica said, and snatched up the keys—on a pink jeweled ring, of course—from the coffee table. Which was white, with pink curlicues. “Nobody drives my car but me.”

“Maybe you ought to not try to drive with the gun in the other hand,” Shane said. Monica looked down at her right fingers, still curled around the purse gun, and seemed faintly surprised. She shrugged and put it down next to the bourbon. Claire had a sudden, sadly hilarious vision of Monica in thirty years—bloated, saggy, drunk, and armed, sitting in this still-pink apartment.

While Monica was drunkenly focused on putting the gun down, Claire plucked the keys from her fingers. Shane was up and moving at the same time, and as Monica fumbled to pick up the weapon again, he slid it out of her reach. She tried to punch him, but he ducked and weaved gracefully, avoiding her as easily as breathing. “You’re not driving,” Claire said. “But thanks for the car, and you can come with us, because I don’t want you calling the cops on us for grand theft auto.”

Monica pouted. It was pretty obvious turning them in had immediately bounced to the top of her to-do list. “Give me back my gun.”

“Obviously that’s a no,” Shane said.

“It’s an heirloom!” He gave her a look. “Fine,” she said. “But this isn’t over.”

“It never is, with you,” he said. “Just don’t make trouble and we’ll all get along fine.”

Claire sincerely doubted that, but she opened Monica’s apartment door and checked outside. There was no sign of the police cruiser; it had moved on to new territory. “Hurry,” she said, and led the way. Shane kept Monica ahead of him, with one hand gripping her upper arm tightly—half to keep her steady on those heels and half to ensure she wasn’t going to bolt and raise hell. But she kept quiet and got into the passenger seat as Claire took the driver’s side. “What?” she demanded, when Shane stood there in the doorway, frowning at her. “Seriously? You are not getting shotgun in my car, loser.”

“At least I can get a choke hold on you easier from back here,” he said as he got in the back. “Silver linings.”

“Touch me and die. And don’t scratch it,” Monica said, and leveled a stiff index finger at Claire. Behind it, her eyes were bright with bourbon and malice. “I’ll cut you twice for every dent.”

After having driven Shane’s beast of a car, this was a piece of cake, really—automatic transmission, smooth steering, posh leather interior. Claire had been ready to hate Monica’s car, but it felt . . . well, it felt great. Maybe being rich wasn’t so bad, if you could avoid being a bitch along with it.

She made Monica scream a little by steering way too close to a rusty trash can, but she missed it by inches and swung out of the parking lot onto the main road. It was risky, riding around in this open car (Monica, of course, had a convertible), but they didn’t have time to put the top up, and anyone who knew Monica would know she never put it up anyway unless it was raining.

Which it so rarely did, in Morganville.

In fact, the night was clear and cool and full of stars—so many stars glittering overhead in the cold black sky that it seemed oddly unreal. The moon was only half full, but it still shed a fiercely focused light, giving edges sharp corners and shadows their own density. It tingled on Claire’s exposed skin like that menthol rub her mom had always put on her when she’d coughed. The difference was that Morganville smelled not medicinal but dusty, with a curious note of raw lumber.

It smelled to her like sunburns felt, and she had a strange moment of thinking that the sunlight the Daylighters worshipped so hard would dry them into parched husks, to be blown away by the constant desert winds.

It wasn’t a long drive to the Glass House, but anxiety continued to beat in her chest like an animal trying to claw free. She expected to see Eve’s hearse pulled up in front, or on the side, but instead she saw a couple of beat-up pickups lining the street in front of the house—never a good sign. She whipped the wheel hard and sent Monica’s convertible squealing in a sharp right, up the house’s gravel driveway. Monica yelped at the sound of the rocks thrown by the tires hitting the undercarriage with glassy pings. “Hey!” she said, and glared as Claire hit the brakes hard, bringing them to a sliding stop. “Where did you learn to drive, freak?”

“Myrnin’s school of demolition driving,” Shane said, which wasn’t true, but it was funny, and Claire didn’t correct him. “Right, thanks for the ride, let’s not do it again, thanks for not making me kill you.”

He dived out of the backseat, moving fast and keeping to the shadows. Claire wondered why, but then she saw the figures moving at the back of the house.

“Get out,” Monica ordered, and forced the issue by practically climbing into Claire’s lap before she could move. “Out out out, stupid!” She jammed the car into reverse just as Claire scrambled out, and Claire only just got the door slammed before Monica hit the gas and sent the car rocketing backward down the drive. It left some scrapes on the street as she bottomed out, and the flare of sparks was pretty noticeable, but Claire supposed that whole “don’t dent it” theory was out the window while Monica was driving.

“What the hell is going on here?” Shane asked, as the sound of Monica’s convertible faded. “Because I guess you were right that it’s something.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But the house was reaching out to me, really distressed. I can’t believe you don’t feel it.”

“It doesn’t like me. Never did. I think it always thought I was trouble for Michael, and you know what, that house is a pretty damn good judge of character because I totally was when I got here, wasn’t I? So, back door or front?”

“I saw whoever it is around back,” she said. “Front makes more sense.”

“No point in being subtle,” Shane agreed, and gave her a brief, crazy smile before he ran for the front door. She caught up with him as he slowed down and braced for a door-busting kick. She managed to stop him, put a finger to her lips, and then took the key from her pocket. She quietly unlocked the door and eased inside.

Shane was disappointed that he couldn’t make a grand entrance, of course, but he slipped in after her and shut and relocked the door. Nothing looked wrong in the front hallway, and she took a couple of steps forward to peer into the front parlor. Nothing there, either. The extinguishers were still exactly where she’d left them, and she didn’t see anything that indicated there had been an intruder.

But she felt it, knotted and tangled in her guts. The house was angry and violated and afraid, and it needed her.

She just didn’t know why. Or what it expected her to do.

“Claire,” Shane whispered, and made a series of hand gestures she was surprised she actually understood: he was telling her to go down the hall, up the stairs, and check the hidden room. He was right, too; it was, in many ways, the heart of the house, and if something was going on, it was probably happening there.

She pointed at him and raised her eyebrows in question. He pointed off to the kitchen, then made another of those utterly mysterious gestures that somehow made perfect sense to her, as if they were sharing some invisible playbook. He was going to retrieve the hidden weapons from the pantry.

She gave him a thumbs-up and headed down the hall.

The living room didn’t look disturbed, either. It was silent, completely silent, and she felt her skin shiver into goose bumps at just how eerie it seemed . . . as if the whole house was holding its breath.

The stairs always creaked if you were careless, but she knew how to get around it. She balanced her weight carefully on the balls of her feet as she stayed on the left side, close to the wall. There was only one slight moan of wood near the top, and she froze, listening for any change—but she heard nothing. The hallway with their bedrooms on it stretched out in front of her, and she was nearly in the middle, heading for the hidden door, when the creature stepped out of the bathroom, right into her path.

Her brain reported creature because it couldn’t think of anything to match what she was looking at—upright, bipedal like a man, but wrong, proportioned in strange ways. The arms were too long, the face too sharp and all the wrong shape, as if bones were broken under the skin. An oddly muscled back hunched forward under the straining white tee it wore.

She’d never figured that a monster in her house would be wearing blue jeans and cross-trainer Nikes, either.

The worst of it, though, the absolute worst, were the eyes—gleaming acid-yellow eyes, with slitted pupils—and the hands, because they sprouted claws that looked big and terrifying enough to make Wolverine feel inadequate.

Then it opened its mouth and snarled, and all the rest of it faded into insignificance beside the rows of gleaming, razor-sharp teeth.

Claire stumbled back and turned to run, but there was another one coming out of Michael and Eve’s bedroom, blocking her escape. This one seemed smaller, but still twice her size, and it somehow also looked female—probably because it was wearing a dress, a bright summery yellow dress, and why would a monster wear a dress, anyway? It made no sense . . .

And as she watched, it twisted, and twisted, and changed, and she felt her stomach rebelling as the creature snarled and ripped at the clothes. It pinned her with brilliant, alien, insane eyes that were straight out of hell.

What was it Shane had said?

Hellhounds.

They were still changing, but they were looking more like dogs all the time.

Her brain was babbling because it was unable to find a single thing useful to say about this situation. She was caught between two things that looked like they’d escaped from the monster vaults, and they were coming closer, trapping her between them.

And then they were sniffing her.

She threw her hands over her head and hunched down into a ball—instinct, not strategy—and the next thing she realized was that they were all over her, taking in great, noisy breaths through their noses. That was alarming and gross and somehow terrifying all over again, because it seemed so wrong. She could smell them now—a kind of sickening mix of animal musk and the kind of body spray that was supposed to make the opposite sex crawl all over you. It was a vile combination, and she found herself gagging a little, but silently, because she couldn’t manage so much as even a scream. Some instinct had locked her voice down tight. Stay quiet, stay small, close your eyes, and make it all go away.

And, surprisingly, it did. The loud snuffling stopped, and when she dared to glance up, she saw that the two things had dismissed her and were moving off down the hallway, using all four legs now. The hallway was littered with shredded, cast-off clothes. They stopped, snuffling the walls, and then glided into Shane’s room like ghosts.

Claire let out a sudden, explosive breath, shot to her feet, and fought a very strong impulse that wanted her to run for the stairs and get the hell out of this house, away from these things, before it was too late.

Instead, she ran forward, her vision fixed on the place on the wood she needed to press to open the hidden door.

She hit it and raced inside as the panel sighed open, pulling it shut with a hard slam just as she saw the first gleam of yellow eyes from the shadows of Shane’s bedroom turning her way. She raced up the stairs, her heart pounding hard, and stopped only when she’d reached the top and entered Amelie’s hidden lair—Miranda’s bedroom.

No Miranda, but there was someone lying on the sofa.

It was Amelie, and she was dressed in red, a dull crimson that seemed completely wrong for her, and her skin was alabaster white, and all Claire could think at first was why is she wearing that color? before she realized that it wasn’t a color at all.

It was blood, soaking her shredded white dress.

Amelie’s eyes opened, carnelian-red to match her dress of blood, and she said, “You need to flee, Claire. You can’t help me. If you go now, they will ignore you. You’re not the prey they’re tracking.”

“What happened?” Claire asked, and came closer. Amelie’s frail white hand rose, trembled, and gestured for her to stop, and Claire obeyed, because when a vampire who’d lost that much blood said to stay away it was probably a good idea to listen. “What are those—things?” But she knew. She remembered Hannah, and the bite on Shane’s arm, and it felt like gravity reversed under her feet.

“They are not things,” Amelie said. “They are humans, modified to track vampires, to harry us until we are too weak to fight or run. They are Fallon’s loyal dogs, with no will of their own. But they will not harm you if you go now.” She sounded alert, but horribly weak. Claire swallowed hard and edged closer. “Did you not hear me? Leave, Claire. They will not kill me. They’ll save that honor for their master.”

“I can’t. I can’t just leave!”

“I made a terrible mistake,” Amelie whispered. She closed her eyes again, and her hand dropped back to her chest. “I thought—I thought I could reason with him. He was one of mine, once. One of us. I never believed he could turn against us so thoroughly. My folly, Claire, only mine. I brought this on us. If I had killed him when I had the chance . . .”

“How do I stop them?” Claire asked, and grabbed Amelie’s hand now, squeezing it to get her attention. Amelie’s eyes flickered open again, but stared straight up, avoiding hers. “Amelie! You can’t just give up—you have to tell me what I can do!”

“You can do only one thing,” Amelie said, and suddenly Claire wasn’t holding Amelie’s hand . . . Amelie was holding hers, in an unbreakable grip. “You can help Myrnin. Do nothing for me, do you understand? Let them have me. They won’t kill me, as I said. But you must stand aside or they will tear through you to reach me.” Her head turned, just a little, as if she was listening. Claire heard nothing, but she felt something inside—a kind of shifting, a pain that went beyond any physical senses. The house was hurting.

And the hidden door was being shredded under the attack of six-inch claws.

“I want to help you,” Claire said. “Please.”

“There’s no escape from this room. Myrnin’s portals are broken, and the only way out now is through the creatures below. You can’t help me. All you can do is escape, and I want you to escape, Claire. I want you to go. Gather your friends and those you love. Leave the Glass House, and never come back. Leave Morganville. Go. My cause is lost, and it’s a cause you could never understand in any case.” Amelie attempted a smile. It didn’t look right. “Never forget that I’m the monster.”

“I can’t just leave you here to die, Amelie. You’re not—” She swallowed hard. “You’re not the monster.”

Amelie studied her directly for a few seconds, and the power and hunger and strength of the woman behind that stare left Claire feeling light-headed. It was like looking into history somehow . . . history hundreds of years deep. “You’re so young,” Amelie said. “And so stubborn. It’s served you well, but it will not serve you now. There is one thing you can do for me, then. One last service you can perform.”

Claire nodded. She was afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of Amelie, really. She was afraid of what would happen when Amelie was gone.

When there was nothing at all to stop Fallon.

“Hold still,” Amelie said, and pulled Claire’s wrist to her lips.

The pain of her fangs going in was brief, and Claire felt an instant unsteadiness take hold, a kind of unreal, whispering faintness that made it necessary for her to fall to her knees beside the sofa. She didn’t try to pull away; there wasn’t any point. Amelie would drink as much as she wanted, and maybe that would be everything, and maybe not. But either way, nothing Claire could do would change the outcome.

Being bitten by Amelie wasn’t like being bitten by any of the others she’d survived before. It was surprisingly easy somehow, as if Amelie’s bite injected some kind of Valium along with it. She felt peaceful, which was very strange; she ought to have felt horrified, or angry, or anything at all except stupidly relaxed.

It went on for a long moment, and then Amelie let her go with a soft sigh, and the peace that had been echoing through Claire’s head evaporated like ice in the desert sun and panic kicked in again, hard and very real. She was weak and drained, and her head was spinning, and when she tried to get up she couldn’t. All she could do was edge slowly back, scooting with her hands until she’d put a respectable distance between her and the queen dressed in blood who lay on the couch.

Amelie sat up. Blood drops ran down her arms like red fringe, and she looked down at herself with a frown, then stood as a hollow sound came from the door below. It wasn’t down, not yet, but they’d clawed through the wood and reached the metal behind it. “Wipe my blood from your hands,” she told Claire. “They will smell it on you, and that would be a dangerous thing. When they come for me, go down the stairs. Get Shane and leave. Promise me you will do this.”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“They will hurt me,” Amelie said flatly. “I will fight them, but they will take me. Don’t interfere. You can’t save me. I thank you for the gift of your blood, Claire, and I will honor it. But you must honor me as well now.”

It came to Claire in a blinding flash that there was one possibility that Amelie hadn’t thought about—a dangerous one. Potentially fatal.

But maybe, just maybe, one that could work.

“If you get out of here, can you hide?” Claire asked her. “Is there someplace you can go?”

“Morley has promised me safety in the town of Blacke, if I can reach the borders of Morganville,” Amelie said. “From there, perhaps we can find a way to strike at Fallon. But it’s of no use to speculate. I will never leave this attic except in their hands.”

This, Claire thought, was going to require two things: precision timing and a whole lot of luck. The house was on her side, though; she could feel it anxiously waiting for any chance to help. And Shane would be armed and dangerous and looking for her, very soon.

She heard the shriek of metal warping and being ripped apart, and waited another few seconds, staring at Amelie. She couldn’t hear these creatures, because they moved like ghosts, but in her peripheral vision she saw one of them on the stairs. As it reached the top, she saw the blur of the second one close behind it.

“Sorry,” Claire said. “I’m not giving up on you just yet.”

She rushed forward, and before Amelie could stop her, she wrapped the Founder of Morganville in a hug.

It was weird and nauseating. The blood from Amelie’s dress squelched wetly between them, smearing Claire, and beneath the garment the vampire felt like a cold marble statue, stiffly unyielding. It lasted only a second, and then Amelie’s shock cracked, and she shoved Claire backward. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but there wasn’t time to explain, because the hellhounds were coming.

Claire threw herself sideways, across the couch, knocked over the lamp, and jumped the low railing to land awkwardly on the steps below. She lost her footing and fell, tumbling down the rest of the way, and caught herself just before she would have rolled into a nasty jagged metal mess that used to be the hidden panel’s door.

Claire shoved it out of the way, panting with fear and adrenaline, and saw one of the monsters leap down behind her on the stairs. It sniffed the air, and those yellow eyes widened, fixed straight on her, and took on an unholy shimmer as it opened its mouth to snarl.

Then it let out a howl that froze her bones, and Claire didn’t wait to see if it was going to give chase.

She just left Amelie behind, and ran.