Her heartbeat thudded, slow and calm, even though she felt the panic building inside her.
She felt herself carried somewhere, tucked into a warm bed and piled with blankets.
Then silence.
Her eyes opened, as if someone else was controlling them, and as she sat up, she saw someone standing in the corner of the darkened room where they"d left her.
Ada.
The ghost put a pale, flickering finger to her lips and motioned for Claire to sit up. She did, although she had no idea why.
Ada drifted closer. Once again, she wasn"t three-dimensional at all, just a flat projection on the air, like a TV character without the screen. She didn"t really look human; in fact, she looked more like a game character, all smoothness and manufactured detail.
Somewhere in the dark, a cell phone rang. Claire walked over to a pile of boxes labeled EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT and ripped away tape to retrieve a cell phone. Fully charged, from the battery icon on the display. She lifted it to her ear.
"Bishop is trying to pull you to him," Ada"s tinny, artificial voice said. "But I need you elsewhere."
"You need me."
"Of course. With Myrnin deactivated, I require someone to a.s.sist me. Take the portal to reach me."
"There"s a portal?" Claire felt slow and stupid, and she didn"t think it was the drugs that Hannah had given her. Ada"s ghostly representation gave her a scorching look of contempt.
"I have made a portal," she said. "That"s what I do, you silly fool. Take it, now. Six steps forward, four to your right. Go!"
The connection died on Claire"s borrowed phone with a lost-signal beep. She folded the clamsh.e.l.l and slid it back in her pocket, and realized that someone-Shane, she guessed-had taken her shoes off for her. She put them on and walked six paces forward into the dark, then four steps to the right.
Her fourth step sent her falling through freezing-cold blackness, and then her foot touched ground, and she was someplace she recognized.
She came out in the cells where Myrnin and Amelie had confined the vampires who had become too sick to function on their own.
It was an old prison, dark and damp, built out of solid stone and steel. The tornado that had raged through Morganville a few months back had damaged part of the building; Claire hadn"t been involved in tracking down the escaped patients, but she knew it had been done, and the place repaired. Not that Bishop had cared, of course. Amelie had done that.
But all the cells were empty now.
Claire stumbled to a halt and wrapped her arms around her stomach, where the tug from Bishop"s will felt like a white-hot wire being pulled through her skin. She braced herself against the wall, breathing hard. "I"m here," she said to the empty air. "What do you want me to do, Ada?"
Ada"s ghost glided down the corridor ahead of her-still two-dimensional, but this time the view was from the back. Her stiff belled skirts drifted inches above the stone floor, and she looked back over her shoulder toward Claire in unmistakable command.
Great, Claire thought. It"s not bad enough that Bishop has his hooks in me; now it"s Myrnin"s nutty computer, too. I have way too many bosses.
Eve would have told her she needed a better job, which would include sewage treatment.
"Where are we going?" she asked Ada, not that she expected an answer. She wasn"t disappointed. The prison was laid out in long hallways, and the last time Claire had been here, most of the cells had been filled with plague victims. She"d delivered their food- well, blood-to them to make sure they hadn"t starved. Some had been violent; most had just been lying very still, unable to do much at all.
Where were they now?
At the end of the line was the cell where Myrnin had spent his days, off and on, when he was too dangerous to be in the lab or around anybody-even other vampires. It had been furnished with his home comforts, like a thick Turkish rug and a soft pile of blankets and pillows, his ragged armchair, and stacks of books.
No sign of Myrnin, either.
Ada glided to the end of the hall, then turned to face Claire, flickering from a back view to a front view like a jump cut in a movie.
"That"s really creepy," Claire said. "You know that, right?"
Her phone rang. She opened the clamsh.e.l.l. "You were seeking Dr. Mills," Ada said. "He is here."
"Where?"
"Follow. He requires a.s.sistance."
Claire kept the phone to her ear as Ada turned around again and misted right through the stone wall. Claire stopped, her nose two inches away from the surface of the barrier. She slowly reached out, and although the stone looked utterly real-it even smelled real, like dust and mold-there was nothing under her hand but air. Still, her brain stubbornly told her not to take another step, or she"d end up with a bruised face at the very least. In fact, her whole body resisted the order to walk on.
Claire forced her foot to rise, inch forward, and step into the stone. Then the other foot, shuffling forward to match it. It didn"t get any easier, not for five or six tor-turous inches, and then suddenly the pressure was gone, and she stepped through into a large, well-lit room.
A room full of vampires.
Claire froze as dozens of pallid faces turned toward her. She"d never gotten to know the inmates-they"d mostly been anonymous in the shadows-but she recognized a few of them. What were they doing out of their cages?
The voice on the phone at her ear snapped, impatiently, "Would you come, then?"
Claire blinked and saw that Ada was drifting in the middle of the room, staring at her in naked fury. "They"re not going to-"
"They will not hurt you," Ada said. "Don"t be absurd."
It really wasn"t all that absurd. Claire had seen some of these same vampires clawing gouges in stone with their fingernails, and gnawing on their own fingers. She was like a doggie treat in a room full of rabid rottwei lers.
None of them lunged at her. They stared at her as if she was a curiosity, but they didn"t seem especially, well, hungry.
She followed Ada"s image across the room to a small stone alcove, where she saw Dr. Mills lying very still on a cot.
"Oh no," Claire whispered, and hurried over to him. "Dr. Mills?"
He groaned and opened reddened eyes, blinking to focus on her face. "Claire," he croaked, and coughed. "d.a.m.n. What time is it?"
"Uh-almost five, I think. Why?"
"I just went to sleep at four," he said, and flopped back to full length on his cot. "G.o.d. Sorry, I"m exhausted. Forty-eight hours without more than a couple of hours down. I"m not a med student anymore."
She felt a wave of utter relief. "They didn"t, you know-"
"Kill me? Other than by working me half to death?" Dr. Mills groaned and sat up, rubbing his head as if he was trying to shove his brains back inside. "Amelie wanted to use the serum to treat the worst cases first. I got everyone housed here, except for Myrnin. I have two doses left. There won"t be any more if we don"t get blood from Bishop to culture."
She"d almost forgotten about that. "Have you seen Myrnin?"
"Not since Amelie brought me here," Dr. Mills said. "Why?"
"He"s sick," Claire said. "Very sick. I was looking for you to try to help him, but I don"t know where he is now. Amelie took him, too."
He was already shaking his head. "She didn"t bring him here. I haven"t seen them."
Claire sensed a shadow behind her and, turning, came face-to-face with a vampire. A smallish one, just a little taller than her own modest height. It was a girl barely out of her teens, with waist-length blond hair and lovely dark eyes, who smiled at the two of them with an unsettlingly knowing expression.
"I am Naomi," she said. "This is my sister Violet." Just behind her was a slightly older girl, same dark eyes, only a little stronger in the chin, and with midnight-black hair. "We wish to thank you, Doctor, for your gift. We have not felt so well in many years."
"You"re welcome," Dr. Mills said. He sounded tense, and Claire could understand why; the vamps were all on their best behavior, but that could change, and she saw a shadow of it in Naomi. "I"m sure Amelie will be along to get you soon."
The two vamps nodded, bobbed an old-fashioned curtsy, and withdrew back into the main room. There was a soft buzz of conversation building out there, a kind of whisper that sounded like a calm sea on the sh.o.r.e. Vampires didn"t have to speak loudly to be heard, at least by one another.
"Is Amelie coming?" Dr. Mills asked. "Because I"m starting to feel like the special of the day around here."
Oh. He thought Claire was the scout riding ahead of the vampire cavalry. She looked around for Ada, but she didn"t see any sign of her now. She"d just faded out. Claire folded up the phone and put it back in her pocket, feeling a little stupid. "I don"t know,"
she said. "I was told you needed help."
He gave a jaw-cracking yawn, murmured an apology, and nodded. "I"ve got sacks of crystals, and some of the liquid. We need to distribute it all over town, make sure everybody who needs it gets medicated. It won"t last for long, and it isn"t the cure, but until I can get Bishop"s blood, it"ll have to do. Can you help me measure it into individual doses?"
Claire realized, as she was scooping measuring spoons of red crystals and putting them in bottles, that the burning urgency in her guts had finally, slowly faded away.
She pulled up her sleeve.
The tattoo was barely a shadow under her skin.
As she stared at the place where it had been, Naomi the vampire leaned over her shoulder and studied it with her. Claire flinched, which was probably what the vamp had intended, and Naomi chuckled. "I see Bishop marked you," she said. "Don"t fear, child.
It"s almost gone now. He marked my sister once." The smile left her face, and it set in hard, cold lines. "Then he marked us both forever. Sister Amelie told us he was dead, long ago, but he isn"t, is he?"
Claire shook her head, unable to say anything with fangs so close to her neck. Naomi didn"t seem to be threatening, but she didn"t seem to be comforting, either.
"Then it"s come to it," Naomi said. "It"s time for us to fight him. Good. For my sister"s sake, I"ll be happy to face him again."
Naomi"s cool hand stroked Claire"s cheek. "Pretty child. You smell warm."
Claire shuddered. "Yeah, well, I, uh, am. I guess."
"Warm as sunlight. So was I, once." Naomi"s sigh brushed Claire"s skin, and then the vampire was gone, moving in a blur. The vampires were all moving faster now-recovering, Claire guessed. Growing stronger.
Dr. Mills was looking at them in satisfaction, but Claire couldn"t quite get there from here. Great, they were feeling better; she could get behind that.
But now they were healthy vampires. Which meant they could make more vampires, and that changed everything. It changed the entire dynamic of Morganville.
Didn"t it?
Her phone rang. No number displayed on the caller ID. Claire flipped it open and said, "What, Ada?"
"You must take Dr. Mills and leave," Ada said. "I will dial the portal for you. Go now."
"Would you mind telling me what-"
"Do as I say or I will leave you both alone in a room full of vampires who may crave an instant hot meal."
Myrnin"s computer was such a b.i.t.c.h.
Claire snapped the phone shut. "Grab what you need," she said. "It"s time to go."
Dr. Mills nodded. He"d loaded the individual doses into a couple of duffel bags, and he handed one to her as he hefted the other.
He opened up a padded silver box and checked the contents.
Two syringes.
"Those are the last two doses of the serum, right?" Claire asked. "Maybe I"d better . . . ?"
He handed them over. "Make sure Myrnin gets one, and Amelie gets the other," he said. "Oliver will try to hijack one for himself.
Don"t let him."
Like she stood a chance of saying no to Oliver on her own, but she nodded anyway. Dr. Mills seemed relieved to have the stuff out of his hands. He looked around at the vampires, who were all turning toward them. "Maybe we should be going," he said. "I"m sure they"re all grateful, but-"
"Yeah," Claire said. "Let"s."
Walking through the crowd was like walking through a giant pride of lions. They might be calmly observing, but there was no mistaking the predatory gleam in their eyes as they did it. Claire caught the glitter of fangs in one or two mouths, and made sure not to make eye contact.
Naomi stepped into her path. The young vampire-well, young-looking-blocked the way out. "May I beg a favor?" she asked.
"A small one, I a.s.sure you." Claire licked her lips. "Sure."
"Give this to my sister Amelie," she said, and lifted a silver necklace off of her alabaster neck. It was a beautiful little thing, thin as a whisper, and it had a white cameo dangling from it. "Tell her that we are with her if she requires it."
Claire put the necklace in her pocket, and nodded. "I"ll tell her." Naomi didn"t move. "Did you want something else?"
"Oh, yes," Naomi said faintly. "Very badly. But you see, I know my sister. I know she would not forgive me if I did anything untoward. So you and your kind doctor must go, before we forget our promises."
Still, she didn"t move.
Claire went around her. Naomi turned to watch her.
Stepping through the stone illusion seemed a whole lot easier this time, maybe because she knew staying was definitely not a good idea at all.
Ada"s ghost stood in the hallway, looking furiously out of sorts with the delay. She turned and glided away at top speed. Claire broke into a run to keep up, and Dr. Mills kept pace. Ada suddenly stopped and spun her image to face them like a flat cardboard cutout, and the speaker on Claire"s phone shrieked with static.
Dr. Mills went down.
"Run!" Ada screamed through the speakerphone, but Claire couldn"t. She couldn"t leave him behind.
Claire stopped to reach down to help him up, but he wasn"t moving. There was a cut on his head, and although he was breathing, he was completely unconscious.
The cut was on the back of his head. He hadn"t fallen that way.