Bite Club

in his bag, ignoring her, ignoring their mortal danger. Stupid, cowardly idiot……

Claire couldn’t even look at him—she didn’t have time, because Bishop swished the blade through the air with a noise like tearing silk, and he gave Claire a long, slow smile.

“This will take approximately ten seconds,” he said. “I’d like to make it last, but, alas, my daughter awaits. I have a whole town to destroy. I can’t take as much time with you as I’d prefer.”

He took a step toward her.

“Claire,” Myrnin said from behind her. He sounded preoccupied and actually quite calm. “Please fall down now, if you don’t mind.”

She had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she did. She just…did.

She hit the canvas and looked up. Myrnin stood over both her and Shane, straight and tall, and there was a wild-looking shotgun kind of thing in his hands, and his Nike bag lay on its side at his feet. He was pointing the gun directly at Bishop.

“Now,” he said, “you appear to have brought the wrong weapon, Bishop. Surrender?”

Bishop buried the sword in Myrnin’s chest in a move so incredibly fast, Claire didn’t even see it happen.

Myrnin didn’t flinch. He pulled both triggers.

The heavy boom rattled the bars of the cage around them, and for a second Claire thought that something had gone wrong, very wrong, because the air was thick with smoke and glitter and Bishop was still there.

He fell, clawed fingers tearing long furrows in the canvas only an inch or so from Shane’s face. He was burning, burning fast, all over. It looked like he’d been hit with napalm, and he screamed and rolled and kept on burning while Myrnin calmly reached down, pulled the sword out of his chest, and reloaded the shotgun.

“That hurt,” he said. “But not, I imagine, as much as this will.” He aimed and then stopped himself. He looked at Claire. “Perhaps it would be best if you took your boyfriend outside for this.”

Claire swallowed. “It’s locked.”

Myrnin walked over and slammed his booted foot into the cage door. The hinges bent and cracked. His second kick sent it flying off the hinges to crash down five feet away, with a sound like tin cans dropping off a roof.

“Out,” he said, and stepped aside as Claire grabbed Shane and the two of them jumped over Bishop’s convulsing body.

Outside, Claire turned to look. Myrnin went back to Bishop and aimed at the center of the downed vampire’s chest.

Bishop bared his bloody teeth. He was disintegrating, pieces of him melting off in a horrible mess. The pain must have been extreme.

“You don’t have the courage,” he spat, and then coughed up rivers of too-pale blood. “You never have, shadow hugger. Get the little girl to do your work for you. She’s braver than you ever were.”

Myrnin raised his eyebrows and stared down at him, then flipped the shotgun up and rested it against his shoulder. “Oh, I think that’s probably true,” he said. “And I think I’d like to tell Amelie you went slowly and in pain. Die on your own, you evil old animal.”

It took a long, agonizing minute. Bishop never screamed. He left behind a skeleton that slowly collapsed into ash in the middle of the cage.

Myrnin sagged and leaned against the bars, head down. Claire came back up the steps and reached through to touch his shoulder. “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

For answer, Myrnin aimed the gun at Bishop’s disintegrating bones and fired both barrels.

Nothing happened. Just a dry, empty click.

“I realized that I never loaded the pellets into the cartridges,” he said. “Those should have been round, silver buckshot.”

“But you knew that first thing would work.”

“Actually,” Myrnin said in a low, confidential voice, “I thought I’d forgotten to load those shells, too. See how it all worked out?”

There was a massive banging on the outer doors, sending the people running around into a freak-out panic. Myrnin sighed, pushed away from the bars, and followed Claire down the stairs. She grabbed hold of Shane’s unbroken hand and held tight, and the three of them found Eve and Michael, still sitting next to Glory’s badly burned body. Only her golden hair was left, and even that was flecked with ash and slowly crisping.

“Follow me,” Myrnin said. “And do stay together. And by the way, this is the last time I go anywhere with you people. You are all insane.”

He picked up an iron bar and slammed it into the wall about half a dozen times in the space of seconds, and the bricks flew out in a haze of dust and splinters.

Claire and Shane stepped through the hole together, and froze as guns turned toward them. A whole lot of cops were yelling for them to freeze, and they did, putting up their hands and leaning up against the wall to be searched and handcuffed.

Claire looked back. Amelie and Oliver were in the next row, behind the cops, along with ranks and ranks of vampires. Amelie was staring straight ahead with a blank, empty expression; Oliver, on the other hand, was smiling. He was giving orders, sending one set of vamps that way, one up top, one around the side…the general deploying his troops, while the queen waited in icy isolation for victory.

Myrnin stepped out of the hole in the wall, glared balefully at the police, and waved to Amelie with demented excitement. “Hello! Your dear father is unfortunately very dead,” he called. “And you said my dispersal system would never work!”

Amelie blinked and focused on him. “What did you say?” she called.

“Dead,” he said, clearly and distinctly. “Your esteemed forebear is no more. He is dust and angel tears, though I shouldn’t think any of us will be mourning him for long. You may see for yourself, but I will swear to you that it is, indeed, your unlamented Mr. Bishop. Now could you please ask these idiots to stop pointing their bullets at me? It’s terribly wasteful.”

Claire tried to keep from laughing, but it turned into a choking cough, and then Shane started laughing, too, and suddenly it was all right.

Amelie swept past them, making for the hole they’d come out of; Oliver hurried to dart in front of her, holding what looked like an actual old-fashioned broadsword. Claire supposed that in the world of vampire wars, a sword could be pretty useful, especially with a silver edge. Beheading always worked.

Michael and Eve came out after a few more seconds, and Eve looked around and saw Shane and Claire in their almost-arrested poses. She snorted. “Leave it to you two,” she said. “What is it with you and cages, Shane?” It must have occurred to Eve a second later that maybe that might not have been cool to say at the moment. But Shane just shrugged.

“If Amelie wants to throw me back in jail, it’s okay. I did sign on for the fighting. I did beat a couple of vamps pretty bad. And I could have hurt Michael.”

Michael leaned against the wall next to him, arms folded. He was wearing the stupid hat—now at least fifty percent stupider, thanks to being crushed by running feet—and the ratty trench coat, but under the shade, his smile was full-on smug. “Sorry. What did you say? You could have hurt me?”

“Dude, I was kicking your ass.” It occurred to Shane, Claire guessed, that maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so proud of it. “Which is why I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t even trying, Shane.”

“Yeah, I know. But…” Shane fell silent.

Now Michael stopped smiling and looked at him for a long few seconds. He nodded and stepped away. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “And, yeah, you will be sorry. You know that.”

“Oh, I know,” Shane said. “You have no idea how sorry I already am.”

But Claire did. She saw the look in his eyes and the shine of tears.

And the shame.

She hugged him and whispered, “We’ll get through this. We will.”

He took in a deep, shaking breath, and relaxed against her.