Lord of Misrule

paintball pellets. As she looked up at the clouds, a horizontal flash of lightning peeled the sky in half, and thunder rumbled so loudly she felt it through the soles of her shoes.

“Come on!” Eve yelled, and started the car. Claire ran to open the backseat door and piled in beside Shane. Eve was already accelerating before she could fasten her seat belt. “Michael, get the radio.”

He turned it on. Static. As he scanned stations, they got ghosts of signals from other towns, but nothing came through clearly in Morganville—probably because the vampires jammed it.

Then one came in, loud and clear, broadcasting on a loop.

Attention Morganville residents: this is an urgent public service announcement. The National Weather Service has identified an extremely dangerous storm tracking toward Morganville, which will reach our borders at six twenty-seven this evening at its present speed. This storm has already been responsible for devastation in several areas in its path, and there has been significant loss of life due to tornadic activity. Morganville and the surrounding areas are on tornado watch through ten p.m. this evening. If you hear an alert siren, go immediately to a designated Safe Shelter location, or to the safest area of your home if you cannot reach a Safe Shelter. Attention Morganville residents—

Michael clicked it off. There was no point in listening to the repeat; it wasn’t going to get any better.

“How many Safe Shelters are there?” Shane asked. “University dorms have them, the UC—”

“Founder’s Square has two,” Michael said, “but nobody can get to them right now. They’re locked up.”

“Library.”

“And the church. Father Joe would open up the basements, so that’ll fit a couple of hundred people.”

Everybody else would head to City Hall, if they didn’t stay in their houses.

The rain started to fall in earnest, slapping the windshield at first, and then pounding it in fierce waves. The ancient windshield wipers really weren’t up to it, even at high speed. Claire was glad she wasn’t trying to drive. Even in clear visibility she wasn’t very good, and she had no idea how Eve was seeing a thing.

If she was, of course. Maybe this was faith-based driving.

Other cars were on the road, and most of them were heading the same way they were. Claire looked at the clock on her cell phone.

Five thirty p.m.

The storm was less than an hour away.

“Uh-oh,” Eve said, and braked as they turned the last corner. It was a sea of red taillights. Over the roll of thunder and pounding rain, Claire heard horns honking. Traffic moved, but slowly, one car at a time inching forward. “They’re checking cars at the barricade. I can’t believe—”

Something happened up there, and the brake lights began flicking off in steady rows. Cars moved. Eve fell into line, and the big, black sedan rolled past two police cars still flashing their lights. In the red/blue/red glow, Claire saw that they’d moved the barricades aside and were just waving everyone through.

“This is crazy,” she said. “We can’t get people out. Not fast enough! We’d have to stop everybody from coming in first, and then give them somewhere to go. . . .”

“I’m getting out of the car here,” Michael said. “I can run faster than you can drive in this. I’ll get to Richard. They won’t dare stop me.”

That was probably true, but Eve still said, “Michael, don’t—”

Not that it stopped him from bailing out into the rain. A flash of lightning streaked by overhead and showed him splashing through thick puddles, weaving around cars.

He was right; he was faster.

Eve muttered something about “Stupid, stubborn, bloodsucking boyfriends,” and followed the traffic toward City Hall.

Out of nowhere, a truck pulled out in front of them from a side street and stopped directly in their path. Eve yelled and hit the brakes, but they were mushy and wet, and not great at the best of times, and Claire felt the car slip and then slide, gathering speed as it went.

Glad I put on my seat belt, she thought, which was a weird thing to think, as Eve’s car hydroplaned right into the truck. Shane stretched out his arm to hold her in place, anyway—instinct, Claire guessed—and then they all got thrown forward hard as physics took over.

Physics hurt.

Claire rested her aching head against the cool window—it was cracked, but still intact—and tried to shake it off. Shane was unhooking himself from the seat belt and asking her if she was okay. She made some kind of gesture and mumbled something, which she hoped would be good enough. She wasn’t up to real reassurances at the moment.

Eve’s door opened, and she got dragged out of the car.

“Hey!” Shane yelled, and threw himself out his own door. Claire fumbled at the latch, but hers seemed stuck; she navigated the push button on her seat belt and opted for Shane’s side of the car instead.

As she stumbled out into the shockingly warm rain, she knew they were really in trouble now, because the man holding a knife to Eve’s throat was Frank Collins, Shane’s father and all-around badass, crazy vampire hater. He looked exactly like she remembered—tough, biker-hard, dressed in leather and tattoos.

He was yelling something at Eve, something Claire couldn’t hear over the crash of thunder. Shane threw himself into a slide over the trunk of the car and grabbed at his dad’s knife hand.

Dad elbowed him in the face and sent him staggering. Claire grabbed for the silver knife in her jeans, but it was gone—she’d dropped it somewhere. Before she could look for it, Shane was back in the fight, struggling with his dad. He moved the knife enough that Eve slid free and ran to grab on to Claire.

Frank shoved his son down on the hood of the car and raised the knife. He froze there, with rain pouring from his chin like a thin silver beard, and off the point of the knife.

“No!” Claire screamed, “No, don’t hurt him!”

“Where’s the vampire?” Frank yelled back. “Where is Michael Glass?”

“Gone,” Shane said. He coughed away pounding rain. “Dad, he’s gone. He’s not here. Dad.”

Frank seemed to focus on his son for the first time. “Shane?”

“Yeah, Dad, it’s me. Let me up, okay?” Shane was careful to keep his hands up, palms out in surrender. “Peace.”

It worked. Frank stepped back and lowered the knife. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you, boy.” And then he hugged him. Shane still had his hands up, and froze in place without touching his father. Claire shivered at the look on his face.

“Yeah, good to see you, too,” he said. “Back off, man. We’re not close, in case you forgot.”

“You’re still my son. Blood is blood.” Frank pushed him toward the truck, only lightly crushed where Eve’s car had smacked it. “Get in.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so!” Frank shouted. Shane just looked at him. “Dammit, boy, for once in your life, do what I tell you!”

“I spent most of my life doing what you told me,” Shane said. “Including selling out my friends. Not happening anymore.”

Frank’s lips parted, temporarily amazed. He laughed.

“Done drunk the suicide cola, didn’t you?” When he shook his head, drops flew in all directions, and were immediately lost in the silver downpour. “Just get in. I’m trying to save your life. You don’t want to be where you’re trying to go.”

Strangely enough, Frank Collins was making sense. Probably for all the wrong reasons, though.

“We have to get through,” Claire shouted over the pounding rain. She was shivering, soaked through every layer of clothing. “It’s important. People could die if we don’t!”

“People are going to die,” Collins agreed. “Omelets and eggs. You know the old saying.”

Or chess, Claire thought. Though she didn’t know whose side Frank Collins was playing on, or even if he knew he was being manipulated at all.

“There’s a plan,” Frank was saying to his son. “In all this crap, nobody’s checking faces. Metal detectors are off. We seize control of the building and make things right. We shuffle these bastards off, once and for all. We can do it!”