“No!” But he couldn’t stop her, not without letting the mayor die, and after one helpless, furious look at her, he went back to work.
Claire slid over the pile of debris and scrambled out the broken door, into the main apartment.
There was no sign of François or Bishop. If the place had been wrecked before, it was unrecognizable now. Most of this part of the building was gone, just—gone. She felt the floor groan underneath her, and moved fast, heading for the apartment’s front door. It was still on its hinges, but as she pulled on it, part of the frame came out of the wall.
Outside, the hallway seemed eerily unmarked, except that the roof overhead—and, Claire presumed, all of the next floor above—was missing. It was a hallway open to the storm. She hurried along it, glad now for the flashes of lightning that lit her way.
The fire stairs at the end seemed intact. She passed some people huddled there, clearly terrified. “We need help!” she said. “There are people hurt upstairs—somebody?”
And then the screaming started, somewhere about a floor down, lots of people screaming at the same time. Those who were sitting on the stairs jumped to their feet and ran up, toward Claire. “No!” she yelled. “No, you can’t!”
But she was shoved out of the way, and about fifty people trampled past her, heading up. She had no idea where they’d go.
Worse, she was afraid their combined weight would collapse that part of the building, including the place where Eve, Shane, and the Morrells were.
“Claire?” Michael. He came out of the first-floor door, and leaped two flights of stairs in about two jumps to reach her. Before she could protest, he’d grabbed her in his arms like an invalid. “Come on. I have to get you out of here.”
“No! No, go up. Shane, they need help. Go up; leave me here!”
“I can’t.” He looked down, and so did she.
Vampires poured into the stairwell below. Some of them were fighting, ripping at one another. Any human who got between them went down screaming.
“Right. Up it is,” he said, and she felt them leave the ground in one powerful leap, hitting the third-floor landing with catlike grace.
“What’s happening?” Claire twisted to try to look down, but it didn’t make any sense to her. It was just a mob, fighting one another. No telling who was on which side, or even why they were fighting so furiously.
“Amelie’s down there,” Michael said. “Bishop’s trying to get to her, but he’s losing followers fast. She took him by surprise, during the storm.”
“What about the people—I mean, the humans? Shane’s dad, and the ones who wanted to take over?”
Michael kicked open the door to the third-floor roofless hallway. The people who’d run past Claire were milling around in it, frightened and babbling. Michael brought down his fangs and snarled at them, and they scattered into whatever shelter they could reach—interior offices, mostly, that had sustained little damage except for rain.
He shoved past those who had nowhere to go, and down to the end of the hall. “In here?” He let Claire slide down to her feet, and his gaze focused on her neck. “Someone bit you.”
“It’s not so bad.” Claire put her hand over the wound, trying to cover it up. The wound’s edges felt ragged, and they were still leaking blood, she thought, although that could have just been the rain. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
A gust of wind blew his collar back, and she saw the white outlines of marks on his own neck. “Michael! Did you get bitten, too?”
“Like you said, it’s nothing. Look, we can talk about that later. Let’s get to our friends. First aid later.”
Claire opened the door and stepped through . . . and the floor collapsed underneath her.
She must have screamed, but all she heard was the tremendous cracking sound of more of the building falling apart underneath and around her. She turned toward Michael, who was frozen in the doorway, illuminated in stark white by a nearby lightning strike.
He reached out and grabbed her arm as she flung it toward him, and then she was suspended in midair, wind and dust rushing up around her, as the floor underneath fell away. Michael pulled, and she almost flew, weightless, into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered faintly. “Thanks.”
He held on to her for a minute without speaking, then said, “Is there another way in?”
“I don’t know.”
They backed up and found the next office to the left, which had suspicious-looking cracks in its walls. Claire thought the floor felt a little unsteady. Michael pushed her back behind him and said, “Cover your eyes.”
Then he began ripping away the wall between the office and Amelie’s apartments. When he hit solid red brick, he punched it, breaking it into dust.
“This isn’t helping keep things together!” Claire yelled.
“I know, but we need to get them out!”
He ripped a hole in the wall big enough to step through, and braced himself in it as the whole building seemed to shudder, as if shifting its weight. “The floor’s all right here,” he said. “You stay. I’ll go.”
“Through that door, to the left!” Claire called. Michael disappeared, moving fast and gracefully.
She wondered, all of a sudden, why he wasn’t downstairs. Why he wasn’t fighting, like all the others of Amelie’s blood.
A couple of tense minutes passed, as she stared through the hole; nothing seemed to be happening. She couldn’t hear Michael, or Shane, or anything else.
And then she heard screaming behind her, in the hall.
Someone fell against the wood, knocking her backward. It was François. Claire tried to shut the door, but a bloodstained white hand wormed through the opening and grabbed the edge, shoving it wider.
François didn’t look even remotely human anymore, but he did look absolutely desperate, willing to do anything to survive, and very, very angry.
Claire backed up, slowly, until she was standing with her back against the far wall. There wasn’t much in here to help her—a desk, some pens and pencils in a cup.
François laughed, and then he growled. “You think you’re winning,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I think you’re the one who has to worry,” Michael said from the hole in the wall. He stepped through, carrying Mayor Morrell in his arms. Shane and Eve were with him, supporting Richard’s sagging body between them. Mrs. Morrell brought up the rear. “Back off. I won’t come after you if you run.”
François’ eyes turned ruby, and he threw himself at Michael, who was burdened with the mayor.
Claire grabbed a pencil from the cup and plunged it into François’ back.
He whirled, looking stunned . . . and then he slowly collapsed to the carpet.
“That won’t kill him,” Michael said.
“I don’t care,” Eve said. “Because that was
Claire grabbed the vampire’s arms and dragged him out of the way, careful not to dislodge the pencil; she wasn’t really sure how deep it had gone, and if it slipped out of his heart, they were all in big trouble. Michael edged around him and opened the door to check the corridor. “Clear,” he said. “For the moment. Come on.”
Their little refugee group hurried into the rainy hall, squishing through soggy carpet. There were people hiding in the offices, or just pressed against the walls and hoping not to be noticed. “Come on,” Eve said to them. “Get up. We’re getting out of here before this whole thing comes down!”
The fighting in the stairwell was still going on—snarling, screams, bangs, and thuds. Claire didn’t dare look over the railing. Michael led them down to the locked second-floor entrance. He pulled hard on it, and the knob popped off—but the door stayed locked.
“Hey, Mike?” Shane had edged to the end of the landing to look over the railing. “Can’t go that way.”
“I know!”
“Also, time is—”
“I know, Shane!” Michael started kicking the door, but it was reinforced, stronger than the other doors Claire had seen. It bent, but didn’t open.
