Carpe Corpus

She shivered deep inside from the disappointment in his voice, and fisted her hands in the folds of Shane’s oversize sweatshirt. “I’m not cold,” she said. “I’m desperate. And so are you.”

“Yes,” Myrnin said. “That’s unfortunately quite true.”

He turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace the far end of the room, turn after turn, head down.

Dr. Mills cleared his throat. “If you have some time, I need help bottling the serum I do have. There’s enough for maybe twenty vampires—thirty if I stretch it. No more.”

“Okay,” Claire said, and followed him to the other side of the room, where a beaker and tiny bottles waited. She poured and handed him bottles to place the needle-permeable caps on with a metal crimper. The serum was milky and slightly pink. “How long does it take to work?”

“About forty-eight hours, according to my tests,” he said. “I need to give it to Myrnin; he’s the worst case we have who isn’t already confined in a cell.”

“He won’t let you,” Claire said. “He thinks he needs to be crazy so that Bishop can’t sense that he’s still working for Amelie.”

Dr. Mills frowned at her. “Is that true?”

“I think he needs to be crazy,” she said. “Just probably not for the reason he says.”

Myrnin refused the shot. Of course. But he took pocketfuls of the medicine and disposable syringes, and escorted Claire back out of the lab. She heard the lock snap shut behind them.

“Are Dr. Mills and his family safe in there?” she asked. Myrnin didn’t answer. “Are they?”

“As safe as anyone is in Morganville,” he said, which really wasn’t an answer. He stopped and leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. “Claire. I’m afraid. . . .”

“What?”

He shook his head. “I’m just afraid. And that’s rare. That’s so very rare.”

He sounded lost and uncertain, the way he sometimes did when the disease began to take hold—but this was different. This was the real Myrnin, not the confused one. And it made Claire afraid, too.

She reached out and took his hand. It felt like a real person’s hand, just cold. His fingers tightened on hers, briefly, and then released.

“I believe that it’s time for you to learn some things,” he said. “Come.”

He pushed off from the wall, and led her at a brisk walk toward the portal, flip-flops snapping with urgency.

5

Myrnin’s actual lab was a deserted wreck.

Whether it was Bishop’s goons, vandals, or just Myrnin being crazy, there was even more destruction now than the last time Claire had seen the place. Virtually all the glass had been shattered; it covered the floor in a deadly glitter. Tables had been overturned and floor in a deadly glitter. Tables had been overturned and splintered. Books had been ripped to shreds, with the leather and cloth covers gutted and empty, tossed on piles of trash.

The whole place smelled foul with spilled chemicals and molding paper.

Myrnin said nothing as they descended the steps into the mess, but on the last step, he paused and sat down—more like fell down, actually. Claire wasn’t sure what to do, so she waited.

“You okay?” she finally asked. He slowly shook his head.

“I’ve lived here a long time,” Myrnin said. “Mostly by choice, as it happens; I’ve always preferred a lab to a palace, which Amelie never really understood, although she humored me. I know it’s only a place, only things. I didn’t expect to feel so much . . . loss.” He was silent again for a moment, and then sighed. “I shall have to rebuild again. But it will be a bother.”

“But . . . not right now, right?” Because the last thing Claire wanted to do was get a broom and a dump truck to pick up all that broken glass when the fate of Morganville was riding on their staying focused.

“Of course not.” He leaped up and—to her shock—walked across the broken glass. In flip- flops. Not even pausing when the glass got ankle-deep. Claire looked down at her own shoes—high- top sneakers—and sighed. Then she very carefully followed him, shoving a path through the glass as she went while Myrnin heedlessly crunched his way through.

“You’re hurting yourself!” she called.

“Good,” he shot back. “Life is pain, child. Ah! Excellent.” He crouched down, brushed a clear spot on the floor, and picked up something that looked like a mouse skeleton. He examined it curiously for a few seconds, then tossed it over his shoulder. Claire ducked as it sailed past. “They didn’t find it.”

“Find what?”

“The entrance,” he said. “To the machine.”

“What machine?”

Myrnin smiled his best, looniest smile at her, and punched his fist down into the bare floor, which buckled and groaned. He punched again, and again—and an entire six-foot section of the floor just collapsed into a big black hole. “I covered it over,” he said. “Clever, yes? It used to be a trapdoor, but that seemed just a bit too easy.”

Claire realized her mouth was gaping open. “We could have fallen right through that,” she said.

“Don’t be overly dramatic. I calculated your weight. You were perfectly safe, so long as you weren’t carrying anything too heavy.” Myrnin waved at her to join him, but before she got halfway there, he jumped down into the hole and disappeared.

“Perfect.” She sighed. When she finally reached the edge, she peered down, but it was pitch-black . . . and then there was the sound of a scratch, and a flame came to life, glowing on Myrnin’s face a dozen feet down. He lit an oil lamp and set it aside. “Where are the stairs?”

“There aren’t any,” he said. “Jump.”

“I can’t!”

“I’ll catch you. Jump.”

That was a level of trust she really never wanted to have with Myrnin, but . . . there was no sign of mania in him, and he watched her with steady concentration.

“If you don’t catch me, I’m totally killing you. You know that, right?”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but didn’t dispute that. “Jump!”

She did, squealing as she fell—and then she landed in his strong, cold arms, and at close range, his eyes were wide and dark and almost—almost—human.

“See?” he murmured. “Not so bad as all that, was it?”

“Yeah, it was great. You can put me down now.”

“What? Oh. Yes.” He let her slide to the ground, and picked up the oil lamp. “This way.”

“Where are we?” Because it looked like wide, industrial tunnels, obviously pretty old. Original construction, probably.

“Catacombs,” he said. “Or drainage tunnels? I forget how we originally planned it. Doesn’t matter; it’s all been sealed off for ages. Mind the dead man, my dear.”

She looked down and saw that she was standing not on some random sticks, but on bones. Bones in a tattered, ancient shirt and trousers. And there was a white skull staring at her from nearby, too. Claire screamed and jumped aside. “What the hell, Myrnin?”

“Unwanted visitor,” he said. “It happens. Oh, don’t worry; I didn’t kill him. I didn’t have to—there are plenty of safeguards in place. Now come on, stop acting like you’ve never seen a dead man before. I told you, this is important.”

“Who was he?”

“What does it matter? He’s dust, child. And we are not, as yet, although at this rate we certainly may be before we get where we’re going. Come on!”

She didn’t want to, but she wanted to stay inside the circle of the lamplight. Dark places in Morganville really