Carpe Corpus

There was a small puncture wound in the middle of her palm, a red circle about the size of a pencil point; there was a whiter circle all around it, like a target. As Claire watched, the white faded.

Blood trickled out of the hole in her skin in fat red drops. Claire looked at Myrnin, who was standing a few feet away; he was gazing at her hand with fascination.

Ewwwwww.

Claire made a fist, willing the bleeding to stop. “What the hell was that?”

“That?” Myrnin didn’t seem to be able to take his gaze off of her fist. “Oh, it’s simple enough. Ada needed to know who you were. She’ll know you now, and she’ll follow your orders.”

Ada made a sound suspiciously like a strangled cough.

“That doesn’t explain why she bit me!” Claire said.

Myrnin blinked. “Blood is the fuel that drives the engine, my dear. As with us all. Ada requires regular infusions of blood to operate.”

“You never heard of plugging her in? My God, Myrnin, you made a vampire computer?”

“I . . .” He seemed honestly unsure how to answer that, and finally gave up. “She requires about a pint of blood each month—not refrigerated blood; it should be warmed to at least room temperature, preferably to body temperature, of course. I generally feed her close to the beginning of the month, though she can, in a pinch, go weeks without nourishment. Oh, and do feed her at night. Blood is less effective when offered under the influence of the sun. We do work according to hermetic rules here, you know.”

“You’re insane,” Claire said. She backed up against a wall and stood there staring at him. “Seriously. Insane.”

He didn’t pay any attention to her at all. “You also need to recalibrate her once on each solstice day, winter and summer, to accommodate the shifting influences of sun and moon. You do remember the hermetic symbology I taught you, don’t you? Well, the formula is quite simple. I’ve noted it down for you, here.” Myrnin patted his jacket pockets, and finally came up with a much-scratched-out, torn scrap of grimy paper, which he offered to Claire.

She didn’t take it. “This is crazy,” she said again, as if it was really important that he understand it. Myrnin slowly raised his eyebrows. “You built a vampire computer. Out of wood. And glass. You’re not . . . This isn’t . . .”

He patted her gently on the shoulder. “This is Morganville, dear Claire. You should know by now that it would not be what you expect.” With a sudden burst of energy, Myrnin took Claire’s unwilling hand, slapped the paper into it, and bounced to his feet. “Ada!”

“What?” The computer sounded surly. Hurt. She’s not even real, Claire told herself. Yeah. She’s not real, and she drinks blood. She just drank mine.

“You will accept all commands from Claire Danvers as my own. Do you understand me?”

“All too clearly.” Ada sighed. “Very well. I shall record her essence for future reference.”

Myrnin turned back to Claire and folded her hand over the scrap of paper. His fingernails were filthy and sharp, and she shuddered at how cold his touch was. “Please,” he said. “You must keep this safe. It’s the only record of the sequence. I made it to remind myself, in case . . . when I forgot. If you get the sequence wrong, you could risk killing her. Or worse.”

Claire shuddered. “What could be worse than her being here at all?”

“Turning her against us,” Myrnin said. “And believe me, dear, you wouldn’t want that to happen.”

6

By the time they made their way out of Ada’s cavern, it was night—full, dark night.

Which was a problem.

“We can’t walk,” she told Myrnin, for about the eleven hundredth time. “It’s not safe out there. You really don’t get it!”

“Of course I get it,” he said. “There are vampires a-roaming the dark. Very frightening. I’m quaking in my beach sandals. Come on; buck up, girl. I’ll protect you.” And then he leered like a total freak show, which made Claire feel not so much reassured. She didn’t trust him. He was starting to get that jittery, manic edge she dreaded, and he kept insisting that he couldn’t take the serum yet—or even the maintenance drug, the red crystals that Claire kept in a bottle in her backpack.

Past a certain point, Myrnin was crazy enough that he thought he was normal. That was when things got really, really dangerous around him.

“We could take the portal,” Claire said. Myrnin, halfway up the stairs, didn’t so much as pause.

“No, we can’t,” he said. “Not from this node. I’ve shut it down. I don’t want anyone else coming here anymore. They’ll ruin my work.”

Claire took a look around at the wreckage—the smashed glass, the shredded books, the broken furniture. In her view, there wasn’t anything left for vandals to destroy, and even if there was, sealing up the portal wouldn’t stop them; it would only inconvenience her (and Myrnin) from getting here.

Only . . . maybe that was what he intended. “What about the entrance to the cave?” she asked. He snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten all about it.

“Excellent point.”

Myrnin dragged the largest, heaviest table over, top down, and covered up with it the hole he’d made in the floor. Then he took handfuls of broken glass and mounded it up on all sides.

“What if they move the table?” she asked.

“Then they’ll find Ada, and my countermeasures will likely eat them,” he said happily. “Speaking of that, I really must find some lunch. Not you, dear.”

Claire would have been happier if he’d had some magical way to repair it, but she supposed that would have to do. It looked like the bad guys had been through this place a dozen times already, anyway; they probably wouldn’t be back and in the mood to redecorate.

Claire unzipped her backpack. At the bottom, rattling around loose, were two sharpened wooden stakes. She took one out and slipped it into her pocket. It wouldn’t kill a vampire by itself, but it would paralyze one until it was removed . . . and it would weaken one enough to die by other means.

If trouble came—even if it was Myrnin himself—she’d settle for slowing it down long enough for her to run for her life.

Myrnin artistically sprinkled some more broken glass. “There,” Myrnin said, and backed off to the stairs again. “What do you think?”

“Fabulous.” She sighed. “Brilliant job of camouflage.”

“Normally, I’d add a corpse,” he said, “just to keep people at bay. But that might be good enough.”

“Yeah, that’s . . . good enough,” she said. “Can we go now?” Before he decided to go with the corpse idea.

As she followed Myrnin out of the wreck of a shack that covered the entrance to his lair, he took the time to carefully close and padlock the door. Which was really ridiculous, because Claire could have kicked right through the rotten old boards, and she wasn’t exactly She-Hulk.

Claire pulled her phone out and flipped it open, scrolling for Eve’s number.

Myrnin batted it right out of her hand, straight up into the air like a jump ball, and caught it with ease. He grinned smugly, all sharp teeth at crazy angles, and put the phone in his jacket pocket. “Now, now,” he chided her. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Off on a beach somewhere with your sanity? We can’t do this. You know what happens out on the streets at night.”

“I can’t help that. I need some air, and besides, walking is very healthy for humans, you know.” With that, Myrnin dismissed her and started walking down the narrow alley into the dark. Claire gaped for a second, then hurried after him, because the being-left-behind option didn’t seem all that fantastic a choice. On her right, over the high wooden fence, she saw the looming dark bulk of the Day House. It was deserted these days. Gramma Day had