Carpe Corpus

Her fourth step sent her falling through freezing-cold blackness, and then her foot touched ground, and she was someplace she recognized.

She came out in the cells where Myrnin and Amelie had confined the vampires who had become too sick to function on their own. It was an old prison, dark and damp, built out of solid stone and steel. The tornado that had raged through Morganville a few months back had damaged part of the building; Claire hadn’t been involved in tracking down the escaped patients, but she knew it had been done, and the place repaired. Not that Bishop had cared, of course. Amelie had done that.

But all the cells were empty now.

Claire stumbled to a halt and wrapped her arms around her stomach, where the tug from Bishop’s will felt like a white-hot wire being pulled through her skin. She braced herself against the wall, breathing hard. “I’m here,” she said to the empty air. “What do you want me to do, Ada?”

Ada’s ghost glided down the corridor ahead of her—still two-dimensional, but this time the view was from the back. Her stiff belled skirts drifted inches above the stone floor, and she looked back over her shoulder toward Claire in unmistakable command. Great, Claire thought. It’s not bad enough that Bishop has his hooks in me; now it’s Myrnin’s nutty computer, too. I have way too many bosses.

Eve would have told her she needed a better job, which would include sewage treatment.

“Where are we going?” she asked Ada, not that she expected an answer. She wasn’t disappointed. The prison was laid out in long hallways, and the last time Claire had been here, most of the cells had been filled with plague victims. She’d delivered their food—well, blood—to them to make sure they hadn’t starved. Some had been violent; most had just been lying very still, unable to do much at all.

Where were they now?

At the end of the line was the cell where Myrnin had spent his days, off and on, when he was too dangerous to be in the lab or around anybody—even other vampires. It had been furnished with his home comforts, like a thick Turkish rug and a soft pile of blankets and pillows, his ragged armchair, and stacks of books.

No sign of Myrnin, either.

Ada glided to the end of the hall, then turned to face Claire, flickering from a back view to a front view like a jump cut in a movie.

“That’s really creepy,” Claire said. “You know that, right?”

Her phone rang. She opened the clamshell. “You were seeking Dr. Mills,” Ada said. “He is here.”

“Where?”

“Follow. He requires assistance.”

Claire kept the phone to her ear as Ada turned around again and misted right through the stone wall. Claire stopped, her nose two inches away from the surface of the barrier. She slowly reached out, and although the stone looked utterly real—it even smelled real, like dust and mold—there was nothing under her hand but air. Still, her brain stubbornly told her not to take another step, or she’d end up with a bruised face at the very least. In fact, her whole body resisted the order to walk on.

Claire forced her foot to rise, inch forward, and step into the stone. Then the other foot, shuffling forward to match it. It didn’t get any easier, not for five or six tor-turous inches, and then suddenly the pressure was gone, and she stepped through into a large, well-lit room.

A room full of vampires.

Claire froze as dozens of pallid faces turned toward her. She’d never gotten to know the inmates—they’d mostly been anonymous in the shadows—but she recognized a few of them. What were they doing out of their cages?

The voice on the phone at her ear snapped, impatiently, “Would you come, then?”

Claire blinked and saw that Ada was drifting in the middle of the room, staring at her in naked fury. “They’re not going to—”

“They will not hurt you,” Ada said. “Don’t be absurd.”

It really wasn’t all that absurd. Claire had seen some of these same vampires clawing gouges in stone with their fingernails, and gnawing on their own fingers. She was like a doggie treat in a room full of rabid rottwei lers.

None of them lunged at her. They stared at her as if she was a curiosity, but they didn’t seem especially, well, hungry.

She followed Ada’s image across the room to a small stone alcove, where she saw Dr. Mills lying very still on a cot.

“Oh no,” Claire whispered, and hurried over to him. “Dr. Mills?”

He groaned and opened reddened eyes, blinking to focus on her face. “Claire,” he croaked, and coughed. “Damn. What time is it?”

“Uh—almost five, I think. Why?”

“I just went to sleep at four,” he said, and flopped back to full length on his cot. “God. Sorry, I’m exhausted. Forty-eight hours without more than a couple of hours down. I’m not a med student anymore.”

She felt a wave of utter relief. “They didn’t, you know—”

“Kill me? Other than by working me half to death?” Dr. Mills groaned and sat up, rubbing his head as if he was trying to shove his brains back inside. “Amelie wanted to use the serum to treat the worst cases first. I got everyone housed here, except for Myrnin. I have two doses left. There won’t be any more if we don’t get blood from Bishop to culture.”

She’d almost forgotten about that. “Have you seen Myrnin?”

“Not since Amelie brought me here,” Dr. Mills said. “Why?”

“He’s sick,” Claire said. “Very sick. I was looking for you to try to help him, but I don’t know where he is now. Amelie took him, too.”

He was already shaking his head. “She didn’t bring him here. I haven’t seen them.”

Claire sensed a shadow behind her and, turning, came face-to-face with a vampire. A smallish one, just a little taller than her own modest height. It was a girl barely out of her teens, with waist-length blond hair and lovely dark eyes, who smiled at the two of them with an unsettlingly knowing expression.

“I am Naomi,” she said. “This is my sister Violet.” Just behind her was a slightly older girl, same dark eyes, only a little stronger in the chin, and with midnight-black hair. “We wish to thank you, Doctor, for your gift. We have not felt so well in many years.”

“You’re welcome,” Dr. Mills said. He sounded tense, and Claire could understand why; the vamps were all on their best behavior, but that could change, and she saw a shadow of it in Naomi. “I’m sure Amelie will be along to get you soon.”

The two vamps nodded, bobbed an old-fashioned curtsy, and withdrew back into the main room. There was a soft buzz of conversation building out there, a kind of whisper that sounded like a calm sea on the shore. Vampires didn’t have to speak loudly to be heard, at least by one another.

“Is Amelie coming?” Dr. Mills asked. “Because I’m starting to feel like the special of the day around here.”

Oh. He thought Claire was the scout riding ahead of the vampire cavalry. She looked around for Ada, but she didn’t see any sign of her now. She’d just faded out. Claire folded up the phone and put it back in her pocket, feeling a little stupid. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was told you needed help.”

He gave a jaw-cracking yawn, murmured an apology, and nodded. “I’ve got sacks of crystals, and some of the liquid. We need to distribute it all over town, make sure everybody who needs it gets medicated. It won’t last for long, and it isn’t the cure, but until I can get Bishop’s blood, it’ll have to do. Can you help me measure it into individual doses?”

Claire realized, as she was scooping measuring spoons of red crystals and putting them in bottles, that the burning urgency in her guts had finally, slowly faded away.

She pulled up her sleeve.

The tattoo was barely a shadow under her skin.

As she stared at the place where it had been, Naomi the vampire leaned over her shoulder and studied it with her. Claire flinched, which was probably what the vamp had intended, and Naomi chuckled. “I see Bishop marked you,” she said. “Don’t fear, child. It’s almost gone now. He marked my sister once.” The smile left her face,