The knife grazed her cheek, but it hit Mr. Bishop right in the center of his chest.
He laughed. “Your young man has quite the throwing arm,” he said, and pulled the knife out as casually as a splinter. Not silver. It wouldn’t do a thing to him. “Your friends like to think they still have a chance, but they don’t. There’s no . . . ”
Then the oddest thing happened. . . . Bishop seemed to hesitate. His eyes went blank and distant, and for a second Claire thought he was just savoring his victory.
“There’s no chance,” he started again, and then stopped. Then he took an unsteady step to the side, like he’d lost his balance.
Then he let her go altogether, to brace himself on the arm of his throne. Bishop looked down at the knife in his hand—Shane’s knife—in disbelief. He couldn’t hold on to it. It slipped out of his fist, hit the seat of the chair, and bounced off to the floor.
Bishop staggered backward.As he did, his coat flapped open, and Claire saw that the wound was bleeding.
Bleeding a
“Get the book!” Amelie suddenly screamed, and Claire saw it, tucked in the breast pocket of Bishop’s jacket. Amelie’s book, Myrnin’s book. The book of Morganville, with all the secrets and power.
Seemed only right that it ought to be the thing he lost tonight, even if he won everything else.
Claire darted in, grabbed the book, and somehow ducked his clutching hands.
Bishop lunged after her as she danced backward, but he seemed confused now. Slower.
Sicker?
As if sensing some signal, Oliver finally moved. He took a pair of leather gloves from his pocket, calmly put them on, and snapped the silver chains holding Amelie prisoner. He picked up the end of the silver leash and held it for a second, looking into her eyes.
He smiled.
Then he took that off her neck and dropped it to the floor.
Amelie surged to her feet—wounded, bloodied, messy, and angrier than Claire had ever seen her. She hissed at Oliver, fangs out, and then darted around him to kneel next to Sam.
His eyes opened and fixed on her face. Neither of them spoke.
She took his hand in hers for a moment, then lifted it to touch the back of it to her face.
“You were right,” she said. “You were always right, about everything. And I will always love you, Sam. Forever.”
He smiled, and then he closed his eyes . . .
. . . and he was gone. Claire could see his life—or whatever it was that animated a vampire—slip away.
Her eyes blurred with hot tears.
Amelie put his hand gently back on his chest, touched her lips to his forehead, and stood up. Oliver helped her, with one hand under her arm—that was the only way Claire could tell that Amelie wasn’t herself, because she seemed to be more alive than ever.
More motivated, anyway.
Bishop was seriously hurt, although Claire couldn’t figure out how; Shane’s knife couldn’t have really injured him. The old man was barely staying on his feet now, as he backed away from Amelie and Oliver.
That put him to moving toward Myrnin, who picked up Pennywell and threw him like a rag doll way out into the distance—all the way to the spotlight, where Pennywell slammed into the glass and smashed the machine into wreckage.
Then Myrnin turned toward Bishop, blocking him from that side.
The three vampires fighting Hannah and Richard suddenly realized that the tide was turning against them, and moved away. As a parting shot, though, one of them yanked the stake out of François’s chest, and the vampire yelled and rolled around for a second, then jumped to his feet, snarling.
Oliver, annoyed, reached down and picked up the silver leash he’d removed from Amelie’s neck. In a single, smooth motion, he wrapped it around François’s throat and tied him to the arm of Bishop’s heavy throne. “Stay,” he snapped, and, just to be sure, wrapped another length of heavy silver chain around his ankle. François howled in pain.
Oliver plucked the wooden stake out of Claire’s hand, removed the silver knife from Ysandre’s back, and drove the stake all the way through her to nail her to the stage. It went through her heart. She shuddered and stopped moving, frozen in place.
“There, that should keep them for a while,” Oliver said. “Claire. Take this.” He tossed the knife to her, and she caught it, still numb and not entirely understanding what had just happened.
“You’re . . . you’re not—”
“On Bishop’s side?” He smiled thinly. “He certainly has thought so, since I sold myself to him the night he came to Morganville. But no. I am not his beast. I’ve always been my own.”
Amelie took a step toward her father. “It’s over,” she said. “You’ve done your worst. You’ll do no more.”
He looked desperate, confused, and—for the first time—really afraid. “How? How did you do this?”
“The key was not in guessing whom you would choose to kill,” she said, and her voice was light and calm and ice cold. “You taught me endgames, my father. The key to winning is that no matter what move your opponent makes, it will be the wrong one. I knew you’d kill at least one of us personally; you enjoy it far too much. You couldn’t resist.”
Like Bishop, she lost her balance. Oliver caught her and held her upright.
Bishop’s face went blank. “You . . . you poisoned me. Through Myrnin. But I didn’t drink.”
“I poisoned Myrnin,” she said. “And myself. And Sam. The only one who didn’t take poison was Oliver, because I needed him in reserve. You see, we knew about Claire after all. We counted on your knowing where we would be, and what we’d planned, at least insofar as she witnessed it.” A pawn. Claire had always been a pawn.
And Sam—Sam had been a
Amelie looked unsteady now, and Oliver put an arm around her shoulders. It looked like comfort, but it wasn’t; he took a syringe from his pocket, uncapped it with a flick of his thumb, and drove it into the side of Amelie’s neck. He emptied the contents in, and she shuddered and sagged against him for just a moment, then drew in a deep breath and straightened.
She nodded to Oliver, who took out another syringe, which he pitched to Claire. “Give it to him.”
For a second she thought he meant to Bishop, but then she realized, as Myrnin’s strength failed and he went to his knees, who it was really meant to help. She swallowed hard, looking at Myrnin uncertainly, and he moved his hair aside to bare the side of his pale neck. “Hurry,” he said. “Not much time.”
She did it, somehow, and helped him back to his feet.
When he looked up, she could see that he was better.
Amelie said, “In case you have any doubt, Father, that was an antidote to the poison that is taking hold inside you. Without the antidote, the poison won’t kill you, but it will disable you. You can’t win against us. Not now.”
Down among the crowds, the fights were dying down. There were casualties, but many of them were Bishop’s people; the humans of Morganville weren’t quite as easy to lead to slaughter as he’d expected. All their anger and vampire-slaying attitude had helped, after all.
And now, pounding up the steps on the side of the stage, came Shane and Eve, backed by a party of grim- looking humans, including Detective Hess and several other cops. All held weapons. Eve had a crossbow that she aimed at Bishop’s chest.
Michael took an extra stake from Hannah.
All of Morganville on one side, and Bishop alone on the other.
He backed up, toward the back of the stage.
Behind him, the curtain took on a silvery shimmer.
“Portal!” Claire yelled, but it was too late; Bishop had activated an escape hatch, and in the next second he stumbled through it and was gone. Amelie was too far away, and too weak to go after him anyway.
Claire didn’t think; she just jumped forward, put her hand on the portal’s surface, and yelled Ada’s name.
