Claire saw the strips of reddened skin, already burned from before, start to smoke and turn black. Michael shook with effort, but the sun was too much for him. He let go of the bars and stumbled backward, panting, eyes gone red and wild. “Dammit!” he yelled, and tried kicking the bars. That worked better; his booted feet and jeans protected him better, and the first kick landed solidly, bending the bars and rattling the bolts.
He didn’t have time for another one, because the vampires on the other side of the door hit it again, sliding the desk halfway into the room and sending Shane stumbling into Claire. Michael whirled in time to face the first vamp in, which was the younger one in the ragged football jersey.
Michael was fast, but his multiple exposures to the sun had slowed him down, and the other vamp hit first and hard in a blocking tackle, and Michael was thrown all the way into the back wall. He shook it off and rolled back to his feet just as the bloodsucking jock reached out for Claire.
Michael wrapped a fist in the back of the boy’s jersey and yanked him off his feet, throwing him down with a bang flat on his back. He planted a knee on the guy’s chest, holding him down, but that wasn’t a permanent solution, and as Claire watched, the other vampire, the twisted old man, shuffled into the room, grinning with one side of his mouth. He looked even more dead than most vampires, and there was something familiar about the disorganized way he was moving, something—
She didn’t have time to think about it, because the old man jumped at them like some creepy hunting spider, hands outstretched and hooked into claws. Shane dived one way, burdened by Eve; Claire dived the other. That put Shane and Eve closer to the door, and with a tormented look back, Shane ducked out.
“Claire, go!” Michael said. “Run!”
“I can’t run,” she said, very reasonably. Hobbling wasn’t really an option; either one of these vamps could take her down in seconds. One slow, sliding step at a time, she backed away from the approaching old vampire, heading for the window.
He didn’t seem to get her plan until he’d followed her into the sunlight and begun to burn. Even then, it seemed to take a few seconds to really sink in that he was in trouble. He kept coming in that awkward crab walk even as his clay white skin turned pink, then red, then began to smoke.
Then, finally, he howled and ducked away into the shadows.
Claire, pressed up against the windowsill and bathed by the hot sun, breathed a sigh of relief. Briefly.
“Smart,” Michael said. He stayed where he was, holding Vamp Boy down, and watching the older vampire shuffle around and stalk Claire. “Stay where you are. He may try to grab you and pull you out of the sun. If I let this one go—”
“I know,” Claire said. “I’ve got it.” She didn’t, really, but what choice did she have? She looked around frantically for something, anything, to use, and blinked. “Can you throw that over here?” she asked, and pointed. Michael looked around and picked up something off the floor, frowning.
“This?”
“Throw it!”
He did, and Claire snatched it out of the air just as the older vampire made his run at her, howling.
Claire buried the pencil in his chest. She got lucky, sliding it between his ribs just as Myrnin had taught her to do in his occasional, completely random self-defense classes, and the older vamp’s eyes went wide and he fell at her feet, in the sun. Claire rolled him out of the way, but she left the pencil in his chest.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Michael said, and shook his head. “That is just embarrassing.”
“Have you noticed something about them?” Claire asked, shaking now that the surge of adrenaline was passing. The vampire Michael was leaning on swiped at him, but Michael easily avoided the blow.
“These guys? They’re not too smart.”
“They’re sick,” she said. “I recognize the way the older one moved. Notice that they’re not really talking? They can’t. They’ve been broken down to basic levels. Hunt and kill. Like the worst-off vampires in Morganville when I got there.”
Michael clearly hadn’t thought of that. His whole body language changed, and for a second Claire thought he was going to get up and move away from the other vampire, but sense won out over fear, and he stayed put. Michael had never gotten sick from the disease the rest of the vampires had carried; as the youngest, he’d never had the chance. But he’d seen what it had done to some of the others in Morganville. He’d seen the creatures they’d become, confined for their own protection in cells in an isolated prison.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve had the shot, Michael. I don’t think you can get it now.”
She hoped that was true, anyway. If this was some new strain of the disease, then that was worse. Lots worse, especially if—as she suspected, from the condition of these two vampires, and the one she’d staked in the hall—they were actually getting sicker a lot faster than the typical Morganville vampire had.
Shane came pelting into the room, almost tripped over the pencil-staked vampire, and looked around, lost. “Uh—what happened?”
“Where’s Eve?”
“I left her next door,” he said. “She’s okay.”
“You
“She’s fine, Mike. She’s awake, kind of. I left her with a letter opener, hiding under a desk. She’s safer than any of us right now.” Shane looked down at the staked vamp at his feet. “Claire?”
“Yes?”
“You staked a vampire with a number two pencil.”
“I didn’t actually check the number.”
“Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?”
She tried to smile, but her heart was fluttering in her chest now, and not in a good way. “Compliments later. We really need to get out of here and get to the car. Any ideas?”
“Find another pencil and I’ll pin this one down, too,” Michael said.
“You know how weird that sounds, right?” Shane said. “Right, never mind. Number two pencil, coming up. Why do I feel like we’re taking a test?”
“Claire.” Michael looked past Shane, at her. “Go to Eve. Make sure she’s okay.”
Claire nodded and hobbled out the door, across the hall. The door was shut but not locked, and she pushed it open ...
Only to have to duck an awkward lunge from Eve, who was standing up, clinging to a chair and holding a glittering silver letter opener in one deathly tight-gripped hand. Eve yelped and opened her fingers to drop the knife when she saw what she’d almost done, and fell into Claire’s arms with a sob of relief. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Eve whispered, and hugged her with feverish, shaking strength. “God, so sorry. I thought you were one of the creeps.”
“Not today,” Claire said, and winced at the blood trickling down the side of Eve’s face. “That must hurt.”
“Not so much now.” Eve’s eyes looked kind of vague and unfocused, but she was staying on her feet. That had to be a good sign. “I thought—I thought I saw Michael. But then Shane was here, and—”
“Michael’s here,” Claire said. “He was carrying you, but he had to fight. He’s coming, Eve. I told you he would.”
Eve squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing deep. “Okay,” she said then, and her voice sounded stronger. “Okay. We’ll be okay.”
From the other room, Claire heard the sound of metal bending, and then a loud
“Come on,” Claire said, and put her arm under Eve’s shoulders to keep her upright. “Time to go.”
“Where’s Jason?” Eve almost sounded in focus now, and on just the wrong topic. “We have to find him! ”
“He’s with Oliver,” Claire said. “We’ll find him. First, we have to make sure we stay alive, okay? Very important.”
The two of them staggered together across the hall into the room where two vampires were lying on the floor, pinned by pencils, and Michael and Shane were standing at the window. The bars were broken out. Michael was sensibly off to the side, away from the sun, and he’d draped one of the thick, dusty curtains over his shoulders. Claire supposed he was going to use it to cover his head.
