Bite Club

choke or have a heart attack or something. Also, there are a lot of cockroaches. I worried about that.”

“You realize that you’re admitting to crimes, Eve.”

“No,” she said. “Because we’re sort of doing stuff for Amelie. Following up a lead. She’ll, ah, back us up.” She raised her eyebrows at Claire, a clear Right? in her expression. Claire shrugged. “Besides, Oliver’s his Protector, and Oliver won’t care what we did. If he’d gotten to him first, I’m pretty sure you’d be doing a whole lot more cleanup.”

Hannah was quiet for a few seconds and then said, “I remember when this was a quiet little town. That was nice.”

“It was never quiet, Hannah. You just went off to Afghanistan.”

“And it was quieter there, too. All right. I’ll check in on your prisoner. What are you girls up to?”

“Do you want to know?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Uh…I don’t think you should,” Claire said. “Seeing as how you’d think you needed to do something about it, and staying out of the way is probably a whole lot safer right now.”

“Are you going to take your own advice?”

“We can’t,” Claire said. “Shane and Michael are in trouble. We’re going to get them out.”

“You’re sure I can’t help with that?”

“Yeah,” Eve said. “I’m sure. We’ve got all the help we can handle already.”

Myrnin whipped the wheel in a sharp movement that made tires squeal, and threw the girls around in the backseat of the car. Eve almost dropped her phone.

“Are you in the car that’s almost caused three accidents on North Vance?” Hannah asked. “Because I’m following you with my lights flashing, and whoever’s driving isn’t pulling over.”

“Let him go,” Claire said. “Trust me. You aren’t going to get him to stop.”

“Oh, God. It’s Myrnin, isn’t it?”

“Tell that police lady to stop chasing me,” Myrnin said, annoyed, from the front seat. “Really, I’m not that bad at this.”

All evidence to the contrary. But Hannah hung up on her end, and the wail of her siren died away. Claire supposed that at the moment, that was as much of a win as they might reasonably hope for. So here they were, hurtling into the dark on the tip of a terrified thief who might or might not be screwing with them, and they’d just refused police assistance.

This was turning out so well. But Claire had to admit, Eve was all kinds of awesome, when she had the chance to shine. She glittered and flared and was sharp enough to cut, just like a diamond. All Claire had to do was look reasonably intense, which right now wasn’t a problem. She felt intense, because she couldn’t stop thinking about Shane. Where he was. What he was doing. What was being done to him.

Gloriana.

Claire’s cell phone rang, and she jumped and looked at the screen.

Mr. Radamon, MIT.

Oh, God.

She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and answered. “Hello?”

“Ms. Danvers, hello. This is Mr. Radamon from MIT. I’m very sorry to bother you, but I need to check in and see how things are going. With your arrangements. As you can imagine, these places are very difficult to hold, and I do need your answer fairly soon to—”

“I know,” Claire said, and tried not to let her voice shake. She felt like she was being squeezed in a vise now, and her head was about to explode. “I’m sorry, I’m kind of in the middle of something. I promise, I’ll call you as soon as I can, sir. Thanks.”

“All right, thank you—”

She hung up. Fast. Silence in the car. Eve gave her a curious look.

“Well,” Myrnin said quietly from the front seat. “I would suggest we focus on the problem at hand. The fewer distractions, the better, I believe.”

His tone of voice was entirely different than it had been before, and Claire realized that he’d heard the conversation. Heard every word on the other end of the line, too. No secrets from someone like Myrnin.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he was unnaturally still.

“Myrnin—” she began. He held up one stiffened hand in a sharp gesture.

“No,” he said. “We don’t discuss this now. Later, perhaps.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror, and his eyes were dark and very troubled. “We should be at the address Mr. Anderson gave us in just a moment. You should be ready.”

“About that…” Claire forced herself to stop marveling at the incredibly bad timing, and remembered just what it was they were doing. “We know the safe entrances, but how are we going to do this? Go in together? Separately?”

“I assume the priority is to find your friends and remove them from the premises first, before calling in Amelie and Oliver—that being equivalent to summoning a nuclear strike. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Eve said. “Shane and Michael, first priority. Oh, and not getting killed. That one’s big, too.” She frowned and grabbed Claire’s cell phone back. “Hey, is this thing Internet ready?”

“Yeah, it’s a smartphone,” Claire said. “Why?”

“I think we should see what’s going on at the Web site,” Eve said. She worked with the phone for a minute or so, then held it out so Claire could also see the small but clear screen. The Immortal Battles site loaded slowly, but it loaded, and Eve expanded the part that talked about upcoming bouts.

There was a countdown counter going, and it was winding down fast. The banner read live event. There was a video embedded next to it that started playing when Claire clicked it.

Vassily again, dressed in his dumb Halloween interpretation of a vampire (although, truthfully, Myrnin wasn’t costumed so differently right now). Vassily looked excited and a bit nervous as he leaned toward the camera, enough that it caught glimpses of his long, white teeth. “Hello, members,” he said. “We have a very special treat for you, so get ready to place those bets. On one side, we have our reigning champion, Shane ‘The Hammer’ Collins.” And Vassily drew back to show Shane sitting there in a chair, stripped to the waist, all those awful bruises showing. He wasn’t tied up or anything. He seemed fine, but very focused.

Vassily moved on, and the camera moved with him. They went through some kind of a door, very walk-and- talk, and all of a sudden the camera fumbled and focused on another familiar face. Michael. He seemed okay, but unlike Shane, he was tied up—no, chained. Chained to a wall. He lunged for Vassily, but he came up short. Vassily flashed fangs at him. Michael flashed them right back.

“And this, my friends, is our newest warm-up contender for our champion…Michael! These two have been building a grudge match for more than a year, and it’s all the more violent because they were once best friends. So, who do you think will come out on top: the current victor, or the vampire? Place your bets! The match starts in just a few minutes, with the winner meeting our special benefactor…”

Vassily was walking and talking again, leaving Michael’s frustrated, anguished face behind. The camera jostled after him, through tunnels and darkness, and quite suddenly, apparently to Vassily’s surprise, there was a man standing in his way. His patter faltered and stopped.

It was Mr. Bishop. Not the skeletal, desperate thing that Claire had seen before…no, Bishop had showered, found fresh clothes, and, clearly, fed until he was completely recovered. He looked younger than before. And very, very strong. The menace came off him like black light.

“Well,” Vassily said awkwardly. “Uh, sir, I don’t think you should be—”

“Shut up, Vassily. I make the decisions here,” Bishop said. “And I have decided that today—I will fight the winner of today’s match. I feel the need for a bit of exercise before we move on to bigger prey.”

“Sir, this isn’t…this isn’t what we agreed—”

Bishop’s eyes went red and his fangs came down, and Claire almost dropped the phone. Even whoever was running the camera was moving backward. “I’m changing our agreement, minion. Tonight I’m changing all the agreements. Tonight we will take the fight out of the cage. Into the streets. To the