Black Dawn

actually. Claire had a dizzying impulse to help him with that, but she shook it off. Time and place, Claire, time and place …

“She can’t come with us,” Claire said, as Eve opened her mouth to agree. “Come on, Eve, you lost about two pints of blood last night. You’re not strong enough yet and you know it. You need rest.”

Eve’s mouth closed without making a comment, but she gave Claire a steady, cool look, as if she’d let her down by even mentioning what had happened. Although it was pretty clear that Eve, and Michael, were thinking a lot about it.

“Right,” Shane said in the silence. “That was awkward. Eve, you stay and … bake or something.”

“The hell I will,” she snapped back, way too tense. “If you don’t want me with you, maybe I’ll just grab a couple of Amelie’s boys and take them shopping for more weapons. We need to arm up, and we need to do it fast. That okay with you, or should I change into my pearls and an apron and die like a good girl?”

Shane held up his hands in surrender and took a step back. “I—have nothing to say.” Smart boy, Claire thought. “But if you go out, you take more than a couple of vampires with you, Eve. I mean it. Take Michael.”

“Well, you know what they say: less is more,” Eve said. She didn’t even comment on the Michael issue, but there was a stubborn, wounded look to her, and she didn’t meet Shane’s eyes.

“Right now, more is more, and much more is much better. You can’t dick around with these … things. You know that, right?”

“Oh, I know,” Eve said. Her dark eyes were filled with shadows, windows in a haunted house. “I was just thinking that it would be a good idea to start making weapons stockpiles around town. If we start a running fight, we need to be able to get to weapons when we need them.”

That was … a very good idea, Claire realized, and she nodded without speaking. Shane even looked respectfully impressed, which was an odd look for him; he wasn’t impressed by much. “Get silver,” he said. “If you can, knock over a jewelry store and get all the silver chains. We can break them up into pieces. Makes a good grenade.” Silver hurt, or killed, both vampires and draug. Shane sounded practical about it, but then, he’d spent his high school years being dragged around with his vampire-hating father. He probably knew more about killing vampires than anyone else in town … except the vampires themselves, of course. “It’s about the only thing that does work on these bastards. Talk to Myrnin about making more shotgun shells, too.”

Myrnin being Claire’s vampire boss—if a relationship that crazy could be called employer-employee, anyway. She was Igor to his Frankenstein. He had an underground lab and everything, which she’d managed to make a whole lot less creepy during her tenure with him … but not less chaotic. Myrnin was walking chaos, and a lot of the time that was fun.

Sometimes, not so much.

Eve rolled her eyes, now almost back to the old carefree girl Claire knew. “Yeah, Collins, I wouldn’t have thought of Myrnin ever. Of course I’ll talk to him. He’s the only one who had his crap together before we went out the first time.”

“Hey!”

“Present company excepted, supposedly.”

“Better,” Shane said, and surprised her by suddenly enfolding her in a fierce hug. “Stay safe, all right?”

“Safe.” Eve agreed, and then held him at arm’s length, studying him with thoughtful intensity. “Huh. You don’t hug, you know. Unless you get hugged first.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope. Never ever.”

Shane shrugged. “Guess everybody changes once in a while.”

All of a sudden Claire was struck by how different they all were now. Eve had grown steadier, more thoughtful. Shane had taken his aggression in hand and was starting to understand it, channel it. Even open up a little more than he had.

Michael … Michael’s changes were more unsettling, less easy to appreciate, but he’d definitely changed. He was struggling not to change even more—not to drift further away from his lost human life.

As for Claire herself, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t tell, really …. She supposed she had more confidence, more courage, more insight, but it was hard to imagine herself from the outside like that. She just … was. More or less, she was still Claire.

Eve waved good-bye, hugged Claire hard—that was a typical Eve gesture—and headed toward the room where they’d left their stuff. Michael was in there. Claire hoped they could work out their … Problems didn’t seem a strong enough word, and issues sounded too mundane. There wasn’t really a word for what was going on between her best friends, other than complicated.

Claire grabbed coffee to go, wolfed down a couple of cookies—premixed or not, they were hot, melty, and delicious—and followed Shane down another hallway. It might be, she thought, the one Oliver had used, but this place was confusing. If there were signs, they were visible only to vampires. But Shane took a right down an identical hallway, then a left, and then they were in another round room, this one with a massive barred door at one spoke of the wheel. The door also had guards … lots of them. Amelie’s personal detail, Claire thought as she recognized some of them. They didn’t look as spotlessly turned out as she was used to seeing. The dark tailored suits were gone, and so were the sunglasses. Instead, they wore clothing from the same archival stores that she and her friends had scavenged … and she supposed that what they’d chosen at least indicated what period in history they were most comfortable with.

The two guards at the door, for instance. The taller, thinner one with the light hazel eyes and close-cut blond hair … he was wearing a chunky black leather jacket with spikes and buckles, and skinny jeans. Very eighties. His friend with the sharply drawn cheekbones and narrow eyes had on the tightest polyester pants Claire had ever seen, and a square-cut jacket to match, with a tight buttoned shirt in a loud earth-toned pattern.

“It’s like disco inferno up in here,” Shane muttered, and she smothered a laugh. Not that it mattered; vampires could hear that, and if they wanted to take offense, they would. But the seventies addict just smiled a little, showing the tips of his fangs, and the eighties dude couldn’t be bothered with that much response. There were more guards standing around the walls, still as statues. Most had chosen clothing that wasn’t so … retro, but one was wearing what looked like a gangster suit from the Prohibition era. Claire half expected him to be toting a violin case with a machine gun in it, just like in the movies.

“No one goes into the armory,” Disco Inferno said. He was apparently the spokesman for the door. “Go back, please.”

“Order from Oliver,” Claire said. “We’re to find Theo Goldman.”

“Yesterday,” Shane put in helpfully. “And we’d like to not die. So. Armory it is.”

“No one goes into the armory,” the vampire repeated, sounding bored now and staring over the top of Shane’s head, which was quite a trick even for a tall guy. “Not without authorization.”

“Which they have,” said a voice from behind the two of them. Claire turned quickly, which she tended to do now, when vampires talked behind her, and found that Amelie’s pretty blond vampire “sister”—not by family but by vampire blood, although she didn’t exactly get all of that relationship detail—Naomi was standing three feet behind them, having arrived in eerie silence. She smiled and bowed her head, just a little. She was still very formal, used to the manners beaten into her hundreds of years ago, but she at least was trying; it wasn’t a full curtsy or anything, not that such would have been practical with the khaki cargo pants and work shirt she was wearing. “I myself have spoken with Oliver. I am to accompany these two and help them locate Dr. Goldman.”

That held some weight. Disco Inferno and his eighties counterpart—Billy Idol?—did some heavy lifting on what looked like solid steel bars, plus a complicated lock, and finally swung the doors open for them. Naomi passed the two of them and looked over her shoulder with that same charming, though slightly awkward smile. “I hope that you do not mind me accompanying you,” she said. She had a bit of an accent, antique and French, and Claire could see that it had an effect on men in general, even Shane, who was more than a little anti-vampire in any form.

“Nah,” he said, “I’m good. Claire?”

“Fine,” she said. She liked Naomi. She liked that the ancient vampire was trying so hard to be … modern. And