Daylighters

Shane’s arm, and it felt like gravity reversed under her feet.

“They are not things,” Amelie said. “They are humans, modified to track vampires, to harry us until we are too weak to fight or run. They are Fallon’s loyal dogs, with no will of their own. But they will not harm you if you go now.” She sounded alert, but horribly weak. Claire swallowed hard and edged closer. “Did you not hear me? Leave, Claire. They will not kill me. They’ll save that honor for their master.”

“I can’t. I can’t just leave!”

“I made a terrible mistake,” Amelie whispered. She closed her eyes again, and her hand dropped back to her chest. “I thought—I thought I could reason with him. He was one of mine, once. One of us. I never believed he could turn against us so thoroughly. My folly, Claire, only mine. I brought this on us. If I had killed him when I had the chance . . .”

“How do I stop them?” Claire asked, and grabbed Amelie’s hand now, squeezing it to get her attention. Amelie’s eyes flickered open again, but stared straight up, avoiding hers. “Amelie! You can’t just give up—you have to tell me what I can do!”

“You can do only one thing,” Amelie said, and suddenly Claire wasn’t holding Amelie’s hand . . . Amelie was holding hers, in an unbreakable grip. “You can help Myrnin. Do nothing for me, do you understand? Let them have me. They won’t kill me, as I said. But you must stand aside or they will tear through you to reach me.” Her head turned, just a little, as if she was listening. Claire heard nothing, but she felt something inside—a kind of shifting, a pain that went beyond any physical senses. The house was hurting.

And the hidden door was being shredded under the attack of six-inch claws.

“I want to help you,” Claire said. “Please.”

“There’s no escape from this room. Myrnin’s portals are broken, and the only way out now is through the creatures below. You can’t help me. All you can do is escape, and I want you to escape, Claire. I want you to go. Gather your friends and those you love. Leave the Glass House, and never come back. Leave Morganville. Go. My cause is lost, and it’s a cause you could never understand in any case.” Amelie attempted a smile. It didn’t look right. “Never forget that I’m the monster.”

“I can’t just leave you here to die, Amelie. You’re not—” She swallowed hard. “You’re not the monster.”

Amelie studied her directly for a few seconds, and the power and hunger and strength of the woman behind that stare left Claire feeling light-headed. It was like looking into history somehow . . . history hundreds of years deep. “You’re so young,” Amelie said. “And so stubborn. It’s served you well, but it will not serve you now. There is one thing you can do for me, then. One last service you can perform.”

Claire nodded. She was afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of Amelie, really. She was afraid of what would happen when Amelie was gone.

When there was nothing at all to stop Fallon.

“Hold still,” Amelie said, and pulled Claire’s wrist to her lips.

The pain of her fangs going in was brief, and Claire felt an instant unsteadiness take hold, a kind of unreal, whispering faintness that made it necessary for her to fall to her knees beside the sofa. She didn’t try to pull away; there wasn’t any point. Amelie would drink as much as she wanted, and maybe that would be everything, and maybe not. But either way, nothing Claire could do would change the outcome.

Being bitten by Amelie wasn’t like being bitten by any of the others she’d survived before. It was surprisingly easy somehow, as if Amelie’s bite injected some kind of Valium along with it. She felt peaceful, which was very strange; she ought to have felt horrified, or angry, or anything at all except stupidly relaxed.

It went on for a long moment, and then Amelie let her go with a soft sigh, and the peace that had been echoing through Claire’s head evaporated like ice in the desert sun and panic kicked in again, hard and very real. She was weak and drained, and her head was spinning, and when she tried to get up she couldn’t. All she could do was edge slowly back, scooting with her hands until she’d put a respectable distance between her and the queen dressed in blood who lay on the couch.

Amelie sat up. Blood drops ran down her arms like red fringe, and she looked down at herself with a frown, then stood as a hollow sound came from the door below. It wasn’t down, not yet, but they’d clawed through the wood and reached the metal behind it. “Wipe my blood from your hands,” she told Claire. “They will smell it on you, and that would be a dangerous thing. When they come for me, go down the stairs. Get Shane and leave. Promise me you will do this.”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“They will hurt me,” Amelie said flatly. “I will fight them, but they will take me. Don’t interfere. You can’t save me. I thank you for the gift of your blood, Claire, and I will honor it. But you must honor me as well now.”

It came to Claire in a blinding flash that there was one possibility that Amelie hadn’t thought about—a dangerous one. Potentially fatal.

But maybe, just maybe, one that could work.

“If you get out of here, can you hide?” Claire asked her. “Is there someplace you can go?”

“Morley has promised me safety in the town of Blacke, if I can reach the borders of Morganville,” Amelie said. “From there, perhaps we can find a way to strike at Fallon. But it’s of no use to speculate. I will never leave this attic except in their hands.”

This, Claire thought, was going to require two things: precision timing and a whole lot of luck. The house was on her side, though; she could feel it anxiously waiting for any chance to help. And Shane would be armed and dangerous and looking for her, very soon.

She heard the shriek of metal warping and being ripped apart, and waited another few seconds, staring at Amelie. She couldn’t hear these creatures, because they moved like ghosts, but in her peripheral vision she saw one of them on the stairs. As it reached the top, she saw the blur of the second one close behind it.

“Sorry,” Claire said. “I’m not giving up on you just yet.”

She rushed forward, and before Amelie could stop her, she wrapped the Founder of Morganville in a hug.

It was weird and nauseating. The blood from Amelie’s dress squelched wetly between them, smearing Claire, and beneath the garment the vampire felt like a cold marble statue, stiffly unyielding. It lasted only a second, and then Amelie’s shock cracked, and she shoved Claire backward. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but there wasn’t time to explain, because the hellhounds were coming.

Claire threw herself sideways, across the couch, knocked over the lamp, and jumped the low railing to land awkwardly on the steps below. She lost her footing and fell, tumbling down the rest of the way, and caught herself just before she would have rolled into a nasty jagged metal mess that used to be the hidden panel’s door.

Claire shoved it out of the way, panting with fear and adrenaline, and saw one of the monsters leap down behind her on the stairs. It sniffed the air, and those yellow eyes widened, fixed straight on her, and took on an unholy shimmer as it opened its mouth to snarl.

Then it let out a howl that froze her bones, and Claire didn’t wait to see if it was going to give chase.

She just left Amelie behind, and ran.

SEVEN

She was halfway to the stairs when the creature burst out of the door, still giving that eerie, wailing howl, and Claire plunged the rest of the way at a dead run. She couldn’t let it catch her. It was following the scent of Amelie’s blood on her, and it would treat her like a vampire—it would rip her to shreds, assuming that she would heal.

But she wouldn’t, of course. If it caught her, it was all over. Her calculated risk would have failed. She’d thought that if Amelie had only one of these things to deal with, she might be able to fight her way free. That was Claire’s theory, anyway. She hoped she hadn’t just sacrificed herself for nothing.

“Shane!” Claire yelled as she reached the stairs and began racing down them. She didn’t feel the scrapes and bruises and muscle strains she was sure she’d earned with that first tumble down the hidden room’s steps.