Daylighters

“’Tis exactly what worries me,” he said. “You heard dear Oliver. Most won’t survive. And we have no real surety that those who do won’t have their lives cut short by his potion, do we? What if his humanity cure lets you live only a few days, or weeks, or a year? What value does it have then?”

Claire hadn’t thought of that—hadn’t even considered it. And now it struck her with terrible force. Fallon wasn’t really concerned with making sure his “cured” vamps lived long and productive lives, was he? He just wanted them not to be vampires anymore. He’d probably consider a week of life without drinking blood worth the trade-off.

What if Michael had survived only to get sick and die? It would break Eve. It would just break her in half.

“We’re not running,” Mrs. Grant said.

“But dearie—,” Morley began.

“Don’t you ‘dearie’ me, you wretch. I’m not your wife and I’m not your mother. I’m the head of the human part of this town and you will pay attention to me. Agreed?”

“Yes,” Morley said. There was a little smile on his lips and a crinkle of amusement around his eyes. “Of course. Very well, then, how do you think we should proceed in our grand quest to liberate Morganville? Descend upon them in a furious horde of fangs? It has a certain theatrical appeal, but—”

“They’d be ready,” Oliver said. “They were ready before they came here. They ignored the vampires at first; they brought good works to the human community, won their trust, fanned the flames of anger. And Amelie was slow to act when there was no threat in sight. If she’d known what we who’d met them before did, she would have taken steps. But she hesitated. If I’d been here, by her side . . .”

“But you weren’t,” Morley said. “Because you had already failed her.”

Oliver’s body went tense, and his head lowered with unmistakable menace.

“Luckily,” Morley continued with that strange trace of a smile, “I did not, and neither did your human companions. She’s escaped from Fallon. What, did no one tell you? That chit of a girl with you, the one who looks so inoffensive—she covered herself in Amelie’s blood to distract the hellhounds from her. And that boy, the one who looks so incapable of self-control—despite Fallon’s infection in his blood, he held off from killing both his lady and yours.”

Oliver’s face twisted into a frown, and he cast a sharp look at Claire and Shane, but before he could ask anything at all, a woman dressed in blue jeans and a buttoned shirt stepped out from between the bookshelves. Her white-blond hair fell in a wavy rush across her shoulders and halfway down her back, and her ice gray eyes looked weary. “It’s true,” Amelie said. “Morley exaggerates, but he rarely lies outright. If not for these children, I’d be in Fallon’s hands now, and this . . . this would be over for the vampires of Morganville.”

Shane’s hand crushed Claire’s, a sudden and convulsive reaction that made her wince and look at him in alarm. He’d turned pale, and his whole body had gone tense, as if he were fighting an internal battle of epic proportions.

A battle he lost, as it happened.

His eyes took on an eerie golden shine, and he let go of her hand to lunge forward. There was a table in the way, but he vaulted it, heading straight for Amelie, and Claire saw bloody claws pushing out of his fingers.

“No!” she screamed. “Shane, no!”

Michael got in his way. Maybe, in that moment, he was thinking that he was still a vampire, capable of speed and strength; it must have been hard to shake that off after years of being used to it. But he didn’t have those things, and Shane hit him like a freight train, slamming him backward.

Michael raised his left arm to protect his throat as Shane lunged for it, and Shane’s teeth bit into his flesh in a violent blur.

Oliver was already in motion. He took a standing leap from halfway across the room, landed on the table, and launched himself like an arrow straight for Shane. He ripped him away from Michael, spun him, and slammed him down. Then he held him there, flat on the floor, as Shane shredded the linoleum with his claws.

“As ever,” Oliver said, “I am at your service, Founder.”

“I know.” There was a shadow of a smile in Amelie’s eyes, and no trace of fear. “Michael?”

“I’m okay,” he said, but it was just an automatic response, not true at all. His arm was bloody, and Eve was already beside him and helping to brace him as he staggered. She grabbed a chair and got him safely into it, and quickly stripped off her hoodie to wrap it around his bitten arm.

On the floor a few feet away, Shane was still changing, triggered by Amelie’s presence. “He’ll need to be locked away,” Amelie said.

“No, you can’t—,” Claire blurted, and even as she said it she knew Amelie was right. Still, it felt wrong. Sick. Horrible. But Shane was dangerous, obviously; he’d hurt Michael, and Michael wasn’t a vampire anymore; he’d just been in the way. He’d have done the same to anyone.

“I don’t think you’d want me to reconsider,” Amelie said, “since the alternative would be to put the boy down, and neither of us wants that.”

“Speak for yourself,” Oliver grumbled, and had to put a quelling hand flat on Shane’s shoulder blades to keep him from pushing up. He was, Claire realized, still changing, his body contorting into a new, horrific shape. “Down, boy. Stay down.”

“Don’t hurt him!”

“Then I need something to tame him,” Oliver said, ignoring her completely. “Quickly, please. He’s strong.”

Mrs. Grant was walking toward them, unsnapping an old-fashioned doctor’s bag—Theo Goldman’s, Claire was surprised to see. She remembered that bag. It even had the vampire doctor’s initials on it in faded gold. “Wait, what are you doing?” Claire said. She didn’t remember moving, but she was clutching the edge of a table now. “Shane, don’t fight! Please!” Mrs. Grant set the bag down and took out an ancient-looking syringe with a hideously long needle.

She caught her breath as Mrs. Grant, with a decisive thrust, stuck the needle into Shane’s back. He let out a howl—an actual howl, pure and shivery—and Amelie herself bent a knee to help hold Shane down as Mrs. Grant depressed the plunger, emptying the contents of the syringe into him.

“Get back,” Oliver snapped. The librarian capped the syringe and put it in Theo’s bag before she retreated, leaving the two vampires to handle Shane as he continued to thrash and struggle for freedom. He was growling now, a low and vicious sound that made Claire feel short of breath.

And then his growling turned to a pained, puzzled whimper, and faded into panting.

Claire gasped and lunged to where Amelie and Oliver were still holding Shane—what Shane had become—down. He didn’t look human at all now. He looked more like a black dog, massive and terrifying, with those eerie inhuman eyes staring blearily up at her.

“Muscle relaxer,” Mrs. Grant said. “It should hold him for a bit, but in my experience, with vampires at least, it doesn’t last long. So we’d better find out what we’re dealing with. From the looks of him, there’s no place we can lock him up here that he won’t break through.”

“Oh, I’ve seen something like this before,” Morley said. He was still sitting on the edge of a table, looking mildly surprised but not alarmed. “Ages ago. An alchemist turned someone into a wolf, one of those elaborate demonstrations so popular back in the day.”

“Did he turn him back?” Claire asked.

“Wolves weren’t terribly popular back then. He didn’t have the chance.” He stared at Shane thoughtfully for a moment, then moved his gaze to Michael as Mrs. Grant moved toward him with the doctor bag and unwrapped his wounded arm. She had him wiggle his fingers, and seemed satisfied when he was able to do so without much pain. “But it would seem to me that it’s a similar thing to what’s happened to him.”

Claire had no idea what he meant, and she couldn’t take it all in; it was too much, too fast, from the warm, romantic moment outside to . . . this. “Michael was healed. Whatever this is—it isn’t being healed!”

“Well, it’s an essential change of state. Vampire to human is just as great a change as what’s happened to your dog boy; perhaps whatever cure Fallon forced down young Michael’s throat might work just as well to change your hound back to his proper form, yes?”

That was . . . crazy. Unscientific. It was the kind of thing Myrnin would think of—but what Claire couldn’t shake was how often Myrnin was right in these situations. “But we don’t have any of the cure,” she said. “And even