Daylighters

crowd. She was blistering in the sun, and starting to smoke; she was weak, and still recovering from the wound in her chest. But even with all that, even in stained clothes and with her hair long and wild, she looked like what she was, and always had been.

A queen.

“You’ve gone to great lengths to make us the monsters, Fallon,” she said. “You talk of how we cannot control our bestial impulses, our appetites. About how those different from you must be eliminated, for safety, or converted to a form you find acceptable. But here we stand, different. We could stop every beating heart in this place. In this town. We could rampage across the world, creating more and more of our own kind. But we do not. Do you know why?” Her calm, calming voice was having an effect on the crowd of panicked Daylighters. They were standing now, listening, not pushing or fleeing. If Amelie was worried about the other guards who were closing in on her—Fallon’s fanatical loyalists—she didn’t betray it by so much as a twitch. “Because we are not monsters. We are you, given a curse that most of us never sought but came to accept. Would we return to our human state if given the chance? Some would. Some would not. But forcing us, with the knowledge that you will destroy so many in the process . . . That’s not mercy, Fallon, no matter what you pretend. It’s murder.”

The Daylighter guards were closing in now, silver stakes out.

Amelie sank gracefully to her knees, still holding the microphone. “By all means, murder us in the sunlight you love so much. Murder us in front of witnesses. Show them just how merciful you are, because I know you, Rhys Fallon. I know the callow heart in you, and the selfish rage, and the bitterness. I know that you pursued your humanity with ruthless purpose, and once you had it back . . . you loathed it. You’ve created this to destroy all that reminds you of what you’ve lost.”

It was a powerful image—the most deadly vampire in the world, on her knees, voluntarily. The Daylighters ringing her with their weapons.

But she wasn’t striking out, she wasn’t killing, she wasn’t even threatening.

And the guards didn’t know what to do with that.

Some people in the crowd looked confused now, and some seemed uncomfortable. As if the truth was starting to dawn.

“We’ve been harsh masters here,” Amelie continued. The strength of will it took to ignore her impending death in those silver stakes the Daylighters held, having seen how it had destroyed Morley, was staggering. Claire couldn’t imagine how she was doing it. “Vampires are slow to learn, and slow to change, but we have changed. We know we must change. Before Fallon arrived, we were building a new Morganville, an equal Morganville, one where we might all live in peace together. Don’t let him take that from you—because if you build your new town on the bones of victims, it will never bring you peace. Watch what he does to us now, and remember.”

Fallon knew he was finished, then. He must have. The fact that the vampires hadn’t attacked, that his side had been seen to shoot Oliver and kill Morley, and was now threatening to kill a woman who kneeled, weaponless . . . it was a PR disaster for him. Morganville resented the vampires, yes, but Claire realized that the crowd here in the square wasn’t as big as it could have been. A lot of the town wasn’t here. Wasn’t singing about the sun and celebrating the defeat of the vampires. Maybe that other half still resented the vamps, but if they weren’t here, that meant that they’d had a reason not to show up. It meant that some of them, a lot of them, didn’t agree.

And Amelie knew that.

Fallon could have made a graceful retreat, kept his cool, preached his anti-vampire screed. Amelie would have let him, most likely.

But he wasn’t content with that. He didn’t want to lose.

“Kill her!” he told his men, and snatched up Jesse’s limp body from where she’d fallen to the ground. He took a silver stake from his coat pocket. Sweat was pouring down his face, and his skin was flushing an unhealthy red from the strength of his fury.

Shane dropped the roses he’d been holding and racked the shotgun, then aimed it at the group of men standing around Amelie. “Hey, guys? Don’t,” he said. “This won’t hurt her so much, but it’ll definitely hurt you.”

They froze. All but one dropped their stakes, which tumbled to the stage and rolled to the edge.

One decided to go for it. He stabbed down, hoping Shane would hesitate to fire . . . as he did.

Amelie reached up and effortlessly caught his arm as it descended toward her chest. She turned and looked at him. “No,” she said. “Not today.” She plucked the stake from his hand and plunged it into the wooden floor of the stage next to her.

Then she let him go. He backed away, clearly not sure what to do with a vampire who didn’t want to hurt him.

It should have been over, but Fallon still had Jesse, and a stake of his own, and although he should have been making his escape, he was moving forward . . . to the edge of the stage, where he grabbed Jesse’s limp body and stood with her clasped against his chest.

“Myrnin!” Even without the microphone, his shout was loud enough to be easily heard over the crowd. “You need to live in the same hell you left me to rot in—and that means you will rot alone.” He raised the stake.

Myrnin was too far away. Too far away to save her.

But Claire wasn’t.

She fired the Taser into Fallon’s back.

He convulsed, slumped, and fell with a heavy thud, still shaking.

Myrnin arrived just a second later, traveling at blurred vampire speed, and vaulted up onto the stage to gather Jesse in his arms. “Dear lady, dear lady, what’s he done to you . . .” He took her wrist and nipped at it, drawing just a little blood, which he licked. It must have told him what he needed to know. “He’s given her a sleeping drug. It’ll pass soon. She’s all right. Claire, she’s all right.” He looked up, and there were tears in his eyes as he smiled at her.

She smiled back. Her heart was breaking a little bit, because she felt something changing in Myrnin, and she knew that she would no longer be the center of his gravity. He’d always be there for her, and he’d always be her friend, but there was something in the way he held Jesse, stroked her hair, whispered to her in a way that Claire couldn’t ever see him doing with her.

Shane’s warm weight settled in behind her, and his arms went around her. He’d passed the shotgun over to Eve, who was holding it on the Daylighter guards. Beyond him, Amelie had finally risen to her feet. She looked at the vampires still standing in the sun—a sign of their loyalty to her, Claire thought—and raised the microphone. “Get under cover, friends,” she told them. “Thank you. Today you’ve shown me, and all of Morganville, what we truly can be. It will always be a struggle for us, but we can learn, and we will. Go.”

As soon as they started moving, heading for the shadows on the porches of the buildings, Amelie turned to Oliver, who was still lying on the ground, shaking. She knelt gracefully next to him and took his hand.

“I’m here,” she said. It was what she’d said to Morley, but where that had been compassion, this was something far stronger.

“Fool,” he managed to whisper. “Never trust a human’s good intentions.”

“Perhaps we’ll both learn to do better,” she said, and bent to place a kiss on his lips. “Over time.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t trust my intentions.”

“I never do,” she said, and raised her brows just slightly. “Rest. You can bedevil me later.”

“I will,” he said. “Perhaps you might get me into the shade?”

She laughed and picked him up in her arms—a very odd sight, and one Claire was pretty sure Oliver wouldn’t remember fondly—and carried him away out of the sun.

Michael still guarded Fallon. He stood there with one of the silver stakes, turning it restlessly in his fingers. Fallon was starting to shake off the shock.

The look in his eyes was pure, cold hatred.

“Yo, Mikey,” Shane said. “He ain’t a vampire anymore. If you do that, it’s murder.”

“I know,” Michael said. “I won’t do anything he doesn’t make me do. Please don’t give me an excuse, Fallon. I do owe you for giving me back my life.”

Fallon had recovered enough to say something, but it was faint, and Claire almost missed it. “You were a