Bitter Blood (45 page)

She took his hand, and sat down next to him.

Shane was standing fifty feet away, beside Michael, but he
looked up and jerked his chin in a silent question.
Is he okay?
She nodded.

It wasn’t much, she thought. It wasn’t anything to build any kind of hope upon, just that he was willing to show up here, willing to fire a rifle, throw her a rope.

But she’d take it. It was horrifying to her how pitifully grateful she was just for that smallest hint of a smile he gave her, before he turned his back.

“You’re very sad,” Myrnin said. He sounded faint and distant, as if he’d been a long way off in more ways than one. “You smell like tears. Did he break your heart?”

“No,” Claire said, in a very soft whisper that she hoped Shane couldn’t hear from where he stood. “I broke his.”

“Ah,” Myrnin said. “Good for you.” He sat up, and suddenly leaned over to throw up a horrifying amount of black water. “Pardon. Well, that was distressing…. Oh no…”

He collapsed back on the ground, as if too weak to rise, and shut his eyes tight. His whole body was shaking and twitching, and it went on for a horribly long time. She didn’t know what to do for him, except put her hand on his shoulder. Beneath the slimy clothes, she could feel his muscles locked and straining as if he were having an epileptic seizure.

He finally relaxed and took in a deep, slow breath before he opened his eyes and said, “We have to go, Claire. Quickly.”

“Where?” she asked, because she was cold and scared and couldn’t think of any place, any place at all, that might be safe now.

“To safety,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”

“But you—you’re not well enough to—”

Before she could finish, he was off stalking barefoot through
the weeds toward the exit. He tore the chain off the fence with one hard pull and shoved the gates open with a rusted shriek.

Then he looked back with a red glow in his eyes and said, “Bring Michael. None of this is his fault. I won’t allow him to suffer for it.”

Shane hadn’t moved during all of this, but now he bent down and pulled the tranquilizer dart out of Michael’s neck. “It’s going to be a few minutes before he’s well enough to stand up.”

“Then drag him,” Myrnin said. “Unless you’d like to enjoy the comfort of my little oubliette. I’m sure Naomi will be sending Pennyfeather in a moment to be certain all of us are dead, and I’d rather not be here to oblige her.
Now
, children.”

He clapped his hands and disappeared beyond the gates, and in a moment, Claire heard Eve’s car start up with a roar.

She went back to Shane and took one of Michael’s arms as he grabbed the other. Their eyes met, briefly.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

But she wasn’t sure if they were talking about the same things at all.

I
t took them a while to drag Michael’s heavy, unresponsive body over the uneven ground and out to the hearse. Myrnin stuck his head out of the passenger window of the hearse to helpfully suggest that Michael could be dumped down the same hole he’d just crawled out of. Shane suggested that Myrnin bite him, hard. Myrnin declined.

And Claire drove, leaving Shane with Michael, by his own request. She was a little anxious about that; Shane held grudges, and it was going to be hard for him to see past what Michael had done to them, but it was at least a truce for now. Mortal danger trumped emotional pain. Temporarily.

Myrnin said, “Michael seems to be under Naomi’s spell, just as Oliver and Pennyfeather must be. I have no idea how many she’s suborned, but it’s too bad she didn’t try it on me.” He smiled, and
his expression was bleak and dark, and it wasn’t only the streaks of black water staining his face. “Greater vampires have tried, including her black-hearted father. I believe my blood made Bishop sick for a month.”

“Where should we go?” she asked. He sighed.

“I suppose we really have no choice,” he said. “Retreating to the Glass House will simply give them an easy point to attack, and we cannot defend the place, not from a concerted attack. So we will have to take the fight to them.”

“Where?”

He shrugged wearily. “To Amelie herself. Ultimately, she is Naomi’s target. Oliver’s seduction of her—or at least, part of it—was Naomi’s effort to weaken her, to stir up trouble against her. She must be warned of what’s to come or she’ll be taken unawares, by those she trusts.”

“How the hell are we supposed to get into Founder’s Square?” Claire asked. “Do you have some secret passage or something?”

“They’re all shut up, I’m afraid,” Myrnin said. “Oh, and I’m ruining your friend’s lovely upholstery. Sorry about the mess. Imagine if they’d left me down there for months. That did happen, once. I was dumped into a cell no larger than a doghouse for half a year. All they did was throw down the occasional chicken or hog…disgusting. I seem to have lost my slippers.”

“I’ll buy you new ones.”

“I expect we’re going to have to rely on Michael,” Myrnin said, switching suddenly back to the original question. “The boy has an automatic entrance to Amelie’s presence, as her offspring. The difficulty is that he’s hardly in a position to voluntarily assist us, and by the way, Shame, why did you shoot him?”

“It’s Shane, and if you call me that again, you’ll be getting the next dart.”

“The question still stands.”

“Because he was going after Claire. Again.” Shane didn’t look at her, not even a glance in the rearview mirror; Claire knew, because she was waiting for it—for some sign that his anger was starting to wear off.

“Again?” Myrnin asked, and his eyebrows rose. “My. Things change so quickly with you young people. Claire, are you enemies now with Michael?”

“Not exactly,” she said. Shane cut her off.

“Last time he just tongue-kissed her,” Shane said. “This time it looked a little more extreme than that. So I didn’t take the chance of being wrong.”

That earned her a sharp, interested look from Myrnin. “Well. We’ll have to have the full story, then.”

“We really don’t,” she said. “Something’s wrong with Michael, all right. And I saw Naomi, with Oliver. They’re working together.”

“That—is very, very unpleasant,” Myrnin said. He frowned and pulled at a stray thread on his shirt, threatening to unravel an entire piece of it. “Naomi was killed in the attack on the draug, or so it was said. I had my doubts. It seemed too convenient, considering that Naomi had begun working to undermine Amelie. I imagine she wanted to take her place even then, but Amelie’s not someone who fails to respond to a challenge.”

“You mean Amelie had Naomi killed?”

“Possibly. Or possibly Oliver did, to protect her. But if so, he must have had a change of heart, since, or Naomi secured control of him. I’ve never trusted the Roundhead, myself. A man of low character and high ambition. Naomi wouldn’t be above using him to achieve her dreams of ruling.”

“Then we have to tell Amelie he’s stabbing her in the back.”
Claire took a deep breath. “
You
have to tell her. She won’t believe me, or Shane, and Michael’s not able to tell her anything, even if he wanted to.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Look at me. I’m in no fit state to—”

“You’re the official bearer of bad news,” Shane said, and pointed the rifle at Myrnin. “End of discussion.”

“Yes,” Myrnin said instantly. “Of course. No problem at all.”

There was quite a lot of animated debate about how to make it into the guarded area around Founder’s Square. In the end, they propped Michael up in the passenger seat, next to Myrnin, who held him upright with a friendly arm around his shoulders; when Claire rolled down the passenger window, the Founder’s Square vampire guard took one look inside, saw Michael and Myrnin, and nodded them through without any questions. “Amazing,” Myrnin said, squeezing rank water out of his hair. “You’d think someone might notice my general appearance.”

“Funny, I’d think you’d notice that it’s not that different from how you usually look,” Shane said. He hadn’t lowered the rifle; he sat braced in the back, aiming it generally in Myrnin’s direction.

“Really? I’ll have to work on that, clearly. Tell me, are you really so angry at Claire that you’re willing to fire that weapon in an enclosed vehicle, with a distinct chance of hitting her?”

“I’m not angry,” Shane said. “I’m careful.” That, Claire noticed, didn’t really answer the question at all.

It did shut Myrnin up for a while, at least until they’d parked the hearse in the underground lot of Founder’s Square. Shane was forced to leave the gun, but he grabbed Claire’s backpack and filled it with a selection of the handiest possible weapons.

“We’re not going to be able to fight our way in, or out again,” Myrnin said. “You might keep that in mind during your packing frenzy.”

“Shut up.” Shane put the backpack over his shoulder, and for the first time, looked at Claire directly. “He’s your responsibility. Keep him from doing anything too crazy.”

“I’ll try,” she said. It was the first real conversation—brief and businesslike as it was—that they’d had in hours, and it made her feel just a tiny bit less awful…until he turned his back on her in the elevator, in preference to watching the numbers flicker until they’d arrived at the right floor. Myrnin led the way, which was a good thing, because the first intersection brought them face-to-face with two of Amelie’s black-uniformed guards.

“We were told you left,” one of them said to Myrnin.

“You were ill-informed, then,” Myrnin said loftily, and drips of filthy water ran down his feet to leave stains on the carpet. “I’m here to see the Founder.”

“Like that?” The guard gave him an up-and-down look, eyebrows raised.

“Would you like me to shower and change before warning her of potential disaster? Because of course one wouldn’t like to deliver that news in a less-than-pristine state.”

The guard accepted that, but then he turned the analysis on Claire and Shane. “And them?”

“With me,” he said. “Entourage. You know.”

“Backpack,” the second guard said to Shane, and gestured. He hesitated. “Now.”

“Oh, give it up. I told you we couldn’t use those anyway,” Myrnin said. “Do it. Quickly. We have little time left, for heaven’s sake.”

The guards were ignoring him now, focused on Shane and the potentially lethal contents of his bag, and as soon as they’d turned away from him, Myrnin reached out, grabbed each of the guards by the side of the head, and knocked them together, hard. Claire
shuddered at the sound of bone crunching. Both men dropped to the carpet, twitching.

“Come on,” Myrnin said. “They won’t be down for long. But don’t worry, their brains aren’t complicated enough to be damaged.”

“But—”

“Claire, we
do not have time.
” He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along at a run, past closed doorways, painted portraits, flickering lights…

And into an open doorway.

Amelie’s assistant rose to her feet in alarm at the sight of them and bared her teeth, and Myrnin bared his in turn. “Announce me,” he said, and then shook his head. “Never mind; I’ll do it myself.”

He lowered his shoulder and ran at the inner door. The lock broke, and the door swung open…

On Amelie, held in Oliver’s arms. Not as a hostage, as Claire originally thought, but in a position that could only be called, ah, intimate. That was one hell of a kiss in progress, and there were fewer clothes than might be strictly formal.

The kiss broke off as Myrnin came to a sliding halt in the remains of the door, with Shane and Claire close behind, and said, “Well, this is awkward. Beg pardon, but I believe Claire has something to tell you.”

Then he shoved her forward as Oliver stepped away from the embrace and began buttoning up his shirt. Amelie glared at Claire, then at Myrnin, then at Shane, as if deciding which of them to kill first.

Myrnin seriously wasn’t going to do anything, Claire realized. He was standing back, watching. She wasn’t sure what he was watching
for
, but he’d left her deliberately hanging there, wriggling like a worm on a hook.

“Well?” Amelie’s voice was a crack of sound, like a sheet of ice snapping. “What could possibly be so vital that you intrude here on my privacy, like some assassin?” She grabbed Shane by the collar and dragged him close, ripped the backpack from his hands, and shredded it open, spilling weapons across the floor. “You come to use these, then? Are you in league with your father again? I warn you, this time, the cage won’t go unused. You’ll burn for this, you little fool.”

“Shane’s just trying to protect us! Oliver’s betraying you,” Claire blurted. “He’s working with—”

She didn’t have time for more. Oliver was right on her, hand gripping her throat as he lifted her effortlessly off the carpet until her feet dangled and kicked uselessly. She clawed at his hand, but he wasn’t going to let her breathe. Panic blinded her, smothered her, and all she knew for a few seconds was that she was going to die before she could make things right again with Shane.

Myrnin reached down, grabbed the silver-tipped bat, and hit Oliver right between the shoulder blades, hard enough to knock him off-balance. Claire was dropped to the carpet, where she whooped in a breath.