Daylighters (4 page)

“Shane? What’s wrong? You’re burning up!” Claire put the back of her hand against his forehead—or tried to. He knocked her arm away. It shocked her, and it surprised him, too. She saw the instant regret in his eyes, but when he tried to talk, he gagged. “Shane?”

“I need to get out,” he said. “Can’t stay here—” He couldn’t get the rest out, just kept gagging. His face looked gray and damp.

“Take him outside and let him have some fresh air,” Hannah said. “I’ll stay here with Eve. Nothing will harm her.”

Claire didn’t want to go; she didn’t want Eve to feel alone and abandoned. But something was clearly very wrong with Shane, and getting worse with every breath he took. She didn’t debate it any further. She just grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the light streaming in through the thick glass doors. When she tried the metal handle, it didn’t move. Locked. She knocked urgently on the glass, and the policeman outside finally opened it—but blocked her way. “Just a minute,” he said. “Where’s Chief Moses?”

“It’s okay, Bud,” Hannah called from behind him. “Let them out.”

He didn’t seem inclined, but he did step back, and Claire pulled Shane over the threshold and down the sidewalk, out into the bright, harsh sunlight and the dry desert air. He practically folded up once they reached the curb, and sat down hard there, his head in his hands. The tremors, though, were lessening, and as she stroked his hair she thought he was getting better. “Shane?” she asked. “Shane, what the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and gulped air. “God. I don’t know. It felt like I was burning up from the inside out. Maybe—maybe you’d better go back in, for Eve. I can’t, Claire. I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

He was definitely, inexplicably better out here, away from the mall and the vamps. And as he looked up, she saw the strange light in his eyes. It looked almost like fear.

“Because I want to kill them,” he said. “The vampires. I want to kill them all. It’s like what I’ve felt my whole life, but turned up to eleven. And if I go back in there, I don’t think I can control it.”

She stared at him, shocked, and he lifted his shoulders in a very small shrug. He still looked unnaturally flushed, and sweat pasted thin strings of hair to his forehead.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why. Please, don’t ask me to explain it, okay? Because I just can’t.”

But somehow she thought he could. She’d seen how he’d acted from time to time around Michael and the other vampires on the trip back. There was something wrong with him.
Really
wrong, in ways that scared them both, but Shane was trying to conceal and ignore it all.

It wasn’t the time to dig into it, though, and she shoved down her desire to interrogate him until this made some kind of sense, however twisted; he was right—she needed to go back. For Eve. For Michael.

For Myrnin, because if anyone knew where he was, Michael would.

She kissed Shane, and then she scrambled up and went back to the doors. The deputy—Bud?—didn’t harass her about it this time; he just silently unlocked them and let her back in, and she walked over to stand beside the spot where Eve and Michael were still kneeling near the fountain. They didn’t seem inclined to let go of each other, but Eve looked up and raised her eyebrows, silently asking the question.

“I don’t know,” Claire said. “But he feels better out there. It was almost like claustrophobia or something.”

“Weird,” Eve said. “Because that boy never hesitated to crawl into small spaces, and this isn’t exactly restrictive. It’s a
mall.
”

“Maybe it’s the high ratio of vampires,” Michael said, and managed a smile, though it was thin. “I mean, if I wasn’t already on Team Fang, I might be a little intimidated.”

“Shane? Intimidated? Better be glad he’s out there and not in here making you eat those words,” Eve said. She shook her head. “No, something’s not right with him. It’s just wrong, the way he reacted. Wrong and weird and wrong, also. Claire, keep an eye on him, okay?”

“I will,” she said, and hesitated for a long few seconds before she glanced at Michael. “Um—I have to ask, because I don’t see them, but about Myrnin, and Jesse—?”

“They’re fine,” Michael said. “Well, you know. It’s Myrnin, so
fine
probably isn’t so accurate, but she’s keeping him calm in one of the rooms that way.” He nodded toward the darkness, the northeast corner where some dark, shuttered spaces lurked. “He’s having a hard time accepting . . . the situation.” He tapped the collar with one fingertip and gave Hannah a quick glance. “You know how he gets when he feels trapped.”

Oh, she knew, and she felt heartsick at the idea of how Myrnin, of all people, would have reacted to wearing a shock collar. Hannah would probably have had to replace the batteries in her control unit several times over, because one thing about Myrnin, he was stubborn, and he just did
not
give up. Jesse was probably holding him back with all of her strength to keep him from charging out here—and no doubt not for the first, or the last, time.

She refrained from asking anything more, mainly because she was acutely aware of Hannah standing there, and she really didn’t trust Hannah at all now. She was loyal to Fallon, obviously, or she wouldn’t be holding the button for the shock collars. It wouldn’t be wise to say too much in Hannah’s hearing, since everything would end up reported back to the Daylight Foundation.

But she did turn to Hannah and ask her a question that seemed perfectly obvious. “You can’t keep a bunch of vampires in here like this forever,” she said. “No matter what kind of little training devices you put on them. What are you planning to do with them?”

Hannah never once looked at her directly. She was watching Amelie, Claire realized—watching for any sign of trouble from the vampire queen. But Amelie didn’t seem to be inclined, yet, to give any orders to her people. “We plan to help them,” she said. “That’s all. We plan to help them get better.”

“Yeah,” Eve said. “You’re
helping
, all right. What is this, Vampire Reeducation Camp? Are you planning on helping them learn to live without blood? Vegan vampires?”

The silence that greeted this was so deep that it made Claire’s already tense muscles ache and tighten. There was something in Hannah’s carefully controlled expression that made her feel sick and scared. “It’s probably time to go now before this gets any messier,” Hannah said. “Wrap it up, kids.”

Eve raised her head from Michael’s shoulder. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She was too angry to cry. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Eve, she’s right. You can’t stay,” he said in a gentle voice. He brushed his hand across her sleek black hair, let it drift through his fingers, and touched her lips just as softly. “You have to go, Eve. You wouldn’t be safe here.”

“Why not? Aren’t they feeding you?”

“They’re feeding us. I’ll be fine,” he said, and kissed her. “Eve, I’ll be fine. Just go, okay? Claire, take her. Please.”

Claire didn’t want to, but she could see that he was serious; when she hesitated, he fixed her with a calm, steady stare until she moved forward and put her hand under Eve’s arm to get her to her feet.

“No,” Eve said. “No, I’m not going, Claire. I can’t—we can’t just
leave him here . . .
”

“Maybe not, but we also can’t get him out,” Claire said. The words tasted horrible in her mouth, like ashes and iron, and she had to swallow hard to continue. “Not yet. But we will, Eve. I swear to you, this isn’t over.”

Hannah said, “It is for now. Michael, you move back to the line. Go on.”

He got up and walked back to where Oliver was waiting at the edge of the tiles—exactly opposite from where Amelie was standing in her glowing white suit. Oliver put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Maybe he meant to just hold him back, but it looked to Claire like . . . comfort? Odd, if so. Oliver wasn’t much on empathy. Then again, the look on Michael’s face—that lost, hollow, helpless look—would have moved anybody.

Except Hannah, apparently, who marched them straight to the door. As she opened it, though, Amelie said, without moving from where she stood, “Thank you for allowing Eve to see him, Chief Moses. I will not forget your kindness.” It sounded unmistakably chilling, and Hannah’s shoulders stiffened for a second, then deliberately relaxed.

“I’m sure you won’t,” Hannah said. “Anybody moves, everybody gets shocked down to the ground. Clear?”

“Yes,” Amelie said. “You have made yourself very clear indeed.”

None of the vamps moved. It was like looking at a room full of pale, silent statues, but the hate in their eyes was like nothing Claire had ever seen before. No wonder Michael hadn’t wanted Eve to stay. That kind of trapped fury didn’t bother with fine distinctions, and there would be some in that mall who didn’t care whom they killed . . . as long as they got to vent that rage on a human.

Just as the door closed, Claire heard Amelie say, soft as a whisper, “Don’t worry. We will see you very soon.”

The sunlight felt as cold as winter.

Shane was pacing near the cruiser, looking pale and agitated, and he was rubbing his arm as if it hurt him. He stopped and looked at them as Claire walked toward him. “What the hell happened?” He didn’t wait for an answer, though; he grabbed Eve’s other arm and helped to hold her up. “Dammit, Eve—”

“I want to go back,” Eve said. She sounded odd and shaky. “They’re going to kill all of them, I know they are, they’re going to do something terrible to Michael. I have to go
back
.” She tried to pull away, but Shane and Claire held on to her. Hannah opened the back door of the cruiser. She still wasn’t looking at them—looking anywhere
but
at them, in fact. Her face could have been carved from stone. “Please, don’t do this, Shane, please let me go—”

“You can’t even come close to getting in there again and you know it,” Shane said. “Eve. You
can’t
, and Michael doesn’t want you pulling something crazy like that. Come on.”

He put her into the car and walked around to block her from sliding out the other door; Claire took the space on one side of Eve as he crowded in on the other. She wasn’t fighting them, but she wasn’t helping, either.
At least she’s not angry,
Claire thought, but she wasn’t sure that was an improvement. No tears, no yelling. Just this . . . silence. And then there was Shane, still acting twitchy on Eve’s left, frowning and rubbing his forearm and snapping, as Hannah took the driver’s seat, “Can we just get the hell out of here already?”

That made Hannah give him a long glance in the mirror, but she started the engine. Shane’s tense body language seemed to ease up a little as the car pulled away from the blank, brooding exterior of the mall. Bitter Creek was a good name for it, Claire thought. Definitely not a happy kind of place.

It worried her that she hadn’t seen Myrnin at all.

H
annah took them home to the Glass House.

It looked different. And it wasn’t just the time Claire had spent away from it that had made it that way. Someone had painted it. Done a good job, too—the exterior was a neat, sparkling white, instead of the faded, peeling mess that had been there before. The trim was a crisp dark blue. It looked almost respectable. The lawn was even neatly mowed.

“What the
hell
?” She blurted it out before she meant to, and sent Shane a disbelieving look. He sent it right back, amplified. So, he hadn’t been on the work crew, then.

Neither had Eve, apparently, because she gulped, sat up straighter, and said, “Um, what is
that
?”

“The town funded a renewal program for all the remaining Founder Houses,” Hannah said. “To preserve our history. Don’t tell me you’re not pleased. It looks a hell of a lot better than the tumbledown mess it was before.”

It did. The railings were straight, the warped boards had been replaced on the porch, and the windows actually sparkled. At the top of the peaked roof, a new weather vane in the shape of a sunrise (ugh) creaked and turned in the direction of the breeze, and as Hannah opened her car door, Claire heard the thin, whispering sound of wind chimes. Someone had mounted a set of them at the edge of the porch, along with a large potted plant that looked new and healthy.

The place was spiffy and pretty and not
theirs
.

“Tell me you didn’t touch anything inside the house,” Eve said. “Because I swear I’ll cut somebody. We liked the house the way we left it! That is our home!” What she didn’t say, but Claire thought she almost heard, was
It’s Michael’s home.
And her heart ached for him, and for Eve.

“Nobody went inside the house,” Hannah assured them. “This was an exterior renovation project. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“You could have asked first,” Eve said, but after the initial shock, some of her dislike was fading. And yeah, the house
did
look fantastic—restored to all its old Victorian glory, neat and sound. Claire realized it only underscored how little they’d taken care of the place . . . but then, they’d had other priorities, like staying alive. And none of them was much on chores.

“Let’s just get inside,” Shane said. “Hey, Hannah? Tell the Daylighters not to do us any more favors. I don’t want to owe them.”

Hannah didn’t comment on that. She just opened the back door of the cruiser, and Shane piled out, followed by Eve, and last of all, Claire.

Walking up the steps was a whole different experience. The paint was still new enough to make her dizzy, and its smell mingled with the aroma of fresh-cut grass and new plants in the warm desert air. “Guess we’ll have to start watering the damn lawn now,” Shane said, and fumbled for his keys. “So much easier to take care of when it was a wreck. Watch the paint on the door. I’m pretty sure it’s still wet.”

As Claire followed them over the threshold, she felt a shiver of power crawl over her . . . the house, waking up from a sleep, coming alive, welcoming them home. It felt like a fresh blast of cool air, and also, weirdly, like hands stroking her hair. She shut and double-locked the door—ingrained habit, in Morganville—and leaned against the wood to breathe in deeply.

Inside, it still smelled familiar. Old wood, dust, paper—not a clean smell, but a good one. The interior walls needed painting just as much as those outside had; they were smudged, scratched, and dented from hard use. None of the four of them was much on surface cleaning, and as Claire glanced into the side parlor, she saw that the oval coffee table—replaced relatively recently, after half their furniture had gotten smashed in a fight—had a blurring of dust over its surface. The old Victorian sofa looked as saggy and tired as ever.

Shane and Eve had already wandered off down the hall, Shane heading for the more modern, overstuffed couch in the living room and Eve’s clunky boots echoing on the stairs that led up to their rooms. Claire went a few steps in, and just . . . stopped. She closed her eyes and felt a peculiar, warm kind of peace sink in.

Home.

She felt almost as if the house itself were saying it to her:
This is where you belong.
She remembered leaving here for her brief journey to MIT in the predawn darkness, carrying her bags down and trying not to wake up any of the others to let them know she was leaving. She remembered the feelings of excitement, of worry, of longing, of fear, of anguish . . . and of devastation.

It felt healing to be back.

It felt right.

“Claire?”

She opened her eyes. Shane was standing at the end of the hall, and his dark eyes were full of concern. She smiled at him and saw the tension ease. “I’m home,” she said, and came into his arms. They closed around her, strong and warm. “I’m home, Shane. We’re
home
.”

“Yeah,” he said, and let out a long, slow breath. “Home. But it’s not exactly what we left behind, is it?”

“The house, or Morganville?”

“Either one.”

“Seems the same in here.”

“Not quite,” he said. “Not without Michael.”

He was right about that.

•   •   •

Eve didn’t want to eat, but Shane found enough stuff in the kitchen to pull together a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, although the meat sauce tasted suspiciously like it had a chili-type origin. Canned chili, at that. Eve forked it mechanically into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, which was about as much as Claire thought they could reasonably expect from her just now. She looked hollow-eyed and exhausted and just . . . empty.

Shane tried to ask her things that normally would have gotten a snappy Eve-style comeback, but she either ignored them or responded with shrugs, until he finally put down his fork and said, “So, Eve, what’s your plan, then? Sit there and look sad and depressed until someone just feels so bad about your bruised little fee-fees that they give Michael back?”

“Screw you,” she said. It sounded mechanical, but then a fire came on behind her eyes and started blazing hotter and hotter. “Seriously, man,
screw you.
How dare you?”

“How dare
you
?” he replied. “Because the Eve I know wouldn’t just sit there and become the poster child for therapy. ‘Ask your doctor today for Depressia, the drug that makes you not freaking care about anything.’”

“You think I don’t care?” She stood up suddenly, fists clenched, and honestly, Claire thought Eve might lunge right across the table at him. Color was high and hot in Eve’s cheeks, and she shook with fury. “How can you even think that, you jackhole? You’re the one who walked out in the first place! And maybe if you’d helped me back there—”

“If I’d stayed in that mall, I would’ve started shit that would’ve got us all killed, and you know it,” Shane said flatly, and Eve pulled in a sharp breath to retort, then let it out, slowly, without a reply. She stared at him for a long moment.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

But he was lying, and Claire could see it; she could see that Eve did, too, and the two of them shared quick, confirming glances. His attention was fixed on Eve, and Claire quickly reached over, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his jeans jacket. It was the arm he’d kept rubbing earlier.

On it, she saw a vivid red scar in the shape of a bite. Healed, but inflamed, as if it was infected. “What is that?”

He yanked free of her, frowned, and pulled his sleeve back down to hide it. “Nothing.”

“It’s where the weird dog bit him,” Eve said. “I remember. It was when you left that night. It wasn’t normal, was it? Some kind of weirdo vamp dog.”

“It wasn’t a vampire dog.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just know. Because if it was some dog the vamps sent out to bite people, then I wouldn’t want to kill
vamps
, would I?” Shane blurted out. He looked pale, suddenly, and a little shaky, and when he picked up his fork it rattled against the plate, so he dropped it again. “Look, it was all I could do to not go after them on the way back here from Cambridge. I couldn’t even stand to be around Mikey in the van for long without wanting—wanting to go at him. Hurt him. But that was nothing to how it feels back here. And in the mall . . . it was too much. It was like I had to attack. Needed to rip them apart. And no, I don’t know what it is, and yeah, I’m fucking afraid, okay? I’m
terrified
.”

That left a ringing silence in the room. Eve opened her mouth again, closed it, and slowly sat down in her chair. Claire felt frozen in place, unable to think what to say. Her throat felt thick and tight, and she swallowed to clear it, then stretched out a hand toward him.

He flinched, but it was just a small move, not a real withdrawal. She rested her fingers gently on his shoulder, then stroked his hair. He felt hot, the way he had back at the mall. Feverish. “Shane, you’re sick,” she said. “Something happened to you. And we need to find out what it is and how to help you.”

“Sick or not, at least I’m not the one locked in a cage with a shock collar around my neck,” he said. “Eve’s right. We can’t leave him like that. I’ll be okay.”

“You’re not,” Eve said, and gave a bitter, brittle laugh. “Okay, none of us are okay. We need to do a lot of things, but first of all, Shane, we need to find out what’s happening with you. I may be depressed, but at least I’m not Mr. McMurdery Wolfenstein.” She paused for a second, and then shook her head. “Okay, I was about to say we should see if Myrnin knows what it could be, but . . . no. Can’t go to any vampires, I suppose. Emergency room?”

“They won’t know anything,” Shane said. “But I know someone who does. Hannah. She was there when I was bitten. She said there were more dogs, more bites. She’d know something, anyway.”

“I don’t trust Hannah.”

“No kidding. I don’t, either, but it’s not like we have a ton of options, Eve. I don’t want to go save Michael and end up—doing something I’d regret. Which right now seems really likely. I nearly lost it back there. And I might do it again, and I swear to God I don’t want to.” His face tightened, and his eyes darkened until they looked almost black. “So if Hannah knows something about what’s happening to me, then she’s going to tell me.”

That was ominous, and Claire’s sense of disquiet grew stronger. “Shane, don’t—”

He was already up from the table, with his plate and fork in his hand. It wasn’t like him not to finish a meal, but there was still a small twisty mountain of spaghetti left when he carried it into the kitchen.

Eve pushed her food around some more and said, “Claire, we’re in trouble. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “Eat your spaghetti.”

Eve obediently lifted a forkful to her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, then said, “You know I love you, but trust me, one thing your fancy Boston trip didn’t teach that boy? How to make decent spaghetti sauce.”

Eve’s critiquing the food was, for some odd reason, funny, and Claire’s breath hiccuped into a laugh that just kept going. And Eve started laughing, too. Shane slammed back through the kitchen doors and glared at them, which only made them keep helplessly, hopelessly giggling at the look on his face. “Sorry,” Claire gasped.

“It’s not funny.”

“I know! But—the food—was—”

“Pretty bad.” Shane’s body language relaxed, just a little. “Yeah, I forgot the art of combining crappy ingredients into an awesome whole while I was off in Fancytown, didn’t I?”

“Fancytown? You saw where I lived!” Her giggles finally dribbled away, but at least she was left with a happier afterglow than before. Eve managed another bite, for solidarity, probably.

“Good point.” He sat down and leaned his elbows on the empty spot where his plate had been. “You guys need to keep a leash on me, okay? I don’t think I can trust myself right now.”

“An
actual
leash? Because I have one,” Eve said. “It has spikes on the collar and everything.”

“Been there,” he said. “Remember?” And with a shock Claire did remember; it seemed like a long time ago now, but a wicked awful female vampire had once led him around on a leash at a party, and the memory of it still turned her stomach. And his. And Eve’s, apparently, because she dropped her fork onto the plate, shoved the whole thing away, and rested her forehead on her palms.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “Mine’s more for recreational purposes anyway. I don’t think it would do much to hold you back.”

“Recreational—okay, freak, I don’t even want to know that,” Shane said. “Let’s pretend that never happened. What I meant was, I’m counting on the two of you to check me if I’m heading for the cliff.”

“Roger that,” Eve said. “I’ll T-bone your ass right off that course.”

“Try not to break anything while you’re at it.”

“Like a nail?” She inspected her black-painted nails, which were looking a little ragged—not a lot of manicure time recently. “I see your point.” Then she folded her hands and looked at him, with all the banter put aside. “What are we doing, then? Going to see Hannah, or not?”

“Going,” Claire said. “But, Shane, you’re not doing the talking. I am. Clear?”

“Clear,” he said and nodded. “One request.”

“What?”

“Can we stop for a burger? Because, seriously, I am starving.”

•   •   •

Everything in Morganville, even the burger places, either had been given a face-lift or was in the process of getting one, and as Eve piloted her big black vintage hearse around the town, they spent a lot of time slowing down, gawking, and shaking their heads. “Wish I’d invested in the hardware store now,” Shane said. “I’d be rolling in money just from paint sales.” He was right about that. Almost every building had a gleaming new coat already or had people on ladders applying one. The few buildings that didn’t had bright, fluttering orange stickers applied to them—either a sign that their paint jobs were on the way or that they were being fined for not having one.

“It’s worse than that,” Eve said, and pointed straight ahead. “Check out Dog King.”

The Dog King was a relic from the 1950s, complete with vintage sign—a little drive-through hot dog and burger joint that had, at its best, looked sketchy, except for its totally awesome sign of a dachshund wearing a crown, a hot dog bun, and a cocky grin. Its leaning shack had been torn down and rebuilt as a shiny new store that was painted a very questionable teal blue. At least the sign hadn’t been touched.