Bite Club Page 0,27

vampire, no matter how it turns out. Human violence gets judged and punished by humans. That's the rule."

"Amelie makes the rules, dear child."

They were in a relatively deserted part of town now, heading for Founder's Square. Normally, Claire wouldn't have liked walking out here in blazing noon sun, not even with an escort, but having a vampire at her side had made her careless.

She never saw it coming, not until Myrnin suddenly stopped and raised his head, face gone still and unnaturally pale in the silvery moonlight. He usually had a kind of awkwardly angled grace that was almost human, but now he took on that weird vampire stillness that made Claire feel so...clumsy. So vulnerable.

Except Myrnin hadn't abruptly gone all fangy on her; he was focusing on something out in the dark.

"Claire," he said, in a low, soothing, carefully controlled voice. "I would like you to take out your mobile phone and call the police, please. Do that now. Perhaps that emergency number."

It was so utterly un-Myrnin that it scared her into fumbling her phone out of her pocket. "Why?" she whispered, as she started punching the three numbers in.

"Because it's an emergency," he said, and then somethinghit him , something faster than Claire could

actually see, and she'd only just gotten the 911 entered and hadn't pressed call, and before Myrnin fell, something had her wrist in a crushing grip. She had a confused impression of a stench like the worst body odor in the world, like poor Stinky Doug times a thousand, and a feverish glitter of eyes, and a face that looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over it.......

With sharp, sharp,sharp fangs that glittered like knives and were heading straight for her throat.

Myrnin hit him--it?--with so much force that the two vampires skidded at least fifty feet, rolling and punching and fighting, and Claire realized that just standing there like a total idiot might not be the best survival strategy. She felt numb and stupid with shock, but she saw the glowing blue screen of her phone in the grass, scrambled for it, and hit the call button. She looked around wildly, trying to get her bearings; it all seemed dark and murky and strange, but she saw the street sign in the faint gleam of the underpowered streetlight at the corner.

She was only two blocks from Founder's Square.

Claire ran, holding the phone to her ear. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like a sledgehammer hitting her chest. The sidewalk was dark, very dark, but she didn't worry about cracks or uneven pavement or anything else but running as fast as she possibly could, heading for the somewhat questionable safety of even more vampires, and,God , she couldn't believe she was runningto the vampires, but that thing, that thing wasn't--

"Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?"

She didn't have any breath, she realized. Claire gasped out something about where she was and was about to try to explain what the hell had just happened, when she tripped and the phone went flying as she lost her balance and momentum carried her forward into what was going to be a bone-snapping impact with the pavement.

She got her hands in front of her, but it wasn't the pavement she hit.

It was Myrnin, who caught her, gave her a look she couldn't read at all, and grabbed her fallen phone when she pointed numbly at it. He had blood on his face and long, animal scratches that were healing slowly. His clothes were ripped and shredded, too.

Without another word, he scooped her up in his arms and ran for Founder's Square. It didn't take long--thirty seconds, maybe--but Claire used the time to get her head back together and try to slow down her flailing heartbeat.You're not going to die. Calm down.

She ran it through her head again. Myrnin's alarm. The glimpse of that skeletonized face. The smell of death.

That had been a starving, savage vampire, and in Morganville, that shouldn't be happening. Vampires had ready access to the blood bank, if nothing else. If they were lawbreakers, they had plenty of easy targets. How did one get that skeletal, that savage? And why attackMyrnin first, before going for her? She'd had the feeling it had come for her only because she was calling for help.

It didn't make sense.

"Something's going on," she said as they turned the corner and she saw Founder's Square dead ahead. "Put me down."

"I'm fine," Myrnin said, and stopped to let her slip down to a standing