Carpe Corpus Page 0,53

relax, and felt her tide of worry begin to recede - until he turned toward her.

His eyes weren't red. They were white. Just . . . white, with the faint shadow of an iris and pupil showing through. The eyes of a corpse.

"Claire," he said, and took a step toward her.

Then he fell, hit the ground, and went completely limp.

"We could take him to the hospital," Hannah said, but not as if she thought it was a good idea. Claire was kneeling next to Myrnin, with Michael hovering near her, ready to yank her out of the way if Myrnin should suddenly surge back to bloodsucking life.

He was quiet. He looked dead.

"I think this is a little beyond the hospital," Claire said. "It's part of the disease. It's in his notes - he charted the progress; sometimes this happens. They just . . . collapse. They revive, but usually when they do, they're not - " Her voice failed her, and she had to clear her throat. "Not the same." Myrnin's notes, what she could remember of them, seemed to indicate that when - or if - the vampire recovered from the coma, he didn't have much left of his original personality.

Myrnin had been sick a long time. He'd lost the ability to create other vampires more than a hundred years ago; he'd begun behaving weirdly about another fifty years after, and from there it had progressed rapidly. Amelie, by contrast, was just now getting to the early physical symptoms - the occasional loss of emotional control, and the shakes. Oliver . . . well. Who knew if Oliver's problem was the disease or just a bad attitude?

The fact that Myrnin had held out longer than at least thirty other vampires confined underground in cells was either proof that the disease didn't work the same way in everyone, or that Myrnin was incredibly determined. He hadn't wanted to take the cure . . . but there wasn't a choice now. He had to take it.

And she had to get him to Dr. Mills.

2

They carried him through the portal - well, Michael and Hannah carried him; Claire concentrated on getting them to their target location, the basement of Morganville High. "Stay here," Claire said. "I'm going to get the doctor."

"We can carry him up," Michael said. He was being charitable; he could have done it on his own, no problem, but he was letting Hannah take half the weight.

"I know," Claire said. "I just don't want to lead a really obvious parade to a secret hideout."

She didn't wait for an answer, just dashed up the steps, through the broken-locked door, and out into the hallways, dodging around oblivious teens her own age who were hustling to and from class. It was early morning, but Morganville High was in full session, and Claire had to shove her way through the crowd with a little more force than usual.

Somebody grabbed her by the back of her shirt and hauled her to a sudden stop. She flailed for escape, but it was just like always - she was too small, and he was way too big.

Her captor was wearing a shirt and tie, and had the drill sergeant hairstyle of school officials everywhere. He glared at her as if she was some bug he'd caught scurrying across his dinner table. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "No shoving in the halls!"

"I'm not a student!" she yelled. "Let go of me!"

He got a glance at the gold bracelet on her wrist, and his eyes went wide; he quickly focused back on her face. "You're that girl - Claire. Claire Danvers.The Founder's - Sorry." He let her go so suddenly she almost toppled over. "My apologies, miss. I thought you were just another of these rude punk kids."

There were a few moments in her new, weird life when it was all worth it - worth being the freak of nature with all the baggage that had been loaded on her in Morganville.

This was one of them. She braced herself, put her hands on her hips, and glared at him with the kind of icy calm that she imagined Amelie would have brought down like a guillotine blade. "I am a rude punk kid," she said. "But I'm a rude punk kid you don't get to order around. Now, I'd like you to leave me alone and go to your office. And shut the door. Now."

He looked at her as if he couldn't quite believe