Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,102

that I do,’ he said, and rested a proprietary hand on VLAD. ‘You developed an object we badly needed in order to keep any captives we managed to secure in line. The immortals are very dangerous, as I’m sure you already know. So, I suppose the answer to your question is yes. Liz was a means to an end, the end being your acquisition for our project.’

‘By immortals, you mean vampires.’

‘It’s the common word for them, but the important thing about them from a biological standpoint is that their tissues simply don’t age. They are – petrified, in a sense. And yet also alive. There are a few other organisms capable of this kind of extraordinary behaviour but—’

‘Not really here for the biology lesson, professor,’ Shane said, interrupting what was sure to be a Myrnin-worthy gush of information. Claire was a little disappointed, actually. ‘We want Jesse released. Now. And that thing you’re holding doesn’t belong to you, so we’d like it back, too.’

Dr Davis and his two minions actually exchanged amused glances before he said, ‘You’re playing well out of your league, boy. Please don’t bluff. It’s just embarrassing.’

‘He’s not bluffing, professor,’ Claire said. ‘Really.’

Shane shook his head. ‘Ah, come on, don’t call him professor, he’s got no right to that. He’s a scumbag who gets college girls to bang him for grades. Right, Claire?’

‘Definitely. By the way, Liz cried all night. In case you were interested, professor.’

‘Here’s a tip,’ Shane said. ‘If you leave a girl crying, you’re probably not doing your Don Juan routine right, asshole.’

Dr Davis said nothing, but his expression compressed into an angry mask, and his eyes bored holes into the two of them. His grip tightened on VLAD.

And that was exactly the moment that the two men standing next to him just … vanished. Not literally, in a dramatic puff of smoke, but more of a now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t blur of motion. Davis didn’t even notice for a few seconds, and by then it was too late; Oliver was there, teeth bared, facing him.

Davis’s startled cry and stumbling backward retreat was almost fun to see. Almost … and then Myrnin was behind him, shoving him forward into Oliver’s embrace. Oliver spun the man around, and Myrnin stripped the device from Davis’s hands.

Then Myrnin froze, looking at Claire with a blank, odd expression, and said, ‘Did you build another one already? Because this most assuredly is not the working model.’

And that was the moment when Dr Irene Anderson stepped out from the closed doorway behind them, aimed with the VLAD weapon that she was holding, and shot Oliver with it.

The effect was immediate, and drastic. Oliver flung Dr Davis away from him, cried out, clapped his hands to his head, and sank down against the wall, shaking. Weeping. He got to his hands and knees, tried to rise, and she shot him again, and this time … this time Oliver didn’t get up.

Claire, open-mouthed, stared at her professor, and didn’t know what to do. What to say. Maybe she misunderstood, maybe …

She hadn’t.

Dr Anderson turned toward her, and the look in her eyes was flat, cool and very scary. ‘That’s three of them out of commission,’ she said. ‘But I know Oliver didn’t come here alone. Where is Myrnin?’

Claire involuntarily glanced aside at the place Dr Davis had been standing, but the area behind him was vacant now. Myrnin was nowhere to be seen. ‘You played me,’ she said. ‘You played me all along. You agreed to take me on as a student not because Myrnin asked you, but because you found out I had something you could use. Something your crazy friends wanted. He trusted you, but you—’

‘I got the hell out of Morganville, Claire, just as you did, so please don’t pretend that there is some higher moral ground on which you’re standing. The vampires used me just as they used you; they found a young, impressionable and bright girl and fed her to the monster. You and I survived that. Not everyone did.’

Everything Dr Anderson was saying was true, but – but it didn’t describe Myrnin, not really. It wasn’t his fault. He tried, tried hard, to be a good person, a real person, not just a soulless monster sucking blood out of people.

But when he failed, he failed spectacularly, like a doomed meteor plunging to Earth.

Claire suddenly realised that a shadow off to the side, about six feet away from Shane, wasn’t empty any more. Myrnin had managed to make his