Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,113

before this crisis erupted. Myrnin’s arrival pushed us into an accelerated timeline. I think we’ve gotten the situation contained, but if any communications made it back to Amelie, we may have a fight on our hands, and I need at least one more working device to be safe. So, you do that, and I’ll make sure your boyfriend and your other friends get out of this in one piece. Clear?’

‘Clear,’ Claire said. ‘Dr Davis’s gun didn’t work? That was a bluff?’

Dr Anderson shrugged. ‘I thought you’d recognise it, and it would slow you down so I could use the one that did.’

It was good strategy. Shane would have approved.

‘We’re ready here,’ said Dr Davis. His goons were strapping Myrnin into some kind of harness. Oliver had been taken out already, locked in a similar straitjacket. ‘Back to the farm?’

‘As quickly as possible,’ Dr Anderson said. ‘Nobody’s scheduled to come into this building until ten, but an early arrival could compromise everything. Let’s move out. We won’t be coming back here.’

The farm? Claire didn’t know if that was some kind of shorthand code, but it didn’t sound like the MIT lab, anyway. She went along with them quietly, and ended up sitting next to Myrnin. He was wrapped up like a mummy in the thick canvas jacket, and his head lolled forward so his dark hair cascaded down in waves to veil his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to him. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She could feel the animal shuddering of his body, wave after wave of what was either pain, or terror, or both. ‘I never meant for this to happen, Myrnin, I swear. I just – I just didn’t see it.’

He turned his head toward her. She saw a red flash from his eyes from behind the curtain of his hair, and felt a brief pulse of something from him – hunger, anger, blind rage. Then he sighed, slipped to one side, and rested against the metal wall of the van. Chains clinked as he shifted. They hadn’t taken any chances, she saw; the chains were coated with silver, and so were the manacles around his wrists and ankles. It was burning him.

Oliver, across from her, was in a similar state, but he wasn’t trembling quite so badly. Maybe he’d just had more practice at handling fear and pain, or maybe he hadn’t gotten quite so bad a dose of VLAD’s medicine. But he didn’t look by any stretch good, either.

Last of all, they loaded Jesse.

She looked awful. Her red hair was tangled into a dry net; her lips were dry and pale and crusted, and her eyes were glowing a pained, painful red. She looked alien and strange and pitiful, all at once, and she, too, was wearing the padded jacket and chains, and they locked her down next to Oliver. She didn’t seem to see Claire, or if she did, to comprehend any of what was going on. And she looked dangerous.

But the sight of her seemed to somehow make Myrnin a little better. He stopped shaking quite so much, and sat up straight again. So maybe there was something still inside there, after all.

Claire hoped so. The alternative was way too awful to consider.

It was a long, silent ride. Dr Davis was up front with Dr Anderson, and Claire’s only company, besides the out-of-it vampires, were the three armed guards crowded inside. None of them were talkative. She wasn’t even sure they blinked. She had plenty of time to observe them, in the dim interior lights – there were no windows back here, which was probably lucky for the vamps. Three men of about the same age, thirties to forties; the oldest had some grey in his hair, but not much. All fit. All wearing what seemed like similar dark suits. Claire was no expert, but they didn’t look expensive – more like … uniforms.

And they were all wearing a pin on their lapels. A rising sun pin.

This looked less and less like the government, and more and more like something private that Dr Anderson had gotten herself in deep with. Private, but well funded. The Daylight Foundation. The people Jesse had been so worried about.

Somehow, that was even less comforting than the idea the government knew about the vampires.

‘So,’ Claire said to the man sitting next to her. ‘Are you, ah, from Boston?’

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at her. He did look at his watch, though, and adjusted the grip on his gun. He