Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,123

his gaze; it was too strange, too … too frightening.

‘We can’t just leave all this here,’ Shane said. ‘For one thing, our DNA’s all over the place.’

‘What do you propose?’ Oliver asked.

‘Well, it’s a farm. There’s gasoline and fertiliser.’

Pete nodded, suddenly looking a lot steadier than he’d been. ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. He and Shane moved to a storage building next to the barn, and began rolling out drums and equipment. It didn’t take long, with vampire help, to wire up improvised bombs – something Shane had learnt from his dad, Claire assumed – and set them in both the barn and farmhouse.

‘What was this?’ Claire asked numbly. ‘I – who are they?’

‘Were,’ Myrnin said. ‘They were from the Daylight Foundation.’

‘But what do they want?’ She was shivering now, shuddering, and she half expected Myrnin to notice, to ask if she was all right.

He didn’t. There was nothing in him right now that cared.

‘They want vampires dead,’ he said, and the slow, cruel smile on his face chilled her into ice. ‘The war has been coming for a while now. But they’ve chosen the wrong way to start it in earnest.’

Shane came back with Pete, and they all climbed into the van. In this vehicle they had Liz, Pete, Claire, Shane and Myrnin; Eve was the only human in the other van, mainly because Michael could probably protect only one of them at a time.

Myrnin was looking at Liz, and Pete. ‘Now, what shall we do with these two?’

Claire shuddered at the lack of feeling in his words, and quickly said, ‘They’re okay, Myrnin. They’ll be fine.’

‘They are not Morganville,’ he said. ‘And they are not fine.’ He put down the weapons, and before Claire could stop him, he grabbed Liz and pulled her close. Claire and Liz both screamed, and Pete lunged forward. Shane would have, but he’d just climbed into the driver’s seat. None of that mattered. Myrnin ignored Pete’s attempt to pull him off, just as he ignored Claire’s words that tumbled out begging him not to hurt her, and Liz’s struggles to pull free.

Then Liz stopped screaming. She went entirely still in Myrnin’s hands, staring into his eyes, and Claire swallowed and let go. She wanted a weapon – a silver one, preferably – but there was nothing in the van that could really hurt Myrnin.

Nothing but VLAD.

Pete had already thought of it, and he picked one of the two up – the damaged one. God only knew if it would work, but if it did, it would only make things worse. ‘Not that one!’ Claire yelped, and scrambled over to grab the other. ‘Put it down!’ Pete did, and Claire turned VLAD – the original version – on Myrnin. ‘Please. Please don’t make me do this. I don’t want to do this.’

‘Claire,’ Shane said softly. ‘Don’t.’

Because Myrnin’s head had turned toward her, and the look he gave her was bone-chilling. It wasn’t a human sort of expression. She remembered what they used to call him, in the bad old days; what his neighbour in Morganville, Gramma Day, still called him. Trap-door spider. This was the old, worst version of Myrnin, and the most powerful.

‘Put that down, or I’ll snap her head off like a daisy and beat you with it,’ he said. It was almost a purr. ‘I’m not intending to hurt her. But I’ll happily do it if you try to use that on me again. And I won’t stop with her. Do you really want to be trapped in this van with me in a murder-crazed state?’

He sounded rational, but he wasn’t, and Claire froze. She didn’t dare try to shoot. He was fast, ridiculously so, and he’d move the barrel aside in these close quarters and then … then it would be a bloodbath.

He’d probably be sorry later. Probably.

She put the weapon down.

Myrnin turned his gaze back on Liz, who seemed terrified and mesmerised at the same time. ‘Now,’ he said, in that same warm, terrifying purr. ‘Let’s see what it would be best for you to remember. Ah, I know. You were abducted and held here at this place. You don’t know what their business was, but you believed that they dealt in drugs and slaves.’ He paused and frowned, then looked confused. ‘Do they still have slaves these days?’

‘Sex slaves,’ Shane said. ‘Yeah.’

‘Ah. How unpleasant. Very well, they dealt in drugs and sex slaves here at this place. There was an attack by some rival force. Everyone was killed.