Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,85
captured his full attention, at least for a moment. ‘We stand in danger, Claire. Very real danger. Irene says that your device has disappeared from her lab; someone with real credibility in the world intends to produce evidence of vampirism, perhaps including actual captured specimens. These are things that we can’t allow, for our own health and survival. We must locate these people, stop them and erase all knowledge of this event; when these things happen, they are cancers, and must be cut out. You understand?’
‘I understand that there’s more going on here than just what you’re into,’ she said. ‘Dr Anderson’s been dealing with some scary spy people, who have – probably not coincidentally – been in my house when they thought I wasn’t there, looking for something that might have been VLAD. And then my friend gets taken by men in a van? Sounds as if they’ve gone to the next level, to me. Maybe it’s connected to your doctor’s publication plans.’
‘If it is, if there is governmental involvement in all this, it’s grave, Claire, grave indeed.’
‘So, not like a cancer then.’
‘No, still very much like one. But I will need a much larger scalpel.’ She hoped he didn’t mean it literally; with Myrnin, you could never exactly be certain. ‘None of that matters just now. We must leave this place, and find Irene. She is exactly the thing that our enemies, if enemies they intend to be, will need – a human with deep knowledge of all things vampire. One with ties to the community, and credibility. We can take no chance that she falls into the wrong hands.’
Myrnin’s logic was often fuzzy, but this time it seemed right on the mark. Dr Anderson was vulnerable; if so many pieces were moving on the board, she needed to be made safe before anything else happened. Before Liz’s rescue, part of Claire mourned, but she knew she couldn’t help Liz, not immediately.
It occurred to her, then, to ask Myrnin the all-important question. ‘What’s the name of the doctor? The one who has the proof about vampires?’
‘A Dr Patrick Davis,’ he said. ‘I doubt you’d know anything of him.’
‘Well,’ Claire said, ‘you’d be wrong about that.’
And she began to see how all the disparate pieces of this fit together, to make a not-at-all pretty picture.
Oliver moved toward them, and gave Myrnin an impatient frown. ‘If you’re done gossiping with your little friend, we need to leave this place,’ Oliver said. ‘Now. Apparently that idiot boy Shane’s gotten himself in trouble with the police. They’ll surely track him sooner or later, as they’re not the complete fools one might wish.’
‘Perhaps we should leave Shane behind, then,’ Myrnin said casually. ‘It would simplify our troubles considerably.’
‘No!’ Claire said sharply. ‘Leave him, and you leave me. And I don’t think Eve and Michael will be too happy with that, either. You’re welcome to take it up with them.’
Myrnin looked as if he might be inclined to try, but Oliver shut him down decisively. ‘We leave no one behind. And Shane knows as much, if not more, about Morganville than anyone else; we don’t dare leave him behind. He’d be a gold mine of information.’
‘He’d never talk,’ Claire said.
‘Everyone talks,’ Oliver said. ‘The question is, do they tell the truth when they do? I don’t trust the boy’s lineage. There are glimmers of his father in him, still, and I’m not certain he wouldn’t glory a little in bringing Morganville down, once and for all, in his family’s memory. So he comes with us, and there’s no more on the subject.’
All of a sudden – and Claire had to confess to herself that she’d forgotten all about him – Pete stood up. It was such a sudden move that it drew all their attention to him. He looked pale, tense, and grim, and he said, ‘Jesse, I know I said I was down with all this vampire crazy shit, but this is next level. What am I supposed to do, just … roll with it?’
‘Yes,’ Jesse said. She sounded gentle about it, but firm. ‘I’m sorry, Pete, but you do. I don’t want to see you hurt.’
‘You think you could hurt me?’
‘I think I wouldn’t have to,’ she said. ‘And again, I’m sorry. Come with us. Staying here means that we leave you vulnerable to the people hunting us, and you’ve already seen the lengths to which they will go. Claire’s friend, and the attempt on Michael’s life … their questions to you