smelled like smoke--not burning-insulation smoke, but the kind of bong smoke college students liked a lot better. It made Claire's eyes water. The rave lights were still on, cycling through all kinds of colors and patterns, strobing white every few seconds. The music was still thundering, too--the deejay had left tracks running and bugged out from behind the console in the corner. Claire could feel the vibrations in her bones, and her ears went instantly into shock. She could still hear, but it was like hearing through earmuffs.
A few people were too scared to make a break for the door; she could see them hiding behind the speakers, or pressed against the walls in a huddle, trying to pretend it all wasn't happening. The usual Morganville strategy. It was hard to make out details in the weird lights, but none of them had Eve's Goth style. Mostly college kids, Claire thought. Well, they'd gotten their tuition's worth tonight.
There were bodies on the warehouse floor. They weren't moving. Some of them had very, very pale faces, and wide eyes, and mouths still open in silent screams. Bite marks on their throats.
There were also a couple of vampires down--also pale, but with stakes in their chests; that didn't necessarily mean they were dead, just wounded. There was one who was definitely dead, because--and Claire had to control an urge to retch--his head was missing. There was still a stake in his heart, too.
She thought she saw the head a few feet away in the corner, but no way was she going to go take a closer look. She was thankful Shane turned away from all that, heading into a hallway that channeled the thundering music into waves. It was still too loud to talk. In strobe flashes, Claire saw blood on the walls in smears.
The hallway opened into another big room, and the music wasn't quite loud enough here to cover the screams. Or the sound of fighting.
Shane stopped, zipped open the bag, and pulled out a crossbow. He stuck the silver stake he'd been gripping into a pocket of his jeans, loaded the crossbow, put another bolt between his teeth, and nodded to Claire to follow. She nodded back.
When they came around the corner, they saw where the noise was coming from. A group of people were hemmed tightly into a corner, mostly cowering, but some were big, drunk-looking frat dudes who were yelling challenges and smashing wooden crates over the heads of the vampires who were closing in on them. The lights in here were dim, dirty fluorescents, and flickering like mad, but somehow Claire saw what happened next with high-definition, slow-motion clarity.
A male vampire--young-looking, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a black leather jacket--grabbed hold of one of the frat boys (who was, she realized, wearing an EEK T-shirt) and dragged him away from the others. The boy was football-big, but the slender vamp lifted him right off the ground by the neck, glaring up at him as he struggled and tried to scream.
Then the vampire said, "You think you can defy us and live? Who do you think you are, meat? This is our town. It's always been ours. You have to pay for your disrespect."
And then he closed his fist and crushed the boy's big, muscular throat like crunching up a sheet of paper.
Shane brought the crossbow up almost as fast and fired. The bolt hit the vamp in the back, on the left side, just about dead center in the heart.
The two bodies hit the floor together.
And then all the vampires turned on Shane and Claire. Shane loaded the second bolt and dropped the bag between the two of them. Claire didn't need any instructions; she crouched down and groped around inside the bag. No extra crossbow, unfortunately, but plenty more bolts, which she took out, and two vials of silvery liquid--silver nitrate. Claire handed Shane another bolt to put between his teeth and popped the cap on one of the vials.
The vampires didn't look familiar to her, but then, she didn't keep up with every bloodsucker in Morganville; she thought these were probably some of the ones Amelie had been concerned about, who weren't taking the new human-rights decrees of the town quite so well. Well, vampires liked to be in charge, no doubt about that. And they didn't like being challenged.
I just saw that boy die, she thought, but then shut that thought off, walled it away, because it wouldn't