Kiss of Death Page 0,84

the hell is going on in here?" A vague shape loomed up behind him out of the shadows. Then another one. Then another. Shane and Claire quickly moved to stand back to back. So did Eve and Michael. Among the four of them, they were covering every angle. "Lurking isn't answering," Shane said. "Oliver? Little help?" Instead, one of the shapes stepped forward into the light. Morley. Claire felt relieved, and annoyed. Of course it was Morley. Why had she ever doubted it? He was the champion lurker of all time. "What did you bring?" Morley rasped. "Besides charm and beauty?" Eve said. "Why? What did you need? What are you doing here?"

"They've been helping us," whispered someone out of the dark. Eve turned up the power on her lantern to max, and the dim, cold light finally penetrated the shadows enough to show the people lying crumpled on the dirty floor of the garage. Well, people might have been a little bit misleading, because Claire realized they were all vampires; their eyes caught the light and reflected it back. She didn't recognize them. And then it finally occurred to her why she wouldn't. These were the vampires of Blacke. The sick ones. And there must have been at least ten of them, in addition to another ten or fifteen of Morley's crew, crammed into the small adobe building. "We went after them one by one," Morley said. "We've been at it for hours now. Some of them were a damn nuisance to bring here, let alone dose. But your witch potion does seem to work, little Claire. If we can get some of the crystals in them, they become rational enough to accept the cure." Claire was stunned. Somehow, having seen how far gone things were, she'd never really expected them to be able to save people--but here they were, lying exhausted on the floor, shaking and confused. Unlike the vampires Claire had dealt with in Morganville, these were newbies, like Michael; people who'd been turned against their will in the first place, and made sick at the same time. For some reason, they'd been more susceptible to getting on the crazy train than Michael; maybe that was because he was originally from Morganville, and had some kind of better resistance. But they'd certainly gotten sick a lot faster, and a lot worse, than any vampires she'd ever seen. Consequently, they were healing a whole lot more slowly. It hadn't taken Myrnin and Amelie and Oliver long to recover after taking their doses when Bishop was safely out of the way, but then, they were far older, and had already coped with being vampires. Claire focused on a boy about her own age. He looked scared, devastated, and alone. He looked guilty, as if he couldn't forget how he'd been surviving these past few weeks or what he'd done. "They're coming around," Morley continued. "But the more we get of them, the more vulnerable we are; they can't get up and fight yet, even if we'd trust them to do so. And the others over there, they've tracked us here. Oliver did a gallant job, but they're no doubt on their way here now."

"Uh, I think we might have pretty much led them straight over," Eve said. "Sorry. Nobody specified stealthy in the message."

"I was hoping one would take it as implied," Oliver snapped. "I should have known better."

"And where the hell is my brother, you jerk?"

"He has orders," Oliver said. "That's all you need to know."

"Children, children, this anger gets us nowhere," Morley said, in a mocking, motherly tone. "There are about fifteen of them left we haven't been able to catch and give the cure, and sadly, we have very little left at this point. The ones we can't cure, we must confine, until we can get the drugs from Morganville." Funny, Claire had never really thought of him as being a humanitarian--vampiritarian? Anyway, someone who put the best interests of others first. But getting out of Morganville-- and away from Amelie--seemed to have done something good for Morley. He seemed to almost care. Almost. "Confine, not kill," Oliver said, and turned to come back toward them. His eyes had gone safely dark again, although Claire could see how tired and hungry he was in the sharp moves he made, and the tense set of his muscles. "And how precisely do you think we should do that, Morley? It's been difficult enough to trap these creatures singly