Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)

“Uh . . . have you noticed he’s not wearing much?” Michael asked. “At least I got to keep my pants.” He’d thrown a lab coat on over his bare chest, but it didn’t fit very well.

Claire hadn’t noticed, actually, until that very moment, and while it was more than a little distracting, she just ignored all of it as they carried Oliver’s heavy, limp form to the car and jammed it in next to Ayesha. There was a shout from the door, and Claire looked up to see one of the men from Eve’s treatment room— if you could call it that— standing in the doorway, trying to force his way past the jammed empty gurneys. “Get in!” she yelled. She saw the furious face of Dr. Anderson behind the orderly. “We have to go!”

Michael started the car as Eve piled into the front next to him, which left Claire no choice but to climb into the backseat with two half- naked comatose vampires. She tried not to think about that, about the cool, dead- feeling bodies pressed against her.

Eve was gagging again, which was miserable for her, and poten- tially miserable for everybody else.

Michael jammed the car in reverse just as one of the orderlies— who must have scavenged a gun from one of the fallen guards— took a shot at them. It smashed the windshield into blinding cracks, with a neat hole high in the center, and it took a second for the delayed reaction to kick in. Claire checked herself for leaks, but the bullet had gone through the back without hitting anyone.

“I can’t see!” Michael yelled. Eve, with barely a pause to flinch, braced herself and began to kick the front windshield. Somewhere in the confusion she’d switched out her paper house shoes for a too- large pair of men’s boots, and they came in handy now as she smashed the whole shattered mess out, leaving them with a make- shift convertible. “Claire, get the back!”

That was a lot harder, because she had no leverage and no room. Claire felt around on the floor and found a kid’s baseball bat rolling under her feet; Amanda must have had a son or daugh- ter in Little League.

She smashed at the back window until it broke out into a heap on the trunk. Not clean, but good enough to allow Michael visi- bility.

Claire lost her hold on the bat as he accelerated backward, and it rolled off, thumped down the slope of the metal, and clattered to the parking lot as Michael swerved, shifted gears again, and roared out at the top speed Amanda’s car could manage.

The cool breeze felt good, and it wiped some of the blank shock from Claire’s mind. There were no more shots from the building behind them, which was lucky. “Where are we going?”

Claire asked. Unfortunately, Michael asked it at the same time, which meant none of them had any good ideas . . . and behind them, not more than a couple of blocks back, police lights began strobing. “They’re on us!”

“I see them,” Michael said tightly. “I— holy shit! ”

He hit the brakes so hard that Claire— not belted in, for obvi- ous reasons— had to grab his seat back in a death grip to keep from being catapulted through the front open window. The two limp vampires in the back with her slammed forward like crash dummies as the car skidded, tires smoking, and came to a shud- dering halt.

Shane was standing in the road.

He looked violent and savage and crazy, and his eyes were that terrifying shade of gold. He was missing a shirt, his pants were ripped and bloody, and underneath it Claire could see that he’d been hurt— cuts and bruises.

But he was mostly human.

As the car stopped just inches from his thighs, he wavered, lost his balance, and slapped both palms on the hood for support as his knees went out from under him.

“Shane!”

“Claire, don’t—,” Michael yelled, but it was too late, she was already out of the car and racing toward him. He won’t hurt me, she thought. He didn’t hurt me before and he won’t hurt me now.

And he didn’t.

Shane’s hands were back to normal human hands, though they looked bloody and bruised, and when he raised his head to meet her gaze, the hot golden color was fading out of his eyes. “Claire?”

He sounded lost and scared. “I was looking for you. For Amelie— I smelled her blood . . .”

Michael had opened the driver’s- side door and stepped out, watching them. Ready, Claire thought, to come to her defense if necessary . . . or to Shane’s, if he needed it, too. Now he came up and put his weight under Shane’s other arm as her boyfriend threatened to drop completely.

“Hey, bro, you found me instead,” Michael said. “You been fighting without me?”

“You’re— you’re not a— Mikey, what the hell . . . ?” Shane was just beginning to realize the magnitude of what had happened, but nobody had much time to explain it. The sirens were wailing behind them. Granted, those cop cars would be making straight for the asylum, but they would definitely have the description of Amanda’s car in minutes, and then it would be almost impossible to make it out of town.

“Got to go,” Claire said, and on Shane’s other side, Michael nodded.

“Let’s get you in the car. We’ll talk on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Shane asked. “Can’t go home. They’re in the house.”

Claire wanted to ask about that, badly, but they were out of time. Instead, she helped Michael drag Shane around to Eve’s side of the car. Eve squished over, and Shane got his customary shot- gun seat.

The door just barely squeezed shut.

Michael and Claire dove back in, and Michael hit the gas hard, peeling out with a screech that probably would have drawn atten- tion if it hadn’t been for the unholy racket of sirens a few streets over.

Sunset was painting the skies a bloody mess of red and orange.

“Um . . . are you okay? Is she okay?” Shane asked, looking at Eve, who was trembling and looking green around the edges.

“She’ll be okay. Where are we going?” Claire asked, holding on to Michael’s seat for dear life.

“We’re getting the hell out of Morganville,” he said. “We’re go- ing to Blacke.”

Blacke, Texas, was a little town (small even by Morganville stan- dards) about two hours away as the crows flew . . . but crows didn’t build roads, and the road builders had no reason to want to go to Blacke. Most people didn’t. Morganville was practically a tourist trap by comparison.

But the little place had the distinction— the secret distinction— of being the only other town where vampires lived in peace with humans. That wasn’t because of the unselfishness of the vampires who’d moved there; the leader of that ragged band, Morley, didn’t have even a hint of altruism in him. What he did have was a burning desire to run his own life and to not live by Morganville’s rules . . . and a healthy fear/respect for Mrs. Grant, the town’s librarian. Blacke had been overrun by a vampire plague brought on by a visit from another, much nastier predator who didn’t care about the consequences, and Mrs. Grant had organized the town’s survivors into an armed camp. Morley had intended to come to Blacke as a conqueror, but instead he’d become its protec- tor and savior.

He seemed to find that oddly thrilling. Or maybe he’d just found Mrs. Grant thrilling. He’d had a hot- for- teacher thing go- ing on when last they’d seen him. Their partnership running the town— and protecting the citizens of Blacke who’d been unwill- ingly turned into vampires— seemed to work better than anyone expected.

Or so Claire had heard. She hadn’t visited since she’d left the town behind to return to Morganville.

“You’re sure?” she asked Michael.

“Do you think we’ve got a choice?” They were heading fast for Morganville’s town limits; she could see the silhouette of the billboard ahead. “If we don’t get the hell out of here, then Fallon will have me, and he’ll have Oliver. If Amelie’s still free, he’ll have what he needs to bring her back in. Plus, whatever else happens, he is never going to touch Eve again.” Wow. Michael was usually a calm guy, but Fallon’s attack on Eve had put him on the edge, for sure.

“That’s sweet,” Eve said. She was pressed up against him, a sit- uation Claire was sure she didn’t mind, and now she let her head rest lightly on his shoulder. “Sweetie, I’m sorry I lost my ring.”

“Didn’t lose me.”

“I know.” She gave a happy sigh and wiggled closer. “Is it weird to say this is nice?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, but he was smiling. He looked . . . more himself, Claire thought. “Pretty weird, weirdo.”

Eve turned her head toward him, considering him carefully.

“Speaking of. What the hell happened to you? I mean, your eyes . . . they’re okay now, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t have a nightlight feature before. Unless you swallowed your phone, your eyes really shouldn’t do that.”

He shrugged. “Dog bite, remember?”

“So now you’re what, a hellhound?”

“Would it be too much if I said, Bitch, please?”

“Probably.”

“Consider my manly silence an answer, then.”

The banter sounded normal, but underneath there was fear— fear from both of them. For each other, and maybe even about each other. After a second or two of silence, Shane said, “Hey, Mikey?”

“Yeah, man.”

“So you’re not a vampire.”

“I’d have let you know ahead of time, but it happened pretty fast.”

“I think that just saved your life,” Shane said, and leaned his head back against the seat. “They sent me to hunt Amelie down, but you’ve got her blood in you— had her blood in you. I can still kind of smell it, but it’s faded now.”

“You’d have killed me?”

“I’d have tried really hard not to, if that’s any help.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He looked tired, Claire thought, and her heart ached for him. “Can’t swear I wouldn’t have, though. It was hard enough holding off to let Claire go, and let Amelie es- cape.”