And, surprisingly, it did. The loud snuffling stopped, and when she dared to glance up, she saw that the two things had dismissed her and were moving off down the hallway, using all four legs now.
The hallway was littered with shredded, cast- off clothes. They stopped, snuffling the walls, and then glided into Shane’s room like ghosts.
Claire let out a sudden, explosive breath, shot to her feet, and fought a very strong impulse that wanted her to run for the stairs and get the hell out of this house, away from these things, before it was too late.
Instead, she ran forward, her vision fixed on the place on the wood she needed to press to open the hidden door.
She hit it and raced inside as the panel sighed open, pulling it shut with a hard slam just as she saw the first gleam of yellow eyes from the shadows of Shane’s bedroom turning her way. She raced up the stairs, her heart pounding hard, and stopped only when she’d reached the top and entered Amelie’s hidden lair— Miranda’s bedroom.
No Miranda, but there was someone lying on the sofa.
It was Amelie, and she was dressed in red, a dull crimson that seemed completely wrong for her, and her skin was alabaster white, and all Claire could think at first was why is she wearing that color? before she realized that it wasn’t a color at all.
It was blood, soaking her shredded white dress.
Amelie’s eyes opened, carnelian- red to match her dress of blood, and she said, “You need to flee, Claire. You can’t help me. If you go now, they will ignore you. You’re not the prey they’re tracking.”
“What happened?” Claire asked, and came closer. Amelie’s frail white hand rose, trembled, and gestured for her to stop, and Claire obeyed, because when a vampire who’d lost that much blood said to stay away it was probably a good idea to listen. “What are those— things?” But she knew. She remembered Hannah, and the bite on Shane’s arm, and it felt like gravity reversed under her feet.
“They are not things,” Amelie said. “They are humans, modi- fied to track vampires, to harry us until we are too weak to fight or run. They are Fallon’s loyal dogs, with no will of their own. But they will not harm you if you go now.” She sounded alert, but hor- ribly weak. Claire swallowed hard and edged closer. “Did you not hear me? Leave, Claire. They will not kill me. They’ll save that honor for their master.”
“I can’t. I can’t just leave!”
“I made a terrible mistake,” Amelie whispered. She closed her eyes again, and her hand dropped back to her chest. “I thought— I thought I could reason with him. He was one of mine, once. One of us. I never believed he could turn against us so thoroughly. My folly, Claire, only mine. I brought this on us. If I had killed him when I had the chance . . .”
“How do I stop them?” Claire asked, and grabbed Amelie’s hand now, squeezing it to get her attention. Amelie’s eyes flickered open again, but stared straight up, avoiding hers. “Amelie! You can’t just give up— you have to tell me what I can do!”
“You can do only one thing,” Amelie said, and suddenly Claire wasn’t holding Amelie’s hand . . . Amelie was holding hers, in an unbreakable grip. “You can help Myrnin. Do nothing for me, do you understand? Let them have me. They won’t kill me, as I said.
But you must stand aside or they will tear through you to reach me.”
Her head turned, just a little, as if she was listening. Claire heard nothing, but she felt something inside— a kind of shifting, a pain that went beyond any physical senses. The house was hurting.
And the hidden door was being shredded under the attack of six- inch claws.
“I want to help you,” Claire said. “Please.”
“There’s no escape from this room. Myrnin’s portals are bro- ken, and the only way out now is through the creatures below.
You can’t help me. All you can do is escape, and I want you to escape, Claire. I want you to go. Gather your friends and those you love. Leave the Glass House, and never come back. Leave Mor- ganville. Go. My cause is lost, and it’s a cause you could never understand in any case.” Amelie attempted a smile. It didn’t look right. “Never forget that I’m the monster.”
“I can’t just leave you here to die, Amelie. You’re not—” She swallowed hard. “You’re not the monster.”
Amelie studied her directly for a few seconds, and the power and hunger and strength of the woman behind that stare left Claire feeling light- headed. It was like looking into history somehow . . . history hundreds of years deep. “You’re so young,” Amelie said. “And so stubborn. It’s served you well, but it will not serve you now. There is one thing you can do for me, then. One last service you can perform.”
Claire nodded. She was afraid, but she wasn’t afraid of Amelie, really. She was afraid of what would happen when Amelie was gone.
When there was nothing at all to stop Fallon.
“Hold still,” Amelie said, and pulled Claire’s wrist to her lips.
The pain of her fangs going in was brief, and Claire felt an in- stant unsteadiness take hold, a kind of unreal, whispering faint- ness that made it necessary for her to fall to her knees beside the sofa. She didn’t try to pull away; there wasn’t any point. Amelie would drink as much as she wanted, and maybe that would be every thing, and maybe not. But either way, nothing Claire could do would change the outcome.
Being bitten by Amelie wasn’t like being bitten by any of the others she’d survived before. It was surprisingly easy somehow, as if Amelie’s bite injected some kind of Valium along with it. She felt peaceful, which was very strange; she ought to have felt horrified, or angry, or anything at all except stupidly relaxed.
It went on for a long moment, and then Amelie let her go with a soft sigh, and the peace that had been echoing through Claire’s head evaporated like ice in the desert sun and panic kicked in again, hard and very real. She was weak and drained, and her head was spinning, and when she tried to get up she couldn’t. All she could do was edge slowly back, scooting with her hands until she’d put a respectable distance between her and the queen dressed in blood who lay on the couch.
Amelie sat up. Blood drops ran down her arms like red fringe, and she looked down at herself with a frown, then stood as a hol- low sound came from the door below. It wasn’t down, not yet, but they’d clawed through the wood and reached the metal behind it.
“Wipe my blood from your hands,” she told Claire. “They will smell it on you, and that would be a dangerous thing. When they come for me, go down the stairs. Get Shane and leave. Promise me you will do this.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
“They will hurt me,” Amelie said flatly. “I will fight them, but they will take me. Don’t interfere. You can’t save me. I thank you for the gift of your blood, Claire, and I will honor it. But you must honor me as well now.”
It came to Claire in a blinding flash that there was one possi- bility that Amelie hadn’t thought about— a dangerous one. Poten- tially fatal.
But maybe, just maybe, one that could work.
“If you get out of here, can you hide?” Claire asked her. “Is there someplace you can go?”
“Morley has promised me safety in the town of Blacke, if I can reach the borders of Morganville,” Amelie said. “From there, per- haps we can find a way to strike at Fallon. But it’s of no use to speculate. I will never leave this attic except in their hands.”
This, Claire thought, was going to require two things: preci- sion timing and a whole lot of luck. The house was on her side, though; she could feel it anxiously waiting for any chance to help. And Shane would be armed and dangerous and looking for her, very soon.
She heard the shriek of metal warping and being ripped apart, and waited another few seconds, staring at Amelie. She couldn’t hear these creatures, because they moved like ghosts, but in her pe-ripheral vision she saw one of them on the stairs. As it reached the top, she saw the blur of the second one close behind it.
“Sorry,” Claire said. “I’m not giving up on you just yet.”
She rushed forward, and before Amelie could stop her, she wrapped the Founder of Morganville in a hug.
It was weird and nauseating. The blood from Amelie’s dress squelched wetly between them, smearing Claire, and beneath the garment the vampire felt like a cold marble statue, stiffly unyielding. It lasted only a second, and then Amelie’s shock cracked, and she shoved Claire backward. “What are you doing?” she demanded, but there wasn’t time to explain, because the hellhounds were coming.