He fell short. “Please—”
“This one,” Fallon said, and dragged Jesse out onto the tile.
“Take her for the cure.”
“No!” It was just a whisper from Myrnin, but it was full of an- guish and horror, and Claire tried to think what she could do to stop it. Maybe she’ll make it, Claire thought. Maybe Jesse could be— What?
Saved? Jesse liked who she was. She was a good person. She used her strength to help others.
She didn’t need saving.
I have to do something.
She didn’t get the chance, because Oliver lurched to his feet and said raggedly, “Take me.”
Fallon turned slowly to look at him. “Excuse me?”
“I. Volunteer. To take. Your cure.” Oliver said it with preci- sion, biting the words off in clean, sharp, cutting edges. “You need a volunteer. A symbol. Who better than me?”
“It’s not like you, Oliver, all this self- sacrifice,” Fallon said, but he shrugged. “You’d be useful, if you survive. You likely won’t, you know.”
“Then you’ll have your way, and I won’t have to look upon you again. We both win.”
Fallon gestured, and the cops handcuffed him and took him away. Claire found herself wondering how they deactivated the collars. They must have, since they didn’t remove it before remov- ing him . . . but she also knew that problem was just a way for her brain to throw up an emotional shield to keep her panic at bay.
They were taking Michael, and Eve, and Oliver, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. The enormity of it crashed in on her then, and panic pressed down. Her lungs were burning, and she risked taking in a single, quick, trembling breath.
Fallon saw the movement.
His eyes widened, and he gestured at one of his black- jacketed Daylighter guards, who crossed the atrium, bent, and grabbed her by the arm.
Claire was ready.
She came straight up, launching herself at him with all the fury that had been building up inside her since she saw how Fallon treated Eve and Michael, and the top of her skull collided so hard with his nose that she saw stars. He let go of her and reeled back, and she charged forward, suddenly and icily calm, sliding into that empty space Shane had taught her to occupy when her life was on the line. She went low, dodging the man’s wild one- fisted swing as he held his gushing nose with the other hand, and whirled like a dancer to come up inside his defense and smash another elbow right into the damage she’d already done. He screamed— a high- pitched scream that sounded as much surprised as pained— and went down hard on his back. He writhed to get to what looked like some kind of Taser, but Claire got to it first, yanked it free, and found the switch to turn it on. She shocked him, and left him bleeding and shaking on the floor as she went after Fallon.
He was holding a gun. Claire skidded to a halt, eyes widening, and took her finger off the trigger for the Taser. The menacing, comforting crackling sound stopped.
“Put that down,” Fallon said. He sounded calm, and gently amused. “You Glass House children are vicious when roused, aren’t you? And for what, defense of vampires? Little girl, you re- ally don’t have the slightest idea what you’re protecting, do you? What they are? What they do?”
“I know what you are,” she said. “I’ve seen what you do. That’s enough.”
“When you fight your enemies, you must become them, or be- come worse. It’s how wars are won, little girl, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand that at your age.” He’d seemed so careful and correct before, but now all she could see was the arrogance un- derneath all that— the pure, nauseating fanaticism. “You can’t fight evil with peace and love.”
“I thought you were a religious man,” she shot back. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Jesus said to do.”
“Jesus was crucified, and I don’t intend to suffer the same.” He gestured with the gun. “I won’t warn you again. Drop that toy.”
“Or what? You’ll shoot me? I thought you were all about pro- tecting humans.”
“You’re only technically human if you collaborate with the enemy.”
She found she was smiling. No idea why, really; it wasn’t a mo- ment for smiling, but then again, it wasn’t happiness driving the expression on her face. It probably wasn’t a very nice look for her.
“And thus begins the war,” she said softly. She understood now what Jesse had meant by that. “You’re willing to kill innocent peo- ple to save them. Sounds like a real crusade now, doesn’t it?”
“Quiet,” he said. He sounded gratifyingly angry. “Down on your knees. Do it. Hands behind your head.”
She did it, because she didn’t see how getting herself killed would make anything better, but she kept smiling because it seemed to upset him.
She kept smiling even as they grabbed her wrists and hand- cuffed her— for the second time in a day— and dragged her to her feet.
“You’re going to lose,” she told him.
“Take her out of here,” he said, and this time he forced a smile, too. It didn’t look convincing. “For her own protection, of course.”
“Take her where?” She could barely understand the guard’s voice; he sounded angry and muffled and bloody, and his nose was probably hurting him badly. She almost felt a bolt of guilt for it.
Almost.
“The same place you took her friend,” Fallon said. “Tell Dr.
Anderson this one needs reeducation, too. And Claire? I’m going to raze your Founder House to the ground. You’ll have no place to go back to. Call it a brand- new start.”
He was going to do it anyway, Claire told herself, just to keep herself from lunging right at him. It doesn’t mat er. We’ll find a way to stop him.
We have to find a way.
“It’s just a house,” she said, and kept smiling. “And we’re never letting you win.”
But she knew that the first half of that was a lie. The Glass House was never just a house.
Not to them.
Nine
The guard brought along a friend to drive, since his eyes were swelling shut and his face was a gory mess of blood.
His nose, Claire thought, looked like something a mon- ster makeup artist might have rejected as “too weird.” It was amaz- ing how much damage she’d done to him, and she felt increasingly guilty about it. That was the difference between her and Shane in the end, she thought; she couldn’t take any pride in her violence.
But it was still good to know she could defend herself when it was necessary.
The guards didn’t say anything to her on the way. She thought they were too angry to try to be civil, and truthfully, she didn’t want to talk to them anyway. She was busy searching the dusty crack between the seat and the backrest, trying to see if anyone had dropped something useful. She found a rolled tube that felt like a cigarette but was probably something less legal, and left it there. Just when she was about to give it up as a lost cause, her fingers brushed across something that felt metallic. She grabbed for it, and realized it was a paper clip, one of the larger, sturdier ones.
She teased it out slowly from between the fabric, then tried to think how to hide it. She settled for sliding it into a frayed opening in the jeans she was wearing, and clipping it to the thin white strings so that it dangled inside. It might fall off, but it was all she could do in case they searched her.
Not a long ride in the police car— Hannah was evidently al- lowing use of official equipment for private security guards, which seemed like a bad idea to Claire— before they pulled up at the front of the iron gates of an old, brooding place that looked as if it had been built to be some kind of fortress. Narrow, barred windows, and forbidding Gothic doors. The sign above the door read morganville mental health facility. That didn’t seem promising.
The guards turned to look at her as they pulled the car to a halt inside the gates, next to the front door. “Don’t give us any more trouble,” said the one whose nose she hadn’t busted. “I don’t like whaling on skinny little girls, but if you pull a stunt like that again, I promise you, I won’t hesitate to put you on the ground.”
The other one mumbled something that sounded like ap- proval, but between his congested nose and his bad mood, Claire couldn’t be sure of anything. She sat quietly as the uninjured man opened her door and then let him help her out, since having her wrists bound behind her back made everything about ten times harder (which was probably the point). The stony gray mass of the building— the asylum— loomed over her like it was planning to collapse and bury her, and she felt a small tremor of fear, looking at her future. No, we’re get ing out of here, she thought. Me and Eve, we’re blowing this place and saving the Glass House and Michael and Oliver and Myrnin and making it all right again.