"He's sick," Claire said. "Very sick. I was looking for you to try to help him, but I don't know where he is now. Amelie took him, too."
He was already shaking his head. "She didn't bring him here. I haven't seen them."
Claire sensed a shadow behind her and, turning, came face-to-face with a vampire. A smallish one, just a little taller than her own modest height. It was a girl barely out of her teens, with waist-length blond hair and lovely dark eyes, who smiled at the two of them with an unsettlingly knowing expression.
"I am Naomi," she said. "This is my sister Violet." Just behind her was a slightly older girl, same dark eyes, only a little stronger in the chin, and with midnight-black hair. "We wish to thank you, Doctor, for your gift. We have not felt so well in many years."
"You're welcome," Dr. Mills said. He sounded tense, and Claire could understand why; the vamps were all on their best behavior, but that could change, and she saw a shadow of it in Naomi. "I'm sure Amelie will be along to get you soon."
The two vamps nodded, bobbed an old-fashioned curtsy, and withdrew back into the main room. There was a soft buzz of conversation building out there, a kind of whisper that sounded like a calm sea on the shore. Vampires didn't have to speak loudly to be heard, at least by one another.
"Is Amelie coming?" Dr. Mills asked. "Because I'm starting to feel like the special of the day around here."
Oh. He thought Claire was the scout riding ahead of the vampire cavalry. She looked around for Ada, but she didn't see any sign of her now. She'd just faded out. Claire folded up the phone and put it back in her pocket, feeling a little stupid. "I don't know," she said. "I was told you needed help."
He gave a jaw-cracking yawn, murmured an apology, and nodded. "I've got sacks of crystals, and some of the liquid. We need to distribute it all over town, make sure everybody who needs it gets medicated. It won't last for long, and it isn't the cure, but until I can get Bishop's blood, it'll have to do. Can you help me measure it into individual doses?"
Claire realized, as she was scooping measuring spoons of red crystals and putting them in bottles, that the burning urgency in her guts had finally, slowly faded away.
She pulled up her sleeve.
The tattoo was barely a shadow under her skin.
As she stared at the place where it had been, Naomi the vampire leaned over her shoulder and studied it with her. Claire flinched, which was probably what the vamp had intended, and Naomi chuckled. "I see Bishop marked you," she said. "Don't fear, child. It's almost gone now. He marked my sister once." The smile left her face, and it set in hard, cold lines. "Then he marked us both forever. Sister Amelie told us he was dead, long ago, but he isn't, is he?"
Claire shook her head, unable to say anything with fangs so close to her neck. Naomi didn't seem to be threatening, but she didn't seem to be comforting, either.
"Then it's come to it," Naomi said. "It's time for us to fight him. Good. For my sister's sake, I'll be happy to face him again." Naomi's cool hand stroked Claire's cheek. "Pretty child. You smell warm."
Claire shuddered. "Yeah, well, I, uh, am. I guess."
"Warm as sunlight. So was I, once." Naomi's sigh brushed Claire's skin, and then the vampire was gone, moving in a blur. The vampires were all moving faster now - recovering, Claire guessed. Growing stronger.
Dr. Mills was looking at them in satisfaction, but Claire couldn't quite get there from here. Great, they were feeling better; she could get behind that.
But now they were healthy vampires. Which meant they could make more vampires, and that changed everything. It changed the entire dynamic of Morganville.
Didn't it?
Her phone rang. No number displayed on the caller ID. Claire flipped it open and said, "What, Ada?"
"You must take Dr. Mills and leave," Ada said. "I will dial the portal for you. Go now."
"Would you mind telling me what - "
"Do as I say or I will leave you both alone in a room full of vampires who may crave an instant hot meal."
Myrnin's computer was such a bitch.
Claire snapped the phone shut. "Grab what you need," she said. "It's time to go."
Dr. Mills nodded. He'd loaded the individual doses into a couple of duffel bags, and he handed one to her as he hefted the other. He opened up a padded silver box and checked the contents.
Two syringes.
"Those are the last two doses of the serum, right?" Claire asked. "Maybe I'd better . . . ?"
He handed them over. "Make sure Myrnin gets one, and Amelie gets the other," he said. "Oliver will try to hijack one for himself. Don't let him."
Like she stood a chance of saying no to Oliver on her own, but she nodded anyway. Dr. Mills seemed relieved to have the stuff out of his hands. He looked around at the vampires, who were all turning toward them. "Maybe we should be going," he said. "I'm sure they're all grateful, but - "
"Yeah," Claire said. "Let's."
Walking through the crowd was like walking through a giant pride of lions. They might be calmly observing, but there was no mistaking the predatory gleam in their eyes as they did it. Claire caught the glitter of fangs in one or two mouths, and made sure not to make eye contact.
Naomi stepped into her path. The young vampire - well, young-looking - blocked the way out. "May I beg a favor?" she asked. "A small one, I assure you."
Claire licked her lips. "Sure."
"Give this to my sister Amelie," she said, and lifted a silver necklace off of her alabaster neck. It was a beautiful little thing, thin as a whisper, and it had a white cameo dangling from it. "Tell her that we are with her if she requires it."
Claire put the necklace in her pocket, and nodded. "I'll tell her." Naomi didn't move. "Did you want something else?"
"Oh, yes," Naomi said faintly. "Very badly. But you see, I know my sister. I know she would not forgive me if I did anything untoward. So you and your kind doctor must go, before we forget our promises."
Still, she didn't move.
Claire went around her. Naomi turned to watch her.
Stepping through the stone illusion seemed a whole lot easier this time, maybe because she knew staying was definitely not a good idea at all.
Ada's ghost stood in the hallway, looking furiously out of sorts with the delay. She turned and glided away at top speed. Claire broke into a run to keep up, and Dr. Mills kept pace. Ada suddenly stopped and spun her image to face them like a flat cardboard cutout, and the speaker on Claire's phone shrieked with static.
Dr. Mills went down.
"Run!" Ada screamed through the speakerphone, but Claire couldn't. She couldn't leave him behind.
Claire stopped to reach down to help him up, but he wasn't moving. There was a cut on his head, and although he was breathing, he was completely unconscious.
The cut was on the back of his head. He hadn't fallen that way.
Someone had hit him.
Ada tried to tell her to run away, but she stayed where she was. Ada's ghostly image screamed silently in frustration and burst into a storm of misty static.
Gone.
In the darkness, Claire felt fingers brush her hair.
"Naomi?" she asked in a faint whisper.
A dry chuckle sounded next to her ear, shockingly close. "Never met the lady. You know who I am," a male voice said. "Don't you, Claire?"
She closed her eyes.
"Hello," she said, "Mr. Collins."
Chapter Nine
Shane's dad turned on an electric light overhead, and the sudden glare made Claire wince and blink. She looked down quickly at Dr. Mills to confirm that he was still breathing, and not moving. Good. She needed all her concentration right now.
Frank Collins looked the same as he had the last time she'd seen him alive, there in Bishop's office - thin, lean, with his long graying hair down around his face, only now he was paler. He looked like a man who'd lived hard and died the same way - and there was definitely a shadow in him that hadn't been there before. A crazy, scary shine in his eyes, like a silver film. He had a few things in common with Oliver, but where Oliver came across as tough, frightening, and ultimately rational, Collins missed that last one entirely.
He was way too close. Claire stayed very still, trying not to let her pulse pound too hard.
"I see what my son likes about you," Frank Collins said. "You're tougher than you look."