Shane came back with Pete, and they all climbed into the van. In this vehicle they had Liz, Pete, Claire, Shane and Myrnin; Eve was the only human in the other van, mainly because Michael could probably protect only one of them at a time.
Myrnin was looking at Liz, and Pete. ‘Now, what shall we do with these two?’
Claire shuddered at the lack of feeling in his words, and quickly said, ‘They’re okay, Myrnin. They’ll be fine.’
‘They are not Morganville,’ he said. ‘And they are not fine.’ He put down the weapons, and before Claire could stop him, he grabbed Liz and pulled her close. Claire and Liz both screamed, and Pete lunged forward. Shane would have, but he’d just climbed into the driver’s seat. None of that mattered. Myrnin ignored Pete’s attempt to pull him off, just as he ignored Claire’s words that tumbled out begging him not to hurt her, and Liz’s struggles to pull free.
Then Liz stopped screaming. She went entirely still in Myrnin’s hands, staring into his eyes, and Claire swallowed and let go. She wanted a weapon – a silver one, preferably – but there was nothing in the van that could really hurt Myrnin.
Nothing but VLAD.
Pete had already thought of it, and he picked one of the two up – the damaged one. God only knew if it would work, but if it did, it would only make things worse. ‘Not that one!’ Claire yelped, and scrambled over to grab the other. ‘Put it down!’ Pete did, and Claire turned VLAD – the original version – on Myrnin. ‘Please. Please don’t make me do this. I don’t want to do this.’
‘Claire,’ Shane said softly. ‘Don’t.’
Because Myrnin’s head had turned toward her, and the look he gave her was bone-chilling. It wasn’t a human sort of expression. She remembered what they used to call him, in the bad old days; what his neighbour in Morganville, Gramma Day, still called him.
Trap-door spider
. This was the old, worst version of Myrnin, and the most powerful.
‘Put that down, or I’ll snap her head off like a daisy and beat you with it,’ he said. It was almost a purr. ‘I’m not intending to hurt her. But I’ll happily do it if you try to use
that
on me again. And I won’t stop with her. Do you really want to be trapped in this van with me in a murder-crazed state?’
He sounded rational, but he wasn’t, and Claire froze. She didn’t dare try to shoot. He was fast, ridiculously so, and he’d move the barrel aside in these close quarters and then … then it would be a bloodbath.
He’d probably be sorry later. Probably.
She put the weapon down.
Myrnin turned his gaze back on Liz, who seemed terrified and mesmerised at the same time. ‘Now,’ he said, in that same warm, terrifying purr. ‘Let’s see what it would be best for you to remember. Ah, I know. You were abducted and held here at this place. You don’t know what their business was, but you believed that they dealt in drugs and slaves.’ He paused and frowned, then looked confused. ‘Do they still have slaves these days?’
‘Sex slaves,’ Shane said. ‘Yeah.’
‘Ah. How unpleasant. Very well, they dealt in drugs and sex slaves here at this place. There was an attack by some rival force. Everyone was killed. Then the farmhouse was destroyed. You were lucky to escape with your life by hiding in the fields.’ He released Liz, who sank back to the floor with her back against the van’s wall. ‘She’ll remember nothing else. Don’t speak to her. She won’t be able to respond, for now.’
Claire had no idea Myrnin could do something like this – though she supposed she should have known. He’d built a machine that could wipe out human memories. He’d have been able to do that only if he’d had the ability to do it himself, and known the techniques. But she’d never really seen him do it, full on.
He looked completely alien to her right now.
I’ve turned him up to eleven
, she thought, and had to choke back a terrified, completely insane laugh. This was a very bad idea, having Myrnin in a small enclosed space with four tempting pulses. He’d be hungry. He’d
have
to be hungry.
‘Yes, I am, a bit,’ he said, and she blinked. That terribly disturbing smile grew wider. ‘Does it surprise you I can read your thoughts? Your own fault, Claire. You turned on parts of my brain that I’d shut down years ago. For safety. I imagine that Oliver and Jesse are having much the same issue. I do hope that Eve doesn’t irritate them too much. I don’t hold out much hope for poor Irene, but then, she did bring it on herself.’
‘Myrnin—’
He shook his head. ‘Leave it.’ Then he turned toward Pete, and riveted him in place with a stare. ‘Now, for you. I think it’s best you were never here. I’d just leave you to burn with the rest, but you
are
Jesse’s friend, after all. She wouldn’t appreciate that. So here is your story: you were home, sleeping. You don’t know anything about this entire affair. In fact, you drank too much. When you do make it home, that’s precisely what you’ll do: drink too much. I’d like this to be as accurate as possible.’ Pete sank down against the van’s wall, next to Liz, staring straight ahead. He and Liz were both in some sort of limbo, held there by the power of Myrnin’s mind. It was unsettling how powerful he was right now.
‘Shane,’ Myrnin said, and her boyfriend turned face forward.
‘If you try to mess with my head, Count Dickula, I’ll rip your throat out,’ Shane said. There was a tense, trembling flatness to his voice that Claire didn’t remember ever having heard before, but he was probably just as freaked out as she felt right now. ‘And don’t you even
think
about touching Claire. I mean it.’
‘Drive,’ Myrnin said. He didn’t seem ruffled. He didn’t even, truthfully, seem to pay attention to what Shane had said. Claire hesitated, looking from him to the blank, zombified stares of Pete and Liz, and finally scrambled up to take the passenger seat of the van. She belted in just as Shane hit the gas.
‘Just so you know, I didn’t drive just because he made me from the power of his mind,’ Shane said. ‘I did it because the sooner I can get him out of here, the better I’m going to feel.’ He hesitated, and reached over to take her hand as he steered the big van over the rutted gravel road. Claire sighed in relief at the touch of his warm hand, and the feeling of safety it gave her to be in contact with him again. ‘Are you okay?’
She laughed. She couldn’t help it, and it had a distinctly crazy edge to it that earned her an alarmed look from him. ‘
Okay?
No. No, we just left a whole bunch of dead people back there, Shane.
Dead people
.’
‘I’m aware of that. But they were kind of trying to kill us hard and ugly. You don’t really think they’d have let us get out of there alive, do you?’
‘I don’t know. I just—’ The feelings boiled up in her again – despair, hopelessness, guilt. Anger, too. Anger at herself, and Myrnin, and Oliver, and Jesse, and … the world. But mostly at herself, for all the mistakes she’d made. ‘It’s my fault.’ All the misery distilled down into that one, nuclear-hot three-word sentence. Toxic. And Claire covered her face with her hands, fighting back tears.
‘Ah, yes, lovely. The guilt phase. Just what we needed,’ she heard Myrnin sigh, and heard his head bang hard against the van.
Shane didn’t say anything. He just put his hand on her leg and kept it there, a gentle and constant pressure, as they drove on into the rising light of day.
They were about a mile out when the explosives went off. Claire gasped at the fireball and looked behind them; the other black van with the rest of their survivors was there, following closely. The smoke rose up into the clear morning air like a black balloon, and in another five minutes they’d gained the intersection with the interstate. Shane relaxed as they merged with traffic, heading for Boston. On the access road, sirens wailed – fire and rescue and police, heading out to the scene of the explosion.
Claire dried her tears on her sleeve and took in deep, centring breaths. ‘Are we going to get away with this?’ she asked.
‘Depends,’ Shane said. He was watching the rear-view mirror with special intensity. ‘If anyone connects these vans with the farm, and the explosions, maybe not. But they’re pretty generic, and if we’re lucky, most of Dr Anderson’s little playmates were out there at that farm. Even if they weren’t, I don’t think they’re going to be interested in talking to the cops about what kind of weird operation they had going – way too many questions to be answered. If we can hit it out of town and get back to Morganville, we’re fine.’
‘Promise?’ Claire asked.
‘I promise,’ Shane said. ‘I promise you, we’ll be all right.’
It was a promise he couldn’t keep, she knew that, but she loved him intensely for trying. All the differences she’d thought existed between them … those had fallen away, when it counted. She’d craved a normal life at MIT, but now … now, she had to face the fact that Morganville was never letting go of her. Even when she’d thought she was escaping for a while, it had followed her. No, it had been
waiting
for her.
And look what it had cost, this little bit of freedom. Look how many lives she’d ruined.
Claire let her eyes close. She was suddenly, overwhelmingly tired, and honestly, she had no idea how she was ever going to feel better, ever again.
She didn’t have any memory of sleeping, but when she opened her eyes again, Shane was pulling the van in at the kerb near Pete’s apartment. It looked quiet and peaceful; no sign of police, nothing unusual. ‘I think we’re good,’ Shane said. ‘So how does this work, exactly? You just whammy him and dump him on the sidewalk?’
‘If you mean, do I complete the removal of his memories and send him inside to drink himself into an unconscious stupor, yes. Exactly,’ Myrnin said. He sounded a little more himself, and when Claire glanced back she saw that he was sitting slumped against the van wall, looking tired. He was kneading his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if it hurt. His colour looked better, too … not quite so luminously white. ‘But first I must consult with Lady Grey.’
‘Jesse? Why?’
‘Because he is her vassal, not mine,’ Myrnin said. He slid the door open, took a second to prepare himself, and then launched himself out of the van and down the sidewalk at a deliberately normal pace to the other van parked behind them. The door slid open for him, and he climbed inside.
‘We could just drive off,’ Shane said. ‘Might be a good plan, actually.’
‘Might be,’ Claire agreed, ‘but you know they’d just track us down.’
‘Can’t run, can’t hide,’ he agreed. ‘Sucks to be us, right?’
‘It never sucks if you’re with me,’ she said, very quietly. He looked over at her, gave her a heart-melting smile.
‘There are all kinds of completely inappropriate things I could say right now, but I’ll be a good boy.’
They were quiet for a moment, and then Shane said, ‘Heads up,’ and Claire saw in the side-view mirror that Myrnin was coming back, with Jesse. The two of them climbed in and slid the door closed, and Jesse crouched down across from Pete. She looked better, too – less feral, more in control. ‘Pete,’ she said. ‘It’s Jesse. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ he said. That was probably the flattest tone Claire had ever heard from him. ‘I hear you.’
‘Pete, I need you to tell everyone at the bar, and everyone who comes asking, that I left town. You don’t know where I went, only that I hooked up with a guy from my past.’ She looked at Myrnin, and smiled, briefly. ‘Nothing strange about it. I’m fine. I’ll call you when I get settled. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re leaving town. But you’ll call when you get settled.’
‘Good,’ she said. She leant forward and kissed him gently on the lips, then the forehead. ‘You’ve been a good friend, Pete. I’m so sorry you got caught up in all this, but you’re not going to remember any of it in a few minutes. Just remember that I love you, all right?’
‘I love you too,’ he said. For a moment, the old Pete was back, and he blinked at her. ‘Jesse? Did you just kiss me?’
She laughed. ‘Only a little. Don’t think it means we’re engaged.’ She leant forward and brushed his short-cropped hair affectionately. ‘Take care of yourself, Pete. Maybe I’ll be back. Stranger things have happened.’
‘Definitely,’ he said, and smiled, just a little. ‘See you.’
She sat back on her heels, and nodded at Myrnin, who leant in and captured Pete’s stare. It seemed to take more effort for him now, but Pete’s expression smoothed out and took on that blankness again, and Myrnin said, ‘Go home, Pete. You remember what I told you to do?’
‘Yes,’ Pete said. ‘Go home. Drink. Forget everything that happened today except what Jesse just said.’
‘Exactly so. Goodbye, Pete.’
‘Goodbye,’ Pete said, and climbed out of the van. He walked to his front door, opened it, and was inside in thirty seconds.
Myrnin slid the van door shut. ‘Next, we say goodbye to your friend, Claire. And we get what’s needed and head home.’
‘What if I don’t want to go?’ Claire asked. She wasn’t serious, but it was almost worth seeing his double take. And Shane’s very anxious expression.
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘You could at least ask me what I want to do,’ she said. ‘But yes, I know staying here isn’t an option. Not any more. There’s too many questions. And too much chance I could be connected to what happened out there. At the very least, Liz is going to be connected, and that means I’ll be questioned as well. Plus, my boyfriend’s basically a wanted felon.’
‘So not my fault,’ Shane said. He put the van in gear, and it was a short drive to the row house Claire shared with Liz. There were no signs of police, at least, though there was some kind of official seal on the door. ‘We’re not going to want to hang around here, guys. I’m guessing my picture’s been passed around, at the very least.’
‘It’ll be fast,’ Claire said. She got out of the van, leading Liz by the hand, and walked her up the steps. She broke the seal on the door with her house keys, opened up, and shut the door behind them. Inside, the lights were off, and the house smelt like unwashed dishes and old wood.
Liz blinked and looked around, like a sleepwalker just coming out of a coma. ‘I – what happened – Claire? Claire, I – those people, they took me …’ She blinked again, and Claire saw the horror dawning in her eyes. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe I got away. They were going to sell me!’