‘I know,’ Claire said softly. ‘But you’re safe now, sweetie. Derrick was one of them. He’s gone now. You’re going to be all right.’
Liz burst into tears, and Claire managed to get her into her room, bundled her in bed, and sat with her for a few minutes until Liz fell into an exhausted, restless sleep.
Then she went upstairs.
I can leave all this
, she thought. There were only a few things she really needed – memories, mostly. Things that mattered. They went into one suitcase.
She sat down and wrote a note, for Liz. And the police, because they’d be looking, too.
Liz,
it said.
I’m sorry, but you were right. MIT’s not for me. I’m a small-town girl at heart, and the pressure here is too intense. I miss my friends, and I miss my boyfriend, and I miss the life I had back home. So I’m going. I’ll send for my things in a couple of weeks once I’m settled again. I’m sorry about the apartment, and I hope you will be okay without me. Call me soon. Your BFF – Claire
.
It wasn’t much, but it sounded right, and it had the virtue of being true … all except the BFF part, but Liz would have expected that.
Claire left the note on the bed, grabbed her suitcase, and headed out to the van. She ducked inside, put the suitcase down, and strapped herself into the passenger seat.
‘Ready?’ Shane asked.
She nodded.
They drove past the MIT campus, and she got one last look at the domed beauty of the Maclaurin Buildings, flanked by the Pierce Lab and Building 2. Overnight, someone had put an old-school MTV spaceman on top of the Great Dome, complete with stiff little American flag. Someone had done another brand new hack, a giant Transformers statue in Killian Court; a student walked up and pressed a button, and it glided from robot into car, complete with movie sound effects. The assembled crowd cheered, then dispersed to their classes.
I could have been one of them
, Claire thought. She could have been a roof and tunnel hacker. She could have hung out with Nick and his crew. She could have been Jack Florey leading an orange tour. She could have done anything.
But instead, she was doing this. Heading back to Morganville.
And to her surprise – her great surprise, actually – it was all okay.
I’m not meant to be out here
, she thought. Where she went, Morganville went, and the last thing she wanted to do was bring that darkness here, into this light.
‘Be safe,’ she whispered, to nobody in particular, as they took the next turn and headed for the freeway, and home.
In Ohio, they ditched the vans, selling them for cash to a scrapyard and buying two big dinosaur SUVs. Having two, they decided, would allow four vampires and four humans to travel in relative comfort, and being able to change vehicles meant they probably wouldn’t kill each other before the trip was over.
Whatever VLAD’s beams had done to Oliver, Jesse and Myrnin had mostly worn off. They looked, and sounded, more like themselves, less like cold-blooded killing machines. But Claire couldn’t quite forget what they’d been, back on the farm.
She knew she’d never forget it again. What they could be.
Michael and Eve chose to travel with her and Shane for a while, with the three other vamps and Dr Anderson in the second vehicle, and that should have felt normal again. Better.
But it didn’t.
Maybe it was just the exhaustion, the stress, the shattering weight of guilt, but Claire felt they were all trying to figure out how to talk to her. What to say.
She had no idea what to say either. Not for a long, long time.
Eve fiddled with the stereo, seeking out alt-rock stations until all that was left was static, and finally switched it off. Shane was napping by then, and Michael driving. Claire should have been sleeping too, but she couldn’t.
‘Claire?’
She opened her eyes, which had drifted closed, and saw Eve watching her from the front. ‘I’m awake.’
‘I just – look, I need to know. How much of what happened did you plan?’
‘When?’
‘From the time we came out from rescuing Liz from that trap. Did you even
have
a plan?’
‘I—’ Claire swallowed. Her throat felt suddenly dry, tight and uncomfortable. ‘Not until I knew Dr Anderson was against us. Then I had to – I had to play along. She knew too much. And she didn’t need anybody except the vampires, for lab tests. She only needed me as far as she could trust me, so I – I had to make her trust me, a little.’
‘You turned on us,’ Eve said. ‘You made Shane turn on us, too, didn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Claire whispered. ‘But it was all out of control, Eve. I didn’t know how else to do it.’
Eve stared at her for another long, painful moment, and then reached her hand back. Claire didn’t know what to do for a second, then she grabbed hold. ‘Don’t ever do it again,’ Eve said. ‘I don’t like feeling that way, okay? It’s the four of us, always. Promise.’
‘I promise,’ Claire said. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she cried a little, holding Eve’s hand. ‘I promise.’
Shane wasn’t asleep after all, because he sat up, put his arm around Claire, and said, ‘We promise.’
‘You’d better, jerkface,’ Eve said. ‘How’s the head?’
‘Taped,’ he said. ‘It’s fine. Chicks dig scars. Wait, did you just call me jerkface? Are we back in grade school?’
‘I love you,’ Eve said.
He closed his mouth, fast, because obviously that was not what he’d expected. ‘I, uh, okay. Love you too. Can we stop that? It’s uncomfortable.’
‘Jerkface.’
‘Much better.’
In the morning, Shane became the designated driver of one of the trucks, and Jesse took command of the other. They got as far as they could, and then Oliver booked them hotel rooms that night. He, Myrnin and Jesse each got their own accommodations; Michael and Eve, of course, shared theirs.
Oliver handed Shane and Claire each key cards. ‘I have no knowledge of, nor interest in, your current relationship,’ he said. ‘Use both, use one, use neither, or sleep in the van. Whatever you choose that involves me the least.’ Like Jesse and Myrnin, Oliver was looking absolutely exhausted. He kept Irene Anderson with him, but Myrnin had – in Shane’s terms – whammied her into submission. She stayed passive, and Oliver didn’t even need to tie her up.
Claire didn’t want to know what Oliver intended to do with her. She still couldn’t quite bring herself to care.
She paused with her suitcase at the door of her room, and looked down the hall. Shane was puzzling out his own key card, finding out which way the arrow went into the lock; he sensed her looking, and sent her a nod.
Claire nodded back, walked into her room, and set the suitcase on the bed. She stripped her clothes off – clothes she never intended to wear again – and got into the shower. The hotel’s shampoo and conditioner smelt like honey and ginger, and the soap smelt like lime; she decided that she would end up smelling like someone’s kitchen pantry, but at least it was better than how she’d been smelling, like sewers and blood and fear.
She put on a clean pair of jeans, a plain blue top, and walked down to Shane’s room. She knocked.
He answered. He’d been in the shower, too … his hair was still damp, and he was wearing the hotel bathrobe.
‘Hi,’ she said, and came in. She closed the door behind her. ‘I don’t want to spend another night alone, if that’s okay with you.’
‘You seriously think I might object to that.’
‘No,’ she said, and stepped in closer to take hold of the tie of his robe. ‘But how about this? Any objections?’ She untied one loop of the knot, and hesitated. He was watching her with a strangely vulnerable intensity. ‘Shane?’
‘I love you,’ he said. It came out in a rush, as if he couldn’t wait to get it out. ‘I love you and Jesus, you scare me. Having to give you up was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, Claire; I can’t do it again. Please tell me – please tell me that you’re coming back for good. Or at least, if you leave, let me go with you.’
‘You came with me this time.’
‘I
followed
you. I didn’t come
with
you.’ It seemed to be important to him that she understand the difference. And she did, she really did.
‘I needed to be away from Morganville,’ she told him then, ‘and I needed to be sure what it was I really wanted. Do I want what I had back there, for a little while? That normal life? It was nice, Shane, but … but it’s not me. Not any more. It’s too late for me to live that life. But not too late for us to live our life together. If you still want—’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I want. If you don’t believe me, untie the rest of the knot.’
She laughed a little, and moved into his arms. The kiss started soft, turned urgent and sweet and damp, and then he walked her back to the feathery hotel bed and stretched her out on the duvet. Everything seemed warm, and in its comfort, in his comfort, she floated.
No. In his comfort, in his warmth, in his passion, she
flew
.
And when she floated back to earth, he was still there, warm and safe, holding her.
Before she drifted off to sleep, he kissed her hand. No, the ring that he’d given her, that promise of a someday-life together.
After all the grief, all the guilt, all the horror of the night and the day … he was the one thing that held it back.
He was the thing that would always give her that safe, warm space that made it possible to breathe.
In the morning, they started for Morganville.
It took another two solid days of driving, day and night, with brief stops at motels for showers and naps, but finally, they rolled past the familiar, antique faded glory of the WELCOME TO MORGANVILLE billboard. And they were greeted by the flashing lights of a police car, coming toward them at high speed.
Shane pulled over, and Jesse nosed her SUV in behind him on the side of the road. Shane stretched and yawned and said, ‘Damn, I never actually thought I’d be happy to see this place again, but I am seriously missing my bed.’ Michael, behind them, leant over the seat to slap Shane on the shoulder.
‘Me too, man,’ he said. ‘If I have to spend another day in this car wearing hats and tarps to keep the sun off, I think I’m going to need some kind of tranquilliser.’
‘Hey, we had fun,’ Eve said, and pinched his earlobe. ‘In the sense of next to none at all, I mean. Next time, can we at least stop at a mall? Maybe see a movie? Avoid the mass murders of our enemies, maybe?’
‘Promise,’ Michael agreed, but it was an absent kind of comment, and he leant forward to peer out through the dark windows. ‘Is that Sheriff Moses?’
‘Looks like,’ Shane said. He opened the SUV’s door and stepped out as Hannah Moses approached. She wasn’t alone, Claire realised; there were two other men with her, dressed in Morganville PD uniforms. And more police cars coming, lights flashing.
Too many for comfort.
Somehow, Claire wasn’t too surprised when Hannah drew her gun. Shane slowly raised his hands.
‘I’m sorry about this, Shane,’ she said. ‘But laws are laws, and I don’t want you doing anything stupid. You too, Claire, Michael, Eve – all of you, out of the car. Now.’
All the good feelings were gone, Claire thought, and she climbed down from the truck’s cab to stand next to Shane, leaning against the fender. Michael and Eve got out, too. Wind shivered over the desert, and drew icy fingers down Claire’s face. The other police car parked behind the second SUV, and more cops arrived, all pointing guns.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Oliver demanded, as he got out of the second vehicle. Myrnin stepped down with him, dark eyes flashing around in restless motion, cataloguing everyone and everything. Jesse joined them, and she held Irene Anderson still as the professor tried to pull away. ‘There’s surely no question of our right to entry!’
‘Not at all,’ Hannah said. ‘But we have something we have to take care of first.’ She stepped up, fastened handcuffs around Shane’s wrists, then Claire’s, then Eve’s. ‘I’ll need that lady over there, too. Paul, put some cuffs on her and bring her over here. Michael, if you would, please stand over there.’ She pointed at Irene Anderson, who was escorted over and handcuffed. Michael went to stand next to the other van.
It was weird and confusing, but there was no reason not to trust her; Hannah seemed the same as she always had. Competent, calm, professional.
It was only as they did it that Claire realised that Hannah had just separated the humans … from the vampires.
And then the cops stepped back, and two others stepped forward with double-loaded crossbows. It happened fast, so fast. Four quick shots, deadly accurate to the heart, and the vampires went down. Jesse first, then Myrnin, then Oliver and Michael almost in the same instant.
Eve screamed. Claire didn’t.
It’s wood
, she told herself.
They’re staked with wood
.
They’re not dead
. But she didn’t know why this was happening, and worse, she didn’t know why Hannah was doing it.
‘Hannah?’ Her voice sounded small and confused, and the police chief looked at her with sympathy, and no small amount of pity.
‘They’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘But they’ll be taken to a safe place. I’m sorry, Claire. I’m sorry for everything. But it’s for the best.’
‘Amelie’s going to—’
‘Amelie’s not in charge,’ Hannah interrupted. ‘
We
are. For the first time, the humans have taken complete control of Morganville, with the help of the Daylight Foundation. And the vampires are being quarantined for their own protection.’
‘What are you doing to them?’ Eve cried. She was fighting to get free, to get to Michael, but that wasn’t going to happen.
‘We’re going to help them,’ Hannah said. She sounded utterly sure of what she was saying. ‘We’re going to help them get better.’
All this sounded like what Shane and Captain Obvious and so many others had been wanting for years, Claire thought. A Morganville run by humans, not by vampires.
Then why did it feel so
wrong
?
‘We’ll be okay,’ Shane said to her. It sounded like a prayer. ‘It’s all going to be okay.’