Daylighters (21 page)

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 precision, 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 removing
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 really 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 become 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 underneath 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 protecting 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 moment 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 people 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 handcuffed 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 matter. 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.

T
he 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 monster makeup artist might have rejected as “too weird.” It was amazing 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 allowing 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 approval, 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 getting 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.

But Fallon had managed to plant one deep, sprouting seed of doubt. Because what did “all right” really mean, in the end? Status quo? Vampires continuing to oppress and disadvantage humans for their own wealth and benefit? Humans hating vampires and trying to kill them? Constant tension and bloodshed, on both sides? Was she on the right side—or was there a right side at all? There had to be, on balance.
You have to be on the side of the ones being hunted and imprisoned, don’t you?

Still. The gnawing sense that in this moral gray area she was walking on the wrong side of the line was really starting to scare her.

Or it did until the old Gothic doors swung open, and Dr. Irene Anderson stepped out to greet them.

She looked much the same as she had back in Cambridge, when Claire had liked her so much as a mentor; she looked calm and competent and quirky, not at all like an agent of evil and chaos. The white coat she was wearing gave her even more of an air of legitimacy. But the look she gave Claire was both pleased and chilling. “So glad to see you again, Claire,” she said. “Please, come in. I’m sure you’ll be just as happy as I am that we get to work together again for the common good.”

“If that means not at all, then yes,” Claire said. She had a real reluctance to take the two steps up to the doorway where Anderson waited, but there didn’t seem to be much choice. The two wannabe cops behind her would push her in if she didn’t go on her own, and Anderson would get a lot of pleasure out of that. Out of her fear.

Claire held eye contact and walked up to join Dr. Anderson, who put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “So nice to see you again,” she said, and it was a lie, and the look in her eyes was unreadable. “Don’t be afraid. We’re going to help you get past these feelings of loyalty you have to the vampires. It’s not your fault. More of a Stockholm syndrome hostage reaction, seeking to please those with power over you so you can survive. Nothing to be ashamed of, just something to be fixed.”

“Thanks. Can you take these off, please?” Claire rattled her handcuffs. Anderson’s smile deepened and turned just a touch mean.

“Maybe later,” she said. “It looks to me like you’ve taken on some very bad habits, Claire. I want to be sure I can trust you first.”

“You can trust me,” Claire said.

“To do what? Act out? Yes, I’m certain I can trust you to be as much of a handful as possible . . . like your friend Eve.”

Claire couldn’t help but ask. “Is she all right?”

“Fine,” Anderson said. “You’ll see her soon.”

The doors boomed shut and locked behind them as they passed into the shadows, and Claire fought back a feeling that she’d just made a really terrible mistake.

•   •   •

The asylum (okay, it wasn’t called that, but Claire couldn’t help but think of it that way) was surprisingly quiet, and once her eyes had adjusted to the lower light levels, it was also surprisingly lush. New, springy carpet cushioned her feet, and she smelled the sharp tang of new paint on the walls. Here, as in the rest of Morganville, there’d been a makeover.

But the doors—heavy metal doors, with sliding windows inset in them—still locked.

“Cheery,” Claire said. “Where’s Eve?”

“Beginning her course of treatment,” Anderson said. “Don’t worry, you’ll see her, but not immediately. This is more of an immersive therapy.”

“I figured you’d need my help making more copies of VLAD.” That was the name she’d given—maybe a little whimsically—to the device she’d created in Myrnin’s lab that worked as a kind of super-Taser on vampires, only it acted by attacking them mentally, not physically. It was effective. Way too effective, in fact.

“You sabotaged the last one I handed you, and are responsible for all the deaths that happened after, because of your actions,” her former mentor said. She couldn’t quite keep the resentment from her voice. “I don’t think I can count on you to see reason anymore, Claire. It’s too bad. You’re a very bright young woman, and you could have done great things.”

“Still can,” Claire said. “But probably not with you, because you’re insane.”

“You should know all about that, given your . . . intimacy with Myrnin.” There was something in Anderson’s voice that made Claire give her a startled, then angry glare. “Does he know, your boyfriend? About your affair with the vampire?”

“I’m not having any kind of affair!”

“What is it people your age call it, then? A hookup?”

“Ugh,” Claire said. “Just shut up. You’re embarrassing yourself. I think it’s you who wanted a hookup with Myrnin back in the day, and you never got it.” She said it, and meant it, and even felt a little flare of pleasure when Dr. Anderson flinched. She’d learned dirty fighting from Shane, but she’d learned how to go for someone’s weak spot from Monica Morrell. Funny, you could learn something from even your worst enemies. “Besides, I thought you were all about slimy Dr. Davis back in Cambridge. Did he tell you he talked my housemate into bed, too? Or maybe you’re just hot for Fallon these days. Doesn’t matter. They’re both loser choices, and they say a whole lot about you as a person.”

Hard to tell from Anderson’s furious blush which guess was on target, but it didn’t really matter; Claire had hit the mark squarely. Anderson opened a creaking metal door, shoved Claire off balance into it, and before Claire could hop enough to get her feet under her again, she heard the hollow boom of her only escape being cut off . . . and then, the key turning.

The room wasn’t much—simple, plain as any cell, with a small twin bed, a pillow, a blanket, and a small wooden chest of drawers that Claire imagined would hold standard-issue pajamas and underwear for the patients. A mirror was bolted to the wall over the sink—not actual glass, of course. Plastic. At least the toilet/shower combination was in a separate little alcove.

It smelled like Lysol and desperation.

The window slid aside, and Anderson stared at her for a long moment. “Don’t get comfortable,” she said. “Your treatments will start soon.”

“How about unlocking these handcuffs?”

“No.” The window slid shut with a final click, and Claire heard that lock in place, too.

There was an odd sound just at the edge of her hearing. At first she thought it might be a siren . . . and then she knew it wasn’t.

It was screaming.

Treatments.

Claire felt her knees go weak. She sank down on the bed, wincing at the shrill squeak of the springs, and took a deep breath.
I have to get out of here.

She felt around the back of her pants to where she’d stashed the paper clip.

It was still there, tangled up in thin acid-washed threads. It took time and patience and cramping fingers to work the paper clip free; after she’d finally succeeded, she took a break, working her sore, still-pinned hands and trying to get some feeling back into them. The guards who’d taken her in had, not unexpectedly, put the cuffs on too tightly, and she had throbbing pain around her wrists. Her hands felt bloated and tingly, and for lack of anything better to do at the moment, she stretched out prone on the bed and held her hands up at a painful angle to reduce the blood flow. The tingling faded in a couple of minutes, and the fingers felt better. Still clumsy, but better.

She sat up again, took a deep breath, and started working with the paper clip. It took a
long
time to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Myrnin had drilled her, at one time, in the finer points of the art; he’d felt it was a necessary skill to have, in Morganville, and it turned out he was almost certainly right. Still, she was rusty, and it took too long to bend the tough, thick clip into the right shapes, and to maneuver it into position. Then she had to fight her own burning, cramping muscles to delicately trip all the little triggers inside the lock, but finally she felt the first of the cuffs slip free. The second took only about a third as much time, now that she had the right angle on the problem.

Freed, she took a few seconds to breathe and silently celebrate. Then she checked the drawers of her little room. As expected, there were ugly cotton undies, in a variety of sizes, and some equally ugly sports bras (though she quickly switched out what she’d been given back at the Vampire Mall, since even this stuff was an upgrade). Then she pulled on the drawer and found it slid smoothly, in and out.

Good news.

Claire padded the area beneath the drawer with the pillow from the bed, emptied out what was inside, and yanked hard on the mechanism. It caught firmly, refusing to slide out. She worked it up and down, side to side, until one of the small wheels inside slipped free of the guides, and then the left side popped free. From there it was simple enough to wrench it loose from the right, but the drawer was heavy and awkward, and she was glad she’d put the pillow in place to catch it as it fell or the noise would have echoed down that hall—quiet, now that the screaming had faded away.

Once the drawer was out, she saw the metal guides screwed into its sides.
Perfect.

Claire worked on her paper clip until it was twisted into a makeshift screwdriver that slotted into the heads of the screws. Working with it took muscle power, sweat, patience, and more strained muscles, but she managed to loosen two out of three fasteners on one side, and the third didn’t matter; she torqued the metal until it ripped loose.

She’d started handcuffed, armed with a paper clip. Now she had a ten-inch strip of metal with sharp edges, handcuffs,
and
a paper clip. Her odds were improving all the time.

There wouldn’t be time to fashion the metal properly, but she found that using the heavy edges of the wooden drawer, she could press on the metal and fold it into a sharp point. An extra pair of undies wrapped nicely around the other end, to provide a decent grip.

Instant knife.

She worked on the other guide and got it free, and bent it into a springy U-shape. With the carefully wrapped addition of a sports bra, she had a passable slingshot. The screws she’d loosened provided ammunition. So did pieces she managed to tease out of the bed’s frame.

The drawer went back in, filled with the clothing, and the pillow back on the bed. At first glance, everything looked perfectly normal.

Claire made a sheath for her knife out of cardboard (they’d left some with crayons, for drawing, in a drawer) and fastened it with a loop of torn elastic to the belt loop of her jeans. Then she put the sheath down the side of her leg, inside the jeans, and slid the knife in. It did show, but not as much as it would have if the jeans had been tighter. Good enough.

The ammunition for the makeshift slingshot went into her pockets. On impulse, she broke up the crayons and added those, too. And the button off her blue jeans.

She was contemplating what to do with the handcuffs when the door rattled, and after a second’s thought, she jammed the slingshot down the small of her back, and put the cuffs back around her wrists, but just barely clicked on . . . loose enough that she could get her hands free with a brisk shake.

She was standing in the middle of the room looking crestfallen when Dr. Anderson swung the door open again. “Can you please take these off now?” she asked, and tried to sound chastened. “They hurt.”

“In a while,” Anderson said, which was exactly what Claire had expected her to say. She gestured for Claire to come out, and she did. The metal slingshot jammed against her back felt raw and awkward, and she knew it would be visible from behind, poking out against her thin shirt, but Anderson didn’t go behind her; she took her elbow and walked next to her quickly down the hallway toward the end. No one passed them, and when Claire risked a look behind, she didn’t see anyone following, either.