The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) (59 page)

No, not fire, but something was definitely wrong. There was something in the whole atmosphere of the house. The smoke had been some kind of signal, from it to her.
A get your butt out of bed
signal.

Shane was still lying next to her on the couch, but he was already awake, too, and in the next second he rolled off to his feet as if he’d also felt it.

‘What’s happening?’ Claire felt a jolt go through her like electricity. ‘Shane?’

‘Something’s wrong.’

They both froze as they heard the sudden loud blare of a siren. It sounded as though it was right in front of the house.

Claire heard feet on the stairs and saw Eve hurrying down in a satin nightgown and fluffy black robe. Eve’s face was bare of any Goth make-up, and she looked flushed and anxious and scared.

‘What is it?’ Eve called. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Shane said. ‘Something bad. Can’t you feel it?’

This was an event; they were all up and it was barely six a.m.

Eve plunged down the steps and yanked up the cord to raise the blinds on the window that faced the front yard. They all looked out. A police car was in the middle of the street, siren still wailing, and its headlights cast a hot circle of light on a maroon sedan stopped on the street, its driver’s-side door open. Its lights were still on, and there was a body slumped on the road next to it.

The windows were dark-tinted.

It was a vampire’s car.

Eve screamed, spun, and looked at them with wide, terrified eyes. ‘Where’s Michael?’ she asked, and Claire stupidly looked behind her, as if she were going to find him standing there.

They all looked back at the street, the car, the body.

‘It can’t be,’ Claire whispered. Shane was already moving for the door at a flat run, but Eve just stood there staring, frozen. Claire put her arm around her and felt her shaking.

She saw Shane blow through the gate at the fence and run towards the body; the cop who’d just emerged from the patrol car grabbed him, slung him around, and slammed him face-first onto the hood. Shane was yelling something.

‘I need to go out there,’ Claire said. ‘Stay here.’

Eve nodded numbly. Claire hated leaving her there, but Shane was going to get himself arrested if he kept it up, and who knew what could happen to him in jail?

She was only to the porch when another police car turned the corner, lights flashing, siren adding its howl to the chaos. It braked beside the first one, and another policeman got out and moved to where Shane was being restrained.

Claire didn’t recognise the cop who had Shane facedown on the hood, but she knew the new arrival. It was Richard Morrell, Monica’s big brother. He wasn’t a bad guy, although he was definitely from the same icky gene pool. He took over for the other cop, who backed away.

‘Shane! Dammit, Shane, calm the hell down. This is a crime scene; I can’t let you run out there, do you understand? Calm down!’

Richard was occupied with keeping Shane under control, so the other policeman went to crouch next to the body on the street.
The body.
Claire took a step closer, and the policeman produced a flashlight and focused it on the face of the man lying in the street. Red hair flared in the light.

Not Michael.

Sam.

There was a stake in his chest, and he was still and white and
not moving
.

‘Richard!’ the cop yelled. ‘It’s Sam Glass! Looks dead to me!’

‘Sam,’ Claire whispered. ‘No.’

Sam had been kind to her, and somebody had dragged him out of his car and put a stake through his chest.

‘Shit!’ Richard spat. ‘Shane, sit your ass down. Down, right now. Don’t make me handcuff you.’ He yanked Shane by the collar of his T-shirt and sat him down on the curb, glared at him for a second, then came over to look at the body. ‘Holy Mother of—Grab his feet.’

‘What?’ The other cop – his name tag said FENTON – looked at him with a frown. ‘It’s a crime scene; we can’t—’

‘He’s still alive, you idiot. Grab his damn feet, Fenton! If he burns, he’s dead.’

The first rays of sun crept over the horizon and fell on Sam’s still form.

And Claire saw him start to smoke.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Richard shouted. ‘Pick him up!’ The other cop, after a blank hesitation, grabbed Sam by the feet. Richard took him under the arms, and together they bodily threw him into the maroon sedan, the one with tinted windows,
and slammed the door shut. Fenton started for the driver’s side, but Richard got there first. ‘I’ll drive,’ Richard said. ‘The wound’s still fresh. He’s got a chance if I can get him to Amelie.’

Fenton backed off. Richard gunned the engine and slammed the door even as he was peeling rubber towards the end of the street.

Officer Fenton glared at Shane. ‘You going to give me trouble, boy?’ he demanded. Claire sure hoped not. This man was twice the size of Richard Morrell, twice as old, and he looked like a human pit bull.

Shane held up his hands. ‘No trouble from me, Officer. Sir.’

‘You two see what happened here?’

‘No,’ Claire said. ‘I was asleep. We all were.’

‘All in the same room?’ the cop grunted, and looked her over, from her bed-head to the wrinkled clothes. ‘Didn’t take you for the type.’

She couldn’t figure out what he meant for a few seconds, and then felt a wave of hot embarrassment sweep over her. ‘No, I mean Eve was in her own room. We were asleep on the couch.’

Shane said, ‘Yeah, we were all asleep. Woke up when we heard the siren.’ Which wasn’t quite true, was it? They’d woken up, and
then
heard the siren. But Claire wasn’t sure why that would be important.

The cop tapped on a handheld device, still
frowning. ‘Ought to be four of you in the house. Where’re the other two?’

‘Eve’s still inside. And Michael—’ Where the hell was Michael? ‘I don’t know where he is.’

‘I’ll go see if he’s in his room,’ Shane volunteered, but the cop froze him in place with another thunderous scowl.

‘You’ll sit your ass down on that curb and be quiet. You, what’s your name?’

‘Claire Danvers.’

‘Claire, get in there, find out if Michael Glass is inside. If he’s not, find out if his car is missing.’

Claire stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘You don’t think…?’

‘I don’t think anything until I have facts. I need to know who’s here, who isn’t, and work from there.’ The cop transferred his dark stare to Shane, who was starting to get up. ‘I already told you, sit your ass down, Collins.’

‘I didn’t have anything to do with this!’

‘If I had to put together a list of prime suspects out to stake some vampires, you’d be right at the top, so yeah, you do.
Sit down
.’

Shane sat, looking furious. Claire silently begged him not to do anything stupid, and hurried back into the house. Eve was upstairs dressing – black baby-doll T with a bling-enhanced cartoon Elmer Fudd on
the front, and black jeans with clunky Doc Martens.

‘It wasn’t—’

‘I know. I saw,’ Eve said. Her voice sounded stuffy, as though she’d been crying, or was about to. ‘It was Sam, right? Is he alive? Or…whatever?’

‘I don’t know. Richard said something like he could still be OK.’ Claire gripped the doorknob tightly, and glanced down the hall. Michael’s door was closed. It was always closed. ‘Did you look—?’

‘No.’ Eve took a deep breath and stood up. ‘I’ll go with you.’

Michael’s door was unlocked, and it was completely dark inside. Claire flipped on the lights. Michael’s bed was empty, neatly made, and the room looked absolutely normal. Eve checked the closets, under the bed, even the master bathroom.

‘No sign of him,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Let’s check the garage.’

The garage was a shed in the back, not attached to the house; the two of them went out the back kitchen door and crossed the rutted driveway. The shed’s doors were closed.

Eve opened one side, Claire the other.

Michael’s car was gone.

‘What about work? Could he be at work?’

‘JT’s doesn’t open until ten,’ Eve said. ‘Why would he be in there at six?’

‘Inventory?’

‘You think they’re going to call a vampire in at six a.m. to do
inventory
?’ Eve slammed the shed door and kicked it for good measure. ‘Where the hell is he? And why the
hell
don’t I have a working cell phone? Why don’t you?’

Hers had been lost, Eve’s had been smashed; both of them miserably looked at each other for a few seconds, then, without a word, walked to the front yard where Shane was still sitting on the curb. If anybody could sit rebelliously, he was doing it.

‘Give me your phone,’ Eve demanded and held out her hand. Shane looked at her with a frown. ‘Now, dumbass. Michael’s not inside, and his car’s gone.’

‘Michael’s got a car? Since when?’

‘Since the vampires issued him one. He didn’t tell you?’

Shane just shook his head. A muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘He doesn’t tell me shit, Eve. Not since—’

‘Not since you started treating him like the Evil Dead? Yeah. Imagine that.’

He silently handed over his cell phone and looked away, staring at the street where Sam’s body had been tossed. Claire wondered if he was thinking about his dad’s crusade, about how
the only good
vampire is a dead vampire.

Claire wondered if he really, deep down, still
agreed.

Eve dialled and put the phone to her ear. For a tense few seconds nothing happened, and then Claire saw relief melt the tension out of Eve’s face and body. ‘Michael! Where the hell are you?’ Pause. ‘
Where?
’ Pause. ‘Oh. OK. I need to tell you—’ Pause. ‘You know.’ Pause. ‘Yeah, we’ll…talk later.’

Eve closed the phone and handed it back. Shane slipped it in his pocket again, eyebrows up and signalling questions.

‘He’s OK,’ she said. Her eyes had gone dark and narrow.

‘And?’

‘And nothing. He’s fine. End of story.’

‘Bullshit,’ Shane said, and tugged her down to sit next to him on the curb. ‘Spill it, Eve. Now.’

Claire sat, too, on Eve’s other side. The curb felt cold and hard, but the good thing was that the patrol car blocked Fenton’s view of them. He was talking to the occupants of another car, vampire-tinted, who had pulled up behind the cruiser.

‘He was downtown,’ Eve said. ‘At the Elders’ Council. They pulled him in there early this morning.’

‘Who did?’

‘The Big Three.’ Oliver, Amelie and the mayor, Richard and Monica’s dad. ‘Amelie just got word
about Sam. But Michael’s not hurt or anything.’ An unspoken
for now
was at the end of that. Eve was worried. She bent her head closer to Shane’s, lowered her voice even further, and said, ‘You didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Sam, right?’

‘Jesus, Eve!’

‘I’m only asking because—’

‘I know why you’re asking,’ he whispered back fiercely. ‘Hell no. If I were going to go after some vampire, it wouldn’t have been
Sam
. I’d be staking somebody like Oliver, make it worth my time. Speaking of Oliver, he’d be my number one suspect.’

‘Vampires don’t kill their own.’

‘He arranged for Brandon to die,’ Claire offered. ‘I think Oliver’s capable of anything. And he’d love to see Amelie even more isolated.’ She swallowed hard. ‘She told me once that Sam was safer if she didn’t keep him close. I guess she was right.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Oliver keeps his hands clean, no matter what. Some broke-ass human is going to burn for this, and you know it,’ Shane said. ‘And it happened in front of our house, and nobody’s forgot what happened with my dad. You don’t think we’re being set up?’

Crap. Shane was right. The fact that Michael was safe was good, but it was also a double-edged sword; it meant that Michael had been gone when Sam had
been attacked.

And Michael was the only one of them whose word might be worth anything to the vampires.

Sure enough, Fenton came back around the cruiser and stared at the three of them for a few seconds, then said, ‘You’re being taken in for questioning. All three of you. Get in the back seat.’

Shane didn’t move. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

The policeman sighed and leant against the quarter panel. ‘Son, you’ve got a lot of attitude, and I respect that. But get it straight: either you get in my car, or you get in
their
car.’ He pointed towards the silent dark sedan, the one with vampires inside. ‘And I promise you, that won’t end so well. You get me?’

Shane nodded, stood, and gave Eve a hand up.

Claire stayed seated. She pulled up the sleeve on her left arm. The bracelet glittered and glimmered in the morning light, and she held it up for Fenton’s clear view.

His eyes widened. ‘Is that…?’

‘I want to see my Patron,’ Claire said. ‘Please.’

He went off to talk on his radio, then came back and jerked his head at Shane and Eve. ‘In the back seat,’ he said. ‘You’re going to the station. You, kid…’ He nodded towards the other sedan. ‘They’ll take you to Amelie.’

Claire swallowed hard and exchanged a look with
Shane, then Eve. That hadn’t been her plan. She wanted them all to stay together. How could she keep them safe if they got separated?

‘Don’t,’ Shane said. ‘Come with us.’

Truthfully, that was starting to sound like a better idea. The vampires weren’t going to be happy, and her shiny gold bracelet didn’t exempt her from suspicion. Amelie could still order her hurt, or killed.

‘OK,’ Claire said. Shane looked massively relieved as he ducked his head and entered the back seat of the cruiser. Eve followed him in.

The cop slammed the door after Eve, before Claire could get in the patrol car.

‘Hey!’ Shane yelled, and hit the car window. He and Eve were both trying to get out, but the doors weren’t opening.

Fenton grabbed her by the arm and hustled her over to the other sedan, opened the door, and put her in the back seat before she could protest. Claire heard the faint click of locks engaging, and sat very still, trying to see through the gloom.

One of the vampires flicked on the overhead light.
Oh crap
. It was two of her not-favourite people. The woman was pale as snow, with white-blonde hair and eyes of palest silver. Gretchen. Her partner, Hans, was a hard man made of angles, with greying short hair, and a stony expression.