The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) (80 page)

‘I should have told you last evening. I have decided to concede to your request to have additional resources on this project,’ Amelie said. ‘Dr Mills is a trusted expert, a longtime resident of the town, and he won’t make the kind of value judgments others might. He’s also capable of keeping our secrets, and that is imperative. You understand why.’

Claire did, all too well. The crystals were a drug that helped vampires ward off the effects of a degenerative disease – a disease they all had, one that was robbing them of their ability to reproduce. Amelie was the strongest, but she was sick, too, and the worst cases were insane and locked away in cells beneath Morganville.

And so far, few of the vampires knew about the illness. Once they did, there might be nothing to stop them from lashing out, blaming others. Innocent humans, probably.

Just as bad would be the effect on the human population. Once they knew the vampires weren’t invincible, how many of them would really cooperate? Amelie had long ago figured that this could destroy Morganville, and Claire was pretty sure she was right.

‘But – he wants to see Myrnin’s lab,’ Claire said. Myrnin, her mentor and sometimes even her friend, had slipped off the edge of sanity, and he was in one of the cells. Lucid sometimes, and other times…dangerously not. ‘Should I take him there?’

‘No. Tell him that you’ll bring what he needs to the hospital. I don’t want any human other than yourself in that lab, Claire. There are secrets that must be kept, and I rely on you to see to it. Restrict his research only to refining and enhancing the formula you’ve already created.’ What Amelie meant, in that queen-cool way, was that if Claire spilt the beans, she’d end up dead. Or worse.

‘Yes,’ Claire said faintly. ‘I understand. About my parents—’

‘They are safe enough,’ Amelie said. That wasn’t
the same thing as saying they were safe. ‘You will not see Mr Bishop for the time being. If you happen to see his two associates, be polite, but don’t fear; they are well in hand.’

Maybe by Amelie’s standards. Claire was a little bit more worried. ‘OK,’ she said doubtfully. ‘If anything happens—’

‘Discuss it with Oliver,’ Amelie said. ‘Curiously, I find the differences between us lessened dramatically once my sire paid a visit. Nothing like a common enemy to unite squabbling neighbours.’ She paused for a moment, and then said, almost awkwardly, ‘You and your friends? You are well?’

We’re doing small talk now?
Claire shivered. ‘Yeah, we’re fine. Thank you.’

‘Good.’ Amelie hung up. Claire mouthed a silent
Oooo-kay
, and pocketed the phone.

As she was leaving, she saw Eve at the barista station, staring blankly at the levers as she worked. The happy glow hadn’t returned. In fact, she looked grim. And scared.

Dammit. Why did I ruin her day like that? I should
have just blown him off, the little psycho.

Claire checked her watch, snagged her backpack, and jogged off to her lab class.

When she met Dr Mills later that afternoon, she did it at the hospital, in his office. He was a medium sort of guy – medium tall, medium age, medium colouring. He had a nice smile, which seemed to promise that everything would be OK, and despite the fact that Claire knew it was total fiction, she smiled back.

‘Have a seat, Claire,’ he said, and indicated one of the blue club chairs in front of his desk. Behind him were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves – medical references in matching bindings, with some newer off-brand volumes thrown in for variety. Dr Mills had stacks of magazines and photocopied articles on one corner of the desk, and a teetering set of patient files on the other. A framed photo faced away from Claire, so she couldn’t see if he had a family. He had a wedding ring, though.

Dr Mills didn’t speak immediately; he leant back in his leather chair, steepled his fingers, and looked at her for a while. She fought against the urge to squirm, but couldn’t keep her fingers from restlessly picking at the fabric of her jeans.

‘I knew you were young,’ he said finally, ‘but I admit, I’m even more surprised now. You’re sixteen?’

‘Seventeen in a few weeks,’ Claire said. She was getting resigned to having this conversation with every single adult in Morganville. She ought to just record it
and play it back every time she met somebody new.

‘Well, from the notes that Amelie has provided to me, you have a very solid grasp of what you’re doing. I don’t think I’ll be so much directing your research as helping you execute your experiments. Where I see opportunities to add some value, I will. Obviously, the labs here at the hospital have much more sophisticated equipment than I imagine you have – wherever you developed your initial crystals.’ He flipped through the large folder open in the centre of his desk, and Claire saw photocopies of her own neat handwriting. Her notes, which she’d provided to Amelie. ‘I took the liberty of making up a set of crystals based on your formula, using the facilities in our labs. I found that if you accelerate the drying process with heat, you can increase the strength of the dosage by about twenty percent. And I also created a stronger liquid version that can be delivered directly into the body by injection.’

She blinked. ‘Injection.’ She tried to imagine getting close enough to Myrnin to stick a needle in his arm, especially when he was in one of his bad swings.

‘It can be delivered through a dart,’ he said. ‘Like an animal tranquiliser, although I wouldn’t use that analogy to anyone else. Wouldn’t be respectful.’

She managed a smile. ‘That’d be – very helpful. I didn’t try the heating process for drying the crystals. That’s interesting.’

‘No reason you should have. I tried it because I didn’t have an unlimited time to dry them – our lab’s busy, and I didn’t want anyone questioning what I was doing. I’ve asked Amelie to provide us with some secured laboratory space at the university. More convenient for you, and safer for me. I can have equipment moved there as we need it, or requisition it through the Council.’ Dr Mills cocked his head and looked at her again, brown eyes bright and challenging. Like Myrnin’s, only not half as crazy. ‘About my request to tour the lab where you made the crystals…’

‘Sorry, I can’t.’

‘Perhaps if you checked with Amelie—’

‘I did.’

He sighed. ‘Then when can I examine our patient?’

‘You don’t.’

‘Claire, this will not work if I can’t take baseline readings on the patient and determine what the measurable improvements are as we change the formula!’

She did see that, actually, but the thought of
putting nice Dr Mills in grabbing distance of Myrnin made her shiver. ‘I’ll check,’ she promised, and got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, it’s getting late. I need to—’

Dr Mills glanced at his office window. Outside the blinds, the sky was darkening from faded denim to indigo. ‘Of course. I understand. Here’s a sample of the new batch of crystals. But before you give it to him, see if you can get baseline information – most importantly, a blood sample.’

‘A blood sample,’ she repeated. He opened a drawer and handed her a small, sealed kit. It had a syringe, gauze pads, alcohol wipes, and a couple of vacuum tubes. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m not saying it might not be difficult, but if you won’t let me go with you to do it…’

She could do a lot of things, but she was pretty sure she couldn’t hold Myrnin down and stick a needle in his vein. Not while he was…altered.

She took the kit and put it in her backpack. ‘Anything else?’

Dr Mills passed her a gun – a dart gun. He opened the back to show her the fluffy end of the tube. ‘It’s preloaded with one dose,’ he said. ‘I only made up a few – it takes some time to distil. Here are two extra, if you need them.’ As she stowed the gun in her backpack, he said, ‘It’s untested. So be careful. I
think
it will be stronger and longer lasting, but I’m not sure about the side effects.’

‘And the crystals?’

He passed them over, too. They looked a little finer than the ones she’d developed – more like raw sugar. Those went into the backpack, as well.

‘Claire,’ he said, as she hoisted the burden, ‘have you heard any rumours about a new vampire in town?’

She froze. Her gold bracelet, the one with Amelie’s symbol etched on it, caught the light and glittered – not that she needed the reminder.

‘Just Michael,’ she said. ‘But that’s not news.’

‘I heard there were strangers.’

Claire shrugged. ‘Guess you heard wrong.’

She left before she had to lie any more. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing back at him. He nodded and smiled a good-bye.

She felt bad, but there was only so much truth she was prepared to give, even to somebody who came recommended by Amelie.

‘Did you bring the hamburger?’

Claire didn’t even have time to drop her backpack on the hallway floor at home before Eve had buzzed in on her like a dark, caffeine-fuelled Tinkerbell, brandishing a wooden spoon.

‘Uh – what?’

‘Hamburger. I sent you a text.’

Oops. Claire dug her phone out and saw that, sure enough, there was a flashing message icon. ‘I didn’t get it. Sorry.’

‘Crap.’ Eve turned away and marched back down the hall, Doc Martens boots clomping with fine disregard for the safety of the wood floor. ‘Michael! Guess what? You’re running errands!’

Michael was playing guitar – something fast and complicated. He stopped periodically, which was unusual for him, and he ignored Eve, which wasn’t normal, either. As Claire rounded the corner, she saw him standing up at the dinner table, leaning over to jot down music on a lined page.

Turned out that he wasn’t ignoring Eve so much as not obeying. ‘I’m busy,’ he said, frowned at the paper, and played the same phrase again, then again. Shook his head in frustration and erased notes on the paper. ‘You and Shane go.’

‘I’m cooking!’ Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Creative people. They think the world stops when they think.’

‘I’ll go,’ Claire said. The chance to be alone with Shane, even on something as boring as a trip to the all-night grocery, was too good to miss. ‘Better if I do, anyway. I’ve got the free pass.’ She held up the bracelet.

Michael pulled himself away from the music in his head long enough to give her a look. He tapped his pencil in a fast, complicated rhythm on the table. ‘Thirty minutes,’ he said. ‘There and back. No excuses. If you guys are late, I’m coming after you, and I’m going to be pissed off.’

‘Thanks,
Dad
.’ She wished she hadn’t said it – not so much because of the grimace on Michael’s face, but because it made her think of her actual dad. And that the clock was running on how long he’d allow her to continue her current living arrangements.

Shane came out of the kitchen sucking on his fingertip. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You have
not
been sticking your dirty fingers in my sauce,’ Eve said, and pointed her wooden spoon at him.

He quickly took the finger out of his mouth. ‘First off, they’re not dirty. I licked them first. And second – did I hear something about the store? Claire?’

‘Yeah, I’m ready.’

He grabbed Eve’s keys from the hall table. ‘Then let’s roll.’

Shane was a good driver, and he knew Morganville like the back of his hand – of course, Morganville was just about that big, too, and there was only one
all-night grocery store, the Food King, locally owned and operated. The parking lot was lit up like a football stadium. There were fifteen or so cars already there, evenly split between human vehicles and vamp-mobiles. Shane parked directly, under a blazing set of lights and turned off the car.

‘Wait,’ he said as Claire reached for the door handle. ‘It takes us about five minutes to get here, five minutes to get the stuff, five minutes back home. That gives us fifteen whole extra minutes.’

She felt her heart stammer, and race a little faster. Shane was looking at her with fierce intensity.

‘So what do you want to do?’ she asked, trying to sound casual about it.

‘I want to talk,’ he said, which was not what she expected. Not at all. ‘I can’t talk about this back at the house. I never know who could be listening.’

‘Meaning Michael?’

Shane shrugged. ‘It’s just never exactly private.’

He wasn’t wrong, but she still felt horribly disappointed. ‘Sure,’ she said, and knew she sounded stiff and wounded. ‘Go ahead. Talk.’

His eyes widened. ‘You thought—’

‘Just talk, Shane.’

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been doing some research on Bishop.’

The idea of
Shane
and
research
didn’t seem to want to fall into the same sentence. ‘Where?’

‘The town library,’ he shrugged. ‘Special collections. I know Janice, the librarian – she was a friend of my mom’s. She let me into the back to take a look at some of the older stuff, the things they don’t put out for public reading.’

‘The vampire collection.’

He nodded. ‘Anyway, the only thing I could find out was a reference to a Bishop – maybe not the same one – who killed a whole lot of people about five hundred years ago.’

‘Doesn’t sound too unusual…’

‘Except that he wasn’t killing humans,’ Shane said. ‘From the way the thing was written, Bishop was killing off his enemies in the vampire community. Making himself the ruler of the world. And then something happened, and he dropped out of sight.’

‘Wow. No wonder Amelie and Oliver were freaked.’

‘If he’s been underground all this time, and has a rep for taking out anyone who stands in his way, human or vampire – yeah. I’d be freaked, too. Anyway, I thought you should know. It could be important.’

‘Thanks.’

He nodded, gaze fixed on hers.

‘Anything else?’ she prompted.

‘Yeah.’

He leant forward and kissed her. His weight settled toward her, leaning her back against the door, and she felt all the strength and breath go out of her body, replaced with a quivering, golden vibration.
Oh
. Shane’s lips were warm and damp, soft but demanding, and she heard herself make a sound like a whimper in response. His hands knew just where to hold her – one at the back of her head, one at the small of her back, pulling her closer. Fitting their bodies together.