Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)

Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15) Page 49

“Quiet,” Hannah said, but Claire caught a quick gleam of hu- mor in her expression before she locked it down to her professional mask again. “Time’s wasting. Get them out of here.”

Sully took personal charge of Shane, which was weirdly com- forting; Claire knew Shane could get to him, and that was a kind of control that they both needed just now. Her own guard was one of Hannah’s cops— a familiar one. “Officer Kentworth,” she said.

He was one of the two who’d searched their house with Halling: the polite one. He touched his fingers to his cap.

“Miss,” he said. “Let’s be businesslike about this, okay? No funny business.”

“You know you’re taking us to be killed, right?”

He flinched, but controlled that quickly, and gave her a flinty stare. “You’re just being transported, miss. Let’s not make this any more complicated,” he said.

Shane was led to yet another car by Sully, and Claire could al- most imagine how much fun that ride was going to be. She hoped Shane didn’t push him so far that Sully really snapped. With his hands pinned, Shane couldn’t fight back very well . . . and Eve was the one who still had the nail clippers to snip their zip- tied bonds.

Eve and Michael, she noticed, were also being separated out from the folks from Blacke and loaded into a car.

Claire hoped they would all end up in the same place, because she had the feeling they’d really need those nail clippers before too long, regardless of what kind of positive spin Officer Kentworth tried to put on things.

Claire expected to be driven to the Daylight Foundation’s building, but instead, the little parade— complete with flashing lights, though no sirens— wound its way through Morganville’s main streets toward Founder’s Square. That seemed odd. Found- er’s Square was vampire territory; it was where they’d lived and worked and had their own late- night businesses. It was where Amelie had her offices, and where they kept the records of their long, long lives.

It was also where they’d executed people, from time to time, for infractions of the Morganville rules. Where they’d threatened to execute Shane, when Amelie had thought him guilty of a vam- pire’s murder.

It was, Claire thought with a sinking feeling, exactly where Fal- lon would choose to make his new headquarters.

The parade turned and took the ramp underground, into the parking garage Claire remembered so well. It was full of cars, mostly black- tinted vampmobiles that had probably been confis- cated when their owners had gone into “protective custody” at the mall. What had Fallon called it? The enclave, like it was some fancy, exclusive members- only apartment complex instead of an eighties nightmare of a building stripped down to dust and concrete.

And now Fallon lived in Amelie’s palace.

The other cars parked in the lot alongside her own transporta- tion, and one by one, they were brought out— Shane, still sniping at red- faced Officer Sully, and then Michael and Eve, not in hand- cuffs but obviously being escorted along by their own guards.

She, Shane, Eve, and Michael, plus their minders, all crowded into one elevator for the trip upstairs. They were taken to the first floor, the entry level. It looked just like Claire remembered it— lush carpets, expensive chandeliers, the faint, oppressive smell of roses, and gloomy, brooding paintings hanging on the walls. Anything that displayed someone who was recognizably a vampire had been taken down, and there was a stack of canvases in the corner of the central atrium.

“This way,” said Hannah, meeting them in that space. Claire didn’t know how she’d arrived before they did, but somehow, she had. Maybe she’d been at the front of the parade. She led them down the hall and out to the big fancy entryway, with its vast, vaulted ceiling . . . and then out onto the porch, where the morn- ing sun was dazzling the marble.

Once her eyes adjusted to the glare, Claire saw that Founder’s Square had been kept looking perfect— the hedges and lawns were neatly trimmed, the flower beds exploded with fresh, live color. It all looked as clean and graceful as anything you could find in a picture of Paris, complete with the marble- columned buildings ringing the park.

Except for the banners, which were red, white, and blue, snap- ping and lifting in the breeze that swirled through the courtyard.

A Morganville- sized crowd, maybe three hundred people strong, had gathered on the lawn. They were conducting some kind of ceremony in connection with the sunrise. Claire spotted a raised stage at the other end, where the vampires had once kept a cage where those who broke their laws were displayed . . . and sometimes held executions, too. The cage was gone, and that was a good thing, but she had a sudden nasty flashback to a photograph she’d seen in history class— a fancy square with dignified grand buildings, long red banners, a stage. A passionate, fiery speaker delivering his speech to a sea of rapt people.

History, repeating.

Fallon must have been delighted, thinking his timing couldn’t have been better. The bodies of Morley, Oliver, and Amelie were being carried through the aisle in the center of the crowd, and there was total silence until the procession was halfway to the stage . . . and then someone started to clap.

Then it was an avalanche of applause, and cheering.

They were cheering dead bodies.

Claire looked over at Shane, and saw that he was watching with a stony expression on his face. He was probably thinking how he might have been in that crowd, cheering, at some point in his life.

Maybe he’d have even been the first to clap.

“Makes you proud to be human, doesn’t it?” he said to no one in particular.

Eve moved up beside them. “So proud,” she said. “They’ll probably open a souvenir shop later. Vampire bones keychains and stake earrings. Maybe they’ll even put the town name on them.”

Claire felt something cool and metallic brush her fingers, and flinched, but then she realized that it was the nail clippers, and it was Eve’s hand pressing them into her palm. She clenched her fist around them.

“Time to go,” Hannah said, and walked their group down the steps toward the ceremony. The cheering had mostly died down by the time they got there, and the three vampires were being laid on the stage, in the sun. They’d be burning— slowly, because they were so old, but still. Definitely painful.

Michael paused on the steps, and Eve stopped with him and anxiously asked, “Honey? What’s wrong?” His eyes were shut, and he looked very strange. “Are you feeling okay?”

When he opened his eyes, Claire saw tears break free and run down his cheeks. “It’s the sun,” he said. “Eve, I’m standing in the sun. It’s so warm.”

She understood, and she hugged him. Claire didn’t get it for a second, until she realized how long it would have been since Mi- chael had felt the touch of sunshine without the horrible scorching and scarring that came with it as a new vampire. It must have really hit him in that moment that he was genuinely human again.

Genuinely cured.

He hugged Eve close and said, “I hate that he’s the one who gave me back my life. You know that, right?”

“I know,” she said, and rubbed his back. “Doesn’t matter.

You’re here, and that’s what counts.”

They held hands on the way down the steps, the sun gilding Michael’s golden hair into blazing glory. He looked even more like his grandfather Sam now, Claire thought; Sam had been frozen at an age not too much older than Michael when he’d been made a vampire. Apart from the fact that Sam’s hair had been more red than blond, they’d been very similar.

That thought made Claire wonder how Amelie really felt about Michael’s conversion back to human. Glad, or sad? She’d loved Sam so intensely that she’d shown public grief for him when he died; maybe she’d want to keep Michael preserved forever at the age where he resembled his grandfather.

Or maybe she’d be happy to let him go and live his life. It was never easy to tell with Amelie.

It made it all the more difficult, though, because Michael was now Fallon’s symbolic victory.

Hannah led them through the crowd to the stage, then went up the steps to whisper to Fallon. He nodded, and beckoned; Eve and Michael were brought onstage.

Shane and Claire were kept where they were, at the edge of the steps.

Everybody’s attention was on Fallon, and Eve, and Michael, so Claire risked flipping the blade on the nail clippers and working the tiny jaws up until they were gripping the plastic of the zip tie around her wrists. She’d have to cut it in stages; the ties were broad and thick, but when she squeezed the clippers, she felt them slice cleanly through the restraints. She adjusted it another quarter of an inch and pressed again. It was harder this time; the angle was more acute, and she couldn’t get leverage as easily. But it yielded.

The third and last time, though, as she tried to slide the clip- pers into position, her sweaty fingers slipped, and she dropped them.

Claire shifted position backward gradually until she could see the metallic shine of them on the grass. She tested the restraints.

She’d cut through two thirds of the band, but what was left was still pretty thick, and she didn’t have the force necessary to rip the cuffs apart. I ne d to work out more, she thought, but that wasn’t going to help her much right now.

She needed to get the clippers.

She took a step, and faked stumbling and falling to one knee, then toppling over in a graceless loss of balance. That put her hands within grasping distance of the clippers, and she raked fran- tically at the grass until she touched them and pulled them into her fist.

Officer Sully grabbed her elbow and yanked her to her feet.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked, frowning.

“You try keeping these things on for hours,” she said. “It throws off your balance, okay?”

“Don’t try anything.”

“I won’t,” she said, and it was the truth. She wasn’t going to try.

Up on the stage, Fallon stepped to the microphone, and the whole crowd quieted. “Friends,” he said, “fellow residents, thank you for coming here to celebrate the dawn of a new day in Mor- ganville, a day without fear of violence or suppression. As of today, you’re no longer slaves to monsters who murder to stay alive, who take your blood and your money and use it to fund their own end- less, selfish existence. As of today, you don’t have to fear the dark.