Rachel Caine: Daylighters

Better not to feel anything right now. Better to stay strong.

The driver’s-side door opened, and Hannah Moses got behind the wheel of the police car. She settled in and buckled her safety belt in one smooth motion. A deputy got in on the other side—new, Claire thought. Someone she didn’t know.

But she did recognize the pin he wore on the collar of his uniform—a rising sun, in gold.

Symbol of the Daylight Foundation.

Eve lunged forward and grabbed the mesh, threading her fingertips into it as Hannah started the engine of the cruiser. “What the hell are you doing , Hannah?” she demanded, and rattled the mesh, hard. “Where are you taking Michael?”

“He’s safe,” Hannah said. “Nothing will happen to him. Trust me, Eve.”

“Yeah, you know what? Bite me. I don’t trust you. You just stabbed us all in the back, you horrible bi—”

Claire grabbed Eve and dragged her away, changing the word to a protesting yelp. “Stop,” she whispered fiercely in her best friend’s ear. “You’re not going to accomplish anything by making her angry at us. Just wait. Be quiet and wait.”

“Easy for you to say,” Eve hissed. “Shane’s coming with us at least. Michael—we don’t even know where they’re taking him!”

She had a point. Claire really hated to admit it, but there was absolutely nothing they could accomplish locked in a police cruiser. And antagonizing the lady who held the keys to their handcuffs probably wasn’t the best strategy.

“We’re not giving up,” she told Eve. “We’re just . . . biding our time.”

“And what do you think they’re going to do to him while we’re biding, exactly?” Eve asked, yanking at the mesh again. “Yo, Hannah! How does it feel to stab your friends in the back? Hope you didn’t get blood all over your neatly pressed uniform!”

The deputy turned around and gave her a cold, hard stare. “Sit quietly,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll shock you until you do.”

“With what, your breath? Ever heard of flossing, Deputy Dimwit?”

“Eve,” Hannah said. It was a warning, a flat and naked one, and it was reinforced by the deputy—whose breath, in all fairness, did kind of reek—taking out a Taser.

Although Eve was still simmering with rage, she let go and sat back, folding her arms over her chest. Then she kicked his seat. Didn’t do any good, because the seat was reinforced with a steel plate, but she probably felt better for doing it.

“Hey,” Claire said, and reached her hand out toward Eve. Eve hesitated, then took it and gripped hard. “It’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.”

Eve didn’t say anything. She was probably thinking, You don’t know that , and she would have been right. Claire didn’t know that. She felt cold and helpless and vulnerable, and she didn’t know how any of this could really be okay . . . but for now, in the moments between opportunities, all she could do was pretend.

She expected they’d be taken straight to the jail, or at least to the courthouse, but instead the two police cruisers turned off and headed for the outskirts of Morganville. Claire recognized the area, and she didn’t like it at all. Nothing good happened out here on the fringes of town; it was full of abandoned buildings and abandoned people.

“Hey,” she said, leaning forward but careful not to touch the mesh. “Excuse me, but where exactly are you taking us?”

“Don’t worry. You’re not in any danger,” Hannah said. “I have someone who wants to meet you. We’re almost there.”

When Claire had left Morganville, a lot of rebuilding had been under way around town, but not in this area. Nobody had thought it much worth saving, she suspected. It had been home mostly to tumbledown old shacks, rotting warehouses, and long-dead factories.

Now gangs of men moved with purpose, most in orange vests, and bulldozers noisily leveled uneven ground and piled up the shattered remains of brick, wood, and rusted steel. Other teams were putting up the frames of buildings in areas that had already been cleared. Beyond, it was obvious that a lot more construction was under way, some of it already painted and finished. She could imagine what Shane was muttering in the other car: Great, I leave town and suddenly there are good jobs. He liked construction, and there was a lot of men and women out there, dressed in work shirts and jeans, hammering, hauling, bulldozing, and creating.

It was a whole new Morganville. It looked . . . cheerful. Hopeful.

“What brought this on?” Claire asked. “All these new houses?”

“They’re for the new members,” Hannah said. Her voice was calm and level, and it didn’t give away anything at all. Her deputy, the one wearing the Daylight Foundation’s rising sun pin on his collar, glanced back at Claire. “By joining the Daylight Foundation, they can receive free new housing if they want it. It’s attracted a lot of enthusiasm and support. Half of these people working out here are volunteers.” She slowed the cruiser and made a left turn. “There’s something to be said for leaving the past behind and building a new future, don’t you think? Especially in a town whose history is as dark as Morganville’s.”

Claire didn’t want to agree, because she still felt there was a lot she didn’t know and didn’t fully understand, but what Hannah had just said made sense—or it would, if she trusted the Daylight Foundation even a little bit.

Speaking of the Daylighters . . . they’d renovated one of the old warehouses and built themselves a brand-new headquarters.

It was a large building just ahead, fresh and gleaming with paint and shining metal, with a big rotating sign on top of the roof. It shone soft gold in the sunlight as it turned—the same symbol that was on the Daylight Foundation pin the deputy wore. A simple image, something that should have looked hopeful. Sunrise, a new day, all that.

Claire didn’t believe it. What she did believe was that the building, for all the cheerful way it had been painted, looked like it would be easy to defend if it came to a fight. The windows were all high, narrow, and didn’t look like they opened at all. Thick walls, too. In fact, if you ignored everything but the construction, it could just as easily have been a prison.

Hannah pulled up in the generous parking lot—a newly paved one, still fresh and black, with bright white stripes marking off spaces. There were about fifty cars already present, but they filled less than a third of the available slots. You could put half the cars in Morganville in here, Claire thought, and have room left over for massive bus parking . Two police cruisers were already in place, plus Hannah’s and the one pulling up in the next slot that carried Shane and Dr. Anderson. She thought she might have recognized a few other vehicles, but nothing jumped out at her with any certainty.

There were, she realized, no vampire-dark-tinted cars in the lot at all. Not a single one.

Hannah turned the engine off, but neither she nor the deputy got out immediately; instead, Hannah twisted to look at Claire and Eve through the mesh. “Here’s how this is going to go,” she said. “You’re going to behave yourselves, get out, and walk with us into the building, and you’re going to act like civilized young ladies while we introduce you to the man in charge.”

“Or what? You’ll put a note in my permanent record?” Eve scoffed.

“Or you’ll end up handcuffed, maybe Tasered, and the end result will be exactly the same, only with a lot less smiling,” Hannah said. “So I’d really rather skip all the unpleasantness and make this as painless as possible for you.”

“Oh, sure, you’re only thinking about us,” Claire said. “I understand completely.”