Rachel Caine: Daylighters

It seemed to take forever. Hannah never quite collapsed completely, but she trembled, clearly very ill, and as the silvery glow finally faded under her skin, she looked up at Claire. Her eyes, after one last acidic pulse of yellow, settled back to their normal human brown color.

Hannah pulled in a few hard, quick breaths, and nodded. Shane let go of her. She made a face. “Tastes funny,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse. “Aches, too.”

“It’ll pass,” he said, and helped her up. “You took it a lot better than I did.” He wasn’t looking at her face, though, he was examining her arm. The bite was looking a little better. “I think I screamed like a baby.”

“Give me a minute and I might just get there,” Hannah said, and attempted a smile. It wasn’t quite right, but it was brave. “Let’s get out of here.”

Claire would have, but as they turned for the stairs, she caught sight of a fuzzy black spider about the size of her palm sitting on top of a book, watching her with eight bright, beady eyes. He looked almost cute.

“Hey, Bob,” she said. She reached down, and he climbed up on her hand. “Let’s get you back in your tank, okay?”

He didn’t seem unhappy with that. She carried him back over the rubble, and he clung to her hand easily, riding all the uneven progress without much concern. She righted his tank and held out her hand, and he scuttled off and settled into the gauzy webs, looking perfectly comfortable.

She resisted the urge to pat him on the head. Thorax. Whatever. “Good boy, Bob. I’ll be back soon.”

He hopped up and down a little in the webs, then turned his attention to one of his stored insects.

She was happy to skip that part, actually.

As she came back to them, Hannah already seemed much better, and Shane looked relieved. “Swear to God, I don’t get you and that spider,” he said. “But if you’re done playing Dr. Dolittle . . .”

“I know where they’ll have Jesse,” Claire said. “Let’s go.”

But she was wrong.

The asylum—mental hospital—whatever the current politically correct term might be—was closed and locked. Nobody there. Claire went around back to check windows, but she didn’t find anything. Just to be thorough, Hannah broke in (though according to her it was an emergency entry), but she came back shaking her head. She looked disturbed, though. “Bodies,” she said. “Quite a few. He’s been processing vampires through his conversion faster than I thought. But Jesse’s not in there.”

“Then where?” Shane asked.

Claire thought frantically. It could be anywhere, absolutely anywhere in Morganville, but Fallon seemed to be a man who enjoyed sticking the knife in and twisting it just a little bit more. That meant if he’d moved Jesse, he’d moved her for a reason.

“I think he’s got her with him,” Claire said. “At Founder’s Square. Don’t you?”

“Well,” Hannah said, “we have to go there anyway. Hop in.”

The ride back to Founder’s Square wasn’t as easy as leaving, mainly because the alerts about Hannah had gone out; they heard it on the police radio in the car when the news dropped. Chief Hannah Moses to be arrested on sight. Armed and dangerous.

“That,” Hannah said, “is code for Killing her would be just fine . Most of my folks won’t feel that way. I hire good people, mostly, though some of them got forced on me, like Sullivan. But Fallon’s Daylighters will be out for blood, and they won’t hesitate.”

Not good news, Claire thought. They needed Hannah by their side. “So how are we going to get there?”

“On foot,” Hannah said. She stopped the car and parked it in front of the City Lights Washateria, where only a couple of people sat inside, looking depressed and watching the dryers spin. “Give me two minutes.”

She went in, had a short exchange with the woman sitting there, opened the dryer, and pulled out some clothes.

“Um . . . ,” Claire said, and poked Shane in the ribs. “Is she changing clothes?”

“Yep,” he said. “Normally, if we weren’t in mortal danger, I would really find this fascinating.”

It was actually less than two minutes before Hannah was back, carrying a bundle with her uniform and gun belt. She’d found a slightly large pair of dress pants that weren’t really long enough (but flood pants were in, Claire remembered) and a too-frilly pink shirt that was also a little big, but surprisingly cute. The only things that seemed far out of place were her shoes, which were typical police issue, but at a glance she could pass easily as a civilian.

She’d also taken the Daylighters pin from her uniform collar and was wearing it on the shirt.

“Camouflage,” she said, when Claire pointed at it. She opened the doors. “We’ll be walking from here on in. Shane, you’re familiar with this.” She tossed him the shotgun from the rack in front. “Claire—take the Taser.”

“What about you?”

Hannah slipped her sidearm into a pancake holster at the small of her back, and flipped the shirt down over it.

“Unless it’s take-your-shotgun-to-work day, I’m going to get noticed,” Shane said. “Not that it isn’t a great late birthday present, though.”

Hannah looked around the other stores on the block, and grinned. “I can fix that.”

And she did.

“I hate this,” Shane complained, and sneezed. Turned out he was allergic to roses. And he was carrying a thick bundle of them to conceal the shotgun. It was kind of bizarrely clever, because nobody thought a guy carrying roses was dangerous in the least, did they? Especially one who was sneezing.

Claire could tell from how hard he was gritting his teeth that he really did hate it. A lot.

They walked quickly but calmly the short distance to Founder’s Square. Hannah must have thought ahead, because they went to one of the side entrances; it was guarded by a police officer, but as Hannah got closer, she locked stares with the woman and said, “Get on the right side, Gretchen. Semper Fi.”

Gretchen—a trim woman with thick white-blond hair—nodded, gave them all a quick glance, and swung the gate open. “I never saw you, boss,” she told Hannah.

“Affirmative.”

And then they were in, approaching from the side. There was a school choir onstage, singing something that it took Claire a moment to realize was “Here Comes the Sun.” They weren’t very good.

“That’s a little on the nose,” Shane said. “I think maybe ‘Black Hole Sun’ might be more appropriate.”

He was right, of course. The audience Fallon had gathered, though, seemed entranced; they were swaying to the music, holding hands, looking for all the world like they were having a religious experience.

Amelie, Oliver, and Morley were still motionless on the stage, blistering and steaming in the sun. It must have been agonizing, waiting for their chance. Claire wondered why they hadn’t done it already, but then she realized they were waiting for word that the vampires in the mall had been rescued.

It was up to her, and Shane, to let them know.

She spotted Eve and Michael. They were sitting in chairs onstage next to Fallon, pretty much held there by the two Daylighter guards standing behind them. Maybe that was another reason why Amelie hadn’t moved; Eve and Michael would be the first in danger if she did.

The choir was still singing when the vampires began to arrive at Founder’s Square.

Some were covered by blankets, coats, whatever they’d been able to scavenge along the way from the mall. Some, the older ones, had made do with a hat or some kind of cap. They came over the walls in a silent stream, landing quietly in the bushes and moving forward to gather at the edges of the crowd. It was done very calmly. Nobody threatened. Nobody attacked.