Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

Claire met her eyes. ‘And what if I fail?’

‘Then we have acres and acres of farmland waiting for fertiliser,’ Dr Anderson said. ‘I’m fighting for the human race. I’m not going to flinch from whatever I have to do to save innocent lives for the future.’

‘Neither am I,’ Claire said. ‘You should have trusted me. I’m really tired of people not trusting me.’

Shane would have recognised that tone. But Dr Anderson missed the warning altogether.

Anderson led the way to the other half of the room, through the clear glass door that separated the two parts. The three vampires knelt where they’d been left, all still submissive. Dr Davis had blood samples laid out on his lab tables, neatly labelled, and he was talking to a lab geek in a white coat – but one, Claire noticed, who also had the rising sun pin on his lapel. He looked up when he saw Anderson, Claire, and the guard, and nodded.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘We’ve been waiting.’

‘You can afford to lose one, Patrick? Just in case Claire’s tried to do something interesting with her project?’

‘I have redundancy now,’ he said. ‘So, yes. If I had to pick one, I’d say the older-looking one. He seems like the most trouble.’

‘Oliver?’ Anderson nodded. ‘Very well. He’s got quite the reputation as a killer. I think that seems appropriate.’ She turned to the guard, took the heavy weapon, and held it out to Claire. ‘Take it.’

Claire didn’t hesitate. The weight settled in her hands, throwing off her balance, but she felt better for having it. Stronger.

‘Before you try using it on me,’ Anderson said, ‘please remember that my friend here has a weapon pointed at your head.’

Claire glanced aside, and saw that the guard behind her had drawn his sidearm, and yes – it was pointed at her, steady and calm. He wouldn’t hesitate, she thought.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked. But she already knew.

‘I want you to shoot Oliver,’ Anderson said. ‘I want you to prove to me that I can trust you. He looks as if he is recovering faster than the others, and I want you to render him nonthreatening. Then I want you to continue shooting him. Do you understand?’

Claire swallowed hard, and looked at Oliver. He hadn’t raised his head. He looked frail, and unexpectedly old and vulnerable. ‘Why?’

‘Because I need to be certain we can kill them this way,’ Anderson said. ‘The simulations say it will work. I need to prove the theory, and document how long it takes to accomplish it. You wanted to be a scientist, Claire. This is what it takes.’

Oliver looked up. It seemed to take a vast effort, from the shaking of his body, but he raised his head and met her gaze. His eyes weren’t red. They were dark, and human, and afraid.

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’

Claire didn’t honestly know what he was asking. She didn’t know what he wanted. But she knew what she had to do. It had to be done fast, and confidently, and above all, it had to be done without hesitation.

She took a deep breath, said, ‘I’m really sorry, but she’s right. I have to do it.’

And then she raised the weapon and held down the trigger.

It seemed to take forever. Oliver was caught in the beam, twitching, eyes wide, mouth open, and the chains rattled against the hasp like chattering teeth … and then, he collapsed. Dead weight. He fell hard, with no attempt to save himself, and hit the concrete limp and lifeless. All the colour that remained had drained from his face, leaving it eerily blue-white; his eyes were open, dark, and blank. His fangs were down, his mouth half-open.

He didn’t move.

‘How can we tell if he’s actually dead?’ Davis asked. He sounded completely unaffected by the whole thing. Claire felt hot, unsteady, numbed into stillness. She couldn’t look away from Oliver’s eyes.

Dr Anderson went to Oliver, knelt down, and used a silver knife from her belt to cut him. No reaction, though his skin still burned and sparked along the edges of the cut.

She stabbed him. Nothing.

‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘Congratulations, Claire. It’s quite a breakthrough. With a little more experimentation, we can understand everything about vampires – how to use them, how to control them properly. And it’s all thanks to you.’

‘I know,’ Claire said. ‘So’s this.’

She couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t stop to second-guess herself. She turned the weapon on Jesse and shot her, too. Then turned the gun on Myrnin. She didn’t have time to hold down the trigger quite as long before the guard started to rush her, clearly not sure whether this was a killing situation or not, and deciding to err on the side of caution.

It was enough time for her to smash VLAD against the concrete floor and destroy the delicate circuitry before he tackled her.

‘No!’ Anderson yelled, too late. Myrnin and Jesse were lifeless on the floor, like Oliver. ‘No, you fool, what did you do?’

‘I ended your experiment,’ Claire said, as the guards shoved her down to a kneeling position. ‘Because you’re not a scientist. You’re a monster. I’m not leaving any of them at your mercy.’

Anderson’s face turned red with fury, and she grabbed the wreckage of the weapon off the floor. ‘Shoot her!’ she shouted. ‘Shoot her, and shoot her friends, too. And bring me Michael. At least we’ve still got him !’

‘Come on,’ the guard said, and grabbed Claire by the collar of her shirt. ‘Might as well die with them. That was stupid, you know. Real stupid.’

Claire knew. But this time, doing something stupid was the only way she could outsmart her enemies.

Dr Davis was kneeling down next to the bodies. ‘Looks like they’re dead all right. In any case, they’re of no use to us now. Take them out of here and get rid of the bodies. Burn them.’

That was exactly right. Burning was the only way to truly be sure the vampires were dead. Davis wasn’t taking any chances … and Claire didn’t want him to take any, either. She needed the vampires to be unlocked.

The air outside of the barn was brisk and cold, and it tasted like snow was coming, even though the sun was still shining. A pretty morning. Probably the last sunrise she’d ever see.

She’d kind of given up on the crazy idea of surviving this, she realised, and that made it possible to take in a deep breath and enjoy the last few moments in the world. She’d done what she could. And maybe it would work out.

But most probably, it wouldn’t. The barn seemed deathly quiet behind them. She pictured Dr Davis’s lab monkeys unchaining Jesse, and Myrnin, and Oliver … and she could see it so vividly in her mind, the limp, dead way their bodies slumped to the floor.

She’d either saved them, or destroyed them. There was no middle ground.

And then she heard the yelling coming from the farmhouse where Shane and Eve and Michael were being held, and the day got just a little bit brighter, somehow. Yes . She wasn’t the only one raising hell.

Time to raise a little more.

Her guard was distracted for a moment, and when she tripped over a rock and jolted against him, she threw him off balance. His gun weaved off target.

Claire saw it in slow motion in her mind, just the way Shane had drilled her. Against an armed opponent, you had to be decisive and fast, because any hesitation would be your last.

She whirled into his grip, throwing him further off balance, and whipping him around in a strange, stumbling dance. She got her foot between his, and then they were falling, and he instinctively let go of the gun to break his fall. She threw her weight against him as they landed, and flung out her hand to grab the gun as she rolled past it.