Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

And Michael would live through that. Sadly.

‘I killed them,’ she whispered to me. Her voice was shaking, and I felt hot tears wet against my skin. ‘Oh God , Shane, I killed them …’

I couldn’t do anything but hold her. I don’t know if it helped her, but it helped me push back the violent impulses inside of me that said I ought to take out the only remaining vampire among us, before it was too late.

The gunfire started, and I flinched and threw Claire to the van floor, covering her. I heard the others hitting the deck, too. I waited for the sound of metal punching in, glass breaking … but it didn’t come.

Whatever they were firing at, it wasn’t us .

I waited for a few more seconds, then carefully rose to a crouch. I couldn’t see a thing out the front windows, because we were pointed the wrong way, but if nobody was firing at us, it was giving us a chance we couldn’t waste.

I opened the van’s side door. ‘Out! Everybody out! Run for it!’

I didn’t even know where we’d go, but staying where we were wasn’t an option. Being out in the sun was going to be hell for Michael, though, and I looked around for something to help him. I found a plastic tarp rolled up in a bin behind the driver’s seat, and I tossed it to him; he broke the rope that held it closed and draped the thing around him like a portable tent.

‘I’ll go first,’ he said. ‘Watch Eve.’

I nodded. With him so close to me, it was hard not to do something violent. The conflict inside was tearing me apart, but I tried not to let it show; even so, Michael gave me a weird look before he bailed out, blue tarp flapping around him like the world’s most heavily waterproofed cloak. Pete and Liz followed, then Eve.

Claire and I were the last ones out.

‘What are you doing?’ I yelled. ‘Move—’ Because the rest had stopped dead where they were, only a few feet from the van.

And then I saw why.

The guards were down. Well, one was still running and firing wildly, but as I watched, Jesse – Lady Grey – took a running leap that crossed at least twenty feet of space. She landed flat-footed in front of him, grabbed him by the throat, and tossed him twenty feet back , to Oliver, who caught him and – well, broke him. I tried not to see more of that than I had to.

Myrnin was up, too, although all I saw of him was a flicker of motion as he disappeared into the barn. Oliver finished up with the guard, nodded to Jesse, and he followed Myrnin.

She went into the farmhouse. And then there was screaming.

There was a lot of screaming.

‘Jesus,’ Eve whispered. She crossed herself, an involuntary motion dragged up from childhood habit; what we were seeing was something that not even I had seen before: vampires let loose from all their inhibitions. The purest expression of predator.

It was bloody terrifying.

‘They’re – they’re killing—’ Claire was shaking now, and her face was blank. ‘They’re killing everyone.’

I put my arms around her and didn’t say anything. I concentrated on breathing, on trying to cool the fire in my blood; it wasn’t getting easier. In fact, now that the three older vamps were back in the game – and sweeping the table clean – it was actually worse. These instincts were screaming at me to do something.

Kill them. Kill them all .

I dropped the gun I was holding. I was afraid to keep holding it. I wasn’t sure I could control this thing inside me too much longer.

Myrnin emerged from the barn. He was still icy pale, like a walking corpse, and he was holding two big, clumsy guns – the things that Claire had developed and used to bring down vampires. One of them was trailing wires and broken circuitry.

I thought we could use the one of those that still worked just now, because Jesse came out of the farmhouse, and she looked unholy . I didn’t think anything could be left alive in there. There was just that vibe coming off of her – one of dark, total destruction.

Oliver came out of the barn as well. I’d seen him in relaxed moods, almost in good ones; I’d known him as a pseudo-friendly hippie coffee-shop owner, and as a snarky, superior man with a violent edge.

But I didn’t know this version of him. It was all vampire, all the time. A god of death.

He stood there in full sun, white as marble, staring at us with eyes red as rubies, and slowly smiled. His fangs were out, and it was incredibly creepy. He was burning, turning black in the sun. And he didn’t even care.

Michael stepped forward, hidden under the tarp, and said, ‘Are you finished?’ He didn’t sound spooked, or bothered. I guessed that all this was normal to him, on some really horrible level. He understood. ‘Because all that’s left here are friends. Understand?’

Oliver nodded.

I wasn’t at all sure it was anything but a gesture, and I braced myself for the attack.

Seeing Oliver, Jesse and Myrnin that way – reduced to their purest hunting instincts – had terrified Claire on a very deep level, but the scariest moment was at the end, when Oliver had no one left to fight.

No one but them.

For a long, long few seconds Claire was convinced he was about to take them out too … and then he just turned and walked away.

‘Wait,’ Claire said. Shane tried to hush her, probably scared that attracting Oliver’s attention was a very bad idea – and he was likely right about that – but she had to know. ‘Did you kill them all?’

‘What did you expect us to do?’ he snapped without turning toward her.

Claire felt numbed by it all now; she knew on some level that killing all these people had been necessary, because they’d been doing their level best to kill her friends, but … but she couldn’t face it. She started for the barn, but Shane held her back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Claire, don’t. You don’t need to see that.’

‘What about Dr Anderson?’

‘Ah,’ Myrnin said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He flashed back inside the barn, and when he came out, he was dragging Dr Anderson by the collar of her lab coat.

She was alive. Bruised, battered, but alive . He’d put her into one of the straitjackets they’d used on him and Oliver, and strapped it too tightly for her to move, though she was trying to fight her way free. He’d also gagged her.

Good. Claire couldn’t imagine anything she wanted to hear from her right now. She was overwhelmed by the conviction that if she hadn’t started all this by her stupid little project, those stupid VLAD guns, then none of it would have had to happen.

None of those people would be dead right now.

Oliver and Jesse, meanwhile, walked out to the van that lay stranded and stuck in the field. The two of them easily picked it up and carried it back to the gravel. ‘We need to go,’ Oliver said. Dr Anderson was screaming behind the cloth, and trying to kick at Jesse, who ignored her. ‘We’ll take both vans. Myrnin will ride with you. Michael …?’

‘We’ll come with you,’ Michael said, and Eve nodded. He turned to Shane, and something strange passed between the two of them that Claire couldn’t understand. She’d thought they were good, but there was some kind of caution there, some wary distance. ‘See you back home?’

Shane nodded. ‘Be safe, man. You okay?’

‘Better,’ Michael said. He sounded more like himself, at least; he wasn’t as pallid as the other vampires, and he seemed less … alien, somehow. What did I do to them? Claire wondered. She’d had to make guesses about how to adjust VLAD’s settings, and she hadn’t been at all sure that it would be enough to reverse the effects of the first blasts … she’d been right about the reversal, but it seemed to have done something else, too. Something scarier. It was as if their essential humanity had been stripped away. Even Myrnin’s. She couldn’t meet his gaze; it was too strange, too … too frightening.