Rachel Caine: Last Breath

Ugh.

Claire fed her three that way and left a fourth next to her, then ran for the doors.

She reached the hallway just as Shane came sliding her way with bowling-ball velocity, and ran right into her. He was soaking wet, and he was bleeding —all over, as if he was sweating it. He shuddered and made little horrible sounds in the back of his throat, but he scrambled to his feet, grabbed her hand, and they ran. She’d never seen him really run like that before, like someone really in the grip of mindless fear, but she understood it.

They made it to the Bloodmobile just as Myrnin came out the door, firing a shotgun behind him and dragging Oliver with his other hand. Claire got Shane into a seat and met Myrnin at the door to pull Oliver inside. Naomi was awake and less insane now, and when Claire screamed at her to get blood, Naomi staggered to the back and came back with armloads.

“Where’s Amelie?” Claire yelled at Myrnin, who was standing in the vehicle’s door, still firing. He shook his head. He looked taut and desperate, and his eyes were glowing red not so much with hunger as with fear, she thought.

Amelie hadn’t come out.

“We have to go back!” Claire said. Myrnin’s shotgun ran dry, and he backed up into the Bloodmobile and slammed the door shut as a draug rushed forward at them.

“We can’t,” he said. “I’m out of shells.” He sounded shaken and oddly flat, and he shoved her back when she tried to push past him. “ No. Wait.”

Magnus was standing in the doorway of the Civic Pool. He was holding Amelie, and she was limp as a doll.

Magnus held her up in silent triumph. “If you want her,” he said, “come and get—”

Somebody shot him. Not Myrnin, because he was out of shells. Not Amelie, who was hanging helpless.

The shot came from a speeding pickup truck that raced by, then screamed into a slewing 360-degree turn, and Claire recognized it. Men poured out, all armed, desperate, and human .

And Captain Obvious was in the lead, pumping another shell into his shotgun.

Magnus hadn’t gone down, and hadn’t even screamed, so whatever they were firing wasn’t silver, but it was inconveniencing him, at the very least. He dropped Amelie, and she rolled limply down the steps to a crumpled heap as Magnus turned his empty, not-human eyes on the new threat.

And laughed.

Myrnin unlocked the Bloodmobile door, lunged out, grabbed Amelie, and jumped back inside as the firing continued. “Well,” he said, “it does appear that your idiot redneck friends are good for something after all. Do tell them to run, Claire.” He looked down at Amelie, and stopped talking. His eyes went from red to black in a second.

Claire snapped open the window and screamed at the men in the truck. They kept firing. Well, she’d tried.

“Myrnin?” Claire asked, short of breath with fear.

He didn’t look up. “Drive,” he said. “Take us out of here.” It was a good idea, because Captain Obvious and his friends had finished unloading their bullets into Magnus and the draug, and were piling back into the bed of their pickup, which was revving its engine. Claire jumped into the driver’s seat, started the Bloodmobile, and followed the pickup as it drove away. She couldn’t match its speed, but it didn’t matter. The pickup was racing toward the edge of town, and she didn’t intend to go that way.

She turned and headed toward Founder’s Square.

“Is she alive?” Claire asked, as Myrnin sat down in the passenger seat with Amelie cradled in his arms. She looked as pale as a marble statue now. Her eyes were closed.

“For now,” he said. He pulled back the collar of her black shirt, and Claire saw two giant black holes in her skin, three or four times the size of even the messiest vampire bite she’d ever seen. “There’s no cure for a master draug’s bite.”

It was silent in Founder’s Square. The cops had formed their lines again; the fight with the mob was over, just some wrecked vehicles left to mark the whole event.

The whole thing had a nightmare kind of stillness to it. Claire pulled the Bloodmobile up to the curb and parked it, and Myrnin silently stood up with Amelie in his arms.

Oliver blocked him as he turned for the door.

Oliver was still pale, and trembling, but he seemed sane, at least; he’d wiped the excess blood he’d gulped off his mouth, but there were still smears of dark red here and there. He didn’t speak, but he held out his arms, and Myrnin, after a brief hesitation, handed Amelie to him.

Oliver shut his eyes for a moment, then nodded and took her outside.

Naomi followed, moving more slowly than Claire had ever seen a vampire move. Myrnin helped her out, which would have looked gallant except for his outfit, which was more like something a crazed beachcomber would wear than a knight in armor, however tarnished.

That accounted for almost all the vampires they’d rescued. Claire got up and walked toward the back. She stopped when she reached Shane, who was lying down on a donation couch. He’d wiped himself clean of the blood, but she could see bleeding pinpricks on his face and hands. He looked terrible, she thought, and wanted to cry in wild, screaming sobs. Somehow, she gulped it back.

He sat up and held out his arms, and she collapsed against him. He kissed her, and even though he still tasted like that pool, like all the nightmares, she sank into the kiss, because underneath it he was Shane, he was alive, he was alive .

And so was she.

He was shaking, she realized, but he was trying to comfort her with soothing strokes down her back, a gentle touch on her face.

Neither one of them tried to speak.

Michael carried Eve past them. There was a thick bandage on her neck, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped, and she seemed okay. She had her arms around him, and her head was lying in the hollow of his shoulder, and Claire thought she’d never seen a look like that on Michael’s face, that complicated mixture of fierce love and fear and regret.

He looked almost as frail as Naomi had, but he carried her anyway.

“What are we going to do?” Claire whispered. “Oh God, Shane, what can we do?”

He shook his head and sighed, and pressed his lips against her hair in a gentle kiss. “We’re going to win,” he said. “That’s our only choice. I don’t know how, and I don’t know what the cost is going to be. But we’re going to win.”

“Yes.” The voice was raw, and quiet, but it was Oliver’s. He was standing in the doorway, and Amelie was still in his arms. “There’s no option now. We fight them for Morganville. All of us.” He looked down at Amelie. “And the cost will be high, Mr. Collins. It will be very high indeed. Come now. It won’t be safe out here for long, and the sun is coming up.”

Claire didn’t want to move, but she did, and helped Shane up. Oliver stared at the two of them for a moment, then shook his head.

“What?” Shane asked.

“I don’t understand humans at all,” he said. “Why would you do such a thing, for us?”

Shane exchanged a look with Claire, and shrugged. “Had to be done,” he said. “And we needed you to stop Amelie from pulling the pin on Morganville. She was going to kill us all.”

Oliver sighed. “What makes you think I won’t?”

“Because you’re a fighter,” Shane said. “Like me. And now you’re in charge.”

“Oh, trust me, you won’t enjoy that,” Oliver said, with a touch of his old acid tone. “We haven’t even begun to fight.”

“Good,” Shane said. “Because as far as I can tell, we’re getting our asses kicked, and I’m tired of that.”

Oliver gave him a slow, odd smile. “So am I,” he said. He turned to go and said, in an offhand kind of way, “Thank you.”