Rachel Caine - Kiss of Death

“I have a gun, Shane.” Eve sighed.

“What, you think I actually loaded yours?”

Eve flipped him off, and Claire laughed.

Even now, things just stayed normal, somehow.

An hour passed, and nothing happened. Eve got anxious about Jason’s absence, but Claire was starting to feel a little confident that nothing would happen tonight at the library, as the minutes clicked by and the night around the library continued quiet, with nothing but the wind stirring outside in the streets.

And then the walkie-talkie Mrs. Grant had given her squawked for attention, making her jump. Claire figured it would be Shane; he’d stationed himself on the other side of the building, apparently because she was so distracting (which really didn’t disappoint her, when she thought about it).

But it wasn’t Shane.

It was Eve. “I’m coming out,” she said. She sounded breathless and worried. “You need to see this.”

“I’m here,” Claire said. “Be careful.”

In under a minute, Eve was beside her, holding out an open cell phone. Not hers—this one, for instance, didn’t have all the usual glow-in-the-dark skulls on it. Eve wouldn’t have a boring cell like this one.

Oh yeah. It was the one Oliver had slipped into her pocket on the bus. The only one they had now, since the rest were probably still dumped in a drawer back in the Durram police station.

There was a text message on the phone. Wounded, it said. Bring help. Garage.

It was from Oliver.

And that was it. Just the four words. Claire had gotten the occasional phone call from Oliver, but never a text.

“Oliver texted me,” Eve said. “I mean really. Oliver texted. That’s weird, right? Who knew he could?”

“Mrs. Grant said the cell phones didn’t work here.”

“No, she said they went out. This one’s working. Kinda, anyway.”

“Michael!” Claire called, and he jumped down from the top of a bookshelf next to the window to land next to her, barely seeming to notice the impact. She didn’t see him coming, either, which made her fumble the phone and almost drop it. “Hey! Scary-monster move! Don’t like it!”

“I’ll try to whistle next time,” he said. “What?”

She showed him. He did whistle, softly, and thought for a few seconds.

“What if it’s not him?” Claire said. “What if it’s, I don’t know, them? They got him, and they’re using his phone to lure us in?”

“They didn’t strike me as particularly clever with the planning, but you’ve got a good point. It could be a trap.” He frowned. “But if Oliver is calling for help, it’s about as bad as it gets.”

“I know.” Claire felt short of breath. “What do we do? He probably thinks Morley’s here!”

“Well, Morley’s not.” Michael looked around at the library, at the cluster of kids sleeping on cots in the middle of the room. “I don’t like leaving them, but we can’t just ignore it. Not if there’s a chance he’s really in trouble. It’s close to dawn, at least. That’s good for them, bad for Oliver.”

They found Mrs. Grant, who listened to them, read the text message, and shrugged.

Shrugged.

“You want to go, go,” she said. “We held out before any of you got here. We’ll hang on long after you’re gone, too. This is our town, and we’re going to be the last ones standing around here. Count on it.”

“Yes ma’am,” Claire said softly. “But—the kids—”

Mrs. Grant smiled bleakly. “What do you think we fight so hard for? The architecture? We’ll fight to our last for our kids, every one of us. Don’t you worry about that. You think your friend needs you, go on. Take the weapons—we’ve got plenty. This used to be a big hunting town.” Mrs. Grant paused, eyeing Claire. “In fact, hold on. Got something for you.”

She rummaged in a closet and came up with something that was huge, bulky, and looked very complicated—but once Claire had it thrust into her hands, she realized it wasn’t complicated at all.

It was a bow. One of those with the wheels and pulleys—a compound bow?

Mrs. Grant found a bag stuffed full of arrows, too.

“I don’t know how to shoot it,” Claire protested.

“Learn.”

“But—”

“If you don’t want it, give it back.”

“No,” Claire said, and felt ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry. I’ll figure it out.”

Mrs. Grant suddenly grinned and ruffled Claire’s hair as one would a little kid’s. “I know you will,” she said. “You got spark, you know that? Spark and grit. I like that.”

Claire nodded, not quite sure what to say to that. She clutched the bow in one hand, the bag of arrows in the other, and looked at Michael. “So I guess we’re—”

“Saving Oliver,” Michael said, straight-faced. “Maybe you’d better try shooting that thing first.”

While Michael, Shane, and Eve straightened out whatever it was they were going to do to get to Oliver—who was, according to the map and Mrs. Grant, at an old adobe building near the Civic Hall called Halley’s Garage—Claire set up a couple of hand-drawn paper targets on pillow-padded chairs, pulled one of the arrows out, and tried to figure out how to put it on the bowstring quickly. That didn’t work so well, so she tried again, taking her time, then pulling back the arrow and sighting down the long, straight line.

It was surprisingly tough to pull the string back, and hold the arrow in place, and not waver all over the place. She didn’t even hit the chair, much less the target, and she winced as the arrow hit the wall at least four feet away. But at least she’d fired it. That was something, right?

She picked out another arrow and tried again.

Twenty arrows later, she’d managed to hit the pillow—not the target, but the pillow—and she was starting to understand how this whole thing worked. It was easier when she thought of it in terms of physics, of potential and kinetic energy, energy and momentum.

As she was working out the calculations in her head, she forgot to really worry about all the physical things that were getting in the way—the balancing of the bow, the aiming, the fear she wasn’t going to get it right—and suddenly it all just clicked. She felt it come into sudden, sharp focus, like a spotlight had suddenly focused on her, and she let go of the arrow.

That instant, she knew it would hit the target. She let the bow rock gracefully forward on the balance point, watching the arrow, and it smacked into the exact center of her crudely drawn paper circle.

Physics.

She loved physics.

Shane arrived just as she put the arrow into the center, and slowed down, staring from the target to Claire, standing straight and tall, bow still held loosely in one hand and ready to shoot again. “You look so hot right now,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

She grinned at him and went to pick up all the arrows. One or two had suffered a little too much from contact with the wall, but the rest were good to reuse, and she carefully put them back into the bag, fletching end up. “You just like me because I might actually be able to be useful for a change.”

“You are always useful,” Shane said. “And hot. I mentioned that, right?”

“You’re mental. I need a shower, clean clothes, and about a year of sleep.”

“Okay, how about a hot mess?”

“Let me be Eve for a minute,” she said, and flipped him off. He laughed and kissed her.

“Not even close,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got some cranky old vampire to rescue.”

It was still dark outside, but it felt ... different, as if the world was still dreaming, but dreaming about waking up. The air felt cool and light, and the darkness was just a tiny bit lighter than before.