Rachel Caine - Fade Out

Pennywell dropped down onto his legs like some pale jumping spider. Myrnin slammed a boot into his face and crawled free of the wreckage, grabbing Claire as he rose to his feet. There was blood staining his shirt, and some on his face where he’d been cut by flying glass, but he looked fine, really.

Angry as hell, though.

Pennywell crawled out of the limo. His expression was no longer empty; it was full of hate. “Heretic,” he hissed. “ Witch. I’ll see you burn, you and your familiar.” He cast a venomous look at Claire, too, and she swallowed hard.

“What’s a familiar?” she asked Myrnin.

“A demonic spirit who aids a witch,” he said. “Usually in the form of a black cat, but I suppose you’d do. Although in my experience you are not nearly demonic enough.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Myrnin raised his eyebrows and thrust his chin at Pennywell. “Well? Are you waiting for your lynch mob to bring your spine?”

Claire had a very nasty flash of intuition. “Where’s Oliver?”

And then a cold hand closed around her neck, choking off her breath and igniting blind panic inside. She was pulled away, completely off balance and out of control, and saw Myrnin spinning toward her but not quickly enough; she was moving away from him, off into the dark. . . .

It all freeze-framed for her: Myrnin, bloody and wide-eyed, reaching out for her. Pennywell smirking from where he stood near the wreckage of the limo. The smoking sedan that had sent the limo rolling—hood crumpled like used tinfoil.

That was a vampire car.

And the driver’s side door was open.

Claire choked, gasped for breath, and tore at the hand holding her throat closed. No good. Her fingernails didn’t concern him any more than her heels when she kicked backward.

“Hush,” Oliver chided her, and squeezed harder. “I’d like to say this will hurt me more than you, but that wouldn’t be strictly true—”

He broke off with a stunned gasp, and his hand slid away from Claire’s throat. She stumbled forward two steps, both hands holding her aching neck, and then looked back.

Oliver was staring down at his chest, where the point of a stake had emerged from his rib cage.

“Damn,” he said, and pitched down to his knees, fighting it all the way.

Michael was behind him.

Michael had just staked Oliver.

He dashed around the older vampire and grabbed Claire. “You okay?”

She couldn’t get words out through her bruised throat, but she nodded, eyes wide. In seconds Myrnin was there, too, picking her up and dumping her unceremoniously into Michael’s arms. “Take her,” he said. “Oliver is not going to be pleased, boy. Better go.”

“I had to,” Michael said. “I had to stake him. He was going to kill her.”

“In point of fact, he wasn’t; he was going to hurt her so badly that Amelie would feel it, that’s all. But that’s not what I meant. You crashed a car into the limousine. Oliver loves his limousine.”

Michael opened his mouth, then closed it without thinking of anything to say to that.

Myrnin, watching Pennywell, said, “Michael, take the girl and go. I have things to do here. Do leave the stake where it is—I can’t have Oliver interfering just yet. The witchfinder and I have old debts to settle.” When Michael hesitated, Myrnin’s dark eyes flashed toward him in command.

“Take her.”

Michael nodded, and Claire lost all sense of where she was, except that she was held firmly in his arms, and moving fast. Lights flashed by, moving too quickly for her to focus on. The burning in her throat died down from a bonfire to a slow broil, and she tried clearing it. It felt like gargling with glass, but she got a weak sound out.

Michael slowed to a normal human-speed run, then a walk, and Claire saw that they were back at the TPU theater. Eve, Shane, and Kim were standing in front of Eve’s car. Two of them looked shocked; Kim just looked like none of it was much concern of hers.

“Claire!” Shane got there first, taking her out of Michael’s arms and easing her to her feet. When she faltered, he held on to her, anxiously looking her over. “What the hell happened, Michael?”

“Crash,” Claire whispered. “Car crash. Hi.”

“Hi,” Shane said. “What do you mean, car crash? Jesus, Michael, you crashed your car?”

“Into the limo,” Claire said. It seemed important to get it right, for some reason. “Saved me.”

Sort of, anyway. She really wasn’t sure what would have happened to her if Oliver had managed to take Myrnin out and had time to do whatever unpleasant thing he’d had planned, or if Pennywell had gotten hold of her. There were so many nasty possibilities.

“We need to get out of here,” Michael said. “Right now. Eve?”

She pulled her car keys out of her tiny black purse, hiked up her velvet skirt, and climbed behind the wheel of her big boxy sedan. Kim smoothly claimed the front passenger seat, leaving Claire in the back, sandwiched between Shane and Michael—which was not at all a bad place to be. She was shaking, she realized. She supposed that was shock or something. Shane held her left hand, and Michael her right, and she closed her eyes as Eve peeled rubber out of the parking lot, heading home.

“Mom?” Claire looked at the clock, bit her lip, and prepared for the worst. “Hey. Sorry to be calling so late. We just got out of the concert—you know Michael was playing tonight, right? So I’m at the Glass House. I’m going to stay over tonight; I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Bye. Love you.”

She hung up and gave a long sigh, leaning back against Shane’s chest. “Thank God for voice mail,” she said. “I don’t think I could have done that if she’d picked up.”

He kissed her neck gently. “I don’t care what your parents say; I’m not letting you out of my sight. Not tonight.”

They were home, safe in the warmth of the Glass House. Michael had gone upstairs to change, but Eve was still there, slinking around in her glam-rags. Also, ugh, Kim was still with them.

But somehow it felt like the two of them were all alone.

Shane wrapped his arms around her, and she relaxed, all her fear bleeding away. Her small hand wrapped around his forearm, she felt so safe as she sensed his muscles moving underneath his velvety skin.

Even if she wasn’t really safe, ever.

“I need to thank Michael,” she said, and stopped to clear her throat. It didn’t make it feel much better. “He didn’t have to come after me.”

“I’d have killed his ass if he didn’t,” Shane said, and there was a grimness behind it that made her wince. “He wouldn’t let me come with him.”

“You could have gotten hurt in the crash.”

“He wasn’t worried about you. ”

“He was. I was about to be dinner.”

Shane sighed and dropped his forehead onto her shoulder. “And he’d have a point.”

“He saved my life.”

“I get that. Could we stop talking about Michael for a second?” He sounded actually pained.

“You are not jealous.”

Shane held up two fingers pinched almost together. “That much, maybe. And only because he’s got that rock-star thing going on. You girls get into that.”

“Shut up!”

“Seriously, you throw panties and stuff. I’ve heard.”

She turned in the circle of his arms to face him, staring up into his face. No words. He was drawn down to her like gravity, lips warm against hers, lazy at first, then getting hotter, breath coming faster. Her brain exploded in a thousand thoughts and memories . . . the soft skin at the back of his neck, the way he said her name in that sweet, hushed whisper, the sheer heat of him against her.