Rachel Caine: Lord of Misrule

And it was ultimately fatal.

Most of the town didn’t have a clue about that, because Amelie was rightly afraid of what might happen if they did—vampires and humans alike. Amelie had symptoms, but so far they were mild. It took years to progress, so they were safe for a while.

At least, Claire hoped it took years.

“No, I doubt I am all right. Still, this is hardly the time to be coddling myself.” Amelie focused on the door. “We will need the key to open it.”

That was a problem, because the key wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The key ring was gone from where Claire kept it, in a battered, sagging drawer, and the more Claire pawed through debris looking for it, the more alarmed she became. Myrnin kept the weirdest stuff. . . . Books, sure, she loved books; small, deformed dead things in alcohol, not so much. He also kept jars of dirt—at least, she hoped it was dirt. Some of it looked red and flaky, and she was really afraid it might be blood.

The keys were missing. So were a few other things—significant things.

With a sinking feeling, Claire pulled open the half-broken drawer where she’d kept the bag with all the tranquilizer stuff, and Myrnin’s drug supplies.

Gone. Only a scrape in the dust to indicate where it had been.

That meant that if— when —Myrnin turned violent, she wouldn’t have her trusty dart gun to help her. Nor would she have even her trusty injectable pen, so cool, that she’d loaded up for emergencies, because it had been in the bag with the drugs. She’d lost the other supplies she’d had with her.

But even worse, she didn’t have any medicine for him, other than the couple of small vials she had with her in her pockets.

In summary: so very screwed.

“Enough,” Amelie said, and turned to her bodyguard. “I know this isn’t easy, but if you would?”

He gave her a polite sort of nod, stepped forward, and took the lock in his hand.

His hand burst into flame.

“Oh my God!” Claire blurted, and clapped her hands over her mouth, because the vampire guy wasn’t letting go. His face was contorted with pain, but he held on, somehow, and jerked and twisted the silver-plated lock until, with a scream of metal, it ripped loose. The hasp came with it, right off the door.

He dropped it to the floor. His hand kept burning. Claire grabbed the first thing that came to hand—some kind of ratty old shirt Myrnin had left thrown on the floor—and patted out the fire. The smell of burned flesh made her dry heave, and so did the sight of what was left of his hand. He didn’t scream. She almost did it for him.

“A trap,” Amelie said. “From my father. Gérard, are you able to continue?”

He nodded as he wrapped the shirt around the ruin of his hand. He was sweating fine pink beads—blood, Claire realized, as a trickle of it ran down his pale face. She realized that as she was standing there right in front of him, frozen in place, and his eyes flashed red.

“Move,” he growled at her. “Stay behind us.” And then, after a brief pause, he said, “Thank you.”

Hannah took her by the arm and pulled her to the spot in the back, out of vampire-grabbing range. “He needs feeding,” she said in an undertone. “Gérard’s not a bad guy, but you don’t want to make yourself too available for snack attacks. Remember, we’re vending machines with legs.”

Claire nodded. Amelie put her fingers in the hole left by the broken lock and pulled the door open . . . on darkness.

Hannah said nothing. She didn’t let go of Claire’s arm.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and then the darkness flickered. Shifted. Things came and went in the shadows, and Claire knew that Amelie was shuffling destinations, trying to find the one she wanted. It seemed to take a very long time, and then Amelie took a sudden step back. “Now,” she said, and her two bodyguards charged forward into what looked like complete darkness and were gone. Amelie glanced back at Hannah and Claire, and her black pupils were expanding fast, covering all the gray iris of her eyes, preparing for the dark.

“Don’t leave my side,” she said. “This will be dangerous.”

Amelie grabbed Claire’s other arm, and before Claire could so much as grab a breath, she was being pulled through the portal. There was a brief wave of chill, and a feeling that was a little like being pushed from all sides, and then she was stumbling into utter, complete blackness. Her other senses went into overdrive. The air smelled stale and heavy, and felt cold and damp, like a cave. Amelie’s icy grip on one arm was going to leave bruises, and Hannah Moses’s warmer touch on the other seemed light by contrast, although Claire knew it wasn’t.

Claire could hear herself and Hannah breathing, but there was no sound at all from the vampires. When Claire tried to speak, Amelie’s ice-cold hand covered her mouth. She nodded convulsively, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as Amelie—she hoped it was still Amelie, anyway—pulled her forward into the dark.

The smells changed from time to time—a whiff of nasty, rotten something, then something else that smelled weirdly like grapes? Her imagination conjured up a dead man surrounded by broken bottles of wine, and Claire couldn’t stop it there; the dead man was moving, squirming toward her, and any second now he’d touch her and she’d scream. . . .

It’s just your imagination; stop it.

She swallowed and tried to tamp down the panic. It wasn’t helping. Shane wouldn’t panic. Shane would— whatever, Shane wouldn’t be caught dead roaming around in the dark with a bunch of vampires like this, and Claire knew it.

It seemed like they went on forever, and then Amelie pulled her to a stop and let go. Losing that support felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, and Claire was really, really grateful for Hannah’s grip to tell her there was something else real in the world. Don’t let me fall.

And then Hannah’s hand went away. A fast tightening of her fingers, and she was gone.

Claire was floating in total darkness, disconnected, alone. Her breath sounded loud as a train in her ears, but it was buried under the thunder of her fast heartbeats. Move, she told herself. Do something!

She whispered, “Hannah?”

Cold hands slapped around her from behind, one pinning her arms to her sides, the other covering her mouth. She was lifted off the ground, and she screamed, a faint buzzing sound like a storm of bees that didn’t make it through the muffling gag.

And then she went flying through the air into the darkness . . . and rolled to a stop facedown, on a cold stone floor. There was light here. Faint, but definite, painting the edges of things a pale gray, including the arched mouth of the tunnel at the end of the hall.

She had no idea where she was.

Claire got quickly to her feet and turned to look behind her. Amelie, pale as a pearl, stepped through the portal, and with her came the other two vampires. Gérard had Hannah Moses’s arm gripped in his good hand.

Hannah had a bloody gash on her head, and when Gérard let go, she dropped to her knees, breathing hard. Her eyes looked blank and unfocused.

Amelie whirled, something silver in one hand, and stabbed as something came at her from the dark. It screamed, a thin sound that echoed through the tunnel, and a white hand reached out to grab Amelie’s shirt.

The invisible portal slammed shut like an iris, and severed the arm just above the elbow.

Amelie plucked the still-grabbing hand from her shirt, dropped the hand to the ground, and kicked it to the side. When she turned back to the others, there was no expression on her face.