Rachel Caine: Lord of Misrule

“If you think you can stay neutral in this, you’re wrong. I will respect your wishes. My father will not.”

Theo’s face hardened. “If your father threatens my family again, then we will fight. But until he comes for us, until he shows us the sword, we will not take up arms against him.”

Gérard snorted, which proved what he thought about it; Claire wasn’t much surprised. He seemed like a practical sort of guy. Amelie simply nodded. “I can’t force you, and I wouldn’t. But be careful. I cannot spare anyone to help you. You should be safe enough here, for a time. If any others come through, send them out to guard the power station and the campus.” She allowed her gaze to move beyond Theo, to touch the three humans huddled in the far corner of the room, under another painting, a big one. “Are these under your Protection?”

Theo shrugged. “They asked to join us.”

“Theo.”

“I will defend them if someone tries to harm them.” Theo pitched his voice lower. “Also, we may need them, if we can’t get supplies.”

Claire went cold. For all his kind face and smile, Theo was talking about using those people as portable blood banks .

“I don’t want to do it,” Theo continued, “but if things go against us, I have to think of my children. You understand.”

“I do,” Amelie said. Her face was back to a blank mask that gave away nothing of how she felt about it. “I have never told you what to do, and I will not now. But by the laws of this town, if you place these humans under your Protection, you owe them certain duties. You know that.”

Another shrug, and Theo held out his hands to show he was helpless. “Family comes first,” he said. “I have always told you so.”

“Some of us,” Amelie said, “are not so fortunate in our choice of families.”

She turned away from Theo without waiting for his response—if he’d been intending to give one—and without so much as a pause, slammed her fist into a glass-fronted wall box labeled EMERGENCY USE ONLY three steps to the right. It shattered in a loud clatter, and Amelie shook shards of glass from her skin.

She reached into the box and took out . . . Claire blinked. “Is that a paintball gun?”

Amelie handed it to Hannah, who handled it like a professional. “It fires pellets loaded with silver powder,” she said. “Very dangerous to us. Be careful where you aim.”

“Always am,” Hannah said. “Extra magazines?”

Amelie retrieved them from the case and handed them over. Claire noticed that she protected herself even from a casual touch, with a fold of fabric over her fingers. “There are ten shots per magazine,” she said. “There is one already loaded, and six more here.”

“Well,” Hannah said, “any problem I can’t solve with seventy shots is probably going to kill us, anyway.”

“Claire,” Amelie said, and handed over a small, sealed vial. “Silver powder, packed under pressure. It will explode on impact, so be very careful with it. If you throw it, there is a wide dispersal through the air. It can hurt your friends as much as your enemies.”

There were real uses for silver powder, like coating parts in computers; Claire supposed it wasn’t exactly restricted, but she was surprised the vampires were progressive enough to lay in a supply. Amelie raised pale eyebrows at her.

“You’ve been expecting this,” Claire said.

“Not in detail. But I’ve learned through my life that such preparations are never wasted, in the end. Sometime, somewhere, life always comes to a fight, and peace always comes to an end.”

Theo said, very quietly, “Amen.”

They left the museum by way of a side door. It was risky to go out into the night, but since the only other way to exit the museum was to go back into the darkness, nobody argued about the choice.

“Careful,” Amelie told them in a very soft voice that hardly reached past the shadows. “I have gathered my forces. My father is doing the same. There will be patrols, especially here.”

The flames hadn’t reached Founder’s Square, which was where they came out—the heart of vamp territory. It didn’t look like the calm, orderly place Claire remembered, though; the lights were all out, and the shops and restaurants that bordered it were closed and empty.

It looked afraid.

The only place she could see movement was on the marble steps of the Elders’ Council building, where Bishop’s welcome feast had been held. Gérard hissed a warning, and they all froze, silent and still in the dark. Hannah’s grip on Claire’s arm felt like an iron band.

There were three vampires standing there, scanning the area.

Lookouts.

“Go,” Amelie said in a whisper so small it was like a ghost. “Move, but be careful.”

They reached the edge of the shadows by the corner of the building, but just as Claire was starting to relax a little, Amelie, Gérard, and the other vampires moved in a blur, scattering in all directions.

This left Claire flat-footed for one horrible second, before Hannah tackled her facedown on the grass. Claire gasped, got a mouthful of crunchy dirt and bitter chlorophyll, and fought to get her breath. Hannah’s heavy weight held her down, and the older woman braced her elbows on Claire’s back.

She’s firing the pistol, Claire thought, and tried to raise her head to see where Hannah was shooting.

“Head down!” Hannah snarled, and shoved Claire down with one hand while she continued to fire with the other. From the screams in the dark, she was hitting something. “Get up! Run!”

Claire wasn’t quick enough to suit either the marines or the vampires, and before she knew it, she was being half pulled, half dragged at a dead run through the night. It was all a confusing blur of shadows, dark buildings, pale faces, and the surly orange glow of flames in the distance.

“What is it?” she screamed.

“Patrols.” Hannah kept on firing behind them. She wasn’t firing wildly, not at all; it seemed like she took a second or two between every shot, choosing her target. Most of the shots seemed to hit, from the shouts and snarls and screams. “Amelie! We need an exit, now !”

Amelie looked back at them, a pale flash of face in the dark, and nodded.

They charged up the steps of another building on Founder’s Square. Claire didn’t have time to get more than a vague impression of it—some kind of official building, with columns in front and big stone lions snarling on the stairs—before their little party came to a halt at the top of the stairs, in front of a closed white door with no knob.

Gérard started to throw himself against it. Amelie stopped him with an outstretched hand. “It will do no good,” she said. “It can’t be opened by force. Let me.”

The other vampire, facing away and down the steps, said, “Don’t think we have time for sweet talk, ma’am. What you want us to do?” He had a drawling Texas accent, the first one Claire had heard from any vampire. She’d never heard him speak at all before.

He winked at her, which was even more of a shock. Until that moment, he hadn’t even looked at her like a real person.

“A moment,” Amelie murmured.

The Texan nodded behind them. “Don’t think we’ve got one, ma’am.”

There were shadows converging in the dark at the foot of the steps—the patrol that Hannah had been shooting at. There were at least twenty of them. In the lead was Ysandre, the beautiful vampire Claire hated maybe more than she hated any other vampire in the entire world. She was Bishop’s girl through and through—Amelie’s vampire sister, if they thought in those kinds of terms.

Claire hated Ysandre for Shane’s sake. She was glad the vamp was here, and not attacking Shane’s Bloodmobile—one, because she wasn’t so sure Shane could resist the evil witch, and two, she wanted to stake Ysandre herself.