Rachel Caine - Bite Club

“Indeed, I think Oliver’s quite convinced her that making an example of me is bad strategy,” Bishop said. He paced side to side, but every turn closed the distance between them. “I expect she’ll execute me instantly. Or try. But I’m better at this than they are, either of them or all of them. I am the best killer who ever lived.”

“Yeah, you don’t seem too worried,” Shane said.

“I had a great deal of time to consider my place in this world, while she had me sealed up in that tiny, airless hell. Nothing to eat. Nothing to hear or feel or touch. Just endless, dark eternity. Do you know what I decided?”

Shane shook his head. Claire realized she was still holding the small, silver-coated knife, and now she nudged the black bag closer to Shane, who glanced down at it.

“I realized that if I can survive that, survive being starved down to bones, I can survive Amelie’s worst,” Bishop said. “I don’t need Vassily and Gloriana. I thought I needed an army to take this town, and they were making me one—humans like you, Shane, who’d take out vampires without flinching. But I don’t need them. Or you. Any of you.” His eyes flared blood red. “Except as fuel.”

Shane crouched down and reached inside the bag, pulling out a crossbow, but it wasn’t set. It would take seconds to cock and load, and Bishop wasn’t going to give it to them.

Bishop smashed the crossbow into splinters with one blow, and threw Shane headfirst into the bars.

Claire screamed, because it should have killed him…and probably would have, if he hadn’t been dosed up with that drugged sports drink Vassily had given the fighters. Instead, it only stunned him. Shane collapsed to the floor, moaning, and tried to get up. Bishop kicked him twice: once in the stomach, once in the head.

Claire didn’t think. She threw herself at him, and when his strong, pale hands reached for her to rip her open, she slashed with the silver knife she held. She didn’t know what she cut off, but Bishop howled and backed away from her. Then he came for her.

Shane couldn’t get up, but he could roll, and he did, right in front of Bishop’s feet as he moved. Bishop fell, twisted, and grabbed Shane’s head in his mangled hands.

Claire tried to stop him, but couldn’t get close enough. She slashed with the knife and delayed him from snapping Shane’s neck, but it was useless; she couldn’t get to him, not without getting killed, too.

That was what Bishop wanted. To kill one of them while the other watched.

“Hey!” Eve shouted, just on the other side of the bars. She had something in her hand, something long and thin and sharp. “Heads up, CB!” It came flying at her, and Claire grabbed it.

It was a sword. One of those things Eve had used against Oliver. She’d gotten a touch on him with it.

This one had a point, not a button, and the edges were sharp on all three sides of the triangular blade.

Claire grabbed the handle and threw herself into a lunge. It probably wasn’t a good lunge, probably wasn’t steady, but it was fast.

And she stuck the point straight into Bishop’s throat.

He let go of Shane and clawed at the sword. Claire dropped it and grabbed Shane’s ankle, and dragged him back to the other side of the cage. She raced forward, but Bishop got the blade before she did. Shane tried to get up, but failed.

Claire was the only one still standing up.

Myrnin. What the hell was he doing? He was down on the floor, rummaging around in his bag, ignoring her, ignoring their mortal danger. Stupid , cowardly idiot……

Claire couldn’t even look at him—she didn’t have time, because Bishop swished the blade through the air with a noise like tearing silk, and he gave Claire a long, slow smile.

“This will take approximately ten seconds,” he said. “I’d like to make it last, but, alas, my daughter awaits. I have a whole town to destroy. I can’t take as much time with you as I’d prefer.”

He took a step toward her.

“Claire,” Myrnin said from behind her. He sounded preoccupied and actually quite calm. “Please fall down now, if you don’t mind.”

She had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she did. She just…did.

She hit the canvas and looked up. Myrnin stood over both her and Shane, straight and tall, and there was a wild-looking shotgun kind of thing in his hands, and his Nike bag lay on its side at his feet. He was pointing the gun directly at Bishop.

“Now,” he said, “you appear to have brought the wrong weapon, Bishop. Surrender?”

Bishop buried the sword in Myrnin’s chest in a move so incredibly fast, Claire didn’t even see it happen.

Myrnin didn’t flinch. He pulled both triggers.

The heavy boom rattled the bars of the cage around them, and for a second Claire thought that something had gone wrong, very wrong, because the air was thick with smoke and glitter and Bishop was still there.

He fell, clawed fingers tearing long furrows in the canvas only an inch or so from Shane’s face. He was burning, burning fast, all over. It looked like he’d been hit with napalm, and he screamed and rolled and kept on burning while Myrnin calmly reached down, pulled the sword out of his chest, and reloaded the shotgun.

“That hurt,” he said. “But not, I imagine, as much as this will.” He aimed and then stopped himself. He looked at Claire. “Perhaps it would be best if you took your boyfriend outside for this.”

Claire swallowed. “It’s locked.”

Myrnin walked over and slammed his booted foot into the cage door. The hinges bent and cracked. His second kick sent it flying off the hinges to crash down five feet away, with a sound like tin cans dropping off a roof.

“Out,” he said, and stepped aside as Claire grabbed Shane and the two of them jumped over Bishop’s convulsing body.

Outside, Claire turned to look. Myrnin went back to Bishop and aimed at the center of the downed vampire’s chest.

Bishop bared his bloody teeth. He was disintegrating, pieces of him melting off in a horrible mess. The pain must have been extreme.

“You don’t have the courage,” he spat, and then coughed up rivers of too-pale blood. “You never have, shadow hugger. Get the little girl to do your work for you. She’s braver than you ever were.”

Myrnin raised his eyebrows and stared down at him, then flipped the shotgun up and rested it against his shoulder. “Oh, I think that’s probably true,” he said. “And I think I’d like to tell Amelie you went slowly and in pain. Die on your own, you evil old animal.”

It took a long, agonizing minute. Bishop never screamed. He left behind a skeleton that slowly collapsed into ash in the middle of the cage.

Myrnin sagged and leaned against the bars, head down. Claire came back up the steps and reached through to touch his shoulder. “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

For answer, Myrnin aimed the gun at Bishop’s disintegrating bones and fired both barrels.

Nothing happened. Just a dry, empty click.

“I realized that I never loaded the pellets into the cartridges,” he said. “Those should have been round, silver buckshot.”

“But you knew that first thing would work.”

“Actually,” Myrnin said in a low, confidential voice, “I thought I’d forgotten to load those shells, too. See how it all worked out?”

There was a massive banging on the outer doors, sending the people running around into a freak-out panic. Myrnin sighed, pushed away from the bars, and followed Claire down the stairs. She grabbed hold of Shane’s unbroken hand and held tight, and the three of them found Eve and Michael, still sitting next to Glory’s badly burned body. Only her golden hair was left, and even that was flecked with ash and slowly crisping.