Ghost Town

“Oliver,” she said, and held his gaze. “I remember what happened. I remember, and I am sorry.”

He hesitated, then nodded in response. It was as if he was waiting for her to make some decision—something more than simply letting him loose.

Amelie said, “I won’t be your servant in Morganville. Nor should you be mine. Equals.” She offered her hand to him, and he looked down at it, clearly taken aback. But he took it. “Now defend what is ours, my partner.”

He gri

He had Myrnin down in seconds, but it was a rush of adrenaline that faded, and Claire realized that the pain of the silver chains was taking its toll on him. He slowed down. Myrnin didn’t, and in another few deadly seconds, Myrnin’s clawed fingers slashed at Oliver’s face. Oliver ducked, but lost his balance as Myrnin threw him backward in a rush.

Oliver crashed with deadly speed into a wall, and Myrnin ran in a blur for the back of the room. “He’s going downstairs!” Claire yelled, and grabbed Oliver’s fallen silver chains as Myrnin yanked the rug away. She heard the beeps of the code being entered in the trapdoor lock. “Stop him!” He’d had days here by himself, doing who-knew-what. Creating . . . things. Letting him go down there was dangerous, even more so than facing him up here.

Somehow, she still wanted to reason with him. It isn’t Myrnin, not really. She remembered the Myrnin she’d gotten to know, the kind, almost gentle man, the one who’d brought her soup and held her upright when she’d been too tired to stand on her own. The one who’d fought for her time and time again.

She had to fight for him now. She had to defend him against himself.

Frank Collins almost made it to the trapdoor, but it slammed shut at the last second, and Claire heard the lock engage with a sharp, buzzing snap of power. “Don’t touch it!” she yelled, as Shane’s dad reached for the keypad. “It’s electrified!”

“It’s the only way in,” Oliver said as he climbed painfully to his feet. “Someone has to open it.”

“It’s not the only way,” Claire replied, and looked at Amelie. “There’s a back way. Isn’t there?”

Amelie hesitated, then nodded. She turned and headed for the portal on the wall. Rudolph’s body was lying there—well, half of it—and she moved it aside and stood in front of the black doorway. Colors shifted, pulsed, and faded into darkness again.

Claire found she was holding on to someone’s hand. It turned out to be Shane, who’d come up beside her. She could feel how tense his muscles were, and how fast his pulse was going. Hers was at least twice as fast.

“There,” Amelie said. Nothing seemed different about the darkness on the other side of the doorway, but Claire felt a kind of energy radiating out of it. “I warn you, it’s not a safe course. Go quickly. I have to hold it open, or he might remember to block it.”

Oliver gave her a doubtful look, but plunged past into the darkness; it swallowed him up like a pit full of ink. Frank and West followed, and then Claire and Shane. Before they stepped through, Shane hesitated and looked over his shoulder.

Michael was right there—pale, a little unsteady, leaning on Eve’s shoulder. “Right with you, bro,” he said. “Go.”

“Are we totally sure this is a good plan?” Shane asked, quietly, to Claire. The fact that he asked her made her feel a little faint; it felt like . . . trust.

No, it was trust. Trust she hadn’t earned, but something that felt unbearably precious to her.

Claire tried to sound confident. “I think so,” she said. “Just watch your back, okay?”

“Nah, Michael’s got mine.” He looked straight into her eyes. “I’ve got yours.”

Shane jumped into the darkness, and took Claire with him.

On the other side, it was just as black—a kind of darkness that made panic twist up in a hard, hot knot in Claire’s stomach. She knew this darkness. She’d been in it before.

“Easy,” Frank Collins said, and she felt his hand grab her shoulder to keep her still. “Don’t move.”

“There are holes in the floor,” she said. “Pits. Can you see them?” She hoped he could; all the vampires she’d ever known could. She and Shane and Eve were about as blind as it was possible to be.

“Yeah, I see it. Hang on; I’ve got a light.” That was Frank Collins speaking from somewhere right behind her. Light blazed out in a pure white cone that lanced out over rocks and pale, angular juts of quartz, sharp as razors. They were in a big cavern, silent except for the echoes of their movements and voices. “Nobody move.”

He was right, because the area where they’d come through was the only reliably safe spot in the room. The rock floor was pitted with inky black holes that led, for all Claire knew, down to the center of the earth and out the other side. Not only that, but she knew from experience that where the rock looked solid, it probably wasn’t. It was like a maze, and the last time Claire had been here, Myrnin had helped her through. He wouldn’t be doing that now. He’d be trying to send her screaming to her death, along with everyone accompanying her. She swallowed hard; in the distance she saw a metal eyebolt driven deep into the rocks, and a length of silver chain. He’d been imprisoned here, once, when he’d been . . . more himself.

But he might not remember that now. Or care that he’d tried to save her life.

“I know the way,” she said softly, and took the flashlight from Frank. She tested every step carefully; some of the solid-seeming rock was fragile, eaten away beneath by unseen underground rivers that were long gone. Her foot broke through twice, and only Shane’s grip on her arm kept her from falling forward the second time.

It seemed agonizingly slow, making their way along the little path. Even the vampires seemed to take each step with great care. Claire supposed it might be an even worse nightmare for them, plummeting down an endless black tu

Claire was worried most about Michael. He’d taken a lot of abuse already, and now Shane was quietly taking his other arm, helping Eve, who was starting to stagger under Michael’s weight. He’ll be okay, she thought. She had to believe that, and focus.

A sound went through the cavern, like a sigh; she frowned, wondering what had caused it. It wasn’t wind; there was no breath of a draft in here, just cool, damp air that weighed down heavily over her skin. She shivered and waited a second, but the sound didn’t come again.

Then she felt a whisper of air against her face—an unmistakable stirring that ruffled her hair. Claire pointed the flashlight in the direction from which the wind had come, but she saw nothing there. Nothing but the treacherous rock floor, the glittering quartz crystals jutting from the walls, and the dark, silent chasms that spread out in sheets.

Claire made her way carefully toward another patch of apparently solid rock, and as she did so, she felt the breeze again, more strongly.

It wasn’t coming from above, or even from the walls.

It blew up straight out of the darkness. Claire braced herself carefully and turned the light downward, into the pit, trying to see what might be going on. Nothing. The darkness swallowed the flashlight’s glow without a trace.

Claire put out her hand. Definitely that was a cool breeze blowing up, as if a fan had been turned on.

She felt a little fu

“Hey!” Shane said, and grabbed her shoulders to drag her back from the edge. “What the hell are you doing?”

She took in a deep breath. Her head hurt a little. “Looking,” she said, and coughed. It hurt. “Sorry. This way.”

Moving away from the chasm seemed to make her feel better, though she now had a kind of odd, twisting nausea inside, and she wanted to breathe deeper and deeper, even though she wasn’t tired. Claire focused on each step, every careful movement. She heard someone stumble behind her, and Frank Collins’s quiet curse.