Carpe Corpus

She didn’t take it. “This is crazy,” she said again, as if it was really important that he understand it. Myrnin slowly raised his eyebrows. “You built a vampire computer. Out of wood. And glass. You’re not . . . This isn’t . . .”

He patted her gently on the shoulder. “This is Morganville, dear Claire. You should know by now that it would not be what you expect.” With a sudden burst of energy, Myrnin took Claire’s unwilling hand, slapped the paper into it, and bounced to his feet. “Ada!”

“What?” The computer sounded surly. Hurt. She’s not even real, Claire told herself. Yeah. She’s not real, and she drinks blood. She just drank mine.

“You will accept all commands from Claire Danvers as my own. Do you understand me?”

“All too clearly.” Ada sighed. “Very well. I shall record her essence for future reference.”

Myrnin turned back to Claire and folded her hand over the scrap of paper. His fingernails were filthy and sharp, and she shuddered at how cold his touch was. “Please,” he said. “You must keep this safe. It’s the only record of the sequence. I made it to remind myself, in case . . . when I forgot. If you get the sequence wrong, you could risk killing her. Or worse.”

Claire shuddered. “What could be worse than her being here at all?”

“Turning her against us,” Myrnin said. “And believe me, dear, you wouldn’t want that to happen.”

6

By the time they made their way out of Ada’s cavern, it was night—full, dark night.

Which was a problem.

“We can’t walk,” she told Myrnin, for about the eleven hundredth time. “It’s not safe out there. You really don’t get it!”

“Of course I get it,” he said. “There are vampires a-roaming the dark. Very frightening. I’m quaking in my beach sandals. Come on; buck up, girl. I’ll protect you.” And then he leered like a total freak show, which made Claire feel not so much reassured. She didn’t trust him. He was starting to get that jittery, manic edge she dreaded, and he kept insisting that he couldn’t take the serum yet—or even the maintenance drug, the red crystals that Claire kept in a bottle in her backpack.

Past a certain point, Myrnin was crazy enough that he thought he was normal. That was when things got really, really dangerous around him.

“We could take the portal,” Claire said. Myrnin, halfway up the stairs, didn’t so much as pause.

“No, we can’t,” he said. “Not from this node. I’ve shut it down. I don’t want anyone else coming here anymore. They’ll ruin my work.”

Claire took a look around at the wreckage—the smashed glass, the shredded books, the broken furniture. In her view, there wasn’t anything left for vandals to destroy, and even if there was, sealing up the portal wouldn’t stop them; it would only inconvenience her (and Myrnin) from getting here.

Only . . . maybe that was what he intended. “What about the entrance to the cave?” she asked. He snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten all about it.

“Excellent point.”

Myrnin dragged the largest, heaviest table over, top down, and covered up with it the hole he’d made in the floor. Then he took handfuls of broken glass and mounded it up on all sides.

“What if they move the table?” she asked.

“Then they’ll find Ada, and my countermeasures will likely eat them,” he said happily. “Speaking of that, I really must find some lunch. Not you, dear.”

Claire would have been happier if he’d had some magical way to repair it, but she supposed that would have to do. It looked like the bad guys had been through this place a dozen times already, anyway; they probably wouldn’t be back and in the mood to redecorate.

Claire unzipped her backpack. At the bottom, rattling around loose, were two sharpened wooden stakes. She took one out and slipped it into her pocket. It wouldn’t kill a vampire by itself, but it would paralyze one until it was removed . . . and it would weaken one enough to die by other means.

If trouble came—even if it was Myrnin himself—she’d settle for slowing it down long enough for her to run for her life.

Myrnin artistically sprinkled some more broken glass. “There,” Myrnin said, and backed off to the stairs again. “What do you think?”

“Fabulous.” She sighed. “Brilliant job of camouflage.”

“Normally, I’d add a corpse,” he said, “just to keep people at bay. But that might be good enough.”

“Yeah, that’s . . . good enough,” she said. “Can we go now?” Before he decided to go with the corpse idea.

As she followed Myrnin out of the wreck of a shack that covered the entrance to his lair, he took the time to carefully close and padlock the door. Which was really ridiculous, because Claire could have kicked right through the rotten old boards, and she wasn’t exactly She-Hulk.

Claire pulled her phone out and flipped it open, scrolling for Eve’s number.

Myrnin batted it right out of her hand, straight up into the air like a jump ball, and caught it with ease. He gri

“Off on a beach somewhere with your sanity? We can’t do this. You know what happens out on the streets at night.”

“I can’t help that. I need some air, and besides, walking is very healthy for humans, you know.” With that, Myrnin dismissed her and started walking down the narrow alley into the dark. Claire gaped for a second, then hurried after him, because the being-left-behind option didn’t seem all that fantastic a choice. On her right, over the high wooden fence, she saw the looming dark bulk of the Day House. It was deserted these days. Gramma Day had moved out, temporarily, and her daughter had gone into hiding—probably for good, considering that she’d thrown in her lot with the antivampire forces in town, and that had not gone well for anybody.

Claire slowed for a second, staring at the unlit windows of the house. She could have sworn that in the cold star-light she’d seen one of those white lace curtains move. “Myrnin,” she said. “Is there somebody in there?”

“Very likely.” He didn’t slow down. “People are hiding out in dozens of places all over Morganville, waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“God to descend from on high and save them? Who knows?”

From the other side of the fence, Claire heard a faint, breathless giggle. She came to a stop, staring at Myrnin, who paused and looked at the fence, shook his head, and shrugged. He moved on.

But Claire was convinced that whatever was on the Day side of the fence was pacing them now, and when they got to the end of the row . . . Bad. That will be bad.

“Myrnin, maybe we should call somebody. You know, get a cab. Or Eve, we could call Eve—”

Myrnin turned on her.

It happened fast, so fast, and she barely had time to gasp and duck as he came at her, a white blur in the star-light. There was a sense of hard impact, of falling, and then everything went a little soft around the edges.

Myrnin was stretched out on top of her, and as the world stopped wobbling, she realized she was flat on her back on the ground. “Get off!” she yelped, and battered at his chest with both fists. “Off!”

He put his cold hand over her mouth and lifted a single finger of his other hand to his lips. She couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but she saw the gesture, and it made the panic in her shift directions from oh my God, Myrnin’s going to bite me to oh my God, Myrnin’s trying to save me.

Myrnin dipped his head low, so low he was well within critical vein range, and she heard him whisper, “Don’t move. Stay here.”

Then he was gone, just like that. As noisy as he could be at times, he could also be as silent as a shadow when he wanted.

Claire raised her head just a little to look around, but she saw nothing. Just the alley, the fence, the sky overhead with wispy clouds moving across the stars.