Lord of Misrule

He was right; he was faster.

Eve muttered something about “Stupid, stubborn, bloodsucking boyfriends,” and followed the traffic toward City Hall.

Out of nowhere, a truck pulled out in front of them from a side street and stopped directly in their path. Eve yelled and hit the brakes, but they were mushy and wet, and not great at the best of times, and Claire felt the car slip and then slide, gathering speed as it went.

Glad I put on my seat belt, she thought, which was a weird thing to think, as Eve’s car hydroplaned right into the truck. Shane stretched out his arm to hold her in place, anyway—instinct, Claire guessed—and then they all got thrown forward hard as physics took over.

Physics hurt.

Claire rested her aching head against the cool window—it was cracked, but still intact—and tried to shake it off. Shane was unhooking himself from the seat belt and asking her if she was okay. She made some kind of gesture and mumbled something, which she hoped would be good enough. She wasn’t up to real reassurances at the moment.

Eve’s door opened, and she got dragged out of the car.

“Hey!” Shane yelled, and threw himself out his own door. Claire fumbled at the latch, but hers seemed stuck; she navigated the push button on her seat belt and opted for Shane’s side of the car instead.

As she stumbled out into the shockingly warm rain, she knew they were really in trouble now, because the man holding a knife to Eve’s throat was Frank Collins, Shane’s father and all-around badass, crazy vampire hater. He looked exactly like she remembered—tough, biker-hard, dressed in leather and tattoos.

He was yelling something at Eve, something Claire couldn’t hear over the crash of thunder. Shane threw himself into a slide over the trunk of the car and grabbed at his dad’s knife hand.

Dad elbowed him in the face and sent him staggering. Claire grabbed for the silver knife in her jeans, but it was gone—she’d dropped it somewhere. Before she could look for it, Shane was back in the fight, struggling with his dad. He moved the knife enough that Eve slid free and ran to grab on to Claire.

Frank shoved his son down on the hood of the car and raised the knife. He froze there, with rain pouring from his chin like a thin silver beard, and off the point of the knife.

“No!” Claire screamed, “No, don’t hurt him!”

“Where’s the vampire?” Frank yelled back. “Where is Michael Glass?”

“Gone,” Shane said. He coughed away pounding rain. “Dad, he’s gone. He’s not here. Dad.”

Frank seemed to focus on his son for the first time. “Shane?”

“Yeah, Dad, it’s me. Let me up, okay?” Shane was careful to keep his hands up, palms out in surrender. “Peace.”

It worked. Frank stepped back and lowered the knife. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you, boy.” And then he hugged him. Shane still had his hands up, and froze in place without touching his father. Claire shivered at the look on his face.

“Yeah, good to see you, too,” he said. “Back off, man. We’re not close, in case you forgot.”

“You’re still my son. Blood is blood.” Frank pushed him toward the truck, only lightly crushed where Eve’s car had smacked it. “Get in.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so!” Frank shouted. Shane just looked at him. “Dammit, boy, for once in your life, do what I tell you!”

“I spent most of my life doing what you told me,” Shane said. “Including selling out my friends. Not happening anymore.”

Frank’s lips parted, temporarily amazed. He laughed.

“Done drunk the suicide cola, didn’t you?” When he shook his head, drops flew in all directions, and were immediately lost in the silver downpour. “Just get in. I’m trying to save your life. You don’t want to be where you’re trying to go.”

Strangely enough, Frank Collins was making sense. Probably for all the wrong reasons, though.

“We have to get through,” Claire shouted over the pounding rain. She was shivering, soaked through every layer of clothing. “It’s important. People could die if we don’t!”

“People are going to die,” Collins agreed. “Omelets and eggs. You know the old saying.”

Or chess, Claire thought. Though she didn’t know whose side Frank Collins was playing on, or even if he knew he was being manipulated at all.

“There’s a plan,” Frank was saying to his son. “In all this crap, nobody’s checking faces. Metal detectors are off. We seize control of the building and make things right. We shuffle these bastards off, once and for all. We can do it!”

“Dad,” Shane said, “everybody in that building tonight is going to be killed. We have to get people out, not get them in. If you care anything about those idiots who buy your revolutionary crap, you’ll call this off.”

“Call it off?” Frank repeated, as uncomprehending as if Shane were speaking another language. “When we’re this close? When we can win? Dammit, Shane, you used to believe in this. You used to—”

“Yeah. Used to. Look it up!” Shane shoved his father away from him, and walked over to Eve and Claire. “I’ve warned you, Dad. Don’t do this. Not today. I won’t turn you in, but I’m telling you, if you don’t back off, you’re dead.”

“I don’t take threats,” Frank said. “Not from you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Shane said. “And I tried.”

He got back in the car, on the passenger-side front seat where Michael had been. Eve scrambled behind the wheel, and Claire in the back.

Eve reversed.

Frank stepped out into the road ahead of them, a scary-looking man in black leather with his straggling hair plastered around his face. Add in the big hunting knife, and cue the scary music.

Eve let up on the gas. “No,” Shane said, and moved his left foot over to jam it on top of hers. “Go. He wants you to stop.”

“Don’t! I can’t miss him, no—”

But it was too late. Frank was staring into the headlights, squarely in the center of the hood, and he was getting closer and closer.

Frank Collins threw himself out of the way at the last possible second, Eve swerved wildly in the opposite direction to miss him, and somehow, they didn’t kill Shane’s dad.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eve yelled at Shane. She was shaking all over. So was Shane. “You want to run him over, do it on your own time! God!”

“Look behind you,” Shane whispered.

There were people coming after them. A lot of people. They’d been hiding in the alley, Claire guessed. They had guns, and now they opened fire. The car shuddered, and the back window exploded into cracks, then fell with a crash all over Claire’s neck.

“Get up here!” Shane said, and grabbed her hands to haul her into the front seat. “Keep your head down!”

Eve had sunk down on the driver’s side, barely keeping her eyes above the dashboard. She was panting hoarsely, panicked, and more gunshots were rattling the back of the car. Something hit the front window, too, adding more cracks and a round, backward splash of a hole.

“Faster!” Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower-moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. “You see why I didn’t want you to stop?”

“Okay, your father is officially off my Christmas list!” Eve yelled. “Oh my God, look at my car!”

Shane barked out a laugh. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s what’s important.”

“It’s better than thinking about what would have happened,” Eve said. “If Michael had been with us—”

Claire thought about the mobs Richard had talked about, and the dead vampires, and felt sick. “They’d have dragged him off,” she said. “They’d have killed him.”

Michael had been right about Shane’s dad, but then, Claire had never really doubted it. Neither had Shane, from the sick certainty on his face. He wiped his eyes with his forearm, which really didn’t help much; they were all dripping wet, from head to toe.