Fade Out

She focused on the portal, shifted frequencies, and started on her camera-destroying mission.

She hoped Myrnin was right about Ada.

Four hours later, it was approaching sunrise, Claire was bone-tired, and she’d bagged all of the cameras on her list, including the one in the football team’s shower room, which was an interesting experience. Kim had clearly been combining business with personal pleasure. She took the portal back to the alley behind Common Grounds, intending to pick up Shane and Eve, but they were nowhere in sight. She called Shane’s cell, and heard it ringing, but it was distant and muffled.

She found him standing braced against the wall, holding Eve’s ankles as she stood on his shoulders to reach a camera set on top of the roof of a shed. “Got it!” Eve called, and nearly overbalanced. Shane staggered around, got his equilibrium again, and helped her down to the pavement. “We should totally join the circus.”

“One of us already looks like a clown.”

“Hi guys,” Claire said, and they both jumped and turned her way. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Shane hugged her. “How’d you do?”

“Twenty cameras. There was one missing. I think somebody found it and swiped it from the University Center. You?”

“That was the last one on the list,” he said. “Guess it’s time to see how Team Vampire did.”

Claire opened the portal to German’s Tire Plant, and stepped through, with Shane and Eve right behind her. The portal snapped shut as soon as they were inside, and Claire flipped on her flashlight.

“Um . . .” Eve turned on her light, as well. “Okay. Wrong number, Claire.”

“No,” Claire said. “That can’t happen. I mean, it’s the right frequency. I don’t know what happened, but we should be at German’s.”

“Well, we’re not,” Shane said, and shone his light around. They were in an underground tu

Eve said, in an entirely different voice, “ Really wrong turn.” She pointed off down the tu

The only problem was that the portal system refused to pick up. They were locked out.

Claire looked at Shane and Eve and shook her head. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, and she could see the light trembling from the force of her pulse beats. “We’re stuck,” she said.

Shane dropped the bag he was carrying, unzipped it, and passed weapons to Eve, then took out a wicked-lethal crossbow with silver-tipped bolts. “Somebody up there doesn’t like you, Claire.”

Claire primed the Super Soaker. “It’s Ada,” she said. “This time, I’m not letting Myrnin talk me out of it.”

The vampires—well, vampirelike things, sort of like Myrnin’s experimental attempts to turn humans back in his crazy days—hurled themselves out of the darkness with high-pitched, batlike squeals. Claire resisted the urge to scream, and let loose with the water gun. A blast caught three of them in midleap, and they shrieked even louder, hit the ground, rolled, and kept rolling. She could see the ghostly blue flare of flames around them as the silver ate into their exposed skin—which was most of it, because these things were more like tu

Only in Morganville . . .

Shane aimed and fired, taking one of them out just as it was preparing to leap, and reloaded with an ease that told Claire he’d been practicing. Eve had a handful of what looked like darts—regulation darts, the kind you threw at a target in a bar. She was dead-on accurate with them, too, as soon as any tu

By the time Claire was starting to worry about her water reservoir, and Shane was ru

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Shane said. “Darts? When did you come up with that?”

“I was playing with your electroplating thingy. After I did all my jewelry, I started in on pointy things.” Eve held out a dart for inspection. It had—of course—a skull on the fletching. “Sweet, right?”

“Cute. Time to run now.”

Claire slung the Super Soaker around her back and ran up the hill, chasing Shane, who was, as always, faster—the result of longer legs, not really dedicated practice. Shane only ran when someone chased him; he was more of a weights kind of guy.

The fact that the tu

Simple.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Shane slowed, and Claire almost crashed into him. He dashed over to the side of the tu

“Someone’s coming,” Shane said. “Shhhh.”

Eve choked and strangled on a cough, and muttered, “Got to cut down on the cigarettes.”

“You don’t smoke,” Claire whispered.

“Then I’m completely screwed.”

Shane whirled toward them and put hands over both their mouths. His face looked fierce. They nodded.

It was dark where they were, but not dark enough. A shape appeared ahead of them, coming down the tu

Hunters.

Morley stopped about twenty feet away, still facing straight ahead, and held up a hand to stop the group of vampires following him. Claire recognized some of them from earlier. Some of them were still healing from the burns left by her water gun.

“Look who’s come to visit,” he said, and turned his head in their direction at the side of the tu

Shane snapped the crossbow up and took aim on Morley. “Don’t even think about it.”

Morley stuck his hands in the pockets of his dirty raincoat. “I tremble in fear, boy. Obviously, in all my long life, no one has ever threatened me with a weapon before.” His tone changed, took on edges. “Put it down if you want to live.”

“Don’t,” Eve whispered.

Morley smiled. “The boy’s got two arrows left,” he said. “You have a handful of darts. Little Claire’s water weapon is almost empty. And by the way, I am aware of your strategic position. I hate to repeat myself, but I will: put down your weapons if you want to live.”

“No choice,” Shane said, and swallowed hard. He crouched down and put the crossbow on the concrete, then rose with his hands up.

I could get in one good spray, Claire thought, but she knew it was a terrible idea. She lifted the strap of the toy gun over her head and let it fall. It sounded empty.

“Shit,” Eve said, and threw down her darts. “All right. What now? You get all Nosferatu on our asses? If you make me a vampire, I’ll make you eat those fangs.”

Morley eyed her with a bit of a frown. “I believe you might,” he said. “But I’m not interested in converts. I’m much more interested in allies.”

“Allies,” Claire repeated. “You’ve tried to kill us a whole bunch.”

“That wasn’t about you,” he said. “The first time, you were simply with Amelie. The next, well, I was doing a favor for someone else. Another ally, as it happens.”