Kiss of Death

Morley. He was baking in the blazing day—not sizzling like Michael, but definitely turning toxic-sunburn red. And he was angry. His hand blurred through space where she’d been, and if she’d been in the way, he would have broken her neck. She rolled and stumbled back to her feet, felt the left one give way again, and hopped backward.

Morley gave her a feral, awful grin. “Nobody leaves the tour,” he said. “Especially not you, little girl. Amelie wants you back. I’m certain of that. You’re my insurance. No fair limping off on your own.”

He reached for her, and out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw a black shape hurl itself from the shattered bus window and streak toward them. At first she thought it was Michael, but no—Oliver.

He hit Morley like a brick wall and threw him fifty feet down the road in a rolling, slapping mess. Then, after an irritated look at her hopping on one foot, he scooped Claire up in his arms, then turned back to shout, “Michael, leave it! Get out!”

A car was roaring over the hill behind them—a police car, with half the light gear ripped off and dangling, and holes punched in the doors and windows. It had clawlike scrapes in the hood.

It didn’t slow down for Morley, who scrambled to his feet and dived out of the way as the cruiser rocketed past. It screeched to a sliding halt, crossways in the road, and the driver threw the passenger door open, then the back. Oliver tossed Claire into the back of the car, left the door open, and raced back to the bus. He leaped up, clinging to the open window, reached in, and grabbed something—a handful of black coat—and dragged.

Michael toppled out the window and fell heavily on the road. Oliver dropped down, cat-steady, and reached down to pull Michael to his feet. He took off his own hat and jammed it down on Michael’s bare blond head, stripped off his own long black coat, and flung it over him as additional protection.

Michael fought to get free, but as Claire flailed and struggled to sit up, Oliver dragged her friend all the way to the police car, shoved him in the back door, and slammed it, hard, pe

Oliver got in the front, turned, and drove a fist through the metal grating that separated the back of the squad car from the front. He peeled back the metal, grabbed Michael’s arm, and said, “You can’t help them by dying. You tried. We’ll try again. This isn’t over.”

“Eve’s still in there! I can’t leave her there!” Michael yelled, and yanked free.

Oliver, with a weary, impatient sigh, grabbed him by the neck this time, and pi

Michael was still tense, ready to fight, but Oliver held him there, staring him down, until Michael finally let go of Oliver’s arm and held up both hands in surrender. His whole body slumped. Defeated.

Still, Oliver didn’t let go. “Drive,” he told the man behind the wheel. “Follow the bus. Morley’s already back on board. He’ll keep driving, but we should hang back out of sight.”

“I can’t follow it if I can’t see it!” the driver protested, and Claire knew that voice, but it didn’t sound like the sheriff from Durram, or even his deputy. It sounded ...

No way.

Claire leaned forward and peered through her half of the grate, which was still in place. “Jason?” Jason Rosser? Eve’s brother? “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Oliver needed some support that wouldn’t combust,” Jason said. “Besides, that’s my sister in there, right?”

Eve. Eve was still in the bus—that was why Michael was fighting so hard. Claire felt strangely behind the curve right now; maybe she’d banged her head harder than she’d thought. It ached on the right side. She was starting to feel a whole lot of aches, as the adrenaline started to recede a little.

Shane. Shane was still on the bus, too. Why was he still on the bus?

“Jason. Use this to track them,” Oliver said, and pulled something out of the glove compartment of the cruiser. It looked like a GPS navigation device. “It’s been keyed to follow the bus.”

“You bugged the bus?”

“I bugged your sister. I slipped a cell phone into her pocket during the confusion. Hopefully she’ll have an opportunity to use it.”

He handed the device over to Jason, who stuck it up on the dashboard, angled so he could see the colored road-map display. “Nice,” he said. “Hey, if you could unlock the shotgun, that would be good, too.”

“No,” Oliver said flatly. “The last thing I trust you with is a firearm. Just drive.”

Claire was having trouble focusing, she realized. “You gave Eve a phone?”

“I put it in her pocket,” Oliver said. “Unless they search her again, I doubt they’ll find it. There were plenty of distractions.”

“What about Shane? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.” Oliver kept staring at Michael. “Was he?”

“I got one of his hands free,” Michael said. “I could have gotten them both out. You just had to give me one more—”

“One more second and you’d have been pulled to pieces, which would have done me no good at all,” Oliver said. “Patience and Jacob were stepping aside. They know a lost cause when they see one, and you couldn’t have gotten Eve and Shane both out in any case. It’s better to leave them together, where they can protect each other. Now, are you going to behave yourself? Or do I need to prove to you, again, who is master here?”

Michael didn’t answer, but he dropped his hands to his sides.

Oliver let him go. “How do you feel?”

Michael let out a brittle little laugh. “What, you’re concerned?” He looked bad, Claire realized, even in the dim light bouncing in from Jason’s side of the front window. He was burned red, his face swollen.

“Not really,” Oliver said. “I’m concerned you’ll be a liability. Which is almost certainly going to be the case, if you continue to act like some lovesick boy instead of a thinking man. Are we understood? If you want to save your fragile little friends, you must be a great deal smarter about when you risk your own safety.”

It was hard to tell what the expression on Michael’s swollen face was, but there was no mistaking the flash of hate in his eyes. Claire swallowed, hard. Michael took a deep breath and turned toward her. “You’re okay?” he asked, and stripped off his gloves. His hands were pale, but just above the line where the gloves had been were vivid black and red burns. He gently touched her face, turning it to one side, then the other. “You’re going to have some action-star bruises, tough girl.” But she knew what he was looking for, really.

“No fang marks,” she said. “Well, none that weren’t already there, from before, you know. Look, not even any needle marks.”

“Needle marks?”

“Patience and Jacob, they insisted that all blood get drawn with a needle. I think they were trying to sort of ration it out.”

“They were trying to keep you alive,” Oliver said, turning back to face the front. “That many vampires in an enclosed space, a feeding frenzy would be inevitable. None of you would have survived it, especially not restrained as you were.”

As Eve and Shane still were. Claire felt sick. She also felt horribly, horribly guilty. “Why me?” she asked. “Why save me, not Eve? Or Shane?”

“You were the closest,” Michael said. “And—you’re the youngest. Eve and Shane would both kick my ass if I tried to save them ahead of you.” But he looked sickly guilty, too, and she knew he was thinking, just as she was, of Eve. “I heard her screaming for me. That was why we—why we decided to go in.”