But she also knew she couldn’t do that. Shane would die.
So she balanced his weight, held on to his legs, and ran for her life, and his.
It took four long blocks for the adrenaline and whatever boost Myrnin’s blood had given her to wear completely off. She began to gasp and stagger, and then went down, hard, and Shane went down with her. Her whole body felt like it was coming apart. Shane had warned her that there was a crash, but this wasn’t a crash; it was more like being ripped apart and put back together again, and God, it hurt.
Shane had made it to his knees, looking pale and out of it, but the rain on his face seemed to bring him back. He met Claire’s eyes and held out his hand, and she took it.
Run, he mouthed, and she nodded. She wasn’t sure she could, but he was right.
It was their only real hope.
They were racing flat-out past Common Grounds when Magnus—or his clone—stepped out from behind the building into their path. Claire shrieked and managed to avoid him, twisting out of the way of his grasping hand; Shane ran straight into him. He made it work for him; he got his shoulder around and rammed into the creature. He knocked it back. Whatever it was, it wasn’t completely gelatinous; there was some kind of weird strength inside of it, and that made it vulnerable to a physical attack. It staggered a few feet, and Shane made a perfect spinning turn, grabbed Claire, and pulled her into a dead sprint.
But ahead, Claire could see more of them, more of those human disguises in that generic nothing form, and behind them . . . something monstrous. They were coming up out of the rain gutters, dripping out of faucets . . . at least four of them, with more coming behind.
She slowed down and exchanged a fast, panicked look with Shane.
They weren’t going to make it.
He put his arm around her, but she shook it off and stood back-to-back with him. They circled, watching as the predators closed in. Claire wasn’t sure what was waiting in the Morganville Civic Pool, but whatever it was, she knew it was awful. Living death.
The earplugs made the fast, rasping sound of her breathing into its own horror-show sound track, along with the rapid thump of her heartbeat. She tasted blood; her nose was still dripping, and always, there was singing, singing, that high, clear, perfect music trying to draw her back.
She heard the roaring engine only at the last possible second before the hood of the hearse plowed through the row of creatures closing in from the front. One bounced off and rolled; the other three hit with too much force, and splashed into a thick black film over the windshield, hood, and grille.
The hearse skidded sideways, and Claire saw Eve’s white, shocked face in the driver’s side. Eve screamed something at them, but it didn’t matter what the message was; Shane was already throwing himself into a slide over the hood to the passenger door, and Claire scrambled after him.
Something caught her by the hood of her jacket.
She turned, pulled the silver knife, and slashed blindly. One of them shrieked that awful cry as it was hurt, and she managed to drive herself forward. Shane met her halfway and dragged her to the open door, shoved her inside, and yelled, “Go!” across to Eve as he got the door slammed shut.
She gunned it.
Claire felt a horrible bubbling pressure in her lungs, and coughed. Water sprayed out, tasting like rancid mold. She bent over and coughed until her lungs ached.
Shane pounded her back, not that it really helped, and put his arms around her when she came upright again. Eve looked seriously terrified. Claire said, “How did you know?” but Eve pointed to her ears. Claire saw a flash of blue.
Earplugs.
She didn’t turn back toward the house; instead, she drove straight for City Hall, where it looked like half the cars in Morganville were parked. There was a full-scale panic under way, Claire saw: families carrying suitcases, hurrying toward the building, police officers out directing traffic.
Chaos.
Eve pulled her earplugs out as she parked, and Claire and Shane did the same. Everybody started talking at once, but Eve shouted the other two of them down. “The cops came to the house!” she said. “Everybody from Walnut Street to Garden had to get the hell out and come here. No exceptions. I figured I’d better go looking for you. Oh God, those things—I hit them. And they splashed. Gross. I wore the earplugs because, you know, last time, the music . . . Did you find Michael?” Eve was bouncing from subject to subject like a crazed meth fiend, but it wasn’t drugs driving her, just panic. “Please tell me you found him!”
Shane said, “We found where they have him.” That was all he said, and that was probably a really good thing; Eve lit up with a smile. “We need reinforcements before we can even think about getting him out.”
“But he’s alive?”
“Yes,” Claire said. She couldn’t smile back; she just couldn’t. What she’d seen was too . . . grimly awful. “Yes, he’s alive. So’s Oliver, and Naomi, and a bunch of others. I have to get to Amelie. She has to understand.”
“Well, you need to do it soon, because she’s already started moving vampires out of town,” Eve said. “I saw buses leaving. They have blacked-out windows, like those rock star kind of things. Probably hot and cold running-blood taps, and I just totally skeeved myself out by saying that. I guess those are the first-class passengers. I heard from Hannah Moses that some were being put into semi tractor-trailer trucks, too. I guess that would explain the sudden Wal-Mart invasion.”
“Wal-Mart?” Shane repeated.
“I guess they grabbed whatever trucks they could get. Wal-Mart, grocery trucks, mail trucks . . . It looks like one of those disaster movies, with the people crawling over each other to get on the last helicopter.” Eve had lost her smile, and she looked . . . adult. And suddenly grim. “I think this town is done for, guys. It feels like it’s dying all around us.”
It felt that way to Claire, too. “Will you take us to Founder’s Square?” she asked. “Please? It’s not safe to try to get there on foot, not anymore. I know they told you to come here, but . . .”
“Sure,” Eve said. “Like I ever followed anybody’s rules anyway. Hey, try the seat belts. I hear they save lives and crap. We may be doing some seriously defensive driving.”
She turned the key, and the engine made an awful grinding sound. Eve frowned and tried it again. It sounded horrible, and it definitely didn’t sound like an engine was supposed to sound.
“Dammit,” she said, and unbuckled as she got out. Shane joined her at the hood, but instead of lifting it, they both stood there, staring.
Claire scrambled out to take a look, too. “What is it?”
The front grille of the hearse looked melted. There was black, wet gunk oozing out of it, and when Eve reached out to pop the hood release, Shane stopped her. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t touch that stuff. Get the work gloves—I left them in the bag in the back.”
Once she’d gotten them, Shane tugged the thick, heavy gloves on, took a deep breath, and reached under the grille to pop the latch. It came free with a sticky, wet sound, and as he raised the hood, there was a thin film of goo that came up with it.
The engine was fouled with the stuff, and it was bubbling. It looked, Claire thought sickly, like a cross between slime and seaweed, and it gave off a wet, thick smell of decay.
“Oh my God,” Eve said. It came out muffled, since she was pinching her nose shut and backing away. “Oh my God, my poor baby—what is that?”
Shane slammed the hood and stripped off the gloves. They were smeared with the same stuff, and he kicked them under the hearse. “Whatever it is, you’re not driving us anywhere,” he said. “So what are we going to do?”