Carpe Corpus

Chapter Four

The Glass House was pretty much as she'd last left it, when she'd packed her pitifully few belongings and moved in with her parents after they'd been brought to Morganville. The house seemed quiet, lonely, somehowto sad and colorless. That was just its mood. Shane's things were still strewn around - a new game console that he'd only just gotten hooked up, games piled in the corners along with his Wii controllers, his ratty old black sweatshirt crumpled on the corner of the couch. Claire walked to it, sat down, and pulled it into her lap like a pet, then held it up to her face and breathed.
I'm home. It felt wonderful and sad and horrible, all at the same time.
Holding Shane's shirt was like having him holding her, just for a moment.
When she looked up, Myrnin was watching her. "What?" she demanded. He shrugged and turned away. "Why did you bring me here?"
"I had to bring you somewhere," Myrnin said. "I thought perhaps you would enjoy this more than, say, the sewage treatment plant."
Michael's guitar lay in its case on the floor near the bookcases. Some of Eve's magazines still littered the coffee table, edges curling up from neglect more than use.
It still smelled so familiar, and Claire felt the loss of Shane, of her friends, hit her hard once again.
"Is Eve here?" she asked him, but Myrnin didn't answer.
Eve did, from the kitchen doorway. "Where else would I be?" she asked. She leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms, staring at them. "What are you doing in my house, freaks?"
"Hey, it's my house, too!" Claire knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn't help it. From the very first time they'd met, Eve had been on her side - always in her corner, always believing her. Believing in her, which was even more important.
It hurt that all that had changed now.
Eve's face was a rice-powder mask, aggressively marked up with black lipstick and way too much eye-liner. Her black hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail, and she was wearing a skintight black knit shirt with a red skull on the front, and oversize cargo pants with loads of pockets and chains. Heavy combat-style boots.
Eve was ready to kick ass, and she wouldn't bother to take names while she was at it.
"I'm serious," Eve said. "I'm giving you about five seconds to get out of my house. And take your pet leech with you before I play a game of Pin the Stake in the Vamp."
Claire held Shane's sweatshirt in her arms for comfort. "Aren't you going to at least ask how they are?"
Eve stared at her with eyes like burned black holes. "I've got sources," she said. "My boyfriend's still evil. Your boyfriend's still in jail. You're still sucking up to the Dark Lord of Mordor. By the way, I'm going to start calling you Gollum, you little creep."
"Eve, wait. It's not like that - "
"Actually, it is exactly like that," Myrnin said. "We should go, Claire. Now."
He tried to take her hand; she shook him off and moved closer to Eve, who straightened from her slouch and slipped one hand into a pocket on her cargo pants. "I'm not screwing around, Claire. Get out of my house!"
"I live here!"
"No, you used to live here!" That came out of Eve's blackened lips in a raw, vicious snarl. "This is still Michael's house, and no matter what's happened to him, I'm going to defend it, do you understand? I'm not letting you - "
"Michael's not evil," Claire blurted out desperately. "He's working for Amelie."
Eve stopped, lips parted, eyes wide.
"Claire," Myrnin warned softly from behind her. "Secrets are best kept cold."
"Not from her." Claire tried again, desperate to see some of that anger leave her friend. "Michael's working for Amelie. He's not on Bishop's side. He'd want me to tell you that. He never left us, Eve. He never left you."
Silence. Dead, cold silence, and in it, Claire could hear Eve's breathing. Nothing else.
Eve took her hand out of her pocket. She was holding a knife.
"So this is Bishop's latest game? Taunt the loser? See how crazy you can make me? Because honestly, that's not much of a challenge - I'm pretty crazy already." Her dark eyes sparkled with tears. "Runs in my family, I guess."
"Claire isn't lying to you," Myrnin said, and stepped around Claire to block any threatening moves Eve might make. "Do you have to be so full of - "
Eve lunged at him. Myrnin didn't seem to move at all, but suddenly he had her from behind, arms pinned, and the knife was spinning on the floor and skidding to bump into Claire's feet. Eve didn't even have time to scream. Once he had her, she wasn't able to, because his hand was across her mouth, muffling any sounds.
Myrnin's eyes sparked an unholy color of red, and he brushed his lips against Eve's pale neck. " - so full of useless bravado?" he finished, in exactly the same tone as before. "She didn't lie to you. She's an awful liar, when it comes down to it. That's what makes her so terrifyingly useful to us - we always know where we stand with little Claire. Now play nicely, make-believe dead girl. Or I will fulfill your darkest wishes."
He shoved Eve away, toward Claire, who kicked the knife far out of anybody's reach. Eve whirled, evidently (and understandably) finding Myrnin more of a threat. Under the rice-powder makeup, her face was flushed, her eyes shining with fear.
Myrnin circled like a hyena. He grinned like one, too.
"Call him off," Eve said. "Claire, call him off!"
"Myrnin, leave Eve alone. Please?" Which was about the closest Claire dared come to telling Myrnin to do anything, especially when he had that particular glow in his eyes. He was enjoying this. "I need to talk to her, and I can't do that if you're scaring the crap out of her. Please."
He paced a few more steps, and she saw him get control of himself with a real physical effort. He sat down in a chair at the dining table and put his dirty feet up. "Fine," he said, and crossed his arms. "Talk. I'll just wait, shall I? Because my mission to save this town is of no importance whatsoever next to your girl talk."
Claire rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up, you medieval drama queen." Now that he was sitting down and the glow was gone from his eyes, she could say it, and he could acknowledge it with a snort and a roll of his shoulders."Eve, I tried to call. I tried to come by and see you." She was talking to her friend now, and Eve was staring right at her, not at Myrnin, as if Claire were the actual threat in the room. "Eve?"
"I heard you."
"And?"
"And I'm thinking," she said. "Because you've been awfully chummy with Fang-Daddy Bishop. You're his little pet, scurrying around all over town, delivering his little love notes. Right?"
Claire couldn't really dispute that. "Not like I had a choice," she said. "Believe me, I'd rather not be in the middle of this, but he knew I belonged to Amelie. I was just another thing to take away from her, that's all. He likes making her squirm by using me."
Eve thawed just a tiny bit. "Sucks to be the object lesson."
"You have no idea."
"He hasn't, you know . . . ?" Eve mimed the fang thing, just in case Claire thought she meant something else. Then she looked worried about that, too.
"He's not interested in me at all," Claire assured her. "I'm just some pawn for him to move around on the chessboard. And besides, Myrnin looks after me." Myrnin waved his hand in the air, halfway between a dismissal and a prince's lazy wave of acknowledgment. "He won't let Bishop hurt me." Well . . . not much. If he was paying attention. "How about you?"
"It's been quiet," Eve said, and looked away for a moment. "My brother's been coming around to check on me."
"Jason?" Wow, that was not the most comforting thing Claire could think of. "Tell me you're kidding."
"No, he's . . . I think he finally has his head on straight. He seems . . . different. Besides, I need somebody on my side, and he's the only one still around."
"Jason is the one who sold us out at the feast; do you remember that? He kicked this whole thing off! Talk about me being Bishop's favorite - at least I didn't choose it!" Not until today, anyway.
Eve sent her a fierce glare. "Jason's still my brother. Hey, I wish he wasn't, but it's not like I got to pick my family!"
"You sound like Shane talking about his dad."
"Did you just come here to insult me, or do you have a point? Because if you don't, I need to get to work." Eve pushed away from the doorway and snatched up a patent-leather backpack and a set of keys, which she rattled impatiently. "That's Latin for get the hell out, by the way. I'd think a college girl like you would know that."
Myrnin slowly sat up, eyes going wider. "I'm sorry, little pale creature - did you just give us an order?"
"Not so much you as her, but yeah, if you want to take it that way. Sure, you knockoff Lestat. Get the hell out of my house." Eve waited expectantly, but nothing happened. "Damn, that really doesn't work anymore, does it?"
"Not since the owner of the house turned vampire," Myrnin said, and stood up in that eerie way he had, as if gravity had just been canceled in his neighborhood. "Please feel free to try to make me leave. I'd quite enjoy it."
"Myrnin." Claire sighed. "Eve. We're not enemies, okay? Stop poking at each other."
That got her stares from both of them. Not nice ones.
"We're just . . . passing through," Claire said, and felt a surge of real regret. "On our way to . . . Where are we going?"
"Somewhere remote," Myrnin said. "And I don't intend to tell your angry little friend about it in any case. Finish your babble. It's time to go."
As if it was his idea, and they weren't getting tossed out. Claire couldn't resist rolling her eyes.
She caught Eve doing the same thing, and they shared sudden, sheepish grins.
"Sorry," Claire murmured. "Honest, Eve. I miss you."
"Yeah," Eve said. "Miss you, too, freak. Wish I didn't, sometimes, but there you go."
Claire wasn't sure which of them moved first, but it really didn't matter; they both put their arms out, and the hug felt warm and good and real. Eve kissed her quickly on the cheek, then let go and hurried out, hiding her tears. "I'm leaving!" she shouted back, and disappeared into the hallway. "That means you should, too!" The front door slammed.
As Myrnin opened the portal in the wall, Claire grabbed up Shane's sweatshirt and pulled it on over her clothes. It was huge on her. She rolled up the sleeves, and couldn't resist lifting the neck to smell it one more time.
Myrnin smirked. "There is no drama so great as that of a teenage girl," he said.
"Except yours."
"Did no one ever teach you to respect your elders?" He grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her through the portal. "Mind the gap. Oh, and you have black lipstick on your cheek."
They came out in a dim, damp basement - a generic sort of place, full of molding boxes. "You take me to the nicest places," Claire said, and sneezed. Myrnin shoved boxes out of his way without bothering to answer, uncovering a set of iron steps that looked to be more rust than actual iron. Claire followed him up, testing every tread carefully along the way. The whole thing seemed ready to collapse, but they made it to the top, which featured . . . a locked door.
Myrnin patted his pockets, sighed, and punched the lock with his fist. It shattered. The door sagged open, and he bowed to her like an old-school gentleman. Which he was, she supposed, on his good days.
"Where are we?"
"Morganville High School."
Claire hadn't ever set foot in the place. She'd started her senior year at the age of fifteen, courtesy of her mutant freak-smart brain, but as they stepped out into the hallway, she felt like she'd traveled back in time. Only a year, actually, which made it especially weird.
Scarred, polished linoleum floors. Industrial green walls. Battered rows of lockers stretching the length of the hallway, most secured with dial locks. Butcher-paper posters and banners advertising the Drama Club's production of Annie Get Your Gun and the band bake sale. The place smelled like industrial cleaners, sweat, and stress.
Claire paused to stare at the oversize painted mascot on the cinder-block wall at the end of the hallway.
"What?" Myrnin asked impatiently.
"Seriously. You guys have no sense of subtlety, do you?" It was the same image the boy at Richard Morrell's office had worn on his T-shirt: a menacing viper lunging, with fangs displayed. Cute.
"I have no idea what you mean. Come on. We have very little time before classes let out - "
A loud bell clattered, and all up and down the hallway, doors banged open, releasing floods of young people Claire's own age, or close to it. Myrnin grabbed Claire's arm and yanked her onward, fast.
School. It was surreal how normal it all seemed - like nobody could handle the truth, so they just kept on with all the surface lies, and in that sense, Morganville High was just like the rest of the town. All the chatter seemed falsely bright, and kids walked in thick groups, seeking comfort and protection.
They all avoided Myrnin and Claire, although everybody looked at them. She heard people talking. Great. I'm famous in high school, finally.
Another quick left turn led through a set of double doors, and the noise of feet, talk, and locker doors slamming faded behind them into velvety silence. Myrnin prodded her onward. More classrooms, but these were dark and empty.
"They don't use this part of the building?" Claire asked.
"No need for it," Myrnin said. "It was built with a plan that the human population of Morganville would grow. It hasn't."
"Can't imagine why," Claire muttered. "Such a great place to live and all. You'd think there'd be people just dying to get in. Operative word, dying."
He didn't bother to debate it. There was another door at the end of the hall, and this one had a shiny silver dead-bolt lock on it.
Myrnin knocked.
After a long moment of silence, the dead bolt was pulled back with a metallic clank, and the door swung open.
"Dr. Mills?" Claire was surprised. She hadn't heard much about Dr. Mills, ER doctor and their sometime lab assistant, for weeks. He'd dropped out of sight, along with his family. She'd tried to find out what had happened to him, but she'd been afraid it would be bad news. Sometimes, it was just better not to know.
"Claire," he said, and stepped back to let her and Myrnin inside the room. He closed and locked the door before turning a tired smile in her direction. "How are you, kid?"
"Um, fine, I guess. I was worried - "
"I know." Dr. Mills was middle-aged and kind of average in every way, except his mind, which was - even by Claire's standards - pretty sharp. "Mr. Bishop got word that I was doing research on vampire blood. He wanted it stopped - it's not in his best interest for anyone to get better right now, if you know what I mean. We had to move quickly. Myrnin relocated us." He nodded warily to Myrnin, who gave him a courtly sort of wave of acknowledgment.
"Your family, too?"
"My wife and kids are in the next room," he said. "It's not what you might call comfortable, but it's safe enough. We can use the gym showers at night. There's food in the cafeteria, books in the library. It's about the best safe haven we could have." Dr. Mills looked at Claire closely, and frowned. "You look tired."
"Probably," she said. "So . . . this is the new lab?"
"Seems like we always have a new one, don't we? At least this one has most of what we need." He gestured around vaguely. The room had clearly been intended to be a science classroom; it had the big granite-topped tables, equipped with sinks and built-in gas taps. At the back of the room were rows and rows of neat shelves filled with glassware and all kinds of bottled and labeled ingredients. One thing about Morganville - the town really did invest in education. "I've made some unexpected progress."
"Meaning?" Myrnin turned to look at him, suddenly not at all fey and weird.
"You know I've been trying to trace the origins of the disease?"
"The origins are not as important as developing an effective and consistent palliative treatment, not to mention mass producing the cure," Myrnin said. "As I've told you before. Loudly."
Dr. Mills looked at Claire for support, and she cleared her throat. "I think we can do both," she said. "I mean, it's important to know where something came from, too."
"That's the thing," Dr. Mills said. "It didn't seem to come from anywhere. There weren't any other vampire diseases; everything I tested within the medium of their blood went down without a fight, from colds and flu to cancer. Granted, I can't get my hands on some of the top-level contagious viruses, but I don't see anything in common between this disease and any other, except one."
Myrnin forgot his objections and came closer. "Which one?"
"Alzheimer's disease. It's a progressive degenerative disease of - "
Myrnin gestured sharply. "I know what it is. You said it had things in common."
"The progress of the disease is similar, yes, but here's the thing: Bishop's blood contains antibodies. It's the only blood that contains antibodies. That means that there is a cure, and Bishop took it, because he contracted the disease and recovered."
Myrnin turned slowly and raised his eyebrows at Claire. It was a mild expression, but the look in his eyes was fierce. "Interpret, please."
"Bishop might have done this on purpose," she said. "Right, Dr. Mills? He might have developed this disease and deliberately spread it - used the cure only for himself. But why would he do that?"
"I have no idea."
Myrnin stalked away, moving in jerky, agitated strides; when a lab stool got in his way, he picked it up and smashed it into junk against the wall without so much as pausing. "Because he wants control," he said. "And revenge. It's perfect. He can once again decide who lives, who dies - he had that power once, until we took it from him. We thought he was destroyed. We were sure."
"You and Amelie," Claire said. There was a long, ugly history behind all this - she didn't understand it and didn't really want to, but she knew that at some point, maybe hundreds of years ago, Amelie had tried to kill Mr. Bishop once and for all. "But you failed. And this is his way of hitting you back. Hitting you all back at once."
Myrnin stopped, facing a blank corner for a moment without replying. Then he slowly walked back toward them and took a seat on one of the lab stools that hadn't been destroyed, flipping back the tails of his frock coat as he sat. "So it is deliberate, this bane."
"Apparently," Claire said. "And now he's got you where he wants you."
Myrnin smiled. "Not quite." He gestured around the lab. "We do have weapons."
Most of the granite-topped tables had metal pans spread with drying reddish crystals. Claire nodded toward them with a frown. "I thought we were going with the liquid version of that stuff?" That stuff being the maintenance drug that she and Myrnin had developed - or at least refined to the point of being useful - that acted to keep the vampire disease's worst effects at bay. It wasn't a cure; it helped, but it had diminishing returns, at best.
"We were," Dr. Mills said. "But it takes longer to distill the liquid form than it does to manufacture the crystals, and we need to medicate more and more of the vampires - so here we are. Two prongs of attack."
"What about the cure?" He didn't look happy, and Claire's heart shrank down to a small, tight knot in her chest. "What's wrong?"
"Unfortunately, the sample of Bishop's blood we had degraded quickly," he said. "I was able to culture a small amount of serum out of it, but I'm going to need more of the base to really develop enough to matter."
"How much more of his blood do you need?"
"Pints," he said apologetically. "I know. Believe me, I know what you're thinking."
Claire was thinking of exactly how stupidly suicidal it would be to try to get drops of Bishop's blood, never mind pints. Myrnin had managed it once, but she doubted even he could pull it off twice without being staked and sunbathed to death. But she wasn't willing to give up, either. "We'd have to drug him," she said.
Myrnin looked up from fiddling with glassware on the table. "How? He's not one of those partial to human food and drink. And I doubt any of us could get close enough to give him a shot large enough to matter."
Claire pulled in a deep breath as it occurred to her in a cold and blinding flash. "We have to drug him through what it is he does drink."
"From everything I've heard about Bishop, he doesn't drink from blood bags," Dr. Mills said. "He only feeds from live victims."
Claire nodded. "I know." She felt sick saying it, so sick she almost couldn't speak at all. "But it's the only way to get to him - if you really want to end this."
The two men looked at her - one older than her, the other infinitely older - and for just a moment, they had the same expression on their faces: as if they'd never seen her before.
Myrnin said thoughtfully, "It's an idea. I'll have to give it some thought. The problem is that loading blood with sufficient poison to affect Bishop will certainly kill a human subject."
Poison. She'd been thinking of some kind of knockout drug - but that wouldn't work, she realized. Doses big enough to affect a vampire would be poison to humans in their bloodstream. "Does he always drink from humans?"
Myrnin flinched. She knew why; she knew Myrnin had drained a couple of vampire assistants he'd had, which was strictly against the rules. He'd done it accidentally, kind of, when he was crazy. "Not . . . always," he said, very quietly. "There are times - but he'd have to be greatly angered."
"Yeah, like that's a trick," Claire said. "Would it kill a vampire to put that amount of poison in his bloodstream?"
"The drugs would not necessarily kill a vampire," Myrnin said. "Bishop draining him certainly would."
The silence stretched. Myrnin looked down at his dirty feet in those ridiculous flip-flops. In the other room, Claire heard a child singing her ABCs, and then a woman's quiet voice hushing her.
"Myrnin," Claire said. "It doesn't have to be you."
Myrnin raised his head and fixed his gaze on hers.
"Of course it doesn't," he said. "But it will have to be someone you know. Someone you might perhaps like. Of all the people in Morganville, Claire, I never expected you to turn so cold to that possibility."
She shivered deep inside from the disappointment in his voice, and fisted her hands in the folds of Shane's oversize sweatshirt. "I'm not cold," she said. "I'm desperate. And so are you."
"Yes," Myrnin said. "That's unfortunately quite true."
He turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace the far end of the room, turn after turn, head down.
Dr. Mills cleared his throat. "If you have some time, I need help bottling the serum I do have. There's enough for maybe twenty vampires - thirty if I stretch it. No more."
"Okay," Claire said, and followed him to the other side of the room, where a beaker and tiny bottles waited. She poured and handed him bottles to place the needle-permeable caps on with a metal crimper. The serum was milky and slightly pink. "How long does it take to work?"
"About forty-eight hours, according to my tests," he said. "I need to give it to Myrnin; he's the worst case we have who isn't already confined in a cell."
"He won't let you," Claire said. "He thinks he needs to be crazy so that Bishop can't sense that he's still working for Amelie."
Dr. Mills frowned at her. "Is that true?"
"I think he needs to be crazy," she said. "Just probably not for the reason he says."
Myrnin refused the shot. Of course. But he took pocketfuls of the medicine and disposable syringes, and escorted Claire back out of the lab. She heard the lock snap shut behind them.
"Are Dr. Mills and his family safe in there?" she asked. Myrnin didn't answer. "Are they?"
"As safe as anyone is in Morganville," he said, which really wasn't an answer. He stopped and leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. "Claire. I'm afraid. . . ."
"What?"
He shook his head. "I'm just afraid. And that's rare. That's so very rare."
He sounded lost and uncertain, the way he sometimes did when the disease began to take hold - but this was different. This was the real Myrnin, not the confused one. And it made Claire afraid, too.
She reached out and took his hand. It felt like a real person's hand, just cold. His fingers tightened on hers, briefly, and then released.
"I believe that it's time for you to learn some things," he said. "Come."
He pushed off from the wall, and led her at a brisk walk toward the portal, flip-flops snapping with urgency.