"Stop. Stop it." Claire dug her fingers into her palms. Myrnin took a step toward her, and she forced herself not to flinch. She knew him, knew what he was trying to do. "You won't hurt me. You need me."
"Do I?" He breathed deeply again. "Yes, I do. Bright, so bright. I can feel your energy. I know how it will feel when I . . ." He blinked, and horror sheeted across his face, fast as lightning. "What was I saying? Claire? What did I just say?"
She couldn't repeat it. "Nothing. Don't worry. But I think we'd better get you to the cell, okay? Please?"
He looked devastated. This was the worst part of it, she thought, the mood swings. He'd tried so hard, and he'd helped, he really had--but he wasn't going to be able to hold together much longer. She was seeing him fall apart in slow motion.
Again.
Michael steered him toward the portal. "Let's go," he said. "Claire, can you do this?"
"If he doesn't fight me," she said nervously. She remembered one afternoon when his paranoia had taken over, and every time she'd tried to establish the portal, he'd snapped the connection, sure something was waiting on the other side to destroy him. "I wish we had a tranquilizer."
"Well, you don't," Myrnin said. "And I don't like being stuck with your needles, you know that. I'll behave myself." He laughed softly. "Mostly."
Claire opened the door, but instead of the connection snapping clear to the prison, she felt it shift, pulled out of focus. "Myrnin, stop it!"
He spread his hands theatrically. "I didn't do anything."
She tried again. The connection bent, and before she could bring it back where she wanted it, an alternate destination came into focus.
Theo Goldman fell out of the door.
"Theo!" Myrnin caught him, surprised out of his petulance, at least for the moment. He eased the other vampire down to a sitting position against the wall. "Are you injured?"
"No, no, no--" Theo was gasping, though Claire knew he didn't need air, not the way humans did. This was emotion, not exertion. "Please, you have to help, I beg you. Help us, help my family, please--"
Myrnin crouched down to put their eyes on a level. "What's happened?"
Theo's eyes filled with tears that flowed over his lined, kind face. "Bishop," he said. "Bishop has my family. He says he wants Amelie and the book, or he will kill them all."
Chapter Fourteen
Theo hadn't come straight from Common Grounds, of course; he'd been taken to one of the open portals--he didn't know where--and forced through by Bishop. "No," he said, and stopped Michael as he tried to come closer. "No, not you. He only wants Amelie, and the book, and I want no more innocent blood shed, not yours or mine. Please. Myrnin, I know you can find her. You have the blood tie and I don't. Please find her and bring her. This is not our fight. It's family; it's father and daughter. They should end this, facetoface."
Myrnin stared at him for a long, long moment, and then cocked his head to one side. "You want me to betray her," he said. "Deliver her to her father."
"No, no, I wouldn't ask for that. Only to--to let her know what price there will be. Amelie will come. I know she will."
"She won't," Myrnin said. "I won't let her."
Theo cried out in misery, and Claire bit her lip. "Can't you help him?" she said. "There's got to be a way!"
"Oh, there is," Myrnin said. "There is. But you won't like it, my little Claire. It isn't neat, and it isn't easy. And it will require considerable courage from you, yet again."
"I'll do it!"
"No, you won't," Shane and Michael said, at virtually the same time. Shane continued. "You're barely on your feet, Claire. You don't go anywhere, not without me."
"And me," Michael said.
"Hell," Eve sighed. "I guess that means I have to go, too. Which I may not ever forgive you for, even if I don't die horribly."
Myrnin stared at each of them in turn. "You'd go. All of you." His lips stretched into a crazy, rubberdoll smile. "You are the best toys, you know. I can't imagine how much fun it will be to play with you."
Silence, and then Eve said, "Okay, that was extra creepy, with whipped creepy topping. And this is me, changing my mind."
The glee faded from Myrnin's eyes, replaced with a kind of lost desperation that Claire recognized all too well. "It's coming. Claire, it's coming, I'm afraid. I don't know what to do. I can feel it."
She reached out and took his hand. "I know. Please, try. We need you right now. Can you hold on?"
He nodded, but it was more a convulsive response than confirmation. "In the drawer by the skulls," he said. "One last dose. I hid it. I forgot."
He did that; he hid things and remembered them at odd moments--or never. Claire dashed off to the far end of the room, near where Richard slept, and opened drawer after drawer under the row of skulls he'd nailed to the wall. He'd promised that they were all clinical specimens, not one of them victims of violence. She still didn't altogether believe him.
In the last drawer, shoved behind ancient rolls of parchment and the mounted skeleton of a bat, were two vials, both in brown glass. One, when she pried up the stopper, proved to be red crystals.
The other was silver powder.
She put the vial with silver powder in her pants pocket--careful to use the pocket without a hole in it--and brought the red crystals back to Myrnin. He nodded and slipped the vial into his vest pocket, inside the coat.
"Aren't you going to take them?"
"Not quite yet," he said, which scared the hell out of her, frankly. "I can stay focused a bit longer. I promise."
"So," Michael said, "what's the plan?" "This."
Claire felt the portal snap into place behind her, clear as a lightning strike, and Myrnin grabbed the front of her shirt, swung her around, and threw her violently through the doorway.
She seemed to fall a really, really long time, but she hit the ground and rolled.
She opened her eyes on pitch darkness, smelling rot and old wine.
No.
She knew this place.
She was trying to get up when something else hit her from behind--Shane, from the sound of his angry cursing. She writhed around and slapped a hand over his mouth, which made him stop in midcurse. "Shhhh," she hissed, as softly as she could. Not that their rolling around on the floor hadn't rung the dinner bell loud and clear, of course.
Damn you, Myrnin.