The police moved on.
They arrived back at the front entrance to the Library Annex, and Claire had expected that the cops would be all over it - after all, Oliver had shattered the front door getting in. But instead, a neat plywood replacement had already been installed, the glass swept away, and there was no sign the police had been there at all.
'Your buddies don't want company,' Shane said. 'Which confirms why there wasn't any alarm. They'd just kidnapped somebody, and the last thing they wanted was the police busting in on them. Plus, there's that weird bat-thing and Dead Derrick to explain.' He tried the door - locked, of course. 'Hang on a second.'
'Do you need the flashlight?'
'Don't need light to pick locks,' he said cheerfully. She didn't know how he did it, but about thirty long seconds later, he gave a satisfied sigh, and she heard the padlock that secured the broken doors click open. 'New personal best. Okay, inside, but go careful. Enemy territory.'
Inside, the building was silent, just as it had been before; she moved past the offices and storage areas to the door of the mechanical closet, which was tightly closed again.
And a voice - Dr Davis's voice - said, 'Nothing to find down there, kids. If you're looking for your friend, she's in good hands.'
He was standing at the dog-leg end of the hall, flanked by two men with weapons. And yes, the weapons were aimed straight at Claire and Shane, which didn't surprise her, but did give her heart a little kick-start of fear.
Dr Davis was holding VLAD. He'd been expecting a vampire rescue. She and Shane, alone, were likely a surprise.
Shane kept his hands down at his sides. 'Can't we talk about this?'
'I don't see why not, but the fact is, your red-headed friend isn't going anywhere. Where are the other vampires? The males?'
'Males,' Shane repeated. 'I'm guessing you refer to Jesse as the female.'
'Well, yes, clinically; they're very far from human, you know, though they can certainly simulate it easily enough when they wish. Do you have any concept of what you're involved in, either of you? How dangerous it is to trust these creatures? You can't. They will kill you.'
'You're the ones with guns,' Claire pointed out. 'And you're the one who killed Derrick.'
'Derrick was none of your concern, and certainly wasn't mine,' Davis said. 'I don't suppose taking the two of you as hostages will gain me anything from the immortals. They don't have any regard for humans.'
'Sure they do,' Shane said. 'They regard us as walking meal deals. But don't worry, they especially wouldn't come running to rescue me. My dad was a genuine vampire killer.'
'Really?' That got Davis's full attention. 'I always suspected that there would be such a thing, with its own lore and skills ... Stoker's novel hinted as much. I assume the business was not passed down. You don't seem terribly motivated.'
Shane gave him a humorless grin. 'Oh, I don't know. I have my days.'
'You came after Liz to get to me,' Claire said. 'Didn't you?'
'I like redundancy in all that I do,' he said, and rested a proprietary hand on VLAD. 'You developed an object we badly needed in order to keep any captives we managed to secure in line. The immortals are very dangerous, as I'm sure you already know. So, I suppose the answer to your question is yes. Liz was a means to an end, the end being your acquisition for our project.'
'By immortals, you mean vampires.'
'It's the common word for them, but the important thing about them from a biological standpoint is that their tissues simply don't age. They are - petrified, in a sense. And yet also alive. There are a few other organisms capable of this kind of extraordinary behaviour but-'
'Not really here for the biology lesson, professor,' Shane said, interrupting what was sure to be a Myrnin-worthy gush of information. Claire was a little disappointed, actually. 'We want Jesse released. Now. And that thing you're holding doesn't belong to you, so we'd like it back, too.'
Dr Davis and his two minions actually exchanged amused glances before he said, 'You're playing well out of your league, boy. Please don't bluff. It's just embarrassing.'
'He's not bluffing, professor,' Claire said. 'Really.'
Shane shook his head. 'Ah, come on, don't call him professor, he's got no right to that. He's a scumbag who gets college girls to bang him for grades. Right, Claire?'
'Definitely. By the way, Liz cried all night. In case you were interested, professor.'
'Here's a tip,' Shane said. 'If you leave a girl crying, you're probably not doing your Don Juan routine right, ass**le.'
Dr Davis said nothing, but his expression compressed into an angry mask, and his eyes bored holes into the two of them. His grip tightened on VLAD.
And that was exactly the moment that the two men standing next to him just ... vanished. Not literally, in a dramatic puff of smoke, but more of a now-you-see-them, now-you-don't blur of motion. Davis didn't even notice for a few seconds, and by then it was too late; Oliver was there, teeth bared, facing him.
Davis's startled cry and stumbling backward retreat was almost fun to see. Almost ... and then Myrnin was behind him, shoving him forward into Oliver's embrace. Oliver spun the man around, and Myrnin stripped the device from Davis's hands.
Then Myrnin froze, looking at Claire with a blank, odd expression, and said, 'Did you build another one already? Because this most assuredly is not the working model.'
And that was the moment when Dr Irene Anderson stepped out from the closed doorway behind them, aimed with the VLAD weapon that she was holding, and shot Oliver with it.
The effect was immediate, and drastic. Oliver flung Dr Davis away from him, cried out, clapped his hands to his head, and sank down against the wall, shaking. Weeping. He got to his hands and knees, tried to rise, and she shot him again, and this time ... this time Oliver didn't get up.
Claire, open-mouthed, stared at her professor, and didn't know what to do. What to say. Maybe she misunderstood, maybe ...
She hadn't.
Dr Anderson turned toward her, and the look in her eyes was flat, cool and very scary. 'That's three of them out of commission,' she said. 'But I know Oliver didn't come here alone. Where is Myrnin?'
Claire involuntarily glanced aside at the place Dr Davis had been standing, but the area behind him was vacant now. Myrnin was nowhere to be seen. 'You played me,' she said. 'You played me all along. You agreed to take me on as a student not because Myrnin asked you, but because you found out I had something you could use. Something your crazy friends wanted. He trusted you, but you-'
'I got the hell out of Morganville, Claire, just as you did, so please don't pretend that there is some higher moral ground on which you're standing. The vampires used me just as they used you; they found a young, impressionable and bright girl and fed her to the monster. You and I survived that. Not everyone did.'
Everything Dr Anderson was saying was true, but - but it didn't describe Myrnin, not really. It wasn't his fault. He tried, tried hard, to be a good person, a real person, not just a soulless monster sucking blood out of people.
But when he failed, he failed spectacularly, like a doomed meteor plunging to Earth.
Claire suddenly realised that a shadow off to the side, about six feet away from Shane, wasn't empty any more. Myrnin had managed to make his way there. He didn't have the weapon any more; his hands were empty, and he stood very quietly, utterly immobile. Waiting for a chance to strike.
But any second, Dr Anderson might notice him. So Claire kept talking. 'That doesn't give you the right to-'
'To do what?' the woman snapped, eyes blazing. She took a step forward, then another, and Shane instinctively shoved Claire back as he got in the way. It also put Anderson closer to Myrnin, and Claire expected him to lunge for her ... but he didn't. He was waiting for her guard to drop completely. 'To do exactly what you were planning to do - develop a weapon that would allow humans the chance to really defend themselves from a vampire attack? To create a nonlethal solution to the problem you know exists? Because you are the one who put us in this position, Claire. You solved the problem of the disease that was destroying them; you helped them defeat the only things that they feared. You put the top predators back on top, and you were right to think we needed a way to stop them.' Dr Anderson touched VLAD's casing with a light, almost reverent hand. 'I'm just the one who pointed it at them first.'
All that sounded right, but at the same time, wrong, all wrong, but the passion of Anderson's words robbed Claire of the ability to argue ... until Shane did it for them.
'Bullshit,' he said, with a strange, tight little smile. 'Man, you sound just like my father. He was really good at this, too; good at justifying all the lying, stealing, beating and killing he needed to do. Oh, it's all for a higher cause, kid. Don't you sweat the details. We're fighting monsters, we have to get our hands dirty. But you used Claire to get the weapon here, and then you used her to get Myrnin coming to the rescue when he heard there was trouble. Then you used Liz, because you knew Claire would come for her, and we'd all help. You weren't picky about who got hurt. Still aren't. So don't preach at us like you're some kind of saint. You're just another sinner.'