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"You're still my son. Blood is blood." Frank pushed him toward the truck, only lightly crushed where Eve's car had smacked it. "Get in."
"Why?"
"Because I said so!" Frank shouted. Shane just looked at him. "Dammit, boy, for once in your life, do what I tell you!"
"I spent most of my life doing what you told me," Shane said. "Including selling out my friends. Not happening anymore."
Frank's lips parted, temporarily amazed. He laughed.
"Done drunk the suicide cola, didn't you?" When he shook his head, drops flew in all directions, and were immediately lost in the silver downpour. "Just get in. I'm trying to save your life. You don't want to be where you're trying to go."
Strangely enough, Frank Collins was making sense. Probably for all the wrong reasons, though.
"We have to get through," Claire shouted over the pounding rain. She was shivering, soaked through every layer of clothing. "It's important. People could die if we don't!"
"People are going to die," Collins agreed. "Omelets and eggs. You know the old saying."
Or chess, Claire thought. Though she didn't know whose side Frank Collins was playing on, or even if he knew he was being manipulated at all.
"There's a plan," Frank was saying to his son. "In all this crap, nobody's checking faces. Metal detectors are off. We seize control of the building and make things right. We shuffle these bastards off, once and for all. We can do it!"
"Dad," Shane said, "everybody in that building tonight is going to be killed. We have to get people out, not get them in. If you care anything about those idiots who buy your revolutionary crap, you'll call this off."
"Call it off?" Frank repeated, as uncomprehending as if Shane were speaking another language. "When we're this close? When we can win? Dammit, Shane, you used to believe in this. You used to--"
"Yeah. Used to. Look it up!" Shane shoved his father away from him, and walked over to Eve and Claire. "I've warned you, Dad. Don't do this. Not today. I won't turn you in, but I'm telling you, if you don't back off, you're dead."
"I don't take threats," Frank said. "Not from you."
"You're an idiot," Shane said. "And I tried."
He got back in the car, on the passengerside front seat where Michael had been. Eve scrambled behind the wheel, and Claire in the back.
Eve reversed.
Frank stepped out into the road ahead of them, a scarylooking man in black leather with his straggling hair plastered around his face. Add in the big hunting knife, and cue the scary music.
Eve let up on the gas. "No," Shane said, and moved his left foot over to jam it on top of hers. "Go. He wants you to stop."
"Don't! I can't miss him, no--"
But it was too late. Frank was staring into the headlights, squarely in the center of the hood, and he was getting closer and closer.
Frank Collins threw himself out of the way at the last possible second, Eve swerved wildly in the opposite direction to miss him, and somehow, they didn't kill Shane's dad.
"What the hell are you doing?" Eve yelled at Shane. She was shaking all over. So was Shane. "You want to run him over, do it on your own time! God!"
"Look behind you," Shane whispered.
There were people coming after them. A lot of people. They'd been hiding in the alley, Claire guessed. They had guns, and now they opened fire. The car shuddered, and the back window exploded into cracks, then fell with a crash all over Claire's neck.
"Get up here!" Shane said, and grabbed her hands to haul her into the front seat. "Keep your head down!"
Eve had sunk down on the driver's side, barely keeping her eyes above the dashboard. She was panting hoarsely, panicked, and more gunshots were rattling the back of the car. Something hit the front window, too, adding more cracks and a round, backward splash of a hole.
"Faster!" Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slowermoving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. "You see why I didn't want you to stop?"
"Okay, your father is officially off my Christmas list!" Eve yelled. "Oh my God, look at my car!"
Shane barked out a laugh. "Yeah," he agreed. "That's what's important."
"It's better than thinking about what would have happened," Eve said. "If Michael had been with us--"
Claire thought about the mobs Richard had talked about, and the dead vampires, and felt sick. "They'd have dragged him off," she said. "They'd have killed him."
Michael had been right about Shane's dad, but then, Claire had never really doubted it. Neither had Shane, from the sick certainty on his face. He wiped his eyes with his forearm, which really didn't help much; they were all dripping wet, from head to toe.
"Let's just get to the building," Shane said. "We can't do much until we find Richard."
Only it wasn't that simple, even getting in. The underground parking was crammed full of cars, parked haphazardly at every angle. As Eve inched through the shadows, looking for any place to go, she shook her head. "If we do manage to get people to leave, they won't be able to take their cars. Everybody's blocked in," she said. "This is massively screwed up." Claire, for her part, thought some of it seemed deliberate, not just panic. "Okay, I'm going to pull it against the wall and hope we can get out if we need to."
The elevator was already locked down, the doors open but the lights off and buttons unresponsive. They took the stairs at a run.
The firstfloor door seemed to be locked, until Shane pushed on it harder, and then it creaked open against a flood of protests.
The vestibule was full of people.
Morganville's City Hall wasn't all that large, at least not here in the lobby area.
There was a big, sweeping staircase leading up, all grand marble and polished wood, and glass display cases taking up part of one wall. The License Bureau was off to the right: six oldtime bank windows, with bars, all closed. Next to each window was a brass plaque that read what the windows were supposed to deliver: RESIDENTIAL LICENSING, CAR REGISTRATION, ZONING CHANGE REQUESTS, SPECIAL PERMITS, TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS, FINE PAYMENTS, TAXES, CITY SERVICES.
But not today.
The lobby was jammed with people. Families, mostly--mothers and fathers with kids, some as young as infants. Claire didn't see a single vampire in the crowd, not even Michael. At the far end, a yellow Civil Defense sign indicated that the door led to a Safe Shelter, with a tornado graphic next to it. A policeman with a bullhorn was yelling for order, not that he was getting any; people were pushing, shoving, and shouting at one another. "The shelter is now at maximum capacity! Please be calm!"
