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Maybe Frankenstein wasn't too bad a name for him, after all.
There was a buzzing sound that seemed to come from allaround her, and it coalesced finally into a distorted, drunk-sounding voice. "Yes, Claire," it said.
"Are you okay?"
"No," it said, after a long pause. "Hungry."
Claire swal owed hard and clenched her fists. Frank-Frank Col ins, or what was left of him-was hardwired into a computer downstairs, an area that Myrnin hadn't wanted her to venture into. "I thought your nutrients were delivered automatically."
"Tank dry," he said. He sounded terribly tired. "Need blood. Get blood, Claire."
"I-I can't do that!" What was she supposed to do-order up a gal on drum from the blood bank? Somehow magically haul it allthe way down there herself? She had no idea how Myrnin did these things; he'd never included her on any of that maintenance activity. But she strongly suspected the only one who'd be able to manage it would be a vampire. "Is Myrnin gone?"
"Hungry," Frank said again, faintly, and then just...stopped talking. The buzz under his voice shut down. She thought he was the equivalent of offline, like a laptop drained of battery shutting down.
If she wanted him to survive, she really did have to figure this out. Clearly, Myrnin wasn't here to do it.
Claire went to the glass enclosure in the corner. It was hard to see under allthe webs, but when she took the top off the tank, Bob the Spider crawled up eagerly to the top of his wispy multilevel construction. He was a big fuzzy spider, and somehow impossibly cute, although part of her still screamed like a little girl at the thought of touching him.
He bounced up and down in his web, alleight eyes staring right at her.
"You're hungry, too," she said. "Right? Myrnin didn't feed you, either?"
That was really strange. Myrnin might neglect Frank, because he and Frank really weren't a marriage made in heaven (and Frank could be faking it; he had a cruel and weird sense of humor), but leaving Bob on his own and starving wasn't like her boss at all. He was ridiculously fond of the thing. She still remembered Myrnin's utter panic the first time Bob had molted. It had been like a normal person freaking out over the birth of a child.
It was not like him to leave Bob behind if he was really leaving.
Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
Claire pulled out her phone and dialed Myrnin's speed dial. It rang on the phone, and suddenly she heard an echo in the lab, a ringtone composed of scary organ music. She'd given him the phone and had put the ringtone on it herself.
The phone was lying in the shadows next to a stack of books. It had a cracked screen, but it was still working. Claire picked it up and felt stickiness on her fingers.
Blood.
What had happened?
"You shouldn't have come," Pennyfeather said from behind her. His voice, like the rest of him, was colorless, and his odd, lilting accent only made him seem less human, somehow. "But don't worry. You won't be leaving."
Claire stumbled backward in surprise, catching her heel on a pile of discarded volumes, which overbalanced and rained down dusty, heavy tomes on top of her. She yelped and ducked, and realized she had an opportunity as Pennyfeather paused to survey the chaos; she jumped, slid over the top of the nearest lab table, sending books and glass beakers flying, and hit the floor running. She heard soft noises behind her, and in her mind's eye she saw Pennyfeather leaping effortlessly onto the same table, touching down, and racing after her.
She felt human, solid, clumsy, and utterly outmatched against his eerie grace. Claire was accustomed enough to running from vampires not to be utterly terrified-she'd done it often enough here, in this lab-but Pennyfeather was different from the others. Oliver, Amelie, Myrnin...They all had some kind of humanity to them, some hints of mercy, however hidden. They could be reached.
Pennyfeather was pure vampire-fueled serial kil er, and a human, any human, was no match for him.
Claire grabbed for the silver-coated stake in her backpack, but it had rolled to the side, and running and hunting around in a bag and watching treacherous footing weren't exactly complementary activities. It was inevitable that just as her fingertips brushed the cool metal, her foot would come down on a book that slid greasily to the side, and she'd tumble, off-balance, to the floor.
As she did.
She got a grip on the stake just as Pennyfeather landed on her chest, nimble and startlingly heavy. He easily pinned her arms down. all she could do was rattle the stake ineffectively against the tile. No way could she get leverage to stab him, or even scratch him. She bucked, trying to throw him off, but he rode it out easily.
It came to her, with cold clarity, that she wasn't getting out of this. No last-minute brainstorms. No clever little science applications to solve the problem. In the end, she was just going to be another Morganville statistic. Score another one for the vamps.
"Hey," a scratchy, electronic voice barked over Pennyfeather's shoulder, and a grayscale, two-dimensional image flickered into existence there.
Frank Col ins, Shane's absent/abusive dad, looking scarred and scary, was wielding a tire iron, which he swung at Pennyfeather's head.
Pennyfeather reacted to the thing coming at him from the corner of his eye, jerking out of the way and letting go of Claire to stop the swing of the blunt object...but his hands went right through Frank's insubstantial arm, and Pennyfeather pitched forward, off-balance. Claire seized the chance to rol away, and Frank flickered between her and Pennyfeather, confusing the issue.
"Out of my way, spirit!" Pennyfeather snarled, fangs out.
"I'm not a spirit," Frank countered, and his fangs descended, too, as he returned the snarl. "I'm your worst damn nightmare, Skeletor. I'm a vampire kil er with fangs and a grudge."
That sounded so much like Shane that Claire was actually startled. So was Pennyfeather, as a sudden blaze of fire shot up from one of the Bunsen burners nearby. Claire barely glimpsed it before scooping up the rol ing stake and her book bag, and lunging for the dark doorway of the portal. Concentrate! she begged herself, shaking allover with adrenaline. She had seconds, at most, before Pennyfeather reached her no matter what kind of distractions Frank might be trying; he didn't have any actual, physical force to wield on her behalf, even if he was inclined. She needed out of here, fast.
She couldn't mentally reconstruct the Day House bathroom under this kind of pressure, or anywhere else that Myrnin had established one of his teleportation thresholds. The only one that leaped clearly and instantly to her mind was home-the living room of the Glass House, with its comfy couch and armchair and barely control ed chaos....
It formed in front of her as she plunged forward, trusting somehow, desperately, that she could make it happen.
Pennyfeather lunged forward and caught her foot just as she pushed through the plastic-wrap pressure of the doorway, and she was stuck, mostly out but with her left leg held in a grip so iron-strong, she knew he'd drag her back through.
Or worse. If she was stuck in the portal when it closed, she'd be cut apart.
"Help!" Claire shrieked.
Michael, Eve, and Shane were allin the living room. Michael and Shane dropped the game control ers they'd been holding and twisted around on the sofa to look blankly at her, as Eve-already facing her-clapped hands to her mouth in shock.
"Help me! Pul me out!"
Al three of them broke out of their momentary freeze at the same time. Michael scrambled over the back of the sofa and got to her first, grabbing her arm just as Pennyfeather yanked backward, and although Michael held on, they both slid toward the portal.
Claire couldn't get her breath. "He's got me; he's got me; I can't-!" she shrieked as Pennyfeather yanked hard on her leg, and she felt the strain in her muscles. He was still playing with her. She'd seen an angry vampire rip limbs off a person, and it was frighteningly possible just now.
Shane took hold of Claire and wrapped his arms around her in a grip so tight it felt as if she'd be crushed. "Go, Mike. I'll hold her here! Get the bastard off her!"
"It's the lab!" Claire blurted, "He's in the lab!"
She wasn't sure Michael could make it through at all-there wasn't much room-but she twisted over to the side in hopes of making more space. At least Michael knew what he was doing. He paused for a moment, fixing the lab's location in his mind, then nodded at her and plunged through in a rush.
Claire felt the disturbance of the thin membrane still holding her leg at the knee like a strange tidal wave, and Pennyfeather's grip tightened. He started to yank her steadily backward, and allof Shane's strength wasn't enough to keep them from sliding forward. If anything, Pennyfeather just seemed to be more intent on taking her with him, not less.
