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  Daylighters

  ( The Morganville Vampires - 15 )

  Rachel Caine

  While Morganville, Texas, is often a troubled town, Claire Danvers and her friends are looking forward to coming home. But the Morganville they return to isn’t the one they know; it’s become a different place—a deadly one…

  Something drastic has happened in Morganville while Claire and her friends were away. The town looks cleaner and happier than they’ve ever seen it before, but when their incoming group is arrested and separated—vampires from humans—they realize that the changes definitely aren’t for the better.

  It seems that an organization called the Daylight Foundation has offered the population of Morganville something they’ve never had: hope of a vampire-free future. And while it sounds like salvation—even for the vampires themselves—the truth is far more sinister and deadly.

  Now, Claire, Shane and Eve need to find a way to break their friends out of Daylighter custody, before the vampires of Morganville meet their untimely end…

  Daylighters

  The Morganville Vampires - 15

  by

  Rachel Caine

  This one’s for you, dear reader. You’ve been such enthusiastic residents of Morganville that I can’t imagine dedicating this book to anyone else.

  Thanks for taking this long, strange journey with me . . . and I hope you never want to leave our little town. Here, have a resident card. Lines for the blood bank form to the right. . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without Ter Matthies, this whole series would never have existed. Thank you, Ter. Love and respect, and I will always remember your light.

  Also: Heidi Berthiaume, Jemina Venter, Sarah Weiss, Janet Cadsawan, NiNi Burkart, Lucienne Diver, and Anne Sowards—all of whom deserve my utmost love and respect.

  INTRODUCTION

  Morganville, Texas, isn’t like any other dusty small town. It’s got secrets. It’s a company town . . . and the company is vampires. If you stay, you work for them, signing special agreements for Protection and paying a tax in earnings or blood for the privilege of not being, y’know, eaten.

  It’s worked for a couple of centuries under the iron-in-velvet touch of the Founder, Amelie . . . but the past few years have been turmoil, trouble, and rebellion. Claire Danvers left to get away from it all, embarking on a special study program at MIT. But even if you can take the girl out of Morganville, you can’t take Morganville out of the girl—and she ran headlong into a menacing new enemy who knew way too much about vampires. The Daylight Foundation.

  Now Claire’s returning home with her housemates (Eve, Michael, and Shane) and her allies (her bipolar mad scientist boss, Myrnin; Amelie’s ex-second-in-command, Oliver; Claire’s new vampire friend, Jesse) and Dr. Anderson, a captive scientist who was once a Morganville native, now turned traitor.

  But home sure isn’t the way they left it. . . .

  ONE

  Claire stared at the creaking billboard that marked the town limits of Morganville, Texas, and thought, I ought to be crying. Her best friend, Eve, already was, in helpless, furious sobs. Claire held on to her and did all the sympathetic things right—murmured that it would be okay, patted her on the back, hugged her.

  But although she said all the right things, she felt . . . empty. Dry as the sand that blew through the desert outside the police cruiser’s windows. They were sitting in the backseat, behind steel mesh, and the doors wouldn’t open from the inside. The cruiser was made like a taxi, but it most definitely wasn’t one since it took you only where you didn’t want to go. Namely, to jail.

  And across from where their cruiser was parked, four limp vampire bodies were being loaded into two of the town’s ambulances—strapped tightly to gurneys, in case the wood still buried in their hearts to keep them temporarily dead didn’t work. Claire identified the slack faces as they were rolled by: Oliver, once town Founder Amelie’s second-in-command, now disgraced and in exile. Jesse, the vamp who Claire knew the least well, a beautiful woman who looked ridiculously young and fragile now, robbed (temporarily, hopefully) of her vampire life. Then Myrnin, Claire’s bipolar vampire boss and friend, his dark hair an untamed mess around his still, white face.

  Finally, and most horribly, Michael Glass, Claire’s friend and the love of Eve’s life. His skin had turned the color of pure white marble, and his blue eyes were open and dull. He looked deadest of them all.

  “It’s fine,” Claire whispered, making sure to keep Eve’s face turned away as Michael’s body was rolled past. “Vampires can shake this off. It’s no problem for them as long as the arrows come out soon; they’re not leaving them in the sun or anything. Just breathe, okay? Breathe.” It wasn’t so much what she was saying as the fact that her voice was steady and calm, a lifeline in a tossing ocean of chaos.

  Eve took a deep breath, and her sobbing slowed and hitched to a stop. She sat back as the ambulance doors slammed shut and one after the other the big vehicles pulled away onto the two-lane blacktop heading toward downtown Morganville—if Morganville had anything that could be described as a downtown. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, smearing what little eye makeup she had left. The glitter of her ruby wedding ring caught the light, and for a moment Claire’s wall of numbness shuddered and threatened to collapse to reveal the pain and fear she’d hidden behind it. “Did you see Michael?” Eve asked. She caught her breath on another sob, and her reddened eyes held Claire’s. “Did he look okay?”

  Claire couldn’t say that, because the sight of his icy skin and blank eyes had thoroughly unnerved her. “He’ll be fine. You know he’s tougher than this,” she said. Which was a totally true thing, and beyond any argument.

  “I know—God, why did this happen? What do they want from us?”

  Eve said it as a rhetorical wail, but it was the question that churned in Claire’s mind over and over. Why? They’d been heading back to Morganville to warn Amelie about several things, not the least of which was the deadly growth of an anti-vampire organization called the Daylight Foundation—and the fact that one of Amelie’s most trusted agents, Dr. Irene Anderson (once of Morganville), had joined the other side.

  But they’d been met by the local police instead of Amelie’s people, and things had gone downhill from there. The cops had first separated out the humans—Claire, Eve, and Claire’s boyfriend, Shane, plus the prisoner, Dr. Anderson. Then, without any warning, they’d taken down their vampire friends, who had just been wheeled into the ambulances and driven off to fates unknown.

  Claire twisted in the seat to look into the car behind them. The cops hadn’t had an easy time getting Shane into the other cruiser; they’d ended up handcuffing him and threatening a Tasering. He sat stiffly in the backseat, staring holes into the distance as if it were in for a beating. Next to him, Dr. Anderson slumped against the window as though she didn’t care whose prisoner she was anymore.

  Claire knew why they’d separated her from Shane, and she knew that Eve needed her right now, but she wanted desperately to be with him and to ask all the questions burning in her mind. Why would Hannah Moses do this? After all, Police Chief Moses was their ally, their good and trusted friend. But she’d shown no hesitation, no remorse. The only way to interpret what had just happened was that Hannah had freely and willingly joined the Daylight Foundation.

  Nothing was making any sense, and Claire needed it to make sense so badly. Humans have taken control of Morganville, Hannah had told her, as their friends—their mutual friends—lay still on the ground. Vampires are being quarantined for their own protection.

  It couldn’t be true. It just . . . couldn’t. And yet it so obviously was.

  “Where are they taking him?” Eve was staring after the flashi
ng lights of the departing ambulances. “She said something about quarantine. What does that mean? Do you think they’re taking them to the hospital? Do they think they have some kind of disease?”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. She felt helpless, and she knew if she let herself feel anything, she’d be just as angry as Shane looked sitting in that other cruiser. He seemed ready to chew through the steel mesh. But if she got angry, she would also have to let in everything else, all the other emotions that bubbled and threatened inside her. And if she did that, she would collapse, like Eve was doing.

  Better not to feel anything right now. Better to stay strong.

  The driver’s-side door opened, and Hannah Moses got behind the wheel of the police car. She settled in and buckled her safety belt in one smooth motion. A deputy got in on the other side—new, Claire thought. Someone she didn’t know.

  But she did recognize the pin he wore on the collar of his uniform—a rising sun, in gold.

  Symbol of the Daylight Foundation.

  Eve lunged forward and grabbed the mesh, threading her fingertips into it as Hannah started the engine of the cruiser. “What the hell are you doing, Hannah?” she demanded, and rattled the mesh, hard. “Where are you taking Michael?”

  “He’s safe,” Hannah said. “Nothing will happen to him. Trust me, Eve.”

  “Yeah, you know what? Bite me. I don’t trust you. You just stabbed us all in the back, you horrible bi—”

  Claire grabbed Eve and dragged her away, changing the word to a protesting yelp. “Stop,” she whispered fiercely in her best friend’s ear. “You’re not going to accomplish anything by making her angry at us. Just wait. Be quiet and wait.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Eve hissed. “Shane’s coming with us at least. Michael—we don’t even know where they’re taking him!”

  She had a point. Claire really hated to admit it, but there was absolutely nothing they could accomplish locked in a police cruiser. And antagonizing the lady who held the keys to their handcuffs probably wasn’t the best strategy.

  “We’re not giving up,” she told Eve. “We’re just . . . biding our time.”

  “And what do you think they’re going to do to him while we’re biding, exactly?” Eve asked, yanking at the mesh again. “Yo, Hannah! How does it feel to stab your friends in the back? Hope you didn’t get blood all over your neatly pressed uniform!”

  The deputy turned around and gave her a cold, hard stare. “Sit quietly,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll shock you until you do.”

  “With what, your breath? Ever heard of flossing, Deputy Dimwit?”

  “Eve,” Hannah said. It was a warning, a flat and naked one, and it was reinforced by the deputy—whose breath, in all fairness, did kind of reek—taking out a Taser.

  Although Eve was still simmering with rage, she let go and sat back, folding her arms over her chest. Then she kicked his seat. Didn’t do any good, because the seat was reinforced with a steel plate, but she probably felt better for doing it.

  “Hey,” Claire said, and reached her hand out toward Eve. Eve hesitated, then took it and gripped hard. “It’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.”

  Eve didn’t say anything. She was probably thinking, You don’t know that, and she would have been right. Claire didn’t know that. She felt cold and helpless and vulnerable, and she didn’t know how any of this could really be okay . . . but for now, in the moments between opportunities, all she could do was pretend.

  * * *

  She expected they’d be taken straight to the jail, or at least to the courthouse, but instead the two police cruisers turned off and headed for the outskirts of Morganville. Claire recognized the area, and she didn’t like it at all. Nothing good happened out here on the fringes of town; it was full of abandoned buildings and abandoned people.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning forward but careful not to touch the mesh. “Excuse me, but where exactly are you taking us?”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not in any danger,” Hannah said. “I have someone who wants to meet you. We’re almost there.”

  When Claire had left Morganville, a lot of rebuilding had been under way around town, but not in this area. Nobody had thought it much worth saving, she suspected. It had been home mostly to tumbledown old shacks, rotting warehouses, and long-dead factories.

  Now gangs of men moved with purpose, most in orange vests, and bulldozers noisily leveled uneven ground and piled up the shattered remains of brick, wood, and rusted steel. Other teams were putting up the frames of buildings in areas that had already been cleared. Beyond, it was obvious that a lot more construction was under way, some of it already painted and finished. She could imagine what Shane was muttering in the other car: Great, I leave town and suddenly there are good jobs. He liked construction, and there was a lot of men and women out there, dressed in work shirts and jeans, hammering, hauling, bulldozing, and creating.

  It was a whole new Morganville. It looked . . . cheerful. Hopeful.

  “What brought this on?” Claire asked. “All these new houses?”

  “They’re for the new members,” Hannah said. Her voice was calm and level, and it didn’t give away anything at all. Her deputy, the one wearing the Daylight Foundation’s rising sun pin on his collar, glanced back at Claire. “By joining the Daylight Foundation, they can receive free new housing if they want it. It’s attracted a lot of enthusiasm and support. Half of these people working out here are volunteers.” She slowed the cruiser and made a left turn. “There’s something to be said for leaving the past behind and building a new future, don’t you think? Especially in a town whose history is as dark as Morganville’s.”

  Claire didn’t want to agree, because she still felt there was a lot she didn’t know and didn’t fully understand, but what Hannah had just said made sense—or it would, if she trusted the Daylight Foundation even a little bit.

  Speaking of the Daylighters . . . they’d renovated one of the old warehouses and built themselves a brand-new headquarters.

  It was a large building just ahead, fresh and gleaming with paint and shining metal, with a big rotating sign on top of the roof. It shone soft gold in the sunlight as it turned—the same symbol that was on the Daylight Foundation pin the deputy wore. A simple image, something that should have looked hopeful. Sunrise, a new day, all that.

  Claire didn’t believe it. What she did believe was that the building, for all the cheerful way it had been painted, looked like it would be easy to defend if it came to a fight. The windows were all high, narrow, and didn’t look like they opened at all. Thick walls, too. In fact, if you ignored everything but the construction, it could just as easily have been a prison.

  Hannah pulled up in the generous parking lot—a newly paved one, still fresh and black, with bright white stripes marking off spaces. There were about fifty cars already present, but they filled less than a third of the available slots. You could put half the cars in Morganville in here, Claire thought, and have room left over for massive bus parking. Two police cruisers were already in place, plus Hannah’s and the one pulling up in the next slot that carried Shane and Dr. Anderson. She thought she might have recognized a few other vehicles, but nothing jumped out at her with any certainty.

  There were, she realized, no vampire-dark-tinted cars in the lot at all. Not a single one.

  Hannah turned the engine off, but neither she nor the deputy got out immediately; instead, Hannah twisted to look at Claire and Eve through the mesh. “Here’s how this is going to go,” she said. “You’re going to behave yourselves, get out, and walk with us into the building, and you’re going to act like civilized young ladies while we introduce you to the man in charge.”

  “Or what? You’ll put a note in my permanent record?” Eve scoffed.

  “Or you’ll end up handcuffed, maybe Tasered, and the end result will be exactly the same, only with a lot less smiling,” Hannah said. “So I’d really rather skip all the unpleasantness and make this as painless as possible
for you.”

  “Oh, sure, you’re only thinking about us,” Claire said. “I understand completely.”

  Hannah gave her a long, troubled look, as if she understood that Claire’s apparent surrender was more worrisome than Eve’s open aggression. “I’m trying to help you kids,” she said. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  “I’m not a kid, and you ambushed my husband,” Eve said. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there are plenty of things you’re going to regret. Probably very briefly, though, if that makes you feel better.”

  Hannah exchanged a shrug with her deputy. “Well,” she said, “I tried. If you want to make it difficult for yourselves, that’s certainly your right, I suppose.”

  The two of them got out, and Hannah opened Claire’s door, grabbed her by the arm, and shoved her against the cruiser with firm strength.

  Then she zip-tied her hands behind her. “Sorry,” she said. “But I can read the tea leaves. The two of you aren’t going to go quietly.”

  Shane was making trouble, too, trouble enough that Claire heard the deputy in charge of him at the other car cursing as he tried to manhandle her boyfriend into submission. Hannah let out an impatient, frustrated growl and spun Claire around to face her. “Calm him down,” she said. “Do it now.”

  Claire lifted her chin. “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t, he’s going to get hurt.”

  Claire looked past her. Shane must have thrown an elbow before they’d gotten him under control, because the deputy had a bloody nose. Now Shane was dodging and kicking, trying to get past the man’s defenses again. Probably just to get to her, because there was no way he’d be getting out of the handcuffs he was wearing.

  “Shane,” she said. “Don’t.”

  Hannah, moving slowly and calmly, unsnapped the strap on her holster and drew her gun, which she held at her side. She stared straight at Shane. “She’s right,” she said. “Don’t make me raise this weapon, Shane.”