Lord of Misrule by Rachel Caine Read Free Book Online Page B

drag Myrnin’s staked body down the corridor. Behind them, the sounds of fighting continued—mainly bodies hitting the floor. No screaming, no shouting.
    Vampires fought in silence.
    “Right,” Hannah gasped. “We’re on our own.”
    That really wasn’t good news—two humans stuck God knew where, with a crazy vampire with a stake in his heart in the middle of a war zone.
    “Let’s get back to the door,” Claire said.
    “How are we going to get through it?”
    “I can do it.”
    Hannah threw her a look. “You?”
    It was no time to get annoyed; hadn’t she just been thinking that being underestimated was a gift? Yeah, not so much, sometimes. “Yes, really. I can do it. But we’d better hurry.” The odds weren’t in Amelie’s favor. She might be able to hang on and cover their retreat, but Claire didn’t think she could win.
    She and Hannah dragged Myrnin past the symbol-marked doorways. Hannah counted off, and nodded to the one where they’d entered.
    Not too surprisingly, it was marked with the Founder’s Symbol, the same one Claire wore on the bracelet on her wrist.
    Hannah tried to open it. “Dammit! Locked.”
    Not when Claire tried the knob. It opened at a twist, and the single candle in the corner illuminated very little. Claire caught her breath and rested her trembling muscles for a few seconds as Hannah checked the room and pronounced it safe before they entered.
    Claire let Myrnin slide in a heap to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “It was the only way. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.”
    She had no idea if he could hear her when he was like this. She wanted to grab the stake and pull it out, but she remembered that with Amelie, and with Sam, it had been the other vampires who’d done it. Maybe they knew things she didn’t. Besides, the disease weakened them—even Myrnin.
    She couldn’t take the risk. And besides, having him wake up wounded and crazy would be even worse, now that they didn’t have any vampires who could help control him.
    Hannah returned to her side. “So,” she said, as she checked the clip on her paintball gun, frowned, and exchanged it for a new one, “how do we do this? We got to go back to that museum first, right?”
    Did they? Claire wasn’t sure. She stepped up to the door, which currently featured nothing but darkness, and concentrated hard on Myrnin’s lab, with all its clutter and debris. Light swam, flickered, shivered, and snapped into focus.
    No problem at all.
    “Guess it’s only roundabout getting here,” Claire said. “Maybe that’s on purpose, to keep people out who shouldn’t be here. But it makes sense that once Amelie got here, she’d want to take the express out.” She turned back. “Shouldn’t we wait?”
    Hannah opened the door and looked out into the hall. Whatever she saw, it couldn’t have been good news. She shook her head. “We bug out, right now.”
    With a grunt of effort, Hannah braced Myrnin’s deadweight on one side and dragged him forward. Claire took his other arm.
    “Did he just twitch?” Hannah asked. “ ’Cause if he twitches, I’m going to shoot him.”
    “No! No, he didn’t; he’s fine,” Claire said, practically tripping over the words. “Ready? One, two . . .”
    And three , they were in Myrnin’s lab. Claire twisted out from under Myrnin’s cold body, slammed the door shut, and stared wildly at the broken lock. “I need to fix that,” she said. But what about Amelie? No, she’d know all the exits. She didn’t have to come here.
    “Girl, you need to get us the hell out of here, is what you need to do,” Hannah said. “You dial up the nearest Fort Knox or something on that thing. Damn, how’d you learn this, anyway?”
    “I had a good teacher.” Claire didn’t look at Myrnin. She couldn’t. For all intents and purposes, she’d just killed him, after all. “This way.”
    There were two ways out of Myrnin’s lab, besides the usually-secured dimensional doorway: