Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Claire selling out Myrnin, of all people. Oliver maybe; we both had enough cause to do that. But without any kind of warning, without so much as a hesitation, she’d given him up, knowing that Anderson was going to shoot.

I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same, but I never claimed to like the guy so much. We had a cheerful sort of loathing going on; he’d save my life out of sheer duty, and I’d do the same for him, but neither of us would shed any tears over a tragic accident.

But Claire … I knew she had this thing with Myrnin. Not love, maybe; not in the sense of the romantic kind of love, anyway. But whatever her feelings were, they ran deep, and so did her loyalty. For her to stick it to him like that … it shook me. It made me wonder in that instant, if I really knew her at all.

I’d been thinking we could still salvage all this – let Myrnin take Anderson, grab Oliver, get the hell out before Dr Davis’s armed cavalry returned. But Claire … Claire changed all that. Claire gave up – she gave up on the whole idea of winning. And I never saw it coming.

From the frozen shock on Myrnin’s face when she’d pointed him out, it wasn’t what he’d expected from her, either.

I didn’t love the guy, but I winced and looked away when Anderson kept shooting him. No visible wounds, no bleeding, but the agony was obvious. She was hurting him, and from the cruel, wet light in her eyes, she liked hurting him a whole hell of a lot. I wondered what kind of crush she’d harboured on Myrnin all these years, only to see Claire take her place in the lab, and maybe in the vampire’s affection.

I tried to step in, but Anderson swung around on me, ready to fire, and I was forced to come to a halt with my hands up. ‘Yeah, right, okay,’ I said, and I kept my voice quiet and calm. ‘Lady, he’s down already, he’s down. You can quit now. He’s no threat to you.’

Dr Anderson stopped firing, then, and she got a look on her face like she was sickened by what she’d done – but only for a second. And then it was gone, replaced by that righteous glow I remembered so well in my father. He was all about the cause, and he’d sacrificed everything and everybody for it. Including me, of course.

I wondered what, and who, she’d sacrificed along the way, if this was her cause now. The crazy thing was that Myrnin had still trusted her – had trusted her the same way he did Claire. He’d never suspected that she’d turned on him.