Bitter Blood tmv-13

by Rachel Caine

  “It’s okay,” Miranda said to him. “It’ll take time to sink in. I know.”

  “Shut up!” he growled at her.

  “Hey!” Eve said, and took a step forward. “She’s a kid. Watch your mouth. Miranda, you don’t have to talk to them. If that’s going to be their attitude, they can shove that camera up their—”

  “Eve,” Michael said, and shook his head. “Not helpful.” He got behind Tyler and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m going to need that thing.”

  Tyler jerked forward, crowding protectively shoulder to shoulder with Angel. “Oh hell no, man. You’re not taking this away.”

  “You don’t think so?” Michael’s eyes had little random flickers of red showing. Claire waved at him behind their backs and pointed toward her own eyes, then at him. He caught the message, and she saw him calm down with an effort. “Look, whatever you think you saw, you just didn’t understand. There’s nothing supernatural going on here. It’s a trapdoor. She came from the next floor up.”

  Tyler and Angel both craned their necks to look up at the totally smooth ceiling…and Michael, vampire fast, snatched the camera away and backpedaled when Tyler came after him. “Don’t make me crush it,” he said. “It looks expensive.”

  “It is, man. Give it back!”

  “Sure. Hang on.” Michael looked it over, ignoring Tyler’s attempts to grab it away again, and found the memory chip, which he ejected. He held it up, and handed the camera back. “No problem.”

  “You can’t keep that!”

  “Not planning to,” Michael agreed. He snapped it in half, then tore the halves into smaller pieces. Then he put the pieces in his jeans pocket. “Done. Sorry, Mir, but you know they can’t walk out of here with that footage.”

  She nodded in agreement, but Claire sensed something was wrong, especially when Tyler exchanged a fast glance with Angel and Jenna. “You asshole,” Tyler muttered, but it sounded like something he felt he ought to say, not that he deeply felt. He backed off. “Maybe we should go, guys. Next thing, they’ll be breaking our necks. Angel’s right. This is some hell of a hoax.”

  Jenna looked at Miranda again. “You can talk to me,” she said gently. “You really can. I’m not afraid of you.”

  “No,” Miranda said. “I know. But I’m afraid of you. And what you can do. You made them hungry, and now they’re dangerous. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Maybe,” Jenna said. “My twin sister died, and she stayed with me for the longest time. Not real, like you are, but—there. But she changed. Turned evil. I had to…I had to get rid of her, send her away.”

  “You don’t understand,” Miranda said. “It wasn’t something else. It was you. You changed her. You made her see a way back, and that makes them—us…ghosts—desperate. Desperate enough to do anything. It’s you that’s making it happen.”

  “You’re not one of them, those lost people. You’re loved here. Loved. Protected. And that’s good; that’s really good. I just want to be sure you’re protected from the things your friends can’t see and fight.” Jenna took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I think that you and I together could—could fix whatever it was I did wrong. You could show me how.”

  “You need to leave,” Miranda said. “You need to go before it’s too late and everything goes completely wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to need the rest of the recordings,” Michael said to Tyler. “Sorry, man.”

  “We don’t have anything else,” Tyler said. “You just broke the crap out of our whole show.”

  Shane looked at Michael, eyebrows raised, and Michael shook his head. “Lying his ass off,” he said. Heartbeat, Claire thought. He could hear them. He might not be able to always tell when one individual was lying, but it was easier for him if there were three people all in on the same falsehood. More people meant more data, like a triangulation of the truth.

  And most likely, all three of the ghost hunters knew Tyler had backups.

  “I read people really well,” he said. It was an obvious lie, but he didn’t give Tyler time to argue. “All right, all three of you, out the door. If you want me to take your whole van apart next, I’ll be happy to do that, too.”

  “Or, you know, punch you,” Shane said cheerfully. “This is Texas. We have the right to do that when you break into our house.”

  He left it to Eve to say, “Or worse,” in a voice so low and dark, it qualified as Goth all by itself.

  Jenna shot to her feet. “Fine. If you want to doom this little girl to an eternity of pain and torment, you’re doing exactly the right things. You’re not prepared for what’s going to happen to her. I am!”

  Maybe that was kind of true; it was very hard to tell. But in any case, Claire was fed up with half-truths and aggression, especially when her head was pounding so very hard. “Just get out,” she said wearily. “She’s our responsibility. We’ll take care of her. If she’s right, you’ve done enough damage already around here.”

  That was when Jenna turned and focused on her, really focused, and Claire saw something familiar in her cool, pale eyes. It was the same distant look she’d seen so often in Miranda…here and not here at the same time. “You dreamed it,” she said. “It’s true. I see…water. A hole. A silver cross in a circle. Someone’s trying to reach you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, save the Vegas act, lady,” Shane said, and pushed her forward toward the door. Angel and Tyler were already making their way out ahead of her. “If we want professional help, we’ll call the Ghostbusters. At least they have matching uniforms. Ciao.”

  Miranda followed them, looking anxious. “Claire,” she said, and caught her arm. “Claire! It’s dark out there.”

  “It’s okay. They have a van,” she said. She wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward the After Death team just now. If Michael was right—and she honestly figured he was—then Jenna’s interest in stirring up the dead had brought back Shane’s sister, and that, that was unforgivable. “They’ll be fine. Don’t worry about them.”

  “The ghosts know what she is. They’ll follow her, eating little bits of her. She won’t feel it at first, but then she’ll get tired and sick, and they could kill her, Claire. Worse: they could get strong enough to do other things. Dangerous things. She’s really powerful.”

  “I think she’s full of it,” Claire said, but now that her anger was fading a bit, she ran what Jenna had said to her through her head. Water. Hole. Silver cross in a circle. That fit with her dream about the hole in the ground, and the water around her legs. Someone is trying to reach you. “I think she was just making it up, Mir. Listen, you stay here. We’re going to make sure they leave, okay?”

  Miranda shuddered. “I can’t go out there again.”

  Even so soon after sunset it was dark outside, darker than Claire had expected; the orange bands on the horizon were already fading, being painted over by shades of purple and blue. The biggest, bravest stars had already made appearances overhead, but there was no moon, not yet.

  The After Death van was parked on the street, two houses down; they’d probably had trouble finding the place. Claire remembered seeing them checking maps. They’d probably been looking for the Glass House already. Ugh. To think she’d thought Angel was kind of greasily charming in the beginning. Now, she never wanted to see him again.

  There was no sign of the mass of ghosts she’d seen before when they’d been in the house, which seemed weird; she could feel something out here, an uneasy sensation on the back of her neck, a phantom whisper on the wind. On instinct, Claire stepped back over the threshold into the house, and as she did, she saw the mists come into focus again. All the ghosts crowded now around Jenna as she headed for the van.

  Inside the house, the ghosts were visible. Out there, in the real world, there was nothing.

  Shane was already down the steps, and Claire hurried down to join him. “They’re leaving too easily,” he said. “Didn’t it seem to you like they just let that t
hing with the memory card go too fast?”

  “What choice did they have?” she asked. “Michael had it and broke it before they could do much.”

  “Yeah, but…” Shane shook his head. “I expected more drama out of them. They’re on TV. It’s kind of what they do for a living.”

  “The camera was off.”

  “For people like them, the camera’s never off….” His eyes suddenly widened, and he dashed forward to take the camera out of Tyler’s hands. Tyler resisted, yelling for help, and suddenly it was a tangle of guys—Angel, Tyler, Shane, and Michael, all wrestling for control of the thing. Not too surprisingly, given the players, Michael won and tossed it to Shane.

  “You wanted this?” he asked.

  “Hey, you can’t do that!” Tyler shouted. “That’s expensive pro equipment, man! I’ll sue your ass!”

  Shane jogged back up the steps and held it under the porch light. “Dammit,” he said. “Michael—you got the memory card, but this thing was broadcasting straight on broadband, too. The memory card was just backup. They’ve rigged it so it can record without the light coming on.”

  Michael rounded on Tyler, whose face had gone pale. “Where did it broadcast to?”

  “Dude, you’re wrong. Yeah, sure it’s got the capability, but I didn’t even switch it on—”

  “That’s a lie,” Michael said, and grabbed him by the collar. “Tell me another one; go ahead.”

  “Let him go.” Jenna’s voice was cool, calm, and focused, and they all looked at her. Michael let go of Tyler, because Jenna was holding a gun. It was something semiautomatic; Claire couldn’t tell the caliber, but it didn’t really matter. Michael wouldn’t be scared of it, but getting holes put in him and healing up would be just as damning, if not more so, than what they already had recorded on Miranda. So he held his hands up and stepped back.

  “That’s not going to look so good on camera,” Michael said. “Better rethink it.”

  “I’m just defending my friends from some scary people,” Jenna said, “and besides, by the magic of editing, they’ll never see I was armed, anyway. Now let’s all just calm down, okay? This doesn’t have to get any crazier.” She jerked her head at Tyler. “Get the camera and get your ass to the van. We have editing to do.”

  “We could stream it live,” Angel suggested.

  “Don’t be stupid, Angel; you don’t waste a revelation like this on a couple of thousand people who stumble over it on the Web. This is a major TV event, maybe even pay-per-view. We’re going to tease the hell out of it for weeks before we put a single frame of it out. Tyler!” She raised her voice to a whip crack, and the camera monkey scrambled up the steps and took the recorder out of Shane’s unresisting hands. “You don’t know what you’ve got here. Or what’s coming. You’re going to need us, trust me. Miranda needs us. This whole town is going to be famous.”

  She was probably going to say more, but she never got the chance, because a dark-clothed figure came out of the shadows behind the trees, and before Claire could draw a breath, the figure knocked Jenna out of the way, spinning her to the ground. The gun tumbled away, lost in the sparse, weedy grass.

  The intruder showed a flash of a pale face, red eyes, a young woman’s crimson smile, and in a heartbeat more, she had hold of her target.

  Not Jenna, after all.

  Angel. The vampire clapped a hand over his mouth when he tried to speak and said, “Hush, now, pretty. What will all the neighbors think if you make a fuss?”

  Tyler mumbled out a curse, and ran for the van. He made it as far as the fence before another vampire ghosted out in front of him.

  Jason.

  Eve’s brother looked just as demented as he had earlier, and Claire shuddered at the smile he turned first on Tyler, and then on his sister. “Hey, Eve. You don’t write, you don’t call…but at least you brought us dinner. That’s nice.”

  “No!” Eve dashed forward and put herself between Tyler and Jason. “No, Jase. What the hell are you doing? They’re not from here! You can’t just—”

  “I hate that word. Can’t. Fact is, I can, big sister. I can do anything I want. So can Marguerite, here. And Jerold, he’s back there somewhere…. Wave to my nice sister, Jerold.” Claire turned. There was a vampire crouched on the edge of the steep roof, staring down at them with a knowing smile. He waved. “See, we have privileges now. We get to hunt if we want. And we really do want. So if you don’t choose to be on the menu, turn your ass around and walk back in the house and shut the door. Hell, you were just arguing with these fools. Why do you care?”

  “I—” Eve didn’t really have a comeback for that. “It’s not about them. I don’t want to see you…be this. God, Jason. Is this how it’s going to be? You weren’t bad enough already?”

  “No,” he said, very rationally. “I’ve never been bad enough to keep the bad stuff from happening to me. Until now.” He waited. Eve didn’t move. “Okay then. I’m going to be kind this time. We can share just this one. You can keep the other ones.” He snapped his fingers, and Marguerite, the one who had Angel, nodded. She picked Angel up in her arms—quite a feat, because the man was bigger, taller, and panicked—and before any of them could draw breath, she just…disappeared.

  Michael started to run after her, but he came up short when Jerold dropped off the roof into his path. In one gloved hand, he held a glass bottle that swirled with silver. “We learned this from you,” Jerold said. “You started fighting your own kind, and we’re going to fight back. You like this stranger enough to burn for him, Michael?”

  “No!” Eve looked pleadingly at her brother—who, whether she liked it or not, clearly was in charge. “No, come on, please—Jason, don’t. Don’t hurt him.”

  “If he stays out of our way, he’ll be fine,” Jason said. “Ditto for you, and Claire, and Shane; I’ll leave you alone. But it’s a new day around here. Our day. And the sun’s never coming up to spoil it for us.”

  Somewhere out in the darkness, there was a pained cry. Angel. Claire tried desperately to think what to do, but there was nothing. They had weapons but Michael had just been outflanked; Shane just had stakes, and although Eve had a crossbow, she didn’t seem inclined to use it on her own brother.

  I need to do something, Claire thought. Anything. I need to save him.

  “Jason, if you let him go, I think we can make some kind of deal,” she said, talking as fast as she could. She didn’t even know what she was saying. “Look, I’ll even let you bite me—two pints for the guy you just took. Come on, it’s a good deal. I’ll get it witnessed at Common Grounds, we can put it in writing, and—”

  “Shut up,” Jason said, still smiling. “I don’t want a measly two pints, like I’m out for a beer with the guys. I want to hunt. Button it if you don’t want to play the rabbit, little girl.”

  She shut her eyes and tried to think what to do. There were three vampires, and even though she and her friends outnumbered them, it would be a tough fight, and probably one of them would be badly hurt, maybe killed. She’d never hated math so much in her life.

  Shane put his arm around her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “You can’t, Claire. You can’t save everybody.”

  And God, he was right; he was right and she hated that, too.

  “All right,” she said. “Eve—call the cops. Hurry.”

  Eve nodded and ran into the house. Jason laughed out loud.

  “Good call,” he said. “And nice counter, but the cops ain’t gonna catch us, and you know it. They know better than to try. Nice doing business with you folks.” He touched a finger to his forehead in ironic salute. “Catch you later.”

  “Wait!” Jenna blurted. “Wait, what about Angel, what—”

  “Pretty lady really doesn’t get it, does she?” Jason said. “Explain it to her. I’m starving.”

  And then he and Jerold were just…gone. Like smoke on the wind. And Angel had stopped crying out, though whether that was due to being gagged or being dead, Claire couldn’t tell and
didn’t want to imagine. Her whole body ached with strain, and she wanted to throw up. What did I just do? Nothing. She’d saved the life of one of her friends, probably. At the cost of Angel’s.

  When she tried to take a step, she staggered and almost went down. Shane caught her and held her up. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. The cops will be on the case.”

  Claire knew he didn’t believe that any more than she did. The cops wouldn’t be on the case; they wouldn’t dare, unless Amelie or Oliver directed them to stop the hunting. After all, Jason—like Michael—had privileges.

  And Angel had technically been fair game…unProtected, a stranger.

  It meant, though, that there’d be some necessary cover-up with Jenna and Tyler. Either their memories would be altered to explain away Angel’s disappearance or death, or they’d face the same fate. Ten minutes ago you were throwing them out of the house, she reminded herself. They were going to go public about Miranda. About Morganville.

  “Check the van,” she said to Shane. “See if Tyler was telling the truth. If they streamed that video to a server in their van…”

  “Got it,” he said, and jogged away to the vehicle. It was unlocked—trusting bunch—and he slid back the cargo door to climb inside.

  “Hey!” Tyler snapped out of his stunned trance, and color flooded his face. “Hey, get the hell out of there—there’s delicate equipment in there!” He charged for the van, but Michael caught up and stopped him with nothing but a look. That didn’t, however, stop Tyler from talking. “We have rights, you know. You touch anything in that van and I’ll sue your asses off!” It was obviously something he could seize on, something real and reassuring in a world that had drunkenly upended on him. He had to know Miranda was the real thing, but that was at least partly in his comfort zone, or he wouldn’t be doing the After Death show. But being stalked and preyed on by vampires—even if nobody had said they were vampires—was different. And there was a feverishly bright light in his eyes that reflected as much fear as it did anger.

  “Easy,” Michael said. “Wait.” He kept a hand outstretched, palm out, to ward Tyler off if he continued his rush forward, but Tyler just paced, staring past Michael at the van.