by Rachel Caine
I didn’t bother to answer. I wasn’t letting Shane, or anyone, do this. If Roy had come after Eve, he’d come after me, and I couldn’t let him see it any other way. Maybe it was loyalty; maybe it was possessiveness. I don’t know; Eve wasn’t there to set me straight on the difference. But I knew that it was my job, not Shane’s, to make Roy regret it.
Maybe that was part of being married. Or maybe it was just me, discovering for the first time that I really, truly wanted Eve to look up to me and believe that I could—and would—protect her. She’d probably laugh and call me a Neanderthal, but secretly, deep down, she’d be pleased.
I got out of the hearse and walked over toward the other cars. The teens fell silent, watching me. Nobody ran, nobody reacted overtly, but they were all ready; I could see it in the tension of their bodies. Even the stoners put down their drugs of choice to pay attention.
I knew how it was. I’d rarely been one to come hang out here, but I was a Morganville kid. We’d all been taught to watch vampires with complete attention when one was in the area.
“You,” I said, and nodded at Roy. He stayed where he was, one arm draped over his girlfriend’s shoulders. “Just you. Everybody else gets a free pass tonight.”
“Hey, look; it’s the big man off campus,” he said. “I’m busy. Screw you.”
I felt a growl building inside me, the beast clawing on its chain. Eve’s smile flashed in front of my mind’s eye, and I wanted so badly to wipe the grin off his face. “Careful,” I said softly. Just that. His girlfriend must have sensed the menace coming off me, because she straightened up and cast Roy a worried look; the others were slipping quietly off the hoods of their own vehicles, stowing their drinks and smokes. No loyalty here. Nobody was willing to stand up for Roy, not even the girl he still held clamped under his arm as if he intended to use her as a human shield.
I waited until the other vehicles started their engines and began heading for less hostile places to get high. Once they were all gone, the Morganville night was cold, silent, and very, very heavy around us.
“Why Eve?” I asked him. I was aware of Shane standing somewhere behind me, ready and most likely armed; I didn’t need him. Not for this. “Why did you go after my wife?” Wife still sounded strange in my mouth; she’d been girlfriend or friend for so many years. But it was a heavy word, an important one, and he must have heard it, because his grin got tighter and more predatory.
“’Cause it’s evil,” he said. “Anybody stupid enough to marry a vampire deserves to die before she contaminates other people.”
“She wasn’t hurting you.”
“Man, it makes me want to vomit just looking at her, knowing you had your hands all over her. She’s better off dead.” That grin—I kept staring at it, wanting to rip it off his face. “Is she? Dead?”
“No,” I said.
“Too bad. Maybe next time. ’Cause you know there’s gonna be a next time, fanger. You can’t get us all.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I can damn sure get you.”
I moved, and he caught it and moved at the same time, shoving his girlfriend into my path. She screamed and rolled off the hood, tripping me, but I landed easily on the other side of her and grabbed Roy by the arm as he tried to jump behind the wheel. His shirt tore as he jerked free, and he backed up, still grinning, but it was more like a snarl now.
He had a spray can in his hand. I didn’t need to ask to know it was silver. The downside of all the weapons that Shane and Eve had developed to help us survive was that now all of the humans of Morganville had the recipes; he’d made his own anti-vamp pepper spray, and if he nailed me with it, it wouldn’t just hurt; it might blind me for days. It would certainly put me down hard enough that he could stake me with silver without breaking a sweat.
Except that I heard Shane, still standing behind me, pump a shotgun. Roy’s eyes slid past me to focus on him, and his snarl faltered.
“Looks like somebody brought a can to a gunfight,” Shane said. “Just to be clear, if you tag my friend, I get to spray you right back. Seems fair.”
“You won’t shoot me,” Roy said. “I’m like you. I’m resistance.”
“Then the resistance is scraping the bottom of the DNA barrel,” Shane said. “And you’re going after my friends. That trumps anything else.” I wouldn’t have doubted him, in that moment. Eve was like his adopted sister, and I knew how Shane felt about her.
So did Roy. He stepped back, eyes darting side to side. He finally dropped the spray can and held up his hands. “Okay. Okay, fine, you got me. What you gonna do now, vamp? Kill me?”
“I could,” I said.
“He’s got a card that says he can, and everything,” Shane said. “But he’s not going to.” I sent him a look. Shane shrugged. “You’re not, man. I know you. Anyway, it ain’t the Roys of this thing you have to worry about. You need to talk to the head man.”
“Captain Obvious,” I said. Roy’s face drained of color. “You’re going to tell me where to find him.”
“No way.”
His girlfriend was getting to her feet behind me. I didn’t even look at her, but I grabbed her and pulled her closer, my arm around her neck to hold her still as she struggled. “We’ll start with her,” I said. “And if she’s not important to you, then I’m pretty sure saving your own neck will do the trick. You kicked my wife when she was down, Roy. You’re not that brave.”
“Michael,” Shane said, very quietly.
“Shut up,” I said, and let my fangs come down. “Captain Obvious. Now.”
It took only about a minute for him to give it up, but for me to feel I was done with him, it took four more.
“You have something to say?” I asked Shane. I was in the front now, since it was no longer daylight. He cut his gaze toward me for a second, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head. “Too little or too much?”
“I’m not you, Michael. I don’t know. It’s really too bad about the car, though. That was a really nice car.”
“If it were Claire—”
“It nearly was Claire.” He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d want to kill the little bastard. Hell, I still want to.”
“I could,” I said. “And nobody would say a thing about it. Do you know how scary that is?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I think it was damn nice of you to just break his arm. But the next vampire, they’d kill somebody for staring at them too long, spilling their coffee, whatever. That’s why it can’t be like this, with every vampire getting some kind of free pass to murder. For every Michael, there are three Jasons. Get me?”
I nodded. I understood that better than he did, probably; I’d been around more vampires over the past year or two than he ever had. “We have to fix things,” I said. “You’re right about that. First Captain Obvious, and then—”
“Then Oliver,” Shane said. “Because that crusty old bastard is getting his way, and if he does for much longer, we’re not going to have a town left. The only way we’re going to survive here is if we make everybody show respect.”
The drive—like every drive inside the city limits—was short, and when we pulled to a halt in front of a plain, everyday house—it was a little weather-beaten, a little run-down—Shane and I sat for a moment, assessing it. “What do you think?” I asked him. He shrugged.
“Looks okay,” he said. “But if Roy wasn’t shining us on, and it is Captain Obvious’s place, he’s going to be prepared for the vampire apocalypse in there. You walk in there all fangs and red eyes, and you’re done.”
“You want me to let you go in by yourself.”
“Seems safer,” Shane said. “After all, I’m the poster child for anti-vamp, right? He’s going to hear me out.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But the point isn’t to talk, Shane. It’s to kick ass and make sure he never comes after Eve again. Or you. Or Claire. If he wants to nail a target on me, fine, I’ve earned it along with the thirst for blood. But there’s a lin
e, and he’s crossed it.”
“I know,” Shane said. “Believe me, I know.”
“No, you don’t. You haven’t seen Eve yet.”
Shane considered that, then nodded, opened his door, and got out. He left the shotgun behind, on the rack behind the seat. “You hear me yell, get in there,” he said. “Otherwise, wait here. Promise me.”
I didn’t, and he didn’t insist on it; after a second’s hesitation, he shook his head and walked up the cracked steps to the front door. He tried the bell, then knocked, and after a few long moments, the curtains in the front window twitched, and the door swung open.
I sat very still, watching. Listening. And, I realized, I wasn’t the only one. There was another vampire in the shadows, almost invisible except for a quick shimmer of red eyes. Vampires had no scent, unless they’d recently fed, and out here in the yard, with all the smells of grass, manure, dirt, wood, metal, there was no chance to detect one that way at all. I wondered who it was. No point in a confrontation, anyway; I needed to focus, in case Shane ended up needing me.
The vampire disappeared just seconds after I noticed his presence.
Shane didn’t yell for help. He opened the front door and gestured; I got out and walked up toward him.
“Take it slow,” he advised me. “Think of it as visiting the Founder’s office. He’s just about as ready to kill you if you put a foot wrong.”
I’d defied the hell out of Amelie already, I thought, but Shane didn’t necessarily need to know that. I walked up to the door and…stopped, because the house had a barrier. Most Morganville houses didn’t, unless they were really old or Founder Houses, but this one was different.
And it was strong.
“Come in,” Shane said, but that didn’t change anything. I was a vampire, and I wasn’t getting inside until the house resident altered the rules.
Enrique Ramos appeared in the hall behind my friend, and stared at me for a moment before he said, “Yeah, come on in.”
I passed a pile of black clothing, a mask, a leather jacket, and paused to look at them. There was also a motorcycle helmet. “Yours?”
“Sure,” he said, and threw me a cold smile. “Everybody saw me in them at the rally.”
“Then you’re not Captain Obvious,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Too obvious.”
And I was right; he was probably one of three or four decoys out there, playing the captain, leading the vampires around on goose chases. This was his house, and a good place to hold a neutral headquarters, since it had been in his family a long time; his mother had moved to a new place and left it to her son, and he’d made it a kind of secured, fortified meeting place.
The war council of Captain Obvious was in session at the dinner table in the kitchen, and as Enrique and Shane walked me in, I realized just how much trouble we were in. There were several of Morganville’s most prominent businessmen at the table, including the owner of the bank, but that wasn’t the issue.
There was a vampire sitting at the Captain Obvious table. Naomi. A blood sister to Amelie, she was a pretty, delicate-seeming vampire who looked all of twenty, if that; she had a gentle manner and sweet smile, and it concealed depths that I hadn’t understood for a long time. She wasn’t just ambitious; she was calculating, backstabbing, and determined to win.
“I thought you were dead,” I told her. I’d been informed she’d been killed by the draug, in the final battle; there’d been a whisper that it wasn’t the draug who’d done it, but Amelie, by proxy, getting rid of a credible rival for leader of Morganville.
Naomi lifted her shoulders in a very French sort of shrug. “I have been before,” she said in that lovely, silvery voice, and laughed a little. “As you know, Michael, I am hard to keep that way.” She sent me a smile that invited me to share the joke, but I didn’t smile back. For all her graces and kind manners, there was an ice-cold core to her that most didn’t ever see. “Sit and be welcome.”
“You’re not Captain Obvious,” I said, and stared at each of the human men at the table in turn. Then I turned to the woman seated across from her. “You are.”
Hannah Moses nodded. Her scarred face was still and quiet, her dark eyes watchful. “I knew you’d be impossible to fool about this. Sit down, Michael.”
I didn’t want to sit down at the Captain Obvious table. I was still angry, yeah, but I was also more than a little bit shocked, and betrayed. Hannah had been a friend. An ally. She’d protected all of us, at one time or another; she was a solid, real person, with a solid set of values.
That made it so, so much worse.
But anyway, I sat, because the alternative was to go full throttle, and I wasn’t quite there. Not yet. Shane kept standing, leaning against the wall, arms folded. He was watching Enrique, who was doing the same thing; bodyguards, I guessed, facing off in silence and ready for the other to make a move. There was muttering among the business leaders, and at least one of them got up to leave the room in protest.
“Sit down, Mr. Farmer,” I said without looking at him. “We’re going to have a conversation about your son and where he gets his funny ideas.”
Roy Farmer’s dad got an odd look on his face and sank back in his seat. “Is my son alive?”
“Yep,” Shane said, with false cheer. I wouldn’t have been quite so quick to reassure him. “Hope you don’t mind the fix-up on his car. Oh, and his arm.”
“You bloodsucking parasite son of a—”
I moved, then, slamming my palm on the table hard enough to leave a crack in the wood. “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “Shut up and take it as a gift.”
He did, looking white around the mouth. Then I looked at Hannah. “You put us in the crosshairs. You put Eve in the crosshairs,” I said to Hannah. “Why would you do that?”
“Why did you have to put her in the middle?” she asked me, in a frighteningly reasonable tone. “You know that the vampires won’t let her stay there for long; they’ll have her killed before they let humans gain power in this town through her status as a legal consort. You knew that when you married her. By putting pressure on her from the human side, we were hoping we could save her life and make her leave you. Get you to understand how dangerous this is for her, and for you. We don’t hate you, Michael. But you’re in the way.”
“Wait,” Shane said, turning his head toward her. “You had Roy Farmer beat her up to help? That’s what you’re telling us?”
“It’s hardly our fault. Roy was never supposed to do more than frighten her,” Naomi said, with that charming little way she had. “I assure you, he was never supposed to harm her badly. He was only to make it clear that she would not be accepted as Michael’s wife. As the vampires have also made it clear. I have heard that Oliver sent Pennyfeather to make that same point.”
“Eve’s not a pawn you can move around the board,” I said, spearing Naomi with a glare, then Hannah, then the others. “And neither am I.”
“But that is exactly what you are, Michael. You, Shane, Claire, Eve—all of you. You are played for one side or the other at every turn, and you fail to see it.” Naomi shook her head in what I was sure was fake sadness, but it was very convincing. “Mistakes have been made, but no one intended permanent harm to your lover. You may take my word for it.”
“My wife,” I said, pointedly. “Call her that.”
Naomi inclined her head. “D’accord.”
I looked at Hannah. She hadn’t said much so far, and left Naomi to try to make the justifications. She watched me, and Shane, with calm and careful attention, hands loose and relaxed on the table in front of her.
But she was afraid. I could feel that, hear it in the rapid beat of her heart. All of the humans were afraid. They ought to be, I thought. They were allied now with a traitorous vampire, and they’d just made an enemy of someone who by all rights should have been their friend and supporter.
“You should never have touched Eve,” I told Hannah.
“I’m sorry for w
hat happened,” she said. “But, Michael, you all made your choices, and your choices have consequences. If you want Eve to be safe, you should allow her to come back to her own side. With us.”
“Why do there have to be sides? We’re people, Hannah.”
She shook her head. “You were people. You like to think you still are, but you’re a killer at heart. And there are always sides. If you can’t give her up just because you love her, then you’re selfish, and you’re the one putting her more at risk every day—from your own kind.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” It burst out of me in anger, and all of a sudden I was on my feet, eyes blazing, rage bringing out my fangs and my fury. “She’s my wife! This isn’t you, Hannah. It’s not like you at all, bringing innocent people into this, getting them hurt, maybe killed!”
Hannah didn’t move, and she didn’t reach for a weapon. Enrique pushed off the wall, and so did Shane in a match move, but I was the only one showing any threat.
Hannah said, “Gentlemen—could you leave me, Naomi, and Michael alone, please?”
The Morganville businessmen all got up and left the room without argument. Enrique stuck around.
“I will if he will,” Enrique said, and nodded toward Shane, who nodded right back.
“Maybe you guys can go have a stare-off in the other room,” I said, and got a challenging frown from Shane. “If something was going to go sideways, it already would have happened. Right?”
“Probably,” Shane said. “But I don’t like this.”
“It’s better if we do this alone,” Hannah said. “You, me, and Naomi. There are things we need to keep private, even from our advisers.”
I studied them, then jerked my head at Shane. He made an after-you motion to Enrique, then followed the other man out of the room.
The door to the kitchen shut tightly behind them.
From the moment the door closed, Hannah said nothing. It was as if she’d just…powered off. It was Naomi who stood up and walked the perimeter of the kitchen, apparently fascinated by the countertops, the appliances, the drawer pulls.
“The solution to your problem is perfectly commonplace,” Naomi said finally. “Let Eve think you have ceased to care for her, and her safety will be assured. Your marriage is the problem, and it’s the marriage that must be ended. You may choose the timing of the legal actions, of course, but it’s imperative that you make her leave you now.”
