Caine, Rachel-Short Stories

by Rachel Caine

  Pennywell looked him over carefully, head to toe.

  “I’m not bending any of your precious rules,” he said. “I won’t bite the child. I won’t even swive her.”

  Leaving aside what that meant (although I had a nasty suspicion), he wasn’t exempting me from the whole biting thing. Or, come to think of it, from the other thing, either. His eyes had taken on a really unpleasant red cast-worse than Michael’s ever got. It was like looking into the surface of the sun.

  Miranda’s hand tightened on mine. “You really need to go,” she whispered.

  “No kidding.”

  “Back this way.”

  Miranda pulled me to the side of the room. There, behind a blind corner, was the open window through which I’d originally heard the boys partying.

  Pennywell knew his chance was slipping away. He sidestepped and lunged, and Michael twisted and caught him in midair. They’d already turned over twice, ripping at each other, before they hit the ground and rolled. I looked back, breathless, terrified for Michael. He was young, and Pennywell was playing for keeps.

  On our way to the window, Miranda ducked and picked up something in the shadows. My cell phone. I grabbed it and flipped it open, speed-dialing Shane’s number.

  “Yo,” he said. I could hear the jocks pounding on the car. “I hope you’re insured.”

  “Now would be a good time for rescue,” I said, and yanked open the window.

  “Well, I can either ask real nice if they’ll move the cars, or jump the curb. Which do you want?”

  “You’re kidding. I’ve got about ten seconds to live.”

  He stopped playing. “Which way?”

  “South side of the building. There’s three of us. Shane-”

  “Coming,” Shane said, and hung up. I heard the sudden roar of an engine out in the parking lot, and the surprised drunken yells of the jocks as they tumbled off the hood of my car.

  I began to shimmy out the window, but an iron grip closed around my left ankle, holding me in place. I looked back to see Mr. Ransom, eyes shining silver.

  “I was trying to bring you help,” he said. “Did I do wrong?”

  “You know, now’s not really the time-” He didn’t take the hint. Of course. I heard the approaching growl of the car engine. Shane was driving over the grass, tires shredding it on the way. I could hear other engines starting up-the football jocks. I wondered if they had any clue that half their team was doing broken-field running against a vampire right now. I hoped they had a good second string ready to play the next game.

  Mr. Ransom wanted an answer. I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down.

  “Asking Pennywell probably wasn’t your best idea ever,” I said. “But hey, good effort, okay? Now let go so I’m not the main course!”

  “If you’d accepted my offer of Protection, you wouldn’t have to worry,” he pointed out, and turned his gaze on poor Miranda. Before he could blurt out his sales pitch to her-and quite possibly succeed-I backed out of the window, hustled her up, and neatly guided her out just as my big, black sedan slid to a stop three feet away. The back door popped open, and Claire, fairy wings all a-flutter, pulled Miranda inside. It was like a military operation, only with one hundred percent less camouflage.

  Mr. Ransom looked wounded at my initiative, but he shrugged and let me go.

  “Michael!” I yelled. He was down, blood on his face. Pennywell had the upper hand, and as Mr. Ransom turned away, he lunged for me.

  Michael grabbed the vampire’s knees and held on like a bulldog as Pennywell tried to get to me.

  “Stake me!” I yelled to Shane, who rolled down the window and tossed me an iron spike.

  A silver-coated iron railroad spike, that is. Shane had electroplated it himself, using a fishtank, a car battery, and some chemicals. As weapons went, it was heavy duty and multi-purpose. As Mr. Pennywell ripped himself loose from Michael’s grasp, he turned right into me. I smacked him upside the head with the blunt end of the silver spike.

  Where the silver touched, he burned. Pennywell howled, rolled, and scrambled away from me as I reversed my hold on the spike so the sharper end faced him. I released the catch on my whip with my left hand and unrolled it with a snap of my wrist.

  “Wanna try again?” I asked, and gave him a full-toothed smile. “Nobody touches up my boyfriend, you jerk. Or tries to bite me.”

  He did one of those scary open-mouthed snarls, the kind that made him look all teeth and eyes. But I’d seen that movie. I glared right back.

  “Michael?” I asked. He rolled to his feet, wiping blood from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Like me, he didn’t take his eyes off Pennywell. “All in one piece?”

  “Sure,” he said, and cast a very quick glance at me. “Damn, Eve. Hot.”

  “What? The whip?”

  “You.”

  I felt a bubble of joy burst inside.

  “Out the window, you silver-tongued devil,” I told Michael. “Shane’s wasting gas.” He was. He was revving the engine, apparently trying to bring a sense of drama to the occasion.

  Michael didn’t you first me, mainly because I had a big silver stake and I obviously wasn’t afraid to use it. He slipped past me, only getting a little handsy, and was out the window and dropping lightly on the grass in about two seconds flat.

  Leaving me facing Pennywell. All of a sudden, the stake didn’t seem all that intimidating.

  Mr. Ransom wandered in between the two of us, as if he’d just forgotten we were there. “Leave,” he told me. “Hurry.”

  I quickly tossed my whip through the window, grabbed the frame with my free hand, and swung out into the cool night air. Michael grabbed me by the waist and set me down, light as a feather, safe in the circle of his arms. I squeaked and made sure to keep the silver stake far away from him. It had hurt Pennywell, and it’d hurt Michael a whole lot worse.

  “I’ll take it,” Shane said. He shoved the spike back under the driver’s seat.

  “Well? Are you two just going to make out or what?”

  Not that we weren’t tempted, but Michael hustled me into the car, slammed the door, and Shane hit the gas. We fishtailed in the grass for a few seconds, spinning tires, and then he got traction and the big car zoomed forward in a long arc around the field house, heading back toward the parking lot. Oncoming jocks dodged out of the way.

  Pennywell showed up in our headlights about five seconds later, and he didn’t move.

  “Don’t stop!” Michael said, and Shane threw him a harassed look in the rearview.

  “Yeah, not my first night in Morganville,” he said.

  “No shit.” He pressed the accelerator instead. Pennywell dodged aside at the last minute, a matador with a bull, and when I looked back he was standing in the parking lot, watching us leave. I didn’t blink, and I watched until he turned his back on us and went after someone else.

  I didn’t want to watch, after that.

  We’d only gone about halfway home when Michael said, raggedly, “Stop the car.”

  “Not happening,” Shane said. We were still in a not-great part of town, all too frequently used by unsavory characters, including vamps.

  Michael just opened the door and threatened to bail. That made Shane hit the brakes, and the car shuddered and skidded to a stop under a streetlight. Michael stumbled away and put his hands flat on the brick of a boarded-up building. I could see him shuddering.

  “Michael, get in the car!” I called. “Come on, it’s not far! You can make it!”

  “Can’t.” He stepped back, and I realized his eyes were that same scary hell-red as Pennywell’s. “Too hungry. I’m running out of time.” And so were we, because Pennywell could easily catch up to us, if he knew we’d stopped.

  “We really don’t have time for this,” Shane said. “Michael, I’ll drop you at the blood bank. Get in.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll walk.”

  Oh, the hell he would. Not like this. I got out of the car and stepped
up to him.

  “Can you stop?” I asked him. He blinked. “If I tell you to stop, will you stop?”

  “Eve-”

  “Don’t even start with all the angst. You need it; I have it. I just need to know you can stop.”

  His fangs came out, flipping down like a snake’s, and for a second, I was sure this was a really, really bad idea. Then he said, “Yes. I can stop.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I-” He didn’t seem to know what to say. I was afraid he’d think of something, something good, and I’d chicken right out.

  “Just do it,” I whispered. “Before I change my mind, okay?”

  Shane was saying something, and it sounded like he wasn’t a fan of my solution, but we were all out of time, and anyway it was too late. Michael took my wrist, and with one slice of his fangs, opened the vein. It didn’t hurt, well not much, but it felt very weird at first. Then his lips closed softly over my skin, and I got the shivers all over, and it didn’t feel weird at all. Not even the buzzing in my ears, or the waves of dizziness.

  “Stop,” I said, after I’d counted to twenty. And he did. Instantly. Without any question.

  Michael covered the wound with his thumb and pressed. His eyes faded back to blue, normal and real and human. He licked his lips, making sure every spot of blood was gone, and then said, “It’ll stop bleeding in about a minute.” Then, in a totally different tone, “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Why?” I felt a little weak at the knees, and I wasn’t at all sure it was due to a sudden drop in blood pressure. “Why wouldn’t I? With you?”

  He put his arms around me and kissed me. That was a whole different kind of hunger, one I understood way better. Michael backed me up against the car and kissed me like it was the last night on earth, like the sun and stars would burn down before he’d let me go.

  The only thing that slowed us down was Shane saying, very clearly, “I am driving off and leaving you here, I swear to God. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Michael pulled back just enough that our lips were touching, but not pressed together, and sighed. There was so much in that sound, all his longing and his fear and his need and his frustration.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  I smiled. “For what?”

  He was still holding his thumb over the wound on my wrist.

  “This,” he said, and pressed just a little harder before letting go. It didn’t bleed.

  I purred lightly, and nipped at his mouth. “I’m Catwoman,” I reminded him. “And it’s just a scratch.”

  Michael opened the car door for me, and handed me in like a lady.

  Like his lady.

  He got in, shut the door, and slapped the back of Shane’s seat. “Home, driver.”

  Shane sent him a one-fingered salute. Next to him, Claire gave me a completely nonethereal grin and snuggled in close to him as he drove.

  Miranda said, dreamily, “One of us is going to be a vampire.”

  “One of us already is,” I pointed out. Michael put his arm around me.

  “Oh,” she said, and sighed. “Right.”

  Except that Miranda never got a thing like that wrong.

  “Hey,” Michael said, and squeezed my shoulders lightly. “Tomorrow’s tomorrow. Okay?”

  I agreed.

  “And tonight’s tonight.” I put Miranda and her wild prophesies out of mind. “And that’s good enough for me.”

  Amelie's Story

  An original Morganville Vampires short story by Rachel Caine

  Outside, nightfall had truly come, and it was a glorious darkness.

  Amelie stood, one hand holding back the heavy velvet of the draperies, and watched the streetlights of her town blink on, one after another. A faint circle of safety for the humans to cling to, an important illusion without which they could not long survive. She had learned a great deal about living with humans, over the past few hundred years.

  More than about living with her own kind, she supposed.

  "Yes?" She had heard the tiny whisper of movement behind her, and knew one of her servants had appeared in the doorway. They never spoke unless spoken to. A benefit to having servants so long-lived; one could reasonably expect them to understand manners. Not like the children of today, sparking as bright as fireflies, and gone as quickly. No manners. No sense of place and time.

  "Oliver," the servant said. It was Vallery; she knew all their voices, of course. "He's at the gates. He requests a conversation."

  Did he. How interesting. She'd thought he'd slink off into the dark and lick his wounds for a year or two, until he was ready to play games with her again. He'd come very near to succeeding this time, thanks to her own carelessness. She could ill afford another occurrence.

  "Show him in," she said. It was not the safest course, but she found herself growing tired of the safe road. There were so rarely any surprises, or strangers to meet.

  Like the surprise of the children living in her house on Lot Street. The angelic blond boy, with his passion and bitterness, woven into the fabric of the house and trapped there. Or the strange girl, with her odd makeup and odder clothing. Or the other boy, the strong one, quick and intelligent and wishing not to seem so.

  And the youngest, oh, the youngest girl, with her diamond-sharp mind. Fierce and small and courageous, although she would not know the depths of it for years yet.

  Interesting, all of them, and that was a rarity in Amelie's long, long eternity. She had been kind to them, out of not better reason than that. She could afford to be kind, so long as it risked her nothing in return.

  Oliver deliberately made noise as he approached her study, a gesture of politeness she appreciated. Amelie turned from the window and sat down in the velvet-covered chair beside it, arranging her skirts with effortless grace and folding her hands in her lap. Oliver looked less harassed than he had; he'd taken time to bathe, change, compose himself. He'd tied his gray curling hair back in the old style, a subtle sign to her that he was willing to accommodate her preferences, and he was perfectly correct in his manners as he bowed to her and waited for her to gesture him to take a seat.

  "I am grateful to you for the opportunity to speak," Oliver said as he settled himself in the chair. Vallery appeared in the doorway with a tray and two silver cups; she gave him a slight nod, and he delivered them refreshment. Oliver drank without taking his eyes from her. She sipped. "I thought we had an agreement, Amelie. Regarding the book."

  "We did," she said, and sipped again. Fresh, warm, red blood. Life itself, salty and thick in her mouth. She had long learned how to feast neatly on it. "I agreed not to interfere with your ... searches. But I never agreed to forego the opportunity to retrieve it myself, if the chance presented. As it did."

  "I was cheated."

  "Yes," she agreed softly, and smiled. "But not by me, Oliver. Not by me. And if you should consider taking your petty revenge on the children, please remember that they are in my house, under my sign of Protection. Don't make this cause for complaint."

  He nodded stiffly, eyes sparking anger. He put his cup back on Vallery's tray. It rang empty. "What do you know of the boy?"

  "Which boy?"

  "Not Glass. The other one. Shane Collins."

  She raised one hand in a tiny, weary gesture. "What is there to know? He is barely a child."

  "His mother was resistant to conditioning."

  Amelie searched her memory. Ah, yes. Collins. There had been an incident, unfortunate as such things were, and she had dispatched operatives to see to the end of it when the elder Collins had taken his wife and son and left Morganville. "She should be dead by now," she said.

  "She is. But her husband isn't." Oliver smiled slowly, and she did not care for the triumph in his expression. Not at all. "I have a report that he returned to town only an hour ago, and went straight to the house where his son is staying. Your house, Amelie. You are now sheltering a potential killer." She said nothing, did nothing. After a long moment, Oliver si
ghed. "You cannot pretend that this is not a problem."

  "I don't," she said. "But we shall see what develops. After all, this town is a sanctuary ."

  "And the children?" he asked. "Are you extending your Protection to them even if they come after vampires?"

  Amelie sipped the last of her blood, and smiled. "I might," she said.

  "Then you want a war."

  "No, Oliver, I want the right to make my own decisions in my own town." She stood, and Oliver stood too as if drawn on the same string. "You may go."

  She went back to the window, dismissing him from her thoughts. If he was inclined to dispute it, he thought better -- possibly because Vallery was not the only servant she had within a whisper's call -- and he withdrew from the field without surrender.

  Amelie folded her hands on the warm wood of the window ledge and stared at the faint glow of moonrise on the horizon.

  "Oh, children," she sighed. "What ever shall I do with you?"

  She was not in the habit of risking her life or position. Especially not for mere humans, whose lives blinked on and off as quickly as the streetlights below.

  If Oliver was right, she would have little choice.

  Lunch Date

  An original Morganville Vampires short story by Rachel Caine

  Lunch was always an iffy proposition at the Glass House. Some days all of Claire’s house mates were all in, most days nobody was; some days there was food in the fridge. Most days, not. Claire had made a fine art out of scrounging up crackers and cans of soup. Her favorite was cream of tomato. Yum.

  She was slurping up her soup, alone as usual, when she heard a thump from upstairs. Odd. She knew for a fact that Eve was at her job on campus, and Michael was off teaching guitar lessons. Shane — well, she never knew for sure where Shane would be, but she’d looked for him before making lunch, and there hadn’t been any sign.

  Not another visitor through the portal. Honestly, having one of those mystic doorways in the house was getting to be a royal pain. “Grand Central Station,” Claire sighed, and gulped down the rest of her lunch before dumping the bowl in the sink and heading upstairs. The house was a comfortable mess, but it was slowly creeping toward the oh my God who lives here? kind of mess, so she’d have to get on everybody’s case to do a little picking up. Just to show she wasn’t immune, she picked up a stack of books she’d left on the dining table and carried them upstairs with her.