by Rachel Caine
“As long as I don’t smell like dinner,” I muttered, and unwrapped another length of silver. Michael was taking an awfully long second to get back here with the tools. I had to ask myself what was going to happen when I stripped the last of the silver away and Jeremy decided that I had a fabulous aroma of roast beef, blood rare. Okay, I didn’t really have to ask. Nothing good.
Jeremy suddenly moved, and his cold hands folded over mine, waking an instant, instinctive shriek that I just barely managed to check to a weak little chirp … but it wasn’t an attack. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the iron bars, and said, “They’re coming in. You need to hide now.”
Crap. I yanked back and stumbled backwards, pulling the last of the silver free on that one bar; it snapped into a tight coil like the world’s most expensive Slinky as I looked around for someplace to go. The only obvious place was under the bleachers, and it was a tight squeeze to get by, but better hurt than death was my motto. I jammed myself through the narrow opening and crouched down in the darkness beneath. Michael, I was thinking, where are you? Because this didn’t bode well, not at all.
I heard the voices first. The words were muffled, but the music was clear — they were upset about the missing knob on the door. I heard metal scrape as they pushed their way inside, and moved around a little to find a good vantage point to peer through the slats between the bleacher seats.
Mr. Batty was one of the men, which somehow failed to surprise me; he was still carrying around the baseball bat, swinging it like a nightstick. Next to him was a sleek, thin man in a black turtleneck sweater and dark pants; he had a GQ look going on, and under other circumstances I might have thought he was eye-worthy, but not now. Not when I saw him rattle Jeremy’s cage, testing the lock, and say, “You’ve had visitors, haven’t you, Jeremy?”
Jeremy didn’t say anything, just stared at Mr. Slick with cold, dead eyes. Mr. Slick didn’t seem nearly as bothered as he should have been, and he shrugged and turned to Batty. “Harry, make a thorough sweep. I want everybody on their feet and checking every corner. If they see anybody who doesn’t belong, I want any intruder’s body dumped right here, dead or alive, clear?”
“Clear, boss,” Harry said. He sounded happy with the assignment, and strolled off swinging his big stick. As he left, another guy came in … and man, he was massive. This was undoubtedly the carnival’s strongman-slash-big-guy … he was seven feet at least, and broad as a truck. Wearing a wifebeater tee assured that everyone could see the steroid-thick bulge of his muscles. He had a shaved head, lots of tats that seemed to feature overly endowed women, and nasty little beady eyes. Not too smart, but plenty mean, and from the state of the t-shirt, personal hygiene wasn’t high on his list.
I reached into the pocket of my cargo pants and pulled out my cell phone — sensibly on silent — and frantically texted Michael’s. WHR R U? TRBL!! I shielded the screen with one hand, in case someone noticed the unearthly glow coming from under the bleachers, but nobody was looking my way except Jeremy.
Skinhead walked up to the bars and slammed a giant forearm into them. Jeremy didn’t flinch, and he didn’t back up, which made Skinhead laugh. He had a voice that didn’t match his exterior at all — high as mine, sounded like. “Your pet rat looks hungry, boss,” he said. “Got anybody to feed it?”
“Later,” the boss-man said. “Right now, we’ve got a bigger problem, because Jeremy here has had some friends drop by, haven’t you, Jeremy?”
Jeremy stood there staring at him for a long, silent few seconds, and then he smiled, and swear to God, I felt ice forming along my spine in sharp little stabby crystals. That was not a vampire’s smile, as awful as those could be … it was something else completely, something I didn’t get at all.
And then Jeremy said, “She’s under the bleachers,” and I couldn’t hold back a gasp. I backed away, but that wasn’t going to help … not like there were any secret exits back here, and Skinhead was grinning and heading my direction. God, why had he done that? Did that idiot not understand that we’d come to help him?
No, of course he did, I realized … but he just didn’t give a damn. He was on fire, and he liked to see everything else burn.
I texted Michael again with a lightning-quick 911!!!!!, which might not matter since he hadn’t responded yet to my first text for help anyway. Something was wrong, and not just with Jeremy … this whole thing felt utterly bad. Drastically wrong.
I had the gun, and it felt heavy in my head. Shane hadn’t just given the thing to me, he’d forced me go to the range with him many times, practice target shooting, practice loading and unloading it in the dark; he’d even tested me (with an empty gun) in an deserted house where he’d popped out of a closet at me to see what I’d do.
I’d screamed and shot him six times, theoretically, in the face. He’d approved.
All well and good, but now I was facing firing that gun into actual flesh and bone. Into Mr. Skinhead, who looked like he could chew small-caliber bullets and spit armor-piercing ones back; this was not his first pistol rodeo, for sure. One good thing: he wasn’t going to fit through that narrow opening I’d wedged myself into … but he was more than capable of pulling the entire bleachers out, which he began doing, with harsh metallic shrieks of protesting, creaking metal. He paused and shined a flashlight into the gaps, playing it around until it spilled over my pale face.
He grinned, or at least I thought he did, behind the glare of the light in my eyes. “Hello, girl,” he said. “Let me help you get out of there. Lots of scary things under there, you know. Black Widows and Brown Recluse spiders, snakes, scorpions …”
I hadn’t even thought about it, but now it sounded sickeningly likely … the very poisonous spiders he was talking about like the shadows, the scorpions were badass and went anywhere they wanted, and the snakes would crawl in here to cool off. Damn. Now I didn’t even want to back up. Vampires, I can deal with. Creepy crawlies in the dark, not so much. “Back off, gorgeous,” I said, and tried to make myself sound tough and mean. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
He giggled, high as a little girl. “Do your best with that little gun,” he said. “I’ve been shot before, it don’t scare me.” For proof, he yanked aside the neck of his wifebeater tee, and I saw star-shaped scars in his skin right below the collarbone. Wow. He wasn’t kidding. I had the weapon in my hand, but my hand was shaking, and I knew I’d miss if I fired. Better to wait and make it count …
He pulled the bleachers out at an angle with a final yank, leaving a narrow space against the wall that he could squeeze through – but didn’t. He bent and looked through it at me. No smile now, nothing but serious menace. “You put that popgun away and come on out of there,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you unless you do something stupid, like pull the trigger. Got me?”
Shane had told me before, a gun is not a magic shield, it’s not a bulletproof vest, and it’s not a defense. It’s an offensive weapon, but I’d never really appreciated how true that was before. If you’re going on offense with someone like Mr. Skinhead, you’d better put him down hard, and I was shaking too badly. He was careful not to give me too good a target, either.
Hell.
I took a deep breath, holstered the gun in my pants, and held up my hands. Probably useless effort, but I tried to look harmless now as I walked toward him. He grunted in satisfaction and squeezed himself under the bleachers a little more, ready to grab me as I got close. In the process, he pretty much immobilized himself.
And that was what I’d been hoping he’d do. As he wedged himself in solidly, I pulled the silver-edged knife from the sheath on my wrist, under my shirt, and leaped forward to slam him against the hollow wall of the metal room. He hit with a resonating thud, and I got my forearm against his Adam’s apple with my knife resting just off to the side, over his fast-beating veins. “Hey,” I said. “I put the gun away, just like you said.”
He laughed, a thin and kind of crazy sound. Up close, he smelled sour a
nd damp, as if he’d worn the same clothes for weeks without so much as going out in the rain. Ugh. “I’ll break your arm, little girl. For starters. I’ll bet I can get real creative with you …”
I let the knife slip a little and gave him another scar. “Whoops,” I said. “Sorry about that.” I kept the knife steady on his throat as he froze, and pulled out the gun with my left hand. “I’m not a great shot with this hand,” I said, “but you know what? Good enough to hit the broad side of a piece of barn like you.” I shoved the muzzle against his chest. “Back up.”
He did, moving slowly, and his massive muscle-bound arms raised as far as they could. I’d impressed him, at least this far. He might not take a .38 seriously, but he knew I couldn’t miss if I fired it into his heart from that distance. He could have grabbed my arm and broken it in two shakes, but that left the knife at his throat.
So we did the dance, moving backwards, until we were out of the bleachers … and that was when Michael said, from behind Mr. Big, “Need any help?”
I grinned tightly. “Well, I think I’ve got this, but sure. I wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
Michael grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck and swung him around like a bag of cotton balls, slammed him face-first into the cage bars with stunning force, and Mr. Big dropped to the dirt floor limp as overcooked pasta. (I know about overcooked pasta. I am so not a cook.)
That left Mr. Slick, but he wasn’t just standing around, as it happened.
He’d unlocked Jeremy’s cage, and stepped back to pull the silver bars in front of him as protection from attack. I decided, from the way he moved, that he was the local lion tamer. Or, more likely, lion-abusing a-hole. “This is your chance,” he said to Jeremy. “Kill them and go.”
Jeremy looked at him through the bars, close range, and said, “What if I want to start with you first?”
You’d think Mr. Slick would be freaking scared, but this was – unfathomably, to me – a guy who’d managed to capture a sociopathic machine like Jeremy and keep him under control for what looked like quite a while. He didn’t seem scared, or even ruffled. “You won’t,” he said. “You can keep the girl, I know you like to play with them first.”
“Hey!” I said, and pointed the gun at Slick. “Standing right here!”
Jeremy hadn’t moved his gaze away from his – I guess? – jailor, but somehow, in less time than it took for me to register the blur, he was moving toward me. I didn’t have time to get the gun or knife up in my own defense, he was just that fast.
And then, he was past me.
Jeremy came to a sudden stop next to the unconscious bruiser Michael had left lying on the floor, picked him up like a rag doll, and – before even my vampire husband could stop him – had his fangs buried in the man’s neck.
Michael tried. He grabbed Jeremy by the shoulder and yanked hard, trying to separate victim from predator, but it was useless; the kid’s wiry strength wasn’t going to give, and anyway, it was over fast.
When Jeremy dropped the corpse formerly known to me as Mr. Batty, it was paper-white and drained of every drop of blood.
Mr. Slick didn’t move for a second, clearly stunned, and then as Jeremy licked his lips clean of the thin smear of red that remained, he dashed around the cage door, threw himself inside, and slammed it behind him. Then he cowered in the center of the cage, eyes as big as headlights and just about as shiny. He’d thought he’d broken this lion he’d caged, but he’d just discovered that was completely wrong.
Michael was looking spooked, too, but he spoke gently. “Hey, man, Amelie sent us. She wants you to come with us, back to Morganville.”
“Morganville,” Jeremy repeated, without so much as a flicker of emotion. He’d just killed somebody, and he didn’t seem to have really cared at all, beyond looking a little less pallid. “Never been there.”
“You’ll be safe there. No one will hurt you.” Michael was being unaccountably gentle; maybe he hadn’t seen the flat, shark-worthy shine of the boy’s eyes as he drank up Mr. Batty. “Trust me, man. Please. We need to leave here.”
“You forgot something,” Jeremy said, and pointed one long, skinny, dirty finger at Mr. Slick cowering inside the cage. “He just heard where we’re going. Can’t be safe if he knows. Got to get rid of him.”
“No, we don’t,” Michael said. He moved to the bars and crouched down, and when he spoke next, I heard that scary vampire tone in his voice. He didn’t use it often, but when he busted it out, he had real power. “Look at me.”
He waited, and after a long few breaths, Mr. Slick uncovered his face and met Michael’s eyes. I couldn’t see them, but I knew how they would look – glowing, red, terrifying if you weren’t drowning in that pool of crimson and unable to feel anything at all.
Michael had one of the most powerful forget-about-me abilities Amelie had ever seen, apparently, and he proved it now, because he said, in low, measured tones, “Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage. Say it back to me.”
“Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage,” the man repeated in a dull, calm voice.
“And you’re feeling very bad about that.”
“I’m feeling very bad about that.” I watched Mr. Slick’s eyes suddenly fill up with wet, hot tears that spilled over and down his cheeks in messy trails. “Oh God …”
“You feel so bad that you’re never going to run this kind of show, ever again. Not with anyone who doesn’t sign up and get paid. And there are no things such as vampires. No real ones.”
“No real ones,” he echoed. His voice was shaking now, and so were his shoulders. Wow. Michael had really rocked his world, and not in a good way. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry …”
“How many others knew about Jeremy?”
Mr. Slick named them, but it was a small, tight circle of insiders – himself, Mr. Dead Batty, and one other woman named Isis, who was asleep in her trailer near the Ferris wheel.
“Do you have a key to this cage?” Michael finally asked. When the man nodded, he said, “Throw it out to me.”
Mr. Slick tossed it, and Michael effortlessly shagged it out of the air. He dropped it on Mr. Batty’s body and frowned down at Jeremy’s handiwork. “We need to make it look less – vampire,” he said.
I slowly held up the gun and the knife. “Man, I’m going to regret this,” I said, “but I think I’ve got that covered.”
Best to skip what came next, except to say that I made Mr. Batty’s body look like he’d been attacked with a knife to the neck, then shot. A decent coroner – like the ones on TV, say – would have figured out the wounds were post-mortem, but it was doubtful that this little burg would have anything like a coroner, much less a good one. If the carnies actually reported the death, which I thought was doubtful.
It’d pass. I felt faint, after, and Michael grabbed me when I staggered while trying to get up. He put his arms around me and held me tight for a few long seconds, and then whispered, “Eve – “
“I’m okay,” I said, and swallowed the nausea that threatened to bubble up. “Just another frakking day in Morganville.”
“You watch way too much TV.”
“Yeah, probs. So? What about this Isis lady?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Michael said, and loosed his hold just enough to put some air between us, but he didn’t let me go. I loved him for that, for knowing just what I needed, and when. “I love you.”
I managed a grin. “Back atcha, stud. You only love me for my body mutilation skills.”
His smile disappeared, and there was no trace of vampire in his blue eyes, none at all. He looked just like the boy I’d fallen so hard for in high school. An avenging angel, this one. And not a fallen one at all. “No,” he said. “I love you for you. Always.”
I kissed him, which was probably weird, given the circumstances, but I needed to feel his arms around me again, and the solid, safe weight of his body, and the cool, sweet taste of his lips. I needed to know it was okay.
He said,
without words, that it was.
Then he stepped back, looked at Jeremy, and said, “I’m here to help you, but I swear to God, if you lay a finger on her, I’ll rip you apart. Are we clear?”
Jeremy shrugged, which I guessed was his version of a yes, and Michael glanced back at me. The silent exchange went something like this: You okay? Yeah. Love you. Love you too. Etc. Oh, and somewhere in that glance, he also warned me to keep the knife and gun handy, which I wasn’t about to give up anyway.
“We should go,” Jeremy said, as Michael blurred off through the open doorway. “Don’t want my boss man here to remember anything.”
He was right, but I felt bad leaving – Michael hadn’t said to stay put, but I was uncomfortable with the idea he might not be able to immediately locate me if I got into trouble. Because Jeremy was trouble. He gave off a kind of dark smoke around him – something shadowy in my peripheral vision, as if he clouded himself with it. I had to concentrate and watch him straight on to feel he was there at all. Useful skill, probably, but really scary when I felt like the warm-blooded prey to his cold-blooded, hungry predator.
He kept his word, though. He didn’t touch me, and he walked about three paces ahead, knowing I didn’t want him at my back. Once we were out of the room, though, I stopped, because I’d totally forgotten that this was a dark ride … that I’d only found this room in the first place because of Michael’s dark-adapted eyes.
I couldn’t see a damn thing.
I heard Jeremy’s faint, whispery chuckle from a few feet away, and I saw a flash of something that might have been his eyes. Creepy.
“No flashlight?” he asked. “Should be one on the dead guy.”
I went back for it, and didn’t look at Mr. Batty’s face while I pilfered it out of its holster. It was a heavy Maglite, which was good – one more weapon, though I had to put away the gun to hang on to it. The knife was of more use against Jeremy, anyway.
The Maglite had a brilliant beam, and it revealed all the monsters in their tacky glory – Dracula, in his threadbare cloak and dusty coffin; the Wolfman, whose fake fur was molting away; a large spider overhead made of Styrofoam and cloth and real spiderwebs, recently woven by some very ambitious arachnid. The place was filthy, and full of rats and cockroaches, and I was real glad of my stomping boots, again.
