by Rachel Caine
Michael wasn’t a creature. Not just a creature, anyway; neither was what Dad had pulled out of Jerome’s grave, for that matter. Jerome wasn’t just a mindless killing machine. Mindless killing machines didn’t fill their spare time with the adventures of Dorothy and Toto. They didn’t even know they had spare time. I could see it in Jerome’s wide, yellowed eyes now. The pain. The terror. The anger.
“Do you want to be here?” I asked him, straight out.
For just that second, Jerome looked like a boy. A scared, angry, hurt little boy. “No,” he said. “Hurts.”
I wasn’t going to let this happen. Not to Michael, oh, hell no. And not even to Jerome.
“Don’t you go all soft on me, Shane. I’ve done what needed doing,” he said. “Same as always. You used to be weak. I thought you’d manned up.”
Once, that would have made me try to prove it by fighting something. Jerome, maybe. Or him.
I turned and looked at him and said, “I really would be weak if I fell for that tired bullshit, Dad.” I raised my hands, closed them into fists, and then opened them again and let them fall. “I don’t need to prove anything to you. Not anymore.”
I walked out the front door, out to the dust-filmed black car. I popped the trunk and took out a crowbar.
Dad watched me from the door, blocking my way back into the house. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Stopping you.”
He threw a punch as I walked up the steps toward him. This time, I saw it coming, saw it telegraphed clearly in his face before the impulse ever reached his fist.
I stepped out of the way, grabbed his arm, and shoved him face-first into the wall. “Don’t.” I held him there, pinned like a bug on a board, until I felt his muscles stop fighting me. The rest of him never would. “We’re done, Dad. Over. This is over. Don’t make me hurt you, because, God, I really want to.”
I should have known he wouldn’t just give up.
The second I let him go, he twisted, jammed an elbow into my abused stomach, and forced me backward. I knew his moves by now, and sidestepped an attempt to hook my feet out from under me.
“Jerome!” Dad yelled. “Stop my—”
The end of that sentence was going to be son, and I couldn’t let him put Jerome back in the game or this was over before it started.
So I punched my father full in the face. Hard. With all the rage and resentment that I’d stored up over the years, and all the anguish, and all the fear. The shock rattled every bone in my body, and my whole hand sent up a red flare of distress. My knuckles split open.
Dad hit the floor, eyes rolling back in his head. I stood there for a second, feeling oddly cold and empty, and saw his eyelids flutter.
He wouldn’t be out for long.
I moved quickly across the room, past Jerome, who was still frozen in place, and opened the door to the cell. “Michael?” I crouched down across from him, and my friend shook gold hair back from his white face and stared at me with eerie, hungry eyes.
I held up my wrist, showing him the bracelet. “Promise me, man. I get you out of here, no biting. I love you, but no.”
Michael laughed hoarsely. “Love you, too, bro. Get me the hell out of here.”
I set to work with the crowbar, pulling up floorboards and gouging the eyebolts out for each set of chains. I’d been right; my dad was too smart to make chains out of solid silver. Too soft, too easy to break. These were silver-plated—good enough to do the job on Michael, if not one of the older vamps.
I only had to pull up the first two; Michael’s vampire strength took care of yanking the others from the floor.
Michael’s eyes flared red when I leaned closer, trying to help him up, and before I knew what was happening, he’d wrapped a hand around my throat and slammed me down, on my back, on the floor. I felt the sting of sharp nails in my skin, and saw his eyes fixed on the cut on my head.
“No biting,” I said again, faintly. “Right?”
“Right,” Michael said, from somewhere out beyond Mars. His eyes were glowing like storm lanterns, and I could feel every muscle in his body trembling. “Better get that cut looked at. Looks bad.”
He let me up, and moved with about half his usual vampire speed to the door. Dad might not let Jerome have at me, but he wasn’t going to hold back with Michael, and Michael was—at best—half his normal strength right now. Not exactly a fair fight.
“Michael,” I said, and put my back against the wall next to him. “We go together, straight to the window. You get out—don’t wait for me. The sun should be down far enough that you can make it to the car.” I gathered up a handful of silver chain and wrapped it around my hand. “Don’t even think about arguing right now.”
He sent me an Are you kidding? look, and nodded.
We moved fast, and together. I got in Jerome’s way and delivered a punch straight from the shoulder right between his teeth, reinforced with silver-plated metal.
I intended only to knock him back, but Jerome howled and stumbled, hands up to ward me off. It was like years fell away, and all of a sudden we were back in junior high again—him the most popular bully in school, me finally getting enough size and muscle to stand up to him. Jerome had made that same girly gesture the first time I’d hit back.
It threw me off.
A crossbow bolt fired from the far corner of the living room hissed right over my head and slammed to a vibrating stop in the wooden wall. “Stop!” Dad ordered hoarsely. He was on his knees, but he was up and very, very angry. He was also reloading, and the next shot wouldn’t be a warning.
“Get out!” I screamed at Michael, and if he was thinking about staging a reenactment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he finally saw sense. He jumped through the nearest window in a hail of glass and hit the ground running. I’d been right: the sun was down, or close enough that it wouldn’t hurt him too badly.
He made it to the car, opened the driver’s side door, and slid inside. I heard the roar as the engine started. “Shane!” he yelled. “Come on!”
“In a second,” I yelled back. I stared at my father, and the moving tattoo. He had the crossbow aimed right at my chest. I twirled the crowbar in one hand, the silver chain in the other. “So,” I said, watching my father. “Your move, Dad. What now? You want me to do a cage match with Dead Jerome? Would that make you happy?”
My dad was staring not at me but at Dead Jerome, who was cowering in the corner. I’d hurt him, or the silver had; half his face was burned and rotting, and he was weeping in slow, retching sobs.
I knew the look Dad was giving him. I’d seen it on my father’s face more times than I could count. Disappointment.
“My son,” Dad said in disgust. “You ruin everything.”
“I guess Jerome’s more your son than I am,” I said. I walked toward the front door. I wasn’t going to give my father the satisfaction of making me run. I knew he had the crossbow in his hands, and I knew it was loaded.
I knew he was sighting on my back.
I heard the trigger release, and the ripped-silk hiss of wood traveling through air. I didn’t have time to be afraid, only—like my dad—bitterly disappointed.
The crossbow bolt didn’t hit me. Didn’t even miss me.
When I turned, at the door, I saw that he’d put the crossbow bolt, tipped with silver, through Jerome’s skull. Jerome slid silently down to the floor. Dead. Finally, mercifully dead.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fell facedown next to his hand.
“Son,” my dad said, and put the crossbow aside. “Please, don’t go. I need you. I really do.”
I shook my head.
“This thing—it’ll only last another few days,” he said. “The tattoo. It’s already fading. I don’t have time for this, Shane. It has to be now.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck.”
He sna
pped the crossbow up again.
I ducked to the right, into the parlor, jumped the wreckage of a couch, and landed on the cracked, curling floor of the old kitchen. It smelled foul and chemical in here, and I spotted a fish tank on the counter, filled with cloudy liquid. Next to it was a car battery.
DIY silver plating equipment, for the chains.
There was also a 1950s-era round-shouldered fridge, rattling and humming.
I opened it.
Dad had stored Michael’s blood in bottles, old dirty milk bottles likely scavenged from the trash heap in the corner. I grabbed all five bottles and threw them one at a time out the window, aiming for a big upthrusting rock next to a tree.
Smash. Smash. Smash. Smash . . .
“Stop,” Dad spat. In my peripheral vision I saw him standing there, aiming his reloaded crossbow at me. “I’ll kill you, Shane. I swear I will.”
“Yeah? Lucky you’ve already got me tattooed on your chest, then, with the rest of the dead family.” I pulled back for the throw.
“I could bring back your mother,” Dad blurted. “Maybe even your sister. Don’t.”
Oh, God. Sick black swam across my vision for a second.
“You throw that bottle,” he whispered, “and you’re killing their last chance to live.”
I remembered Jerome—his sagging muscles, his grainy skin, the panic and fear in his eyes.
Do you want to be here?
No. Hurts.
I threw the last bottle of Michael’s blood and watched it sail straight and true, to shatter in a red spray against the rock.
I thought he’d kill me. Maybe he thought he’d kill me, too. I waited, but he didn’t pull the trigger.
“I’m fighting for humanity,” he said. His last, best argument. It had always won me over before.
I turned and looked him full in the face. “I think you already lost yours.”
I walked out past him, and he didn’t stop me.
• • •
Michael drove like a maniac, raising contrails of caliche dust about a mile high as we sped back to the main highway. He kept asking me how I was doing. I didn’t answer him, just looked out at the gorgeous sunset, and the lonely, broken house fading in the distance.
We blasted past the Morganville city limits sign, and one of the ever-lurking police cars cut us off. Michael slowed, stopped, and turned off the engine. A rattle of desert wind shook the car.
“Shane.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“I know that.”
“I can’t just let this go. Did you see—”
“I saw,” I said. “I know.” But he’s still my father, some small, frightened kid inside me wailed. He’s all I have.
“Then what do you want me to say?” Michael’s eyes had faded back to blue now, but he was still white as a ghost, blue-white, scary-white. I’d spilled all his blood out there on the ground. The burns on his hands and wrists made my stomach clench.
“Tell them the truth,” I said. If the Morganville vampires got to my dad before he could get the hell out, he’d die horribly, and God knew, he probably deserved it. “But give him five minutes, Michael. Just five.”
Michael stared at me, and I couldn’t tell what was in his mind at all. I’d known him most of my life, but in that long moment, he was just as much of a stranger as my father had been.
A uniformed Morganville cop tapped on the driver’s side window. Michael rolled it down. The cop hadn’t been prepared to find a vampire driving, and I could see him amending the harsh words he’d been about to deliver.
“Going a little fast, sir,” he finally said. “Something wrong?”
Michael looked at the burns on his wrists, the bloodless slices on his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “I need an ambulance.”
And then he slumped forward, over the steering wheel. The cop let out a squawk of alarm and got on his radio. I reached out to ease Michael back. His eyes were shut, but as I stared at him, he murmured, “You wanted five minutes.”
“I wasn’t looking for a Best Supporting Actor award!” I muttered back.
Michael did his best impression of Vampire in a Coma for about five minutes, and then came to and assured the cop and arriving ambulance attendants he was okay.
Then he told them about my dad.
They found Jerome, still and evermore dead, with a silver-tipped arrow through his head. They found a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz next to him.
There was no sign of Frank Collins.
Later that night—around midnight—Michael and I sat outside on the steps of our house. I had a bottle of most illegal beer; he was guzzling his sixth bottle of blood, which I pretended not to notice. He had his arm around Eve, who had been pelting us both with questions all night in a nonstop machine-gun patter; she’d finally run down, and leaned against Michael with sleepy contentment.
Well, she hadn’t quite run down. “Hey,” she said, and looked up at Michael with big, dark-rimmed eyes. “Seriously. You can bring back dead guys with vampire juice? That is so wrong.”
Michael almost spat out the blood he was swallowing. “Vampire juice? Damn, Eve. Thanks for your concern.”
She lost her smile. “If I didn’t laugh, I’d scream.”
He hugged her. “I know. But it’s over.”
Next to me, Claire had been quiet all night. She wasn’t drinking—not that we’d have let her, at sixteen—and she wasn’t saying much, either. She also wasn’t looking at me. She was staring out at the Morganville night.
“He’s coming back,” she finally said. “Your dad’s not going to give it up, is he?”
I exchanged a look with Michael. “No,” I said. “Probably not. But it’ll be a while before he gets his act together again. He expected to have me to help him kick off his war, and like he said, his time was running out. He’ll need a brand-new plan.”
Claire sighed and linked her arm through mine. “He’ll find one.”
“He’ll have to do it without me.” I kissed the soft, warm top of her hair.
“I’m glad,” she said. “You deserve better.”
“News flash,” I said. “I’ve got better. Right here.”
Michael and I clinked glasses, and toasted our survival.
However long it lasted.
LUNCH DATE
I rarely wrote stories from Claire’s point of view, mainly because she’s the main character in the books, so it seemed redundant to have her take the lead in the shorts, too. But I did enjoy it from time to time, such as in this short story (free on the Web site) that just gives us a taste of the romance building between Claire and Shane. This is set in that late-romance period somewhere around Feast of Fools when things are hot . . . but not yet reaching the boil that they would in Carpe Corpus.
One of Shane’s many terrible jobs is featured, which is always fun for me. Poor Shane. Poor bosses.
Lunch was always an iffy proposition at the Glass House. Some days all of Claire’s housemates were 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 of him.
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 said, then 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.
Once she’d dumped the books on top of—well, all the other books she’d been meaning to find a shelf for, Claire grabbed the miniature baseball bat Shane had bought her—aluminum, but electroplated in silver. Good for vampire-whacking, should the need come up. It was surprisingly heavy.
The thump came again. Not, as she would have thought, from Amelie’s private room upstairs, or from the attic.
It was coming from Shane’s room.
Claire took a firm grip on the bat, and flung open the door. “Freeze!” she yelled. Stress made her voice sound too high, like the squeak of a little girl on helium. Embarrassing. And not intimidating.
There was a half-naked man standing in the middle of Shane’s room.
Oh.
Shane, in his underwear, tried to get into his jeans so fast he staggered and tipped over onto the bed. “Hey!” he protested. “What is it with girls busting in on me when I’m getting dressed? Out!”
Claire couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing. It was ridiculously funny, the way he was rolling around on the bed trying to wiggle into those jeans, and also—well, yeah. Hot.
She lowered the bat and turned her back. “Sorry. I heard noises. I thought—wait. Girls, plural? Somebody else busts in on you besides me?”
She heard the bed creak, clothes rustling, and he said, “Well, yeah. Eve kind of walked into the bathroom once while I was in the shower. Which is when I got rid of the clear shower curtain and got the dark one.”
“Eve’s seen you naked?”
“Um—behind a sheet of plastic with water all over it? There’s no safe answer to this, is there?”
Claire turned, unasked. He was just pulling on his old gray T-shirt. “Not really,” she said. “Anyway. Why are you changing clothes?”
Shane tried for an innocent look, which didn’t go well on his face. “Got bored?”
