Midnight Bites

by Rachel Caine

  She knew what I was thinking. I saw it in the weird smile she flashed. “Because they owe me favors,” she said. “I’ve been making them money.”

  Oh God, I could see it now. Morganville had a small, but thriving, betting underworld. What better to put your money on in a Texas town than football? The jocks had used Miranda’s clairvoyant abilities to pick winners, they’d cleaned up, and now she was asking them to pay her price.

  A vampire? That was her price? Even for Mir, that was just plain weird.

  “Why Michael?” I asked, more slowly. Miranda frowned.

  “I didn’t ask for Michael,” she said. “He just came. But it doesn’t matter who it is. I just need to be turned.”

  I refused to repeat that because it would taste nasty in my mouth. “Mir. What are you talking about?”

  “I need to be a vampire,” she said, “and I want one of them to make it happen. Michael will do fine. I don’t care who turns me. The important thing is that if I change, I’ll be a princess.”

  I was wrong. She really was crazy.

  For about fifty years in Morganville, none of the vampires had been able to create new ones—except Amelie, who’d turned Michael to save his life. Now . . . well. Things had changed, humans had more rights, and the rules weren’t so clear anymore. Why did people want to be vampires? I didn’t see the appeal.

  Miranda obviously did. And she was going about it in a typically sideways Miranda-ish way. With my boyfriend.

  I wheeled on Michael. “Why didn’t you just say no?”

  He glanced over at the football guys. The defensive line was between us and the door, kicked back with a new case of beer but still looking like they’d love the chance to do a little vamp hand-to-hand.

  Idiots. He’d absolutely destroy them.

  “I was trying to,” he said. “She isn’t listening. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, and I couldn’t walk away and leave her like this. She needs to understand that what she’s asking . . . isn’t possible.”

  “I know what I’m asking,” Miranda said. “Everybody thinks I’m stupid because I’m just a kid, but I’m not. I need to be a vampire. Charles promised me I’d be one.” That last line came out like the petulant cry of a first grader who’d had her crayons taken away. I was willing to bet her vampire Protector (in name only—more like vampire Predator) had promised her a lot of things to get what he wanted. It made me feel even more sick.

  “Mir, you’re what, fifteen? There are rules about this kind of thing. Michael can’t do it, even if he wanted to. No vamps under the age of eighteen. Town rules. You know that.”

  Miranda’s chin set into a stubborn square. She would have done well in Claire’s fairy costume. Fairies, as Claire had explained to me in the car, weren’t kindly little sprites at all. Right now, Miranda looked like a fey come straight from the old scary stories.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Somebody’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure they do. My friends will make sure.”

  “Miranda, they can’t make me do anything,” Michael said, and it sounded like an old argument. “The only reason I haven’t blown out of here already is because of you.”

  “Because I’m so screwed up?” Miranda’s voice was dark and bitter. As she moved, I saw scars on her forearms, marching in railroad tracks up toward her elbow. She was a cutter. I wasn’t surprised. “Because I’m so pathetic?”

  “No, because you’re a kid, and I’m not leaving you here. Not with them.” Michael didn’t even look at the jocks, but they got the point. I saw their beery good humor start to evaporate. Some set down bottles. “You think they’re doing this because they like you, Mir? What do you think they want out of it?”

  For a second, she looked honestly surprised, and then she slipped her armor back on. “They got what they wanted already,” she said. “They got their money.”

  “Yeah, drunk, bored football types are always fair like that,” I said. “So tell me, guys, was this going to be a party night? You and her?”

  They didn’t answer me. They weren’t drunk enough to be quite that cold about it. One finally said, “She told us she’d make it worth our while if we got her a vampire.”

  “Well, she’s fifteen. Her definition of worth your while is probably a whole lot different from yours, you asshole.” Man, I was angry. Angry at Miranda, for getting herself and us into this. Angry at the boys. Angry at Michael, for not already walking away. Okay, I understood now why he hadn’t. He’d already known he’d be throwing her to the wolves (and the bats) if he did.

  I was angry at the world.

  “We’re leaving,” I declared. I grabbed Miranda by a skinny, scabbed wrist and pulled her to her feet. Her Cleopatra headdress slipped sideways, and she slapped her other hand up to hold it in place even as she decided to pull back from me. I didn’t let her. I had pounds and muscle on her, and I wasn’t about to let her stay here and throw her own vamptastic pity party, complete with dangerous clowns.

  Up to that point, Miranda had been all talk, but I saw the look that came across her face and settled in her eyes when I grabbed on to her. Blank, yet focused. I knew that expression. It meant she was Seeing—as in, seeing the future, or at least something the rest of us couldn’t see.

  The hair shivered on the nape of my neck under my Catwoman cowl.

  “It’s too late,” she said, in a numbed, dead sort of voice. I drew in my breath and looked at the door. “Oh dear.”

  The door slammed open, bowling over a couple of football players along the way, and three vampires stood there. One of them was the vague Mr. Ransom.

  Another was a particularly unpleasant bit of work named Mr. Vargas, who had the looks of one of those silent film stars and the temperament of a rabid weasel. He’d always been one of the dregs of vampire society. Oliver kept him around—I didn’t know why—but Vargas was one of those you had to watch for, even if you were legally off the menu. He was known to bite first, pay the fine later.

  The last one, though, was the one who really scared me. Mr. Pennywell. Pennywell had come to town with Amelie’s father, the scary Mr. Bishop, and he’d stuck around. I knew he’d sworn all those promises to Amelie, but I didn’t believe for a second he really meant them. He was old. Really old. And he looked like some androgynous mannequin, with no emotion to him at all.

  Pennywell’s cold eyes looked around, dismissed the jocks, and focused in on three things:

  Miranda, Michael, and me.

  “The boys are yours,” he said to Ransom and Vargas.

  Vargas’s teeth flashed in a white grin. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said, and stepped aside, out of the way. “Run, mijos. Run while you can.”

  The jocks weren’t stupid. They knew the odds had shifted. They were severely in trouble. Not a one of them was willing to stand up for Miranda, or for us, and that didn’t shock me at all. What shocked me was that they didn’t take their beer with them when they broke for the door and stampeded out into the night.

  Vargas watched them go, and counted it off. “Twenty yard line. Thirty. Forty. Ah, they’ve reached midfield. Time for the opposing team to enter the game, I think.”

  He moved in a blur, gone. I resisted the urge to yell a warning to the football guys. It wouldn’t do any good.

  Pennywell said, “You, girl. I hear you want to be turned.” He was looking at Miranda.

  “No, she doesn’t,” I said, before my friend could say something idiotic. “Mir, let’s get you home, okay?”

  Faced with the alien chill that was Pennywell, even Miranda’s great romantic love of dying had a moment of clarity. She gulped, and instead of pulling free from my grip, she put her hand in mine. “Okay,” she said faintly. I wondered exactly what her vision had shown her. Nothing that she wanted to pursue, clearly. “Home’s good.”

  “Not quite yet, I think,” Pennywell said, and shut the doo
r to the field house. “First, I think there is a tax to be paid. For my inconvenience, yes?”

  “You can’t feed on her,” I said. “She’s underage.”

  “And undernourished from the look of her. Not only that, I can smell the witch on her from here.” He sniffed, long nose wrinkling, and his eyes sparked red. He focused on me. “You, however . . . you’re of age. And fresh.”

  That drew a growl out of Michael. “Not happening.”

  Pennywell barely glanced his way. “A barking puppy. How charming. Don’t make me kick you, puppy. I might break your teeth.”

  Michael wasn’t one to be baited into an attack, not like Shane. He just got calmly in Pennywell’s way, blocking the other vampire’s access to Miranda and me.

  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 an 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.

  “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 aflutter, 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 was. Shane had electroplated it himself, using a fish tank, a car battery, and some chemicals. As weapons went, it was heavy-duty and multipurpose. 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 openmouthed 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, getting only 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 gone only 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 brak
es, 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.”