by Rachel Caine
“I doubt it. We’d probably heal. Doesn’t sound like something I want to try if it isn’t going to stay on.”
“Sucks to be you, don’t it? No pun intended.”
Michael looked up and grinned, and all the bullshit faded away. All the bitter anger (it always tasted like blood and tinfoil), all the weird complication of his best friend drinking blood for God’s sake, all that just up and left, and it could have been two years ago, or three, or more. They could have been twelve years old again, thinking of ways to stick frogs in Alyssa’s shoes, worms in her underwear drawer, whatever.
Shane felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes, and looked away. “I missed you,” Shane blurted. It felt right to say it, and then it felt stupid because Michael was right there at the other end of the couch, and besides, guys didn’t say that crap to other guys. “Whatever.”
Michael got real interested in his guitar, all of a sudden. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I missed you, too. How’d we get like this?”
“Well, you vamped out, my dad made me promise to kill you—”
“Seriously.”
“That wasn’t serious?”
“We used to hang. I miss you having my back.”
“I still have your back.”
“Do you?”
Shane looked at him in silence for a long few seconds without blinking, and said, “If you don’t know that, you don’t know shit about me, bro. Do I like it that you’re sucking down O neg like it’s SlimFast? Hell, no. Creeps me the hell out and it always will. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll always have your back.”
“Then let me have yours once in a while,” Michael said, and held out his fist. Shane bumped it, or tried; his coordination was way off. “Next time, don’t go wandering around out in the dark, bleeding and wearing a Bite Me sign.”
“Oh, blow me,” Shane groaned. “I’m fine.”
“Please. You’re so fine you’re about thirty seconds from telling me all your deep, dark secrets and crying, or else puking your guts out.”
“Yeah, screw you, too, buddy.” Shane closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the sofa. The room was doing loop-de-loops, and it was kind of fun at first, and then not so much.
“I worry about you,” he heard Michael say very quietly. “I wasn’t kidding about the death wish. Jesus, Shane, you keep doing this kind of thing, you’ll end up dead in a ditch. Or worse.”
“Maybe it’s what I deserve.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that out loud, but it was true. Maybe it was what he deserved. He hadn’t been able to protect Alyssa. He hadn’t been able to save his mother. The pain—the pain helped, because it was like paying back a debt. Nobody understood that, though. They just thought he was nuts.
He felt a cold hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Michael standing there, staring at him with so much—everything—in his eyes that it made him feel scared. Nobody should know him that well. Nobody.
But at least Michael didn’t say it. He just said, “Come on, man. Let’s get you upstairs before you puke all over my guitar.”
“Don’t tell Claire I came home drunk,” Shane said.
“Hell no.”
“Because I will end you.”
“If you survive the hangover,” Michael said, “we’ll see who wins that throw-down.”
• • •
Michael was right about the hangover. Shane woke up with his guts heaving and his mouth tasting like he’d sucked on old sweat socks, and he rolled over in bed and moaned. He hadn’t ralphed, but it had been close. He figured he still might. His head was pounding like Metallica’s drummer, and he wanted to just make it all go away.
Not an option, though. He got up, slipped on a pair of cheap sunglasses and a ratty T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days, and shuffled downstairs to grab a tall glass of water. There was a pot of coffee on the burner, so he poured a cup of that, too, and took both to the kitchen table. He’d downed the water and was about to start on the coffee when the knocking came at the back door.
Well, not so much knocking as pounding. Which was really not good with his head already keeping the beat to a different, sadistic drummer.
Shane groaned, got up, and opened the door without checking to see who it was, mainly because death was preferable to the pain his head was giving him as long as that pounding was going on.
It was two someones, actually. Shane stared at them for a long, bloodshot second, then stepped back to let them in. “Wow, a visit from the mayor,” he said. “And it’s not even election season. How you doing, Dick?”
Richard Morrell—who was never known as Dick, except to Shane—gave him a pained, long-suffering look. For all his faults—and God knew he had a lot, starting with being related to that psycho-bitch Monica—Dick never let the little things get to him. Which was why it was so much fun to try. He looked tanned and fit, and he was wearing an expensive suit, though why he bothered in Morganville was anybody’s guess.
“Shane,” said the second person, a tall, dark-skinned woman with a scar on her face, tightly cornrowed hair pulled back in a bun, and who was wearing a crisply ironed police uniform, all her brass gleaming. She wore the gun like she’d been born with it on her hip. “Sorry for the early visit. I heard you had a late night.”
He shrugged, but he was glad he was wearing the sunglasses to hide his expression. And the bloodshot eyes. “No problem, Chief Moses,” he said. “Coffee?”
“I never say no to coffee,” Hannah Moses said, with a charming, professional kind of smile. Shane got a couple of mugs out of the cabinet and filled them, brain churning furiously against the numbing fog of the hangover. Why are they here? What did I do? Because the chance they could be here for anyone else seemed pretty long, and pretty small. He was always the one in trouble with the law.
He carried the mugs back to the kitchen table, which was piled with old, discarded copies of the Morganville Daily and flyers for things he never paid attention to; he shoved it all to the side. “Sorry,” he said. “Not my kitchen duty day.” As Hannah and Richard sat down and started sipping their drinks, he said, “No offense, but we’ve got a coffee shop about six blocks away. Vampire owned. Any particular reason you’re dropping in on me for your caffeine fix?” Please say no.
Richard and Hannah exchanged glances, and then Richard Morrell said, “We need you to do something for us.”
Well, that was different. Really different. Shane cocked his head and tried to sort through it, because it wasn’t making any sense. “You. Need something. From me.”
“Don’t make it a thing, Shane.”
“Kinda is a thing, though.” Neither of them cracked a smile. They both looked very, very serious. “What is it?”
“Michael.”
Michael? Shane’s eyebrows rose on their own, and he said, “You have got to be kidding. Our Michael, the Boy Scout? No freaking way. What’s he supposed to have done, littered? Jaywalked?”
“No,” Hannah said. She sounded regretful, and very sure of what she was saying. “We think that he’s hiding a fugitive from justice. A dangerous one, and one who could easily get him killed. And we need to find out why, and where.”
Shane didn’t mean to, but he sat down, hand cradling the hot ceramic of his coffee cup. No way. It wasn’t like Michael, not at all. But Hannah wasn’t one of those people who went off half-cocked, either. She knew her business, and if her business was Shane’s best friend . . . well, that was bad. Real bad.
“Who’s he supposed to be hiding?” Shane finally asked, through a throat that felt way too tight. “Osama bin Laden?”
“He’s hiding a vampire. I’d rather not tell you who we believe it is.”
“What, Dracula? Man, that guy gets around.” Neither of them smiled. “Kidding. Jeez. Lighten up a little.”
Richard reached out and grabbed Shane’s wrist as he started to raise the coffee cup. �
�Lighten up,” he repeated. He looked way too pale, and way too angry now. Not the usual Dick Morrell at all. “You stupid punk, you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you want to save Michael’s life, you’d better get your head out of your ass and quit joking around.”
“If you want to save your life, you’d better take your hand off me, asshole!”
Richard did, sitting back and crossing his arms. Hannah’s gaze darted from him to Shane, then back again. “We’re all going to just calm down,” she said. “Because this doesn’t help anyone, least of all Michael. Shane, he’s not wrong. This is serious, and if we don’t do something, it’s going to go bad, especially for your friend, and maybe for the rest of you, too. Please. We need your help.”
“To do what? Spy on my best friend? Screw that.” Shane felt his jaw muscles bunching up, and his aching hands—still bruised from last night’s little scuffle—tightened into fists. “Never gonna happen. Not unless you’re straight with me. Who is it you’re looking for, exactly? I’m guessing not Dracula, probably.”
The house seemed very quiet, to Shane. He knew Claire could feel the house’s moods, somehow, but he didn’t really. It was just a house. Except it wasn’t, and somehow, he knew it was . . . listening.
“I can’t tell you that,” Hannah said. “And you don’t need to know. It’s better if you don’t.”
“Yeah, for you. But for me, trust me, it’s better if I believe you when you say I need to stab my best friend in the back.”
Another moment of silence, and then Richard made a frustrated sound, like a dog growling, and said, “Fine, Shane. But when I tell you this, it means you are exactly the fifth person in Morganville to know it. You, me, Hannah, Amelie, and Oliver. And guess which one we’ll be looking at if it gets out.”
Shane was starting to think it really was Dracula they were talking about. “All right,” he said. “I’ll sign a paper, or whatever you want. But I need to know what you’re talking about, here.”
“Bishop,” Richard said. “I’m talking about Bishop.”
Shane felt his entire body turn cold. The hangover headache disappeared, just like mist. He slid his sunglasses off and stared at Richard, then Hannah. “You’re kidding,” he said. “You didn’t kill him yet? Or at least keep him in prison?” He had to be in prison. Bishop was, hands down, the most terrifying guy that Shane had ever seen in person. He’d never met a serial killer, not a real one, but damn, Bishop was the next-best thing. Shane was willing to bet that Bishop would have intimidated Dahmer, Gacy, and Bundy put together.
And he lived to cause destruction. It was his thing. That, and undoing whatever good things his daughter, Amelie, had managed to accomplish.
Not somebody you wanted to have roaming around loose on the streets of Morganville.
Jesus, Shane thought. I walked home last night, bleeding and drunk. Michael wasn’t kidding about the death wish.
“Bishop was in prison,” Richard confirmed. “Amelie had him walled up in a cell. And now he’s out. He killed four guards along the way.”
“You’ve got to be—wait, you think Michael is hiding him? Why the hell would he do that?”
“I’ll be honest with you—we don’t know that Michael is involved. But there are only a few people in Morganville that Bishop could potentially use, and Michael’s one of them—he was under Bishop’s influence before. If so, your friend is in deep, deep trouble,” said Hannah. “If you can find out where Bishop is hiding, we can take care of this quickly and quietly. Michael never has to be involved. But if you can’t, we’ll still find Bishop, and we’ll bring Michael in as an accessory. Amelie’s already said that this time she won’t be so merciful—not to Bishop or to any vampire who gives him help. This could save his life, Shane. Help us.”
Shane stood up and walked away, arms folded. He was aching inside now, angry at them for putting him in this position, angry at Michael for . . . for whatever. If you weren’t a bloodsucking leech, this would never have happened. Not that Michael had asked for it, in the beginning, anyway. He’d been a casualty of war, even at the start.
Even if Michael forgave him for this, Eve never would; Shane just knew that. When it came to Michael, Eve held a grudge like nobody he’d ever seen. And how the hell was he going to explain any of this to Claire? He couldn’t tell her about Bishop. No way.
Save his life.
Shane put his sunglasses back on, turned around, and said, “What do you want me to do?”
• • •
Following a vampire around was not as easy as it sounded. For one thing, Michael had wheels—a Morganville-issued sedan, with blacked-out windows. The transportation Shane could get was all too obvious—Eve’s big black boat of a car, with tail fins, or the murdered-out black Charger he was making payments on with Rad, down at the repair shop. But there was a way to do it.
Rad had motorcycles. Lots of them. Most of them were way too flashy—chrome, bright paint, all that stuff. No good for staying anonymous.
“How about this one?” Shane asked, pointing to a dark blue Honda. “That’d probably do.”
“Pretty drab,” Rad—Radovic—said. “I could maybe put some paint on it if you want.” Rad didn’t feel that any of his rides were worth much unless they were memorable, which was kind of funny; he didn’t have to work to make people remember him. Rad was a big, tough guy, all muscles. He was one of the few Shane would back off from in a fight, because when Rad swung a punch, it broke things. “How long you need it for?”
“I don’t know,” Shane said. “Hopefully just tonight.”
“Twenty-five dollars a day,” Rad said. “Friends’ rate. I won’t ask you if you have a motorcycle license. You don’t, that’s your problem.”
Shane didn’t think Hannah was going to quibble about some paperwork, not right now. He nodded. “I need a helmet. Something that covers my face.”
Rad nodded. “No problem. You want maybe night vision?”
“What?”
“My own invention,” Rad said proudly. “Night vision built into helmet. Very handy for Morganville. You want?”
“How much?”
“Oh, another twenty-five dollars a night for the helmet.”
“You’re killing me.”
Rad shrugged. “Cheap if you can see trouble coming out there. Right?”
Well, Shane really couldn’t argue with that. He finally nodded and shelled out fifty from the cash he’d won off the college boys. It was a good value, in Morganville, no question about it.
“You want two?” Rad’s lips split in a wide, blinding grin. He had big, square teeth that could have done work in a toothpaste commercial. “One for the girlfriend, eh?”
“Just one,” Shane said. “I’m on my own tonight.”
As a precaution, Shane parked the bike behind the garage, in the deepest shadows he could find. He’d gotten to know it on the way home, and it was a sweet little ride, not as loud as a lot of motorcycles. That would help, probably. But the important thing wasn’t to keep Michael from seeing the bike following him, just that he didn’t know it was Shane.
At least, that was Shane’s best idea.
When he came in the kitchen, Claire was already there, looking in the refrigerator. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday, which meant she’d just gotten back from the lab, and when he started toward her, she held up her hands, looking miserable. “I smell,” she said. “No, I’m wrong—I stink. I can’t smell it, but I can feel it. I don’t want you to smell me right now.”
“I love how you smell,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t take a shower this morning, either. My bad.”
She considered that, catching that cute lower lip between her teeth in a way that made him tingle, and then nodded and stepped into his embrace. God, she felt good—small and fragile and warm, soft in all the right places. Her lips were hot and sweet under
his, and for a few seconds, at least, he felt all the way better. Kissing Claire did that to him.
He kissed her a second time, lightly, and asked, “Did you eat anything today?”
“I think I had a graham cracker yesterday,” she said, and yawned. “I think I’m too tired to eat, though.” When she turned her head, he saw the shadow of bite marks on her neck—scars, not fresh. She was growing her hair longer to cover them up. “Where’s everybody else?”
“Michael’s at the music store. He had a late lesson. Should be back soon. Eve—” Right on cue, the front door banged open. “That’d be Eve.”
“Yo, losers, where’s my dinner?” Eve yelled.
“Yo, Gothic Princess, your name is on the kitchen duty list today!”
“Is not!”
Shane rolled his eyes. Claire was smiling. “I’ll help,” she said, and started pulling stuff out.
“Not your turn,” Eve said, breezing into the kitchen. “You don’t have to, Claire.”
“I know, but I’m hungry. I think. Maybe.” Claire frowned doubtfully at some leftovers. “Is this any good?”
“If you have to ask, the answer is usually no,” Eve said, and dumped the bowl into the trash. “Ugh. I don’t even know what that was, but it isn’t anymore. How about spaghetti?”
It was always spaghetti with Eve, unless someone else stepped in. Today, though, Shane’s heart wasn’t in it. “Sure,” he said, which made her turn and narrow her heavily made-up eyes at him. Mistake.
“Wow. Mr. I Have a Better Idea, stumped? That’s crazy talk. Are you running a fever?”
“Spaghetti sounds good.” He shrugged and let it go, because he was starting to wonder how he was going to gracefully ease out of here and follow Michael, if Michael left again.
“Not to me,” Claire sighed. “You know what? I was right the first time. I’m more tired than I am hungry.” She grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge and covered another yawn. She really did look exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, her skin gone paler than it should have been.
“You’re working too hard,” Shane said. “Promise me you’re going to get some rest, okay?”
