Midnight Bites

by Rachel Caine

  Michael took hold of the knob of the door and lightly turned it, then shook his head. Locked, obv. That posed no serious issues for him, but it’d make some noise; the glow of the light under the door made me less of a blind human liability, so I pulled my hand free of his and pulled the snub-nosed revolver out of my belly pack. I didn’t like guns, particularly, but they were real useful around humans who meant me no good. I had a knife, too, but if it came to hand-to-hand with Mr. Batty out there, it wasn’t going to be an even match, and I liked advantages.

  Michael twisted, hard, and broke something metallic inside the door with a harsh snap. The knob slid out, and he reached into the hole and manipulated things until there was a click and the door yawned open, letting loose a flood of what seemed like a five-hundred-watt spotlight . . . but it was just one bulb, not even remotely bright. My eyes adjusted quickly, and I shut the door behind us. Without the lock, it wasn’t going to do much good, but I followed Michael’s lead and reached into the empty hole where the knob had been to push on metal until the tongue slipped back in place. It’d slow them down, at least.

  When I turned to look, I saw we were in a plain metal room. The one bulb was on a swinging chain hanging in the middle of the open space. There was a miniature viewing stand of seats that would hold maybe twenty people, if they were really friendly, and then there was the cage. It was the size of something you’d use for a lion or tiger act, big enough to move around in; it held a cot with a blanket and a pillow, and some kind of pot under the bed I assumed was their version of a portable toilet. Apart from that, it was just iron bars coated with silver, and a single stoutly built wooden chair that was bolted to the floor at the center of the cage.

  There were stains on the floor around it, and a few soaked into the wood. Dark stains. I told myself it was chocolate, and left it at that. I was too busy staring at the vampire in the cage.

  Because he was just a kid.

  I mean, a kid. Maybe twelve, thirteen years old at the most—a thin boy with long legs that he had tented up as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling of the room. He must have heard us coming, but he hadn’t moved, not an inch. From the still way he lay, I’d have thought he was regular dead, but he was the special kind. The kind that could still get up and kill us.

  “Hey,” Michael said softly. “You need out of there?”

  That made the kid sit up, with a sudden fluidity that made me glad there were bars between him and me; Michael didn’t move like that. Most vampires in Morganville didn’t, because they were trying to fit in, be less alarming to the people they farmed for money and blood. (To their credit, most of the blood donations are voluntary, through the blood bank. It’s sort of like the Mafia, but with fangs.)

  Seeing a vampire move like the pure predators they are . . . that was a bit scary. So was the emptiness in this kid’s eyes, the utter lack of interest or emotion. He could have been the lion the cage was meant for, only at least a lion would have more of an opinion.

  “Open it,” the kid said, and rattled the door. It was extra sturdy; he couldn’t hold it for more than a second before the silver began to burn him. He was wearing only a ratty, dirty pair of khaki shorts that was two sizes too large for him—no shirt, and his thin chest was as pale as ivory. Veins showed blue underneath the skin, like one of those see-through anatomy dolls. “Open it.” He didn’t even sound angry, or hopeful, or desperate. The words were just as emotionless as his eyes. Most vampires were faking it, to some extent or other, but this kid—I had the eerie idea that he might never have been human at all.

  Michael was considering him thoughtfully, although he was putting on the leather gloves he’d brought along in the event of silver. Unlike with the kid, I could read emotion in my honey’s expressions . . . and he looked just as startled and worried about what we were facing as me. “In a second,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  The kid blinked, a slow movement like he’d learned it from observation, not nature. “Jeremy,” he said. “My name is Jeremy.”

  “Okay, Jeremy,” Michael said, in a soft, calming voice, the way you’d speak to a particularly dangerous-looking wild dog. “Are you hurt?” He got a headshake. “Hungry?”

  That got a flat stare for a second, and then Jeremy turned it on me. “Let me have her, and I’ll be fine.”

  “Uh, no, creepy kid, really not happening,” I said. “I’m not your lunch.”

  Jeremy didn’t even bother to blink this time. Honestly, the kid was scarier than anything I’d seen out there in the carnival.

  “Jeremy,” Michael said. He sounded colder now, with an edge; it got the kid’s attention in a flash. “I’m here to get you out, but you so much as look at her again, much less touch her, and I’ll walk away and leave you to rot. Understood?”

  Jeremy tilted his head a little to the side, considering Michael, and then said, “If that’s what you want, then I won’t touch her.”

  “Swear,” I said. “Pinkie swear.”

  He shrugged. “I swear.” I didn’t hear any particular meaning in it, which wasn’t good, but we didn’t have a wealth of choices. Amelie’s instructions were to bring the weird kid back with us, not leave him here. Michael was doing his best.

  “Go watch the door,” Michael said to me, and I nodded and backed off to stand next to it. That not-so-coincidentally put a lot of space between me and Jeremy, with Michael in the middle between us. I watched as Michael put gloved hands on the bars, got a firm grip, and applied pressure. He was strong, but the bars just groaned and held. Jeremy watched with interest but no emotion as Michael panted, shook off the strain, and tried again. I winced when I saw the pain on his face; the stuff was burning him even through the gloves.

  “Michael,” I said. “Did you see any tools out there?” Because this crew didn’t seem like the type to be neat about putting things away. He took a step back from the cage, stripped off his gloves, and I saw that beneath them his hands were swollen and pink with burns. Ouch. Very high silver content.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Look, this silver’s pretty soft, but I can’t get a grip even with the gloves. I’ll go get the tools. It’ll just take a second.”

  “A second,” I repeated. “Promise?”

  Our eyes locked, and he smiled just a little. “Cross my heart,” he said. “Jeremy, you back off and sit on your bed. Eve’s going to stay with you.”

  Jeremy said nothing, but he walked back to his cot and stretched out, looking bored with the whole thing. I considered him for a second, then nodded. “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  Michael was a blurred flash that paused to get the door open, and then it swung shut behind him with a soft thump. I took a deep breath and wished I’d worn something warmer—all of a sudden, it seemed much colder with him gone. I walked over to the cage and examined it. It didn’t look so hard. The silver was wire, and it was wrapped around the bars tightly, but when I found an end of the wire and grabbed it, it bent easily enough—high-content silver, pretty soft. I was concentrating so much on unwinding it that I didn’t realize Jeremy had moved until I glanced up.

  He was standing only a few feet away, staring at the point where I was unwinding the silver. Not at me, which I supposed fell under the letter of the law. I swallowed and said, “Michael told you to stay on the bed.”

  “No,” he said. “He told me to go to the bed. He didn’t tell me to stay there.”

  Wonderful, he had a kid’s built-in ability to parse orders and find loopholes. That was just great. “Yeah, well, why don’t you just sit down over there? It’ll take a little time to do this.”

  He didn’t move. Evidently, I didn’t have the same kind of authority as Michael wielded. Up close-ish, Jeremy’s eyes were not black; they were a very dark brown, with a central ring of amber. They’d have been nice if they’d been in a face that moved like a human being’s, but as it was, they reminded me of glassy dolls’ eyes. I like a
good creep-out as much as any self-respecting Goth, but this kid was giving me a serious freaking.

  “You smell nice,” he said.

  “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 backward, 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 dead 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. 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 hand. Shane hadn’t just given the thing to me; he’d forced me to 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 a 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 shone 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 liked 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 toy,” 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 m
y 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 and 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 broadside 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 rose 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 backward, 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 of the door 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.”