Midnight Bites

by Rachel Caine

  “I like to be able to see what’s biting me, thanks.”

  “Does that really help?” Myrnin sounded honestly interested. “It’s all well and good knowing, but stopping it, ah, that’s the real challenge. Things that bite are rarely easily discouraged.”

  He ought to know, I guessed. “What exactly is it you’re researching?”

  His tone turned cautious, all of a sudden. “I can’t say, really.”

  I made the last turn down a dark cul-de-sac. His lab was off to the right, at about two o’clock on the circle, next to the imposing loom of the newly refurbished Day House. Gramma Day was still up, or she’d left some lights burning. The alleyway that led to Myrnin’s lab entrance was still dark. Of course.

  “Can’t say why?”

  “I believe I’m paying you not to ask.”

  He was. I parked the car, killed the lights, and grabbed his arm as he popped the passenger door open. “Hey,” I said, and he turned to look at me. There were red glints in his dark eyes, like sparks coming off a fire. “Tell me you’re not cooking up something dangerous.”

  “Now, why would you think something like that?” Myrnin effortlessly broke my grip and got out and dashed like the spider he was down the dark alley.

  Me, I locked the car doors behind me, got out my flashlight, and followed at the pace of just another human.

  An armed and dangerous one, at least.

  • • •

  Claire had equipped Myrnin’s lab with motion-activated lights, mostly for her own benefit because Myrnin, damn him, could see just fine in the dark. The rising glow helped me not to break my neck on the steps leading down into the main room, because he’d spilled something all over the stone again. Sticky or slick, no way was I going to step in it. No telling what it was, but it looked biological.

  Myrnin was already at one of the lab tables, which had been cleared of its usual litter of crazy stuff . . . cleared because he’d just shoved it off on the floor, of course. Claire had tried to educate him about trip hazards and keeping the place cleaned, but he just couldn’t get there, and she’d finally given up and resigned herself to picking up after him. I left the stuff on the floor. Wasn’t being paid to clean.

  “So explain it to me. Why am I here exactly?” I asked him, as he fitted on a pair of weird-looking goggles. He flipped a switch on the side, and they were bathed in an eerie blue glow inside. The glass magnified his eyes.

  “You’re here to protect me, of course,” he said.

  “From what?”

  “Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it? From what.”

  This wasn’t sounding too great. “Can’t help you if you’re not more, you know, specific.”

  “You’re here to protect me from getting lost,” he said, as he hooked up the cemetery camera to something that looked like a vacuum hose straight off a Hoover. It didn’t quite fit. He duct-taped it together with way too much tape, and then jammed the other end into another box. . . . This one was polished wood, decorated with ornate little gold letters applied in neat rows all over it.

  “Wait, getting lost?” I said, as he worked. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “We are,” he said. “Come here.” I put the flashlight down on the table and came around to join him. He pushed a button on the wooden box, and grabbed my hand to slam it down on top of the switch as he slipped his own hand away. “Now, don’t let go of it,” he said. “Not until I tell you. And no matter what you see, stay still.”

  “I don’t—”

  My voice choked off, because darkness crashed in with the thick weight of midnight, and there was nothing. My mouth dried up; I flinched and almost pulled my hand back but managed to hang on. Myrnin gripped my arm and held tight.

  “You’ll see things,” his disembodied voice whispered. “Bad things. But they won’t harm you. But one thing is very important: Don’t let me stay here. You can’t let me stay, no matter how much I want to do it. Don’t let go of the button until I tell you, and when you do, you have to be touching me. Understand?”

  I couldn’t see a damn thing, and almost said so, and then something moved at the corner of my vision. Not like a light, exactly—more like a disturbance of the darkness. I turned my head that direction, and saw a very small wisp of gray that moved, got brighter, and took on form.

  A ghost, at first. A woman, from the form, wearing an old-fashioned long, full skirt like something from a documentary on Victorians. She took on more color, though she stayed pale in skin. The dress was dark red, like drying blood, and it had a high collar and long sleeves. She had her dark, glossy hair up in a complicated bun thing.

  It took me a second, but then I realized who she was. Ada. Myrnin’s former lab assistant, a vampire who’d gotten on his bad side and ended up as a brain in a jar. I’d only known her as a crazycakes hologram thing, but she looked real enough here, as she glided up toward us.

  Myrnin took on form and color, too, but not the Myrnin who was holding on to my arm. That one never let go, never moved. The one walking toward her was the old Myrnin . . . and he was dressed out of the same period closet as Ada was, with some kind of fancy tight black trousers and high boots and a white shirt with lace under a long black coat. The only color on him was a bright bloodred ruby he wore as a pin on the front of his shirt.

  That old-school Myrnin lunged at her, slammed her into the invisible wall behind her, and as she screamed, he bit at her throat. Tore it open.

  Drank.

  “No,” Modern-Day Myrnin whispered. He sounded shaky. Horrified. “No. No, this is not what I want. Not what I need. Stop. Stop.”

  The Myrnin acting out Ada’s murder in front of us never paused. She was dying, and it was pretty horrible. I looked away and swallowed hard. I’ve never been good with just bystanding.

  Myrnin—the one next to me—took in a deep breath and let it out, slowly. The scene vanished, just melted on the air as if it had never been there. His voice, when it came, was hesitant. “It is an inexact science, and that . . . nightmare is rarely far from my mind. Bide a moment.”

  I guessed that was another word for wait, and I did, as more shadows moved and whispered and crowded, all unseen in the dark. Some talked. One or two screamed, and I flinched. I could almost feel them brushing over me, like damp breezes. It felt sickening.

  “There,” Myrnin whispered. He sounded different. More focused. “There it is.”

  This time, a storm of gray appeared, swirling like clouds, and then parted to show a confusion of bodies, men, dressed in those same period clothes, all wrestling and shouting, though I could hear it only in a muffled kind of way. It looked like they were clustered in around something.

  Someone screamed. A woman. High and thin and terrified. In pain. Myrnin’s hand closed hard on my arm, hard enough to bruise, but I didn’t mind. It felt like I was falling into that crowd, or that it was rushing up on us, and suddenly I was standing surrounded by all those guys yelling and striking out, and in the center was a woman crouched on the ground, screaming as clubs came down on her. She was bloody and one of her arms was broken, but she still kept putting it up to try to protect her head.

  I wanted to let go of that button and help her. I didn’t know who she was. Didn’t matter. Bunch of bullies beating somebody—my natural impulse was to jump in.

  And then I realized she was protecting someone who was lying on the ground senseless underneath her. A man in dirty rags, curled into a shaking ball, bleeding in the street.

  The woman raised her head, and I saw her flame red hair slipping free of pins, and her eyes caught fire and she snarled, showing fangs, and leaped for the man whose club was coming down toward her. She snapped his neck, picked up his club, and effectively beheaded a couple of guys with it.

  I knew who that was.

  Jesse. Lady Grey. Myrnin’s current girlfriend, if that was the right word for two vampires
who were kind of hooked up, or not. But this must have been a couple of hundred years ago, and the man lying on the street, trying to get up and slipping in his own blood . . . that was Myrnin. A crazier version than the one I knew. He looked pretty terrible.

  And he had a book clutched in his grimy, shaking hands.

  As Jesse killed people with claws and teeth and clubs, defending that babbling crazy man on the ground, the Myrnin I knew let go of me and moved into view. He took on solidity and color as he did, and the contrast was pretty harsh. I hadn’t appreciated how relatively sane he was now, until I saw the before picture. That trembling wreck wasn’t anybody I would have normally recognized, except for the eyes and the chin.

  “Give it to me,” Modern Myrnin said, and bent to grab the book. Ancient Myrnin snarled at him and held on, looking feral. “Give it to me, fool! You’re going to destroy it, and I need it!”

  I guessed Ancient Myrnin wasn’t too keen on it, because he dropped the book and launched himself at Modern Myrnin’s throat, and damn, that was some vicious killer instinct at work. Jesse was scary, but that old, crazy hobo was something way, way worse. And it was pretty clear that Modern, Mostly Sane Myrnin wasn’t about to win that fight at all.

  At least until he called out to Lady Grey. “Please!” he shouted. “Help me subdue him!”

  She turned, teeth bared, and blinked in shock. Two Myrnins. Yeah, that might have done it. “Who are you?” Jesse demanded. She backhanded some street thug who tried to grab her. “What sorcery is this?”

  “Science, they call it now,” Modern Myrnin said. “Assistance!”

  He blurted that last part out, and it choked off because Old Crazy Myrnin had seized hold of his throat. Jesse didn’t hesitate. She flashed forward, grabbed Crazy Myrnin, and made him let go. She held on to him, stroking his matted hair as he shook and stared and made weird noises. Modern Myrnin stared at them with a look I hoped I’d never see again . . . kind of like looking back into hell and seeing yourself.

  “I need the book,” he told Jesse. “Please. He’ll take it from here and destroy it, and if I don’t have it now, where I am . . .”

  “I don’t understand how this is possible,” she said. She had the same fire as the Jesse I knew, the same challenge, and she shook her broken arm in annoyance. Bones slipped back together. It must have hurt, but she ignored the pain. I didn’t see any sign of the mob now, except for the dead ones that still littered the ground around them. Didn’t really blame them for running; I might have backed down, too, faced with that look in her eyes. “Are you Myrnin? But he is here.”

  “That me is broken,” he said. “I’m much better now. But, Lady Grey, I must have the book. I must. Please. Do this for me, for the care you take of me in this moment. It will make no difference to him, because all he longs for is your touch, your kindness. Books are meaningless to him, and will be for some time.”

  “But not to you. Does he improve?”

  Modern Myrnin spread his arms and bowed. “As you see.”

  “You hardly dress any better,” she said. “But I see spirit in your eyes that is absent in him now, and that . . . that is what I would hope to see.”

  She reached out and gently tugged the bloodstained book free of Crazy Myrnin’s grip. He made a croak like a crow, not words, just distress, and grabbed for it, but she eased his hand away, and he let it go. Instead, he just grabbed for her, and held on.

  It was her broken arm, but she didn’t flinch. She held the book out to Modern Myrnin, and as his fingers touched it, there was a spark of light between them, almost like static electricity. She gasped and let go of it. Myrnin shoved it in the pocket of his coat, but he was staring at her, and I knew that look. Hell, I felt it every time I looked at Claire. Hunger. Longing. Fever.

  “Take care of me,” Myrnin said. “You’re the only reason I lived, my lady. Or continue to live, even now. Remember me, I beg you.”

  For a lady who’d just killed a lot of men, she looked kind of vulnerable right then . . . and sort of sweet, under the blood.

  “It isn’t every day I see a man from the future,” she said. “I can scarce forget.”

  He smiled, and he bowed to her again, deeper, and stepped back toward me. Close enough to grab. “Shane,” he said. “I believe I’m ready to—”

  Lady Grey was right there, all of a sudden, and she reached for his hand. He let her take it. “You’ll not go anywhere,” she said, “until you explain yourself, Myrnin of the future. You know what will happen, yes? Tell me. Tell me. Shall I follow Amelie to the New World? Or stay here?”

  “I can’t,” he said, very gently. “I can’t tell you what to do, my lady. You must choose it on your own. I’ve done enough.”

  She looked back at the crazier, dirtier version of him, huddled now in a crouch on the ground, and said, “I love him, you know. He has . . . vision. And freedom.”

  “He’s quite mad,” Myrnin said. “But I suppose you know that, too.”

  “I know. But I can’t let him be slaughtered in the streets. I’ll see him safe.”

  “Yes. You will.”

  She turned again, facing him, and I figured that was the end of it . . . but she didn’t let him go. “If you know me, you’ll know that I’ve never been much for propriety,” she said. “I do what I like.”

  “It is your very best quality—”

  She cut him off by planting a kiss on him. Not a little peck on the cheek, oh no—a full-on press of her lips on his, with her arms slipping around him and holding on, and wow, that was a kiss. He seemed shocked at first, and then he got into it. Well, I could understand that, although I really didn’t need to see it; his hands traveled up her sides, her arms, cupped the sides of her head, and she moaned and pressed up against him, and he didn’t seem to mind that at all. In fact, he gave it right back, to the point where I was starting to wonder just how far this was going to go, because—damn.

  And then Jesse pulled back, lips red and eyes wild, and whispered, “Stay. Stay with me. I need you to stay.”

  “No,” Myrnin said. He didn’t sound too convinced. “I can’t.”

  “I’ve been alone for so long, and this—this you is more my patient than anything else. I love him, but he’s broken, and will be so long in healing. Just bide with me a day. Only a day.”

  “I . . . can’t . . .”

  Yeah, that sounded like a man who was seriously thinking about it. And he hadn’t let her go. He brushed hair back from her pale face and kissed her again. Hard. This was not a side of Myrnin I’d ever really imagined seeing. I was starting to hope I never saw it again, because I couldn’t help but see Claire in Jesse’s place, and that was an oh, hell no kind of experience.

  “Hey, man,” I said to him. “Gotta go. Come on.”

  He didn’t listen. I reached for him at the extent of my stretch, not letting go of the button, and got him. I grabbed hold of the back of his coat, and dragged him a step back to where I could get a good grip on his collar.

  Lady Grey turned on me, snarling, and the frustrated anger in her eyes made me remember all the men she’d just laid out dead on the street. Whoa. There was wanting, and then there was wanting. This lady wasn’t used to being told no.

  He hadn’t told me so, but I figured it must be time to bail. Myrnin hadn’t made it clear whether I needed to be touching skin or just his clothes, but I grabbed the cold back of his neck before I let go of the button.

  And the darkness cut off like . . . well, like somebody had flipped on the lights. And Myrnin and I were standing there in the same place, next to the lab table, and the only difference was that he had a book in the pocket of his coat, and he was shaking like a leaf. He put his hands to his face. To his lips.

  “Sorry to be your anti-wingman,” I told him, “but you said don’t let you stay. Looked like you were tempted to me.”

  “Tempted,” he repeated fai
ntly. “Yes. She is very tempting. She was . . . different in those days. Less in control. More . . . feral.”

  “Sexy as hell is the phrase you’re looking for.”

  He glanced at me and turned away, bracing his hands on the lab table, head down.

  “So, you got what you wanted? This book thing?”

  “Yes,” he said. “With it, I can rebuild many of the systems on which I based Morganville, but better. More powerful. So why do I feel that I’ve . . . lost something? Left something?”

  “Because you didn’t get to have the wild sexy night with Victorian Jesse?”

  “She was not Jesse. Not then. She was . . . Lady Grey. And Lady Grey only. But she never . . . We have never . . . It was more that I idolized her. She saved me. She brought me out of the dark and back from the dead, in many ways that matter. And I feel . . . robbed of knowing more of her now.”

  “Good thing you told me to pull you back,” I said. “What would have happened if you’d stayed and I let go of the button, anyway?”

  “I’d have died. More importantly, I suppose, I would have never existed. Two of the same cannot exist in the same space and time. The only reason this was possible was my tether, using the box, to this time. There are calculations, if you’d care to see them. . . .”

  “Pass,” I blurted. “And if you’d have never existed . . .”

  “Morganville would never have existed,” he said. “Or at least, not in this form. The world would change. You might not be here. Claire might not. Things would be . . . quite different.”

  I didn’t want different. I shuddered to think about it, actually. “Thanks for warning me about that up front, man.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Sarcasm. Look it up.”

  “Oh. Well, you see, I didn’t tell you because I knew if I had explained the stakes, you’d have not allowed me to go.”

  Suspicion struck me. “That’s why you didn’t get Claire to do this. She’d have figured it out. Right?”

  “Right,” he said. “Whereas you’re not as . . . ah . . .”