by Rachel Caine
“Hey,” she called after him. “I left the chili on for you!”
He didn’t answer. Claire capped her marker pen and went to the kitchen door. She didn’t open it, but she stood and listened. Shane wasn’t making the normal dish noises of a guy desperate for dinner; in fact, he wasn’t making any noise at all.
Claire was debating whether to return to studying when she heard him open the back door of the house. Voices, hushed and muffled. She eased the door open just a little, and listened harder.
“You’re lucky I don’t call the cops,” Shane was saying. “Walk away, man.”
“I can’t. I need to talk to her.”
“You’re not coming near either one of the girls, got me?”
“I’m not going to hurt anyone!”
She knew that voice, or thought she did. But that couldn’t be right, it just couldn’t be.
Shane could not be talking to Eve’s brother, Jason, especially not at the back door. She had to be imagining things. Maybe it was someone else, someone who just sounded like Jason Rosser. . . .
Claire eased the door open enough to get a tiny slice of a view.
No, that was Jason. There was absolutely no doubt about it. He was even wearing the same skanky, stained jeans and leather jacket. His hair was lank and even greasier than the last time she’d seen him, and he looked sallow and sick.
“Come on, man,” he said. “Just let me talk to Claire. You keep me waiting out here in the dark, I’m lunch meat.”
“Good to know.”
Jason put out a hand to stop Shane from closing the door on him. “Please, man. I’m asking.”
Shane hesitated. Claire couldn’t really imagine why. Jason had stalked Eve; he’d killed—or at least he said he’d killed—innocent girls out of some misguided attempt to get the vampires to sign him up for service. He’d stabbed Shane in the guts.
Shane did swing the bat at him first, Claire’s prim little voice of conscience said. She told it to shut up. Jason had engineered that fight, he’d provoked Shane into it, and it was only the fact that they’d gotten an ambulance there so fast that had saved Shane’s life.
Jason didn’t look like a crazy killer just now. He looked like a half-starved scared junkie kid who was terrified out of his mind. And desperate.
Claire came into the kitchen. Jason’s face lit up. “Claire! Claire, tell him—tell him it’s okay. I promise, I’m not going to hurt anybody. Tell him it’s okay to let me in so I can talk to you.”
“It’s not okay,” Claire said. “But he already knows that.”
Shane nodded. He shoved Jason backward, off-balance, off the porch. Jason tripped over a brick and fell flat on his ass. He glared up at Shane and rolled slowly to his feet. “Claire, I’m supposed to tell you something. From Oliver.”
“Oliver’s got nothing to tell us that we want to hear, man. Especially from you.”
“You sure about that?”
Shane grinned. “Pretty sure. Good luck with that survival thing out there in the dark.”
Shane started to shut the door. He almost made it before Jason blurted out, “Bishop’s setting a trap. We can tell you where and when.”
Claire put a hand on Shane’s shoulder, and he kept the door open, just a crack. “What are you talking about?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.” Jason looked desperate enough to claw paint off the door. “Please, Claire. I swear, I’m on the level here.”
“No,” she said. “If Oliver’s got something to say, I’ll talk to him, not to you.”
Resentment flickered in Jason’s dark eyes like oil on fire, and he got up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah? You gonna play it like that?”
“I’m not playing at all,” Claire said.
“I think you are. So maybe we do it the hard way after all.” Jason threw himself against the door with such force that Shane was knocked backward, and Claire lost her footing and ended up flat on her back on the kitchen floor. As she twisted around to try to get up, she felt Jason’s hand close on her hair, painfully tight. He yanked her up to her knees and dragged her out into the night. She yelled and fought, but he had a lot of experience with making girls do what he wanted.
And she stopped fighting when he put a gun to her head.
“Good,” he said in her ear, and even in a blind, black rage she thought his breath was disgusting enough to peel paint. “Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you. I was serious. You need to listen to me.”
Shane followed them outside, moving slowly but never taking his eyes off Jason. Off the gun. “Let her go.”
Jason laughed, and dragged her backward to the driveway, where a big black car was waiting. Shane followed at a safe distance. Don’t, Claire mouthed. She’d seen Jason nearly kill Shane before. She couldn’t stand to see it happen again. I’ll be okay.
Jason opened the driver’s-side door of the car, shoved her inside, and pushed in after. She immediately lunged for the other door.
Locked.
Jason slammed the car door and turned the key to start the engine. He took a firmer grip on Claire’s hair. “Stay still!”
Something heavy fell on the roof of the car, denting it down almost to the level of their heads; Claire and Jason both ducked, and Claire yelped at the thought that panic might make him squeeze the trigger.
It didn’t.
A fist punched through the metal roof of the car, grabbed the ragged edge, and peeled it back like a tin can lid. And the face that looked down was Michael’s.
No—not Michael; it was Vampire Michael. Fangs completely down, eyes completely crimson.
Michael was angry. Also, terrifying.
He dropped through the hole in a fall of moonlight, took hold of Jason’s gun hand, and yanked him away from Claire like a toy. A breakable one. Jason screamed. The gun went off, and Claire flinched and covered her head, trying to pull into a ball in the corner. The car shook as Michael threw Jason out, straight up through the opening in the roof. Jason screamed the whole way up, and the whole way down. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and rolled.
Michael launched himself up out of the car, landed lightly on his feet in the wash of headlights, and walked to where Jason was crawling to get away. Jason rolled over. He still had the gun.
He shot Michael six times, point-blank. Claire flinched with every loud crack.
Michael didn’t.
He reached Jason, took the gun, ripped it in half, and threw the two pieces into the trash can leaning at the side of the house. Jason looked shocked, then resigned, as Michael reached down and grabbed him by the collar of his leather jacket.
Shane reached through the ragged sunroof, opened the car door, and grabbed Claire. He pulled her out and to her feet. “You okay?” He sounded deeply shaken, and he kept running his hands over her, looking for bullet holes, she guessed. “Claire, say something! ”
“Stop him,” she whispered, looking past him at Michael. “Don’t let him do that.”
Because Michael was going to bite Jason, and once he did, there’d be no going back. Shane sent her a look, one that probably meant he thought she was crazy, but she forced herself to stay still and calm, even if her insides were quivering in terror.
“Shane,” she said, and tried her best to channel Amelie’s cool authority. “Stop him.”
She saw the reality of what was happening dawn on Shane, and he nodded and turned toward Michael, who didn’t look as if he was in any mood to be talked off the murder ledge.
But Shane didn’t have to try, because Michael looked up and saw Eve standing in the doorway, hands pressed to her mouth, dark eyes wide in horror, staring at her boyfriend threatening to suck blood out of her little brother.
Michael let go. Jason collapsed back to the ground, whimpering, and tried to crawl away.
Michael put his foot on Jason’s back, holding him in place. “No,” he said. His voice sounded low and very, very dangerous. “I don’t think so. Attempted kidnapping, assault with
a deadly weapon, and attempted murder of a vampire? You’re done, man. It’s all over but the screaming.”
“You asshole!” Jason yelled. “I’m working for Oliver! You can’t touch me!”
He skinned back the sleeve on his jacket, and there, on his wrist, was a silver bracelet.
Michael responded by pressing his foot harder into Jason’s back. “Then you and I are going to have a talk with Oliver about how he sends his little worm to my house to shoot me,” he said. “I think you’re not going to like that very much. Because I’m pretty sure that Oliver didn’t ask you to do that kind of thing.”
“Michael,” Shane said. It was a warning, and as Claire turned, she saw why—another car was arriving, a police car with lights flashing. It pulled to a stop in the driveway, blocking in Jason’s half-peeled car, and Richard Morrell got out of the driver’s side carrying a shotgun. Detectives Joe Hess and Travis Lowe were with him, and each of them held a drawn gun.
She’d never seen the three of them looking so grim, but she was glad to see them. At least this meant somebody would be putting a stop to Jason and his craziness at last. Michael was right: it wasn’t going to be a good ending for him, but—
Richard Morrell put the shotgun to his shoulder. He was aiming at Michael. The other two men took up shooting stances.
Claire gasped.
“Out of the way,” Detective Hess ordered Shane, with a jerk of his head. Shane didn’t argue. He held up his hands and backed away. Michael turned and saw the cops aiming at him, and frowned.
“Let him go, Michael,” Travis Lowe said. “Let’s do this easy.”
“What’s going on?”
“One thing at a time. Let the kid up.”
Michael removed his foot. Jason scrambled to a standing position and tried to run; Richard Morrell sighed, handed his shotgun to Joe Hess, and took off after him. As fast as Jason was, Richard was faster. He took him down in a flying tackle before he was halfway to the fence. He rolled Jason onto his back and handcuffed him with brutal efficiency, yanked him upright, and marched him back to where the other two policemen held Michael at gunpoint.
“What’s going on?” Michael repeated. “He tries to kidnap Claire, and you come after me? Why?”
“Let’s just say we’re saving you from yourself,” Detective Hess said. “You okay? You calm?”
Michael nodded. Hess lowered his gun, and so did Travis Lowe. Richard Morrell put Jason in the backseat of the police car.
“We got a tip,” Hess continued, “that you’d gone berserk and were trying to kill your friends. But since I see they’re all standing here alive and well, I’m guessing little Jason is the real problem.”
Richard came back, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. Clearly, he didn’t like touching Jason, either. “Did he break in?”
“No,” Shane said. “He pulled a gun on us and grabbed Claire at the back door. He was trying to drive away with her. Michael stopped him.”
Michael, Claire realized as her heartbeat started to slow, had also been shot six times in the chest at point-blank range. His loose white shirt had the blackened ragged holes to prove it, each one rimmed with a thin outline of red. She remembered Myrnin swiping the knife carelessly down his arm, laying open veins and arteries and muscles just to get a blood sample.
She couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t look like there was a mark on Michael’s chest under the shirt, and he wasn’t moving like a man with bullets buried inside. Not even one in shock.
Wow.
“What did he want?” Detective Hess asked. “Did he say?”
“He said he wanted to talk to me,” Claire said. That much was true, but she didn’t want to drag Oliver into this. It was enough of a mess already. “I think he really did want to. He just knew he wouldn’t be able to do it here. I don’t—I don’t think he really meant to hurt me.” This time.
Shane was looking at her like she’d grown a second head, one with serious brain damage. “It’s Jason. Of course he meant to hurt you! Wasn’t the gun pointed at your head a clue?”
He was right, of course, but—she’d seen the look in Jason’s eyes, and it hadn’t been the predatory glee she’d seen before when he was playing his little sadistic games. This had been flat-out desperation. She couldn’t explain it, but she believed Jason.
This time.
Shane was still watching her with a frown. So was Michael. “Are you all right?” Shane asked, and folded his arms around her. The warm weight of his body pressed against hers, and she realized just how cold she felt. She was shivering, and her knees felt weak underneath her. I could collapse, she realized. And he’d catch me.
But she stayed on her own two feet, pulled back, and looked him in the eyes.
“I’m fine,” she said. She kissed him. “Everything’s fine.”
Chapter 9
Eve hadn’t said a word, but she’d allowed Michael to take her back inside once the cops had pulled away; she’d taken only one look at her brother as he’d been hauled off in handcuffs, but that had been enough. On top of the shock of her father’s death, and the trouble with Michael, Eve didn’t seem to have any emotion left to spare.
Through common consent, none of them went to bed. They didn’t eat. The four of them crammed onto the couch, grateful for the warmth and the company, and put on a movie. A scary one, as it turned out, but Claire was glad to focus on someone else’s problems for a change. Being hunted by a city full of zombies might have seemed like a relief in some ways—at least you knew whom to run from, and whom to run toward. She lay with her head on Shane’s chest, listening more to him breathe than to the characters babbling at one another. His hand kept a slow, steady rhythm on her hair, stroking all her tension and fear away.
Eve and Michael didn’t cuddle, but after a while, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer, and she didn’t resist.
By the time the DVD menu came on after the credits, they were all sound asleep, and trouble was far, far away.
Fridays were usually good days, classwise; even most of the professors were in better moods.
Not this Friday, though. There was a weird tension in the air, along with the increasingly chilly bite to the wind. Her first professor of the day had lost his temper over a cell phone going off, and reduced some sophomore sorority girl to tears before exiling her from the class with a flat-out failing grade. Her second class didn’t go much better; the TA had a headache, maybe a hangover, and was grumpy as hell—too much to bother slowing down as he sped through the lecture, or to answer any questions.
The only good thing about her third hour was that she was confident it would be over in under an hour. Professor Anderson had widely advertised today’s supposedly pop quiz; only a complete coma patient wouldn’t know to come prepared. Anderson was one of those professors—the ones who gave you plenty of chances, but the test was The Test, full stop. He gave only two a year, and if you didn’t do well on both of them, you were screwed. He had a reputation for being a nice guy who smiled a lot, but he’d never yet allowed anybody extra-credit work, or so Claire had heard.
The history majors liked to call his class Andersonville, which was a not very funny reference to the Civil War prison camp. Claire had studied her brains out, and she was absolutely sure that she would ace the test, and have extra time left over.
She stopped off in the restroom, since she was a little early, and carefully balanced her backpack against the wall of the bathroom stall as she did her business. She was going over dates and events in her head when she heard a soft, muffled laugh from near the sinks. Something about it made her freeze—it wasn’t innocent, that laugh. There was something weird about it.
“I hear there’s a test in Andersonville today,” a voice said. A familiar one. It was Monica Morrell. “Hey, does this color look okay?”
“Nice,” Gina said, fulfilling her job as Affirmation Friend #1. “Is that the new winter red?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to shimmer. Is it shimmering? ”
“Oh yeah.”
Claire flushed the toilet, grabbed her backpack, and braced herself for impact. She tried to look as if she didn’t care a bit that Monica, Gina, and Jennifer were occupying three out of the four sinks in the bathroom. Or that the rest of the place was deserted.
Monica was touching up her hooker-red lipstick, blowing kisses at her reflection. Claire kept her eyes straight ahead. Get the soap. Turn on the water. Wash—
“Hey, freak, you’re in Andersonville, right?”
Claire nodded. She scrubbed, rinsed, and reached for the paper towels.
Jennifer snagged her backpack and pulled it out of her reach.
“Hey!” Claire grabbed for her stuff, but Jennifer dodged out of her way, and then Monica took hold of her wrist and snapped something cold and metallic around it. For a crazy second Claire thought, She’s switched bracelets with me. Now I’m Oliver’s property. . . .
But it was the cold metal of a handcuff, and Monica bent down and fastened the other end to the metal post on the bottom of the nearest bathroom stall.
“Well,” she said as she stepped back and put her hands on her hips, “I guess you’ll be finding out just how tough the little general can be, Claire. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’re so smart, you’ll just fill in those test answers by the power of your mind or something. ”
Claire yanked uselessly at the handcuffs, even though she knew that was stupid; she wasn’t going anywhere. She kicked the bathroom stall. It was tough enough to stand up to generations of college students; her frustration wasn’t going to make a dent.
“Give me the key!” she yelled. Monica dangled it in front of her—small, silver, and unreachable.
“This key?” Monica tossed it into the toilet in the first stall and flushed. “Oops. Wow, that’s a shame. You wait here. I’ll get help!”
They all laughed. Jennifer contemptuously shoved her backpack across the floor to her. “Here,” Jennifer said. “You might want to cram for the test or something.”
