Bitter Blood (36 page)

“You wanted this?” he asked.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Tyler shouted. “That’s expensive pro equipment, man! I’ll sue your ass!”

Shane jogged back up the steps and held it under the porch light. “Dammit,” he said. “Michael—you got the memory card, but this thing was broadcasting straight on broadband, too. The memory card was just backup. They’ve rigged it so it can record without the light coming on.”

Michael rounded on Tyler, whose face had gone pale. “Where did it broadcast to?”

“Dude, you’re wrong. Yeah, sure it’s got the capability, but I didn’t even switch it on—”

“That’s a lie,” Michael said, and grabbed him by the collar. “Tell me another one; go ahead.”

“Let him go.” Jenna’s voice was cool, calm, and focused, and they all looked at her. Michael let go of Tyler, because Jenna was holding a gun. It was something semiautomatic; Claire couldn’t tell the caliber, but it didn’t really matter. Michael wouldn’t be scared of it, but getting holes put in him and healing up would be just as damning, if not more so, than what they already had recorded on Miranda. So he held his hands up and stepped back.

“That’s not going to look so good on camera,” Michael said. “Better rethink it.”

“I’m just defending my friends from some scary people,” Jenna said, “and besides, by the magic of editing, they’ll never see I was armed, anyway. Now let’s all just calm down, okay? This doesn’t have to get any crazier.” She jerked her head at Tyler. “Get the camera and get your ass to the van. We have editing to do.”

“We could stream it live,” Angel suggested.

“Don’t be stupid, Angel; you don’t waste a revelation like this on a couple of thousand people who stumble over it on the Web. This is a major TV event, maybe even pay-per-view. We’re going to tease the hell out of it for weeks before we put a single frame of it out. Tyler!” She raised her voice to a whip crack, and the camera monkey scrambled up the steps and took the recorder out of Shane’s unresisting hands. “You don’t know what you’ve got here. Or what’s coming. You’re going to need us, trust me.
Miranda
needs us. This whole town is going to be famous.”

She was probably going to say more, but she never got the chance, because a dark-clothed figure came out of the shadows behind the trees, and before Claire could draw a breath, the figure knocked Jenna out of the way, spinning her to the ground. The gun tumbled away, lost in the sparse, weedy grass.

The intruder showed a flash of a pale face, red eyes, a young woman’s crimson smile, and in a heartbeat more, she had hold of her target.

Not Jenna, after all.

Angel. The vampire clapped a hand over his mouth when he tried to speak and said, “Hush, now, pretty. What will all the neighbors think if you make a fuss?”

Tyler mumbled out a curse, and ran for the van. He made it as far as the fence before another vampire ghosted out in front of him.

Jason.

Eve’s brother looked just as demented as he had earlier, and Claire shuddered at the smile he turned first on Tyler, and then on his sister. “Hey, Eve. You don’t write, you don’t call…but at least you brought us dinner. That’s nice.”

“No!” Eve dashed forward and put herself between Tyler and
Jason. “No, Jase. What the hell are you doing? They’re not from here! You can’t just—”

“I hate that word.
Can’t
. Fact is, I can, big sister. I can do anything I want. So can Marguerite, here. And Jerold, he’s back there somewhere…. Wave to my nice sister, Jerold.” Claire turned. There was a vampire crouched on the edge of the steep roof, staring down at them with a knowing smile. He waved. “See, we have privileges now. We get to hunt if we want. And we really do want. So if you don’t choose to be on the menu, turn your ass around and walk back in the house and shut the door. Hell, you were just arguing with these fools. Why do you care?”

“I—” Eve didn’t really have a comeback for that. “It’s not about them. I don’t want to see you…be this. God, Jason. Is this how it’s going to be? You weren’t bad enough already?”

“No,” he said, very rationally. “I’ve never been bad enough to keep the bad stuff from happening to me. Until now.” He waited. Eve didn’t move. “Okay then. I’m going to be kind this time. We can share just this one. You can keep the other ones.” He snapped his fingers, and Marguerite, the one who had Angel, nodded. She picked Angel up in her arms—quite a feat, because the man was bigger, taller, and panicked—and before any of them could draw breath, she just…disappeared.

Michael started to run after her, but he came up short when Jerold dropped off the roof into his path. In one gloved hand, he held a glass bottle that swirled with silver. “We learned this from you,” Jerold said. “You started fighting your own kind, and we’re going to fight back. You like this stranger enough to burn for him, Michael?”

“No!” Eve looked pleadingly at her brother—who, whether she liked it or not, clearly was in charge. “No, come on, please—Jason, don’t. Don’t hurt him.”

“If he stays out of our way, he’ll be fine,” Jason said. “Ditto for you, and Claire, and Shane; I’ll leave you alone. But it’s a new day around here. Our day. And the sun’s never coming up to spoil it for us.”

Somewhere out in the darkness, there was a pained cry. Angel. Claire tried desperately to think what to do, but there was nothing. They had weapons but Michael had just been outflanked; Shane just had stakes, and although Eve had a crossbow, she didn’t seem inclined to use it on her own brother.

I need to do something,
Claire thought.
Anything. I need to save him.

“Jason, if you let him go, I think we can make some kind of deal,” she said, talking as fast as she could. She didn’t even know what she was saying. “Look, I’ll even let you bite me—two pints for the guy you just took. Come on, it’s a good deal. I’ll get it witnessed at Common Grounds, we can put it in writing, and—”

“Shut up,” Jason said, still smiling. “I don’t want a measly two pints, like I’m out for a beer with the guys. I want to
hunt
. Button it if you don’t want to play the rabbit, little girl.”

She shut her eyes and tried to think what to do. There were three vampires, and even though she and her friends outnumbered them, it would be a tough fight, and probably one of them would be badly hurt, maybe killed. She’d never hated math so much in her life.

Shane put his arm around her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “You can’t, Claire. You can’t save everybody.”

And God, he was right; he was right and she hated that, too.

“All right,” she said. “Eve—call the cops. Hurry.”

Eve nodded and ran into the house. Jason laughed out loud.

“Good call,” he said. “And nice counter, but the cops ain’t gonna catch us, and you know it. They know better than to try. Nice doing business with you folks.” He touched a finger to his forehead in ironic salute. “Catch you later.”

“Wait!” Jenna blurted. “Wait, what about Angel, what—”

“Pretty lady really doesn’t get it, does she?” Jason said. “Explain it to her. I’m starving.”

And then he and Jerold were just…gone. Like smoke on the wind. And Angel had stopped crying out, though whether that was due to being gagged or being dead, Claire couldn’t tell and didn’t want to imagine. Her whole body ached with strain, and she wanted to throw up.
What did I just do?
Nothing. She’d saved the life of one of her friends, probably. At the cost of Angel’s.

When she tried to take a step, she staggered and almost went down. Shane caught her and held her up. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. The cops will be on the case.”

Claire knew he didn’t believe that any more than she did. The cops wouldn’t be on the case; they wouldn’t dare, unless Amelie or Oliver directed them to stop the hunting. After all, Jason—like Michael—had
privileges.

And Angel had technically been fair game…unProtected, a stranger.

It meant, though, that there’d be some necessary cover-up with Jenna and Tyler. Either their memories would be altered to explain away Angel’s disappearance or death, or they’d face the same fate.
Ten minutes ago you were throwing them out of the house,
she reminded herself.
They were going to go public about Miranda. About Morganville.

“Check the van,” she said to Shane. “See if Tyler was telling the truth. If they streamed that video to a server in their van…”

“Got it,” he said, and jogged away to the vehicle. It was unlocked—trusting bunch—and he slid back the cargo door to climb inside.

“Hey!” Tyler snapped out of his stunned trance, and color flooded his face. “Hey, get the hell out of there—there’s delicate equipment in there!” He charged for the van, but Michael caught
up and stopped him with nothing but a look. That didn’t, however, stop Tyler from talking. “We have rights, you know. You touch anything in that van and I’ll sue your asses off!” It was obviously something he could seize on, something real and reassuring in a world that had drunkenly upended on him. He had to know Miranda was the real thing, but that was at least partly in his comfort zone, or he wouldn’t be doing the
After Death
show. But being stalked and preyed on by vampires—even if nobody had said they were vampires—was different. And there was a feverishly bright light in his eyes that reflected as much fear as it did anger.

“Easy,” Michael said. “Wait.” He kept a hand outstretched, palm out, to ward Tyler off if he continued his rush forward, but Tyler just paced, staring past Michael at the van.

And then at Shane, who stepped out of it about half a minute later. “Video’s on their server, Mike. What do you want me to do?”

This time, when Michael focused on Tyler, he wasn’t playing around. Red swirled in his irises, and Claire felt a force coming out of him—what it was, she couldn’t say, but it was powerful. “Is that the only copy left?” he asked Tyler. Even his voice sounded different, somehow. Less human.

“Yes,” Tyler said, and blinked. “I mean, no! It streamed to the Internet already….”

“Yeah, that’s a lie.” Michael glanced back at Shane and nodded. “It’s the only copy. Wipe it.”

“No!” Tyler’s cry was furious and agonized, but he didn’t try to go up against Michael, either. He must have sensed how dangerous it was to try.

Jenna didn’t even protest. She slumped down on the ground, sitting cross-legged, and put her head in her hands. “He didn’t believe,” she said. “Angel never really believed. God. I shouldn’t have
gotten him into this. I should have made him go home….” She sounded tired, and Claire remembered with a chill what Miranda had said. All around her, invisible here in the real world beyond the Glass House, ghosts were crowded around Jenna, breaking off pieces of her in some strange psychic way and consuming the tasty strength she’d brought to town.

Making themselves stronger.

Silence. Profound silence, broken by the distant, frantic barking of a dog.

“Come on,” Michael said, and took Tyler by the arm. “Let’s get inside.”

Claire went to Jenna and offered her a hand. She looked at it, then her, and finally nodded and rose. “This is crazy,” Jenna told her.

“I know,” she said. “Come inside.”

She paused on the doorstep to watch as Shane jogged back to join them. Nothing loomed out of the darkness to menace him…this time. Once he was in, she closed and locked the door, and took a moment to lean her head against the wood.

I’m sorry,
she told the vanished Angel. In his way, he’d been charming.
I wish…

But she didn’t even know how to finish the thought.

T
he trick to doing the impossible, I’ve found, is to simply never think past what is at your fingertips. Do the thing in front of you. Then the next. Then the next. In such ways have men built the pyramids, or climbed mountains, or raced to the moon on rockets.

And that is how I had carved, inch by painful inch, the niches for my hands and feet in the stone wall of the oubliette. I did not look up; I did not look down. I looked only at the task before me, and ignored the pain as a side effect. I’d had enough practice at that, certainly.

With enough concentration, the panic attacks faded into a running babble at the back of my mind, like a fast-rushing river that became background noise I didn’t feel the need to heed. In a way, it was a comforting sort of distraction. It was a bit like not
being alone, even if my only real company was my own horribly distorted, screaming mind.

I found out just how far I’d ascended the hard way, when I lost my concentration, and losing my concentration was
not my fault.
I was remarkably centered, but when suddenly there was a sensation inside my mind that felt like cold, icy fingers shuffling through my thoughts, and…well. One does tend to get distracted when something like that happens.

My fingers slipped, then my bare toes, and as I fell—counting the feet on the way down, my goodness, nearly ten steps completed—I saw Claire’s face. Just a flash of it, pale and worried. And another face, a woman’s, with pale gold hair and light-colored eyes. It was not Amelie, though in some ways the resemblance was there…. It was someone I didn’t know.