Midnight Bites

PRAISE FOR THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES NOVELS

“Rachel Caine is a first-class storyteller who can deal out amazing plot twists as though she was dealing cards.”

—#1
New York Times
bestselling author Charlaine Harris

“Fast-paced adventure. . . . Claire's tough-girl attitude may remind adult readers of Rachel Morgan and her world of human-vampire interactions. A tremendously popular series.”

—
Booklist

“Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series is my all-time favorite. I love love love the characters, the town, and the surprising plots.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Maria V. Snyder

“An intriguing world where vampires rule, only the strongest survive, and romance offers hope in the darkest of hours.”

—Darque Reviews

“Caine's signature rapid-fire pace, plot twists, and excellent character development deliver another stellar installment to the series.”

—Monsters and Critics

“Fans of
Twilight
really should check this out.”

—Word Nerd

“Filled with delicious twists that the audience will appreciatively sink their teeth into.”

—Genre Go Round Reviews

“If you love to read about characters with whom you can get deeply involved, Rachel Caine is so far a one hundred percent sure bet to satisfy that need.”

—The Eternal Night

“[Caine's] imagination easily tops the average. . . . Her suspense scenes, the heart of this series, crackle with vitality. . . . This series continues to provide terrific action and great entertainment.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Fantastic.”

—Fresh Fiction

“Every time I think Rachel Caine can't top herself, she does.”

—Fiction Vixen

ALSO BY RACHEL CAINE

THE GREAT LIBRARY

Ink and Bone

Prince of Shadows

THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES NOVELS

Glass Houses

The Dead Girls' Dance

Midnight Alley

Feast of Fools

Lord of Misrule

Carpe Corpus

Fade Out

Kiss of Death

Ghost Town

Bite Club

Last Breath

Black Dawn

Bitter Blood

Fall of Night

Daylighters

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

Published by New American Library,

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of New American Library.

Copyright © Rachel Caine LLC, 2016

For additional copyright information, see the end of the book.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-98979-1

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-I
N-PUBLICATION DATA:

Names: Caine, Rachel, author.

Title: Midnight bites: stories of the Morganville Vampires/Rachel Caine.

Description: New York: New American Library, [2016] | 2015 |

Series: The Morganville Vampires |

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041861 | ISBN 9781101989784 (paperback)

Subjects: | CYAC: Vampires—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | University towns—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION/Short Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION/Love & Romance.

Classification: LCC PZ7.C1198 Mid 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041861

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

WELCOME BACK TO MORGANVILLE

I never thought I'd get to say that, but after receiving many, many requests for some kind of collection of all the various short stories I've written in the world of Morganville, I began to consider the idea of putting them all together—all the one-offs, exclusives, and Web stories. All the stories that were published only in certain languages or countries.

But the one thing I did
not
want to do was just give you things you could (with great effort) put together for yourself. I needed to be sure you got good stuff. New stuff.

So there are included in this anthology, thanks to the incredible generosity of my six Kickstarter backers for the Web series of Morganville, six original tales for you to enjoy. These backers have hardcover editions of these stories in a special coffee-table collection, but they've been kind enough to let me share the Morganville love with all of you, too. So where those stories appear, you'll see their names attached to them, with special thanks.

Each story has a little introduction and backstory with it, from me.

One final note: I resisted calling this
The Complete Collection
, because I don't think I'm done with Morganville yet (or it isn't done with
me).
Because, as you know, once you're a Morganville resident . . . you'll never want to leave.

—Rachel
Caine

This story came about just because I wanted to know more about Myrnin for my own understanding of his character, and sometimes, the best way to achieve that is to write a character's history from his or her point of view. The character tells me what is important, and what changed, for better or worse. Discovering that Myrnin's father had some type of mental disorder was important to me, because of course when he was born, such things weren't really understood. When I was working on the draft of the first book in which Myrnin appeared, my coworker who read it said, “Oh, you've written a bipolar character, and he's actually really cool! Did you know that I take medication for that?” She went on to relate all the ways he was familiar to her. I was amazed, and honored. I won't name the coworker, for privacy, but I say now, as then: Thank you for sharing your story with me, and you know who you are. I hope Myrnin continues to make you proud.

I
grew up knowing that I would go insane. My mother spared no chance to tell me so; I was, on regular occasions, walked up the road to the small, windowless shack with its padlocked door and introduced to my dirty, filthy, rag-clad father, who scratched at the walls of his prison until his fingers bled and whimpered like a child in the harsh glare of daylight.

I still remember standing there, looking in on him, and the hard, hot weight of my mother's hand on my shoulder to keep me from running, either toward him or away from him. I must have been five years old, perhaps, or six; I was old enough to know not to show any sign of distress or weakness. In my household, distress earned you slaps and blows until your tears stopped. Weakness invited far worse.

I don't remember what she told me on the first visit, but I do remember the ritual went on for years—up the road, unlocking the chains, rattling them back, shouting through the door, then opening it to reveal the pathetic monster within.

When I was ten, the visits stopped, but only because on that last occasion the door swung open to reveal my father dead in the corner of the hut, curled into a ball. He looked like a wax dummy, I thought, or something dug up in the bogs, unearthed after a thousand years of silent neglect.

He hadn't starved. He'd expired of some fit, which no one found surprising in the least. He was buried in haste, with decent rites but few mourners.

My mother attended the funeral, but only because it was expected, I thought. I can't say I felt any different.

After the burial, she took me aside and looked at me fiercely. We shared many things, my mother and I, but her eyes were brown, and mine were very dark, black in most light. That I had from my father. “Myrnin,” she said, “I've had an offer to apprentice you. I'm going to take it. It's one fewer mouth to feed. You'll be on your way in the morning. Say good-bye to your sisters.”

My sisters and I shared little except a roof, but I did as I was bid, exchanged polite, cold kisses and lied about how I would miss them. In none of this did I have a choice—not my family nor my apprenticeship. My mother would be relieved to be rid of me; I knew that. I could see it in her face. It was not only that she wanted fewer children underfoot; it was that she feared me.

She feared I was like my father.

I didn't fear that. I feared, in fact, that I would be much, much worse.

•   •   •

In the morning, a knock came at the door of our small cottage well before dawn. We were rural folk, used to rising early, but this was far too early even for us. My mother was drowsy and churlish as she pulled a blanket over her shoulders and went to see who it was. She came back awake and looking more than a little frightened, and sat on my small cot, which was separated a little from the bed in which my three sisters slept. “It's time,” she said. “They've come for you. Get your things.”

My things were hardly enough to fill out a small bundle, but she'd
sacrificed part of the cheese, and some ends of the bread, and some precious smoked meat. I wouldn't starve, even if my new master forgot to feed me (as I'd heard they sometimes did). I rose without a word, put on my leather shoes for traveling, and my woolen wrap. We were too poor to afford metal pins, so, like my mother and sisters, I fastened it with a small wooden peg. It was the nicest thing I owned, the woolen wrap, dyed a deep green like the forest in which we lived. I think it had been a gift from my father when I was born.

At the door, my mother stopped me and put her hands on my shoulders. I looked up at her and saw something in her lined, hard face that puzzled me. It was a kind of fear, and . . . sadness. She pulled me into her arms and gave me a hard, uncomfortable hug, all bones and muscle, and then shoved me back to arm's length. “Do as you're told, boy,” she said, and then pushed me out into the weak, gray predawn light, toward a tall figure sitting on a huge dark horse.

The door slammed shut behind me, cutting off any possibility of escape, not that there was any refuge possible with my family. I stood silently, looking up, and up, at that hooded, heavily cloaked figure on the horse. There was a suggestion of a face in the shadows, but little else that I could make out. The horse snorted mist on the cold air and pawed the ground as if impatient to be gone.

“Your name,” the figure said. He had a deep, cultured voice, but something in it made me afraid. “Speak up, child.”

“Myrnin, sir.”

“An old name,” he said, and it seemed he liked that. “Climb up behind me. I don't like being out in the sun.”

That seemed odd, because once the sun rose, the chill burned off; this was a fair season, little chance of snow. I noticed he had expensively tailored leather gloves on his hands, and his boots seemed heavy and thick beneath the long robes. I was conscious of my own poor cloth, the thin sandals that were the only footwear I owned. I
wondered why someone like him would want someone like me—there were poor folk everywhere, and children were ten a spit for the taking. I stared at him for a long moment, not sure what to do. The horse, after all, was very tall, and I was not.

Also, the horse was eyeing me with a clear sense of dislike.

“Enough of that. Come on,” my new master snapped, and held out his gloved hand. I took it, trying not to tremble too much, and before I could even think, he'd pulled me straight up onto the back of that gigantic beast, into a thoroughly uncomfortable position behind him on the hard leather pad. I wrapped my arms around him, more out of sheer panic than trust, and he grunted and said, “Hold on, boy. We'll be moving fast.”

I shut my eyes and pressed my face to his cloak as the horse lunged; the world spun and tilted and then began to speed by, too fast, too fast. My new master didn't smell like anyone I'd ever known: no stench of old sweat, and only a light odor of mold to his clothes. Herbs. He smelled like sweet summer herbs.

I don't know how long we rode—days, most certainly; I felt sick and light-headed most of the time. We did stop from time to time to allow me to choke down water or bites of bread and meat, or for the more necessary bodily functions . . . but my new lord ate little, and if he was subject to the needs of the body, I saw no sign of it.

He wore the cloak's hood up, always. I got only the smallest glimpses of his face. He looked younger than I would have thought—only ten years older than me, if that. Odd, to be so young and rumored to have such knowledge.

I ached everywhere, in every muscle and bone, until it made me want to weep. I didn't. I gritted my teeth and held on without a whimper as we rode, and rode, through misty cold mornings and chilly evenings and icy dark nights.

I had no eyes for the land around us, but even I could not mistake
how it changed from the deep green forest to slowly rolling hills with spottings of trees and brush. I didn't care for it, truth be told; it would be hard to hide out here.

On the morning when the fog lifted with the sun's determined glare, my master drew rein and stopped us on a hilltop. Below was a valley, neatly sectioned into fields. Up the rise of the next hill sprawled an enormous dark castle, four square corners and jutting towers. It was the biggest thing I had ever seen. You could have put ten of my small villages inside the walls, and still had room for guests.

I must have made some sound of amazement, because my master turned his head and looked back at me, and for a moment, just a moment, I thought that the sunrise turned his eyes to a fierce hot red. Then it was gone, in a flash.

“It's not so bad,” he said. “I hear you have a quick mind. We'll have much to learn together, Myrnin.”

I was too sore and exhausted to even try to make a run for it, and he didn't give me time to try; he spurred his horse on, down into the valley, and in an hour we were up the next hill, riding a winding, narrow road to the castle.

So began my apprenticeship to Gwion, lord of the place in which I was taken to learn my trade of alchemy, and wizardry, and what men today would call science. Gwion, you will not be surprised to hear, was no man at all, but a vampire, one older than any others alive at that time. His age surpassed even that of Bishop, who ruled the vampires in France with an iron hand until his daughter, Amelie, cleverly upended his rule.

But those are tales for another day, and enough of this gazing into the mirror.

I am Myrnin, son of a madman, apprentice to Gwion, and master of nothing.

And content I am to be
that.