Midnight Bites (12 page)

“Here it comes,” she said, and transferred the stare to her sister. “I'm sorry. I love you.”

And then something bad happened, and the world ended.

•   •   •

I walked away from the smoking wreckage. Staggered, actually, coughing and carrying the limp body of Miranda; she was alive, bleeding from the head but still alive.

My brain wouldn't bring up anything about Trent, Jane, or Guy. Nothing. It just . . . refused.

I walked until I heard sirens and saw flashing lights, and dropped to my knees, with Miranda in my lap.

The first cop on the scene was Richard Morrell, the son of the mayor. I'd always thought that even though his family was poisonous, he was kind of a nice guy; he proved that now by easing Miranda out of my arms and to the ground, cushioning her head gently to keep it from bumping against the pavement. His warm hand pressed on my shoulder. “Eve. Eve. Anybody else in there?”

I nodded slowly. “Jane. Trent. Guy.” Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe I'd imagined all of that. Maybe they were about to crawl out of that twisted mass of metal and laugh and high-five. . . .

Too much imagination. I imagined dead, bloody bodies crawling
out of the wreck, and swayed. Nearly collapsed. Richard steadied me. “Easy,” he said. “Easy, kid. Stay with me.”

I did. Somehow, I stayed conscious even when the ambulance drivers wheeled the gurneys past me. Miranda was taken first, of course, and rushed off to the hospital with flashers and sirens.

They didn't bother hurrying for the others. They just loaded the black zippered bags into one ambulance, and it drove away. The fire department hosed down the wreck, and it smelled like burned metal and reeking plastic, alcohol, blood. . . .

I was still kneeling there on the pavement, pretty much forgotten, when Richard finally came back, did a double take, and looked grim. “Nobody came to get you? From your family?”

“You called them?”

“Yeah, I called,” he said. “Come on. I'll take you home.”

I wiped my face. The white makeup was almost gone, and my skin was wet; I hadn't even known I was crying.

Not a mark on me.

Sit here,
Miranda had told me.
Right here.
Like she'd known. Like she'd picked me over her own sister.

I couldn't stop shaking. Officer Morrell found a blanket in the back of his patrol car and threw it around my shoulders, and then he bundled me in the back and drove me the five miles back home. All the lights were on at my parents' house, but it didn't look welcoming. I checked the time on my cell phone.

Four a.m.

“Hey,” Richard said. “It's the big day, right? Time to grow up, Eve. I'm sorry about your friends, but you need to focus now. Make the right choices. You understand?”

He was trying to be kind, as much as he knew how to be; must have been hard, considering the asshole genes he'd been given. I tried to think what his sister, Monica, would have said in the same
situation.
What a bunch of trashed-out losers. They shouldn't be in our cemetery. We've got a perfectly good landfill.

I knew Monica too well, but that wasn't Richard's fault. I nodded to him numbly, gave back the blanket, and walked up the ten steps from the curb to my parents' front door.

It opened before I reached for the knob, and I was facing Brandon, the family's vampire Protector.

“I've been waiting for you, Eve,” he said, and stepped back. “Come in.”

I swallowed whatever smart-ass remark I might normally have given him, and looked back over my shoulder. Richard Morrell was looking through the window of the police cruiser at me, and he gave a friendly wave and drove off. Like I was in good hands.

You know every stereotype of the romantic, brooding vampire? Well, that's Brandon. Dark, broody, bedroom eyes, wore a lot of black leather. Liked to think he was badass, and what the hell did I know? Maybe he was.

I hated his guts, and he knew it.

“Honey?” Mom. She was hovering behind Brandon, looking timid and nervous. “Better come inside. You know you shouldn't be out there in the dark.”

Dad was nowhere to be seen. I bit my tongue and crossed the threshold, and when Brandon closed the door behind me, it was like the cell slamming shut.

“I was in an accident,” I said. Mom looked at me. We didn't look much alike, even when I wasn't Gothed up. . . . She had fading brown hair and green eyes, and I took after Dad's darker looks. I sometimes thought maybe this was some kind of play, and Mom was an actress, and not a very good one, playing the role of my mother. She phoned in her performance.

“Officer Morrell called,” she said. “But he said you weren't hurt.
And you know, we had a guest.” She smiled at Brandon. My skin tried to crawl off my bones.

“Three of my friends were killed,” I said.

“Oh dear!”

“Once more with feeling, Mom.”

“Any of mine?” Brandon asked casually. I gritted my teeth, because I wanted to scream and hit him, and that wouldn't have done me any good at all.

“N-no,” I managed to stammer. “Jane Blunt, Trent Garvey, and Guy—” What the hell was Guy's last name? I wanted to cry now. Or keep crying. “Guy Finelli.”

Brandon smiled. “Sounds as if Charles had a bad night.” Charles being a rival vamp. I knew he was the Protector for Jane's family. I hadn't known he'd been responsible for one or both of the others. Charles was just the opposite of Brandon—a bookish little man, soft-spoken and mild until you pushed him. Not a bad choice, if I had to go shopping for Protectors, I supposed.

God, I hated this. I wanted this over.

“Let's just do it,” I said, and walked down the hallway to the living room. Predictably, Dad was parked in his recliner with an open beer, probably working on his usual six-pack. He was a bloated vision of my future—two hundred and fifty pounds, sallow and grim and full of rage and resentment he couldn't fling anywhere but around here, in the house. He managed the biggest local bar, which of course was owned by Brandon. All nice and tidy. Brandon owned the mortgage on the house. Brandon owned the notes on our cars.

Brandon owned us.

And now Brandon was smiling at me, all sleek and horrible with those hungry, hungry eyes, and he was taking a folded, thick sheaf of papers out of the pocket of his long black coat.

“You only wear that thing because you saw it on TV,” I said, and
snatched the paperwork from him. I read the first bit.
I, Eve Evangeline Walker Rosser, swear my life, my blood, and my service to my Protector Brandon, now and for my lifetime, that my Protector may command me in all things.

This was it. I was holding my future in my hands, right here.

Brandon held out a pen. My father tore his attention away from the glowing escape of the television and took a sip of beer, watching me with dead, angry intensity. My mother looked nervous, fluttering her hands as I stared without blinking at the black Montblanc the vampire was holding out.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Brandon said. “There's a signing bonus. Ten thousand dollars.”

“Guess I could bury my friends in style with that,” I said.

“You don't have to worry about that.” Brandon shrugged. “Their family contracts cover that sort of thing.”

Mom sensed what I was thinking, I guess, because she blurted, “Eve, honey, let's hurry. Brandon does have places to go.” She encouraged me with little vague motions of her hands, and her eyes were desperate.

I took a deep breath, held the crisp paper in both hands, and ripped it in half. The sound was almost drowned out by my mother's horrified gasp, and the sound of the beer can crushing in my father's hand.

“You ungrateful little freak,” Dad said. “You disrespect your Protector like that? To his face?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much just like that.” I ripped the contract in quarters, and threw it at him. The paper fluttered like huge confetti, one piece landing on his shoulder until Brandon calmly brushed it off. “Fuck off, Brandon. I'm not signing with you.”

“No one else will take you,” he said. “And you're mine, Eve. You've always been mine. Don't forget it.”

My Dad got out of his recliner and grabbed my arm. “You're
signing that paper,” he said, and shook me like a terrier shaking a rat. “Don't be stupid!”

“I'm not signing anything!” I screamed, right in his face, and took Brandon's expensive pen and stomped on it with my Mary Janes until it was a leaking black stain on the floor. “You can be slaves if you want, but not me! Not ever again!”

Brandon didn't look angry. He looked amused. That was bad.

Dad shoved me and sent me reeling. “Then you're gone,” he said. “I won't have you in my house, eating my food, stealing my money. If you want to go out there bare, then do it. See how long you last.”

I was stunned, at least a little; he'd never done that before, even though he'd never really loved me. I backed away from him, into Mom. She got out of the way, but then, she always did, didn't she? She had all the backbone of a balloon.

She avoided my eyes completely. “You'd better go, honey,” she said. “You made your choice.”

I turned and ran down the hall to my room, slammed the door, and dragged my biggest suitcase out from under the bed. I couldn't take much, I knew that; even taking a suitcase was risky, because it slowed me down. But I couldn't wait for dawn; I had to get out of here now, before Brandon stopped me. He wasn't supposed to use compulsion on me, but that didn't mean he wouldn't.

Or that my parents wouldn't. For my own good, of course.

I filled up the bag with underwear, shoes, clothes, a few mementos that I couldn't leave, just in case Dad decided to load the barbecue grill with my belongings the minute I was out the door. I left the family photos. Mom and Dad weren't fond memories, and neither was my brother, Jason, who was better off in jail, where he was currently rotting.

I went out the back door, since Brandon was still talking to Mom
and Dad in the front, and dragged the suitcase as quietly as possible across the backyard to the alley. Alleys in Morganville are freaky at night, and wildly dangerous, but I didn't have much choice. I hurried, bouncing my suitcase over rough, rutted ground and past foul-smelling trash bins, until I was on the street.

And I realized I had no idea where to go. No idea at all. All the friends I'd had were dead—dead tonight—and I couldn't even really grieve about that; I didn't have time. Lifesaving had to come first, right? That was what I kept telling myself.

Didn't help me carry that giant boulder of guilt on my back.

Cabs didn't run at night, because cabbies knew better, and besides, there were only two in the whole town. No bus service. At night, either you drove or you stayed home, and even driving was dangerous if you were un-Protected.

I could go to the local motel for the night, the Sagebrush, but it was a good twenty-minute walk, and I didn't think I had twenty minutes. Not tonight. I'd officially forfeited Brandon's Protection when I'd ripped up that paper, and that meant I was an all-you-can-suck buffet until I got somebody to take me in. Houses had automatic Protection. Any house.

Michael.

I don't know why I thought of Michael Glass, but all of a sudden I had a flashback to the last time I'd seen him, playing guitar in Common Grounds, the local hot-spot coffee shop. I'd gone to high school with Michael, crushed hard on Michael from a distance, and semi-stalked him after he graduated, attending every single gig he'd landed in Morganville. He was good, you see. And a sweetheart. And little baby Jesus, he was hot. And he had his own house.

I knew the Glass House. It was one of the historic homes of Morganville, all gently decaying Gothic elegance, and Michael's parents
had moved out on waivers two years ago. Michael lived there all alone, as far as I knew.

And it was only three blocks away.

I had no idea if he was home, or if he'd be stupid enough to let me in when I was running for my life, but it was worth a try, right? I broke into a jog, the wheels of my suitcase making a whirring, grating hiss on the sidewalk. The night felt deep and dark, no moon, only starlight, and it smelled like cold dust. Like a graveyard. Like my graveyard.

I thought of Trent, Guy, and Jane, in their silent black bags. Maybe they were in cold metal drawers by now, filed away. Lives over.

I didn't want to be dead. I didn't.

So I ran, bumping my suitcase behind me.

I didn't see a soul on the streets. No cars, no lights in windows, no shadows trailing me. It was eerily quiet outside, and my heart was racing. I wished I had weapons, but those were hard to come by in Morganville, and besides, I had nosy parents who trashed my room regularly looking for contraband of all kinds. Being under eighteen sucked.

Being over eighteen wasn't looking so great, either.

I heard the hiss of tires behind me, over the puffing of my breath, and the low growl of a car engine. I looked back, hoping to see Richard Morrell following me in the police car, but no such luck; it was a nondescript black sports car with dark-tinted windows.

Vampire car. No question.

Two more blocks.

The car seemed content to creep along behind me, tires crunching over pavement, and I had plenty of panic time to wonder who was inside. Brandon, in the back, almost certainly. But Brandon wouldn't
be the one to fang me, although he'd probably take his turn before I was dead. He had people to do that for him.

The suitcase hit a crack in the sidewalk and tipped over, dragging me to an off-balance halt. I saw a light go on in one of the houses I was passing, and a curtain twitch aside, and then the blinds snapped shut and the lights flicked off. No help there. But then, in Morganville, that wasn't unusual.

I wasn't crying, but it was close; I could feel tears burning in my throat, right above the terror twisting my guts.
This was your choice,
I told myself.
You couldn't do anything else.