Midnight Bites (20 page)

“Yo,” he said. I could hear the jocks pounding on the car. “I hope you're insured.”

“Now would be a good time for rescue,” I said.

“Well, I can either ask real nice if they'll move the cars, or jump the curb. Which do you want?”

“You're kidding. I've got about ten seconds to live.”

He stopped playing. “Which way?”

“South side of the building. There's three of us. Shane—”

“Coming,” Shane said, and hung up. I heard the sudden roar of an engine out in the parking lot, and the surprised drunken yells of the jocks as they tumbled off the hood of my car.

I began to shimmy out the window, but an iron grip closed around my left ankle, holding me in place. I looked back to see Mr. Ransom, eyes shining silver.

“I was trying to bring you help,” he said. “Did I do wrong?”

“You know, now's not really the time—” He didn't take the hint. Of course. I heard the approaching growl of the car engine. Shane was driving over the grass, tires shredding it on the way. I could hear other engines starting up—the football jocks. I wondered if they had any clue that half their team was doing broken-field running against a vampire right now. I hoped they had a good second string ready to play the next game.

Mr. Ransom wanted an answer. I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. “Asking Pennywell probably wasn't your best idea ever,” I said. “But, hey, good effort, okay? Now let go so I'm not the main course!”

“If you'd accepted my offer of Protection, you wouldn't have to worry,” he pointed out, and turned his gaze on poor Miranda. Before he could blurt out his sales pitch to her—and quite possibly succeed—I backed out of the window, hustled her up, and neatly guided her out just as my big black sedan slid to a stop three feet away. The back door popped open, and Claire, fairy wings all aflutter, pulled Miranda inside. It was like a military operation, only with one hundred percent less camouflage.

Mr. Ransom looked wounded at my initiative, but he shrugged and let me go. “Michael!” I yelled. He was down, blood on his face. Pennywell had the upper hand, and as Mr. Ransom turned away, he lunged for me.

Michael grabbed the vampire's knees and held on like a bulldog as Pennywell tried to get to me.

“Stake me!” I yelled to Shane, who rolled down the window and tossed me an iron spike.

A silver-coated iron railroad spike, that was. Shane had electroplated it himself, using a fish tank, a car battery, and some chemicals. As weapons went, it was heavy-duty and multipurpose. As Mr.
Pennywell ripped himself loose from Michael's grasp, he turned right into me. I smacked him upside the head with the blunt end of the silver spike.

Where the silver touched, he burned. Pennywell howled, rolled, and scrambled away from me as I reversed my hold on the spike so the sharper end faced him. I released the catch on my whip with my left hand and unrolled it with a snap of my wrist.

“Wanna try again?” I asked, and gave him a full-toothed smile. “Nobody touches up my boyfriend, you jerk. Or tries to bite me.”

He did one of those scary openmouthed snarls, the kind that made him look all teeth and eyes. But I'd seen that movie. I glared right back. “Michael?” I asked. He rolled to his feet, wiping blood from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Like me, he didn't take his eyes off Pennywell. “All in one piece?”

“Sure,” he said, and cast a very quick glance at me. “Damn, Eve. Hot.”

“What? The whip?”

“You.”

I felt a bubble of joy burst inside. “Out the window, you silver-tongued devil,” I told Michael. “Shane's wasting gas.” He was. He was revving the engine, apparently trying to bring a sense of drama to the occasion.

Michael didn't
you first
me, mainly because I had a big silver stake and I obviously wasn't afraid to use it. He slipped past me, getting only a little handsy, and was out the window and dropping lightly on the grass in about two seconds flat.

Leaving me facing Pennywell. All of a sudden, the stake didn't seem all that intimidating.

Mr. Ransom wandered in between the two of us, as if he'd just forgotten we were there. “Leave,” he told me. “Hurry.”

I quickly tossed my whip through the window, grabbed the frame
with my free hand, and swung out into the cool night air. Michael grabbed me by the waist and set me down, light as a feather, safe in the circle of his arms. I squeaked and made sure to keep the silver stake far away from him. It had hurt Pennywell, and it'd hurt Michael a whole lot worse.

“I'll take it,” Shane said. He shoved the spike back under the driver's seat. “Well? Are you two just going to make out or what?”

Not that we weren't tempted, but Michael hustled me into the car, slammed the door, and Shane hit the gas. We fishtailed in the grass for a few seconds, spinning tires, and then he got traction and the big car zoomed forward in a long arc around the field house, heading back toward the parking lot. Oncoming jocks dodged out of the way.

Pennywell showed up in our headlights about five seconds later, and he didn't move.

“Don't stop!” Michael said, and Shane threw him a harassed look in the rearview.

“Yeah, not my first night in Morganville,” he said. “No shit.” He pressed the accelerator instead. Pennywell dodged aside at the last minute, a matador with a bull, and when I looked back, he was standing in the parking lot, watching us leave. I didn't blink, and I watched until he turned his back on us and went after someone else.

I didn't want to watch after that.

We'd gone only about halfway home when Michael said, raggedly, “Stop the car.”

“Not happening,” Shane said. We were still in a not-great part of town, all too frequently used by unsavory characters, including vamps.

Michael just opened the door and threatened to bail. That made Shane hit the brakes, and the car shuddered and skidded to a stop under a streetlight. Michael stumbled away and put his hands flat on the brick of a boarded-up building. I could see him shuddering.

“Michael, get in the car!” I called. “Come on, it's not far! You can make it!”

“Can't.” He stepped back, and I realized his eyes were that same scary hell-red as Pennywell's. “Too hungry. I'm running out of time.” And so were we, because Pennywell could easily catch up to us, if he knew we'd stopped.

“We really don't have time for this,” Shane said. “Michael, I'll drop you at the blood bank. Get in.”

He shook his head. “I'll walk.”

Oh, the hell he would. Not like this.

I got out of the car and stepped up to him. “Can you stop?” I asked him. He blinked. “If I tell you to stop, will you stop?”

“Eve—”

“Don't even start with all the angst. You need it—I have it. I just need to know you can stop.”

His fangs came out, flipping down like a snake's, and for a second, I was sure this was a really, really bad idea. Then he said, “Yes. I can stop.”

“You'd better.”

“I . . .” He didn't seem to know what to say. I was afraid he'd think of something, something good, and I'd chicken right out.

“Just do it,” I whispered. “Before I change my mind, okay?”

Shane was saying something, and it sounded like he wasn't a fan of my solution, but we were all out of time, and anyway it was too late. Michael took my wrist and, with one slice of his fangs, opened the vein. It didn't hurt—well, not much—but it felt very weird at first. Then his lips closed softly over my skin, and I got the shivers all over, and it didn't feel weird at all. Not even the buzzing in my ears, or the waves of dizziness.

“Stop,” I said, after I'd counted to twenty. And he did. Instantly. Without any question.

Michael covered the wound with his thumb and pressed. His eyes faded back to blue, normal and real and human. He licked his lips, making sure every spot of blood was gone, and then said, “It'll stop bleeding in about a minute.” Then, in a totally different tone, “I can't believe you did that.”

“Why?” I felt a little weak at the knees, and I wasn't at all sure it was due to a sudden drop in blood pressure. “Why wouldn't I? With you?”

He put his arms around me and kissed me. That was a whole different kind of hunger, one I understood way better. Michael backed me up against the car and kissed me like it was the last night on earth, like the sun and stars would burn down before he'd let me go.

The only thing that slowed us down was Shane saying, very clearly, “I am driving off and leaving you here, I swear to God. You're embarrassing me.”

Michael pulled back just enough that our lips were touching, but not pressed together, and sighed. There was so much in that sound, all his longing and his fear and his need and his frustration. “Sorry,” he said.

I smiled. “For what?”

He was still holding his thumb over the wound on my wrist. “This,” he said, and pressed just a little harder before letting go. It didn't bleed.

I purred lightly, and nipped at his mouth. “I'm Catwoman,” I reminded him. “And it's just a scratch.”

Michael opened the car door for me, and handed me in like a lady.

Like his lady.

He got in, shut the door, and slapped the back of Shane's seat. “Home, driver.”

Shane sent him a one-fingered salute. Next to him, Claire gave me
a completely non-ethereal grin and snuggled in close to him as he drove.

Miranda said, dreamily, “One of us is going to be a vampire.”

“One of us already is,” I pointed out. Michael put his arm around me.

“Oh,” she said, and sighed. “Right.”

Except that Miranda never forgot a thing like that.

“Hey,” Michael said, and squeezed my shoulders lightly. “Tomorrow's tomorrow. Okay?”

“Tonight's tonight,” I agreed. “And tonight's good for me.”

One of the hard-to-find exclusive stories written specifically for the U.K. editions (which at the time were being published a month or two after the U.S. releases, meaning that die-hard fans rushed to buy internationally), it was offered as an extra to help the U.K. publisher convince fans there to wait for the local edition, and it seems to have worked!

I didn't give Shane his own car early on in the series for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it was fun for him to have to ask nicely for rides. The fact that he couldn't quite earn enough to buy his own said something about Shane's job-related experiences, too. But finally, at this particular point (after
Kiss of Death
, before
Bite Club
), Shane is ready to make the commitment.

I mostly love this story for the small-town details I got to put into it, and the introduction of Rad, the mechanic. Fun factoid: This story was inspired by my getting the rims on my car (a Smart car, which Shane would never drive, but Claire totally would) painted black. The shop salesperson said, “Oh, you mean you're murdering it out.” I'd never heard the term before, and loved it.

N
ormal life in Morganville. As far as normal ever was, Shane Collins thought; nobody was overtly rioting, getting arrested, or killing anyone.

Not on this street, anyway.

Being out in the open around dark was not his favorite survival strategy, but even though the Morganville Multiplex Cinema (three whole screens) tried to cram as many morning and afternoon showings in as practical, it wasn't always possible to avoid getting out later than was healthy for a regular human in Morganville, Texas.

“There's a reason those twilight shows are cheaper than the others,” he said to Claire Danvers, who was walking with her small hand in his large one, head down. Claire was thinking, but then, she was always thinking. It was part of what he loved about her. “I wish Eve would have come with us. At least then we'd have had wheels.”

“We'll be all right,” Claire said. She sounded confident about that. He wasn't, only because he was the guy, and therefore, by his logic, their survival on the way home sort of landed squarely on his shoulders. Claire was his girlfriend. That meant she was his to protect. He knew that if he said that out loud, she'd smack him, and mean it, but it was just how he felt about it.

And he was smart enough not to tell her.

“She and Michael were going out,” Claire said. “To that restaurant she likes. And then I guess they were going to the show, so it doesn't make sense for her to see it twice in one day.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It wasn't that good. I mean, don't get me wrong—I am all about the exploding things. But there's a pretty fine line between awesome and explode-o-porn.”

Claire laughed, a silvery little thing that made him want to stop, put his arms around her, and kiss the hell out of her, right here in front of Bernard's Best Resale Shoppe. He didn't, only because the sun was scraping the horizon, they had five blocks left to walk to get home to the Glass House, and anyway, kissing her would only make him want to kiss her even more.

Which would make them appetizers for the vampires already getting ready for their nightly strolls.

That was the thing about Morganville. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here. And honestly, Shane couldn't exactly define why it was he did live here. He could have left, he supposed. He had, once, and come back to do a job for his father, Fearless Frank the Vampire Hunter. But now he stayed because . . . because at least in here he understood things. He knew the rules, even if the rules were crappy and the game of survival was rigged.

He stayed because there were people here he loved. Claire, for a start, and as much as he felt for her, that would have been enough right there. But then there was Eve Rosser, who was like his annoying/sweet Gothed-out sister. And there was Michael Glass, who was his best friend.

Had been, anyway, before he'd opened the door to the wrong vampire, and now—now it was complicated. Having a best friend with fangs had never been in Shane's life strategy.

One thing about strategy, boy,
Fearless Frank had once told him, on one
of his more sober days.
It never fails to go to hell once you're knee-deep in the fight.

“Hey.” Claire nudged him. He nudged her back. “You're walking a little too fast.”

“What's long, your widdle short legs can't keep up?”

“Watch it. I am proportional.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Just the way I like it.”

“Stop that.” He loved seeing her blush like that, a creep of hot pink that bloomed from her cheeks and spread all the way down her throat, into the neck of her shirt.

“Stop what?”

“You know what!”

“What can I say? Explode-o-porn. It makes me crazy.” He waggled his eyebrows again. She laughed and blushed at the same time. All right, that did it. Sunset or not, he couldn't not kiss her.

He reached down, put his arms around her, and pulled her close. As he bent his head, hers came up, lovely and sweet and beautiful, her dark eyes shining. Her lips shimmered in the slanting orange light, until his were on them.

And oh God, it was good. Good enough to make him forget Morganville altogether, for the space of a long, sweet, damp kiss. And several seconds after, before a streetlight clicked on overhead with a hiss of burning filament, and reminded him why making out on the corner was a very bad idea.

The streets were deserted, except for a few people hurrying by in cars. He and Claire were the only pedestrians. Even so, it wasn't that far to the house, and they had time. Barely.

Until Claire, hurrying to keep up with his long strides, tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and went down, hard. He bent down next to her as she quickly pushed herself back up, hands and knees, gave him a wide-eyed look of shame, and started to rise.

Her ankle folded up under her. “Ow!” she yelped in surprise, and looked down at it. “Ow ow ow!” She took her weight off it, leaning on his arm, and he helped her limp over to a battered old wrought-iron bench. It creaked as they sat down on it, and he immediately slid off to crouch down, take her ankle in both his hands, and carefully probe it. She flinched as he started to move it around, and her face went white, but she didn't scream, and he didn't feel anything broken.

Not that she couldn't have broken one of the smaller bones in her foot. Happened all the time. Nothing they could do about it, even at the hospital, but he thought this was probably a sprain. A bad one. He could already see the smooth matte surface of her slender ankle starting to swell up.

She took out her cell phone and dialed without him saying a word, but closed it up after a moment. “Eve's phone goes to voice mail.”

“Try Michael's.” She did, and shrugged helplessly when she didn't get an answer. They both knew what that meant—Michael and Eve were having private time, and there would be no rescue coming from that quarter. For once. “Taxi?” Even as he said it, Shane shook his head. “Never mind; he won't get out this close to dark.”

They really didn't have time to debate it. What had been sort of theoretically dangerous before, when they were two healthy young people capable of running and fighting, had turned into a calculation. Claire, injured, was going to be irresistible bait. And not every vampire would check whether she had another vamp's Protection before digging in.

Amelie might be furious about it, later, but that wouldn't help Claire right now. And Shane didn't have any Protection at all, except the fact that he was tough to kill.

“Right,” he said, and stood up. “No arguments, okay?” He didn't wait for agreement, because he knew he probably wouldn't get it. He reached down, picked her up, and settled her in his arms. She wasn't
featherlight, but he'd carried heavier suitcases. And suitcases hardly ever put their arms around your neck, or let their head fall into the crook of your neck. All in all, the kind of burden he was happy to carry.

“You okay?” he asked her. He felt her nod, breath warm against his throat. “All right, you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

She laughed and snuggled closer. “You need a car,” she said.

Didn't he just?

•   •   •

They made it home without incident, thankfully, although Shane was almost sure they'd been followed the last block. By that time it had been nearly full dark, and he'd felt stares on him from half a dozen dark spots.

He managed to balance Claire's weight, unlock the front door, and kick it open with a bang as he stepped across the threshold. There was a weird kind of sensation to it, every time, as the house itself recognized him. Welcomed him home.

It meant that no vampire would be lunging in after him, at least.

He didn't trust it, though. He slammed the door shut, jammed a dead bolt home with his elbow, and yelled, “Yo, heads up! Little help here!” Because his arms were about to fall off. He moved forward, trying not to bang Claire's injured ankle against the walls or the furniture, and by the time he'd emerged at the end of the hallway, Michael Glass was just hitting the floor at the bottom of the staircase. He was dressed, but there was something about it that looked like he'd done it on the way down. He took one look at Claire, cradled in Shane's arms, and drew in a deep breath.

“It's not like that,” Shane said. “Nobody fanged her. She fell. It's her
ankle.”

“Couch,” Michael said, and shifted aside his guitar, game controllers. “You carried her home? In the dark?”

“Not like you were answering your cell, asshat.”

Michael looked up at him, then up at the stairs, where Eve was just pelting down them, a black dragon-printed robe belted around her. From the flash of legs, that was pretty much the extent of the outfit. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”

The Guy Code ruled the moment, and all Shane could say to that was, “No problem,” as he eased his girl down on the battered sofa cushions. She immediately squirmed up to a sitting position and pulled up the leg of her jeans.

Her ankle was swollen, all right. And starting to bruise.

“I'll get ice,” Eve said, and ran off to the kitchen. She hesitated in the doorway to call back, “Claire? You need anything?”

“Better balance? Oh, and Angelina Jolie's lips?”

“Cute. Settle for aspirin and a Coke?”

Claire nodded. Eve disappeared through the swinging door.

“Thought you guys were going out to dinner,” Shane said. He couldn't resist, really. And it was worth it to see Michael think about lying, because he was just bad at it.

“We were,” Michael finally said, which was the truth. “And then we didn't.” Also the truth. “We can still make the movie if we hurry.”

“Don't,” Claire said, and winced as she tried to move her ankle. “It's explode-o-porn.”

“What's wrong with that?” Michael looked honestly baffled. Shane really couldn't blame him, and the resulting harassed look from Claire was pretty much
fantastic.

Eve came back with a plastic bag full of ice and a couple of towels, and carefully packed it all around Claire's ankle before running back to retrieve the aspirin and Coke. The medical treatment completed, all that was left was to not comment on what Michael and Eve might have been doing to not answer their phones.

That was almost impossible, in Shane's view. Eve and Michael looked so obviously barely out of bed it was crazy. But there was the Guy Code, and then there was the Code of Housemates, which meant he couldn't really say much at all about that unless he wanted to get the hell mocked out of him in return.

So instead, he sighed and said, “I really need a car.”

•   •   •

He kind of meant it, and kind of didn't, but over the next few days he found himself looking more and more at the cars for sale in Morganville. There was one car lot that sold a bunch of brands, but there was no way he could afford the shiny new ones anyway. So he ended up looking at the clunkers—the rusting, beat-up models that people wanted to unload cheap. He had a little money saved up, but not much, and after seeing three cars in a row that were barely running and yet still out of his budget, he just about gave up.

Until he came across the little sign in the window of Bernard's Best Resale, which said
CAR FOR SALE, BEST OFFER
. That was all. No number, no picture of the car, nothing. Which meant it probably was a dog, but he wasn't exactly rich with choices.

Besides, he could use a new shirt or something.

The bell rang as he entered, and the thrift-shop smell hit him immediately—mothballs, and dry paper. Fans turned overhead, stirring the smell and spreading it around, and there was nobody else in the place, except Miss Bernard, dozing off behind the counter. She came awake with a snort as he walked over to the men's shirt aisle,
blinked behind her thick glasses, and patted her thin gray hair. “Collins, isn't it? Shane Collins?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. The
ma'am
was automatic. Miss Bernard had been his second-grade teacher. And his fourth-grade. Not happy memories, but then, school in general hadn't been his greatest time ever.

But it had been better than what had come after, mostly. So there was that.

“Well, Shane, what can I do for you? You need a nice new shirt for a date? Or a suit? How about a nice suit?”

He winced at the idea of him in a suit. Especially a suit from this place. “You've got a sign in the window,” he said. “A car? You're selling a car?”

“Oh, that thing? Yes. I didn't think anybody would ever ask about it.” She pursed her lips, blue eyes vague and yet somehow calculating. “You want to see it?”

“Sure.” He tried not to seem too eager about it.

Miss Bernard led him out the back door, to a shed that leaned precariously in the back. At one time it had probably held supplies, or maybe even horses. Now it was full of junk, and crammed into the middle of the junk . . .

A hell of a car.

Shane blinked at it. Under the layers of dust and cobwebs, it looked like a sweet vintage Charger—big, black, and intimidating. “Uh . . . that's it?”

“Yes. It was my son's. He's gone.” Whether Miss Bernard meant dead or just departed from Morganville, Shane couldn't tell, but he thought she meant dead gone. She looked very sad, and those big, vague eyes filled with tears for a moment. “He just loved this car. But I'm not as well-off as I used to be, and I could sure use the money.”

He felt very uncomfortable, seeing her like this, so he focused on the car. “Does it run?”

“I expect so. Here.” She retrieved a set of keys from a hook on the wall and handed them over. “Start it up.”

It took some reconfiguring of the junk pile to even open the driver's side door, but once he was in it, Shane felt something kind of like instant love. The car was old, a little shabby, but it felt right.

The starter ground a little, sluggish from its long sleep, and finally the engine caught fire with a cough and a belch of exhaust, and settled into a low, bass rumble.