Midnight Bites (39 page)

I don't think either of us wanted to know exactly what Jeremy had in mind, but I Google-flagged articles with the name of the carnival. There was an eerie silence for a few weeks after we got back, and then the mentions started appearing, slowly.

The haunted dark ride. Missing people. Investigations finding nothing.

He was out there, moving with the carnival, haunting it like a hungry ghost.

It was pretty selfish, but frankly, I hoped he'd stay out there.

I didn't want him in Morganville.

Ever.

And that was the last time I'd ever take a chance on one of those rides, however cheesy, however safe.

“Hey,” Michael said from behind me. I shut the lid on the laptop, and Jeremy's latest missing person, and leaned back as he put his hands on my shoulders and bent to kiss my neck—not in a vampy way, just in a sexy way. “You've been on there for hours. Ignoring me?”

“Never,” I said, and stood up to face him. “Real life's so much better than Internet life.”

He agreed with a kiss, a long one, sweet and cool, hot in ways that had nothing at all to do with body temperature, although his mouth took on heat from mine the longer they touched. I loved that, seeing the effect I had on him. I could change him, at least briefly; sometimes, when I woke up in bed with him, my body heat had transferred to him so effectively that he felt alive again. He loved that, too. It made him feel connected, alive, and . . . human.

“Bed,” he said, in a whisper that vibrated against my skin. “You and me. Now, Mrs. Glass.”

“Right now,” I agreed.

And I left all the dark rides behind for something much wilder and better.

If you're smart . . . you will,
too.

Dedicated to Jennifer Stangret for her support of the Morganville digital series Kickstarter

Another brand-new offering!

Jennifer, bless her, wanted a Shane/Myrnin story as part of her Kickstarter contribution, and I was happy to oblige. So here is Shane, and Myrnin, and a tie-in to a story earlier in this collection: “Nothing like an Angel.” If you read them back-to-back, you'll see why I say that; events in this particular story feed into events in that one, though it might not be obvious without a closer look. We get graveyards, corpses, mysterious alchemical machines, time travel (maybe), and the payoff on a romance that I built between
Bitter Blood
and
Daylighters
. This story occurs after the end of the series, so you may think of it as an epilogue of sorts.

No matter how many times I destroy Myrnin's lab, I always want to rebuild it and bring it back as a setting, because it so perfectly reflects the state of the inside of his mind. “Pitch-black” refers to many things in this story, not the least of which is the state of Myrnin's mind at various times in his history.

I
don't know what I did to deserve this. I mean, I'm relatively nice to old ladies. I've never been mean to animals. Sure, I've had my occasional dives into punk-ass behavior, but who doesn't sometime in his life? Hey, I'm only twenty. It isn't like I can't learn better.

Which is why this was so damn unfair. “Why me, God?” I muttered, as I shoveled another heavy load of dirt out of the hole in the graveyard. “Why am I the one who always gets the crap jobs?”

“Well,” my supervisor said as he sat on a tombstone, sipping on what looked like a Bloody Mary, and which almost certainly had a whole lot more blood in it than most drinks, never mind the ornamental celery. Come to think of it, it might have had someone named Mary in it. “I didn't know you were a serious student of philosophy. That gladdens my heart. However, your question does confuse me. Expound, please.”

“It was rhetorical,” I shot back. The hole was up to my neck, but I could still glare out of it at him as I leaned my weight on the shovel and dug it into the damp, wormy soil. “And I don't know shit about philosophy.”

“So much clearer now. However, I hope you realize that using the word
rhetorical
means you are also a student of philosophy, even if ill
taught.” He saluted me with the drink. In honor of the refreshment, I guessed, he'd put on a loud Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, which at least went together, though where he'd found the Liberace-quality sunglasses I had no idea. Also, I wondered if I should clue him in that the flip-flops he was wearing were meant for girls. Probably not.

If you're wondering why I was in the graveyard doing minion work for Myrnin the Crazy Vampire, well.

So was I.

Hi, my name is Shane Collins, and I hate vampires. I have ever since I was old enough to understand that (a) there were vampires in Morganville, Texas, and (b) they were the boss of me, no matter what I wanted. My goal was to be a fearless badass vampire hunter, and sometimes I have been that, but the reality that I've come to reluctantly accept is that not all vamps are terrible people. Selfish, sure. Annoying, definitely. But I can't support my original stake-'em-all theory anymore, because—well, case in point was sitting on a tombstone watching me get covered in dirt while he had a cocktail. Myrnin was a lunatic, he dressed funny, and he was as annoying as an ingrown toenail, but I'd seen him do kind things, and brave things, for no better reason than a real person lurked somewhere in that vampire body.

It just spoils the fun when you realize that your
kill all monsters
crusade actually includes real people as collateral damage.

“Are you resting?” Myrnin asked, then took a loud sip through his straw. “I don't think I'm paying you to rest.”

“It's hard work.”

“Not for a vampire.”

“I'm not a vampire.”

“That would seem to be a pity.”

Myrnin took another gulp of his drink, probably just to irritate me, and I jammed the shovel in once more . . . and hit something solid. Instantly, he was off the tombstone, drink abandoned, and he
was leaning over the grave to look down in it. “That's it,” he said, and gave me a quick, commanding look. “Out. Now.”

“Don't have to tell me twice,” I said, and managed to claw my way up and out of the hole. Of
course
he hadn't brought a ladder. Vampires could do Olympic jumps, straight up, so they hardly ever felt the need for one. By the time I was collapsed on the thin grass of the Morganville Pioneer Cemetery, I was sweaty and filthy, and I ached all over. Also, I wanted to strangle the little rat, but only in an abstract kind of way. Mostly, I just wanted a shower. “Want to tell me why we're digging up a dead guy from olden days?”

“We aren't,” he said. “Well, I suppose we are, in a sense, but the bones aren't what I'm after. . . .” His voice trailed off, and I heard scraping, as if he was clearing dirt away, and then a sharp snapping sound. A heavy, groaning creak. Yeah, that was some serious ghostly soundtrack, and it said something about my experiences in Morganville so far that it didn't even make me nervous.

Silence then. Pardon the pun, but . . . dead silence.

“Hey,” I finally said. “Everything okay down there?”

No answer.
Perfect.
I tried to get up and my aching muscles put up a fight, but I won and rolled up to look over the edge of the hole.

Into . . . darkness.

The lid was up on the coffin, but there was no body. It was just . . . black. Kind of disorienting, and I sat back a little because it almost felt like it was trying to suck me in.

“Hey, Myrnin? Stop screwing around. You down there?” No answer. I flipped a rock over the side, expecting it to hit the bottom of the coffin, but it just . . . disappeared. “Come on. I'm getting paid to dig a hole, not haul your ass out of one!”

Myrnin had been mostly a giant pain in my neck since I'd first met him. He'd been suspiciously nice to my girl, Claire, for one thing, and I knew he had feelings for her. . . . Of course, what those feelings
actually
were
was a different story, because Myrnin didn't exactly follow normal rules of behavior. For instance, he'd once intended to kill her and put her brain in a computer, and to him, that didn't even seem all that unfriendly. He'd gotten a little less crazy over the past few years, but honestly? Still pretty nuts.

Not something you really like to see in a guy who's capable of ripping you limb from limb if he's in a bad mood.

But also . . . unlike most vampires, Myrnin did care. He cared about pretty much
everything
, including people. He protected puppies and little kids. He had a spider for a pet. He'd practically adopted Claire, and personally saved her life (and mine, sad to say) more than a few times.

So I kind of owed the crazy bloodsucker.

“Dammit.” I sighed and grabbed the shovel, because I was not doing this unarmed. I had an LED flashlight clipped to my belt loop, and I turned it on and aimed it into the grave. Whatever that was at the bottom of the coffin, it just ate the light whole. “Why me, God?”

I didn't wait for the answer, because I already knew it.

Because you can.

I jumped.

•   •   •

I felt my feet hit the bottom of the coffin with a thump, and then crack right through the rotten wood into soft, damp dirt. I won't lie—it smelled pretty foul, and my skin crawled, because there was no way that it ought to be this dark down here; I'd just been in this hole, and the moonlight had been bright enough for me to see up top. Now it was like being trapped inside a black velvet bag.

I still had the flashlight in my hand, and I smacked it against my thigh, hoping that it would turn on and somehow this was all just some big misunderstanding, but it stayed pitch-black.

And then a pair of cold, too-strong hands grabbed me in the darkness. Yeah, I might have yelped. A manly sort of yelp, obviously.

“Calm yourself,” Myrnin said. He sounded annoyed, not unnerved, which would have been interesting if the sane part of me hadn't been kind of freaking out. “It's perfectly normal.”

“Normal?” My voice came out high enough to have been mistaken for my friend Eve's. I cleared my throat and tried again, and got it into a more usual range. “What the hell is normal about this?”

“It's a bit difficult to explain, but clearly, the item I was hoping to find is here. . . . Now stand very still, boy. And try not to make noise.”

I stood still. It wasn't easy, because after Myrnin let go of my shoulders, I felt like I was drifting in the dark, pulled out into space. Nothing seemed real. I finally reached out and put my hand on what felt like rough, solid dirt to the side, and that reminded me that I was standing at the bottom of a grave. Weird that it should make me feel better.

“I think I said
stand still
,” Myrnin said, but he didn't sound too angry. I could hear creaking, and then a sound that seemed like snapping bones, and then he let out a pleased sigh. “Perfect. Brace yourself.”

I didn't know what he meant, and then there was a soft click, and light poured in. After that complete darkness, it seemed like somebody had a flashlight pointed directly in my face, and I gasped and blinked and realized that, hey, someone
was
shining a flashlight directly in my face, and that someone was me, because the thing hadn't been working before and now it was. Probably because of something Myrnin had done.

I switched the beam off, blinked a few times, and saw Myrnin crouching down, examining what looked like some ancient, boxy camera held in the hands of a grinning skeleton. I'd managed not to step on him, whoever the dead guy was; my feet were braced on either side of the corpse.

Suddenly, I
really
wanted out of this grave.

“Don't move,” Myrnin said absently, and carefully moved one of the skeletal hands. I expected the thing to come apart, but the hand held together. That seemed weird, because I thought skeletons this old fell apart. I didn't see any muscle connecting the bones.

“I'd really like to go now,” I said.

“Oh, I wasn't talking to you,” Myrnin said, and moved the other bony hand. It suddenly turned and wrapped around his wrist like a living thing. “Damn.”

The skeleton sat up and wrapped its other bony hand around Myrnin's throat. Its fingers tightened fast, and I saw them sink in deep; it probably would have killed me, or anybody still human, but it didn't seem to hurt him much. Benefits of being a bloodsucker. Myrnin grabbed hold of the skeleton's neck and twisted, which only seemed to piss the thing off. Myrnin was left holding a skull that snapped its dry teeth at him, trying to bite, and the hand around his throat didn't let up at all.

I didn't know what to do, but I figured getting rid of the skull might help, so I grabbed it out of his hands and pretended it was a gross, snapping football. I threw it long and up, aiming for the next county.

As soon as the head left the grave, the rest of the skeleton collapsed into dust and bones. The hand around his neck clattered in pieces back to the coffin's wood. Myrnin's throat looked like he'd been hanged by an old-time Western sheriff, and he coughed a little, shook his head, and bent down to pick up the old black camera thing
from the litter of bones. Then he jumped, straight up, out of the grave, and left me standing there like an idiot.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Little help, since I just saved your life?”

No answer. I swore under my breath, tried not to step on any bones as I pulled my feet out of the rotten wood. Hard to see how I was going to climb out, since when I scrambled up, the sides started to collapse in on me.
Great,
I thought grimly.
I'm going to suffocate in a grave because Claire's boss forgot about me.

Myrnin's face appeared over the top of the grave, just as another avalanche of dirt piled in on me, raising a choking cloud. “Oh,” he said, as if he was surprised to find me still down there. “Can't you get out?”

“Sure, I'm just staying down here because it's so damn comfy.” I spat out a mouthful of dirt, and God only knew what else. “Little help?”

He extended one bone-white hand down to me. I grabbed hold, and he pulled so hard that he almost dislocated my shoulder. “Come along, Shame,” he said. “We have work to do.”

I was technically working for him, true, but no way did that mean he could call me that. “My name is Shane,” I said. “With an
n
. Dickhead.”

“Sorry,” Myrnin said. I saw the thinnest, fastest ghost of a smile. “I'm just very forgetful.”

Like hell he was. “Speaking of that, you paid me a hundred to dig up a coffin for you. Not to follow you around the rest of the night and battle dead guys. I think a little evil-skeleton-demon hazard pay might be a good idea.”

“He wasn't evil,” Myrnin said, seizing upon exactly the wrong thing, of course. “Keep up, then; there isn't any time to lose. I must get this camera obscura to my lab.”

I didn't know what a camera obscura was, but it sounded like
trouble. “Oh no, you don't. If you want me to tag along, it's an extra hundred.”

Myrnin was notoriously cheap, or at least, utterly oblivious to the concept of fair pay, but he didn't hesitate to raise my bluff. “Two hundred, plus what I already pledged,” he said. “I suppose you want to be paid in those paper bills. You may count them out yourself. I can't be bothered.”

I should have known that if he was willing to double my asking price, it was going to be a bad, bad night, but then again,
three hundred bucks
. I'd done some terrible things for less than that. Hell, I'd done them for free.

“Deal,” I said. “But we're taking my car.”

•   •   •

My car was a sweet, sinister ride . . . deep black, with murdered-out wheels and chrome. Ninja black. Since I wasn't a vamp like my passenger, I had to keep the headlights on, which spoiled the stealth effect, but image wasn't worth dying over.

I half expected to argue with Myrnin about how to ride in a car like a human, but he got in, fastened his seat belt, and seemed perfectly at home. I eyed him suspiciously while I started up the engine. “Where'd you learn to buckle up?”

“Claire has explained to me the rules for riding in a motorized vehicle,” he said. “Also, I understand not to attempt to drive from this position. She got very upset when I tried it last time.”

“Touch this wheel, and swear to God, I'll kill you.”

“I see what she likes about you,” he said. “How long have you been wedded now?”

“Coming up on a year,” I said. It still felt weird,
really
weird, to say that. I'd never thought past having the wedding—it seemed like the
biggest possible goal there was in the world, and I hadn't bothered to think about what would happen after.