Midnight Bites (7 page)

“It's nothing,” he interrupted, and put a hand on her shoulder to move her off down the sidewalk, fast. “Let's just get home.”

•   •   •

Home wasn't that much of an improvement, but after having run into Monica—violently—Shane didn't feel real good about letting Lyssa stay home alone. Mom was out doing mom-things—he didn't really know what—and Dad, well. Dad would be over at one of the two bars, pounding back boilermakers and pretending like life was good.

“I thought you were going to the game shop,” Alyssa yelled from behind her closed bedroom door as she changed clothes. “You don't have to babysit, you know! I'm not a kid!”

“You are, and I do, and shut up,” Shane said. “I'm opening a can of SpaghettiOs. Better hurry up.”

She made a vomiting noise, which made him grin. He went downstairs and, true to his word, opened up the can, microwaved the SpaghettiOs, and started wolfing them down. When Lyss finally showed, he tossed her the can opener. “Make yourself something.”

“Wow, you are some babysitter. Why don't you just tell me to go play in the street?”

“Not nearly exciting enough. Make yourself something and I'll play you on Super Mario Bros. Winner gets to pick dessert.”

“Twinkies!”

“I said winner, loser.”

Lyssa popped a spoon in her mouth and crossed her eyes at him, poured soup into a bowl, and stuck it in the microwave.

Two hours later, he'd lost at video games, Lyssa had her Twinkie, and somehow they ended up watching bad movies. Mom called. She was stuck at work. Not too surprising; she ended up staying late a lot these days. Probably couldn't deal with Dad, who of course still hadn't shown up. Shane put on a DVD—one of those Pixar movies Lyss loved, and he secretly did, too, although it probably wasn't cool—and she fell asleep halfway through it. He let it finish, then nudged her with one foot.

“Hey,” he said. “Go upstairs, sleepy butt. You've got school tomorrow.”

She stretched and yawned. “So do you!”

“Yeah, but I'm in charge, so I get to stay up. Go on.”

“You suck, Shane.”

“Do not make me come over there.”

She made a show of being too tired to run up the stairs, and crawled up them on her hands and knees, which was funny and odd, and as soon as she was gone, Shane picked up his cell and told Michael about Monica.

Michael was worried. Yeah, he was, too, kinda. Plus, Alyssa was probably right—his Myspace page was going to be a mess.

Shane decided to worry about that in the morning. For now, there were language, violence, and nudity warnings on HBO.

Sweet.

•   •   •

He fell asleep on the couch, just like Alyssa had. When he woke up, HBO was running boxing, and it was really late. Mom and Dad still weren't home. Shane yawned, considered watching boxing, and decided to wander upstairs instead.

That was when he smelled smoke, halfway up the stairs.

For a second he thought,
Somebody's barbecuing
, and then, stupidly,
What, at midnight?
And then he smelled more smoke, and saw it, a pale white haze in the air, and the smoke detectors started going off with loud whooping shrieks upstairs.

Oh God.

Shane ran the rest of the stairs. The smoke was thicker at the top, choking and rancid; it tasted like burning plastic, and before he knew it, he was on his hands and knees, crawling instead of running. The air was better there. He could hear something crackling now, and that had to be the fire, fire—Alyssa was in her room and he had to get to her. . . .

“Lyss!” He banged on her closed door, yelling and coughing, then rose up to his knees to try to open it. He couldn't. The knob burned his hand, and the paint on the door was blistering, smoke pouring out from underneath like water on a sinking ship. “Lyssa!”

He had to try. He had to save her.

Shane fell onto his back, gasping for air, coughing constantly, and pulled both his legs back for a last effort at a kick. He hit the doorknob, and the whole door shuddered, then flew back on its hinges.

A ball of flame erupted out at him, and he rolled, feeling his clothes catch fire. He had to keep rolling to put it out, and then he crawled back. Alyssa's door was open. He had to get to—

Somebody grabbed him by the feet and started dragging him backward. “No!” he screamed, or tried to; he couldn't breathe—it felt like his lungs were stuffed with wet cotton. “No, Lyssa—”

It was his father. Frank Collins dragged him out to the stairs, then collapsed in a coughing heap, sucking whatever air remained near the floor, and rolled Shane down the steps. Shane barely felt any of it. The world was taking on dark, glittering edges, and his chest
hurt, and none of it meant anything because he had to get to his sister. . . .

His mother was there, too, grabbing his arms and dragging. His dad made it down and helped.

They dragged Shane outside, and suddenly there was all this air, and he began coughing and vomiting black stuff and shaking and crying, and oh my God, Lyssa. . . .

His dad grabbed him and shook him. “Why didn't you get her?” he yelled, right in Shane's face. “She was your responsibility!” He was slurring his words, so drunk he could hardly stand up.

Shane couldn't help it. He laughed. There was something terrible about it. Something broken.

His mother was trying to go inside. The firefighters and cops were there now, and they stopped her and brought her back. She sat down on the wet grass with Shane and rocked him back and forth as their house turned into an orange, flickering bonfire against the cold black sky, as their Morganville neighbors—and even some of the vampires—came out to watch.

And then Shane looked up, and he saw Monica Morrell and her two BFFs, Gina and Jennifer. They were standing at the edge of the crowd, closest to where Shane sat, and Jennifer looked horrified and fascinated by the fire—but Gina and Monica were staring straight at Shane.

Monica held up her hand. She had a Bic lighter, and she flicked the wheel and showed him the flame. Then she made a little finger-and-thumb gun and shot it at him.

Shane heaved himself up off the grass and went for her, screaming, raving, crazy, and not caring at all about the rules, about whether she was a girl, about anything, because if she'd done this, if she'd . . .

Somebody stopped him. The face didn't register with him for a
long couple of seconds, but then he saw it was Michael, grabbing on, and then Monica's brother, Richard, the cop.

“She killed her!” Shane screamed, and felt his knees go out from under him, because saying it had made something awful become horribly real. “She killed Alyssa!”

Michael hadn't realized, Shane saw; his friend's face went white, and he looked at the house, and whatever he said, Shane couldn't hear it over the violent pounding of his heart. He tried to get up. Michael stepped back, but Richard Morrell kept him down.

“Shane!” Richard was yelling, and shaking him, but all Shane could see was Monica's face over her brother's shoulder. She wasn't smiling anymore. In fact, she looked as pale as Michael, and now she was staring at the house, too.

Like she hadn't known.

Like she hadn't thought.

Shane kept screaming, and fighting, until Richard finally rolled him over and put him in handcuffs, but even then, Richard's hand on his back was only there to keep him down.

To keep him from doing something insane.

Monica, you stupid bitch.

She hadn't known. She hadn't realized Alyssa was still in the house.

And Shane didn't care. He didn't really care about anything anymore.

By the time the fire was out, Monica was gone.

•   •   •

Time passed. Things happened. Shane didn't much care, still; he felt numb, even days later. He felt numb when he picked through the wreckage of the house, looking for something that hadn't been destroyed. Looking for something of his sister's.

The cops brought him in, along with his parents, and gave them the dog and pony show. Terrible accident, faulty wiring, no reason to believe . . .

It was bullshit. Shane knew it. Big cover-up, because Mayor Morrell's precious baby girl just couldn't be a killer. Wouldn't be right.

Sometime in there, his dad got screaming drunk and his mom started taking Valium and still, Shane really didn't care. He sat alone, mostly. He thought about nothing. He just . . . existed. They were stuck in some crappy motel room with borrowed clothes and no money and no home, and Lyssa was gone. So what did any of it matter anyway?

Michael kept coming over; he kept trying to talk, trying to get Shane to think about something else. And that was cool and all, but Shane just couldn't even care about Michael, either. He guessed Michael knew. He saw the pain in his friend's face, the confusion, but none of it touched him.

He just wanted people to leave him the hell alone.

He was out buying a pizza—they never ate anything else these days, when the three of them remembered to eat at all—when he saw Monica Morrell outside the store. She was with her brother, the cop.

Shane put the pizza down on the counter and walked outside.

Richard got in the way, fast. “No,” he said, and put a hand flat on Shane's chest. “Listen to her. Just listen.”

Monica looked bad. Worse than Shane had ever seen her. She wasn't pretty; her face was puffy and red, her eyes swollen, like she'd been crying for days. Her hair was stringy and unwashed. She looked miserable.

He didn't care. He wanted to hurt her, and it took everything he had inside—everything he had left—not to deck Richard and go after her, right then.

But somehow, he stood there, numbed, waiting.

“I didn't know,” she said. Her voice was muffled, and her nose was running. She was crying again. “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't know.”

“She didn't do it,” Richard said, staring into Shane's face. For a Morrell, he didn't look like a complete jerk, but again, Shane just couldn't care. “My sister did not do this. Understand? She was trying to piss you off, and she pretended she'd started the fire. She didn't know Alyssa was in the house. She wouldn't have done that. She didn't torch your house. It was an accident.”

Shane laughed. It was a dry, empty sound, and he saw Monica flinch, like he'd hit her. “Oh, man,” he said. “You really don't know her at all, do you?”

Richard's face turned hard. “I know this,” he said. “You come near my sister, and this is going to get ugly. You want your parents to lose another kid?”

Shane didn't answer. He looked past Richard, at Monica, and made a little gun out of his finger and thumb.

Then he silently fired it at her.

Then he went back, got his pizza, and went to the motel, where the world was still dying in slow motion.

•   •   •

Two days later, Michael's grandfather Sam Glass arranged for them to get out of Morganville. Shane didn't know how, didn't know why, didn't care. His father was sober enough to drive, for a change. His mother—he didn't know what his mother was doing anymore.

They drove past the borders of Morganville, and it occurred
to
Shane that maybe this was Richard's way of keeping Shane away from his sister. Well, it had worked. They were out of town, and heading . . .

“Where are we going?” Shane asked. It was the first thing he'd said in hours.

His dad said tightly, “Nowhere.”

And he was right about
that.

Dedicated to Samantha Monical for her support of the Morganville digital series Kickstarter

Here is our second original story for this collection, and in a way, it's an outside look into the last story you read. This is about Eve and Michael, and life before and after the fire at Shane's house. I really enjoyed getting to write from Eve's point of view; she's tremendous fun, and looks at things from angles I hadn't considered before—especially her relationship with her brother. This story has it all: sweet romance, evil Monica, sinister Bloodmobile, and yet another view of the Collins family disaster.

Samantha, to whom this story is dedicated, requested a story from Eve's point of view specifically, so you can definitely thank her for this one!

T
he flyer Eve Rosser was handed on the way out of class was candy-colored pink, with a big red cartoon heart on it—typical February crap. She glanced at it, shoved it in her black Dracula notebook, and forgot about it. February was lousy with stupid Valentine-themed stuff. This would be a flyer for a band bake sale, or a drama-sponsored dance, or something equally dumb that had no relation to actual Valentine's Day. She was hoping for a bake sale, though. At least there might be cookies.

Morganville High wasn't huge, but it was crowded; too many loud, proud students all jammed into ancient hallways built too small. Tough swimming upstream to her locker, but one thing about being Morganville's resident Weird Girl: people tended to give her personal space. Unlike some of the poor kids she saw getting slammed face-first into lockers. Bullying might be a problem in other places, but it was a way of life here. You were a predator, or you got eaten. The kids who were getting locker facials weren't at the top of the food chain, and they were trying hard to settle for being invisible.

Eve didn't consider herself a predator, but she always made sure
everybody
saw her. Hard to ignore her rice-powder makeup, black eyeliner, funky black hair, and generally Hot Topic–worthy outfits.
Today's combo featured heavy combat boots, skeleton tights, a red mesh poufy skirt, and a tight black top. Distressed leather jacket, natch. Being Morganville's only Goth had its benefits.

Halfway down the hall, Shane Collins spotted her and waved her closer. He towered over most of the crowd, so he always found it easy to see her; given he was well over six feet, the basketball coach was always pestering him to join the team, but Shane wasn't a joiner—more of an avoider. Eve had that in common with him. As she got closer, she saw he was talking to Michael Glass, her own personal rock-star crush. Michael was Shane's best friend and, without any doubt at all—at least in Eve's mind—the hottest guy in Morganville.

Eve's steps slowed a little, because her heart had sped up. Just the sight of Michael did that to her . . . made her feel light inside, a little giddy, a little terrified. He was just so . . . yeah.
That.

Ironic that he was just about the only person in school who didn't seem to really notice her, despite all the careful, time-consuming work she put into it. Not that Michael ignored her—he looked at her; he smiled; he said things. But not the
right
smiles. Not the
right
things. He always seemed to be thinking of something else.

As she came closer, Michael's deep blue eyes fixed on her, and again, she wondered what was really going through his head under that mop of blond hair. He was good at not showing it, and although he smiled at her, it wasn't a warm
Hey, gorgeous, can't wait to get to know you better
sort of thing. It was just a smile, to a person.

She smiled back. It probably looked awkward.

Shane wasn't happy. She could tell by the tense lines of his face that he was upset about something. Pretty much a normal day, then. Her morning horoscope had said,
Take today's terrific personal energy in a positive direction—ask out that hot babe you've been admiring from afar, or impress
your boss with initiative.
She imagined Shane's horoscope read more like,
Today you're going to be funny and awesome, but also angry about something dumb.
Because that would be his every-single-day horoscope.

“Did you see this?” he demanded, and waved a pink paper in her face. She grabbed it from him and glanced at it. Yep, cartoon heart right on top.

“Everybody got one,” she said, and shoved it back. “Good morning, Drama Queen. What have you got against Valentine's Day? Oh, except the total lack of girlfriend.”

“Are you flunking English, Club Dead?” He was staring at her like she'd grown fangs or something. She was pretty sure she hadn't.

“What? No! Of course not. It's kind of my mother tongue. Be pretty embarrassing to fail.”

“Breaking news, then, Vampira, your reading comprehension sucks. It's not a V-Day flyer.”

She grabbed it away and looked it over, this time carefully. Pink paper, check; red heart, check . . . with a drop of blood dripping from the point at the bottom of that heart.

The text below read
SHOW US SOME LOVE. . . .
GIVE BLOOD
!

“Seriously?” she said, and then at a higher pitch, “
Seriously?
A
blood drive
? In Morganville?”

“Keep reading,” Michael said. His gaze on her was steady, and she wished for the eleventy millionth time it was more . . . something. God, he was so cute she almost forgot about the paper in her hand. Almost. She managed to pull her attention back to it.

The
Bloodmobile
was coming. That evil black beast was coming here, to Morganville High, for a blood drive organized by . . . “Seriously?” she blurted again, and laughed. Because if there was anything the MHS Spirit Leaders—aka the cheerleaders—were known for, it was for being a showcase for Monica Morrell, the mayor's daughter,
and generally useless otherwise. At sixteen, the same age Eve and Shane were, Monica was already a world-class brat, maturing into full-on bitch. “Why in the hell are our cheerleaders running a blood drive? Is Monica trying to bathe in the blood of the innocent
again
?”

“She's standing right behind you, by the way,” Michael said. Yes. Of course she would be. Eve turned to see Morganville's Most Likely to Succeed by Climbing over the Bodies of Others staring at her from a distance of, like, two feet. Her girlfriends were attached to her shoulders like bat wings. All gorgeous, all glossy, but of course Monica was the glossiest and gorgeous-est. She was also, by virtue of those insanely tall pumps she had on, the tallest. Those looked painful.

Eve still topped her by an inch or so, though. Score.

“Who allowed you to have an opinion, emo freak?” Monica asked, and gave Eve a scorching head-to-toe look. “Somebody needs to nine-one-one the fashion police, because that's a felony.”

“I really wish you
would
call, because I'm pretty sure this is a hooker-shoe-free zone. Also—news flash, you really need to stop taking style tips from people with sex tapes.” Eve said it with all the warm concern she could manage, which only made Monica angrier, of course. If they'd been alone in the locker room, or even in front of a bunch of girls, Monica would probably have slapped her, and then it would have been
on
, but Shane loomed at Eve's back, and Michael, though not as hair-trigger on temper, was definitely tense.

Monica was mean. She wasn't stupid. She gave Eve a clear
Later, loser
look, and tossed her shiny hair. “For your information, the blood drive's for Morganville General Hospital. Not for the blood bank.”

“You got that in writing somewhere? I mean, somewhere that doesn't include your contract with your dark lord, Satan,” Shane said. “Because you doing something just out of the goodness of your heart sounds about like . . . Wait, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, right. Bullshit.”

Monica made a kissy face at him, and he made a retching sound. Eve thought she might have been the only one to see the flash of hurt that raced through Monica's expression.
God,
she thought, stunned.
Tell me the Queen Bitch doesn't have a total crush on Shane Collins!
That would be . . . wrong. And also dangerous, because as far as Eve could tell, Shane wouldn't even consider a hate-you makeout with Monica, much less anything else, and Monica didn't take rejection all that well.

“Don't forget the sign-up sheet in the cafeteria,” Monica said to all of them, but her attention was totally focused on Shane. “I want to see all of you strapped down and giving it up.”

Now Eve felt like vomiting, too, given the way Monica seemed to roll that around on her tongue. It was a welcome relief to hear Michael say, “Don't you have some fifth graders to menace, Monica? It's getting boring now.”

“Watch it, Glass,” Monica's bestie, Gina, said, and leveled a really well-manicured finger at him. “You can't talk to her that way.”

“Yeah? Wait until you see how I talk to you,” Michael shot back, and slammed his locker door. Funny. Shane was all instant violence . . . explosive, but quick to be over it. Michael got mad slow, but he burned a long time, and everybody knew when that tone came into his voice, it was time to back the hell away. “Clear off. Now.”

Gina might have pushed, but Monica knew better; she grabbed her friend's arm and shoved her forward, moving with the flow to the other end of the hall. It was first lunch; the smell of overdone meat loaf and waterlogged vegetables was starting to sour the hallway. “They're heading for the cafeteria,” Eve said to the boys. “What say you to tacos?”

“I say yea,” Shane said, and held up his hand for a slap. When she went for it, he yanked it too high for her to reach. “Too slow and too low.”

She punched him in the stomach—not hard, just playing—and he let out an exaggerated
woof
and bent over, still holding up the hand. She slapped it. “I can always cut you down to size, Shane,” she said. “Come on. Primo
comida
awaits.”

•   •   •

The taco stand a block away from the school—brilliantly, it just read
TACOS
in big red and yellow letters—was crowded with teens and adults alike, but Shane shouldered his way up and ordered while Eve and Michael grabbed a small table that had just been abandoned. He came back balancing a bag and three sodas. The bag held nine tacos and about half a gallon of hot sauce, which was a smart move on Shane's part. They all loved hot sauce.

Lunch didn't require a lot of chitchat, at least for the first two tacos apiece, and then Shane mumbled around a mouthful of shell and spicy beef, “You think the blood drive's legit?”

“Hell no,” Michael said. “There's got to be something going on there. Monica Morrell never did a nice thing in her life unless there was something in it for her.”

“Well, they're using the Bloodmobile,” Eve pointed out as she slathered more hot sauce on her taco. She liked them gruesome. “That alone tells you the vamps have a stake in it. Pun intended, by the way, because I am awesome like that.”

Michael gave her a smile. A genuine smile, one that made her tingle inside and out. She smiled back, and for a second—a beautiful, amazing second—it felt like they were really communicating.

Then Michael looked away at Shane and said, “What would the vamps get out of a blood drive for the hospital?”

“Maybe they're planning on having some kind of cocktail party fund-raiser, and we're providing the drinks.”

“Ugh,” Eve said.

“So I take it neither of you will be signing up on the donation sheet,” said Michael.

“What idiot would volunteer for blood donations in this town, anyway? We have to do it from eighteen on by law. I'll enjoy my last couple of years of needle-free existence, thanks.”

“I'd do it,” Michael said. He didn't put any particular emphasis on it, but Eve caught her breath as if he'd gut-punched her, and didn't dare look at him for a few seconds. “I mean, if the hospital really needed it. But this still sounds sketchy as hell to me, mainly because Monica's involved.”

I just called him an idiot. Michael Glass. An idiot. The most gorgeous boy in town. Who's the idiot now, idiot?
Eve bit back the urge to babble out some crazy explanation, like
I would, too—I didn't mean it—I would totally give blood for sick babies.
Which would be true, but sounded desperate.

“Maybe one of us should, you know, investigate it,” Eve said, before she could think too hard about what she was saying. “Sign up, get on the bus, check it out.”

“No frigging way,” Shane said. “I'm crazy, but I'm not that—”

“I'll do it,” she rushed on, before she could think it over. She wanted to—what? Make up for what she'd said? Well, she was doing it by being a total victim-in-training, which wasn't smart, but at least it made Michael give her a long, very serious look.

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” he said slowly. “Not alone, anyway. If you're doing it, you need backup. I'll go with you.”

“Together?” Oh, God, was there any other way to make herself sound like a total fool today? “I mean, we're blood donor buddies?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled slowly enough that it made her swallow. Hard. “Together. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” she said, and tried to pretend like it hadn't just been the pinnacle of her life, right there. “Whatever.”

•   •   •

She floated through the rest of school, and the walk home, even though she didn't see Michael again the entire time. For the first time, she really, really wanted a best friend to blurt out all her excited feelings to, but she'd long ago decided that no Morganville girls were to be trusted with valuable intel like that. She'd been burned too many times. Hell, once upon a time, she'd thought Jennifer—now one of Monica Morrell's wing-girls—was a good friend. Granted, that had been elementary school, but betrayal still stung.

Her good feeling faded fast when she got home, because her dad was already there. If he was home early, it meant he'd quit work early, and stopped off at the bar, and worse, they'd already cut him off. Eve paused at seeing his car in the driveway, and thought about heading away again, but this time of year dark came fast, and she didn't want to be out roaming at night. Sure, technically, she was underage and
should
be free from predatory vamps, but nobody in Morganville trusted that kind of thing.

She compromised and headed around back, creeping low past the living room window, and made it to the back porch. The door was locked, of course, but she keyed herself in, eased the door closed behind her, thumbed the lock back on, and . . . ran right into her dad, who was standing at the refrigerator, grabbing another beer.