by Rachel Caine
I surprised him by not trying to pull away, but instead throwing myself into him and over, flipping him clumsily on his side. He let go of me with a surprised yelp, and I rolled up to my feet and spared one glance for my phone.
Destroyed.
No time to mourn; I was in serious shit, because this dog wasn’t just a dog; the hellhound glare of its eyes was proof enough of that. I’d never seen anything like it before, not even in Morganville; dogs were pretty predictable, but this one was coming after me like I was a steak and he’d been starved for months. All my weapons were in the pack, which was with Michael, and besides I really didn’t like the idea of killing a dog, even one that was trying to kill me.
It launched itself at me in a running leap, growling, showing way-too-sharp teeth, and I fell backward to the grass and put one foot up like a soccer player going for a goal. Good timing. My foot caught the dog underneath and changed the trajectory from down to my throat, to up and headed for a hard landing against Michael’s car.
Michael caught it as it bounced off. More accurately, he got it in a headlock and held it there as it snarled and fought and ineffectively clawed the air for purchase. I heaved in thick, fast breaths and got to my feet in a post-fight burst of adrenaline. The sleeve of my coat was shredded, and I could feel bruises deep into my arm, but at least I hadn’t lost any flesh out of it.
Lucky.
‘What the hell?’ I said, and Michael shook his head.
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘It’s almost as if it’s been turned, but you can’t do that. Animals can’t become vampire. They don’t have enough – will, I guess.’
‘Tell that to the devil beast, then, because he damn sure looks like he’s been turned.’
‘Whatever he is, we can’t leave him running around out here,’ Michael said. ‘You mind waiting a bit until this is taken care of?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘Not unless you want to share the seat with him, locked in the car.’
‘Yeah, I haven’t had my shots, better not. Throw me your phone,’ I said. ‘Mine’s trashed. I’ll call it in.’
‘Let me see your arm.’
‘I’m fine, man.’
‘Let me see.’
I took off the coat and rolled up the long sleeve of the thermal I was wearing beneath. Red bruises that were going to black-and-blue in a few hours … and some distinct dark, welling spots of blood. Funny. I hadn’t felt the punctures at all.
I wiped the blood off.
No wounds.
‘Shane?’ Michael sounded worried. Hell, he was right to be. I shook my head, and he pitched his phone to me. I fielded it neatly, dialled 911, and reported devil dog in a vampire headlock. They didn’t sound surprised. That’s my hometown for you. He repeated the question after I hung up, with a more urgent edge to it.
‘I’m fine!’ Well, maybe I wasn’t, but I knew how this would go … if nobody knew what was going on, I’d get my ass hauled up in front of the Founder, or worse, Myrnin, who’d siphon blood off of me and hem and haw and make crazy statements and finally say he didn’t know what was going on. So I’d prefer to skip the drama and work out my problems on my own. Right now, the idea of letting anybody poke and prod me sounded horrifying. ‘They’re on the way.’
They were, too, at high speed. The cop car that wailed toward us screeched around the corner, and the two police inside bailed as the doors flew open. One was a vampire, which was nice, since apparently it was taking vampire strength to subdue angry Fido.
The other was the former mayor, now returned to police chief (which was where she belonged, I thought). Chief Hannah Moses looked at each of us in turn, considered the state of my arm and jacket, and then focused in on Michael and the dog. ‘Hal, if you’d please wrangle the dog …?’
Hal, the other cop, nodded and moved in. He and Michael did a complicated little manoeuvre transferring control of the snarling, writhing, snapping Fluffy, whose devil-red eyes continued to haunt me. Hal dumped the dog in the trunk of the police car, where it immediately began attacking the metal with a fury that chilled, and then he returned to us. ‘That’s the third one,’ he told Hannah, who nodded.
‘Third one?’ I asked. ‘Mind if I ask …’
‘You can ask, I’m just not sure I have an answer,’ Hannah said. She looked strong, tall, competent, perfectly put together … she held herself like a woman who wasn’t afraid of anything, and that was almost true. She was afraid of failure, and she’d failed at being mayor, because that was a job nobody could win. But give her a weapon, a uniform, and a problem, and I couldn’t think of anybody I’d rather get behind. ‘I can’t tell you what they are, Shane, because I don’t know. All I know is that we got a report of a wild dog last night that was attacking people, and it looked just like this one. Had to shoot that one, it was going after a kid. Two more tonight. I’m hoping like hell this is the last one.’
‘Experiment gone wrong out of Myrnin’s lab?’ Michael wasn’t afraid to go there. Well, he was only half a step ahead of me, actually.
‘I checked,’ Hannah said. I’d have paid to hear that conversation. ‘He says no. He says he wouldn’t. He likes dogs.’
‘Probably true,’ I said. ‘And Claire would never put up with him experimenting on helpless animals. He cares what she thinks, even if he doesn’t care about anybody else.’
The sound of the dog in the trunk was like a demon in a tin can, and it was unnerving me. The whole police cruiser was rocking on its tyres. Hannah didn’t so much as glance at it. Michael cleared his throat and said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Find out what’s going on, or try to,’ Hannah said. ‘So far, nobody’s been killed, but I don’t like it. Nothing good ever comes of weird things happening in this town.’ Before I could comment on how true that was, not that she needed my opinion, she focused in on me. ‘How’s your arm?’
I showed her. I’d wiped the blood away, and all that showed was bruising. ‘Nothing broken. Coat’s toast, though.’
‘It makes you look tough,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Yeah. You know. Out.’
‘Of town.’
I was silent. I’d gotten approval from the Founder to bug out of Morganville for a while, but that didn’t mean Amelie couldn’t change her mind. She did. Often. And I wasn’t her favourite person, anyway.
‘Well,’ Hannah said after a few seconds of whistling wind, ‘I suppose you should be on your way, then. Tell Claire we miss her.’
‘She’s only been gone a day.’
‘And yet,’ Hannah said. She was still giving me a professional kind of smile, but now it had a softening of warmth to it. ‘You’d better do right by that girl, Shane.’
‘Thanks, Mom.’ I meant it sarcastically, but you know, if Hannah had been my mom, I’d have probably turned out a lot more badass. Not to mention less prone to stupid mistakes. ‘Michael’s giving me a ride out of town.’
‘Better get going, then.’ She nodded to me, to Michael, and she and Hal got back into the snarling, rocking police cruiser, shut off the flashers, and headed off to wherever you unloaded insane devil dogs.
My arm was starting to ache. Nothing bad, though. Just hot and abused. I’d had lots worse. Lots worse. Michael stuck my bag in the back seat and we went back in the house; he had a nice leather jacket that he let me have for the trip, with the warning that if I got it torn up he’d patch it up with strips of my bleeding flesh, which hey. Brotherly love.
I’d left Morganville a couple of times before – once with my dad and mom, when we’d fled after our house burnt and my sister died. Then again with Michael, Eve and Claire (and the much-loathed vampire Oliver as our chaperone). Still, approaching the town boundary made my heart speed up and my palms clammy; it was a built-in resident reaction. Despite the chill in the air, I rolled down the window to see where we were, and I shivered when Michael’s car sped past the ghostly, creaking billboard where we’d said goodbye to Claire in
the predawn light. I let out a slow, shaky breath and rolled the heavily tinted window back up. It was like travelling in space, riding around in vampire cars.
‘Feels weird, right?’ Michael said. In the dashboard’s green light, his pale skin looked alien. So did his eyes – wide and dark, pupils gone huge to take in available light. ‘No matter how much we tell ourselves it’s okay to leave town, our bodies still don’t believe it. We’re used to liking the cage.’
I admit it, I was a little surprised. ‘You feel it, too?’
‘Sure.’ His smile was bitter around the edges. ‘Dude, I grew up here, never left here until I was made a vampire. Still got all the instincts. We’re born with them, and trained into them, right?’
I nodded silently. I felt itchy and weird, and the ache in my arm had sunk in deeper. Even with the heavy leather jacket, I felt cold. I also became aware of a weird odour coming from the jacket – the scent of a vampire. I’d never really smelt it before. Michael had, since turning vamp, smelt only like whatever body spray Eve had given him; vamps didn’t sweat. Strange, that I could smell something else now.
Something buzzed in the pocket. I pulled out the phone and stared at it for a second, then blinked. ‘Oh. Your phone. Sorry.’
‘Keep it. Yours is fried, I’ll get a new one. That way at least we can keep track of you and know you’re safe.’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, suddenly – about the vampires being able to track my phone. But then again, I supposed if they wanted, they could dispatch Michael or any other vamp to find me. Wouldn’t be that hard. They knew where I was going, anyway.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Eve texted you a picture of herself in a nightie.’
‘What?’ He grabbed for the phone, but I held it out of reach.
‘Kidding. She just asked when you’d be home. You know, to rip all her clothes off.’
‘Maybe this giving you my phone thing is a bad idea.’
‘Depends, what kind of pictures does Eve send you?’
‘Good thing I’m not the jealous type—’ He stopped himself, but too late, and there was an awkward, thick silence for a few long seconds.
Because I was the jealous type, and we both knew it. I tried not to be, but the green-eyed monster part of me had roared out on a couple of occasions, and Hulk-smashed my trust with Claire the last time.
Hence, me travelling alone.
‘I’ll ignore any pictures, I swear,’ I said. ‘I’m texting Eve now.’ I pushed buttons and lost myself in the tech world for a few more heartbeats, and when I came out of it, the strangeness between me and my best friend was mostly gone. Mostly. ‘Done. If she sexts me now, it’s her own lookout.’
He punched me on the arm, lightly. It was the uninjured one, thankfully, but I still felt echoes through to the other side. Ow. Yeah, definitely going to leave a mark. ‘You’re lucky I love you, man.’
‘You’re lucky I don’t stake your undead Dracula wannabe ass.’
He just shook his head. ‘Seriously. You going to be okay out there on your own?’
‘Claire’s out there,’ I said. ‘Alone. So yeah. I have to be, right?’
‘She really can take care of herself, you know. She’s proved it about a hundred times already.’
‘I know,’ I said. This time, my voice came out softer than I intended. ‘That’s kind of what scares me. Because what if she doesn’t need me any more, man?’
That got me a sideways flash of a look before he turned his attention back to the road. ‘She needs you for more than just protection. It’s how it works. You want the strong girl, you understand that she’s with you because she wants to be. Not because she has to be. You know that, right?’
‘I guess. I mean, yeah, but … hard to break the habit.’ I turned toward the window, but all I saw was my blurry reflection in the darkened glass. Michael was looking at me again, I could feel it. ‘How long ’til we get to the bus station?’
‘Another half hour,’ he said. ‘Sleep if you want.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I think I will.’
I didn’t.
But I pretended.
It didn’t occur to me until later, when I was on the bus and headed on a long, exhausting trip across country, that I’d forgotten to text Claire and tell her about my broken phone, and by then …
By then it was too late.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Are you nervous?’ the girl standing next to Claire whispered. ‘I’m nervous.’ She sounded it. They were in a fairly large group of incoming students being led around by an upperclassman at night. It was the end of Claire’s first day of orientation, which had been exhausting and full of way too much info to absorb at once; her brain was swimming with maps, people, names, streets, stunningly gorgeous buildings … she still hadn’t met her Special Projects instructor, Professor Anderson, who wouldn’t be available until the morning, but she’d filled up her day trying to learn more about the MIT campus.
But it had been impossible to resist the little orange slip of paper she’d received, that had told her where to meet for the ‘special tour’. And it hadn’t disappointed. An hour of complicated rules, and the Orange Tour had shown them absolutely incredible things … tunnels, rooftops, secrets of all kinds. Claire hadn’t thought she had a head for heights, but it turned out she did … more than a lot of the others on the tour. She’d been able to stand right on the edge of the tallest building, and look straight down. It was exciting. Dizzying, but exciting.
MIT was … unique. Like Morganville, it was pretty much a self-regulating system, with its own history, rules and environment … once you were on the campus, it felt as if the MIT universe was the only universe that mattered. She’d met a ton of people, and they were all a blur. There were at least five upperclassmen leading the tour group, but only one wore a T-shirt that said I’M NOT HERE. His name was Jack, and he was the one who talked the most.
Seeing the cool, creative energy of the dorms taught Claire that it had probably been a huge mistake to stay off campus with Elizabeth, but done was done on that score. She was committed, and it would be too much of a drama to try to beg off now. Plus, she’d already prepaid the rent.
‘Hey,’ the girl whispered again. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ Claire said. She supposed to normal people there was something spooky about the tour – after all, it was after hours, they were trudging around in the dark, and the upperclassmen leading the tour were doing their best to freak them out. But she couldn’t get nervous about it. She supposed Morganville had raised the bar way too high on that one. ‘We’re safe. They’re not going to let anything happen to us, trust me.’
‘I don’t know where we are,’ the girl whispered back anxiously. She shuffled maps, frowning; like Claire, she had a ton of materials, but unlike Claire, she hadn’t come armed with a backpack to stow them in. ‘Do you know? Because I thought we were heading for Baker House. Isn’t that right?’
‘I think so.’
‘But – we’re way off, right? Look, I think we’re not even on campus … no, wait, we are …’ The girl’s anxiety teetered on the edge of panic, and there wasn’t much Claire could do to help. She checked her phone, supposedly to look at the GPS, but quite honestly, she was checking to see if she’d gotten any messages.
She had. Voicemail from Michael. Again. She’d skipped listening to the last three because she was hoping Shane’s name would pop up … but just as she started to stow the phone away, she saw a text pop up.
It was still Michael … but it said, This is Shane hit me back.
What?
Claire lagged behind a little, texting back – risky to do on unfamiliar ground, in the dark, but this couldn’t wait. Y R U on Michael’s phone?
A few seconds, and the text came back. Broke mine sry.
It sounded like an excuse. A bad one. But accidents did happen. Was waiting, she texted back. Saw vid.
No answer for a long moment, and then he typed bac
k, I meant it. That was all. Just that.
And she stopped walking, closed her eyes for a moment, and pulled in a deep, chilly breath. Then she texted, Miss U.
He responded, Luv U.
Her eyes stung with tears, and she hesitated for a long second before she texted back, Ttys. Talk to you soon.
‘Hey!’
Claire jerked her head up at the urgent whisper from a few feet away, instincts coming alive and screaming, but it was just the girl, the nervous one, still clutching all her brochures and maps and binders. She looked even more paranoid than before. What was her name, anyway? Started with a V. Vita? No, Viva. ‘Viva,’ she said, and the girl nodded. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘We’re supposed to be going to Baker House,’ she said. ‘But it’s not on the map!’
‘Well, it’s supposed to be a secret tour,’ Claire said. ‘So maybe it’s called something else on the map.’
‘But—’ Viva shifted uneasily. ‘I just – I just want to go back. Would you share a cab with me? Please? We can get one on the street up there.’
The rest of the group was walking briskly on, heading through some trees, and they were being left behind. Well, that didn’t seem like a good idea under any circumstances.
Claire put her phone away, shifted the weight of her backpack (which wasn’t much, at least not now – a tablet computer, a couple of books she was interested in, and the load of goodies from orientation. She wasn’t used to it being so light). ‘Let’s just catch up,’ she said. ‘Come on. We can’t bug out now, they’ll worry about us.’ And she jogged onward, looking back to be sure Viva was coming. She was, probably only because she didn’t want to be left alone.