by Rachel Caine
The grin faded just as quickly. “Where am I going?”
“Around the blood bank. Five Morganville High guys in letter jackets picked Michael up around there. I don’t know why, or how, or why he went without a fight.”
Shane’s face went hard. “You think they lured him off?”
“I think Michael wants to help people. Just like his grandfather.” Sam Glass had always put others ahead of his own safety, and I figured Michael was walking the same path. “It may be nothing, and hell, Michael can handle five drunk jocks, but-“
“But not if they’ve got a plan,” Claire finished. “If they know how to disable him, they could hurt him.”
Neither of them asked why a bunch of teens would want to hurt somebody they hardly knew; it was in teen DNA, and we all knew it, deep down. On Halloween, a bunch of drunk assholes might think it was fun and exciting to hurt a vampire. And then, as they sobered up, they might imagine that they’d be better off killing him than leaving him to identify them later. The Morganville powers-that-be didn’t look favorably on vampire bashing.
“Maybe they needed his help,” Claire said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
We got into the huge black sedan without another word, and Shane peeled rubber.
“What do you think?” I asked aloud, as we started driving through the more unpleasant parts of Morganville. “Where should we start?”
“Depends on whether or not Michael’s picking the place, or the jocks are,” Shane said. His voice sounded low and harsh-Action Shane, not the one who arm-wrestled me for the remote control at home. “The jocks will go someplace they feel safe.”
“Like?” Because I had no idea how jocks thought, in any sense. Shane did.
“Nobody at the football field this time of night. No games this evening.” Because although Morganville paid lip service to other sports, like most Texas towns, football was where it was at. To know Michael was with five guys in letter jackets meant football was surely involved, if not at the center of things.
“I’d say stadium. Maybe the press box or the field house.”
I nodded. Shane took that as permission to hit warp speed. The engine roared as we shot down quiet streets, past derelict houses and empty businesses. Not a fantastic part of town these days. At the end of the street, he took a left, then a right, and we saw the columned expanse of Morganville High School at the crest of a very small hill. To the left and below was the stadium. It wasn’t much, not compared to professional arenas, but it was a respectable size for a small Texas town. The lights were all off.
Shane piloted the car into the parking lot and killed the headlamps. There were a few cars parked here and there. Some had steamed-over windows-I knew what was going on in there. Kids. I wanted to run over, rap on the window and take a cell phone picture, but that would have been rude.
There was a cluster of vehicles, mostly battered pickups, at one end of the lot. The windows were clear. Claire pointed wordlessly over my shoulder at them, and we all nodded.
“What’s the plan?” Shane asked me. I looked at Claire, but she didn’t seem to be Plan Girl tonight. Maybe it was the fairy glitter.
“I’m the one with the stealthy outfit,” I said. “I’m going to go take a look. I’ll keep my phone on, you guys listen in and come running if I get into it, okay?”
Shane raised eyebrows. “That’s stealthy? That outfit?”
“In terms of being black, yes. Shut up.”
“Whatever, Miss Kitty,” he said. “Call me.”
I dialed his number, he answered it and put it on speaker. I slipped out of the car, wondering how anybody could scramble over rooftops dressed like this. Once I was in the shadows, I felt more at home. Nobody around that I could see, and as I did my best to creep along without being spotted, I felt more and more foolish. There was nobody here. I was skulking without any reason.
I heard voices. Male voices. They were coming from the field house, which contained the changing rooms for the teams, the gym, the showers, that kind of stuff. One of the windows was open to catch the cool night air. This was probably how they’d gotten into the building in the first place.
I sprinted-as much of a sprint as I could manage in the heels-across the open ground to the shadows on the side of the field house, and slid down the wall toward the window.
“Shane,” I whispered into the phone. “Shane, they’re in the field house.”
I heard a screech of tires in the parking lot and retreated to look around the corner. On either side of my big, black sedan, two pickup trucks had pulled in, parking so close that there was no way Shane or Claire could open the doors, much less get out. Another truck parked behind them.
They were trapped in the car.
“Shane?” I whispered into the phone. I could hear the drunk jocks high-fiving and booyah-ing each other in the trucks from here. A couple rolled out of the back and began to jump around on the hood of my car, rocking it on its springs.
“Well, the good news is you drive a damn tank,” he said, but I heard the tension in his voice.
“Can you get out of there?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, much more calmly than I would have. “But I think the longer we let them play on the bouncy castle, the fewer of these guys you’ve got to deal with on your end.” He paused. “Bad news, I can’t back you up in person if I do that.”
I swallowed hard and went back to my original position on the side of the field house.
“Stay put,” I said. “I’ll yell if I get in trouble. Rescue is more important than moral support.”
If he answered, I didn’t hear him, because just then a big, beefy guy rounded the corner of the field house carrying a case of beer. He dropped it with a noisy crash of glass at the sight of me.
Shane had been right. The costume was not stealthy.
Look what I found prowling around,” my jock captor announced, and shoved me into the doorway of the field house. My heels skidded on the tile floor, and I lost my balance and fell - into Michael’s arms.
“Oh,” I breathed, and for a second, even given the circumstances, being in his arms felt wonderful. He held me close, then pushed me away from him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“Saving you?”
“Awesome job so far.”
“Fine, criticize - hey!” Beefy Jock Guy, who’d dumped the case of empty beer bottles outside, had plucked the phone from my hand, peered at the screen, and shut it off.
He looked tempted to do the macho phone-breaky thing, so I snapped, “Don’t even think about hurting my phone, you jackass.” He shrugged and pitched it into the far corner of the room.
“She’s cute,” the jock said to Michael. “Bet she likes to party, right?”
I ignored him, and looked around to see what I’d gotten myself into. Not good. Mr. Ransom’s assessment had been right. Big guys, all wearing Morganville jock jackets. The smallest of them was twice the size of Michael, and my boyfriend wasn’t exactly tiny.
I still couldn’t figure out what Michael was doing here, though. He was just standing there, and he could have wiped the room with these guys, right? But he hadn’t.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Michael slowly shook his head. “Michael?”
“You need to go,” he told me. “Please. This is something I need to do alone.”
“What? Kick jock ass? Shane is going to be very disappointed.” Looking into Michael’s eyes, I saw the red starting to surface. I blinked. “Did you, ah, snack?”
“No,” he said. “I was on my way in when they tried to take Ransom off with them.”
“And you just had to get in the middle of that.”
Michael’s eyes were turning an unsettling color, almost a purple, as the red swirled around. It was pretty. From a distance.
“Yes,” he said. “I kind of did. See, they wanted Ransom to come bite somebody.”
My own eyes widened.
“Who?”
For the answer, Michael turned, and I saw a frail young girl sitting on a bench at the back of the room, dressed in a cheap-looking Cleopatra costume. I recognized her after a long couple of seconds.
“Miranda?” Miranda was sort of a friend, in that uncomfortable not-quite way. She was about ninety pounds of pure crazy, fragile as glass, and I knew from personal experience that sometimes she could see the future. Sometimes. Sometimes she was just plain nuts.
She’d been under Protection by a vampire named Charles, until recently. I didn’t know for sure, but I strongly suspected that Charles had gotten more than just blood out of the kid. I was glad he was dead, and I hoped it had hurt. Miranda didn’t need more screwed-up sprinkles on top of her utterly boned life.
“Mir?” I stepped back from Michael and walked over to her. She was very quiet, and unlike most other times I’d seen her, she wasn’t bruised, or shaking, or otherwise in distress. “Hey. Remember me?”
She gave me an irritated look. “Of course. You’re Eve.” Wow. She sounded completely normal. That was new. “You’re not supposed to be here.” What, according to her visions?
“Well, I am here,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“They were supposed to find me a vampire,” Miranda said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I looked around at the jocks, an entire backfield of muscle, with blank curiosity.
“Why them?” And why, more importantly, would they be willing to do a favor for a kid like Miranda?
She knew what I was thinking, I saw it in the weird smile she flashed.
“Because they owe me favors,” she said. “I’ve been making them money.”
Oh God, I could see it now. Morganville had a small, but thriving, betting underworld. What better to put your money on in a Texas town than football? The jocks had used Miranda’s clairvoyant abilities to pick winners, they’d cleaned up, and now she was asking them to pay her price.
A vampire? That was her price? Even for Mir, that was just plain weird.
“Why Michael?” I asked, more slowly. Miranda frowned.
“I didn’t ask for Michael,” she said. “He just came. But it doesn’t matter who it is. I just need to be turned.”
I refused to repeat that because it would taste nasty in my mouth.
“Mir. What are you talking about?”
“I need to be a vampire,” she said, “and I want one of them to make it happen. Michael will do fine. I don’t care who turns me. The important thing is that if I change, I’ll be a princess.”
I was wrong. She really was crazy.
For about fifty years in Morganville, none of the vampires had been able to create new ones-except Amelie, who’d turned Michael to save his life. Now - well. Things had changed, humans had more rights, and the rules weren’t so clear anymore. Why did people want to be vampires? I didn’t see the appeal.
Miranda obviously did. And she was going about it in a typically sideways Miranda-ish way. With my boyfriend.
I wheeled on Michael. “Why didn’t you just say no?”
He glanced over at the football guys. The defensive line was between us and the door, kicked back with a new case of beer but still looking like they’d love the chance to do a little vamp hand-to-hand.
Idiots. He’d absolutely destroy them.
“I was trying to,” he said. “She isn’t listening. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, and I couldn’t walk away and leave her like this. She needs to understand that what she’s asking - isn’t possible.”
“I know what I’m asking,” Miranda said. “Everybody thinks I’m stupid because I’m just a kid, but I’m not. I need to be a vampire. Charles promised me I’d be one.” That last line came out like the petulant cry of a first grader who’d had her crayons taken away. I was willing to bet her vampire Protector (in name only-more like vampire Predator) had promised her a lot of things to get what he wanted. It made me feel even more sick.
“Mir, you’re what, fifteen? There are rules about this kind of thing. Michael can’t do it, even if he wanted to. No vamps under the age of eighteen. Town rules. You know that.”
Miranda’s chin set into a stubborn square. She would have done well in Claire’s fairy costume. Fairies, as Claire had explained to me in the car, weren’t kindly little sprites at all. Right now, Miranda looked like a fey come straight from the old scary stories.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Somebody’s going to do it. I’m going to make sure they do. My friends will make sure.”
“Miranda, they can’t make me do anything,” Michael said, and it sounded like an old argument already. “The only reason I haven’t blown out of here already is because of you.”
“Because I’m so screwed up?” Miranda’s voice was dark and bitter. As she moved, I saw scars on her forearms, marching in railroad tracks up toward her elbow. She was a cutter. I wasn’t surprised. “Because I’m so pathetic?”
“No, because you’re a kid, and I’m not leaving you here. Not with them.” Michael didn’t even look at the jocks, but they got the point. I saw their beery good humor start to evaporate. Some set down bottles. “You think they’re doing this because they like you, Mir? What do you think they want out of it?”
For a second, she looked honestly surprised, and then she slipped her armor back on. “They got what they wanted already,” she said. “They got their money.”
“Yeah, drunk, bored football types are always fair like that,” I said. “So tell me guys, was this going to be a party night? You and her?”
They didn’t answer me. They weren’t drunk enough to be quite that cold about it. One finally said, “She told us she’d make it worth our while if we got her a vampire.”
“Well, she’s fifteen. Her definition of worth your while is probably a whole lot different from yours, you asshole.” Man, I was angry. Angry at Miranda, for getting herself and us into this. Angry at the boys. Angry at Michael, for not already walking away. Okay, I understood now why he hadn’t. He’d already known he’d be throwing her to the wolves (and the bats) if he did.
I was angry at the world.
“We’re leaving,” I declared. I grabbed Miranda by a skinny, scabbed wrist and pulled her to her feet. Her Cleopatra head-dress slipped sideways, and she slapped her other hand up to hold it in place even as she decided to pull back from me. I didn’t let her. I had pounds and muscle on her, and I wasn’t about to let her stay here and throw her own vamptastic pity party, complete with dangerous clowns.
Up to that point, Miranda had been all talk, but I saw the look that came across her face and settled in her eyes when I grabbed onto her. Blank, yet focused. I knew that expression. It meant she was Seeing-as in, seeing the future, or at least something the rest of us couldn’t see.
The hair shivered on the nape of my neck under my Catwoman cowl.
“It’s too late,” she said, in a numbed, dead sort of voice. I drew in my breath and looked at the door.
“Oh dear.”
The door slammed open, bowling over a couple of football players along the way, and three vampires stood there. One of them was the vague Mr. Ransom.
Another was a particularly unpleasant bit of work named Mr. Vargas, who had the looks of one of those silent film stars and the temperament of a rabid weasel. He’d always been one of the dregs of vampire society. Oliver kept him around, I didn’t know why, but Vargas was one of those you had to watch for, even if you were legally off the menu. He was known to bite first, pay the fine later.
The last one, though, was the one who really scared me. Mr. Pennywell. Pennywell had come to town with Amelie’s father, the scary Mr. Bishop, and he’d stuck around. I knew he’d sworn all those promises to Amelie, but I didn’t believe for a second he really meant them. He was old. Really old. And he looked like some androgynous mannequin, with no emotion to him at all.
Pennywell’s cold eyes looked around, dismissed the jocks, and focused in on three things:
Miranda, Michael, and me.
“The boys are yours,” he said to Ransom and Vargas.
Vargas’s teeth flashed in a white grin. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said, and stepped aside, out of the door. “Run, mijos. Run while you can.”
The jocks weren’t stupid. They knew the odds had shifted. They were severely in trouble. Not one of them was willing to stand up for Miranda, or for us, and that didn’t shock me at all. What shocked me was that they didn’t take their beer with them when they broke for the door and stampeded out into the night.
Vargas watched them go, and counted it off. “Twenty yard line. Thirty. Forty. Ah, they’ve reached mid-field. Time for the opposing team to enter the game, I think.”
He moved in a blur, gone. I resisted the urge to yell a warning to the football guys. It wouldn’t do any good.
Pennywell said, “You, girl. I hear you want to be turned.” He was looking at Miranda.
“No, she doesn’t,” I said, before my friend could say something idiotic. “Mir, let’s get you home, okay?”
Faced with the alien chill that was Pennywell, even Miranda’s great romantic love of dying had a moment of clarity. She gulped, and instead of pulling free from my grip, she put her hand in mine.
“Okay,” she said faintly. I wondered exactly what her vision had shown her. Nothing that she wanted to pursue, clearly. “Home’s good.”
“Not quite yet, I think,” Pennywell said, and shut the door to the field house. “First, I think there is a tax to be paid. For my inconvenience, yes?”
“You can’t feed on her,” I said. “She’s underage.”
“And undernourished from the look of her. Not only that, I can smell the witch on her from here.” He sniffed, long nose wrinkling, and his eyes sparked red. He focused on me. “You, however - you’re of age. And fresh.”
That drew a growl out of Michael. “Not happening.”
Pennywell barely glanced his way. “A barking puppy. How charming. Don’t make me kick you, puppy. I might break your teeth.”
Michael wasn’t one to be baited into an attack, not like Shane. He just got calmly in Pennywell’s way, blocking the other vampire’s access to me and Miranda.