by Rachel Caine
“Screw you,” she said. It sounded mechanical, but then a fire came on behind her eyes and started blazing hotter and hotter. “Seriously, man, screw you. How dare you?”
“How dare you?” he replied. “Because the Eve I know wouldn’t just sit there and become the poster child for therapy. ‘Ask your doctor today for Depressia, the drug that makes you not freaking care about anything.’”
“You think I don’t care?” She stood up suddenly, fists clenched, and honestly, Claire thought Eve might lunge right across the table at him. Color was high and hot in Eve’s cheeks, and she shook with fury. “How can you even think that, you jackhole? You’re the one who walked out in the first place! And maybe if you’d helped me back there—”
“If I’d stayed in that mall, I would’ve started shit that would’ve got us all killed, and you know it,” Shane said flatly, and Eve pulled in a sharp breath to retort, then let it out, slowly, without a reply. She stared at him for a long moment.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
But he was lying, and Claire could see it; she could see that Eve did, too, and the two of them shared quick, confirming glances. His attention was fixed on Eve, and Claire quickly reached over, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his jeans jacket. It was the arm he’d kept rubbing earlier.
On it, she saw a vivid red scar in the shape of a bite. Healed, but inflamed, as if it was infected. “What is that?”
He yanked free of her, frowned, and pulled his sleeve back down to hide it. “Nothing.”
“It’s where the weird dog bit him,” Eve said. “I remember. It was when you left that night. It wasn’t normal, was it? Some kind of weirdo vamp dog.”
“It wasn’t a vampire dog.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know. Because if it was some dog the vamps sent out to bite people, then I wouldn’t want to kill vamps, would I?” Shane blurted out. He looked pale, suddenly, and a little shaky, and when he picked up his fork it rattled against the plate, so he dropped it again. “Look, it was all I could do to not go after them on the way back here from Cambridge. I couldn’t even stand to be around Mikey in the van for long without wanting—wanting to go at him. Hurt him. But that was nothing to how it feels back here. And in the mall . . . it was too much. It was like I had to attack. Needed to rip them apart. And no, I don’t know what it is, and yeah, I’m fucking afraid, okay? I’m terrified.”
That left a ringing silence in the room. Eve opened her mouth again, closed it, and slowly sat down in her chair. Claire felt frozen in place, unable to think what to say. Her throat felt thick and tight, and she swallowed to clear it, then stretched out a hand toward him.
He flinched, but it was just a small move, not a real withdrawal. She rested her fingers gently on his shoulder, then stroked his hair. He felt hot, the way he had back at the mall. Feverish. “Shane, you’re sick,” she said. “Something happened to you. And we need to find out what it is and how to help you.”
“Sick or not, at least I’m not the one locked in a cage with a shock collar around my neck,” he said. “Eve’s right. We can’t leave him like that. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not,” Eve said, and gave a bitter, brittle laugh. “Okay, none of us are okay. We need to do a lot of things, but first of all, Shane, we need to find out what’s happening with you. I may be depressed, but at least I’m not Mr. McMurdery Wolfenstein.” She paused for a second, and then shook her head. “Okay, I was about to say we should see if Myrnin knows what it could be, but . . . no. Can’t go to any vampires, I suppose. Emergency room?”
“They won’t know anything,” Shane said. “But I know someone who does. Hannah. She was there when I was bitten. She said there were more dogs, more bites. She’d know something, anyway.”
“I don’t trust Hannah.”
“No kidding. I don’t, either, but it’s not like we have a ton of options, Eve. I don’t want to go save Michael and end up—doing something I’d regret. Which right now seems really likely. I nearly lost it back there. And I might do it again, and I swear to God I don’t want to.” His face tightened, and his eyes darkened until they looked almost black. “So if Hannah knows something about what’s happening to me, then she’s going to tell me.”
That was ominous, and Claire’s sense of disquiet grew stronger. “Shane, don’t—”
He was already up from the table, with his plate and fork in his hand. It wasn’t like him not to finish a meal, but there was still a small twisty mountain of spaghetti left when he carried it into the kitchen.
Eve pushed her food around some more and said, “Claire, we’re in trouble. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Claire said. “Eat your spaghetti.”
Eve obediently lifted a forkful to her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, then said, “You know I love you, but trust me, one thing your fancy Boston trip didn’t teach that boy? How to make decent spaghetti sauce.”
Eve’s critiquing the food was, for some odd reason, funny, and Claire’s breath hiccuped into a laugh that just kept going. And Eve started laughing, too. Shane slammed back through the kitchen doors and glared at them, which only made them keep helplessly, hopelessly giggling at the look on his face. “Sorry,” Claire gasped.
“It’s not funny.”
“I know! But—the food—was—”
“Pretty bad.” Shane’s body language relaxed, just a little. “Yeah, I forgot the art of combining crappy ingredients into an awesome whole while I was off in Fancytown, didn’t I?”
“Fancytown? You saw where I lived!” Her giggles finally dribbled away, but at least she was left with a happier afterglow than before. Eve managed another bite, for solidarity, probably.
“Good point.” He sat down and leaned his elbows on the empty spot where his plate had been. “You guys need to keep a leash on me, okay? I don’t think I can trust myself right now.”
“An actual leash? Because I have one,” Eve said. “It has spikes on the collar and everything.”
“Been there,” he said. “Remember?” And with a shock Claire did remember; it seemed like a long time ago now, but a wicked awful female vampire had once led him around on a leash at a party, and the memory of it still turned her stomach. And his. And Eve’s, apparently, because she dropped her fork onto the plate, shoved the whole thing away, and rested her forehead on her palms.
“Sorry,” she sighed. “Mine’s more for recreational purposes anyway. I don’t think it would do much to hold you back.”
“Recreational—okay, freak, I don’t even want to know that,” Shane said. “Let’s pretend that never happened. What I meant was, I’m counting on the two of you to check me if I’m heading for the cliff.”
“Roger that,” Eve said. “I’ll T-bone your ass right off that course.”
“Try not to break anything while you’re at it.”
“Like a nail?” She inspected her black-painted nails, which were looking a little ragged—not a lot of manicure time recently. “I see your point.” Then she folded her hands and looked at him, with all the banter put aside. “What are we doing, then? Going to see Hannah, or not?”
“Going,” Claire said. “But, Shane, you’re not doing the talking. I am. Clear?”
“Clear,” he said and nodded. “One request.”
“What?”
“Can we stop for a burger? Because, seriously, I am starving.”
* * *
Everything in Morganville, even the burger places, either had been given a face-lift or was in the process of getting one, and as Eve piloted her big black vintage hearse around the town, they spent a lot of time slowing down, gawking, and shaking their heads. “Wish I’d invested in the hardware store now,” Shane said. “I’d be rolling in money just from paint sales.” He was right about that. Almost every building had a gleaming new coat already or had people on ladders applying one. The few buildings that didn’t had brigh
t, fluttering orange stickers applied to them—either a sign that their paint jobs were on the way or that they were being fined for not having one.
“It’s worse than that,” Eve said, and pointed straight ahead. “Check out Dog King.”
The Dog King was a relic from the 1950s, complete with vintage sign—a little drive-through hot dog and burger joint that had, at its best, looked sketchy, except for its totally awesome sign of a dachshund wearing a crown, a hot dog bun, and a cocky grin. Its leaning shack had been torn down and rebuilt as a shiny new store that was painted a very questionable teal blue. At least the sign hadn’t been touched.
“Right, Dog King it is,” Eve said, and turned into the newly paved driveway. It was still an order-at-the-window kind of place, so that hadn’t changed, and she got a bag of mini-dogs and burgers and fries, sodas all around, and tossed the results at Shane and Claire to sort out as she piloted the beast of a car. Sharp turns were a thing the hearse wasn’t great at doing, but she managed not to scrape any of the oh-so-new paint on the building, or the fence.
Claire was past noticing after that, because the hot dog she grabbed was melting in her mouth with deliciousness that totally erased the not-so-great chili spaghetti experiment. Two mini-dogs for Claire later, and two burgers that Shane practically inhaled, Eve was parking the car in front of the (not surprisingly) newly refurbished Morganville City Hall, where Chief Moses had her office. They sat in the parking lot and munched through the rest of the food, watching the foot traffic come and go.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Eve asked finally, as she crumpled up the last of the wrappers and three-pointed it into the bag that Shane held up for a basket.
“Morganville has never looked this good,” he said. “It’s like that old movie about the robot wives or the pod people or something. Seriously, look at the grass. It’s actually green. And even.”
“No, moron, I mean the pins. Lots of pins on cops.” Eve pointed to an imaginary collar. “Daylight Foundation pins. If it gets any more popular, they’ll put it on the freaking flag.”
“Great,” Shane said. “Everybody got pinned. We live in a giant evil frat house now.”
The massive Gothic front of the building looked old, but it had been rebuilt fairly recently; the aging of the stone was done with sandblasting. Still, it looked broody and impressive, looming over them as they walked up to the big, heavy doors. Two cops lingering by the entrance gave the three of them cool, blank looks that were, well, pretty normal, actually. The police in town had never been friendly, especially toward Shane and Eve. One shrugged, though, and opened the door for them as they approached.
Both, Claire noticed, wore pins.
Inside, it was business as usual in Morganville—clerks bustling around, phones ringing, people standing in line for permits or tickets or whatever. But there was a difference, somehow; it was intangible, but there. Claire couldn’t quite put her finger on how it felt wrong, or at least strange, but it had something to do with the overly friendly smiles, the happy tones of their voices.
“Someone’s been spiking the Cheery Kool-Aid,” Eve said.
“Think you mean cherry, slick.”
“I meant cheery, dumbass. Try to keep up,” Eve said, and gave Shane a shove on his shoulder. “Enough sightseeing. This is your show. Get it on the road.”
He trudged up the steps leading to the second floor, went down the hall, and opened the door that led to Hannah Moses’s office. Not the office she had once, briefly, occupied as mayor; this one had a harassed-looking female cop sitting behind a desk working a multi-button phone. She shot them an irritated glance as the three of them stepped in. She hit the HOLD button and said, “Chief Moses isn’t seeing anyone today. She’s in meetings.”
“Can you tell her it’s Shane Collins?”
“I don’t care who you are. She’s busy.”
Shane leaned both hands on the officer’s desk. “Tell her it’s about my dog bite. I think I might be rabid.”
There was something in his face that convinced the woman. She frowned, stared him down for a few seconds, then hit another button on her phone and said, “Yes, I need you in the office, please. Thank you.”
“Excellent,” Shane said. “We’ll be right over here.” He walked to a small line of guest chairs. Claire took one, with Eve beside her, while Shane flipped through an assortment of ragged magazines . . . and then the door opened.
It wasn’t Chief Moses. It was, instead, the biggest, most muscle-bound policeman Claire had ever seen. Broader and taller than Shane.
His gaze fixed immediately on the officer behind the desk. “You got some kind of trouble here?” he asked. She merely pointed over her shoulder at Shane and kept talking to whatever constituent was on the phone at the moment.
“Crap,” Eve said. “Um . . . guys?”
It was too late. The officer was lumbering over, and Shane was standing up, fast, dropping his magazine to the floor. “I think there’s some misunderstanding,” he said. “Because I didn’t ask for Officer Friendly. I asked for—”
That was as far as he got before the cop grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and pressed him flat against the wall, rattling the bland artwork hanging there. “Shut up,” he said, and reached for handcuffs.
“You mean, I have a right to be silent? How about my right to an attorney, do I have that? Ouch. Look, you haven’t done this before, have you? Let me help you out—”
“Shut up, smart-ass. You’re creating a disturbance.”
“I just want to see Chief Moses!”
“Chief Moses is busy. You get to see me instead.”
“Should we be doing something?” Eve asked Claire, who was still sitting frozen in her chair. “Because I’m kinda used to Shane being arrested, but this seems wrong. And weren’t you going to ask the questions?”
Claire snapped herself out of the feeling of unreality that had settled over her, and stood up. Officer Friendly’s (the name really did fit him) eyes flicked over to scan her, then dismissed her.
She tried anyway. “Sir, we know Hannah Moses. She wouldn’t want you to do this. We only need to ask her some questions. Important questions.”
The lady on the phone, who had just finished her call and finally replaced the receiver, rolled her eyes. “Yeah. About a dog bite.”
Oddly enough, that stopped Officer Friendly for a couple of seconds, and then he grabbed Shane by the shoulder, turned him around to face him, and said, “You got bit by a dog?” It was said with both concern and eagerness, such a weird combination that Claire couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. Neither could Shane, by his expression. “When?”
Shane managed to shrug, despite the handcuffs and the grip on his shoulder. “A while back.”
The cop turned Claire’s boyfriend back around, skinned up one of Shane’s sleeves, got nothing, and tried the other. He stared at the ruddy scar for a second, then took out his keys and unlocked the handcuffs. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “I’ll get the chief. Have a seat.”
Just like that, he left. All of them—even the officer/receptionist—looked silently confused, and it lasted for a full minute until the frosted-glass door opened again to admit Hannah Moses.
“Sorry,” the lady behind the desk said, “but this young man was very insistent—”
Hannah ignored her. She walked to Shane, grabbed his arm—the correct one—and looked at the scar. “Dammit,” she said. “Come with me, all of you.”
She led them into her office, where she slammed and locked the door behind them.
“I just—,” Shane began, but then she held up one finger to stop him, went behind her desk, and opened a drawer. She flipped some kind of switch, then nodded. “What is that, spy crap?” Shane asked.
“Spy crap,” she affirmed, and sat down in the wheeled office chair. “I knew you’d been bitten, but in the press of everything else, it slipped my mind. I’m sorry. What kind of aftereffects are you feeling?”
“Hang on a minute. W
ho the hell is trying to listen in on you? All the vamps are back there not shopping at the mall,” Eve said. “Unless . . . you don’t trust your shiny new boss. I think he is your new boss, right? Fallon the Fanatic?”
Hannah didn’t answer that. She just fixed Shane with that steady look and waited until he said, “The bite’s feeling pretty weird, actually. Not so bad when I left Morganville, but it flared up on the road, and got worse when I came home. It started small, sort of like an ache in my arm, but then I started feeling this . . . urge.”
“An urge to hunt vampires. Fight them. Kill them,” Hannah said. “Which is why you left the mall so suddenly. You couldn’t control it anymore.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It felt like something was taking me over, and I didn’t like it. Still don’t. Look, I’m not saying I’m some vampire groupie or anything, but I don’t hate hate them, not like I used to do. Not like my dad did.” It was unusual, Claire thought, for Shane to look like this—helpless. Lost. “I just don’t know what I’m doing. I only know I don’t want to.”
“Hannah . . .” Claire sank down in one of the visitor chairs and leaned forward, staring at the chief. “Please tell us what’s going on. Please. We need to know.”
Hannah looked away, as if she was composing herself for a moment, and then she nodded. “The Daylight Foundation has been conducting research for a long time,” she said. “It’s an old organization, very old, though they’ve only recently come out of hiding. They conducted cutting-edge genetics experiments; some worked, some didn’t. Some ended up creating things they found useful.”
“Like the devil dogs,” Shane said. “Like the one that bit me that night.”
“The dogs were part of Fallon’s advance team,” Hannah said. “He’d seen an opening, with Oliver’s exile from Morganville. He thought there was enough unrest, given what had just happened, to depose Amelie from her position. And he was right, damn him. He was dead right.”
“But—I thought you were—” Eve pointed to the Daylighters pin on Hannah’s collar.