Midnight Bites (23 page)

Michael hugged Eve from behind as she stirred the spaghetti, and kissed the side of her neck. He might have lingered there just a little too long for Shane's comfort, but so far, there weren't any scars on Eve's throat. So far. “I'll be back as soon as I can,” Michael said. “You guys have fun.”

And just like that, he was gone. Eve looked after him for a few seconds with a sad expression, then turned the heat off under the pasta and started hunting around for the strainer. She didn't talk about Michael's absence after that, just focused on the food.

Shane was hungry, and he wolfed down a bowl, barely stopping to provide
mmm-hmm
commentary to Eve's monologue, which was like a bright, manic soundtrack he barely understood. He was thinking about Michael. About what he'd promised to do. Five minutes after sitting down, he was rinsing out his bowl at the sink.

“Hey,” Eve called from the other room. “I know it was good and all, but what's the rush?”

“Got someplace to be,” he called back, feeling a stab of guilt at her silence after that pronouncement. “Sorry.” That sounded lame.

“I needed some me time, anyway,” Eve said. “Where are you going?”

“I'm dating a supermodel on the side.”

“Ha-ha, very funny. Is that what you want me to tell Claire?”

Shane stuck his head back into the living room area, where Eve
still sat at the dining table in the corner, poking morosely at her half-full bowl. “I can't tell you,” he said. “But it's important, okay?”

She raised her head and looked at him, and for all the Goth white paint on her face and the thick black lines around her eyes, not to mention the screaming purple lipstick, for a second she looked just like his mother. Back when his mother was still . . . herself. “You need to say where you're going,” Eve said. “It's not safe if you just—take off. You know that. You grew up knowing that.”

“Yeah,” he said, and avoided her stare. “Well, this time, I can't. I'll be back.”

He was out the back kitchen door before she could yell anything after him, and he stuck the helmet on and grabbed the bike and rolled it silently down the drive to the street, where he kicked it into gear. Michael's car was long gone, of course, but that didn't really matter; he kicked the motorcycle into a dull growl, and then into a roar as he rounded the corner. He liked the way it responded to him when he leaned one way, then another, dodging around imaginary obstacles. It was full dark out, and Morganville wasn't big on security lighting, but the night vision built into the helmet was freaking amazing—everything looked ghostly green, but perfectly visible. There were a few cars on the street, mostly the dark-tinted variety that Michael drove, but he ignored them. All the vampmobiles looked alike, especially at night, but Eve had given Michael a glow-in-the-dark bumper sticker, and it easily distinguished him from the rest.

Shane caught sight of the green-glowing death's-head in less than three minutes, and eased back on his speed. The engine noise faded to a throb, and he hung back—as much as possible, in Morganville—and tried to look inconspicuous. Not easy to do, but he was wearing a black jacket and a black helmet, and the bike's paint blended in with the darkness.

Michael made some turns, leading him off into the broken-down
industrial area on the south side of the town; they passed up the old tire factory, for which Shane was grateful because he had bad, creepy memories of that place. They also passed up the old hospital, shuttered and half-destroyed. There were a bunch of not-very-stable rusted barns that passed for workshops and storage warehouses. Again, no stopping.

Michael kept going, heading for the edge of town. Shane started to worry about that; as a vampire, Michael could conceivably have permission to go outside the boundaries, but he knew that if he tried it, somewhere, someone would notice. Plus, he didn't fancy getting any of the town's memory tinkering, especially now that he knew who, and what, was doing it. He'd heard way too much on that subject from Claire to feel comfortable. Shane unconsciously backed off on the speed and watched the sedan's glow-in-the-dark skull begin to get smaller. He hesitated for a second, then pressed the throttle again, harder. The engine growled a threat, and he headed for the wrong side out of town.

But Michael didn't go past the town limits sign. Instead, he took a left turn into the darkness, down a street that looked as if it had been built dilapidated, not to mention deserted. Shane pulled far back on his speed, almost coasting. Michael was turning his car right into a dirt yard in front of one of those almost-falling-down tin buildings, streaked with rust like mold.

Shane parked, killed the engine, but kept the cool night-vision helmet on. He crouched down, well aware Michael could see in the dark if he tried, but his best friend's attention was all on the building ahead of him. Michael looked hesitant, even as far away as Shane was; he stood by his car for a long second, then walked forward.
Slowly.
From what Shane could tell, it was like a man walking to his own execution.

Dammit. Shane realized that he couldn't just . . . wait here. He'd have to follow Mike inside, which was nine kinds of crazy, not to mention suicidal. Michael was into something bad, maybe not by his own choice. It was no place for a human to be, especially without backup.

But he couldn't let Mike go by himself.

Shane moved as quietly as a lifetime of living in Morganville had trained him, toward the dark, sinister-looking doorway through which Michael had vanished. It occurred to him that Eve was never going to forgive him if he got himself killed out here without telling her first.

He didn't want to even think about Claire. Not right now. It might make him turn around and leave.

Shane pulled in a deep, slow breath and stepped into the dark.

A hand closed around his throat and jerked him off-balance, and off into the shadows. The chin strap on his helmet broke, and the whole thing was ripped off, but there wasn't any sound of it hitting the ground, so his attacker had kept it, maybe the better to beat him with it. Shane flailed a little, feet scuffing the broken concrete floor, but he couldn't get any traction. The hand around his throat felt cold, and very strong.

And then Michael said, in a whisper like mist, “Shane?” He let go, and Shane tried to slow his heartbeat down, and breathe without wheezing. “You idiot, what the hell are you doing?”

“Following you,” Shane whispered back. “What do you think—I came here for the scenery?”

“You are a fucking moron.” Michael was really pissed; he didn't drop the f-bomb very much anymore, not since Claire had moved in. It was probably unconscious. “Seriously, what are you doing?”

“Following. You.” Shane said it very slowly, just to be sure. “You're in trouble, man. I got a visit.”

“What kind of visit?”

“You want to discuss that here?” Shane waved a hand—which he couldn't see, in the inky darkness—to stress the point. “Now?”

“No, I want you to get back on your little rice-burner and leave me alone,” Michael said. “Jesus, did you tell Eve, too? Is she lurking around here?”

“Give me some credit. You know Eve—she's not stealthy. You'd have heard her first, in those damn boots.”

Michael made a sound that was not quite a laugh, but should have been. “So you came by yourself. To what, rescue me?”

“Absolutely,” Shane whispered. “Now, can we go?”

“No,” Michael said. “I have to be sure he's still here.”

Shane had a sudden, urgent bad feeling. “Please don't tell me it's who I think it is.”

“Mean old guy who nearly killed us all before?”

“Oh man.” Shane took in a deep breath. “They think you're helping him.”

He didn't need to be able to see Michael's face to imagine his expression—shock, outrage, anger. “What? Who thinks that?”

“Tricky Dick, for one. And Hannah Moses. That ain't good, Mikey.”

“No damn kidding.”

“How did you get yourself into this?”

Michael was quiet for a second or two, then said, “There was this girl—I knew her back in junior high. She came to see me.”

“What, for a booty call?”

“No, asshat, to get me to bite her. Turn her. Bring her over. Give her life eternal. Pick your euphemism.”

“I think I liked the booty call explanation better. Wait, this relates to Bishop how, exactly?”

“I was worried about her. I thought she might get herself hurt, so I followed her. While I was following her, she got grabbed.” Michael's pause was painful. “She got killed. I couldn't—I was too far away to stop it. I saw it happen. And I saw who did it.”

“Bishop.”

“I didn't know why he was out, but I knew it was important to find out what he was doing. So I tracked him. He came here, finally. He spends days here, sometimes nights.”

Shane swallowed hard. “Is he here?”

“Not right now—I checked. I was planning to wait until I was sure he'd come in, then go get the cavalry.”

“Why didn't you turn him in already?”

“The first time, I was going to, but he left again, and I lost him. I figured he'd come back here, so I waited. He did. This is the second time I've been here. I just want to make sure before I get Amelie and Oliver on it.”

“You know, I'm not usually the on-the-side-of-caution guy, but I think this is a prime time to call the heavy hitters and get the hell out of the way.”

“Probably,” Michael said. “But I was afraid they'd think I was with him.”

“Guess what? Barn door, horse, et cetera. Come on, let's go drop a safe, long-distance dime on this old bastard.” It seemed, to Shane, like the best plan ever. Particularly the part where he didn't get killed, or turned vamp, which for him would be worse. No offense to Michael.

Michael seemed to be torn, but finally, he said, “All right. I just want to make sure he's here when they get here. He's gotten away from them once. It can't happen again, Shane. It can't.”

Michael was taking this real damn personally, Shane realized. It wasn't just about Bishop, and general-principles anger at the evil old crow. It was about the girl, the one Michael had refused to Protect, who'd gotten way more than she'd ever bargained for from the next vamp she bumped into.

Shane could understand that on a level so deep it was practically atomic. “Right,” he said quietly. “It won't. Let's book.”

And they would have, honestly, except that in that moment, as they headed for the front door, something made a sound at the distant, lightless back of the warehouse. It echoed weirdly around the metal, and Shane couldn't decide what it was. A struggle? Someone dragging something? Michael's hand tightened on his arm, pulling him to a sudden, silent stop.

And then Shane heard a child crying.

It was a lost, desperate sound, and it got inside him and pulled in painful places. He couldn't see Michael, but he understood the rigid way his friend was locked in stillness. Michael could hear more, maybe see more.

And it wasn't good.

Shane was trying to decide whether to whisper a question when he heard, very distinctly, a little girl's voice say, eerily calmly, “Please let me go, sir. I won't say a thing. I won't tell anybody.”

No wonder Michael was so still, so quiet.

It was happening all over again, like a nightmare.

Shane felt a shiver go through Michael, an impulse, and he knew what it was. “No,” he whispered, just a thread of sound. “Don't do it.”

“No choice,” Michael whispered back. Shane nodded, because he got it—he really did—and he took out his cell phone and texted Claire, mainly because he didn't have any bloodsuckers on speed dial. Claire did. He gave the address, or as close as he could guess it, and
added a 911 on the end, just to make it clear this wasn't going to be pretty. If she'd turned her phone off, or left it somewhere . . .

But she hadn't, and seconds later, the screen lit up with a message from Claire.
Sending help. Get out. Get out now.

Which was a sensible kind of plan, really.

But that left Michael here, all alone, without help. Without anybody. And that ultimately wasn't something Shane could live with. He texted back
Will do
, even though he knew he wouldn't, and in the glow of the cell phone screen looked up at Michael. Michael could see what he was texting, but it was pretty obvious that Michael knew he was lying. Textually speaking.

It was really hard to fold up the phone and lose the light, but Shane knew he had to do it. The darkness fell like a thick, smothering blanket, and for a second he imagined he was drowning in it. Michael had let go of him, and the disorientation was total. Shane stayed where he was, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong with this non-plan, and almost jumped when he felt Michael's fingers grip his shoulder in warning. He knew what that meant, without any words being said.

Bishop knew they were here.

In a weird kind of way, that was . . . better. The suspense was over. Now it was just about the fight, and the fight was where Shane lived, inside. It was like . . . home.

“Tell me you brought weapons,” Michael said. He wasn't trying to hide, either. Shane wondered if he felt the same way; probably not, he thought. Michael didn't run from a fight, but he never seemed to have quite the same thirst for it, either. It was more of a grim acceptance of the inevitable.

“Don't say I never give you anything,” Shane said, and reached into his jacket to retrieve two silver-tipped wooden stakes. Guaranteed to leave a mark, even on a vamp of Bishop's age and power. He
handed one to Michael, then checked his other pockets. He found a bag of silver nitrate powder, which he handed over, too. “When you throw this, stay out of the way, or you're going to be sparkling, and not in that fashionable vamp kind of way.”