Midnight Bites (43 page)

Eve wasn't kidding. She'd spent her life since the age of about sixteen trying hard to piss off the vampires, mock them, and be utterly uncooperative. It was why she was steadfastly Goth in her look; the vampires found that whole trend distasteful and downright disrespectful. Right now, she was rocking a complex confection of braids that curled and stuck out at odd angles around her head. She'd tinted her midnight-black hair with dark blue in streaks. Between the careful pale makeup, dark eyeliner, pale blue lipstick, and skull-and-spike clothes, she looked intimidating to anyone who didn't know her.

Of course, if you did know her, Michael thought, you probably loved the holy hell out of her. Eve was just like that.

“I don't know what he wants,” he said, and reached out to take her hand in his. She gave him a quick, warm smile and leaned in to fit her warmth against his side—sunlight in flesh, his own portable sun that heated but never burned him. “I just know that whatever it is, it can't be good for you.”

“Well, yeah, that's kind of a given. I've never known a vamp to
drop in to make it rain fun. I just can't figure out . . . me. Why me? Claire's the one who usually gets that honor.”

“Trust me,” Claire said, inspecting her henna tattoo with a mixture of bemusement and delight. “I'm happy to share that.” She held her forearm out to Shane, who ran his fingers over the ink. Michael saw her shiver, and heard the faint whisper of her heartbeat speed faster. “Do you like it?”

“Is it a training tat?”

She laughed. “Kind of.”

“Then I like it. Hey, want to see my new one?”

“Where is it?” Michael, Eve, and Claire somehow managed to say it in unison, and they all dissolved into laughter at Shane's wounded expression.

“My
back
, jackasses. C'mon. Do you think I'm that desperate for attention I tattoo my—”

“Let's just leave it right there,” Eve interrupted. “Because I'm really afraid I might have to think about that one way too hard.” She looked up at Michael, and for a second he lost himself in the shine of her dark eyes, the intoxicating, exotic spice of her scent. “Michael doesn't have any tats.”

“Michael doesn't like needles,” he told her.

“Ironic, coming from a dude who bites people for a living,” Shane said.

“Why do you think I don't like needles?”

Michael was sitting in his comfortable armchair, with Eve snugged against him like a happy cat, and Shane and Claire had the sagging, much-abused sofa. Not for the first time, Michael considered that they'd really have to start taking better care of the place. Home improvement never seemed to get high up on the priority list, though. Or, at least, not as high as staying alive in a town that wanted to kill them at least twelve hours of every day. Tonight, though, it seemed
quiet. Gentle. Normal. The TV was playing silently in the background; Shane had turned it on, which meant he was going to be loading up a game anytime now, and soon they'd be taking turns shooting zombies and trash-talking each other.

But Michael's mind kept worrying at the problem of Kiril Rozhkov, and what the vampire wanted with his wife. For all her attitude and toughness, she was still human, and fragile. And precious to him.

“Claire,” he said. “How do you feel about asking Amelie for a favor?”

“Not so good,” she replied. “Why can't you?”

It was a fair question. He was, after all, her creature; she'd made him a vampire, and he was part of her own bloodline. That entitled him to certain privileges, normally. “She's keeping her distance,” he said. “We had a—difference of opinion.”

By which he meant she was still cold toward him because of his marriage to Eve. She still didn't approve, though she hadn't actively stopped him from doing it; it had nothing to do with Eve herself, but more with the principle of humans and vampires making those kinds of commitments, and the general attitude of vampires (and humans) about it. Amelie needed to stay above the fray, and right now, he
was
the fray.

“I guess,” Claire said. “You want me to ask her about Rozhkov?”

“Yes. I just need a clue about the guy—how dangerous he is, how worried I should be.”

“We,” Eve said, without raising her head from where it rested against his chest. “How worried
we
should be.”

“We,” he agreed, and looked at Claire. “Please?”

She grinned. Even though she'd grown up over the years he'd known her—grown into a capable, calm, intimidating young woman, really—she still looked like she was ten when she smiled like that. “Since you said please,” she said. “Thanks for the tat, Eve. It's supercool.”

She excused herself and went upstairs to make the call, and Shane (as Michael had predicted) loaded up Dead Rising and went to work slaughtering the undead. Eve uncurled herself from her place at Michael's side and took up the other controller, and before a minute had gone by, they were insulting each other nonstop, in colorfully hilarious ways.

Michael's fingers itched to pick up his guitar and play, but he also knew it was probably the wrong time. Instead, he went upstairs and knocked softly on Claire's closed bedroom door.

She opened it. Her cell phone was in her hand, but she put it on her dresser and walked back to her bed to sit down.

“Rozhkov is bad news,” she said to him.

“Kinda got that already.”

“Amelie wouldn't say much. She just said not to let him inside.”

“I wish she'd imparted that wisdom a little earlier. Like before we let him inside.”

Claire smiled a bit, but she looked pale and serious as she stared at him. “She didn't say it in so many words, but Eve's in danger. I could read between the lines. I don't know why he wants her, but if he does, it's not for fashion tips and henna tattoos.”

“She's not going to like being guarded.”

“Nope,” Claire said, and the smile grew wider. “She's not going to like it a bit. We should probably take turns so we all get the blame equally.”

“She's not going out after dark.”

“You're going to have to tell her that yourself, because I am not sticking my hand in that wasps' nest.”

It wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation, for certain. “I guess it's my job. Thanks for helping watch out for her.”

“We look out for each other. We're family. It's what we do. Is that the door?”

Michael had heard it, too—the doorbell was broken, so it made a weird buzzing sound that was sometimes hard for human ears to hear, but Claire had found a way of attuning herself to it even from up here. To him, it sounded like a fly buzzing in his ear—annoying, and alarming.

Even more alarming when Eve yelled out, “I'll get it!” from downstairs.

Michael didn't think; he just moved. It was rare he engaged the speed vampire life had given him, at least here in the house; he'd grown so used to mimicking human behavior around his friends and with Eve that it came almost naturally. But just now, with the prickling awareness of danger seeping into him, he didn't even consider appearances.

Shane yelped when Michael passed by him, but Michael was gone and down the hallway before the sound even registered. Eve was at the end of the hallway, cracking the door open. She wasn't as careful as she should have been, but the fact that Rozhkov was a vampire, and the house was on alert about him, had probably lulled her into a false sense of security.

It wasn't Rozhkov out there. It was a human—a scared one. Michael recognized him as Mr. Lockhart, from down the block. “Please,” the man said, as Michael joined Eve at the door. “Please, you've gotta help me.
He's in my house.
”

“Who?” Eve asked. “What's going on?”

“We'll call the police,” Michael said. He was pulling out his cell.

“No!” Lockhart shoved at the door, and Eve let him open it wider so he could thrust his desperate, sweaty face closer. “No, please, he said—he said he'd kill my wife if you did. He said you know what he wants. Please. You've gotta help.”

They all went still and silent. Lockhart wasn't lying; his distress hung in the air around him like a white-hot electric cloud, and Michael could smell the adrenaline flooding through his bloodstream. Claire sent him an anxious, pleading look; Shane had gone tense and unreadable.

It was Eve who punched Michael on the shoulder, swung the door open, and said, “We can't let this happen. You know that.”

His hand flashed out without any real planning, grabbed her shoulder, and pulled her back across the threshold when she stepped outside. “No,” he said, when she opened her mouth to yell. “Eve, it's you he wants. It's you. And you can't do this.”

She gave him a blackly miserable look, one that chilled him in places he hadn't know he could still feel the cold. “Do you think he'll do what he says?”

Yes,
Michael thought, but he kept himself from saying so. He tried not to project what he felt for Eve onto Lockhart, desperate to save his own wife, but he couldn't help it. He'd always been way too softhearted about these things for a vampire—he knew that. But falling in love with Eve—falling more in love with her every day, it seemed—he couldn't
not
know what Lockhart felt.

Eve was still pinning him with that bleak stare. “Michael. We can't let her die.
I
can't.”

“And I can't let you go.”

“Dude,” Shane said, “what makes you think you
let
any of us do any damn thing?”

And he shoved past, out the door, and down the steps, with Claire
fast on his heels. That left him and Eve standing together, with Lockhart looking at them in silent, tormented distress.

“He's right,” Eve said. “What makes you the boss of me? Are we partners, or not?”

He didn't like it, but he let go. “Partners,” he said. “Which means what you do affects us both. All right?”

She kissed him. It was a quick, warm, sweet thing, and it made him crave her in too many ways to comprehend, and then she was gone, heading after Claire and Shane toward the Lockhart house.

Michael closed and locked the door behind them, because . . . Morganville.

•   •   •

Lockhart's front door was wide-open, throwing a warm, buttery glow of light down the cracked front steps and shimmering on the shiny wood floor visible inside. As Michael approached with Eve, Claire and Shane stopped at the foot of the steps, and Claire looked back at them. “How do you want to do this?” she asked. Lockhart pushed past them into the house, stumbling in his eagerness, and disappeared around the corner. Like the Glass House, this house was basically a square, but it was about half the size. They'd taken good care of it, Michael could tell; what he could see inside looked clean and neat, and on the walls were framed photos of a happy family. There were kids. Two of them.

Eve took a deep breath and said, “Well, it's me he wants, so let's see what happens. Michael's got my back.”

“He's not the only one,” Shane said. “I'm on Mission Protect the Goth, too.”

Claire didn't need to add that she was, too. They all took that for granted.

Michael fought an almost overpowering urge to hold Eve back, to
keep her safe, and let her walk ahead of him up the steps and down the polished wooden hallway. He felt Shane behind him, solid and steady, and knew Claire would be analyzing everything, thinking through the possibilities. Nobody better to have going into a bad situation than Claire, even if she looked deceptively fragile.

Eve, on the other hand, looked badass, and she knew it. And as she turned the corner, he saw her put on attitude like armor as she stopped, set her feet in a battle stance, and sent the man seated on the sofa across the room a cocky tilt of her head.

“You wanted me? You got me,” she said. “Now let her go.”

Kiril Rozhkov had Mrs. Lockhart sitting close against him, a position she obviously hated. He had his arm around her shoulders, but every muscle in her body was tensed and quivering, and the look in her eyes was one step away from madness. She didn't look hurt, and Michael smelled no spilled blood. So far, so good.

Rozhkov took his time looking Eve up and down. “You are not as I expected.”

“No? Goody. Get your damn hands off her.”

“I think I will wait,” he said, apparently not bothered at all by Eve's tone of utter disrespect. “Your great-grandmother was named Ulyana, yes? She was born in Minsk?”

“My
great-grandmother
?” Eve shook her head. “No idea. I never knew her.”

“But your mother's family is Russian.”

“I guess, yeah. Mostly we're just Morganville. Why? You feeling nostalgic for the Old Country?”

Rozhkov smiled. It was chilling, and the cold light in his eyes had an edge like broken glass. “In a way,” he said. “Come, child. Sit.” He patted the sofa on his other side. Eve didn't move. He patted again, the way someone would encourage a pet dog. Michael gritted his teeth
against an urge—a very real one—to go at the guy with his teeth. “Sit and I will allow this woman to go.” Eve still didn't move, and Rozhkov's patience visibly frayed. “Or, by all means, stand and watch as I rip her apart for my entertainment. You may choose.”

It wasn't even a choice. Eve let out a slow breath and walked to the sofa, but didn't sit. She stood, looking down at the vampire. “Let her go and I'll sit.”

He hesitated, just to draw out the moment, and then took his hand from around Mrs. Lockhart's shoulders; the young woman—not that much older than Eve herself, Michael realized, maybe twenty-five—launched herself off the couch and ran to throw herself into her husband's arms.

“Get out of here,” Shane said, without taking his eyes from what was happening with Eve. Michael didn't spare the two a glance as they left, either, rushing upstairs to what was probably the kids' room, bunkering down their family as best they could.