Morganville - 10 - Bite Club (19 page)

"Bullshit," Gina said, and she must have hit her, because Claire heard the wet crunch of the punch and Miranda's thin little cry, and then the sound of a body falling.

Gina laughed. Claire pushed off from the wall, but it was too late. Gina was walking off, humming to herself while she went. If she hadn't been wearing high heels, she'd have been skipping.

Miranda was getting up already, holding her broken, bleeding nose in one hand.

Claire, angry and shocked, trembling with the sudden rush of frustrated adrenaline, started to go after Gina, but Mir grabbed her and shook her head furiously -- and as she did, some of the blood gushing from her nose spattered Claire's new pink-and-white shirt. Claire didn't care at all. She crouched down next to the girl, helping her stand and holding her steady.

"That bitch!" Claire said. "You stay here. I'll -- "

"No!" Miranda said. Her voice was muffled and small, but her eyes were wide and fierce. "It's the best thing. It's only my nose. She'd kill us."

"Then we're calling the cops. I am not letting her get away with this...."

"Oh, don't worry. She won't," Miranda said. And beneath the blood, Claire was almost sure she smiled. "She's going to get in her car and drive real fast, and in two minutes she's going to run a red light.

And then she's going to get hit by a big truck. My nose will set straight.She's going to the hospital, and she'll be there for a while."

Claire stared at her, this little, fragile girl with her bloody face and scary smile.

Finally she said, slowly, "Mir, did you plan for that to happen?"

"No," Miranda said. "But sometimes it just happens the right way after all. It wouldn't have been right if you'd come to help me, though. She'd have stabbed me, right here, and then you, and she'd have died, too, but later and a lot worse. Amelie wouldn't have liked it."

It was fascinating and freaky, but Claire believed her. Every weird and scary word of it. She shook it off, with difficulty, and took Miranda back into the resale shop, where the clerk got her cleaned off, packed her nose with tissue, and even helped Claire sponge off the blood from her shirt.

As she did, Claire heard the distant sound of a car horn, then a crash, and then silence. She looked over at Miranda, who'd tilted her head back to slow the bleeding, and Miranda glanced back and shrugged.

"Karma," she said. "It's a bitch."

Miranda was dead right about Gina, not that Claire had any doubts; the accident was the talk of Morganville for days, and opinions were mostly on the "yay, finally" side of the scale. Gina had earned her suffering, not that Claire took much pleasure in it.

She'd be weeks in the hospital and months in rehabilitation for the broken legs.

Miranda showed up the next morning for coffee, and the morning after, as if it had been planned that way. She probably saw it as inevitable, which it was, once she started showing up. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Eve thought it was weird, but she accepted it the way she accepted most things. It wasn't that she disliked Miranda; she just didn't know what to make of her, Claire thought. And she was fascinated by Miranda's psychic abilities.

Though she was just as shocked and fascinated by the spectacular bruises on Miranda's face and around her eyes. Double black eyes, and a swollen nose that had been reset at the hospital. "You look awful," Eve said on the second morning. "What color is that? Eggplant? You look like a special effect, Mir." She poured Miranda a cup of coffee and set out the milk and sugar.

"It's okay," Miranda said. Her voice sounded a little muffled and congested, but she was smiling. "It's just a bruise. Nothing much."

"It looks painful." Eve frowned at her over her own cup of coffee. "Seriously, if Gina wasn't already all busted up, I would be on her. I mean it."

"I know," Miranda said. "Thank you. But I'm okay. Really."

Michael came in through the swinging doors and smiled at Eve, and his smile turned brittle and strange when he saw Miranda sitting there. She didn't look at him. "Hey, Mir," he said, and it sounded casual, but Claire had seen that first, unguarded look.

Michael got his sports bottle out of the refrigerator and warmed it up in the microwave, then left.

Claire got up and followed him into the living room. "Hey," she said. "Wait. What was that look?"

"What look?" Michael asked, trying to sound innocent. He took a drink from the sports bottle, and a little red flashed like sparks through his blue eyes. "I'm just wondering what she's doing here."

"Having coffee."

"Yeah, I can see that. Why?"

"Oh, come on, Michael -- "

"I don't want to sound like a hard-ass, but Miranda's trouble," he interrupted. "Look, I feel for the kid -- I do -- but you have to understand, she's not...she's not safe to be around. Things happen. They always have."

"She's a kid. And it seems like nobody cares about her!"

"It's not that. It's just -- " Michael gave up, sighed, and shook his head. "Not all strays are safe to bring inside, Claire. Trust me on that one."

Miranda was still sitting in exactly the same spot when Claire came back, still stirring her coffee with the same slow, dreamlike motions. Without looking up, she said,

"He's right, you know."

"What?"

"Michael told you it wasn't safe to be around me. Well, he's right, mostly. Things do happen. Bad things, mostly."

Across the table, Eve looked up from her reading material, which looked like a celebrity gossip mag.

She didn't say anything, but there was something weird about the way she looked at Miranda. Bad memories.

Miranda sipped her coffee. "I only came today because I needed to tell you something," she said. "They all think that the one they're looking for left town, but he hasn't. He's still here. He's got a plan; he's had one for months. And the pretty one, she's working for him. She's in charge of recruitment."

Eve's eyebrows were going up slowly but surely. "Hey, Claire? What's she talking about?"

"I don't know," Claire said, although she thought she did. She slid into the chair next to Miranda. "The pretty one. Do you mean Gloriana?"

Eve stiffened when she heard the name and rolled her eyes. "Oh, God, don't tell me that bitch is up to something after all. I knew it."

Miranda didn't seem to be listening to Eve; in fact, Claire wasn't sure she was hearing anything at all outside of her own head. "It's not totally his fault, you know, but you have to be careful now. He isn't in control anymore. All that anger..." She shook her head. "They're making him like this. They want to make you all like this."

It was impossible to follow what she was talking about.... Was she still referring to Bishop? Or...God, was she talking about Shane ? "Mir," Claire said. "Mir, are you talking about Shane?" Because Shane had a lot of anger; she'd always known that.

He kept it locked down, mostly. But it was there.

Miranda, her bruised face distant and vague, sipped coffee and said, "Oh, I see. They want money first -- money and soldiers. Then the rest of it. He won't make the same mistakes again. Tell Amelie. Tell her -- "

She stopped talking, and her swollen, bruised eyes suddenly widened.

"Mir?" Eve must have felt the same thing Claire did, a powerful surge of dread, because they both got to their feet. "Mir, are you okay?"

"Oh," Miranda said. There were tears in her eyes now, and they flooded down her bruised cheeks. "Oh, that's bad. You have to stop it. You have to stop him."

"Stop who?"

"He's hiding in the dark. He's killing. He's killing all the time," Miranda said. And then her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out in a dead faint, right at the breakfast table.

Bishop, Claire thought, frozen, as Eve cried out, ran to Miranda, and felt for a pulse.

Claire couldn't seem to move. She felt icy and sick.

"Help me!" Eve yelled at her, and Claire blinked and jumped to it. Helping involved moving Miranda into the living room, where they propped up her feet higher than her head and covered her with a warm afghan until Miranda's frail eyelids fluttered and she woke up again.

"Oh," she said. "Did I fall down?"

"More like passed out," Eve said. "How do you feel?"

"Nauseous," Miranda said. Her voice sounded thin and a little feeble. "Too much coffee." She took a few deep breaths and smiled. "I don't eat enough."

Yeah, that much was obvious; Miranda was so thin, Claire could see the knobs of her bones at the joints. The girl needed sandwiches. "I'll make you something," she said.

"No, I have to go now."

"But, Mir -- "

"I have to go," she said, and threw off the afghan and sat up, looking chalky and sick but very, very determined. "I can't answer your questions. It's too dangerous."

"For you?" Eve asked.

Miranda shook her head. "For you," she said. "You're in enough trouble already."

In the end, they couldn't stop her leaving; it was all Claire could do to delay her long enough to put together some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and raid Eve's chocolate chip cookie stash. Miranda clutched the sack lunch and managed a smile as she walked, moving slowly and carefully, toward the door with them. Eve hovered near her elbow, but she seemed steady enough.

"I can't stay," Miranda said, and turned to meet Claire's eyes, then Eve's. "Michael's right. I'm trouble for you. I'm trouble for everyone, and it's better if I'm on my own.

I'll be okay now."

"You're sure?"

Miranda nodded. She paused on the porch, looking like a sad little girl off to school, and said, "He's not going to stop this time. Claire, you need to understand, this isn't like it was before. This is war. Amelie's going to go to war."

Amelie went to war last time, Claire thought, but there was something sincere in Miranda's concern, something that made her feel anxious and breathless.

Shane. Shane was caught in the middle of all this. "Mir, is there anything else you can tell me...?"

"No. Nothing that won't get you killed." Miranda lifted the sack of food. "Thank you for the sandwiches. And the cookies. I'm going to like the cookies a lot."

Then she walked away into the gray, chilly day, and they both watched until she was out of sight.

"Did we just do something bad?" Eve asked. "I mean, she's just akid. We should have made her stay."

"I don't think we could," Claire said. "And she's probably right. It's safer for everybody if she goes."

Still, she couldn't forget about it...about Miranda, alone with all that going on in her head. As alone as Claire sometimes felt, she wasn't anything close to as isolated.

I wish I knew how to help her.

But the truth was, sometimes there wasn't anything that could be done.

SHANE

Once I started fighting, it was all I could think about over the next few days. There was nothing like it, especially when Gloriana was there with Vassily, watching.... I felt invincible. Even the punishment was just another kind of approval; every time Jester hit me, it felt like a pat on the back, and an invitation to hit harder.

So I did.

Yeah, I wondered about the sports drinks, the ones Gloriana kept in the refrigerator.

We all drank them, and it made it easier to keep up with the vamps. Some part of me wondered what was in it, but that part was small, and got crushed down by the part that was excited by all the freedom. It was freedom -- freedom to be all those things I'd been holding back. Freedom to hate. Freedom to crush. No rules; no conscience. I was fighting like them now.

Because that was what it was going to take to beat them. Fighting like an animal, without any fear.

"You're fast," Jester said on the last day of the scheduled sparring. "Getting faster all the time." He sneered at me, and the sight of his fangs made my pulse jump -- not with fear, but with aggression.

Because I wanted to snap those fangs right off and wipe that sneer off his face. "You should take the bite," he said. "You'd be a good vampire."

"Shut up and fight."

"What's the matter? You afraid you'd bite your skinny little girlfriend?" Jester laughed. "She's already someone else's, you know. I can smell the bite on her. He's marked her." Myrnin.

"Shut up," I said, and kicked him in the face. He wasn't expecting it, and he went down, but vampires were never that easy to put on the canvas for long. He bounced up, snarling now, and I danced back, watching his shifts of weight. He would come after me. Jester always came after me.

When he did, I hit fast, ducking under his rush, ramming my shoulder into his center mass and lifting him up off the canvas. Without leverage he wasn't much better than a regular human, but I had to be careful of his hands; they could crush bone, and his fingernails were as sharp as knives. I slammed him down on his head behind me and pinned his arms fast behind his back. It must have hurt, because for the first time, I heard something like a cry of pain.

From a vampire.

It made me feel great.

Someone clapped. It was Gloriana, watching me, leaning against the ropes with beautiful grace. "That was wonderful," she said. "Poor Jester. I think he may just be outclassed, Shane. You should let him up now. I think he's learned his lesson. Don't you?"

I twisted his arms tighter and felt something tear. This time, Jester screamed.

"Enough," Vassily barked, and ducked under the ropes. He grabbed hold of my shoulder to pull me off.

"I need him more than I need you, boy."

I let go, because you didn't fight Vassily. You just didn't. It was the rule, one of the only rules left now.

Glory and Vassily, they were off-limits.

Otherwise, though...it was just freedom. Fight until they said stop.

"Ah," Vassily said. "He's watching." He didn't sound especially happy about it. I looked up and I thought I saw a shadow upstairs, behind thick glass. A drawn, thin face, old and pale, that almost looked familiar, but it was gone in a blur of motion.

Vassily sighed. "Did you see that, Shane?"

I nodded.

"I was afraid of that. Glory, if you would?"

It all blurred away, all the sharp edges and the surfacing memories. Gone. Whatever it was I was supposed to remember...Well, I didn't.