Morganville - 10 - Bite Club (23 page)

That was what had happened to Shane.

"Sure, she can draw men to like her," Michael said. "It's not that hard. But changing them, the way Shane's changed? That's a whole different kind of thing. I don't think even Glory can do that."

"Well, who'd know?" Claire asked. "Amelie?"

"Maybe. Or Oliver; he seems to know her better."

Claire remembered Oliver sitting with Gloriana at Common Grounds. Yeah, they had seemed cozy.

Which made her stomach twist a little, because the last thing she wanted to think about was Oliver having any kind of love life, ever, with anyone. That was just disgusting. "Frank said something about -- " She shut her mouth, suddenly flooded with alarm and adrenaline, with a snap, because she had not meant to mention Frank.

Ever. "I mean, before he, you know -- "

"Died?" Eve supplied. "Went to that big motorcycle rally in the sky? Took a dirt nap?" She sent Michael a warning glare as he winced. "What? Yes, I'm being insensitive, but Shane's not here, and besides, I am pissed off right now. Frank Collins was never Mr. Congeniality when he was alive, you know. I don't know why I have to give him any extra post life respect."

That nicely distracted everybody from Claire's mistake, and she took the precious time to work out what she'd meant to say, leaving out Frank completely. "We need to find out what she's doing here,"

Claire said. "Something's turning the humans at that gym into a mob, and we all know that's what Amelie is most afraid of. Human mobs can take down vampires individually. She'll do anything to prevent that from starting. If it's Gloriana, then we need to prove it."

"What if it's Bishop?" Michael asked. Eve made a choked sound. "It's just the kind of thing Bishop would want -- humans turning against vampires, creating chaos and death. He doesn't care who gets hurt."

"Nasty," Eve agreed. "If he's got Gloriana working for him..."

"Then this could be a whole lot bigger than anybody expected," Michael finished. He paused for a moment, and said, "I can find out."

"How?" Eve's voice had an edge, and Claire glanced over at her. She seemed tense, hands clenched where they rested on her thighs.

"By talking to Glory," he said. "Look, she likes me. She'll tell me things."

"Yeah, that in no way makes me want to barf acid," Eve said. "You getting cozy with her."

"Eve -- "

"We agreed. You stay away from her."

"This is different. This isn't just -- Look, it could be Shane's life we're talking about.

And a lot of other people's. Innocent people. I can handle Glory."

"Can you?" Eve asked. "Because I notice you never call her Gloriana. Just Glory."

He shut up. Which is probably about the only smart thing he can do, Claire thought.

Eve had a genuine point. There was something alarming about how fast Michael had jumped on the whole "let me talk to her" thing.

It was an uneasy silence all the way back home. As Michael parked the car and killed the engine, Claire said, "Do you think he'll come home?"

"You mean tonight? No," Michael said. "If you mean ever, I don't know. That wasn't Shane back there. I think you know that."

She did. It hurt like a huge ball of spikes inside her stomach, and she couldn't keep her eyes from clouding with tears every time she thought about him. It hurt -- oh, God, it hurt. "Then I have to get him back," she said. "We just do. Whatever it takes."

Her cell phone rang, and she looked down at the screen, hoping wildly that it was Shane -- but no. It had no picture and no number showing. Just blankness. She flipped it open and said, "Hello?"

"I didn't know your boyfriend was so hot," a girl's voice said. "So much hotter than you, you know. You're dating so far outside your league, you're making us all embarrassed." Giggles, and the voice took on a nasty edge. "He's a rock star now, and he doesn't need some flat-chested kid anymore. He's going to dump you faster than last week's Chinese food and date a real girl. A porn star."

"What -- Who are you?"

"The future Mrs. Shane Collins." More giggles from other girls who must have been listening. "I'm watching it again. God, he is smokin' hot!"

A click, and Claire was left with nothing. Not even -- when she checked -- a call history. It was a blank number.

"What?" Eve asked, frowning. Claire shook her head.

"I have no idea," she said. "But...it probably isn't good."

"Well, there's a stunning surprise," Eve said. "Didn't see that coming. Was it Monica?"

It should have been, by all logic that Claire knew, but...it hadn't been Monica or Jennifer or any voice she knew. She'd made enemies in town, but not so many that she didn't know how to identify them.

So why was some random weird girl calling her about Shane?

What had she said...? "I'm watching it again," Claire said out loud. Eve looked at her with a frown.

"Watching what?" Michael asked.

"Exactly," Claire said, and felt like she was falling off a cliff into the dark. "Exactly.

Something's really, really wrong, Michael. I just know it!"

"Let's get inside," he said. "And we'll figure this out."

ELEVEN

A
few months back, a girl named Kim had wormed her way into Eve's friendship, and she'd betrayed it. She'd recorded a lot of things all over Morganville, but her personal favorite had been sex tapes.

Claire, fingers trembling on the keyboard, did a search for Shane Collins on YouTube.

It came back empty, and she slumped back in her chair, so relieved she thought she might faint. If Kim had somehow gotten that on the Internet......

"Try Google," Michael said. He was crouched down next to her chair. Eve was hovering over her shoulder, all of them fixed on the glowing screen of her laptop.

Claire bit her lip and tried that, and results scrolled down. Most of them weren't about her Shane, but one caught her eye. She clicked it, without even consciously realizing why she'd picked it.

A Web site came up, loud and red and edgy, all jagged type and torn-up graphics.

The banner read immortal battles. An animated thing underneath asked if she had the courage to enter the game.

There were lots of fragments of pictures making up the splash page -- dark, gritty stuff, mostly guys looking intense and sweaty.

And immediately, one face jumped right out at her. She gasped at the same time Michael leaned forward and pointed. "That's Shane," he said. She nodded. "Click it."

"I -- "I don't want to, she thought, but she squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then aimed the mouse at the glowing entry box.

She clicked. It exploded, and the sound rattled harshly out of the speakers. Michael didn't flinch, but she did.

When the screen cleared of the animated explosion, there was a sign-in box and a link to create an account. She clicked that. "It says I need a credit card," she said. "And that it's a hundred bucks to sign up."

Michael opened his wallet and handed over a card. He hadn't had it long, she guessed; it still looked shiny and new. It was black, with Amelie's logo in gray in the background and the bank's info at the bottom. "Do it," he said. She typed in the info and handed the card back, then clicked register. There was the usual wait, and then the screen cleared for a video.

"That's a vampire," Eve said, leaning forward. "What the hell?"

"His name is Vassily," Michael said. "I never liked him."

Vassily -- whom Claire had never seen before, except maybe at a distance -- was a long-haired guy only a little older in face-age than Michael. Kind of good-looking, if you went for lots of sharp angles and arrogant smiles. He was wearing period costume, which struck her as a little weird; some vampires did, but not many. They were anxious to fit in, not stand out. He looked like he'd ripped the clothes off Dracula in an old black-and-white movie.

"Welcome," Vassily said, and smiled. He showed teeth. "To Immortal Battles. We don't fight to the death -- we fight beyond death, in the world's most dangerous sport.

You'll never see ultimate fighting the same way again -- I promise you. Ah, I see our betting windows are open. Choose to view previous matches, or place a bet on an upcoming one. And remember: we know who you are." Another flash of vampire teeth. It was all weirdly campy.

"What the hell?" Michael murmured, almost laughing. "Amelie's going to kill him."

The video went away, and Claire was left with choices. There were two previous-bout videos, and she clicked on the second one.

Michael sucked in a startled breath, and so did Eve.

Two half-naked guys in a wire cage, pounding the hell out of each other. Nothing you couldn't see on pay-per-view, except that one guy's skin was far too pale, and where he got cut and bled, the blood wasn't quite right. That was a human and a vampire, fighting each other.

Then one, the human, went down and was dragged out -- Claire couldn't tell if it was theater or not, or if he'd been knocked out -- and another guy entered the cage.

"No," she whispered. "Oh no."

It was Shane. He looked scared but determined, eyes dark and fixed on the vampire in the cage with him. The vampire hissed at him. Shane circled, looking for an opening.

"Is he insane?" Michael blurted, looking paler than ever. "He's not even armed!"

He also wasn't bruised, Claire realized. This had been shot before today, before she'd seen all the bruises on his body. Because of that -- and only because of that -- she was able to watch as Shane and the vampire bobbed, weaved, feinted...and attacked. The vampire looked weakened, thanks to the first bout, but Shane looked incredibly fast and strong.

Even so, he got pounded down, time after time. Claire found herself flinching every time a vampire fist landed. Shane kept himself alive, barely, and actually broke off one of the vampire's fangs with an unexpected kick. That earned him a slam into the wire mesh so forceful it cut the pattern into his skin.

"I can't watch this. I can't," Eve said, and put her hands over her face. "He's bleeding!"

It dawned on Claire that if the fight had been dangerous before, now it was incredibly risky -- a bleeding human was like catnip to a vampire, and the one Shane faced seemed to get a second wind, so to speak, and come after him with a vengeance.

And Shane went down. The vampire pinned him, and Claire caught a glimpse of red, glowing eyes and one fang as it lunged for his throat.

Shane slammed a fist into the side of the vampire's head and snapped it sideways, and managed to use the momentum to roll him over. Once Shane was on top, he pounded the vampire with merciless punches, over and over again, and Claire could see the horror and anguish and rage that she knew was trapped deep inside him bubbling over, taking over. He wasn't just fighting for fun or money -- he was fighting for his mother, his sister, even his father.

He was fighting his nightmares and his own hatred of Morganville.

A black-shirted referee jumped in and stopped the fight, and hefted Shane's sweating arm into the air to signal victory. Shane collapsed to his knees and had to be helped out of the cage.

But he'd won. His vampire opponent had to be carried out.

When the screen went dark, there was silence in the room, and then Michael said, very quietly, "Look at the hit counter."

Hundreds of thousands of views for this video, at a hundred dollars per account.

Millions, for whoever was running Immortal Battles.

"That doesn't even count the betting, and you know there's betting. Shane's not just doing this for fun. He's getting paid," Michael said. "He's getting paid to fight vampires."

"Click the other one, the older one," Eve said. She sounded better now that she'd seen the ending of the first fight. Claire wasn't so sure she could handle another one; she never wanted to see Shane like that again, or be that afraid for him.

But she needn't have worried, because Shane wasn't in this one.

Stinky Doug was.

Stripped down, with his hair tied back, Stinky Doug looked lanky, all muscle. His fight was over quicker than Shane's, although he displayed the same unnerving quickness and strength. It didn't go in his favor.

Doug got his ass kicked by a slender young female vamp, and was dragged out unconscious. Not dead, Claire knew; from the date on the fight, this had been at least two weeks before he'd died.

So Stinky Doug had stolen blood from the lab experiment after this fight was filmed -- why?

"He already knew about the vamps. He must have needed proof," she murmured.

"Proof of the vampires. That's why he took the blood. He was going to go public, or he was blackmailing them."

"What?"

Claire pointed to Stinky Doug's slack face as he was dragged out of the cage. "He fought two weeks ago, right? Maybe he wasn't happy with what he got paid. He stole vamp blood from a college lab experiment. I think maybe he was going to use it for proof, or to get more money out of the Immortal Battles people. After all, they're playing the vampire part of it like theater. Like a joke."

She was right; the comments proved it. People were playing along with it, but clearly, nobody believed there were vampires fighting on screen. They were guys in makeup.

But they liked it all the same.

Claire remembered the phone call she'd gotten that had tipped her off to the Web site.

Somebody inside Morganville knew for sure, and they would take it seriously.

"There's something else," Michael said. "Shane's fast, yeah, sure, and he's always been strong. But he's not superhuman. Or he wasn't. But you saw him tonight. That was...different. He's gotten faster and stronger and able to take more punishment.

They've done something to him."

And it all came together in Claire's head in a blinding flash. Doug...the lab experiment. Her discussion with Frank about why someone would want vampire blood in the first place. He'd told her it wouldn't make a decent drug, because there wasn't a high and it wore off too fast, but it made you stronger and faster.

"Vassily's giving them vampire blood," Claire said. "In the protein shakes, probably.