Midnight Bites (34 page)

But I guess today was about fighting myself, and God help me, I was kind of winning.

•   •   •

I had a date late afternoon to walk Claire home from campus; she didn't really need the escort, but I enjoyed pretending she did, and spending time with her was always a plus. I had a lot to make up for, with Claire; I'd lied to her, and when things got dark on me with the fight club, I'd gone dark on her, too. She hadn't deserved that, or any
of the terrible things I'd said, or thought. It was going to take some real effort to get back to where we were, but I was determined to make it happen.

And normally, I wouldn't have let anything interfere with that, but as I was passing the empty house on Fox Street, the second from the corner, with the broken-out windows and the ancient, peeling paint job, I heard something that sounded like muffled, frantic crying.
It's a cat,
I told myself. The place was a lifeless wreck, and the yard was so overgrown that just getting to the barred-over front door would have meant a full-blown safari, with the added benefit of thorny weeds, possible snakes and poisonous spiders, and who knew what else. I'd feel really damn stupid if I ended up snakebit to save a cat who wasn't even in trouble in the first place.

But it didn't really sound like a cat.

In Morganville, the principal survival rule was always keep walking, but I've never been one for that strategy; it's soul-sucking, seeing people hurt and doing nothing to help. Goldman was right—I did have a savior complex—but dammit, in Morganville, people sometimes did need saving.

Like, most probably, now.

I sighed and started pushing through the tangle of waist-high weeds toward the house. The front door was a nonstarter; I could see from here that the padlock was still intact. Whoever had found a way in had done it with at least a small bit of stealth.

The windows were still full of jagged glass, so even if someone else had gone in that way, I wasn't about to try it—and I didn't need to, because the back door was standing wide-open, a not very inviting rectangle of blackness.

I could hear scuffling now, and the crying was louder. Definitely
being muffled. It was coming from upstairs, and from the thumps, it sounded like there was a fight under way.

The stairs creaked and popped, alerting anybody who was paying the slightest attention that I was on the way, and I wasn't surprised when a girl of about fourteen appeared at the top of the steps, gasping and sobbing, and plunged past me toward the exit. She looked relatively okay, if panicked.

The boys—two of them—at the top of the steps weren't much older than she was. Sixteen, seventeen, maybe. Local kids, but nobody I had on my radar.

They looked real surprised to see me.

“Hey,” I said, and stopped where I was, halfway up, blocking the way down. “You want to explain what just happened?”

One of them opted for bravado. Not a good look for him. “None of your business, jackhole,” he said, and flipped me off. “We're not doing anything.”

“You mean now,” I said. “Here's a pro tip, kids—when the girl's crying, she's not that into you.” I was angry now, angrier than I'd been at dumb-ass Billy with his sucker punch. That would have been a meaningless fight. This one, on the other hand, had some meat to it. “You know who I am?”

One of them had some sense, at least, and he nodded. “Collins,” he said, and tugged at his friend's arm. “Dude, let it go.”

The friend wasn't that smart. “You can't prove nothing,” he shot back at me. I shrugged.

“Yeah, I might really care about that if I was some kind of cop, but I'm not. I'm just a guy who gets pissed off a lot. So here's the deal. I'm going to give you one chance to promise me you'll stop being giant douches. Do that, and you can get the hell out of here.” My voice went cold for the next part. “You break your promise, you touch
any girl in this town again who doesn't sincerely beg you for it, and I'm going to rip off any parts that dangle, you got me?”

“Who died and made you Batman, dickhead?” the bigger one asked.

“For the purposes of this discussion, let's just say my dad,” I said. “Because he'd already have left you room temperature on the floor. I'm the kinder, gentler version.” Not quite true; my dad hadn't possessed any real moral compass. If these fools had been vamps, he'd have been all over it, but regular human idiots? He'd shrug and walk away.

They didn't need to know that, though.

“Dude, let's just go already!” said Lesser Douche Bag, and didn't wait for his friend to make up his alleged mind; he held up both hands in surrender and edged by me down the steps. When he hit the ground floor, he ran.

The remaining guy reached in his pocket and flicked open a fairly serious-looking knife. I respect knives. It raised him a notch or two in my threat levels, though he wasn't yet even breaking orange. “Bad idea,” I told him, and began climbing the stairs toward him. “Real, real bad idea.”

He started backing off, clearly spooked; he'd thought just having a knife meant he won. I hit the top step and lunged, knocking his knife hand out of the way, twisting it, and catching the weapon before it hit the floor.

Then I put a forearm against his chest, shoved him against the wall, and showed him the knife. “Bad idea,” I repeated, and drove it into the wall next to his head, close enough for him to feel the passage of it. He went really, really pale, and all the fight bled out of him as if I'd actually stabbed him. “You just got upgraded. You no longer get a full pass, jackass; you get to look forward to seeing me a lot. And I'd better like what I see, you got me? Any girls crying, even if it's at a sad
movie, and we're going to finish this in a way that's not going to look real good on you.”

I wanted to punch the little bastard, but I didn't.

I just stared at him for a long few seconds, and then pulled the knife free, folded it, and put it in my own pocket. Then I let him go. “Scat,” I said. “You've got a ten-second head start.”

He made use of it.

I sat down on the steps, toying with the knife he'd left behind. I hadn't lost my temper, but I hadn't exactly been nonviolent, either. I called that one a draw.

I hadn't heard him, but all of a sudden I realized that someone was at the bottom of the steps, looking up in the gloom. Pale skin, curly wild hair, out-of-fashion old man's clothes. Small wire-framed glasses pushed down on his nose.

Dr. Theo Goldman.

“You following me?” I asked. I felt surprisingly relaxed about it.

“Yes,” he said. “I was curious how much effort you would put forward. I'm pleasantly surprised.”

I gestured with the knife. “So, how does this count?”

He smiled, just a little. “I've never really been a fan of the teaching that you should turn the other cheek,” he said. “Evil must be fought, or what does it matter if we're good? Goodness can't be weakness, or it ceases to be good.” He shrugged. “Let's call it a draw.”

I could live with that. “You were right,” I said. “It doesn't have to be all fight, all the time. But I'm going to miss it. Kind of a lot.”

“Oh,” he said cheerfully, “I'm quite sure there will be plenty of chances for you to indulge yourself. It's Morganville, after all. See you tomorrow.”

He was already gone when I blinked. I shook my head and started to pocket the knife.

“Leave it,” his voice drifted back. “I trust you better when you're not armed.”

I grinned this time, and dumped the knife through a crack in the boards. It was swallowed up by the house.

It wasn't twenty-four hours yet, but somehow, I felt like I could probably make it the rest of the way.

Probably.

Another anthology tale, written for the
Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions
collection, edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong. That amazing anthology is the result of Melissa and Kelley inviting a bunch of their author friends along for a road-trip signing tour called the Smart Chicks Kick It event, and it was a huge success and blowout fun. To help fund the tour (because all of us pitched in for costs), they put together this anthology, which also allowed us to give back a little to our readers.

This stand-alone story is set late in the series, but before the Daylighters show up, and it deals with something I've always wondered about. . . . We have vending machines for snacks, cold drinks, even hot drinks. Why don't the vamps have one for blood?

Well, this examines why it might not be such a great idea, by way of Michael's experience. A sweet little love story, too, in an unexpected way.

Fun factoid: I was addicted to soft drinks in college (not coffee) and if I couldn't find a working machine that served Dr Pepper, my day was bound to go almost as badly as Michael's is about to in this story. Physics class without the sweet relief of soda? Unthinkable!

T
here was a new vending machine at the Morganville Blood Bank. In the withdrawal area, not the deposit area. It looked like a Coke machine, only instead of handy ice-cold aluminum cans, there were warm cans labeled
O Neg
and
A
and
B Pos
—something for everybody. The cans even had nice graphic logos on them.

My girlfriend, Eve, and I were standing in front of the vending machine, marveling at the weirdness, and wondering a lot of things: First, what the hell did they tell the can manufacturers about what was going in those containers? And second, would the blood taste like aluminum? It already had a coppery tone to it, like licking pennies, but . . . would it be any
good
?

There were twelve vampires in the room, including me, and nobody was making a move to get anything out of the shiny new machine. The Withdrawal Room itself was clean, efficiently laid out, and not very friendly. Big long counter at one end, with staff in white lab coats. You took a number; you got called to the counter; they gave you your blood bags. You could order it to go, or drink it here; there were some small café-style tables and chairs at the other end, but nobody really liked to linger here. It felt like a doctor's office, someplace you left in a hurry as soon as you could.

So it was odd how all the tables and chairs were full, and the sofas, and the armchairs. And how there were vamps standing around, watching the machine as if they expected it to actually DO something. Or, well, expected me to do something.

“Michael?” Eve said, because I'd been a long time, staring at the glossy plastic of the machine in front of me. “Uh, are we doing this or not?”

“Sure,” I said, resigned. “I guess we have to.” I had actually been
asked
—well, ordered, really—to lead the way on this particular new Morganville initiative. Morganville, Texas, is—to say the least—unusual, even for someplace as diverse and weird as our great state. It is a small, desert-locked town in the middle of nowhere, populated by both humans and vampires. A social experiment, although the vampires really controlled the experiment. As far as I knew, we were the only place in the world vampires lived openly—or lived at all.

I was on the side of the vamps now . . . not through any plan of my own. I was nineteen years old, and looking at eternity, and it was starting to look pretty lonely because the people I cared about, that I loved . . . they weren't going to be there with me.

Somehow, the machine summed up how impersonal all this eternal life was going to get, and that made it so much more than just another Coke machine full of plasma.

I was still amazed that eleven other vamps had shown up today for the demonstration; I'd expected nobody, really, but in the end, we weren't so different from humans: novelties attracted us, and the blood dispenser was definitely a novelty. Nobody quite knew what to make of it, but they were fascinated, and repelled.

And they were waiting.

Eve nudged me and looked up into my face, concerned. She wasn't too much shorter than I was, but enough that even the stacked heels on her big Goth boots didn't put us at eye level. She'd gone with
subdued paint-up today: white makeup, black lipstick, not a lot of other accessories. We were so different, in so many ways; I wasn't Goth, for starters. I wasn't much of anything, fashion-wise, except comfortable. And she seemed okay with that, thankfully.

“Swipe?” she said again, and tapped my right hand, which held a shiny new plastic card. I looked down at it, frowning. White plastic, with a red stripe, and my name computer-printed at the bottom.
GLASS, MICHAEL J
. My dates of birth and death (or, as it was called on the vamp side, “transformation”). The cards were new, just like the vending machine—issued just about two weeks ago. A lot of the older vampires refused to carry them. I couldn't really see why, but then, I'd grown up modern, where you had to have licenses and ID cards, and accepted that you were going to get photographed and tracked and monitored.

Or maybe that was just the humans who accepted that, and I'd carried it over with me.

It was just a damn glorified Coke machine. Why did it feel so weird?

“So,” Eve said, turning away from me to the not-very-welcoming audience of waiting vampires, “it's really easy. You've all got the cards, right? They're your ID cards, and they're loaded up with a certain number of credits for the month. You can come in here anytime, swipe the card, and get your, uh, product. And now,
Michael Glass is going to demonstrate
.”

Oh, that was my cue, accompanied by a not-too-light punch on the arm.

I reached over, slid the card through the swipe bar, and buttons glowed. A cheerful little tone sounded, and a scrolling red banner read
MAKE
YOUR SELECTION NOW
. I made my selection—O negative, my favorite—and watched the can ride down in a miniature elevator to the bottom, where it was pushed out for me to take.

I took the can, and was a little surprised to find it was warm, warm as Eve's skin. Well, of course it was: the signs on the machine read
TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED
, but that just meant it was kept
blood
temperature, not
Coke
temperature. Huh. It felt weird, but attractive, in a way.

They were all still watching me, with nearly identical expressions of disgust and distaste. Some of them looked older than me, some even younger, but they'd all been around for centuries, whereas I was the brand-new model . . . the first in decades.

Hence, the guinea pig—but mainly because I'd grown up in the modern age, with swipe cards and Internet and food from machines. I trusted it, at least in theory.

They hated it.

I rolled the can indecisively in my hand for a few seconds, staring at the splashy graphics—the vampire fangs framed the blood type nicely. “How do you think they got away with getting these made?” I asked Eve. “I mean, wouldn't somebody think it was a little strange?”

She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Michael, don't you pay attention? Out there”—meaning, anywhere except Morganville—“it's just a big joke. Maybe they thought it was for a movie or a TV show or a new energy drink. But they don't think about it like we do.”

I knew that, even though, like Eve, I'd been born and raised in Morganville. We'd both been out of town exactly once in our lives, and we'd done it together. Still, it was really tough to realize that for the rest of the world, our biggest problems were just . . . stories.

As hard as Morganville was, as full of weirdness and danger, Out There hadn't been a walk in the park, either. Though I wished I'd been able to go to a really big concert. That would have been cool.

I was still turning the can around, stalling. Eve grabbed it from me, popped the top, and handed it back. “Bottoms up,” she said. “Oh, come on, just give it a try. Once.”

I owed her that much, because the black choker around her neck was covering up a healing bite mark. Vampire bites healed quickly, and usually without scarring, but for the awkward three-day period, she'd be wearing scarves and high necks.

It was typical Eve that she was also wearing a tight black T-shirt that read, in black-on-black Gothic-style lettering,
GOOD GIRLS DON'T
. AWESOME GIRLS DO
.

She saw me looking at her, and our eyes locked and held. Hers were very dark, almost black, though if you really got close and looked, you could see flecks of lighter brown and gold and green. And I liked getting close to her, drawn into her warmth, her laughter, the smooth hot stretch of her skin. . . .

She winked. She mostly knew what I was thinking, at moments like these, but then, as she'd once told me, smugly, most guys really aren't that complicated.

I smiled back, and saw her pupils widen. She liked it when I smiled. I liked that she liked it.

Without even thinking about it, I raised the can to my lips and took a big gulp.

Not bad. I could taste the aluminum, but the blood tasted fresh, just a bitter streak that was probably from the preservatives. Once I started drinking, instincts kicked in, and I felt the fangs snap down in my mouth. It felt a little like popping your knuckles. I swallowed, and swallowed, and all of a sudden the can was light and empty, and I felt a little shaky. I don't usually drink that much blood at one time, and I'm more of a sipper.

I crushed the can into a ball—vampire strength—and tossed it across the room into a trash can, basketball-style. It sailed neatly through the narrow circle.

“Show-off,” Eve said.

I felt great. I mean,
great
. My fangs were still down, and when I smiled, they were visible, gleaming and very sharp.

Eve's smile faltered, just a little. “Really. Showing off now.”

I closed my eyes, got control, and felt the fangs slowly fold up against the roof of my mouth.

“Better,” she said, and linked arms with me. “Now that you're all plasmaed up, can we go?”

“Yeah,” I said, and we got two steps toward the door before I turned back, got the card out of my pocket, and slid it through the machine's reader again. Eve stared, blinking in confusion. I chose another O negative (“This Blood's for You!”) and slipped the warm can into the pocket of my jacket. “For later,” I said.

“Okay.” Eve sounded doubtful, but she got over it. She turned back to the crowd of vamps watching us. “Next?”

Nobody was rushing to swipe their cards, although one or two had them out and were contemplating it. One guy scowled and said, “Whatever happened to organic food?” and went to the counter to get a fresh-drawn bag.

Well, I'd done what Amelie had asked me to do, so if it didn't work, they couldn't blame it on me.

But I did feel great. Surprisingly, the canned stuff was better than the bagged stuff. Almost better than when Eve had let me have a taste, straight from the tap, if that's not too sick.

I felt them watching us. Eve and I weren't the most popular team-up in town; humans and vampires didn't mix, not like that. We were predator and prey, and the lines were pretty strictly drawn. In vampire circles, I was looked at as either pitiful or perverted. I could imagine what it was like on Eve's side. Morganville's not full of vampire wannabes—more a town full of Buffys in the making.

Our relationship wasn't easy, but it was real, and I was going to hang on to it for as long as I possibly could.

“What do you want to do?” Eve asked, as we stepped outside into the cool Morganville early evening.

“Walk,” I said. “For starters.” I let her fill in what might come after, and she smiled in a way that told me it wasn't a tough guess at all.

•   •   •

Later, it occurred to me that I felt jittery, and it was getting worse.

We were strolling out in Founder's Square, which is vampire territory; Eve could come and go from here with or without me, because she had a Founder's Pin and was pretty much as untouchable as a human got, in terms of being hunted—by vampires who obeyed the rules, anyway. But it was nice to walk with her. At night, Morganville is kind of magical—bright clouds of stars overhead in a pitch-black sky, cool breezes, and, at least in this part of town, everybody is on their best behavior.

Vampires liked to walk, and jog, along the dark paths. We were regularly passed by others. Most nodded. A few stopped to say hello. Some—the most progressive—even said hello to Eve, as if she was a real person to them.

I had a wild impulse to jog, to
run
, but Eve couldn't keep up if I did, even in her practical boots. Holding that urge back was taking all my concentration, so while she talked, I just mostly pretended to listen. She was telling some story about Shane and Claire, I guessed; our two human housemates had gotten themselves into trouble again, but this time it was minor, and funny. I was glad. I didn't feel much like charging to anybody's rescue right now.

Up ahead, I saw another couple approaching us on the path. The woman was unmistakably the Founder of Morganville, Amelie; only Amelie could dress that way and get away with it. She was wearing a white jacket and skirt, and high heels. If she'd stood still, she'd have
looked like a marble statue; her skin was only a few shades off from the clothes, and her hair was the same pale color. Beautiful, but icy and eerie.

Walking next to her, hands clasped behind his back, was Oliver. He looked much older than her, but I didn't think he was; she'd died young, and he'd died at late middle age, but they were both ancient. He had his long, graying hair tied back, and was wearing a black leather jacket and dark pants. He was scowling, but then, he usually was.

Weird, seeing the two of them together like this. They were usually polite enemies, sometimes right at each other's throats (literally). Not tonight, though. Not here.

Amelie glowed in the moonlight, ghost-bright, and when she smiled, she didn't look cold at all. She inclined her head to us. “Michael. Eve. Thank you for doing the little demonstration today. It was much appreciated.”

“Ma'am,” I said, and returned the salute. Eve waved. We would have kept on walking, but Amelie stopped, and Oliver was a solid block in front of us, so we stopped as well. I said, “Hope you're enjoying the walk. It's a nice night.”

Lame, but it was all I had for small talk. I was aching to keep moving. I couldn't keep still, in fact, and I drummed my fingers against the side of my leg in a nervous rhythm. I saw Oliver notice it. His scowl deepened.

“It's turned quite cool,” Amelie said. Like Oliver, she was zeroing in on my trembling fingers. “I heard you sampled the new product today.”

“Yeah, it's great,” I said. “I got another one to go.” The can was heavy in my pocket, and I'd been thinking about it the entire evening. I'd found myself actually wrapping my hand around it inside my pocket, but I'd managed to stop myself from pulling the tab. So far.
“Very convenient. You ought to think about selling them in six-packs.”