Bitter Blood (29 page)

It took another few seconds, but finally the glow faded out of his eyes to a more-normal bloody color—I hated that I could say it was normal—and he sat back, shaking all over. “What the hell was that? I just—”

“Went all evil superhero? Yeah. I don’t know. One of Myrnin’s fun little gadgets, I guess.” I poked at it, frowning, and it slid on top of a pile of books and nearly toppled to the floor until I grabbed it and settled it in place again.

Michael was still holding out his hand to me, and I realized he was still waiting for the knife. Calmly, now. Our eyes met and held, and I said, “Are you sure, man?”

“No,” he said. “But it’s got to be done.”

I handed it to him. Pennyfeather’s eyes were shut, and he looked lifeless already, stunned unconscious by Michael’s furious attack. Lying there silent, he seemed a lot…smaller. And with that androgynous bone structure, he could have just as easily been a strong-featured woman as a man, and that made the whole thing even more unsettling. I wasn’t sure I could have done it at all, honestly.

And just to make matters worse right then, the portal shimmered, shivered, and belched out Claire. My girlfriend was still running on adrenaline; it was obvious in her too-wide brown eyes, the color burning in her cheeks. She had a longbow in her hand that was almost as tall as she was, and an arrow nocked and ready to pull. The arrow had a barbed silver tip.

She skidded to a halt, but she didn’t drop her guard. “Is Pennyfeather—” She spotted Michael kneeling over the fallen vamp, and the knife, and she sucked her breath in hard.

“Has to be done,” I said. She bit her lip, but she didn’t try to argue. “Look, we need to get out of here. Myrnin did something crazy and filled in the exit, so we’re now relying on the goodwill of my Frankendad keeping this portal thing open, and I’m not feeling good about the plan.”

“Feel worse,” she said. “Frank’s starving. I don’t know if he can even keep this up at all. We need to get out of here,
now
.”

“Not if we leave Pennyfeather behind and he has a way out that leads through our house.”

Eve burst through just then, having apparently stopped to load up a rapid-fire crossbow that she held with frightening competence. She checked the corners for threats, too, before letting her guard down and starting to head toward Michael.

“Wait,” I said, and got in her way. “Just—give him a minute.”

She took a step back and considered me silently a second, then said, “I’m the one Pennyfeather came after. It’s my job, right?”

“No!” Claire and I both said at the same time, but Claire went on, earnestly. “Eve, it’s not killing him in a fight. It’s—murder.”

“So?” Eve said. Her eyes had gone flint-hard. “How many murders has he committed? You don’t think he has it coming?”

“I don’t think that’s something any of us should decide!”

“Oh, honey,” Eve said, and smiled just a little. “You really aren’t from Morganville yet.” She looked at me. “What’s your objection, Collins?”

I shrugged. “Michael can handle him if he wakes up. You can’t. Logistics.”

Claire seemed shocked, but hey, Eve was right; Morganville kids understood this better. It might seem cruel and harsh, but
when it came down to living and dying, we knew which side we wanted to end up on. Having Pennyfeather continue to stalk us was not an option.

Eve nodded. She walked over to Michael and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her and took in a deep, steadying breath.

“He can’t,” Claire said. “He
can’t
, Shane—”

I stepped in, and she dropped the bow and arrow with a clatter as I wrapped my arms around her and turned her back to what was going to happen. “Hush,” I said, and nodded to Michael over her shoulder. “It’ll be fast.”

“Stop.”

The voice seemed to come from everywhere, all around us, from hidden speakers and the tiny little one on my phone, too. It was scratchy and pale, and sounded exhausted, but it was all too familiar.

“Frank,” I said. Facing down my dad was something I’d done a lot over the past few years, but it always seemed to have a new sting in the tail, every time. I wondered what it would be today. I swallowed what felt like a mouthful of acid, and said, “Just leave us alone, okay?”

“You don’t need his blood on your conscience,” Frank said. “Trust me, kids, you don’t. Let me do it.”

“You? Dad, hate to break it to you, but downstairs there’s a computer, and in the middle of it there’s a brain floating in a jar with wires running into it, and that’s
you
. As in, you’re not doing jack to Pennyfeather, however badass you think you are.”

“I only have to do one thing, Son,” he said. “I just have to die. I’m dying anyway; the nutrient tanks are dry, and there’s nothing left for me. If you leave him here, I’ll hold the portals shut until I’m gone. He’s not going anywhere.”

I turned and looked at Michael and Eve, and they seemed just as surprised as I was. And a little bit relieved. “Well,” Eve said, “maybe it’s the best—”

“Think about what you’re saying,” Michael said. “Because if I put this in his chest right now, he’s finished. If we walk away, what if your dad screws up and lets him out?”

“Worse,” Claire said, “what if he doesn’t? You don’t want Pennyfeather’s death on your conscience, but you have no problem with leaving him here to starve? How would that be, Michael? Fun? Easy?”

He looked away. He knew, and I knew, that vampires didn’t go easy from starvation; they lived a long, long time. And suffered. “Maybe he deserves it.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But if he does, he damn sure deserves the knife, too. And I don’t want to wake up thinking of him down here screaming, do you?”

Pennyfeather took the decision out of our hands, because he opened his eyes, and snarled, and lunged up, claws outstretched.

And Michael acted completely out of reflex, defending himself and Eve. Quick and smooth and deadly accurate.

Pennyfeather hit the floor hard, and the silver began eating through his skin. His eyes stayed open. I didn’t know if he was still alive, but I hoped not; either way, it didn’t take long.

Frank’s voice came back, weaker this time. “Time to leave,” he said. “You need to go, now.”

Michael left the knife in Pennyfeather’s chest, took Eve in his arms, and led her to the portal. It rippled as they passed through without pausing.

That left just Claire and me staring at each other.

“Hey, Dad,” I said to Frank. My voice sounded unexpectedly husky, and I cleared it. “Maybe this is wrong, but I think you tried
to help me when the draug had me in their tanks. They were killing me and making me dream while they did it, only someone—someone kept trying to make me wake up. Was that you?”

Nothing. Silence. I listened to the distant drip of water for a while.

“Well, if it was, thanks, I guess. It made me fight.”

That summed up me and my dad perfectly. He made me fight, whether I wanted to or not, and whether it was for a cause I believed in or not. He’d made me tough, and strong, and a survivor, and yeah, that was worthwhile, especially now that I had things to really fight for. Claire had quoted a writer named Hemingway to me, not so long ago:
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some people are strong at the broken places.
I don’t think my dad ever read Hemingway, but he’d have liked him.

I spent another couple of seconds waiting for—I don’t know, something—and then I turned to go.

And a grainy, shadowy, two-dimensional figure formed in front of me.

My father had chosen a younger version of himself than the age he’d been when he’d died, but it was still him—him from the last of the good times of my childhood. Relatively speaking. We stared at each other for a moment, and then his lips moved. I could just barely hear the scratchy words hissing out of an ancient speaker on the side of the machine across the room.

“I knew this day would come, Shane. That’s why I sent you back here. To be here when everything went bad.”

“The vampires,” I said. It was always about the vampires with him. He blamed them for everything—for my sister’s probably accidental death, for my mom’s probable suicide, for his own drinking and bitterness and anger. And yeah, okay, maybe he was right, because Morganville was a toxic place. “They’re out of control.”

“Always were,” he whispered. “Always will be. Stop it. No matter what it costs. Burn the town around them if you’ve got to.”

That was my dad. Always kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out. If a few innocents got caught in the inferno, well, collateral damage.

“Claire, go,” I said. She was crying, I realized, silent tears that ran in silver drops down her cheeks. I couldn’t sometimes fathom all of the goodness inside of her, because who cried for my dad, for a brain in a jar who’d hardly ever been good for anybody?

Claire did. She was probably crying for Pennyfeather, too.

“Go,” I said again, gently, and kissed her on the lips. “I’m right behind you.”

She picked up her bow and arrow and—after a hesitation, grabbed the bulky machine thing that had affected Michael so strongly. Before I could wonder about that, she headed for the portal, but she paused there, looking back. “Come on,” she said. “We go together.”

I headed for the exit, walking right through Frank’s image. It felt like a curtain of pins and needles, but I was used to pain, especially where it came to my dad.

He re-formed ahead of me, blocking the way to Claire. I kept walking, and he kept backing up, traveling smoothly as the ghost he was. “Son,” he said, “I want to tell you one thing. Just one.”

“So do it.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

I came to a sudden and complete halt, staring at him—at the man I’d never really known, because he’d never let me know him; he’d treated me like a useful tool and potential enemy my whole life.

“You’re different,” he said. “You’re better than I ever was. And I’m proud of you for being so strong. That’s all. I just needed to tell you, before the end.”

He dissolved in electronic smoke. Gone.

“Dad?” I turned on my heel, my voice echoing through the cool, silent lab. “Dad?”

Nothing. Just…silence. That told me he had no further energy to spare, and we were out of time. The lights flickered, warning me of the same thing.

Claire suddenly said, “Oh no—Bob!”

“Bob?” I stared at her blankly, and she pointed across the lab.

Oh. The spider. I shook my head and jogged over to pick up the tank—which, except for the glass content, was light—and made damn sure the lid was on it tightly before carrying it to the portal. Claire waited anxiously as the lights continued to flicker, faster and faster.

I paused on the edge of the portal as she stepped through. I wanted to say something profound, but I’m not that guy, so I just said, awkwardly, “Okay, Dad. See you.”

“See you.” His voice sighed, and there was something wistful in his electronic voice.

I stepped through the portal into the cool, familiar air of the Glass House, and felt the thing snap shut—utterly shut—behind me. There was an almost physical sensation of disconnection, of the whole system just…dying.

I put my hand on the blank wall and concentrated, for a moment, on just breathing.
You’ve lost him before,
I told myself.
He wasn’t really there anyway.

But it had felt real to me when he’d said he was proud. Maybe I’d always craved that, needed it. Maybe he’d known it.

But despite the surge of sadness, there was something good about leaving him this time—something that felt final, and complete.

Maybe this was what all those TV psych doctors meant when they talked about closure.

I put Bob’s tank down on the dining room table, to Eve’s
muttered distress, and Claire quickly dumped the heavy, clunky machine on the coffee table, along with her bow and arrow. I noticed vaguely that it was pointed in my direction, but at the moment, that didn’t mean anything—and neither did the prickly feeling that raced through me.

“You’re all right?” Claire said, and stepped closer with an expression of pure concern. She looked…I can’t explain it, exactly, but all of a sudden I felt a bolt of heat go through me like fire out of heaven, and, man, did I want her in all kinds of ways—right and wrong. She’d grown over the past year—filled out in curves that begged to be held and stroked, and this definitely wasn’t the time, but all of a sudden I was considering not minding what was appropriate behavior.

“Fine,” I said through a suddenly dry throat. “I mean, I will be, anyway.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wish we could’ve done something.”

“That’s why I love you,” I said, and reached over to brush her hair back from her face. “Because you care so much.” Her gaze came up and hit mine, and more heat exploded through me like a bomb. I saw the shock wave of it in her eyes.
Oh
.

I really could not explain what was going on in my head and ricocheting around my body, but it was…good. Great, in fact. I fitted my hand around Claire’s cheek and bent to kiss her. Her lips tasted like cherries and salt, sweet and tart together, and I growled somewhere deep and leaned in, pulling her close. She was mine,
mine
, and that was all that mattered. Myrnin had gone, vanished, and he wasn’t any threat now. Some traitorous little whisper told me I could have asked Frank about him, about what had happened, but I hadn’t wanted to know. He was gone.

And I had Claire, body and soul, and
man
, did I want her, right now. In so many ways.

“Hey,” Michael said from somewhere behind me. “That’s really sweet and all, but we just killed a guy and your dad—are you sure you want to be doing this
now
?”

He was dead right about that, but I couldn’t take my hands away from her—or my lips. I’d somehow worked my thumbs under the tight knit of her shirt and found skin beneath, and I didn’t want to let that go. The sensation of her fine, soft flesh, even that much of it, made me feel as if my head were on fire.

And then Claire gasped, coughed, and fought her way free of me. I instinctively reached for her and got air, and stumbled after…and as soon as I did, I sucked in a sharp, cold breath of air and felt something like sanity start to come back.