Bitter Blood (32 page)

“It’s not really a riot. More of a rally.”

“Because the underground talk is that it’s a riot. Are they beating people with signs? Is there pepper spray involved? Details!”

“Not that I saw,” she said. “I really thought I had breaking news, but you beat me to it.”

“Not so much, sugar pie. Is it true that they almost got Flora Ramos? Man, I wish they had. It would have just destroyed whatever high ground Amelie had left. I mean,
Flora Ramos
—everybody knows about her kids….”

“They didn’t take her in,” Claire said, and talked fast, in case Eve was refreshing the Web page. “Amelie declared her mayor.”

“Wait—
declared?
How is that fair? Wow, Monica is going to be
pissed
that she didn’t even get to properly lose…. Okay, that’s an upside, actually.”

“She wouldn’t have gotten much of a vote. There was about half the town rallying out there—you know, the half that breathes? And they weren’t carrying any ‘Monica Morrell’ signs. Everybody was Team Obvious out there.”

There was a rustle on the other end, and then a confused blur of voices arguing. “Hey!” Eve came into focus again. “Hell no, Shane, call her yourself. I got her first…. Oh, all right. Shane says to tell you he worked hard on those signs, and they were way better than Captain Obvious’s signs.” Eve covered up the speaker, but Claire still heard her muffled exchange with him. “Really? You had to try to steal my phone to say that? Loser!” Shane’s comeback was indistinct, but probably insulting. Eve frostily ignored it and said, “You were saying, Claire?”

“No matter how great they were, all our posters got torn down or…”

“Or? Claire? Helllloooooooo?”

“Gotta go,” Claire said hastily, and hung up, because Monica’s red convertible was pulled in at the curb up ahead, and she was standing there, staring at one of her posters that
hadn’t
been pulled
down. Claire could see the blank expression on her face, which made her curious, and she hurried over to stand at an angle where she could see the poster.

She covered her mouth to hide an appalled gasp, because someone had gotten downright artistic on Monica’s poster—more than one person, obviously, from the ink-color variations and styles. One had written, in bold Sharpie,
Burn in Hell
, which was really the nicest thing anyone had said. The additions to her half-drunk duckface picture were interesting, too, and mostly pornographic.

Not that Monica didn’t deserve it. She did. This was nothing but retribution, but from the look on the girl’s face, she hadn’t seen it coming, not at all.

“They hate me,” Monica said. Her voice was quiet and a little hushed, and her eyes were wide. There were spots of high color on her cheekbones under the spray tan. “Jesus, they really do hate me.”

“Um…sorry. But what did you expect?”

“Respect,” Monica said. “Fear. But they’re not afraid of me. Not anymore.” She reached out, took hold of the poster, and yanked it down. It ripped in the middle, and she tore the second half down with even more vicious fury. The cardboard was tough, but she managed to reduce it to vivid neon scraps and toss it defiantly to the sidewalk in a shattered heap. “Their mistake! And
yours
, bitch! I know you and Shane set this up. You always wanted to see me humiliated!” She advanced on Claire, fists clenched. Claire stood her ground calmly, and Monica stopped coming when she realized she wasn’t going to make her back down, but rage still boiled through her whole body. At the slightest opportunity, the least little sign of weakness, she’d pounce.

“We thought you might pull it off,” Claire said. “It’s not our
fault you have more baggage than an airport at Christmas. Maybe instead of getting even, you ought to be thinking how to improve what people think about you.”

“I think
you
have about ten seconds to get out of my face!”

Claire shrugged. “Enjoy your outcast life, then. You’ll get used to it. The rest of us do just fine.”

“Bitch!” Monica yelled at her back, but it was just words, and it was a sign of just how much things had changed between the two of them that Monica didn’t dare attack her with anything else, not even when her back was turned. “I’ll get you for this—I swear!”

Claire just waved and kept walking, though the area right between her shoulder blades kept itching until she heard Monica’s car door slam and heard the roar of the engine. Even then, she stayed ready to jump out of the way should the Mustang mysteriously jump the curb, but once it had flashed past her, burning rubber in a thin, bitter mist on the still air, she relaxed. A little.

But only for a moment.

It was a sunny morning, quiet; the sun hung warm in a cloudless sky the color of faded denim, and a couple of big hawks kited overhead, circling for prey. It wasn’t the time or place that she would have expected to sense a threat, and yet…

Yet something was wrong. She could just…feel it.

It took her a few seconds of quick analysis to figure out that what had tripped her alarm switch was the dusty college bookstore she had just passed. Instead of opening up, someone had been sliding the curtains closed in the window…and now a hand reached through the curtain and turned the
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
. That wasn’t right. It was a regular workday, and the store wouldn’t have been open for very long.
Well, he could have just wanted to grab breakfast. Or an early lunch.

She couldn’t be sure, because it happened very quickly, but she
could have sworn that the hand flipping the sign had taken on a vivid red sunburn even in that brief exposure to the sun.

Vampire.

Claire slowly backed up, staring at the store. She thought back to what was happening while she’d been talking to—well, been taking abuse from—Monica. Had someone gone inside the place? Yes, one person; she’d seen him out of the corner of her eye. And, now that she thought of it, that person had been Professor Carlyle, he of the utterly unearned B on her physics paper, so obviously not a creature of the night, even if he was evil.

Someone had been in the store already, like a spider waiting in a web.

Not my problem,
Claire told herself, but something deep down argued with her. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Shane, who was always throwing himself gleefully into one fight after another. Maybe she was just still angry at Amelie and Oliver’s arrogant attitude toward the mostly defenseless human population of Morganville. Whatever.

She slipped her backpack off her shoulder, tugged free a silver stake, and tried the door, and despite the sign, it was still unlocked. She was committed then—the vampire would have heard her anyway, however distracted he might have been. So she charged inside, let the door bang shut behind her, and landed solidly on her feet, ready for the fight.

Good thing she was, because the vampire came at her fast out of the shadows, a white distorted face and a red snarl, and she struck out and got flesh, but not his heart. He screamed and darted off, clearly not prepared for a fight with someone who could hurt him, and in the brief respite Claire glanced around the shop. The lights were on, which was helpful. Typical college bookstore, with loads of shelves crammed with dog-eared, highlighted-over
textbooks; the whole place had a run-down, cheap look to it that probably was exactly what the average TPU student liked about it—that, and the low, low prices. (Claire had tried it out once, but the book she’d bought at pennies on the dollar also had significant issues, such as missing about a dozen crucial pages in the middle.)

The shopkeeper, whose name she vaguely remembered as Sarah something—Sarah Brooke, that was it—was sitting on the floor. Her wrists and ankles had been tied together, and her eyes were so wide that she was likely screaming under the duct tape that covered her mouth.

Professor Carlyle was kneeling beside her. He’d been blitz-attacked, apparently; he had a cut on the side of his head that was bleeding freely in shocking red streams, and he was holding a trembling hand to his neck. More blood trickled out of that wound, but it wasn’t gushing. “Danvers?” he said, in blank astonishment.

“You okay, sir?”

“He—he bit me—but I’m Protected!” He held up the hand that wasn’t clamped over his throat, and Claire saw the silvery glint of a bracelet. “This can’t happen!”

Sarah was Protected, too—she was wearing a similar bracelet that guaranteed her safety from vampire attack, at least theoretically. Obviously, it wasn’t a magic shield.

The vampire, who’d backed away from Claire temporarily, took another run at her, and this time, she skipped backward and ripped down the curtains over the big front window, framing herself in bright daylight. “Come on, if you’re coming,” she said, but the vamp skidded to a halt right at the edge where shadow met sun.

And she got her first good look at him. “Jason?” she blurted in horror.

The vampire who was trying to kill her—and Sarah, and Professor Carlyle—was Jason Rosser, Eve’s brother.

He’d wanted to be a vampire—had actively campaigned for it—and she’d been afraid he’d be even worse as a person if he grew fangs; here it was, proof positive, that if you had creepy violent tendencies as a human, you felt free to indulge them as a new vampire. The only good thing about the situation was that he was
really
new, and super allergic to the sun. In fact, today’s attack might have been his first try at hunting.

If so, it wasn’t going extremely well.

“Get out of here,” Jason said. His voice was low, rough, and ugly with fury. “I don’t want you.
Get out.
”

“Too bad, you’ve got me, jackass. What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like, bite bait?” He flashed his teeth at her, which might have scared her, oh, years ago.

“Failure? And don’t drop fang at me, Jason. It’s not polite. Ah! Watch it!” He’d made a move, and although she didn’t think he’d charge into the sunlight to grab her, she wasn’t assuming anything. She brought the stake to an easy-stabbing position. He already had a blackened, sizzling hole in his side that wasn’t healing fast. He wasn’t eager to take another hit. “These people are Protected, idiot. They’re off the menu. Go to the blood bank if you need your fix of B positive or whatever it is you’re jonesing for.”
Besides causing pain and terror,
she thought, but didn’t say. Clearly, that was a big part of it for Jason. Most of the other vampires were more clinical about their feeding, but he’d brought all his weird, twisted baggage over with him.

In some ways, he and Eve were mirror images of each other—both fascinated by the darkness. Only Eve had chosen to manifest hers outwardly, and Jason…Jason had taken it all deep inside. For a while, Claire had been convinced there was something in
him more than that. Something better. But over time, he’d proven her wrong.

And now, here he was, bloody-mouthed, grinning at her like Batman’s Joker, if the Joker had fangs.

“Protection’s a joke,” Jason told her. He prowled the line of shadow, staring at her with dark, angry eyes that looked unsettlingly like his sister’s. “Always has been; it’s a racket, and the vampires laugh about it over their drinks. You know what the penalty is for me draining these two? I have to pay a
fine
. It’s like a note in your file at school. I can do what I want. Nobody’s going to care. Nobody’s going to stop me.”

“Oliver might. Or Amelie. They kind of like vampires to stay in line around here. Makes things easier for everyone.”

He made a harsh buzzer sound. “Sorry, wrong answer,” he said. “Old pioneer days, Claire. You’re not keeping up. We’ve got privileges now. You can’t keep us walking around on leashes anymore like tame dogs.”

His pacing reminded her of a caged animal, too. Creepy. “Don’t make me stake you, Jason. I’d have to tell your sister, and I don’t want to do that.”

“As usual, it’s all about Eve. Why is it her business what I do?”

“She still cares about you, you know.”

“She never really cared. Don’t try that on me. If she’d been any kind of a stand-up sister, she’d have watched out for me. She just ran off and left me behind to take my punishment and shacked up with her precious
Michael.
” Jason singsonged the name like a grade-schooler.
He’s just trying to scare you,
Claire told herself, somewhat unconvincingly.
You’ve dealt with Myrnin all this time; you can handle this stupid kid.

But she wasn’t so sure. She’d counted on a vampire who’d back
down, not one who was the poster child for unbalanced. Time for a shift of strategy.

Claire put down the stake. She needed both hands as she unzipped her backpack and reached inside to the inner pocket.

Jason decided it was the perfect time to make his move. He was fast, she had to give him that, but so was she, and she’d known he’d take the bait; he wasn’t the cautious sort. So when her hand came up out of the bag holding the canister, he laughed, and his hands closed on her shoulders with crushing force.

“What’re you going to do? Perfume me?”

She sprayed liquid silver in his open mouth.

Jason’s shriek almost burst her eardrums, and, coughing and gagging, he staggered backward, smoke pouring from between his lips. His skin was burning from the sunlight. Claire shoved him backward into the shadows, and he stumbled a few steps, kept gagging, and sank down to his hands and knees to cough convulsively.

“It’s just a little,” she told him. “Consider it breath freshener. The next time, I spray it in your eyes, Jason, so keep the hell off me if you like your face.”

He was too busy retching to try to speak, even if he could have managed it. Claire bypassed him and went to Sarah, tugged the ropes free, and let her pull the tape off her mouth. It must have hurt. The skin beneath it looked red and abraded, and Sarah whooped in a deep breath of relief. She fixed a poisonous glare on Jason. “You just wait, you little piece of crap,” she said. “My Protector’s not going to stand for this.”

“Neither will mine,” Professor Carlyle said. He looked pale and shaky, but righteously angry. Claire found paper towels behind the bookstore’s counter and folded some into a thick pad,
which she gave him to apply to his head wound. “Thank you, Danvers.”