Authors: Rachel Caine
“Thanks,” Claire said, because regardless of the insult, Monica really had just done her a solid. She was having trouble catching her breath both from the run and from real worry. “Right turn!”
“Not heading that way, sunshine. I’m going shopping.”
Claire grabbed the wheel and forced it, and Monica swore—honestly, she knew words Claire had never heard of, in interesting and colorful combinations—and smacked Claire’s hand away to manage the turn carefully. “I swear to God, if you make me dent this car, I will
end you
!”
“They got Eve,” Claire said. “Right turn! Make the block!”
“Why should I?”
“They beat her up. She’s hurt. They could go back!”
“And I care because…?”
“Monica, they could kill her! Just do it!”
Monica hesitated just long enough to make Claire consider diving out of the car while it was speeding, but then she hit the brakes and fishtailed into a hard right, then another one, then U-turned to squeal to a halt in the intersection where Eve’s hearse still idled.
Monica didn’t say anything at all. Claire took one look at Eve lying on the pavement in a pool of her own blood, time just seemed to freeze into a block of ice for a long breath. Then it shattered, and Claire scrambled out to kneel beside her. Eve’s eyes were closed. She was breathing, but her skin looked ashen, and she was bleeding freely from cuts on her head; Claire didn’t dare move her, but she could see the livid red marks on her arms where she’d been kicked and stomped. There could be internal injuries, broken bones….
Ambulance,
she thought, but even as she reached for her phone, she heard Monica saying, “Yeah, 911? There’s somebody bleeding all over the sidewalk at Fifth and Stillwater. Just look for the hearse.”
Claire looked up at her as Monica shut off her cell phone and tossed it into her purse. Monica returned the glance, shrugged, and checked her lipstick in the mirror. “Hey,” she said. “Never let it be said I’m not civic-minded. That sidewalk might stain.”
Then she drove off with a roar of the convertible’s engine.
Claire was right about Roy leading the others back, but by the time they arrived, half of his friends had come to their senses, and the ones still with him weren’t enough to really work up a good frenzy. They were further held back by the sound of the ambulance siren piercing the air and moving closer. Claire sat back on her heels as she stared at Roy. He was a nondescript boy, nothing
really—an okay kind of face, neutral hair, standard high school clothes. The only thing that really made him stand out at all was the blood on his hands, and even as she noticed, he must have, too, because he pulled out his shirttail and scrubbed the skin clean, then tucked the fabric back into his pants. Evidence gone, except for the bruises on his knuckles.
He pointed at Claire as the ambulance pulled to a stop, siren winding down, behind the hearse. “This ain’t over,” he said. “Captain Obvious says vamp lovers get what they deserve. You do, too, for sticking up for her.”
She had an almost-uncontrollable desire to scream at him, but she could see it wouldn’t do any good. They were all looking at her as if
she
were the monster and as if Eve were some kind of pervert that deserved to die. Shane might have known what to say, but Shane wasn’t here. Michael wasn’t here. It was just her, alone, holding the limp and bloody hand of her best friend.
She met his gaze squarely and said, “Bring it, Roy Toy.”
“Later,” he promised, and jerked his head at his posse. They headed out at a jog and split up.
It was only as the ambulance attendants asked her to move back and started evaluating Eve’s condition that she realized exactly what Roy had said.
Captain Obvious says…
Captain Obvious.
Oh God. Claire remembered the flyers, the brick, the gasoline thrown on their house, and the paper with the tombstones on it, and their names.
All
their names.
Maybe Pennyfeather hadn’t used the gas at all; he’d just taken advantage of the distraction. Maybe
humans
had already tried to kill them all.
She tried Michael’s phone, but of course it was turned off; it would be, if he was playing. She dialed Shane, instead. He picked up on the fifth ring. “Hey,” he said, “kinda busy trying to get an actual job here….”
“Eve’s been hurt,” she said. “Get to Michael. Captain Obvious has us on some kind of hit list. And watch your back.”
“Jesus.” Shane was quiet for a second; then he said, “Is Eve okay?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time, the reality of it was hitting her as the adrenaline rush faded away, and she felt panic choke her up. “God, Shane, they were kicking her so hard—”
“Who?” She could read the fury in the single word.
“I don’t know. Roy Farmer, some guy named Aaron, a girl named Melanie—three others. Shane, please, get to Michael. He’s at Common Grounds….”
“On it,” he said. “You safe right now?”
“I’m going to the hospital with her,” Claire said. “Watch your back—I mean it.”
“I will.”
He hung up, and she had an insane wish to call him back, to hear his voice saying her name, telling her it would all somehow, impossibly, work out, that he loved her and she didn’t have to be afraid of the humans of Morganville, too, instead of just the vampires. But Shane would never say that last thing.
Because he’d known better, and always had.
Eve had disappeared into an emergency room treatment area, and Claire wasn’t allowed to follow; she ended up sitting on the edge of a hard plastic chair in the waiting room, rubbing her hands together. They felt sticky, even though she’d washed them twice. When she closed her eyes, she kept seeing the avid delight on the
faces of the kids—people Eve knew—as they kicked her when she was down.
She’d faced down Monica and her friends, but that had been a cold, calculated kind of violence. This was…This was sickeningly different. It was a blind, unreasoning hate that just wanted blood, and she didn’t understand
why.
It left her feeling horrified and shaky.
The first she knew of Michael’s arrival was Shane putting his hand on her shoulder and crouching down in front of her. When she looked up, she realized that Michael had just walked straight past her, past the nurse who’d tried to stop him, and stiff-armed open the emergency room patients only beyond this point door.
Shane didn’t say anything, and Claire couldn’t find the words. She just collapsed against him, and let the tears boil out of her. It wasn’t all grief; part of it was a sharp-edged ball of fury and frustration that kept bouncing around in her chest. First Myrnin had disappeared, and then Pennyfeather had come at them, and Jason, and Angel, and now
this
. It was as if everything they’d known was going wrong, all at the same time. Morganville’s bricks and mortar were back together, but its people were coming apart.
Shane made boyfriend noises to her, things like
Hush
and
It’s okay
, and it did soothe that deep, scared part of her that had felt so alone. She gulped back her sobs and got enough self-control that she asked, “Was everything all right with Michael?”
“Nah, not really,” Shane said. “While we were leaving, some guy taunted Michael about Eve getting what she deserved. We might have trashed the place a little bit. Oliver’s going to be pissed. That was a bonus, though. I had to keep Michael from ripping the idiot’s head off. He had some kind of Human Pride thing going on, and you know I don’t exactly disagree with that, but…” He shrugged. “At least I got to hit somebody. I needed that.”
She dug in her backpack and found a sad little crumpled-up ball of tissues, blew her nose, and wiped the worst of her tears away. “Shane, I couldn’t stop them. They were just—all over her. I tried, but—”
“Knowing you, you did more than try,” he said. “I heard a rumor that Captain Obvious had put out the word we were no longer off-limits, but I didn’t take it too seriously; hell, he just got started up again, I didn’t think he had real juice yet.” He sat beside her and took her hand in his. “Eve’s tough. She’s okay.”
“She wasn’t,” Claire said, and felt tears threaten again. “She couldn’t even try to fight them. They just—”
He hushed her and tipped her head against his shoulder, and they sat together, in silence, until Michael came back. He was moving more slowly now, but his face was tense and marble-pale, and he wasn’t bothering to try to keep the vampire grace out of the way he walked, like a prowling animal. His eyes looked purple at a distance, from the flickering red in them.
He stopped in front of them, and Claire started to ask about Eve, but something in him kept her quiet and very still.
“I need you,” he said to Shane. Shane slowly rose to his feet. “You know who it was?”
Shane glanced at Claire, then nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
“Bro—,” Shane said, and for him, his voice sounded almost tentative. “Man, you’ve got to tell us something. We love her, too.”
“She has a concussion and a broken rib,” Michael said. “I can’t be here. I need to go, right now.”
Shane gazed at him for a long few seconds before he said, “I’m not letting you kill anybody, man.”
“I have the privilege to hunt. If you want to stop me from using it, you’d better come along.”
Shane cast a quick look of apology at Claire, and she nodded; there was no doubt that Michael was in a mood to get more violent than she’d ever seen him, and having Shane as wingman might actually save lives. “Stay here,” he said to her, and gave her a fast, warm kiss. “Do
not
leave without me.”
“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” she whispered. “And don’t
you
do anything stupid, either.”
“Hey,” he said with a cocky grin, “look who you’re talking to!”
He left before she could tell him—as if he didn’t know—that she loved him, so much, and Michael never even glanced back at her. Maybe he blamed her, she thought miserably. Maybe he figured she should have been able to stop it, to save Eve.
Maybe she ought to have been able to, after all.
She sat in silence, miserable and aching with guilt and grief, for hours. It was long enough that she got thirsty and bought a Coke, downed it, had to find the restroom, went through all the ancient magazines piled on the table, and actually napped a little.
It was almost eight o’clock when the doctor finally appeared from the treatment area. He looked around, frowned, and then came to her. “You’re here for Eve Rosser?”
“Yes.” She shot to her feet and almost stumbled; her legs had gone a little numb from sitting for so long. “Yes!”
“Where’s her immediate family?”
“He’s”—she tried to think of something more clever than blurting out
Getting his revenge
, and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other—“gone to tell her mom.”
That seemed to do the trick, because the doctor looked more satisfied with that. “Well, when he comes back, tell him she’s in recovery. We’ve got her stabilized, but we’ll have to keep her for a couple of days and make sure there’s no brain trauma. She’s lucky. The surgery went well.”
“Surgery?” Claire covered her mouth with her hand. “
She had
surgery?
For what?”
He stared at her in silence for a moment, then said, “Just tell him she’s stable. I don’t anticipate more than one night here for her, unless there are complications we can’t foresee right now. But the internal bleeding is under control.”
He walked off before she could ask him if she could see Eve. He got all the way to the door, then turned back to see her settling miserably back into the plastic chair. “Oh,” he said. “If you want to see her, she’ll be waking up soon. I warn you, she’ll be in some pain.”
Claire climbed to her feet again and followed him to the recovery room.
He wasn’t kidding about the pain, and Claire was in tears trying to soothe Eve as she moaned and tossed and whimpered, but they finally gave her some kind of a shot that quieted her a little. Claire followed as they wheeled her into a room and hooked her up to machines, and this time, when Claire dozed off in a chair, it was a little more comfortable, and she pulled up to Eve’s bedside.
When she woke up, Morganville had gone still and dark, bathed here and there in the soft glow of porch lights and streetlamps. Car headlights crisscrossed the grid of streets. There were, as always, more out at night. Vampire vehicles.
She was still staring out at it when she heard a rustle of sheets, and Eve said, in a shockingly small voice, “Michael?”
Claire went to her side as Eve woke up. She had bruises on her face—red right now, but starting to turn purple at the edges. Both eyes were puffy. “Hey,” she said in as soothing a voice as she could manage. She took Eve’s hand, carefully, and held it. “Hey, you scared the hell out of me, sweetie.”
“Claire?” Eve blinked and tried to open her lids wider, then winced from the effort. “Crap. What car hit me?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Did someone run into us? Is my hearse—” Her voice faded off, and she was quiet for a moment, then said, “Oh. Right. They jumped me, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “But you’re okay. You’re in the hospital. The doctor says you’re going to be fine.”
“Son of a—” Eve tried to lift her hand, but it had tubes coming out of it; she looked at it, then lowered it slowly back down. “Where’s Michael?”
“Ah—”
“Please don’t tell me he went after them.”
“I won’t,” Claire said. “Look, you just need to rest, okay? Get your strength back after surgery.”
“Surgery? For what?” Eve tried to sit up, but she groaned deeply and sank back down in the pillows. “Oh
God
, that hurts. What the hell…?”
The nurse came in just then, saw Eve was awake, and came to lift the bed up to help her sit. “You can sit up for a while,” the nurse said, “but if you start feeling sick, use this.” She pressed a bowl into Eve’s hands. “The anesthesia could make you vomit.”
“Wow. Cheery,” Eve said. “Wait—what kind of surgery did I have?”
The nurse hesitated, glanced at Claire, and said, “Are you sure you want me to tell you with your visitor present?”