Текст книги "Bite Club"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“I saw how he looked at you. C’mon, Michael, tell her. Tell her I’m wrong. Tell her you never think about it.”

Michael didn’t say anything. There was an odd light in his eyes, one Claire couldn’t remember seeing before. She punched him in the arm. “Well?” she demanded. “Tell him!”

“Won’t do any good,” Michael said. “He’s not listening to anything I have to say. Or you, for that matter. Come on, Claire. We should go.”

“No! I’m not leaving him here like this, thinking that I’m—”

Shane lunged forward, grabbed her by the shoulders, and put his face very close to hers. Close enough to kiss, but that didn’t seem to be on his mind at all. It was Shane, but…not. Not the Shane she’d always known. Even when he’d lost his memory, there’d been this core of gentleness, of control…and now that was gone.

It was like part of him had died. The best part.

“Let me make it realclear,” he said. “I don’t date fang-bangers. If it’s not him, then it’s that crazy-ass, bloodsucking boss of yours. So, go on. Do what you know you want to do. None of my business anymore. We’re done.”

And he pushed her away, hard. She banged against a steel post, which knocked the breath out of her and brought tears to her eyes from the instant, white-hot pain of bone ringing on metal.

Through the tears, she saw Michael grab Shane’s arm and yank him away from her, unbelievably fast and strong. But Shane had strength and quickness of his own, more than he should have, more than she’d ever seen any human have, and he swung around inside Michael’s defenses and slammed a fist into his stomach, then his chin, snapping Michael’s head back. Then again and again and again, so fast it was a blur.

And Michael went down flat on his back. He rolled over, blinking, and got back to his feet, but his mouth was bleeding, and Eve was yelling and trying to get between him and Shane, and it was all just insane how this was happening. How could it possibly be—

Claire caught sight of a figure standing at a metal railing upstairs, looking down at them. A petite woman, masses of honey-colored wavy hair, a sweet face.

Gloriana. The vampire.

She was smiling—not an evil smile, which Claire could have understood, but a smile of childlike delight. A smile that should have been reserved for puppies and rainbows and true love.

Not for seeing Shane kick Michael in the side with enough force to shatter bone.

The onlookers watched with a kind of strange, hungry approval, and nobody moved in to stop it until a tattooed, muscled guy—Rad, from the car and motorcycle shops—grabbed Shane from behind, winding his arms through and locking his fingers together behind Shane’s neck in a unbreakable restraining hold. He kicked the joints of Shane’s legs and got him down on his knees.

Eve was down next to Michael, helping him sit up, wiping the slightly too-pale blood from his face with a lacy black handkerchief. “My God,” she was saying numbly. “My God, my God…Oh, sweetie…”

Shane was trying to throw off Rad’s hold, but his buddies were moving in now. As if he realized it was useless to try to break Rad’s hold on him, Shane went still.

Eve must have decided Michael was okay, because she looked at Claire and asked her if she was hurt, at increasingly worried volumes. Claire shook off her daze and said, “No, I’m fine. Michael?”

He didn’t answer. He was sitting up and all his attention was on Shane. Just Shane. “Let him go, Rad,” he said.

“Dude,” Rad said. “Don’t think that’s too good an idea. He ain’t givin’ up. He’s just waiting. I can feel it.”

“I said let him go.”

“Your funeral.” Rad released Shane, who turned and shoved him back. Rad held up his hands, signaling surrender.

And Shane turned back toward Michael, who wasn’t showing anything like that. In fact, he was on his feet again, moving Eve—gently—and facing Shane squarely.

“This isn’t you, man. What is causing this?” Michael asked.

“It’s her,” Claire said, and looked up at the railing above them. “She’s screwing with him.”

Only Gloriana was gone. No sign she’d ever been there. Claire looked around, but there were no vampires in view. Not one.

Just Michael.

Shane turned a scorching look on her. “ Herwho?”

“Gloriana,” Claire said. “She’s doing this to you.”

He laughed. “I don’t do vamps. You ought to remember that.”

“It’s a glamour.”

“No, it’s not,” Michael said, very quietly. “Not exactly. Or not completely. Right, Shane? This is something else.”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “It’s something else. Because there’s a lot of us who are sick as hell of getting our asses kicked by vampires, sick of being your cheap wine bottles with legs, sick of letting you rule this town like lords. It’s not going to happen anymore. Right, guys?”

The gym guys—and girl, too—had gathered around in a circle, and the rest had the same predatory glitter in their eyes, the same barely under-the-surface violence. Rad seemed to be the only muscled-up dude who was in the wrong place and had the wrong motives, and he was looking around now, frowning uneasily.

“Look, maybe you should go,” he said to Michael, and then glanced at Eve and Claire. “All of you. Work this out later.”

Her impulse was to say that she was staying, that no power on earth could make her leave Shane when he was like this, but if she did that, she knew that Michael and Eve would stick it out, too. And that would be bad. Shane seemed especially angry about Michael being here—and, from the look he gave her now, Eve, too.

A big, overmuscled guy dressed in microfiber sweats and gold chains, like some cheesy reality-show reject, gave Eve a reallynasty grin. It was mostly a snarl. “You always ran around town, dressing like a wannabe bloodsucker, and now you’re banging one,” he said. Well, he didn’t actually say banging, but Claire’s brain refused to completely translate it. It was too shocking when it was said with that much venom. “I hate fang-bangers worse than the vamps. At least the vamps are just doing what comes natural. Yourkind, you’re perverts.”

Eve flinched a little, but then she lifted her chin. “Really? Considering what I hear from the girls you date, Sandro, maybe you ought to think twice about throwing that word around. ’Cause I had to look up half the things you wanted them to do on Urban Dictionary, and it was disgusting.”

She was wearing the choker again, having tied it back on before they’d left the house, but now Sandro—like Shane had before—reached out and yanked on it. He didn’t manage to pull it off, but he pulled it down far enough that Eve’s fang marks were clearly visible. “Look at that. Walking blood bank. I heard you’re a walking ATM, too. That stands for Any Time Michael wants it—”

Michael stepped in front of Eve, facing Sandro, and said, “You want to say it to me?”

Sandro laughed. “You didn’t learn your lesson from your little friend there? Sure. ’Cause you ain’t got no backup, Glass. Your whole family’s been vamp pets from the Dark Ages, but we ain’t having any more of that better-than-you crap. Not here. Here, you’re all on your own, bitch.”

Shane had gone very quiet behind them. Claire looked at him, at his set, unsmiling face, and felt panic ignite. This was real, and it was dangerous. Rad and the few others who didn’t seem angry were backing off, edging out of the crowd. Maybe they’d send for some help, or maybe not. She certainly didn’t trust that the dude taking their money at the door would bother to come charging to the rescue.

Michael was a vampire, but he was young, and he couldn’t fight this crowd on his own. Plus, he’d be trying to protect Eve, and her, too.

And Shane didn’t have his back. Or any of their backs. It was obvious and painful, and Eve gave him the worst, most heartbroken and betrayed look Claire could imagine. “You’d just stand there,” she said. “You’d stand there and let this happen to us. To us. To your own girlfriend.”

Shane turned away to start slugging the heavy bag again.

“Shane,” Claire whispered. “Please. Please.”

He faltered, and one of his punches landed light. He grabbed the bag and stopped its swing, and looked over his shoulder at her. For a long, awful second, she thought he’d just go back to what he was doing, but then he nodded sharply at Sandro. “Let them go,” he said.

Sandro cracked his knuckles. “Gimme a reason.”

“I owe her that much,” Shane said. “Let them leave.” He punched the bag again with stunning force. “But take my advice, friends. Don’t come looking for me again. Any of you.”

There was some grumbling, but the circle slowly parted. Eve grabbed Michael’s hand and towed him off, heading for the exit. Claire hesitated, staring at Shane’s back as he bobbed, weaved, and punched.

“Shane,” she said. “I still love you.”

He didn’t answer. Sandro shoved her after her friends.

“You heard him,” Sandro said. “Get the hell out and stay out. He ain’t interested.”

She looked back just once. There was pain—real pain—on Shane’s face as he fought the training bag, and their eyes locked just for a second before he looked away.

His were red. It wasn’t possible to tell tears from sweat, but she thought—no, she knew—how devastated he felt.

Because she felt exactly the same.

Tears welled up and spilled over, and she sucked in a trembling breath that smelled like sweat and metal and despair.

Eve took her hand. “Come on,” she said. “Nothing you can do here.”

That was true, and it hurt so, so badly.

SHANE

I wish I could say I don’t know why I did it. That would make me feel better, cleaner, about what I said to her. But I knew. It was just like Claire figured: Glory had glamoured me. But I didn’t care, because under the glamour there was a real bad streak of…me. I felt right. More than that, I felt righteous, like a knight in the old stories riding off to some God-justified war. I felt like I had when I’d had a purpose and my dad had been alive to tell me what it was.

I punched the heavy bag until my arms trembled and my legs felt like lead, and then collapsed on a metal bench. Somebody brought me another protein shake, and I downed the bottle in thick, thirsty gulps. My head was hurting, and I was having trouble catching my breath.

“Hey, man, you all right?” That was Sandro. I hated Sandro, I hated his greasy smile and his gold chains and his fake New Jersey cred. He was from Morganville, like the rest of us. Hell, his dad was a baker. You can’t be a badass when your dad makes cakes.

Sandro squeezed my shoulder, tightly enough to bend tendons. I knocked his hand away. “Fine,” I said. “Get lost.”

“Good job dumping that little Renfield. I don’t know what you ever saw in her, anyway. She looks like half a boy. Me, I like my women with curves and bounce, if you know what I mean.”

I drained the last of the shake and felt a fresh burst of anger and hunger. “Maybe you need to look up whatget lost means.” Michael wasn’t here to take it out on, but Sandro would do just as well.

“Don’t get attitude with me, Collins. You ain’t that tough.”

I knew better. Sandro was schoolyard tough. I was fight-for-your-life tough. But I wasn’t going to teach him the difference, because for all his faults, for all he was a prime, grade-A jackass, he was breathing and his heart was beating, and that’s all it took to put him on my side. Two kinds of fighters: us and them.

None ofthem were here right now. Glory and Vassily had separated us into humans and vamps, and it had worked. Now every time I saw a vamp it made me want to rip into it.

Including Michael.

That made me feel weird inside, but not weird enough to want to change it. This was where I belonged. This was what I was meant to do. Born and bred to it, honestly. My dad had taught me well.

In here, I didn’t have to be Shane Collins, eternal slacker, orphan, lost boy. In here, with these guys, I was part of something. Part of the war.

Even if, right now, that war was fought one on one, in the ring, with people cheering.

Someday, it would be fought in the streets, and people would cheer there, too.

Even Claire.

Soon.

“It’s Gloriana,” Claire said once they were safely in the car. “I saw her, Michael. I saw her watching you and Shane fight. She was smiling.”

“I don’t know how she could do it without affecting me or you or Eve,” he said. “Glamour isn’t that specific.”

“Hers is,” Eve said. He gave her an odd look as he drove down the street, heading for home. “What, you didn’t know that? She can grab one guy out of a room if she wants to. I’ve seen her do it. I’ve seen her do it to you.”

Claire had seen it, too, at her welcome party—Gloriana had lured Michael away with just a smile and a wink, right out of Eve’s arms. She hadn’t been serious about it—at least, Claire didn’t thinkshe’d been serious—and Eve had gotten him back fast, but she’d felt Glory’s influence now, and the worst thing about it was that it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Frank had even warned her, and she stillhadn’t believed that there was anything wrong with what she was feeling or doing.

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 notmeant 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 offright 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 postlife 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

Afew 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 Collinson 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 herShane, 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 beyonddeath, 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, takingover. 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 knowthere’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 Dougwas.

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 afterthis 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 believedthere 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 wouldtake 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. It’s a temporary boost, but it breaks down fast.”

“Oh, God,” Eve said. “That’s bad. That’s damn bad, isn’t it?”

Michael didn’t deny that at all. “Click on the link for upcoming bouts.”

Claire did. In three days, Shane was scheduled to fight again, this time a vampire named……

“Jester,” Michael murmured. “He’s fighting Jester. And Jester will murder him.” He didn’t mean it figuratively. “We have to get to Shane and get him out of this. He can’t survive that, not even with the help of whatever they’re giving him. The human body’s not made for it.”

“We have to get him out of it before Amelie finds out,” Claire said, “because she’ll kill everybody involved, no questions asked. This is a high-security risk for the town. She won’t hesitate.”

Eve dropped down onto Claire’s bed and buried her head in her hands. “And how are we supposed to do that, exactly? Shane’s all grrrnow. He’s not going to listen to us. And he’s got an entourage of his very own tough guys who’d gladly beat the crap out of us for breathing his air.”

“What are we going to do, then? Just let him die? For money?” Claire stood up and glared at the Web site again in utter fury. Her hands ached, and she didn’t know why until she realized she was clenching them into tight fists. That made her think about Shane fighting, and that made her even angrier. There was a red-hot pressure inside her head that felt like it might blow her apart. “We can’t tell Amelie. We can’t go to Shane. Then what?”

Her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and it said nothing at all again. Her breath hissed out in a sound of pure, enraged frustration, and she answered it in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “If you’re calling to tell me how hotit is to see my boyfriend get beaten up, I’m going to come over there and—”

“It’s Frank,” said the weird mechanical voice on the other end. That hit her like a bucket of ice-cold water, making her flinch and shiver at the same time. Oh, God, he could hear her.Frank could hear any of them, anytime, if they had their cell phones on them and he cared to listen. The ultimate eavesdropper, and she’d forgotten all about it. “Get here. Now.”

“The lab,” she said.

“No, Candyland! Of course the lab! And you’d better come prepared to explain to me what the hell is happening to my son, Claire.” He hung up on her. She’d just been hung up on by a disembodied brain in a jar. Fantastic. She hadn’t even had time to say, Don’t tell Myrnin, but she didn’t think Frank would, anyway. He’d have picked up on how dangerous this was for Shane, and if Myrnin knew, well…Myrnin wasn’t Shane’s biggest fan at the best of times. Claire didn’t think he’d rat Shane out just because of that, but he was, ultimately, Amelie’s friend first. And Amelie would want to know.

This was so dangerous. God, everywhere she turned there was risk. To Shane and to Morganville. Even to the vampires, though she didn’t care quite as much about that, because the vamps could always take care of themselves…and would.

“Who was it?” Michael’s face was carefully blank, but she saw the glitter in his eyes. He was waiting to see how much she was going to lie.

She sighed and told the truth. “Frank Collins,” she said.

“Frank’s dead.”

“Yes,” she said. “And…I have some things you’d better know before we go any further.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Eve said, in a “not really” voice. “Somebody make popcorn.”