Bite Club

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 beyond death, 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, taking over. 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 know there’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 Doug was.

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 after this 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 believed there 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 would take 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 grrr now. 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