Bite Club

Claire stiffened. “Myrnin doesn’t hunt. He has regular blood deliveries.”

Frank just looked at her, then at Michael. “You. Best friend. What the hell’s going on with my son?”

Michael exchanged a quick glance with the others, then said, “Probably easier if I show you. Got a computer? One with Internet?”

“Yeah, over there.” Frank pointed, and Claire led the way to the laptop that she kept in the corner, the one that she’d set up for Myrnin but he never seemed to use. “I was monitoring your keystrokes, but I couldn’t see the Web site. Somebody’s gone to some trouble to blind me.”

Claire pulled up the Immortal Battles site. “Can you see it now?”

“No.” Frank’s insubstantial, flickering ghost leaned forward, frowning. “Just a blank screen. White noise.”

“Try this,” Eve said. She took out her cell phone and turned on the camera, then focused it on the screen. “Can you see it now?”

He wasn’t looking at her cell phone screen, but he grunted in acknowledgment. “That works,” he said. “I can see your cell in real time, so I can watch it through your camera. Good thinking. All right. Show me.”

He didn’t have any comment until Claire loaded up the video of Shane’s first fight. As he watched the boy get thrown into the fence and then turn it around on the vampire, he did the thing Claire most dreaded.

He smiled in genuine pride.

“Hey!” she said sharply. “Your son is being hurt. I know you’re an abusive asshole, but could you maybe focus on the fact that he could have been killed? Maybe?”

Frank lost the smile, but the pride remained. “He won,” he said. “My son won a bare-knuckles fight with a vampire. You, Glass. You want to tell me how unlikely that is?”

“Pretty damn unlikely,” Michael said. “But Claire’s got a point.”

“I trained my son to survive in Morganville. I’m not apologizing for that.”

“You beat the hell out of him,” Michael said, and behind his soft tone there was steely anger. “I remember how many times he came to my house to stay the night because he couldn’t face going home to you. How many times he had bruises from your training. My parents didn’t do that to me to train me to survive.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “And look how you turned out, Glass, with all the blood drinking. No offense.”

“Lots taken,” Michael said. “And by the way, you wound up with fangs, too. So screw you and your self- justification for being Worst Parent of Our Lifetime, Drunken Ass Division.”

“I’d kick your disrespectful butt if I still had legs, but I’ll let it go. For now,” Frank said. “So my son’s tangled up with this. I’ll admit, it’s risky, but it’s right up his alley.”

“He’s doing it for money,” Claire said.

“Good for him. I’d have done the same thing myself if it had been around in my day. Good training and cash, plus the chance to pound some bloodsucker in the face.”

“It’s illegal!”

Frank shrugged. “Maybe. But who cares?”

“Frank, it’s run by vampires. They’re getting rich off your son’s blood!” Michael said. Frank raised his eyebrows.

“You think that’s a news flash? That’s how it’s been from the beginning, Glass. Humans get boned; vampires get rich. It’s their whole lifestyle.”

Claire shook her head. “Maybe, but I guarantee you that Amelie doesn’t know about this particular little project, and she’s going to care big-time. Anything that puts Morganville on the radar is a bad thing, right?”

“Eh,” Frank said. “They’re playing it for the cheap seats, all opera capes and bad Transylvanian accents. Nobody out there’s going to take it seriously. They’re watching it for the fighting. They don’t believe for a second there are actual vampires involved. Not much of a risk.”

“Maybe not, but what happens when somebody takes it seriously and sends somebody to check it out? It would make a hell of a 60 Minutes story,” Michael said. “One guy already tried to extort them for money. He’s dead.”

“Wait,” Claire said as Frank opened his mouth to reply. Not that he needed to have a mouth to talk; it was just theater. His voice was coming out of her phone. He waited while she thought for a second. “Michael. Bishop killed Stinky Doug. That’s what Jason told me.”

“And—Oh.” Eve’s eyes grew very wide. “Wait. You saw Jason? Where?”

Dammit, again she was saying things she shouldn’t have been. Too late to call that back, anyway. “He’s been arrested,” Claire said. “Again. Sorry.”

“And you were going to tell me that my brother was in jail when, exactly?”

“When they said I could. I’m sorry, Eve, but that’s not the point. Jason accused Bishop.”

“Wait, the Bishop? Evil old man who is supposed to be dead—that Bishop?”

This was a house of cards, and it was all crashing down around her. Claire decided she couldn’t care about that, not now. Better to try to get it all out in the open. “Bishop broke out,” she said. “And the next thing anybody knew, he grabbed Jason and had him take him to Stinky Doug. Then he killed him. Jason didn’t know why.”

“But we do now,” Michael said. “Doug was trying to blackmail Immortal Battles. He lifted vampire blood and was probably planning to go to a reporter with it, along with his story and the Web site evidence. Proof.”

“Proof nobody could afford, not even Bishop,” Claire said. “So no more Doug. But the thing is, Bishop had to already know about the fighting. He was in on it. Or behind it. Amelie’s got a full-scale search going for Bishop, and she’s going to find out about this, probably soon.”

Michael leaned against a lab table and crossed his arms. “That means Shane will be just as guilty as everybody else, for aiding and abetting,” he said. “You know how she’s going to feel about that. And if we knew and didn’t tell her, we’ll be there right alongside him.”

“I know how I’m going to feel,” Eve said. “I’m going to feel sorry, because I don’t look good in prison clothes. Or I’ll be dead, in which case I won’t feel much. Claire, sweetie, I hate to say this, but I don’t think we have a choice. We have to tell somebody. We have to.”

“But Shane—”

“Shane needs to understand that this little sideshow is over, like it or not,” Frank said. “And that he’s falling with it if he stays. He’d better decide to end up on Amelie’s side, not Bishop’s, because Claire is right: Bishop in the mix changes it from illegal fun to a serious threat.”

“Shane doesn’t know about Bishop’s involvement. I’m sure. He’d never have anything to do with it if he had any clue,” Claire said. “We just have to tell him, that’s all. He’ll break it off.”

“That’s all,” Michael said. “You were there, right? The last time we tried to talk to him?”

Claire took a deep breath. “No offense, Michael, but I think—I think it was you who really caused the problem. Not what you said. What you are. Somehow he’s gotten conditioned to be angry whenever it involves vampires. You saw how he treated Eve, and he likes Eve. I think I have to talk to him alone.”

“No!” Eve blurted that out, but she didn’t back down when Claire turned to her. “No, seriously, just…no, honey. You can’t, Claire. You saw how he was. If you go alone he might…he might hurt you. I know you don’t think he will, but I saw him. I know he could. I hate it, and I wish it wasn’t true, but…you can’t take that risk.”

“You take that risk all the time with Michael,” Claire said, and stepped forward to touch Eve’s choker, beneath which lay bite marks. “You trust he’ll know how far to go. Right? I trust Shane. I have to trust him.”

“Well…they’ll never let you in,” Eve said, but she sounded doubtful now rather than definite. “You’d never make it past the bouncer.”

Claire locked eyes with her and held the stare, trying to put all her grief and passion into it. “I have to,” she said. “Please understand. Please.”

Eve didn’t want to, but she finally, unwillingly nodded. When Michael tried to interject, she shook her head firmly. “She’s right, Mike. She’s not a little kid; we can’t always be there. And she’s also right about how Shane feels about vampires. If either one of us shows up, it kicks it up to a whole new level. If she’s alone, it’s more personal.