Bitter Blood

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.