Bitter Blood

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?”

“Claire? Sure. She’s like—like a sister.” Eve paled a little as she shifted. “It hurts.”

“Well, it will,” the nurse said, without much sympathy. “They had to remove your appendix. It was bleeding.”

“It what?”

“You were kicked in the stomach,” the nurse said. “Your appendix was badly damaged. They had to remove it. So it’s best if you stay still for a while and let yourself heal. The police are coming to interview you about what happened.”

“Good.”

The nurse smiled. There was something a little ominous about it, a little disturbing. “I’d advise you to refuse to give a statement. Might be healthier for you, all things considered. The people who hurt you might have friends. And you don’t have very many.”

Claire blinked. “What did you just say?” The nurse turned away. “Hey!”

Eve put a hand on her arm as Claire tried to get up. “I understand,” she said.

The nurse nodded, checked the readings on a couple of machines, and said, “Don’t keep her awake long. I’ll tell the police to come back later. Give you some time to think about what you’re going to say to them. You’re a smart girl. You know what’s best.”

The message, Claire thought, was chilling and clear: don’t tell the cops the names of the people who attacked you. Or else. And an “or else” from a medical professional was pretty nasty. If Eve wasn’t safe here…

Captain Obvious had always been a little bit of a joke, in most Morganville resident circles, but Claire was starting to think that this new, more aggressive Cap was something else entirely. He was inspiring people. And leading them into frightening extremes.

Like the vampires, with their identification cards and hunting licenses.

If both sides kept escalating, nobody could stand in the middle for long without having a price on his head— and it sounded as though that had already happened. Eve was the first, but any one of them could be next.

The nurse left. Eve watched her go, then closed her eyes and sighed. “Figured that would happen,” she said. “Humans first, and all that crap. They’ve gotten stronger. And now Captain Obvious is back. It’s a bad time to be us, Claire. I have to tell Michael to back off….”

Eve tried to sit up, but the effort left her pale and exhausted. “He never should have gone after them. That’s what they want; don’t you get it? They came after me to get to him. I’m not important. He is. He’s Amelie’s blood—kind of like her son. If they can hurt him, kill him—Claire, go find him. Please. I’ll be okay here. Just go. The worst thing they’re going to do to me is give me crap Jell-O.”

Claire hesitated a long moment, then leaned over and hugged Eve, giving her a gentle and awkward kind of embrace that made her aware of just how fragile the girl was—how fragile they all were.

“Love you,” she said.

“Yeah, whatever, you, too,” Eve said, but she smiled a little. “Go. Give him a call. He’ll listen to you—or at least Shane will.”

And for the love of her, Claire tried, but the phone kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing, straight to voice mail.

And the day slipped away as they anxiously waited.

SIXTEEN MICHAEL

The anger that had hold of me made me ache all over, especially in my eyeteeth; I’d rarely experienced the urge to bite somebody in pure rage, but damn, I wanted to sink my fangs deep in someone now. Roy Farmer, that little son of a bitch, to start, and then the rest of his murderous little crew.

Eve had looked so broken, lying in that bed. So unlike the bundle of strength and energy I loved. I really hadn’t known, deep down, how much she meant to me until I’d seen her like that, and known, really and deeply known, that I could lose her.

Nobody hurt my girl and got away with it.

Shane was angry, too, but—and this was a reversal of our usual roles as friends—he was the cautious one, the one telling me to play it smart and not let anger drive the bus. He was right, of course, but right didn’t matter so much just now. I wanted blood, and I wanted to taste it and feel the fear spicing it like pepper. I wanted them to know how she’d felt, helpless and terrified and alone.

And yeah, it probably wasn’t fair, but I was angry at Claire for leaving her, even for a moment. I knew she’d done the right thing, drawing off the mob, but that had left Eve lying bleeding on a sidewalk. Alone. And I couldn’t get that image out of my head. She could have died alone.

I understood how Shane felt when he drove his fist through a wall. Some things, only violence could erase.

“Roy lives over on College Street,” Shane said, “but he won’t be there. He lives with his parents. He’s a punk, but not so much of one that he’d run home to his mommy.”

“Where, then?” We were in Eve’s hearse, and Shane was driving; I was sitting in the blacked-out back area. Shane had verbally kicked my ass about risking sunburn when I’d wanted to walk; he’d made me stop off and grab a long coat and hat and gloves, too, just in case. “You know the guy, right?”

“Kinda,” he said. “Roy’s one of those vampire-hunter-wannabe types, came to me a couple of times for