Bitter Blood

pointers on things, and showed me things he was working on as weapons. He hero-worshipped my dad, which tells you a little bit about how screwed-up he is. I never thought he’d do this, though. Not coming out for Eve, or any of us. Didn’t think he’d have the guts.”

“It doesn’t take guts to kick a girl half to death,” I said. Shane said nothing to that, just gave me an uneasy look in the rearview and tightened his grip on the wheel. “Where would he be?”

“Probably at the ’Stro,” Shane said. “He has a sick hand-built Cadillac he likes to show off there. He’s probably getting back-slaps from his buddies about how awesome he is.”

The Astro was an abandoned old drive-in on the outskirts of Morganville, just barely within its borders; it had a graying movie screen that tilted more toward the desert floor every year, and the pavement had cracked and broken in the sun, letting sage and Joshua bushes push up through the gaps. The concession stand had fallen down a couple of years back, and somebody had touched off a bonfire there for high school graduation.

It went without saying that the place was a favorite of the underage drinking and drugging crew.

Shane drove out there. It was close to twilight now, and sunset had stacked itself in bands of color on the horizon; the leaning timbers of the Astro’s screen loomed as the tallest thing around in the flatland, and Shane circled the peeling tin fence until he came to the entrance. The cops made periodic efforts to chain it shut, but that lasted only as long as it took for someone to cut the lock off—and most of those who hung out here had toolboxes built in the beds of their trucks.

Sure enough, the entrance stood gaping, one leaf of it creaking in the fierce, constant wind. Sand rattled the windshield as Shane made the turn, and he slowed down. “Got to watch out for bottles,” he said. “The place is land-mined with them.”

He was right. My eyes were better in the dark, and I could see the drifts of dark brown bottles, some intact, most broken into shards. The fence line was peppered with shotgun blasts, and I got the feeling that a lot of the empties had been used for target practice. Standard drunken-country-teen behavior; I couldn’t say I hadn’t done some of that myself, before I’d been forced to adapt to something different.

I didn’t miss it, though.

Shane’s headlights cut harsh across dusty green sage, the spiked limbs of mesquite pushing up out of the broken pavement, and, in the far corner of the lot, a gleam of metal. Cars, about six of them. Most were pickups, the vehicle of choice out here in Nowhere, Texas, but one was a sharply gleaming Caddy, painted electric blue, with shimmering chrome rims. Shane was right. It was a sick car.

A bunch of kids—about twenty of them—were sitting on the hoods of the vehicles, passing bottles, cigs, pills, whatever else they had to share.

They watched the slow approach of the hearse with the wary attention of people who might have to run for it at any moment. The only reason they hadn’t scurried already was that it wasn’t a standard vampire sedan, or a cop car.

Roy Farmer was sitting on the hood of his Caddy with his arm around a plump blond girl. They were both wearing cowboy hats and boots. She must have been cold in her tank top and torn jeans shorts, but from the looks of her, she was too drunk to care. Roy watched as the hearse pulled to a stop, and he took a long pull out of the brown bottle in his hand.

“Mike,” Shane said as I reached for the door. “Seriously, man, slow your roll. He wouldn’t just be sitting there like this if he didn’t have something up his sleeve. He has to know you’d be coming for him. Let me check it first.”

I didn’t bother to answer. I wasn’t letting Shane, or anyone, do this. If Roy had come after Eve, he’d come after me, and I couldn’t let him see it any other way. Maybe it was loyalty; maybe it was possessiveness. I don’t know; Eve wasn’t there to set me straight on the difference. But I knew that it was my job, not Shane’s, to make Roy regret it.

Maybe that was part of being married. Or maybe it was just me, discovering for the first time that I really, truly wanted Eve to look up to me and believe that I could—and would—protect her. She’d probably laugh and call me a Neanderthal, but secretly, deep down, she’d be pleased.

I got out of the hearse and walked over toward the other cars. The teens fell silent, watching me. Nobody ran, nobody reacted overtly, but they were all ready; I could see it in the tension of their bodies. Even the stoners put down their drugs of choice to pay attention.

I knew how it was. I’d rarely been one to come hang out here, but I was a Morganville kid. We’d all been taught to watch vampires with complete attention when one was in the area.

“You,” I said, and nodded at Roy. He stayed where he was, one arm draped over his girlfriend’s shoulders. “Just you. Everybody else gets a free pass tonight.”

“Hey, look; it’s the big man off campus,” he said. “I’m busy. Screw you.”

I felt a growl building inside me, the beast clawing on its chain. Eve’s smile flashed in front of my mind’s eye, and I wanted so badly to wipe the grin off his face. “Careful,” I said softly. Just that. His girlfriend must have sensed the menace coming off me, because she straightened up and cast Roy a worried look; the others were slipping quietly off the hoods of their own vehicles, stowing their drinks and smokes. No loyalty here. Nobody was willing to stand up for Roy, not even the girl he still held clamped under his arm as if he intended to use her as a human shield.

I waited until the other vehicles started their engines and began heading for less hostile places to get high. Once they were all gone, the Morganville night was cold, silent, and very, very heavy around us.

“Why Eve?” I asked him. I was aware of Shane standing somewhere behind me, ready and most likely armed; I didn’t need him. Not for this. “Why did you go after my wife?” Wife still sounded strange in my mouth; she’d been girlfriend or friend for so many years. But it was a heavy word, an important one, and he must have heard it, because his grin got tighter and more predatory.

“’Cause it’s evil,” he said. “Anybody stupid enough to marry a vampire deserves to die before she contaminates other people.”

“She wasn’t hurting you.”

“Man, it makes me want to vomit just looking at her, knowing you had your hands all over her. She’s better off dead.” That grin—I kept staring at it, wanting to rip it off his face. “Is she? Dead?”

“No,” I said.

“Too bad. Maybe next time. ’Cause you know there’s gonna be a next time, fanger. You can’t get us all.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but I can damn sure get you.”

I moved, and he caught it and moved at the same time, shoving his girlfriend into my path. She screamed and rolled off the hood, tripping me, but I landed easily on the other side of her and grabbed Roy by the arm as he tried to jump behind the wheel. His shirt tore as he jerked free, and he backed up, still grinning, but it was more like a snarl now.

He had a spray can in his hand. I didn’t need to ask to know it was silver. The downside of all the weapons that Shane and Eve had developed to help us survive was that now all of the humans of Morganville had the recipes; he’d made his own anti-vamp pepper spray, and if he nailed me with it, it wouldn’t just hurt; it might blind me for days. It would certainly put me down hard enough that he could stake me with silver without breaking a sweat.

Except that I heard Shane, still standing behind me, pump a shotgun. Roy’s eyes slid past me to focus on him, and his snarl faltered.

“Looks like somebody brought a can to a gunfight,” Shane said. “Just to be clear, if you tag my friend, I get to spray you right back. Seems fair.”

“You won’t shoot me,” Roy said. “I’m like you. I’m resistance.”

“Then the resistance is scraping the bottom of the DNA barrel,” Shane said. “And you’re going after my friends. That trumps anything else.” I wouldn’t have doubted him, in that moment. Eve was like his adopted sister, and I knew how Shane felt about her.

So did Roy. He stepped back, eyes darting side to side. He finally dropped the spray can and held up his hands. “Okay. Okay, fine, you got me. What you gonna do now, vamp? Kill me?”

“I could,” I said.

“He’s got a card that says he can, and everything,” Shane said. “But he’s not going to.” I sent him a look.