Bitter Blood

again against the wall and held him there, ignoring his blows. He was looking now at Eve, who was gasping and crying, curled in on herself on the bed as if he’d punched her in an open wound.

“We’re done?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Get out.” It would have been a scream, Claire thought, except that Eve couldn’t get the breath to make that happen.

Michael let go of Shane and walked away, stiff-armed the hospital door open, and disappeared in less than five seconds.

But what he left behind felt like an explosion that was still happening, the shock waves rippling on and on and on….

Shane turned on Claire. “What the hell was that?”

“Why are you asking me?” she shot back, shocked, and scrubbed her mouth again. “I didn’t ask for it!”

“He wouldn’t just—” Shane was the one looking terrible now, and almost as betrayed as Eve. “Is that the first time? Is it?”

“What? What are you saying?” She felt sick to her stomach. One minute ago, everything had been fragile, but okay; now the whole world seemed to be splintering around her, breaking into unrecognizable fragments. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” She remembered, with a horrible wrench, that Shane had once secretly worried about that, about her and Michael having a thing behind his back. It had never happened, but now—now it was back, all that paranoia, and the anger. Michael had chosen exactly the right spot to hit to break their trust apart. “How can you even think I would—”

“God, get out,” Eve said in a small, broken voice. “Just get out. Both of you.” She was crying still, but quietly now, and all her monitors were beeping and flashing red lights. “Jesus, please, go!”

The nurses came in then, crowding around Eve’s bed to adjust machines and poke needles full of meds into the hanging saline bags. As Shane pushed her out into the hall, Claire heard the frantic fast beating of Eve’s pulse monitor slow down. They were putting her back to sleep. Maybe, if they were lucky, Eve would think it was all a drug dream in the morning. No. She won’t be that lucky.

Shane let go of her, and she rounded on him, still trying to pull her shirt down to a decent level. “I didn’t do anything,” she insisted, again. “And I never kissed him! He kissed me; you saw that.”

“He did it like he knew exactly what you liked,” Shane said. “Like he was used to doing it. And you weren’t exactly struggling.”

“I didn’t know what to do! God, Shane—it was fast, and I didn’t know—I didn’t want that! How can you think that he and I were—”

“I don’t know,” Shane said, and stuck his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched tight. “Maybe because my best friend thought it was perfectly okay to stick his tongue down your throat to make his point? Because I’m pretty sure he didn’t have to do that just to break up with Eve. He didn’t have to be that cruel.”

“Shane—Shane! Wait!”

He was walking away from her, heading down the hallway with his head down. Leaving her, too.

Claire stood there, shocked and alone, feeling like the only sane person left in the world, and when the enormity of it hit, really hit, she burst into tears and curled up in a ball on the worn old couch in the corner of the waiting room.

How did I feel about it? She didn’t want to ask herself that. She didn’t want to remember the warm rush of feelings underneath the confusion and horror of the moment, or the way her heart had speeded up, and her body betrayed her right down to the core. I didn’t want it. I didn’t.

Well, hadn’t she always thought Michael was a hottie? Yes, she had. She’d always noticed, and every once in a while she’d had the occasional little fantasy—but that was normal; that was what happened when you were around someone a lot, not—not this. Never this.

He hadn’t wanted her. He’d used her, viciously and with cold calculation, to drive Eve away, and Shane. Each of them was alone now, in a world that didn’t want or need them.

Why would you do that, Michael? It didn’t make any sense. Even if he’d decided not to stay with Eve, Michael was a good man, a nice man; he would have done it gently and with as much kindness as possible because he did love Eve; he did. She couldn’t have been so wrong about that. And when he’d left here before, he’d been a knight on a mission, hell-bent on avenging her. When he’d come back…

Claire gulped back the horrible, hurtful tears, and wiped her face, and tried to think through the problem, as if it were happening to someone else. What makes someone turn around like that, turn on his friends?

No. That wasn’t the question. The question was, what would make a vampire turn on his friends…and there was only one answer to that, really. Claire thought of Bishop, Amelie’s vampire father, who could infect another vampire with his bite and command his absolute loyalty. Amelie had a measure of that same power, but hers came in a different form. Bishop was unquestionably dead, so could it be Amelie? Would Amelie have broken Michael, as she’d once threatened to do, and made him do this?

Claire shuddered. If Amelie had done it, if this wasn’t Michael’s real will, then there were four victims of his cruelty, not three…. Michael himself was the first, and the most badly wounded of them all.

And even if it was true, even if this was no real choice of Michael’s, the problem was…

How was she going to prove it?

In the end, Claire slept in the hospital chapel—it was quiet, calm, deserted, and she needed the spiritual support just now. She wished that Father Joe would make an appearance…. He was a great listener, and she desperately needed to talk to someone.

But in the end, she fell asleep reading the Bible through tear-swollen eyes, and tried to find some kind of comfort. If she did, she didn’t remember.

Claire tried to call Shane six times in the morning, but her calls went to voice mail; texts went unanswered. She was surprised to see him show up around noon, but he hadn’t come to talk to her, though she had a moment’s pitiful hope…. He walked straight past her with a plastic bag, ignoring her, and into Eve’s room.

When he came back outside, he sat across the waiting room and stared at the floor.

“Shane?” She took some tentative steps toward him. She wanted to burst into tears, but she knew it would only make things worse if she did. “Please, please talk to me. Please—”

“I brought her clothes,” he said. “Then I’m driving you both home. Then I’m getting the hell out for a while. You take care of Eve. You do that for me.”

“But—”

“Michael’s stuff’s already gone,” he said. “He packed up last night. I don’t know where he went, so don’t ask me.”

“Shane, please look at me.” She sank down on a chair next to him. He smelled like sweat, as if he’d gone to the gym and hadn’t stopped to shower. He didn’t shift his gaze away from a dedicated examination of the stained tile floor. “I’ve never had anything going with Michael, ever. I don’t know why he did that, but it’s not what you’re thinking. I’ve never cheated on you. I wouldn’t. I’ve been thinking that maybe—maybe Amelie made him do this. Because I really don’t think this was Michael, not the real Michael, do you?”

He didn’t answer her. They sat in silence for a few dark seconds, and then a nurse rounded the corner and said, “She’s ready to go.”

Shane shot to his feet as if the chair had a catapult built in, and was halfway to Eve’s room before Claire managed to follow, feeling slow, clumsy, and achingly lost.

Eve looked terrible—no makeup, chalky skin, bruises discoloring her swollen face. She’d let her hair fall forward to hide the worst of it, but it also hid any trace of how she felt seeing Claire come around the corner.

That was probably a blessing, Claire thought, with a horrible surge of unearned guilt. I didn’t kiss him! He kissed me! But she couldn’t insist on that, not with Eve so torn up with grief, and so badly hurt.

And I left her lying there on the sidewalk, bleeding, she thought. I can’t forget that, either.