Midnight Bites (21 page)

Sweet.

Shane stuck his head out and said, “Can I take it around the block?”

Miss Bernard nodded. He didn't ask twice, just backed it out, down the alley, and cruised around, getting the feel of it. It was a hell of a nice car. Little bit of a shimmy on the turns, probably needed some work on the suspension, and a tune-up. But overall . . .

Yeah, it was going to be way out of his range. He could just feel it.

As Shane turned it back to the store, he ended up sitting at a stoplight. A battered old wrecker pulled in next to him, and a voice called, “Hey, that your car?”

“Just test-driving it,” Shane called back. The driver was Radovic, the dude from the motorcycle shop; he worked part-time at Doug's Garage. Everybody called him Rad. He looked like central casting's idea of a tough biker dude, all right.

Rad nodded back at him. “Sweet. Hey, you buy it, you bring it by the shop. I can make you a deal on murdering it out.”

Shane raised his eyebrows, but before he could figure out what the hell to say to that, the light changed, and Rad charged off with the wrecker, and Shane turned back to the store, where he pulled the car
back into the shed, turned it off, patted the steering wheel, and got out to hand the keys to Miss Bernard.

“It's great,” he said. “Out of my league, though. Thanks.”

“What do you mean, young man, out of your league?”

“Too expensive.”

She blinked. “I didn't even tell you how much it would be yet!”

“I know what it's worth.”

She waved that aside with an impatient old-lady gesture. “I just want it gone. It reminds me so much of Steve, and I . . . just don't want to see it anymore. And the money would be ever so much help. I need to buy medicine, you know. How much can you pay?”

His turn to blink. “Um . . . I don't know.” He had five hundred dollars. He chewed his lip a second, then said, “Three fifty?” Because she'd bargain, right?

“Sold,” she said. And he instantly felt like a worm. Before he could try to tell her he was going to pay more, she gave him back the keys. Shane cleared his throat, gave it up, and reached into his pocket. He'd been carrying around the cash for days, just in case, and now he peeled off the three fifty and handed it over. Miss Bernard dug the title card out of the glove compartment and signed it, then thrust it at him. “Don't forget to get insurance. They're really hard on you if you don't have insurance.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“And remember to change the oil. Steve was very particular about his oil changes.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She patted his cheek with her hard, dry hand. “You always were a sweet boy,” she said. “I'm sorry about the troubles your family had.”

He nodded, suddenly not able to say anything at all, and slid into the driver's seat. This time, the car started up without a hitch.

He drove it straight to the car wash, a creaking old thing with
barely working sprayers and tired old vacuum cleaners. He found spiders in the vents, and an old nest on the engine that was already turning brown from the heat and probably would have burst into flame anytime. He scrubbed off the dust and shined the paint and cleaned the windows, and when he drove it away, glistening in the sun, he felt like he'd made the deal of the century.

And like he'd ripped off a little old lady, too. Which wasn't so great.

He went straight to the garage.

•   •   •

Radovic was there; the wrecker was parked in the front, big hook still swinging from its earlier motion on the road. Shane parked the Charger and went inside, where he found Rad chugging down what looked like a beer and reading a bike magazine.

“What did you mean?” Shane asked. “Murder it out?”

Rad wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Get all that chrome off it,” he said. “Black it out. Black the wheels. Deep tint. Make it a badass mother—”

“Yeah, I get it,” Shane interrupted. “How much?”

Rad shrugged. “It's already mostly there. Three hundred.”

“Don't have it,” Shane said. “Never mind, I guess.”

“Yeah? What you got?”

“One hundred.”

Rad laughed. “For a hundred, I could maybe black out the wheels. Do the chrome. Not the tint.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “When?”

“You got a couple of hours?”

Shane did.

He handed over the keys and walked home, checked on Claire—
she was up and walking, though with a pretty significant limp—and made chili dogs for the two of them while she talked about the new weird shit that Myrnin was making her do. It was fascinating, whatever it was. He just liked listening to her talk.

“What?” Claire asked him, stopping in midstream to watch his face. He paused, a chili dog halfway to his mouth. “You're smiling.”

“I am? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'm eating. Which does make me happy.”

“That wasn't a chili dog smile. That was some other kind of smile. An I've-got-a-secret smile.”

Damn. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he said. He didn't want to tell her. He wanted to show her. He was trying not to smile, but dammit, his lips just wouldn't stop with the curving. “Maybe I just like hearing you talk.” Which was true, but she wouldn't believe that. Sure enough, she rolled her eyes, let it go, and went back to her Myrnin monologue.

He ate his lunch in silence, smiling the whole time.

•   •   •

Two hours later, he was back at Doug's Garage, and the Charger was parked outside. If it had been sweet before, it was incredible now. There was a kind of gravity to it, a darkness that just sucked in everything around it, and Rad had been dead-on about murdering it out—the Charger went from a car to something like the Car. In a crowd, it would be the only car.

Huh.

Rad had said he couldn't do the tinting, not for a hundred, but not only were the chrome and wheels blacked out; the windows sported a new, heavy tint, black as midnight.

Rad emerged from the door in the side of the garage, the one that said
OFFICE
, and gestured at Shane. He was carrying a big wrench in
one hand, and he was half-covered in grease. Shane walked over, digging out a hundred dollars from his very thin bankroll.

He froze, because inside the office sat a vampire.

“Shane Collins,” the vampire said, and stood up to extend a hand. “My name is Grantham Vance. Good to finally meet you.” He smiled, no fangs in evidence, which didn't make him one bit less a vamp. “You're getting to be quite a legend in Morganville, you know.”

Vance was medium tall, medium broad, with skin that had probably been dark olive when he was alive. It was now sort of a sickly almost-gray, which made his big dark eyes glow even brighter. He had brown hair cut into a kind of Roman style, something antique and weird.

He wore a Western plaid shirt, with pearl snap buttons, a pair of blue jeans, and cowboy boots. Lizard.

In short, he just looked completely . . . wrong.

Shane didn't answer him. He looked at Rad. “What's going on?”

Rad looked uncomfortable. “Mr. Vance, he sort of owns the place,” Rad said. “He dropped in, you know, to look around. He saw your car.”

“Beautiful machine,” Vance said. “I'll give you a thousand dollars for it.” He reached in his pocket and peeled off hundreds. Ten of them.

Shane swallowed and said, “It's not for sale.”

“No?” Vance peeled off another three. “Really?”

“I just got it!”

“Of course.” More hundreds. Shane had lost count. “I've always wanted a car like that. Oh, and I had Rad put on the vampire-quality tinting, so really, it's of no use to you now, is it? You can't even see to drive.” Vance lost his smile, and what was left really wasn't good. Not good at all. “Take the money, Collins.”

Rad shifted uncomfortably. He was still holding the wrench in
one hand, and he was too big a guy to fight, even unarmed. “Just do it,” he said. “Sorry, man. I didn't know this would happen. Walk away.”

That would have been the smart thing to do. Take the money. Leave the car. Hell, he hadn't even gotten used to having it yet.

“No,” Shane said. “Take the tint off.”

Rad looked deeply worried now. “Don't play that way. Just let him have it.”

“I'm not playing. That's my car. I've got the title to prove it. It's not for sale. Take the tint off.”

Vance stopped counting money. Shane tried not to imagine how much there was in his hand. “Really.”

“Yeah, really,” Shane said.

Vance shook his head. “Stupid, boy. Very stupid. I'd give you the cash to buy any car you liked.”

“I like this one.”

“So do I. And my wishes rule, in Morganville.” Their eyes met, and locked, and Shane felt himself getting dizzy. He braced himself against the wall and held on, somehow, until the vampire looked away first. “You really are a fool,” Vance said. “Mr. Radovic.”

“Sir?”

“Do you like your job?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then make Mr. Collins leave before I lose my temper.”

Rad grabbed Shane by the collar of his shirt and shoved him out into the sunlight. Shane twisted, stiff-armed him, and got some distance.

Rad still had the wrench. In the dusty, hot afternoon, surrounded by the skeletons of old cars, Shane felt like he was ten years old again, getting beaten up for his lunch money by kids twice his size.

Not again. Never again.

“Let him have it,” Rad said. “Trust me. Just let him have it.”

“Screw you, man, that's my car! I don't just let vampires take stuff away from me!”

Rad grabbed him and hustled him off into the grimy garage. It was large, and filled with cars under construction, destruction, repair. Sparks flew. Machines whined and banged. It stank of old oil and burning metal.

“This way,” he said, and dragged Shane around two SUVs, a battered Ford pickup, to the far corner of the garage.

There sat Shane's car. Murdered out. Tint and everything.

Shane turned and looked back outside. A duplicate of the Charger sat in the sun, sparkling. Identical. “What the hell . . . ?”

“That one out front is mine,” Rad said. “It's got a blown valve, it drives like shit, and the block's going to crack in the next ten thousand miles, so I've been keeping it in the back. I was going to overhaul it and drop in a new engine. Let him have it. Take the money, man. Don't screw this up and you can walk away with the cash and the car, and Vance gets screwed both ways.”

Rad, Shane decided, wasn't as dumb as he looked. He stared at him for a long moment, then nodded, walked back to the office, and looked inside. Vance was still sitting there, counting money. He looked up and said, “Come to insult me again?”

“No, sir,” Shane said. “I'll take the deal. For five thousand.”

Vance frowned, but Shane had guessed right this time. Five thousand was well within the boundaries of that bankroll, and Vance didn't seem like a guy who particularly cared about the money, anyway.

He counted out the bills and shoved them over, and Shane smiled. “Enjoy the car.”

“Oh, I will.” Vance smirked. “And they say nobody ever takes advantage of you, Collins. You're not so tough.”

“Absolutely,” Shane agreed, deadpan.

Then he walked out, handed Rad a thousand bucks, and said, “Hang on to the car.”

Rad looked stunned. “What?”

“Your plan, your gain. Keep the car for now. I'll buy it back from you one of these days. Can't afford the insurance right now anyway.” Shane shrugged. “Just let me drive it when I want—that's all I ask.”

“You're sure?”

“Yeah. I'm sure.” They shook hands, and Shane grinned. “But that means you need to let me borrow it right now, okay?”

“Sure.”

Shane drove it by Bernard's Resale on the way, and handed Miss Bernard another thousand dollars of Vance's money because, hey, why not?

Then he went home, picked up Claire, and drove her to the movies.

A chick flick, this time.

In style.

Another free Web site story, but a late addition—one I'd been kicking around for years before I finally finished it. I wrote it a couple of ways, but this was the best version, I believe. . . . It dates back to the period shortly after Michael turns vampire, and Shane's still deeply uncomfortable about it. He's also still picking fights to work off his rage, which never really helps him.

Warning: There's drinking. And confessions. And secret missions with night vision. Bonus Bishop, and scary battles. Michael and Shane, being heroes together.

Which seems about right.

Fun factoid: For most of my late-college apartment living, spaghetti was the only thing I was good at making. That, and mac and cheese with tuna. But we shall not speak of this again.

W
hen Shane came limping home, he was bleeding all over the place, and even though he was drunk off his ass, he knew that wasn't a good idea. Not with a vampire for a housemate.

The vampire housemate stared at him with a really blank expression, standing in the kitchen doorway, as Shane dropped down on the couch, grabbed a handful of tissues out of the box, and started mopping at his mouth and nose.

“What?” he snapped. Michael shook his head. He was holding a beer in his hand. At least, Shane hoped it was a beer. It had a Budweiser label on it, anyway. “I had a fight.”

“No kidding. Looks bad.”

“Nah.”
Ow.
Shane probed at a sore spot in his jaw and felt a sickening creak in one of his teeth.
Dammit.
The only thing worse than hitting a doctor's office in Morganville was suffering through dental work. Not exactly the best and the brightest setting up shop around here. He was convinced that the jerks had never even heard of novocaine.

Shane spat blood into the tissue, sniffed experimentally, and
didn't feel any telltale drippage. Not so bad. Maybe the worst was over.

Michael walked over, but not close. Not close enough to worry about, anyway. “What happened?”

Shane shrugged. “You know, the usual. Couple of vampires got hold of some girl, started dragging her off. Some of us got into it. No big thing. Nobody got hurt bad.”

“Was she Protected?”

“College girl, out partying in the wrong side of town. You know the type.”

Michael nodded and held out the beer. Shane stared at it, then him.

“Don't be an asshole,” Michael said. “It's not blood. And I didn't even take a drink yet.”

Shane took it and drank. The beer burned in cuts, but it was a good kind of burn, and it washed the copper taste out of his mouth. He sat back with a sigh and closed his eyes. The room started making loops, so he opened them again.
Really shouldn't be drinking, on top of the drinking I already did.
Yeah, there were a lot of things he shouldn't be doing. Like living in the house with a vampire, for one thing. His dad would have—

His dad. There was a reason to drink. Shane toasted the absent ghost of Frank Collins, Major Douche Bag, and gulped down another mouthful.

Michael sat on the couch, but at the other end. Safe distance, like he knew Shane was still feeling raw about the whole bloodsucking issue. He picked up his guitar and started playing, some Coldplay song Shane half remembered. “Which girl?”

“What?”

“You know, the girl the vamps were trying to drag off. Who was she?”

Shane considered that, rolling the beer between his hands. “Didn't know her. Why?”

Michael shrugged. “Doesn't matter, I guess. She probably never even knew they were vamps. But, dude, you really need to do something about your hero complex one of these days.”

“It wasn't just me. There were two other guys who jumped in.”

“But you started it.”

Oh man, Michael knew him way too well. “Kinda.” Shane tipped his head back and laughed, a little. It hurt. “C'mon, man, you would've jumped in, too. I know you. I'm not the only one riding around on a white horse.”

Michael studied Shane for a long moment, then said, “You are way too drunk, you know that?”

Shane choked and nearly did a spit take with the beer. “Uh . . . yeah. Not really my fault, though. I was playing poker. Bunch of college guys, easy money. Only they kept buying rounds. The more they lost, the more they bought. Don't blame me. I made almost a thousand bucks tonight.
And
free beer.”

“And then you got into a fight with vampires, and walked home. Drunk and bleeding and carrying cash. In Morganville.” Michael's face was still, and way too sober. “Man, you really do have a death wish. Why didn't you call? I'd have—”

“I don't need a bloodsucking babysitter,” Shane snapped, even though he knew Michael had a big frickin' point. The beer made him feel hot and sick, but he forced down another mouthful. “Weren't you supposed to be out with Eve, anyway? What are you doing here?”

Michael shrugged. “She had to go in to work,” he said. “I'm picking her up later. Claire's at Myrnin's lab. She ought to pay rent there instead of here, the time she spends doing his crap.”

That gave Shane a bad, even sicker twist in his stomach. “You don't think he's hitting on her, do you?”

“Myrnin?” Michael's fingers went still on the guitar, and Shane got a flash of startled blue eyes. “Jesus. I think she'd have said something. Maybe not to you or me, but to Eve, for sure.”

“And Eve would tell you.”

Michael smiled. “If she thought Claire was in trouble, she'd tell us both.”

That made Shane feel a little better. Just a little. Because when your potential competition was some ancient, occasionally suave dude who dressed in velvet and still looked twentysomething, nothing could make you feel a
lot
better.

Speaking of looking better, Michael was wearing better stuff than usual, probably because he'd been planning on impressing Eve. Blue shirt, blue jeans. Diamond stud earring in his left ear. “Dude,” Shane said, distracted. “Can vamps get pierced?”

“What?”

“Your earring.”

“Don't know.” Michael flicked his earlobe with one finger. “I did this last year. When I was still the old me.”

“I never noticed.”

“And here I thought you cared.”

Shane laughed, a little, and kept on thinking. “What about tats? Do they stay on a vampire?”

“I doubt it. We'd probably heal. Doesn't sound like something I want to try if it isn't going to stay on.”

“Sucks to be you, don't it? No pun intended.”

Michael looked up and grinned, and all the bullshit faded away. All the bitter anger (it always tasted like blood and tinfoil), all the weird complication of his best friend
drinking blood for God's sake
, all that just up and left, and it could have been two years ago, or three, or more. They could have been twelve years old again, thinking of ways
to stick frogs in Alyssa's shoes, worms in her underwear drawer, whatever.

Shane felt the hot sting of tears in his eyes, and looked away. “I missed you,” Shane blurted. It felt right to say it, and then it felt stupid because Michael was right there at the other end of the couch, and besides, guys didn't say that crap to other guys. “Whatever.”

Michael got real interested in his guitar, all of a sudden. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I missed you, too. How'd we get like this?”

“Well, you vamped out, my dad made me promise to kill you—”

“Seriously.”

“That wasn't serious?”

“We used to hang. I miss you having my back.”

“I still have your back.”

“Do you?”

Shane looked at him in silence for a long few seconds without blinking, and said, “If you don't know that, you don't know shit about me, bro. Do I like it that you're sucking down O neg like it's SlimFast? Hell, no. Creeps me the hell out and it always will. But it doesn't matter. I'll always have your back.”

“Then let me have yours once in a while,” Michael said, and held out his fist. Shane bumped it, or tried; his coordination was way off. “Next time, don't go wandering around out in the dark, bleeding and wearing a Bite Me sign.”

“Oh, blow me,” Shane groaned. “I'm
fine
.”

“Please. You're so fine you're about thirty seconds from telling me all your deep, dark secrets and crying, or else puking your guts out.”

“Yeah, screw you, too, buddy.” Shane closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the sofa. The room was doing loop-de-loops, and it was kind of fun at first, and then not so much.

“I worry about you,” he heard Michael say very quietly. “I wasn't
kidding about the death wish. Jesus, Shane, you keep doing this kind of thing, you'll end up dead in a ditch. Or worse.”

“Maybe it's what I deserve.” He couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud, but it was true. Maybe it
was
what he deserved. He hadn't been able to protect Alyssa. He hadn't been able to save his mother. The pain—the pain helped, because it was like paying back a debt. Nobody understood that, though. They just thought he was nuts.

He felt a cold hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Michael standing there, staring at him with so much—
everything
—in his eyes that it made him feel scared. Nobody should know him that well. Nobody.

But at least Michael didn't say it. He just said, “Come on, man. Let's get you upstairs before you puke all over my guitar.”

“Don't tell Claire I came home drunk,” Shane said.

“Hell no.”

“Because I will
end
you.”

“If you survive the hangover,” Michael said, “we'll see who wins
that
throw-down.”

•   •   •

Michael was right about the hangover. Shane woke up with his guts heaving and his mouth tasting like he'd sucked on old sweat socks, and he rolled over in bed and moaned. He hadn't ralphed, but it had been close. He figured he still might. His head was pounding like Metallica's drummer, and he wanted to just make it all go away.

Not an option, though. He got up, slipped on a pair of cheap sunglasses and a ratty T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days, and shuffled downstairs to grab a tall glass of water. There was a pot of coffee on the burner, so he poured a cup of that, too, and took both to the kitchen table. He'd downed the water and was about to start on the coffee when the knocking came at the back door.

Well, not so much knocking as pounding. Which was really
not good
with his head already keeping the beat to a different, sadistic drummer.

Shane groaned, got up, and opened the door without checking to see who it was, mainly because death was preferable to the pain his head was giving him as long as that pounding was going on.

It was two someones, actually. Shane stared at them for a long, bloodshot second, then stepped back to let them in. “Wow, a visit from the mayor,” he said. “And it's not even election season. How you doing, Dick?”

Richard Morrell—who was
never
known as Dick, except to Shane—gave him a pained, long-suffering look. For all his faults—and God knew he had a lot, starting with being related to that psycho-bitch Monica—Dick never let the little things get to him. Which was why it was so much fun to try. He looked tanned and fit, and he was wearing an expensive suit, though why he bothered in Morganville was anybody's guess.

“Shane,” said the second person, a tall, dark-skinned woman with a scar on her face, tightly cornrowed hair pulled back in a bun, and who was wearing a crisply ironed police uniform, all her brass gleaming. She wore the gun like she'd been born with it on her hip. “Sorry for the early visit. I heard you had a late night.”

He shrugged, but he was glad he was wearing the sunglasses to hide his expression. And the bloodshot eyes. “No problem, Chief Moses,” he said. “Coffee?”

“I never say no to coffee,” Hannah Moses said, with a charming, professional kind of smile. Shane got a couple of mugs out of the cabinet and filled them, brain churning furiously against the numbing fog of the hangover.
Why are they here? What did I do?
Because the chance they could be here for anyone else seemed pretty long, and pretty small. He was
always
the one in trouble with the law.

He carried the mugs back to the kitchen table, which was piled with old, discarded copies of the
Morganville Daily
and flyers for things he never paid attention to; he shoved it all to the side. “Sorry,” he said. “Not my kitchen duty day.” As Hannah and Richard sat down and started sipping their drinks, he said, “No offense, but we've got a coffee shop about six blocks away. Vampire owned. Any particular reason you're dropping in on me for your caffeine fix?”
Please say no.

Richard and Hannah exchanged glances, and then Richard Morrell said, “We need you to do something for us.”

Well, that was different. Really different. Shane cocked his head and tried to sort through it, because it wasn't making any sense. “You. Need something. From me.”

“Don't make it a thing, Shane.”

“Kinda is a thing, though.” Neither of them cracked a smile. They both looked very, very serious. “What is it?”

“Michael.”

Michael?
Shane's eyebrows rose on their own, and he said, “You have
got
to be kidding.
Our
Michael, the Boy Scout? No freaking way. What's he supposed to have done, littered? Jaywalked?”

“No,” Hannah said. She sounded regretful, and very sure of what she was saying. “We think that he's hiding a fugitive from justice. A dangerous one, and one who could easily get him killed. And we need to find out why, and where.”

Shane didn't mean to, but he sat down, hand cradling the hot ceramic of his coffee cup.
No way.
It wasn't like Michael, not at all. But Hannah wasn't one of those people who went off half-cocked, either. She knew her business, and if her business was Shane's best friend . . . well, that was bad. Real bad.

“Who's he supposed to be hiding?” Shane finally asked, through a throat that felt way too tight. “Osama bin Laden?”

“He's hiding a vampire. I'd rather not tell you who we believe it is.”

“What,
Dracula
? Man, that guy gets around.” Neither of them smiled. “Kidding. Jeez. Lighten up a little.”

Richard reached out and grabbed Shane's wrist as he started to raise the coffee cup. “Lighten up,” he repeated. He looked way too pale, and way too angry now. Not the usual Dick Morrell at all. “You stupid punk, you don't know what you're talking about. If you want to save Michael's life, you'd better get your head out of your ass and quit joking around.”