I took another pull from the beer, and another, and before too long all the walls I’d built so carefully around my pain were mud, soft and flowing and sticky. I remembered seeing Claire for the first time, fragile and wounded and needy. I remembered the first time I’d kissed her, and the trembling intensity of it. I remembered the first, breathless, anxious time in bed with her, the beautiful imperfection of it, terror and lust and joy all mixed together. I remembered a thousand wonderful things, and then all the bad things invaded right after them, because when the wall comes down it’s too late to try to build it again.
Pandora’s box was open.
The bottle was empty. I went to the cooler and got a six-pack, and worked my way through that while trying to forget about my dad’s furious disappointment with me, his abuse, his willingness to sacrifice me for the cause … and then once I’d pushed that back, all the times that I’d been at the mercy of a pair of fangs, and helpless. Too many times, in Morganville.
And then, I brooded about the draug.
They were the worst, the draug – creatures in the water, creatures that were worse than the vampires and more alien than anything I could really imagine. They didn’t have feelings, except cold hunger, and they’d had me for a long time in their tanks. Feeding on me. Trapping me in dreams, and nightmares, until I wasn’t sure I could tell the difference between the two any more.
By the time I’d managed to work through
that
trauma, I was out of beer, and stumbling drunk, and I felt … empty. Just empty. No more anger, no more fear … just a vast vacuum that needed filling with something other than all the fury I’d held inside, and finally released.
I needed Claire.
Needed her.
And so I clumsily unlocked Florey’s, reset the alarm as I left, and weaved along the silent sidewalks heading for her apartment. I didn’t think ahead to what I was going to say to her. I guess in my beer-soaked mind it would all just magically work out, and she’d be so happy to see me she’d forget about everything else. Because everybody loves having the drunken self-pitying boyfriend banging on their door at Jesus, four-thirty in the morning. At the time, hey, it seemed like a fabulous idea.
I never got there.
See, I forgot all the lessons that had been drilled into my head in Morganville: first, never get stumbling drunk, because you never know when you’re going to need your wits and reflexes about you. Second, see the first rule.
And third, never ever do it after dark.
For some reason, I thought that Morganville was the equivalent of
Dead Space
Level Twelve, and having survived that, I didn’t rate the nerdy, vampire-free streets of Cambridge at more than a Level Two.
Turns out that it wasn’t vampires I had to worry about. It was just a gang of guys who’d finished off their night badly and were looking for somebody to blame, and I was staggering down the wrong damn street. There were six of them, and approximately one quarter of me, and those weren’t good odds in any game.
In real life, you don’t get a reset, and you don’t get extra lives, and I got the crap pounded out of mine. I don’t really know how it happened; I saw them coming, whooping and hollering and high-fiving, and then they went quiet when they saw me and I guess they didn’t like the T-shirt I had on, or maybe they thought I was some rich, stupid kid out for a stroll, but after the first punch it was all just a blur because there wasn’t any way to fight six guys at once. It was more a matter of going down, curling up, and trying to survive it while being dimly aware that the beer wasn’t making it any less painful, and that one of them had a really high, shrill, ragged voice as he yelled
faggot
in my ear and kicked me in the liver.
And then I heard the ring of metal on concrete, and I went cold, because one of them had found a piece of rebar lying around, and I knew with sudden certainty that these guys were going to kill me right here on this stupid sidewalk, for
nothing
, without even the reason of knowing my name or hating my politics. They were just going to kill me because they needed to kill something, and I was handy.
At least zombies would have had a reason.
I would have been dead if Team Vampire hadn’t swooped in and saved my drunken ass.
I didn’t see a lot of it, given that I had a pretty good concussion and blood in my eyes, but I saw pale skin, a killer smile, whipping hair that flared red in the streetlight, and curves that would be fairly impossible to forget. Jesse had come to my rescue, and so had Pete; my fireplug of a friend had taken the rebar and was strategically applying it to arms and legs with dispassionate calm. There was a lot of screaming, and within seconds,
seconds
, it was all over and there were seven guys on the concrete.
Then Jesse helped me stand up, and there were six.
‘Don’t worry, they’re not dead,’ she said, and gave me a merciless appraisal. ‘You look like shit, Collins.’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled. I didn’t mean for the compliment. ‘Well, that walk sucked.’
She laughed as I spat out a mouthful of blood, and if she thought I was wasting food, at least she didn’t say so. Pete brought the rebar along with us, and we went to a car parked about a block down. It was a long walk. I passed the time by wondering (probably aloud) why Pete had brought along his iron stick. I know it was aloud because he finally said, ‘Fingerprints,’ as he tossed it in the trunk of the car and helped Jesse pile me into the back. ‘You’re drunk.’
‘You’re perceptive,’ I said, and slid sideways until my already-sore head collided with window glass. ‘Ow.’ That wasn’t adequate to the situation, but I didn’t think it was manly to cry like a little girl. I pulled myself into a leaning position and breathed deeply, trying not to think of how the world was spinning. ‘It was only a six-pack.’
‘Of?’
‘Russian imperial stout.’
‘Oh, honey,’ Jesse said from the driver’s seat, clearly amused. ‘The Russians have nothing to do most of the winter but drink as a hobby. You really should work up to that stuff. Take it from me, I was around when Gregory Rasputin was still the man to beat in a drinking game. You’re going to regret that.’
‘He’s going to regret it a lot more,’ Pete said. He was poking and prodding me, a fact I realised late, and when I ineffectively slapped at him to stop, I missed and smacked myself in something that was already bruised. Not sure what. ‘Might have to take him to the ER. He could have internal bleeding.’
Jesse cocked her head and glanced back at me, and I saw that red glow in her eyes again. Weirdly, it seemed comforting right now. Homey, even. ‘He might have, but he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘I could tell if he did. Oh, he’s got plenty of haemorrhages, but they’re not life-threatening. And he’s no stranger to cuts and
bruises. Watch his head, though. I saw them get in a good shot at least twice.’
‘He’ll have a hell of a headache from the contrecoup, but doesn’t look like anything too bad. Might want to get an X-ray, though.’
I was starting off my time in Cambridge pretty much the same way I had my return to Morganville: with hospital visits. ‘What the hell,’ I sighed. ‘I haven’t had a good X-ray in a long time. Could be fun.’ Because unlike most drunken tough guys, I’d seen enough to know that head injuries were nothing to fool around with. You could look and feel fine for a day, then drop dead of the swelling and exploding veins.
‘I think you’re confusing X-rays with something from a porn movie,’ Jesse said, ‘but sure. One ER visit, coming up. I hope that whatever you had going with those guys was worth all the trouble. What did they do, kick a puppy, insult your mother …?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything. They just wanted to hurt someone, and I was there.’
After a moment of silence, she said, ‘Yes, I know how that can happen.’ She sounded grim, like she personally knew it, and hey, she probably did. She might have even been on the receiving end, but you could never assume that kind of thing with vampires. ‘Why were you wandering around in the dark, Shane? I’m assuming that coming from Morganville you know better.’
‘I thought it’d be safer here.’
Pete laughed. He had an odd kind of laugh, one that hitched in the middle. ‘You don’t get out much, Shane. That’s kind of cute. Take a walk in a genocide zone and tell me humans can’t be worse than bloodsuckers. We’re hardwired to be bastards, take it from somebody who did volunteer work in the Congo.’
Thing is, I already knew that perfectly well, because I knew what Amelie, the Founder of Morganville, was afraid of. She was most afraid of us. Humans. And our tendency to kill whatever we feared and/or hated.
Our ability to target things that were different.
I wasn’t any better, I thought. I’d hated vampires most of my life, and I still didn’t feel totally comfortable around them, even if Jesse had just joyously kicked some ass to save me.
Hardwired. Pete was probably right about that.
They got me into the somewhat deserted ER, and it took only about four hours (some kind of record, I was assured) to get me into X-ray and find out that yes, I still had a functioning, if lightly bruised brain, and that nothing important was busted in the rest of me. By that time, the beer’s comfortable cushion had evaporated, and with the cold light of dawn coming, Jesse had taken off and left me to Pete. He didn’t seem especially upset about losing his beauty sleep; maybe he was used to staying up until dawn, given the bar job and his clear alliance with Jesse, which seemed to be more about business than pleasure. Jesse had left him the car and gone her way on foot; she must have had some bolt-hole put away nearby, because she seemed pretty casual about the sunrise. Unless she was pretty old, she’d still be susceptible to the burns delivered by the daylight … and even if she
was
old, she wouldn’t enjoy being out in it.
Once I’d paid the bill (which ate up all my free cash, plus a loan from Pete, silently offered) I collapsed back in the car and let him drive me back to Florey’s. We passed Claire’s row house along the way, and I remembered the foggy, ill-formed plan to stagger up to her door and let her forgive me and drag me upstairs to bed. Wow. That had not been smart. It was almost good I’d wandered into a beating instead. At least I’d preserved my self-respect.
Because now, sober, I knew exactly how it would have played out. Claire would have been kind, and pitying, and given me aspirin and a blanket and pillow, and I’d have slept it off on some direly uncomfortable couch with her upstairs and unattainable. And then I’d have had the awkward awakening, the explanations, the apologies, and … what?
I was afraid that there would be nothing, afterward.
‘What were you guys doing?’ I asked Pete, as he pulled to a stop in front of Florey’s. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Didn’t,’ he said tersely. ‘We were looking for those jackasses. They’d already beaten up a gay guy two blocks down. Cops don’t always get on this stuff quick in our neighbourhood, so we do. It’s kind of a hobby.’
I paused in the act of opening the door and looked at him with what were probably cartoon-wide eyes. ‘Wait a second,’ I said. ‘So, you’re best friends with a hot vampire chick who likes leather.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And together, you fight crime?’ I couldn’t help it. I cracked up.
‘Everybody needs a hobby, man,’ Pete said. ‘Now go inside, because you’re going to start throwing up soon and I don’t want it on my floorboards.’
Dammit.
He was right about that, too.
Claire started to call Professor Anderson to tell her about her night-time visitors, but she realised that it was probably a very bad idea … if the government really was involved, they had the power and the ability to monitor cell communication as easily as breathing. In fact, her conversation with Michael and Eve, even encrypted on the Morganville system, was probably vulnerable in some way, though she imagined that Amelie’s paranoia was a pretty decent firewall against such things. Some things needed to be said in person, though. In a secured environment.
So, even though she slept remarkably little, and felt hungover from lack of sleep, Claire got up early and jogged to the lab. It was very quiet at that hour – just after dawn, really – and she passed a few students sleepily heading to early sessions. The hallways of the secured area were deserted and silent. Claire quickly badged into Anderson’s area, and found the professor already there, sitting at the desk in the corner, typing away. Anderson turned around, frowning, when she heard the warning chime of the security door, and her eyes widened when she saw Claire.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, and got up to come closer. ‘You look pale.’
‘Long night,’ Claire said, and took a deep breath. ‘Can I talk here?’
‘Give me your cell phone.’ Claire handed it over, and Anderson took it over to the computer. She linked it on with a cable and did some key-clicking, and handed it back about a minute later. ‘I’ve installed an app to block anybody trying to snoop. They’ll get playback of innocuous conversation instead, so they won’t be able to tell there’s anything wrong. Now you can talk freely.’
‘My house was searched last night by two men. I think they thought I’d gone out, like my roommate. Professor – they didn’t break in. They let themselves in, like they had keys.’
‘Did you get a look at them?’
Claire nodded. Anderson sat down in her computer chair and brought up a screen. More mouse movement and key clicks, and suddenly Claire was looking at an album of surveillance photos … not the grainy kind, either. These were sharp and clear as high-res stills. ‘See anyone you recognise?’
Claire pointed over her professor’s shoulder at one of the men pictured there. ‘He was one of them, for sure. I’m not sure about the other, I just got a quick look. Could have been one of the others, but I’m really not sure at all. Who are they?’
‘Well, they’re not from the people I work with directly, but there are plenty of players on the board. Best to be careful. Do you have an alarm system?’