Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(73)

“I only have to do one thing, Son,” he said. “I just have to die. I’m dying anyway; the nutrient tanks are dry, and there’s nothing left for me. If you leave him here, I’ll hold the portals shut until I’m gone. He’s not going anywhere.”

I turned and looked at Michael and Eve, and they seemed just as surprised as I was. And a little bit relieved. “Well,” Eve said, “maybe it’s the best—”

“Think about what you’re saying,” Michael said. “Because if I put this in his chest right now, he’s finished. If we walk away, what if your dad screws up and lets him out?”

“Worse,” Claire said, “what if he doesn’t? You don’t want Pennyfeather’s death on your conscience, but you have no problem with leaving him here to starve? How would that be, Michael? Fun? Easy?”

He looked away. He knew, and I knew, that vampires didn’t go easy from starvation; they lived a long, long time. And suffered. “Maybe he deserves it.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But if he does, he damn sure deserves the knife, too. And I don’t want to wake up thinking of him down here screaming, do you?”

Pennyfeather took the decision out of our hands, because he opened his eyes, and snarled, and lunged up, claws outstretched.

And Michael acted completely out of reflex, defending himself and Eve. Quick and smooth and deadly accurate.

Pennyfeather hit the floor hard, and the silver began eating through his skin. His eyes stayed open. I didn’t know if he was still alive, but I hoped not; either way, it didn’t take long.

Frank’s voice came back, weaker this time. “Time to leave,” he said. “You need to go, now.”

Michael left the knife in Pennyfeather’s chest, took Eve in his arms, and led her to the portal. It rippled as they passed through without pausing.

That left just Claire and me staring at each other.

“Hey, Dad,” I said to Frank. My voice sounded unexpectedly husky, and I cleared it. “Maybe this is wrong, but I think you tried to help me when the draug had me in their tanks. They were killing me and making me dream while they did it, only someone—someone kept trying to make me wake up. Was that you?”

Nothing. Silence. I listened to the distant drip of water for a while.

“Well, if it was, thanks, I guess. It made me fight.”

That summed up me and my dad perfectly. He made me fight, whether I wanted to or not, and whether it was for a cause I believed in or not. He’d made me tough, and strong, and a survivor, and yeah, that was worthwhile, especially now that I had things to really fight for. Claire had quoted a writer named Hemingway to me, not so long ago: The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some people are strong at the broken places. I don’t think my dad ever read Hemingway, but he’d have liked him.

I spent another couple of seconds waiting for—I don’t know, something—and then I turned to go.

And a grainy, shadowy, two-dimensional figure formed in front of me.

My father had chosen a younger version of himself than the age he’d been when he’d died, but it was still him—him from the last of the good times of my childhood. Relatively speaking. We stared at each other for a moment, and then his lips moved. I could just barely hear the scratchy words hissing out of an ancient speaker on the side of the machine across the room.

“I knew this day would come, Shane. That’s why I sent you back here. To be here when everything went bad.”

“The vampires,” I said. It was always about the vampires with him. He blamed them for everything—for my sister’s probably accidental death, for my mom’s probable suicide, for his own drinking and bitterness and anger. And yeah, okay, maybe he was right, because Morganville was a toxic place. “They’re out of control.”

“Always were,” he whispered. “Always will be. Stop it. No matter what it costs. Burn the town around them if you’ve got to.”

That was my dad. Always kill-’em-all-let-God-sort-’em-out. If a few innocents got caught in the inferno, well, collateral damage.

“Claire, go,” I said. She was crying, I realized, silent tears that ran in silver drops down her cheeks. I couldn’t sometimes fathom all of the goodness inside of her, because who cried for my dad, for a brain in a jar who’d hardly ever been good for anybody?

Claire did. She was probably crying for Pennyfeather, too.

“Go,” I said again, gently, and kissed her on the lips. “I’m right behind you.”

She picked up her bow and arrow and—after a hesitation, grabbed the bulky machine thing that had affected Michael so strongly. Before I could wonder about that, she headed for the portal, but she paused there, looking back. “Come on,” she said. “We go together.”

I headed for the exit, walking right through Frank’s image. It felt like a curtain of pins and needles, but I was used to pain, especially where it came to my dad.

He re-formed ahead of me, blocking the way to Claire. I kept walking, and he kept backing up, traveling smoothly as the ghost he was. “Son,” he said, “I want to tell you one thing. Just one.”

“So do it.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

I came to a sudden and complete halt, staring at him—at the man I’d never really known, because he’d never let me know him; he’d treated me like a useful tool and potential enemy my whole life.