Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(81)
Someone had been in the store already, like a spider waiting in a web.
Not my problem, Claire told herself, but something deep down argued with her. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Shane, who was always throwing himself gleefully into one fight after another. Maybe she was just still angry at Amelie and Oliver’s arrogant attitude toward the mostly defenseless human population of Morganville. Whatever.
She slipped her backpack off her shoulder, tugged free a silver stake, and tried the door, and despite the sign, it was still unlocked. She was committed then—the vampire would have heard her anyway, however distracted he might have been. So she charged inside, let the door bang shut behind her, and landed solidly on her feet, ready for the fight.
Good thing she was, because the vampire came at her fast out of the shadows, a white distorted face and a red snarl, and she struck out and got flesh, but not his heart. He screamed and darted off, clearly not prepared for a fight with someone who could hurt him, and in the brief respite Claire glanced around the shop. The lights were on, which was helpful. Typical college bookstore, with loads of shelves crammed with dog-eared, highlighted-over textbooks; the whole place had a run-down, cheap look to it that probably was exactly what the average TPU student liked about it—that, and the low, low prices. (Claire had tried it out once, but the book she’d bought at pennies on the dollar also had significant issues, such as missing about a dozen crucial pages in the middle.)
The shopkeeper, whose name she vaguely remembered as Sarah something—Sarah Brooke, that was it—was sitting on the floor. Her wrists and ankles had been tied together, and her eyes were so wide that she was likely screaming under the duct tape that covered her mouth.
Professor Carlyle was kneeling beside her. He’d been blitz-attacked, apparently; he had a cut on the side of his head that was bleeding freely in shocking red streams, and he was holding a trembling hand to his neck. More blood trickled out of that wound, but it wasn’t gushing. “Danvers?” he said, in blank astonishment.
“You okay, sir?”
“He—he bit me—but I’m Protected!” He held up the hand that wasn’t clamped over his throat, and Claire saw the silvery glint of a bracelet. “This can’t happen!”
Sarah was Protected, too—she was wearing a similar bracelet that guaranteed her safety from vampire attack, at least theoretically. Obviously, it wasn’t a magic shield.
The vampire, who’d backed away from Claire temporarily, took another run at her, and this time, she skipped backward and ripped down the curtains over the big front window, framing herself in bright daylight. “Come on, if you’re coming,” she said, but the vamp skidded to a halt right at the edge where shadow met sun.
And she got her first good look at him. “Jason?” she blurted in horror.
The vampire who was trying to kill her—and Sarah, and Professor Carlyle—was Jason Rosser, Eve’s brother.
He’d wanted to be a vampire—had actively campaigned for it—and she’d been afraid he’d be even worse as a person if he grew fangs; here it was, proof positive, that if you had creepy violent tendencies as a human, you felt free to indulge them as a new vampire. The only good thing about the situation was that he was really new, and super allergic to the sun. In fact, today’s attack might have been his first try at hunting.
If so, it wasn’t going extremely well.
“Get out of here,” Jason said. His voice was low, rough, and ugly with fury. “I don’t want you. Get out.”
“Too bad, you’ve got me, jackass. What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like, bite bait?” He flashed his teeth at her, which might have scared her, oh, years ago.
“Failure? And don’t drop fang at me, Jason. It’s not polite. Ah! Watch it!” He’d made a move, and although she didn’t think he’d charge into the sunlight to grab her, she wasn’t assuming anything. She brought the stake to an easy-stabbing position. He already had a blackened, sizzling hole in his side that wasn’t healing fast. He wasn’t eager to take another hit. “These people are Protected, idiot. They’re off the menu. Go to the blood bank if you need your fix of B positive or whatever it is you’re jonesing for.” Besides causing pain and terror, she thought, but didn’t say. Clearly, that was a big part of it for Jason. Most of the other vampires were more clinical about their feeding, but he’d brought all his weird, twisted baggage over with him.
In some ways, he and Eve were mirror images of each other—both fascinated by the darkness. Only Eve had chosen to manifest hers outwardly, and Jason…Jason had taken it all deep inside. For a while, Claire had been convinced there was something in him more than that. Something better. But over time, he’d proven her wrong.
And now, here he was, bloody-mouthed, grinning at her like Batman’s Joker, if the Joker had fangs.
“Protection’s a joke,” Jason told her. He prowled the line of shadow, staring at her with dark, angry eyes that looked unsettlingly like his sister’s. “Always has been; it’s a racket, and the vampires laugh about it over their drinks. You know what the penalty is for me draining these two? I have to pay a fine. It’s like a note in your file at school. I can do what I want. Nobody’s going to care. Nobody’s going to stop me.”
“Oliver might. Or Amelie. They kind of like vampires to stay in line around here. Makes things easier for everyone.”