Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(107)

The stairs creaked and popped, alerting anybody who was paying the slightest attention that I was on the way, and I wasn’t surprised when a girl of about fourteen appeared at the top of the steps, gasping and sobbing, and plunged past me toward the exit. She looked relatively okay, if panicked.

The boys—two of them—at the top of the steps weren’t much older than she was. Sixteen, seventeen, maybe. Local kids, but nobody I had on my radar.

They looked real surprised to see me.

“Hey,” I said, and stopped where I was, halfway up, blocking the way down. “You want to explain what just happened?”

One of them opted for bravado. Not a good look for him. “None of your business, jackhole,” he said, and flipped me off. “We’re not doing anything.”

“You mean now,” I said. “Here’s a pro tip, kids—when the girl’s crying, she’s not that into you.” I was angry now, angrier than I’d been at dumb-ass Billy with his sucker punch. That would have been a meaningless fight. This one, on the other hand, had some meat to it. “You know who I am?”

One of them had some sense, at least, and he nodded. “Collins,” he said, and tugged at his friend’s arm. “Dude, let it go.”

The friend wasn’t that smart. “You can’t prove nothing,” he shot back at me. I shrugged.

“Yeah, I might really care about that if I was some kind of cop, but I’m not. I’m just a guy who gets pissed off a lot. So here’s the deal. I’m going to give you one chance to promise me you’ll stop being giant douches. Do that, and you can get the hell out of here.” My voice went cold for the next part. “You break your promise, you touch any girl in this town again who doesn’t sincerely beg you for it, and I’m going to rip off any parts that dangle, you got me?”

“Who died and made you Batman, dickhead?” the bigger one asked.

“For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just say my dad,” I said. “Because he’d already have left you room temperature on the floor. I’m the kinder, gentler version.” Not quite true; my dad hadn’t possessed any real moral compass. If these fools had been vamps, he’d have been all over it, but regular human idiots? He’d shrug and walk away.

They didn’t need to know that, though.

“Dude, let’s just go already!” said Lesser Douche Bag, and didn’t wait for his friend to make up his alleged mind; he held up both hands in surrender and edged by me down the steps. When he hit the ground floor, he ran.

The remaining guy reached in his pocket and flicked open a fairly serious-looking knife. I respect knives. It raised him a notch or two in my threat levels, though he wasn’t yet even breaking orange. “Bad idea,” I told him, and began climbing the stairs toward him. “Real, real bad idea.”

He started backing off, clearly spooked; he’d thought just having a knife meant he won. I hit the top step and lunged, knocking his knife hand out of the way, twisting it, and catching the weapon before it hit the floor.

Then I put a forearm against his chest, shoved him against the wall, and showed him the knife. “Bad idea,” I repeated, and drove it into the wall next to his head, close enough for him to feel the passage of it. He went really, really pale, and all the fight bled out of him as if I’d actually stabbed him. “You just got upgraded. You no longer get a full pass, jackass; you get to look forward to seeing me a lot. And I’d better like what I see, you got me? Any girls crying, even if it’s at a sad movie, and we’re going to finish this in a way that’s not going to look real good on you.”

I wanted to punch the little bastard, but I didn’t.

I just stared at him for a long few seconds, and then pulled the knife free, folded it, and put it in my own pocket. Then I let him go. “Scat,” I said. “You’ve got a ten-second head start.”

He made use of it.

I sat down on the steps, toying with the knife he’d left behind. I hadn’t lost my temper, but I hadn’t exactly been nonviolent, either. I called that one a draw.

I hadn’t heard him, but all of a sudden I realized that someone was at the bottom of the steps, looking up in the gloom. Pale skin, curly wild hair, out-of-fashion old man’s clothes. Small wire-framed glasses pushed down on his nose.

Dr. Theo Goldman.

“You following me?” I asked. I felt surprisingly relaxed about it.

“Yes,” he said. “I was curious how much effort you would put forward. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

I gestured with the knife. “So, how does this count?”

He smiled, just a little. “I’ve never really been a fan of the teaching that you should turn the other cheek,” he said. “Evil must be fought, or what does it matter if we’re good? Goodness can’t be weakness, or it ceases to be good.” He shrugged. “Let’s call it a draw.”

I could live with that. “You were right,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be all fight, all the time. But I’m going to miss it. Kind of a lot.”

“Oh,” he said cheerfully, “I’m quite sure there will be plenty of chances for you to indulge yourself. It’s Morganville, after all. See you tomorrow.”

He was already gone when I blinked. I shook my head and started to pocket the knife.