Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(112)

No. That couldn’t be true, it couldn’t, because the rush hadn’t lasted, hadn’t lasted at all this time, and I felt bottomlessly empty. I needed more. I had to have more.

I shoved the other vampire back and slammed both hands into the plastic covering of the vending machine. It held, somehow, although cracks formed in the plastic. I hit it again, and again, until the plastic was coming apart. I shoved my hand through, heedless of the cuts, and grabbed one of the warm cans.

That was when someone behind hit me with an electric shock, like a Taser, only probably five times as strong, and the next thing I knew, I was limp on the floor, with the unopened can of AB negative rolling on the carpet beside me.

I tried to grab for it, but my hands weren’t working. I was still reaching for it, fumbling for the fix, when they picked me up and towed me out of the waiting area, into a steel holding cell somewhere in the back.

? ? ?

Days passed. They took me off the canned stuff and put me on bags again, and finally, the frenzy passed. I won’t lie—it was awful. But what was worse was slowly realizing how bad I’d been. How close I’d been to becoming . . . a thing. A senseless monster.

I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted them to let me out, actually.

Music was the only thing that helped; after they got me stabilized, the woman who delivered the blood also delivered my guitar. I didn’t feel myself until I was sitting down with the guitar cradled in my lap. The strings felt warm, and when I picked out the first notes, that was good; that felt right. That felt like me, again.

I don’t know how long I played; the notes spilled out of me in a frantic rush, no song I knew or had written before. It wasn’t a nice melody, not at first; it was jagged and bloody and full of fury, and then it slowly changed tempo and key, became something soothing that made me relax, very slowly, until I was just a guy, playing a guitar for the thrill of the notes ringing in the air.

From the doorway, a voice said, “You really do have a gift.” I hadn’t even heard him unlock it.

I didn’t look up. I knew who it was; that voice was unmistakable. “Once, maybe. You took that away from me,” I said. “I was going somewhere with it. Now I’m going nowhere.”

Oliver, uninvited, sat down in a wooden chair only a few feet away from me. I didn’t like seeing him here, in my space. This was my personal retreat, and it reminded me of how it had felt when he’d turned on me in my house, in my house, and . . .

. . . and everything had changed.

He was looking at me very steadily, and I couldn’t read his expression. He’d had hundreds of years to perfect a poker face, and he was using it now.

I kept on playing. “Why are you here?”

“Because you are Amelie’s responsibility, and it follows that you’re also mine, as I’m her second-in-command.”

“Did you take the machine out?”

Oliver shook his head. “No, but we changed the parameters. The testing was done on older vampires, ones who’d had centuries to stabilize their needs. You are entirely different, and we’d forgotten that. Very young, not even a full year old yet. We didn’t anticipate that the formula would trigger such a violent response. In the future, you’ll only receive the unprocessed raw materials.”

“So it’s because I’m young.”

“No,” he said. “It’s because you’re young and you refuse to acknowledge what you are. What it means. What it promises. You’re fighting your condition, and that makes it almost impossible for you to control yourself. You need to admit it to yourself, Michael. You’ll never be human again.”

Last thing I wanted to do, and he knew it. I stopped playing for a few seconds, then picked up the thread again. “Fuck off,” I said. “Feel free to take that personally.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. I glanced up. He was still watching me.

“You’re still not yourself,” he eventually said. “And you’re speaking like your scruffy friend.”

He meant Shane. That made me laugh, but it sounded hollow, and a little bit desperate. “Well, Shane’s probably right most of the time. You are an ass.”

“And even if you think it, you rarely say it. Which rather proves my point.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? Because you’ve not asked a thing about your girlfriend, whom you left on her own in the middle of a vampire district, at night.”

That sent an electric jolt of shame through me. I hadn’t even thought about it. I hadn’t spared a single thought for Eve all the time I’d been in here; I’d been too wrapped up in my own misery, my own shame. “Is she okay?” I asked. I felt sick, too sick to even try to keep on playing. The guitar felt heavy in my hands, and inert.

“She’s becoming annoying with her repeated demands to see you, but yes, otherwise, she’s as well as could be expected. I made sure she got home safely.” Oliver paused for a few seconds, then leaned forward with his elbows braced on his knees, pale hands dangling. “When I was . . . transformed, I thought in the beginning that I could stay with those mortals I loved. It isn’t smart. You should understand this by now. We stay apart for a reason.”

“You stay apart so you don’t feel guilty for doing what it is you do,” I shot back. “I’m not like you. I’ll never be like you. Best of all, I don’t have to be.”