Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(117)
“Maybe,” he said. “Look, this silver’s pretty soft, but I can’t get a grip even with the gloves. I’ll go get the tools. It’ll just take a second.”
“A second,” I repeated. “Promise?”
Our eyes locked, and he smiled just a little. “Cross my heart,” he said. “Jeremy, you back off and sit on your bed. Eve’s going to stay with you.”
Jeremy said nothing, but he walked back to his cot and stretched out, looking bored with the whole thing. I considered him for a second, then nodded. “I’ll be fine. Go.”
Michael was a blurred flash that paused to get the door open, and then it swung shut behind him with a soft thump. I took a deep breath and wished I’d worn something warmer—all of a sudden, it seemed much colder with him gone. I walked over to the cage and examined it. It didn’t look so hard. The silver was wire, and it was wrapped around the bars tightly, but when I found an end of the wire and grabbed it, it bent easily enough—high-content silver, pretty soft. I was concentrating so much on unwinding it that I didn’t realize Jeremy had moved until I glanced up.
He was standing only a few feet away, staring at the point where I was unwinding the silver. Not at me, which I supposed fell under the letter of the law. I swallowed and said, “Michael told you to stay on the bed.”
“No,” he said. “He told me to go to the bed. He didn’t tell me to stay there.”
Wonderful, he had a kid’s built-in ability to parse orders and find loopholes. That was just great. “Yeah, well, why don’t you just sit down over there? It’ll take a little time to do this.”
He didn’t move. Evidently, I didn’t have the same kind of authority as Michael wielded. Up close-ish, Jeremy’s eyes were not black; they were a very dark brown, with a central ring of amber. They’d have been nice if they’d been in a face that moved like a human being’s, but as it was, they reminded me of glassy dolls’ eyes. I like a good creep-out as much as any self-respecting Goth, but this kid was giving me a serious freaking.
“You smell nice,” he said.
“As long as I don’t smell like dinner,” I muttered, and unwrapped another length of silver. Michael was taking an awfully long second to get back here with the tools. I had to ask myself what was going to happen when I stripped the last of the silver away and Jeremy decided that I had a fabulous aroma of roast beef, blood rare. Okay, I didn’t really have to ask. Nothing good.
Jeremy suddenly moved, and his cold hands folded over mine, waking an instant, instinctive shriek that I just barely managed to check to a weak little chirp—but it wasn’t an attack. He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against the iron bars, and said, “They’re coming in. You need to hide now.”
Crap. I yanked back and stumbled backward, pulling the last of the silver free on that one bar; it snapped into a tight coil like the world’s most expensive Slinky as I looked around for someplace to go. The only obvious place was under the bleachers, and it was a tight squeeze to get by, but better hurt than dead was my motto. I jammed myself through the narrow opening and crouched down in the darkness beneath. Michael, I was thinking, where are you? Because this didn’t bode well, not at all.
I heard the voices first. The words were muffled, but the music was clear—they were upset about the missing knob on the door. I heard metal scrape as they pushed their way inside, and moved around a little to find a good vantage point to peer through the slats between the bleacher seats.
Mr. Batty was one of the men, which somehow failed to surprise me; he was still carrying around the baseball bat, swinging it like a nightstick. Next to him was a sleek, thin man in a black turtleneck sweater and dark pants; he had a GQ look going on, and under other circumstances I might have thought he was eye-worthy, but not now. Not when I saw him rattle Jeremy’s cage, testing the lock, and say, “You’ve had visitors, haven’t you, Jeremy?”
Jeremy didn’t say anything, just stared at Mr. Slick with cold, dead eyes. Mr. Slick didn’t seem nearly as bothered as he should have been, and he shrugged and turned to Batty. “Harry, make a thorough sweep. I want everybody on their feet and checking every corner. If they see anybody who doesn’t belong, I want any intruder’s body dumped right here, dead or alive, clear?”
“Clear, boss,” Harry said. He sounded happy with the assignment, and strolled off swinging his big stick. As he left, another guy came in . . . and man, he was massive. This was undoubtedly the carnival’s strongman-slash–big guy. . . . He was seven feet at least, and broad as a truck. Wearing a wifebeater tee assured that everyone could see the steroid-thick bulge of his muscles. He had a shaved head, lots of tats that seemed to feature overly endowed women, and nasty little beady eyes. Not too smart, but plenty mean, and from the state of the T-shirt, personal hygiene wasn’t high on his list.
I reached into the pocket of my cargo pants and pulled out my cell phone—sensibly on silent—and frantically texted Michael. Whr r u? Trbl!! I shielded the screen with one hand, in case someone noticed the unearthly glow coming from under the bleachers, but nobody was looking my way except Jeremy.
Skinhead walked up to the bars and slammed a giant forearm into them. Jeremy didn’t flinch, and he didn’t back up, which made Skinhead laugh. He had a voice that didn’t match his exterior at all—high as mine, sounded like. “Your pet rat looks hungry, boss,” he said. “Got anybody to feed it?”