Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(127)

I guessed that was another word for wait, and I did, as more shadows moved and whispered and crowded, all unseen in the dark. Some talked. One or two screamed, and I flinched. I could almost feel them brushing over me, like damp breezes. It felt sickening.

“There,” Myrnin whispered. He sounded different. More focused. “There it is.”

This time, a storm of gray appeared, swirling like clouds, and then parted to show a confusion of bodies, men, dressed in those same period clothes, all wrestling and shouting, though I could hear it only in a muffled kind of way. It looked like they were clustered in around something.

Someone screamed. A woman. High and thin and terrified. In pain. Myrnin’s hand closed hard on my arm, hard enough to bruise, but I didn’t mind. It felt like I was falling into that crowd, or that it was rushing up on us, and suddenly I was standing surrounded by all those guys yelling and striking out, and in the center was a woman crouched on the ground, screaming as clubs came down on her. She was bloody and one of her arms was broken, but she still kept putting it up to try to protect her head.

I wanted to let go of that button and help her. I didn’t know who she was. Didn’t matter. Bunch of bullies beating somebody—my natural impulse was to jump in.

And then I realized she was protecting someone who was lying on the ground senseless underneath her. A man in dirty rags, curled into a shaking ball, bleeding in the street.

The woman raised her head, and I saw her flame red hair slipping free of pins, and her eyes caught fire and she snarled, showing fangs, and leaped for the man whose club was coming down toward her. She snapped his neck, picked up his club, and effectively beheaded a couple of guys with it.

I knew who that was.

Jesse. Lady Grey. Myrnin’s current girlfriend, if that was the right word for two vampires who were kind of hooked up, or not. But this must have been a couple of hundred years ago, and the man lying on the street, trying to get up and slipping in his own blood . . . that was Myrnin. A crazier version than the one I knew. He looked pretty terrible.

And he had a book clutched in his grimy, shaking hands.

As Jesse killed people with claws and teeth and clubs, defending that babbling crazy man on the ground, the Myrnin I knew let go of me and moved into view. He took on solidity and color as he did, and the contrast was pretty harsh. I hadn’t appreciated how relatively sane he was now, until I saw the before picture. That trembling wreck wasn’t anybody I would have normally recognized, except for the eyes and the chin.

“Give it to me,” Modern Myrnin said, and bent to grab the book. Ancient Myrnin snarled at him and held on, looking feral. “Give it to me, fool! You’re going to destroy it, and I need it!”

I guessed Ancient Myrnin wasn’t too keen on it, because he dropped the book and launched himself at Modern Myrnin’s throat, and damn, that was some vicious killer instinct at work. Jesse was scary, but that old, crazy hobo was something way, way worse. And it was pretty clear that Modern, Mostly Sane Myrnin wasn’t about to win that fight at all.

At least until he called out to Lady Grey. “Please!” he shouted. “Help me subdue him!”

She turned, teeth bared, and blinked in shock. Two Myrnins. Yeah, that might have done it. “Who are you?” Jesse demanded. She backhanded some street thug who tried to grab her. “What sorcery is this?”

“Science, they call it now,” Modern Myrnin said. “Assistance!”

He blurted that last part out, and it choked off because Old Crazy Myrnin had seized hold of his throat. Jesse didn’t hesitate. She flashed forward, grabbed Crazy Myrnin, and made him let go. She held on to him, stroking his matted hair as he shook and stared and made weird noises. Modern Myrnin stared at them with a look I hoped I’d never see again . . . kind of like looking back into hell and seeing yourself.

“I need the book,” he told Jesse. “Please. He’ll take it from here and destroy it, and if I don’t have it now, where I am . . .”

“I don’t understand how this is possible,” she said. She had the same fire as the Jesse I knew, the same challenge, and she shook her broken arm in annoyance. Bones slipped back together. It must have hurt, but she ignored the pain. I didn’t see any sign of the mob now, except for the dead ones that still littered the ground around them. Didn’t really blame them for running; I might have backed down, too, faced with that look in her eyes. “Are you Myrnin? But he is here.”

“That me is broken,” he said. “I’m much better now. But, Lady Grey, I must have the book. I must. Please. Do this for me, for the care you take of me in this moment. It will make no difference to him, because all he longs for is your touch, your kindness. Books are meaningless to him, and will be for some time.”

“But not to you. Does he improve?”

Modern Myrnin spread his arms and bowed. “As you see.”

“You hardly dress any better,” she said. “But I see spirit in your eyes that is absent in him now, and that . . . that is what I would hope to see.”

She reached out and gently tugged the bloodstained book free of Crazy Myrnin’s grip. He made a croak like a crow, not words, just distress, and grabbed for it, but she eased his hand away, and he let it go. Instead, he just grabbed for her, and held on.

It was her broken arm, but she didn’t flinch. She held the book out to Modern Myrnin, and as his fingers touched it, there was a spark of light between them, almost like static electricity. She gasped and let go of it. Myrnin shoved it in the pocket of his coat, but he was staring at her, and I knew that look. Hell, I felt it every time I looked at Claire. Hunger. Longing. Fever.