Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(135)
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Lockhart’s front door was wide-open, throwing a warm, buttery glow of light down the cracked front steps and shimmering on the shiny wood floor visible inside. As Michael approached with Eve, Claire and Shane stopped at the foot of the steps, and Claire looked back at them. “How do you want to do this?” she asked. Lockhart pushed past them into the house, stumbling in his eagerness, and disappeared around the corner. Like the Glass House, this house was basically a square, but it was about half the size. They’d taken good care of it, Michael could tell; what he could see inside looked clean and neat, and on the walls were framed photos of a happy family. There were kids. Two of them.
Eve took a deep breath and said, “Well, it’s me he wants, so let’s see what happens. Michael’s got my back.”
“He’s not the only one,” Shane said. “I’m on Mission Protect the Goth, too.”
Claire didn’t need to add that she was, too. They all took that for granted.
Michael fought an almost overpowering urge to hold Eve back, to keep her safe, and let her walk ahead of him up the steps and down the polished wooden hallway. He felt Shane behind him, solid and steady, and knew Claire would be analyzing everything, thinking through the possibilities. Nobody better to have going into a bad situation than Claire, even if she looked deceptively fragile.
Eve, on the other hand, looked badass, and she knew it. And as she turned the corner, he saw her put on attitude like armor as she stopped, set her feet in a battle stance, and sent the man seated on the sofa across the room a cocky tilt of her head.
“You wanted me? You got me,” she said. “Now let her go.”
Kiril Rozhkov had Mrs. Lockhart sitting close against him, a position she obviously hated. He had his arm around her shoulders, but every muscle in her body was tensed and quivering, and the look in her eyes was one step away from madness. She didn’t look hurt, and Michael smelled no spilled blood. So far, so good.
Rozhkov took his time looking Eve up and down. “You are not as I expected.”
“No? Goody. Get your damn hands off her.”
“I think I will wait,” he said, apparently not bothered at all by Eve’s tone of utter disrespect. “Your great-grandmother was named Ulyana, yes? She was born in Minsk?”
“My great-grandmother?” Eve shook her head. “No idea. I never knew her.”
“But your mother’s family is Russian.”
“I guess, yeah. Mostly we’re just Morganville. Why? You feeling nostalgic for the Old Country?”
Rozhkov smiled. It was chilling, and the cold light in his eyes had an edge like broken glass. “In a way,” he said. “Come, child. Sit.” He patted the sofa on his other side. Eve didn’t move. He patted again, the way someone would encourage a pet dog. Michael gritted his teeth against an urge—a very real one—to go at the guy with his teeth. “Sit and I will allow this woman to go.” Eve still didn’t move, and Rozhkov’s patience visibly frayed. “Or, by all means, stand and watch as I rip her apart for my entertainment. You may choose.”
It wasn’t even a choice. Eve let out a slow breath and walked to the sofa, but didn’t sit. She stood, looking down at the vampire. “Let her go and I’ll sit.”
He hesitated, just to draw out the moment, and then took his hand from around Mrs. Lockhart’s shoulders; the young woman—not that much older than Eve herself, Michael realized, maybe twenty-five—launched herself off the couch and ran to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
“Get out of here,” Shane said, without taking his eyes from what was happening with Eve. Michael didn’t spare the two a glance as they left, either, rushing upstairs to what was probably the kids’ room, bunkering down their family as best they could.
The living room was profoundly silent after that, and Michael’s vampire senses—on high alert—heard every click of the clock on the wall, the low hum of electronics, the heartbeats of his friends, the subtle whisper of their breathing.
“Sit,” Rozhkov said again, staring up at Eve.
She did.
Michael shivered from the barely controllable impulse to rush forward. He felt the displacement of air like needles on his skin as Shane stepped off to his left, out of the way, ready to make a move when needed. He felt immersed in his senses in a way he rarely did, an entirely vampiric dimension of the world that hurt; it pressed on him in so many intimate ways.
“You know,” Rozhkov said—not to Eve, but suddenly to Michael, driving it home with a shift of his focus—“you would not feel so discomforted if you didn’t keep the world pushed so far away. You fight what you are, and it makes you weak, Michael. We all know that. All except you, perhaps.” He laughed a little. It sounded sad, but it had the flash of fangs behind it. Rozhkov was disconcertingly contradictory. He shifted back to Eve. He hadn’t tried to touch her, which was good; Michael wasn’t at all sure he could hold back if that happened. “Your great-grandmother, we were speaking of her. Ulyana. I knew her.”
“You kidnapped a lady and threatened to kill her so you could ramble on about old dead people?” Eve asked. “Get help.”
Rozhkov’s faint smile disappeared, and there was something about his face that seemed like all the life had drained out of it—a corpse’s face, except for the living fire in his blue eyes. “Careful,” he whispered. “Your blood only takes you so far.”