Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(35)

They were behind me. They were right behind me. I knew it, even though I didn’t dare look back and they made no sound. I could feel it. I felt something grab the suitcase, nearly twisting my arm out of the socket, and I let go, stumbling against the porch stairs. The house stretched above me, gray and ghostly in the dark, but that porch light, that was life.

Something caught my foot. I screamed and kicked, fighting to get free. My searching fingers scratched at the closed wood of the door, and I tasted dust again. I’d been close, so close. . . .

The door opened, and warm yellow light spilled out over me. Too late. I tried to grab for a handhold, but I was being yanked backward . . . and I could feel breath on the back of my neck. Cold, rancid breath.

Something flew over my head and slammed into the vampire pulling on me, knocking him flying. I crawled back toward the door and got a hand over the threshold.

Michael Glass grabbed my hand and dragged me inside with one long pull. My feet made it over the line just a fraction of a second before another vampire slammed into the invisible barrier there.

Brandon. Oh, damn, he was angry. Really angry. Vampires usually didn’t look like movie vamps—they were all about the fitting in—but right now he clearly didn’t care. His eyes had turned bloodred, and his face was whiter than I’d ever made mine. And I could see fangs, fangs a viper would have envied, flicking down from their hiding place to flash in menace.

Michael Glass didn’t flinch. He looked pretty much as I remembered him, only . . . better, somehow. Stronger. Tall, built, golden hair that waved and curled surfer-style. He had blue eyes, and they were fixed on Brandon. Not afraid, but wary.

“You okay?” he asked me. I nodded, unable to say anything that would really cover how I felt. “Then get out of the way.”

“Huh?”

“Your legs.”

I pulled them in, and he calmly shut the door in Brandon’s face. I sat there on the wooden floor, knees pulled in to my chest, and tried to slow my heart down from triple digits. “God,” I whispered, and rested my forehead on my knees. “That was close.”

I heard the rustle of fabric. Michael had crouched down across from me, back to the opposite wall. He was wearing some comfortable old jeans, a faded green cotton shirt, and his feet were long and narrow and bare. “Eve?” he asked. “What the hell was that?”

“Um . . . my eighteenth-birthday present.” I was shivering, and I realized my skull shirt was displaying a whole lot more bra than I’d ever intended. Kind of a plunge bra. Victoria’s Secret. Not so much of a secret right now. “Brandon’s pissed.”

Michael rested his head against the wall and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t sign.”

I shook my head, unable to say much about that.

“You can stay until dawn, but you need to go then. You got someplace to go?”

I just looked at him miserably, and I felt tears starting to bubble up again. What had I been hoping for? Some white knight hottie to save me? Well, I wasn’t going to get it from Michael. He hadn’t even come outside to get me; he’d just thrown a chair or something.

Still, he’d opened the door. Nobody else on this street had, or would have.

“Okay,” Michael said softly. He stretched out a hand and awkwardly patted me on the knee. “Hey. You’re okay, right? You’re safe in here. Don’t cry.”

I didn’t want to cry, but that was how I vented, and boy, did I need to vent. All the fury and grief and rage and confusion just boiled up inside, and forced their way out. I was shaking, sobbing like a punk, and after a couple of shaking breaths I felt Michael move across to sit next to me. His arm went around me, and I turned toward his warmth, soaking his shirt with tears. I would have told him everything then, all the bad stuff . . . the van, my friends, Brandon. I would have told him how Brandon gave my dad a pay raise when I was fifteen in return for unrestricted access to me and Jason. I would have told him everything.

Lucky for him I couldn’t get my breath.

Michael was good at soothing; he knew not to talk, and he knew just how to touch my hair and how to hold me. It wasn’t until the storm became more like occasional showers, and I was able to hiccup steady breaths, that I realized he had a clear view down my bra.

“Hey!” I said, and tried to artfully tuck the torn edges of my shirt under the strap. Michael had an odd look on his face. “Free show’s over, Glass.”

Trent would have snapped back some snazzy insult, but not Michael. Michael just looked uncomfortable, and edged away from me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”

Well, if he wasn’t, I was offended. I gave good bra: 34B.

I raised my eyebrows.

Michael held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, yeah. I was. That makes me an *, right?”

“No, that makes you male and straight,” I said. Was it wrong I felt relieved? “I just need to change my— Oh, damn. My suitcase! It’s still out there—”

Michael got up and walked down the polished wooden hallway. The house felt warm, but strange—old and, despite the big open rooms, kind of claustrophobic. Like it was . . . watching.

I loved it.

The living room was normal stuff—couch, chairs, bookcases, throw rugs. A guitar case lying open on a small dining table, the guitar lying abandoned on the couch as if he’d put it down to see what the trouble was out in the yard. I’d heard Michael play before, though not recently. People had said he’d given it up . . . but I guessed he hadn’t.