Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(38)

“She is. But her husband isn’t.” Oliver smiled slowly, and she did not care for the triumph in his expression. Not at all. “I have a report that he returned to town only an hour ago, and went straight to the house where his son is staying. Your house, Amelie. You are now sheltering a potential killer.” She said nothing, did nothing. After a long moment, Oliver sighed. “You cannot pretend that this is not a problem.”

“I don’t,” she said. “But we shall see what develops. After all, this town is a sanctuary.”

“And the children?” he asked. “Are you extending your Protection to them even if they come after vampires?”

Amelie sipped the last of her blood, and smiled. “I might,” she said.

“Then you want a war.”

“No, Oliver, I want the right to make my own decisions in my own town.” She stood, and Oliver stood, too, as if drawn on the same string. “You may go.”

She went back to the window, dismissing him from her thoughts. If he was inclined to dispute his dismissal, he thought better—possibly because Vallery was not the only servant she had within a whisper’s call—and he withdrew from the field without surrender.

Amelie folded her hands on the warm wood of the window ledge and stared at the faint glow of moonrise on the horizon.

“Oh, children.” She sighed. “Whatever shall I do with you?”

She was not in the habit of risking her life or position. Especially not for mere humans, whose lives blinked on and off as quickly as the streetlights below.

If Oliver was right, she would have little choice.





WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME


Another free-on-the-Web story under the Captain Obvious hidden content, I wrote this story to give a little shading and understanding to Richard Morrell, Monica’s (exasperated) older brother. We first met him in Glass Houses, and I took a liking to him immediately—it’s not easy being the son of the most corrupt human in Morganville while also being the brother of the most outrageous, selfish bully. Add to that a real desire to do some good in the world and help protect his fellow Morganville residents, and you’ve got a man who has a hard day ahead of him.

But one thing’s for certain: Richard does love his sister. He knows her flaws, but that doesn’t mean he won’t go to the wall for her—and even compromise his ethics from time to time.

This is about to be a very bad day to be a criminal in Morganville.





Richard Morrell looked at the man sitting across from him—shaking, pale, covered in blood that the ambulance attendants had sworn wasn’t his own—and said, “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me your name.” He kept his tone neutral, because he wasn’t sure yet which approach to take. The guy looked too shaky to push really hard, and too paranoid to take well to friendliness.

Businesslike was apparently the right course, because the man blinked at him, ran a blood-smeared hand across his sweaty forehead, and said, “They’re dead. They’re dead, right? My friends?”

“Lets talk about you,” Richard said, very steadily. “What’s your name?”

“Brian. Brian Maitland.”

“Where are you from, Brian?” Richard smiled slightly. “I know you’re not from around here.”

“Dallas,” Maitland said. “We were, y’know, just passing through. We thought, Jeez, it looks like such an easy score, y’know? No big deal. We weren’t going to hurt anybody. We just wanted the money.”

“One thing at a time, Brian. What are your friends’ names?”

“Joe. Joe Grady. And Lavelle Harvey. Lavelle—Lavelle’s Joe’s girl. I swear, Officer, we were just passing through. We thought—we saw the bank open after dark, we thought—we figured—”

“You figured it would be an easy score,” Richard said. “You said. So what happened?”

“I, uh—” Maitland seemed to vapor-lock. Richard motioned over one of the two cops standing in the corner of the room—the human one—and asked for coffee in a low voice. He waited until the steaming Styrofoam cup was in Maitland’s big, bloody hands before prodding him again.

“You’re safe now,” Richard said, which really wasn’t the truth. “Tell me what happened at the bank.”

Maitland sipped at the coffee, then gulped convulsively, not seeming to care that it was hot enough to raise blisters. His eyes had that terrible distance to them, something Richard was way too familiar with.

“There was this girl,” he said. “Pretty little thing, cashing a check at the teller window. Joe took the guard, Lavelle covered the couple of people in the lobby, and I grabbed the girl.”

“Describe her,” Richard said.

“I don’t know, pretty. Brunette. Had a mouth on her—I’ll tell ya that.” He shook his head slowly. “She kept telling me we were in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong damn town. Pissed me off. But she was right.”

He gulped more coffee, eyes darting nervously from Richard to the night visible in the barred window of the room. He hadn’t once looked at the cops standing behind him. Richard figured he was blocking it out, the knowledge that one of them might not be entirely human.

“This girl,” Richard said softly. “What did you do to her?”