Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(40)

“Does he really have a lawyer?” Oliver asked.

Idle curiosity, Richard thought. It wouldn’t matter a hill of beans to him.

“Sure. Jessie Pottsdam.”

Oliver laughed, and Richard saw the flash of fangs in the dim light. “You really should never be underestimated, my boy,” he said. “One day, you’re going to make this town a very fine mayor.”

Richard, still expressionless, stared through the glass at Maitland. The two cops had followed him out, and now Jessie Pottsdam was going into the room, looking every inch the lawyer he was. Crisp black suit, white shirt, carefully knotted red tie. Expensive shoes and leather briefcase.

Jessie smiled down at his client, and his eyes glowed bright red.

Maitland screamed. Oliver reached over and switched off the speaker. “I don’t believe we need to observe the rest,” he said. “Justice is swift.”

Richard watched anyway, sickness twisting at his stomach. It has to be done. The man was a liar; he would have killed everyone in that bank, including Monica.

It’s justice.

It didn’t really feel that way.





DEAD MAN STALKING


This story was first published in the BenBella Books anthology Immortal, edited by none other than P. C. Cast, so if you want to read some other killer YA vampire tales, go in search of it! You won’t be disappointed.

I decided to do an action-oriented story from Shane’s point of view. There was a running joke at the time that I should throw some zombies into Morganville, and while I didn’t succumb to the temptation in the books, I veered into it here . . . in a way. We get to visit some great Morganville locations, fight some zombies, and find out where Michael has disappeared to—and what Shane’s father has been doing just beyond the town’s borders that might change everything.

This story is set sometime after Michael’s transformation to full vampire, but not long after; Shane’s still getting used to the idea that his best not-a-vamp friend has switched sides. There’s a little bromance, and a lot of Frank Collins.

I might have been thinking just a little bit about the iconic Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Zeppo” . . . but only in the undead football player sense. And yes, I quoted the eighties movie Buckaroo Banzai. Guilty as charged.





Living in West Texas is sort of like living in hell, but without the favorable climate and charming people. Living in Morganville, Texas, is all that and a takeout bag of worse. I should know. My name is Shane Collins, and I was born here, left here, came back here—none of which I had much choice about.

So, for you fortunate ones who’ve never set foot in this place, here’s the walking tour of Morganville: It’s home to a couple of thousand folks who breathe, and some crazy-ass number of people who don’t. Vampires. Can’t live with ’em, and in Morganville, you definitely can’t live without ’em, because they run the town. Other than that, Morganville’s a normal, dusty collection of buildings—the kind the oil boom of the sixties and seventies rolled by without dropping a dime in the banks. The university in the center of town acts like its own little city, complete with walls and gates.

Oh, and there’s a secluded, tightly guarded vampire section of town, too. I’ve been there, in chains. It’s nice, if you’re not looking forward to a horrible public execution.

I used to want to see this town burned to the ground, and then I had one of those things—what are they called, epiphanies? My epiphany was that one day I woke up and realized that if I lost Morganville and everybody in it . . . I’d have nothing at all. Everything I still cared about was here. Love it or hate it.

Epiphanies suck.

I was having another one of them on this particular day. I was sitting at a table inside Marjo’s Diner, watching a dead man walk by the windows outside. Seeing dead men wasn’t exactly unusual in Morganville; hell, one of my best friends is dead now, and he still gripes at me about doing the dishes. But there’s vampire-dead, which Michael is, and then there’s dead-dead, which was Jerome Fielder.

Except Jerome, dead or not, was walking by the window outside Marjo’s.

“Order up,” Marjo snapped, and slung my plate at me like a ground ball to third base; I stopped it from slamming into the wall by putting up my hand as a backstop. The bun of my hamburger slid over and onto the table—mustard side up, for a change.

“There goes your tip,” I said. Marjo, already heading off to the next victim, flipped me off.

“Like you’d ever leave one, you cheap-ass punk.”

I returned the gesture. “Don’t you need to get to your second job?”

That made her pause, just for a second. “What second job?”

“I don’t know, grief counselor? You being so sensitive and all.”

That earned me another bird, ruder than the first one. Marjo had known me since I was a baby puking up formula. She didn’t like me any better now than she had then, but that wasn’t personal. Marjo didn’t like anybody. Yeah, go figure on her entering the service industry.

“Hey,” I said, and leaned over to look at her retreating bubble butt. “Did you just see who walked by outside?”

She turned to glare at me, round tray clutched in sharp red talons. “Screw you, Collins—I’m running a business here. I don’t have time to stare out windows. You want something else or not?”