Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(43)

Sometime in there, my dad had changed from random pathetic drunk to mean, badass, vampire-hunting drunk. The vampire-hating component of that had been building up for years, and it had exploded like an ancient batch of TNT when my mother died—by suicide, maybe. I didn’t believe it, and neither did my dad. The vampires had been behind it, like they were behind every terrible thing that had ever happened in our lives.

That was what I used to believe, anyway. And what Dad still did.

I could smell the whiskey rising up off him like the bad-meat smell off Jerome, who was kicked back in a chair in the corner, reading a book. Funny. Jerome hadn’t been much of a reader when he’d been alive.

I sat obligingly on the ancient, dusty couch, mainly because my feet were too numb to stand, and I was trying to work circulation back into my fingers. Dad and I didn’t hug. Instead, he paced, raising dust motes that glimmered in the few shafts of light that fought their way through smudged windows.

“You look like crap,” Dad said, pausing to stare at me. I resisted the urge, like Marjo, to give him a one-fingered salute, because he’d only beat the crap out of me for it. Seeing him gave me a black, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to love him. I wanted to hit him. I didn’t know what I wanted, except that I wanted this whole thing to just go away.

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” I said, and deliberately slumped back on the couch, giving him all the teen attitude I could. “I missed you, too. I see you brought all your friends with you. Oh, wait.”

The last time my dad had rolled into Morganville, he’d done it in a literal kind of way—on a motorcycle, with a bunch of badass motorcycle buddies. No sign of them this time. I wondered when they’d finally told him to shove it, and how hard.

Dad didn’t answer. He kept staring at me. He was wearing a leather jacket with lots of zippers, faded blue jeans, sturdy boots. Not too different from what I was wearing, minus the jacket, because only a stupid jerk would be in leather in this heat. Looking at you, Dad.

“Shane,” he said. “You knew I’d come back for you.”

“Yeah, that’s really sweet. The last time I saw you, you were trying to blow my ass up along with a whole building full of vampires, remember? What’s my middle name, Collateral Damage?” He’d have done it, too. I knew my dad too well to think anything else. “You also left me to burn alive in a cage, Dad. So excuse me if I’m not getting all misty-eyed while the music swells.”

His expression—worn into a hard leather mask by wind and sun—didn’t change. “It’s a war, Shane. We talked about this.”

“Funny thing, I don’t remember you saying, ‘If you get caught by the vampires, I’ll leave you to burn, dumbass.’ But maybe I’m just not remembering all the details of your clever plan.” Feeling was coming back into my fingers and toes. Not fun. It felt like I’d dipped them in battery acid and then rolled them in lye. “I can get over that. But you had to go and drag my friends into it.”

That was what I hated the most. Sure, he’d screwed me over—more than once, actually. But he was right—we’d kind of agreed that one us might have to bite it for the cause, back when I believed in his cause.

We hadn’t agreed about innocent people, especially my friends, getting thrown on the pile of bodies.

“Your friends, right,” Dad said, with about a bottle’s worth of cheap whiskey emphasis. “A half vampire, a wannabe morbid freak, and—oh, you mean that girl, don’t you? The little skinny one. She melted the brains right out of your head, didn’t she? I warned you about that.”

Claire. He didn’t even remember her name. I closed my eyes for a second, and there she was, smiling up at me with those clear, trusting eyes. She might be small, but she had a kind of strength my dad wouldn’t ever understand. She was the first really pure thing that I’d ever known, and I wasn’t about to let him take her away. She was waiting for me right now, back at the Glass House, probably studying and chewing a pencil. Or arguing with Eve. Or . . . wondering where the hell I was.

I had to get out of this. I had to get back to Claire.

Painful or not, my feet were functional again. I tested them by standing up. In the corner, Dead Jerome put aside his book. It was a battered, water-stained copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Who did he think he was? The Cowardly Lion? The Scarecrow? Hell, maybe he thought he was Dorothy.

“Just like I thought, this is all about the girl. You probably think you’re some knight in shining armor come to save her.” Dad’s smile was sharp enough to cut diamonds. “You know how she sees you? A big, dumb idiot she can put on a leash. Her own pet pit bull. Your innocent little schoolgirl, she’s wearing the Founder’s symbol now. She’s working for the vampires. I sure as hell hope she’s like a porn star in the sack for you to be betraying your own like this.”

This time, I didn’t need a knock on the head to see red. I felt my chin going down, my lungs filling, but I held on to my temper. Somehow.

He was trying to make me charge him.

“I love her, Dad,” I said. “Don’t.”

“Love, yeah, right. You don’t know the meaning of the word, Shane. She’s working for the leeches. She’s helping them regain control of Morganville. She has to go, and you know it.”

“Over my dead body.”