Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(46)

“Do you want to be here?” I asked him, straight out.

For just that second, Jerome looked like a boy. A scared, angry, hurt little boy. “No,” he said. “Hurts.”

I wasn’t going to let this happen. Not to Michael, oh, hell no. And not even to Jerome.

“Don’t you go all soft on me, Shane. I’ve done what needed doing,” he said. “Same as always. You used to be weak. I thought you’d manned up.”

Once, that would have made me try to prove it by fighting something. Jerome, maybe. Or him.

I turned and looked at him and said, “I really would be weak if I fell for that tired bullshit, Dad.” I raised my hands, closed them into fists, and then opened them again and let them fall. “I don’t need to prove anything to you. Not anymore.”

I walked out the front door, out to the dust-filmed black car. I popped the trunk and took out a crowbar.

Dad watched me from the door, blocking my way back into the house. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Stopping you.”

He threw a punch as I walked up the steps toward him. This time, I saw it coming, saw it telegraphed clearly in his face before the impulse ever reached his fist.

I stepped out of the way, grabbed his arm, and shoved him face-first into the wall. “Don’t.” I held him there, pinned like a bug on a board, until I felt his muscles stop fighting me. The rest of him never would. “We’re done, Dad. Over. This is over. Don’t make me hurt you, because, God, I really want to.”

I should have known he wouldn’t just give up.

The second I let him go, he twisted, jammed an elbow into my abused stomach, and forced me backward. I knew his moves by now, and sidestepped an attempt to hook my feet out from under me.

“Jerome!” Dad yelled. “Stop my—”

The end of that sentence was going to be son, and I couldn’t let him put Jerome back in the game or this was over before it started.

So I punched my father full in the face. Hard. With all the rage and resentment that I’d stored up over the years, and all the anguish, and all the fear. The shock rattled every bone in my body, and my whole hand sent up a red flare of distress. My knuckles split open.

Dad hit the floor, eyes rolling back in his head. I stood there for a second, feeling oddly cold and empty, and saw his eyelids flutter.

He wouldn’t be out for long.

I moved quickly across the room, past Jerome, who was still frozen in place, and opened the door to the cell. “Michael?” I crouched down across from him, and my friend shook gold hair back from his white face and stared at me with eerie, hungry eyes.

I held up my wrist, showing him the bracelet. “Promise me, man. I get you out of here, no biting. I love you, but no.”

Michael laughed hoarsely. “Love you, too, bro. Get me the hell out of here.”

I set to work with the crowbar, pulling up floorboards and gouging the eyebolts out for each set of chains. I’d been right; my dad was too smart to make chains out of solid silver. Too soft, too easy to break. These were silver-plated—good enough to do the job on Michael, if not one of the older vamps.

I only had to pull up the first two; Michael’s vampire strength took care of yanking the others from the floor.

Michael’s eyes flared red when I leaned closer, trying to help him up, and before I knew what was happening, he’d wrapped a hand around my throat and slammed me down, on my back, on the floor. I felt the sting of sharp nails in my skin, and saw his eyes fixed on the cut on my head.

“No biting,” I said again, faintly. “Right?”

“Right,” Michael said, from somewhere out beyond Mars. His eyes were glowing like storm lanterns, and I could feel every muscle in his body trembling. “Better get that cut looked at. Looks bad.”

He let me up, and moved with about half his usual vampire speed to the door. Dad might not let Jerome have at me, but he wasn’t going to hold back with Michael, and Michael was—at best—half his normal strength right now. Not exactly a fair fight.

“Michael,” I said, and put my back against the wall next to him. “We go together, straight to the window. You get out—don’t wait for me. The sun should be down far enough that you can make it to the car.” I gathered up a handful of silver chain and wrapped it around my hand. “Don’t even think about arguing right now.”

He sent me an Are you kidding? look, and nodded.

We moved fast, and together. I got in Jerome’s way and delivered a punch straight from the shoulder right between his teeth, reinforced with silver-plated metal.

I intended only to knock him back, but Jerome howled and stumbled, hands up to ward me off. It was like years fell away, and all of a sudden we were back in junior high again—him the most popular bully in school, me finally getting enough size and muscle to stand up to him. Jerome had made that same girly gesture the first time I’d hit back.

It threw me off.

A crossbow bolt fired from the far corner of the living room hissed right over my head and slammed to a vibrating stop in the wooden wall. “Stop!” Dad ordered hoarsely. He was on his knees, but he was up and very, very angry. He was also reloading, and the next shot wouldn’t be a warning.

“Get out!” I screamed at Michael, and if he was thinking about staging a reenactment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he finally saw sense. He jumped through the nearest window in a hail of glass and hit the ground running. I’d been right: the sun was down, or close enough that it wouldn’t hurt him too badly.