Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(47)

He made it to the car, opened the driver’s side door, and slid inside. I heard the roar as the engine started. “Shane!” he yelled. “Come on!”

“In a second,” I yelled back. I stared at my father, and the moving tattoo. He had the crossbow aimed right at my chest. I twirled the crowbar in one hand, the silver chain in the other. “So,” I said, watching my father. “Your move, Dad. What now? You want me to do a cage match with Dead Jerome? Would that make you happy?”

My dad was staring not at me but at Dead Jerome, who was cowering in the corner. I’d hurt him, or the silver had; half his face was burned and rotting, and he was weeping in slow, retching sobs.

I knew the look Dad was giving him. I’d seen it on my father’s face more times than I could count. Disappointment.

“My son,” Dad said in disgust. “You ruin everything.”

“I guess Jerome’s more your son than I am,” I said. I walked toward the front door. I wasn’t going to give my father the satisfaction of making me run. I knew he had the crossbow in his hands, and I knew it was loaded.

I knew he was sighting on my back.

I heard the trigger release, and the ripped-silk hiss of wood traveling through air. I didn’t have time to be afraid, only—like my dad—bitterly disappointed.

The crossbow bolt didn’t hit me. Didn’t even miss me.

When I turned, at the door, I saw that he’d put the crossbow bolt, tipped with silver, through Jerome’s skull. Jerome slid silently down to the floor. Dead. Finally, mercifully dead.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fell facedown next to his hand.

“Son,” my dad said, and put the crossbow aside. “Please, don’t go. I need you. I really do.”

I shook my head.

“This thing—it’ll only last another few days,” he said. “The tattoo. It’s already fading. I don’t have time for this, Shane. It has to be now.”

“Then I guess you’re out of luck.”

He snapped the crossbow up again.

I ducked to the right, into the parlor, jumped the wreckage of a couch, and landed on the cracked, curling floor of the old kitchen. It smelled foul and chemical in here, and I spotted a fish tank on the counter, filled with cloudy liquid. Next to it was a car battery.

DIY silver plating equipment, for the chains.

There was also a 1950s-era round-shouldered fridge, rattling and humming.

I opened it.

Dad had stored Michael’s blood in bottles, old dirty milk bottles likely scavenged from the trash heap in the corner. I grabbed all five bottles and threw them one at a time out the window, aiming for a big upthrusting rock next to a tree.

Smash. Smash. Smash. Smash . . .

“Stop,” Dad spat. In my peripheral vision I saw him standing there, aiming his reloaded crossbow at me. “I’ll kill you, Shane. I swear I will.”

“Yeah? Lucky you’ve already got me tattooed on your chest, then, with the rest of the dead family.” I pulled back for the throw.

“I could bring back your mother,” Dad blurted. “Maybe even your sister. Don’t.”

Oh, God. Sick black swam across my vision for a second.

“You throw that bottle,” he whispered, “and you’re killing their last chance to live.”

I remembered Jerome—his sagging muscles, his grainy skin, the panic and fear in his eyes.

Do you want to be here?

No. Hurts.

I threw the last bottle of Michael’s blood and watched it sail straight and true, to shatter in a red spray against the rock.

I thought he’d kill me. Maybe he thought he’d kill me, too. I waited, but he didn’t pull the trigger.

“I’m fighting for humanity,” he said. His last, best argument. It had always won me over before.

I turned and looked him full in the face. “I think you already lost yours.”

I walked out past him, and he didn’t stop me.

? ? ?

Michael drove like a maniac, raising contrails of caliche dust about a mile high as we sped back to the main highway. He kept asking me how I was doing. I didn’t answer him, just looked out at the gorgeous sunset, and the lonely, broken house fading in the distance.

We blasted past the Morganville city limits sign, and one of the ever-lurking police cars cut us off. Michael slowed, stopped, and turned off the engine. A rattle of desert wind shook the car.

“Shane.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“I know that.”

“I can’t just let this go. Did you see—”

“I saw,” I said. “I know.” But he’s still my father, some small, frightened kid inside me wailed. He’s all I have.

“Then what do you want me to say?” Michael’s eyes had faded back to blue now, but he was still white as a ghost, blue-white, scary-white. I’d spilled all his blood out there on the ground. The burns on his hands and wrists made my stomach clench.

“Tell them the truth,” I said. If the Morganville vampires got to my dad before he could get the hell out, he’d die horribly, and God knew, he probably deserved it. “But give him five minutes, Michael. Just five.”

Michael stared at me, and I couldn’t tell what was in his mind at all. I’d known him most of my life, but in that long moment, he was just as much of a stranger as my father had been.