Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(54)

“Michael may need help,” I said, and I got their attention, immediately. “You want to come with?”

“I’m not exactly dressed for hand-to-hand,” Shane said, “but what the hell. If I have to hit somebody, maybe they’ll be too embarrassed to trade punches with Hugh Hefner—guy’s got to be about a hundred years old or something.”

I was more worried about Claire. Fairy wings and glitter weren’t exactly going to intimidate anybody . . . but then again, Claire had other skills.

“You drive,” I said to Shane, and tossed him the car keys. He fielded them with a blinding grin. “Don’t get used to it, loser.”

The grin faded just as quickly. “Where am I going?”

“Around the blood bank. Five Morganville High guys in letter jackets picked Michael up around there. I don’t know why, or how, or why he went without a fight.”

Shane’s face went hard. “You think they lured him off?”

“I think Michael wants to help people. Just like his grandfather.” Sam Glass had always put others ahead of his own safety, and I figured Michael was walking the same path. “It may be nothing, and hell, Michael can handle five drunk jocks, but—”

“But not if they’ve got a plan,” Claire finished. “If they know how to disable him, they could hurt him.”

Neither of them asked why a bunch of teens would want to hurt somebody they hardly knew; it was in teen DNA, and we all knew it, deep down. On Halloween, a bunch of drunk *s might think it was fun and exciting to hurt a vampire. And then, as they sobered up, they might imagine that they’d be better off killing him than leaving him to identify them later. The Morganville powers-that-be didn’t look favorably on vampire bashing.

“Maybe they needed his help,” Claire said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

We got into the huge black sedan without another word, and Shane peeled rubber.

“What do you think?” I asked aloud as we started driving through the more unpleasant parts of Morganville. “Where should we start?”

“Depends on whether Michael’s picking the place, or the jocks are,” Shane said. His voice sounded low and harsh—Action Shane, not the one who arm-wrestled me for the remote control at home. “The jocks will go someplace they feel safe.”

“Like?” Because I had no idea how jocks thought, in any sense.

Shane did. “Nobody at the football field this time of night. No games this evening.” Because although Morganville paid lip service to other sports, as in most Texas towns, football was where it was at. To know Michael was with five guys in letter jackets meant football was surely involved, if not at the center of things. “I’d say stadium. Maybe the press box or the field house.”

I nodded. Shane took that as permission to hit warp speed. The engine roared as we shot down quiet streets, past derelict houses and empty businesses. Not a fantastic part of town these days. At the end of the street, he took a left, then a right, and we saw the columned expanse of Morganville High School at the crest of a very small hill. To the left and below was the stadium. It wasn’t much, not compared with professional arenas, but it was a respectable size for a small Texas town. The lights were all off.

Shane piloted the car into the parking lot and killed the headlights. There were a few cars parked here and there. Some had steamed-over windows—I knew what was going on in there. Kids. I wanted to run over, rap on the window, and take a cell phone picture, but that would have been rude.

There was a cluster of vehicles, mostly battered pickups, at one end of the lot. The windows were clear. Claire pointed wordlessly over my shoulder at them, and we all nodded.

“What’s the plan?” Shane asked me. I looked at Claire, but she didn’t seem to be Plan Girl tonight. Maybe it was the fairy glitter.

“I’m the one with the stealthy outfit,” I said. “I’m going to go take a look. I’ll keep my phone on. You guys listen in and come running if I get into it, okay?”

Shane raised eyebrows. “That’s stealthy? That outfit?”

“In terms of being black, yes. Shut up.”

“Whatever, Miss Kitty,” he said. “Call me.”

I dialed his number; he answered it and put it on speaker. I slipped out of the car, wondering how anybody could scramble over rooftops dressed like this.

Once I was in the shadows, I felt more at home. Nobody around that I could see, and as I did my best to creep along without being spotted, I felt more and more foolish. There was nobody here. I was skulking without any reason.

I heard voices. Male voices. They were coming from the field house, which contained the changing rooms for the teams, the gym, the showers, that kind of stuff. One of the windows was open to catch the cool night air. This was probably how they’d gotten into the building in the first place.

I sprinted—as much of a sprint as I could manage in the heels—across the open ground to the shadows on the side of the field house, and slid down the wall toward the window. “Shane,” I whispered into the phone. “Shane, they’re in the field house.”

I heard a screech of tires in the parking lot, and retreated to look around the corner. On either side of my big black sedan, two pickup trucks had pulled in, parking so close that there was no way Shane or Claire could open the doors, much less get out. Another truck parked behind them.