Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(60)

And he was smart enough not to tell her.

“She and Michael were going out,” Claire said. “To that restaurant she likes. And then I guess they were going to the show, so it doesn’t make sense for her to see it twice in one day.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It wasn’t that good. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I am all about the exploding things. But there’s a pretty fine line between awesome and explode-o-porn.”

Claire laughed, a silvery little thing that made him want to stop, put his arms around her, and kiss the hell out of her, right here in front of Bernard’s Best Resale Shoppe. He didn’t, only because the sun was scraping the horizon, they had five blocks left to walk to get home to the Glass House, and anyway, kissing her would only make him want to kiss her even more.

Which would make them appetizers for the vampires already getting ready for their nightly strolls.

That was the thing about Morganville. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live here. And honestly, Shane couldn’t exactly define why it was he did live here. He could have left, he supposed. He had, once, and come back to do a job for his father, Fearless Frank the Vampire Hunter. But now he stayed because . . . because at least in here he understood things. He knew the rules, even if the rules were crappy and the game of survival was rigged.

He stayed because there were people here he loved. Claire, for a start, and as much as he felt for her, that would have been enough right there. But then there was Eve Rosser, who was like his annoying/sweet Gothed-out sister. And there was Michael Glass, who was his best friend.

Had been, anyway, before he’d opened the door to the wrong vampire, and now—now it was complicated. Having a best friend with fangs had never been in Shane’s life strategy.

One thing about strategy, boy, Fearless Frank had once told him, on one of his more sober days. It never fails to go to hell once you’re knee-deep in the fight.

“Hey.” Claire nudged him. He nudged her back. “You’re walking a little too fast.”

“What’s long, your widdle short legs can’t keep up?”

“Watch it. I am proportional.”

He waggled his eyebrows. “Just the way I like it.”

“Stop that.” He loved seeing her blush like that, a creep of hot pink that bloomed from her cheeks and spread all the way down her throat, into the neck of her shirt.

“Stop what?”

“You know what!”

“What can I say? Explode-o-porn. It makes me crazy.” He waggled his eyebrows again. She laughed and blushed at the same time. All right, that did it. Sunset or not, he couldn’t not kiss her.

He reached down, put his arms around her, and pulled her close. As he bent his head, hers came up, lovely and sweet and beautiful, her dark eyes shining. Her lips shimmered in the slanting orange light, until his were on them.

And oh God, it was good. Good enough to make him forget Morganville altogether, for the space of a long, sweet, damp kiss. And several seconds after, before a streetlight clicked on overhead with a hiss of burning filament, and reminded him why making out on the corner was a very bad idea.

The streets were deserted, except for a few people hurrying by in cars. He and Claire were the only pedestrians. Even so, it wasn’t that far to the house, and they had time. Barely.

Until Claire, hurrying to keep up with his long strides, tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and went down, hard. He bent down next to her as she quickly pushed herself back up, hands and knees, gave him a wide-eyed look of shame, and started to rise.

Her ankle folded up under her. “Ow!” she yelped in surprise, and looked down at it. “Ow ow ow!” She took her weight off it, leaning on his arm, and he helped her limp over to a battered old wrought-iron bench. It creaked as they sat down on it, and he immediately slid off to crouch down, take her ankle in both his hands, and carefully probe it. She flinched as he started to move it around, and her face went white, but she didn’t scream, and he didn’t feel anything broken.

Not that she couldn’t have broken one of the smaller bones in her foot. Happened all the time. Nothing they could do about it, even at the hospital, but he thought this was probably a sprain. A bad one. He could already see the smooth matte surface of her slender ankle starting to swell up.

She took out her cell phone and dialed without him saying a word, but closed it up after a moment. “Eve’s phone goes to voice mail.”

“Try Michael’s.” She did, and shrugged helplessly when she didn’t get an answer. They both knew what that meant—Michael and Eve were having private time, and there would be no rescue coming from that quarter. For once. “Taxi?” Even as he said it, Shane shook his head. “Never mind; he won’t get out this close to dark.”

They really didn’t have time to debate it. What had been sort of theoretically dangerous before, when they were two healthy young people capable of running and fighting, had turned into a calculation. Claire, injured, was going to be irresistible bait. And not every vampire would check whether she had another vamp’s Protection before digging in.

Amelie might be furious about it, later, but that wouldn’t help Claire right now. And Shane didn’t have any Protection at all, except the fact that he was tough to kill.

“Right,” he said, and stood up. “No arguments, okay?” He didn’t wait for agreement, because he knew he probably wouldn’t get it. He reached down, picked her up, and settled her in his arms. She wasn’t featherlight, but he’d carried heavier suitcases. And suitcases hardly ever put their arms around your neck, or let their head fall into the crook of your neck. All in all, the kind of burden he was happy to carry.