Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(71)

Shane pulled in a deep, slow breath and stepped into the dark.

A hand closed around his throat and jerked him off-balance, and off into the shadows. The chin strap on his helmet broke, and the whole thing was ripped off, but there wasn’t any sound of it hitting the ground, so his attacker had kept it, maybe the better to beat him with it. Shane flailed a little, feet scuffing the broken concrete floor, but he couldn’t get any traction. The hand around his throat felt cold, and very strong.

And then Michael said, in a whisper like mist, “Shane?” He let go, and Shane tried to slow his heartbeat down, and breathe without wheezing. “You idiot, what the hell are you doing?”

“Following you,” Shane whispered back. “What do you think—I came here for the scenery?”

“You are a f*cking moron.” Michael was really pissed; he didn’t drop the f-bomb very much anymore, not since Claire had moved in. It was probably unconscious. “Seriously, what are you doing?”

“Following. You.” Shane said it very slowly, just to be sure. “You’re in trouble, man. I got a visit.”

“What kind of visit?”

“You want to discuss that here?” Shane waved a hand—which he couldn’t see, in the inky darkness—to stress the point. “Now?”

“No, I want you to get back on your little rice-burner and leave me alone,” Michael said. “Jesus, did you tell Eve, too? Is she lurking around here?”

“Give me some credit. You know Eve—she’s not stealthy. You’d have heard her first, in those damn boots.”

Michael made a sound that was not quite a laugh, but should have been. “So you came by yourself. To what, rescue me?”

“Absolutely,” Shane whispered. “Now, can we go?”

“No,” Michael said. “I have to be sure he’s still here.”

Shane had a sudden, urgent bad feeling. “Please don’t tell me it’s who I think it is.”

“Mean old guy who nearly killed us all before?”

“Oh man.” Shane took in a deep breath. “They think you’re helping him.”

He didn’t need to be able to see Michael’s face to imagine his expression—shock, outrage, anger. “What? Who thinks that?”

“Tricky Dick, for one. And Hannah Moses. That ain’t good, Mikey.”

“No damn kidding.”

“How did you get yourself into this?”

Michael was quiet for a second or two, then said, “There was this girl—I knew her back in junior high. She came to see me.”

“What, for a booty call?”

“No, asshat, to get me to bite her. Turn her. Bring her over. Give her life eternal. Pick your euphemism.”

“I think I liked the booty call explanation better. Wait, this relates to Bishop how, exactly?”

“I was worried about her. I thought she might get herself hurt, so I followed her. While I was following her, she got grabbed.” Michael’s pause was painful. “She got killed. I couldn’t—I was too far away to stop it. I saw it happen. And I saw who did it.”

“Bishop.”

“I didn’t know why he was out, but I knew it was important to find out what he was doing. So I tracked him. He came here, finally. He spends days here, sometimes nights.”

Shane swallowed hard. “Is he here?”

“Not right now—I checked. I was planning to wait until I was sure he’d come in, then go get the cavalry.”

“Why didn’t you turn him in already?”

“The first time, I was going to, but he left again, and I lost him. I figured he’d come back here, so I waited. He did. This is the second time I’ve been here. I just want to make sure before I get Amelie and Oliver on it.”

“You know, I’m not usually the on-the-side-of-caution guy, but I think this is a prime time to call the heavy hitters and get the hell out of the way.”

“Probably,” Michael said. “But I was afraid they’d think I was with him.”

“Guess what? Barn door, horse, et cetera. Come on, let’s go drop a safe, long-distance dime on this old bastard.” It seemed, to Shane, like the best plan ever. Particularly the part where he didn’t get killed, or turned vamp, which for him would be worse. No offense to Michael.

Michael seemed to be torn, but finally, he said, “All right. I just want to make sure he’s here when they get here. He’s gotten away from them once. It can’t happen again, Shane. It can’t.”

Michael was taking this real damn personally, Shane realized. It wasn’t just about Bishop, and general-principles anger at the evil old crow. It was about the girl, the one Michael had refused to Protect, who’d gotten way more than she’d ever bargained for from the next vamp she bumped into.

Shane could understand that on a level so deep it was practically atomic. “Right,” he said quietly. “It won’t. Let’s book.”

And they would have, honestly, except that in that moment, as they headed for the front door, something made a sound at the distant, lightless back of the warehouse. It echoed weirdly around the metal, and Shane couldn’t decide what it was. A struggle? Someone dragging something? Michael’s hand tightened on his arm, pulling him to a sudden, silent stop.