Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(91)
“Until now.”
“If you don’t disappoint me.” She looked as if she didn’t have much faith in him, which was a bit insulting considering how much he’d already survived in this cursed place. “Promise me you’ll do it.”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” he said. “This place deserves to burn.”
“So do we,” Trothe said. “Don’t let her tell you different. We did so many bad things. Don’t let her do it to you, too.”
Clemencie shrieked again, and the sound drilled at him, clawed bloody furrows in his fragile mind, and he could almost hear, almost know, almost see what she wanted him to become.
Worse, it almost seemed tempting.
No time left. If he intended to survive these bitter ghosts, he had to trust that Trothe could do as she promised.
“Now, go now!” Trothe cried, and he glanced back to see that Clemencie had broken whatever barrier had kept her at bay. She was rushing at him, and this time, he knew that if she touched him, his mind would shatter like a thin glass bowl.
Myrnin took a run at the window, leaped, and hit the boards with a crash that rattled his brain in its bones . . . and the boards broke away, and he soared a bit in cold desert air before arcing down to an ignominious rolling stop in the dirt.
That damned scorpion, or its close cousin, scuttled at him across the sand as he sat up. He didn’t bother to warn it this time, just picked it up and threw it hard enough to send it to Mexico, and turned his attention back to the Vexen house.
It was still and quiet and lifeless in the fading moonlight. Dawn was a dull blue edge on the eastern horizon now.
“You took your good time,” Oliver said from behind him, and Myrnin managed not to flinch. Somehow.
“I thought you’d be well gone.”
“It occurred to me you might need help.”
“Thanks for not providing it, then. You did that very well.” Myrnin stood up and slapped sand irritably from his clothing. The amount of it that had trickled down into his boots was going to drive him mad. Again.
“What happened in there?” Oliver’s face, when Myrnin glanced back at him, was less cynical and guarded than was normal for him. He seemed . . . worried. Perhaps he’d sensed something in that house, too.
And maybe he’d been worried that Myrnin would emerge as mad and savage a beast as their vampire quarry, Lucian.
“Ghosts,” Myrnin said. “And I’m about to lay them to rest. Do you happen to have a lighter?”
Oliver raised his eyebrows, but he fished in a coat pocket and brought out an ornate silver thing, engraved with a dragon. “I’ll want that back,” he said.
“Of course.” Myrnin picked up one of the tinder-dry broken boards that had come through the window with him, and searched around for a bit of sun-rotted cloth to wrap around the end of it. It caught on the first flicker of the lighter’s flame, and he held it upside down to feed the greedy fire for a moment, then walked back to the house.
Upstairs, in the window he’d exited, he saw Trothe Vexen, smiling down at him.
She blew him a kiss.
“That’s unsettling,” he told her. “Do give your sister my regards when you see her in hell.”
He threw the burning board inside a broken window, and whatever control Clemencie Vexen had over that house, she could not keep fire from seizing hungry hold of all the rotten, ready-burning things in it. In ten seconds the glow was visible at the window, and in thirty, flames were leaping and spreading throughout the structure.
Myrnin withdrew to a safer distance and stood to watch the Vexen house burn. Oliver stood with him, silent, as though he understood this was a necessary vigil.
Trothe stayed in the window staring out until the house collapsed in upon itself in a roaring rush of flames and sparks and ashes, and then it was done. Completely done.
“Whatever did you do with Lucian?” Myrnin thought to ask as smoke rose up in the dawning sky, and the Vexen girls vanished back to whatever fate waited for them.
“He fell,” Oliver said. “Tragic dismemberment accident.”
“Ah. Pity. How do you feel about a hearty breakfast?”
“I could murder a Bloody Mary,” Oliver said.
“Two Bloody Marys sound better.”
Oliver fixed him with a long sober look. “Are you sure you’re quite all right?”
“As all right as I’ve ever been,” Myrnin said. He was well aware, in fact, that it was not a reassuring answer. But what was one more whispering ghost at the back of his mind? He had a chorus of the wretched things. It was hard for someone to drive him to insanity when he’d already crossed those borders and taken up residence.
Amateurs.
SIGNS AND MIRACLES
Dedicated to Kelley Armstrong (and her readers) for her support of the Morganville digital series Kickstarter I was so awestruck that no less than the fantastic urban fantasy / YA author Kelley Armstrong helped us get our Morganville digital series off the ground, and she then donated the custom hardcover to one of her readers. She allowed me to choose the characters for this story, and I decided to explore one that I particularly love and have never written in point of view: Hannah Moses. This is a mystery story with Hannah as our detective, unraveling the story of a girl left for dead and a mysterious peddler of anti-vampire drugs, with bonus Monica Morrell, being heroic against her will, mostly. Glimpses inside the Morganville Police Department we’ve not previously been able to see, too.