“Ma’am,” I said, and returned the salute. Eve waved. We would have kept on walking, but Amelie stopped, and Oliver was a solid block in front of us, so we stopped as well. I said, “Hope you’re enjoying the walk. It’s a nice night.”
Lame, but it was all I had for small talk. I was aching to keep moving. I couldn’t keep still, in fact, and I drummed my fingers against the side of my leg in a nervous rhythm. I saw Oliver notice it. His scowl deepened.
“It’s turned quite cool,” Amelie said. Like Oliver, she was zeroing in on my trembling fingers. “I heard you sampled the new product today.”
“Yeah, it’s great,” I said. “I got another one to go.” The can was heavy in my pocket, and I’d been thinking about it the entire evening. I’d found myself actually wrapping my hand around it inside my pocket, but I’d managed to stop myself from pulling the tab. So far. “Very convenient. You ought to think about selling them in six-packs.”
“Well, the modern age seems to demand convenience.” Amelie shrugged. “But we’ll see how the single-can sales go. So many wanted access at odd hours to the blood bank that automation seemed the most logical solution. You don’t mind the taste of the preservatives?”
“No, it’s good stuff,” I said. I remembered that I hadn’t liked it at first, but now, for some reason, it seemed like that memory was wrong—as if it had actually been delicious but I hadn’t been ready for it. “It tastes better than the bagged stuff.” I almost said and better than from the vein, but Eve was right there, and that would embarrass her on two levels, not just one. First, that I was telling people she was letting me bite her, and second, that somehow her blood wasn’t good enough. I was able to stop in time, barely. “Has anybody else tried it?”
“Really, Glass, do you think we put it out for public consumption without testing?” Oliver snapped. “It’s been tried, analyzed, and tested to death. I cannot imagine a more boring process. Two years, from concept to actual delivery. Half the vampires in Morganville have been involved in taste tests.”
“Have you tried it?” I asked him. “You should. It’s really—” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence, once I’d started it. “—fierce,” I finally said. An Eve word. I wasn’t sure I even knew what it meant in the way she used it, but it seemed right.
Evidently, Oliver didn’t really understand the usage, either, because he gave me a long stare, one that could have melted concrete. “Our major difficulty seems to be in convincing the elders to use it,” he said. “Most of them are not familiar with the concept of identification cards, much less credit cards, and machines confuse them.”
“I’ll bet,” Eve put in. “Not much call for Cokes among the fang gang, I guess.”
“Well, I like Coke,” I said. Amelie smiled, very slightly.
“As do I, Michael. But I fear we’re in the minority.” There was something guarded in her eyes, a little worried. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Great,” I said, probably too quickly. “I feel great.”
Oliver exchanged a fast glance with her, and gave an almost invisible shrug. “Then we should be going,” he said. “Matters to discuss.”
It was dismissal, and I was happy to grab Eve’s hand and walk on while the other two headed the other way. Oliver always bothered me; partly it was his eviler-than-thou attitude, and partly it was that I could never quite shake the memory of how I’d met him . . . how he’d come across as a nice, genuine guy, and turned on me. That had been before anyone in Morganville had known who he was, or how dangerous he could be.
And he’d killed me. Part of the way, anyway; he hadn’t left me much choice in becoming what I was now. Maybe he thought of that as a fair trade.
I still didn’t.
A tremor of adrenaline surged through me—hunting instinct. It took me a second to realize that there was a complicated mixture of things happening inside of me: hatred boiling up for Oliver, well beyond what I normally felt; hunger, although I shouldn’t have been hungry at all; and last, most unsettlingly, I felt the steady, seductive pulse beat of Eve’s blood through our clasped hands.
It was a moment that made me shiver and go abruptly very still, eyes shut, as I tried to master all of those warring, violent impulses. I heard Eve asking me something, but I shut her out. I shut everything out, concentrating on staying me, staying Michael, staying human, at least for now.
And finally, I fumbled in my pocket and popped open the aluminum can of O negative, and the taste was metal and meat, soothing the beast that was trying to claw its way free inside. I couldn’t let it out, not here, not with Eve.
The taste of the blood silenced it for a moment, and then it roared back, shockingly stronger than ever.
I dropped the can and heard it clatter on the pavement. Eve’s warm hands were around my face, and her voice was in my ears, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying.