There was a porch light on in front of 716, and it cast a glow on the pillars framing the porch, picked out the boards in the white fence in front. There were lights on inside, and I saw someone pass in front of a window.
“Michael!” I screamed it, and put everything into one last sprint. The car eased ahead of me and pulled in at the curb with a squeal of brakes, tires bumping concrete. A door flew open to block the sidewalk, and I gasped, picked up my suitcase, and tossed it over the fence. It weighed about fifty pounds, but I managed to toss it anyway. I grabbed the rough whitewashed boards with their sharp tops and vaulted over, got my shirt caught on the way and ripped it open. No time to worry about that. I dragged my suitcase over the night-damp grass and yelled his name again, with even more of an edge of panic. “Michael! It’s Eve! Open the door!”
They were behind me. They were right behind me. I knew it, even though I didn’t dare look back and they made no sound. I could feel it. I felt something grab the suitcase, nearly twisting my arm out of the socket, and I let go, stumbling against the porch stairs. The house stretched above me, gray and ghostly in the dark, but that porch light, that was life.
Something caught my foot. I screamed and kicked, fighting to get free. My searching fingers scratched at the closed wood of the door, and I tasted dust again. I’d been close, so close. . . .
The door opened, and warm yellow light spilled out over me. Too late. I tried to grab for a handhold, but I was being yanked backward . . . and I could feel breath on the back of my neck. Cold, rancid breath.
Something flew over my head and slammed into the vampire pulling on me, knocking him flying. I crawled back toward the door and got a hand over the threshold.
Michael Glass grabbed my hand and dragged me inside with one long pull. My feet made it over the line just a fraction of a second before another vampire slammed into the invisible barrier there.
Brandon. Oh, damn, he was angry. Really angry. Vampires usually didn’t look like movie vamps—they were all about the fitting in—but right now he clearly didn’t care. His eyes had turned bloodred, and his face was whiter than I’d ever made mine. And I could see fangs, fangs a viper would have envied, flicking down from their hiding place to flash in menace.
Michael Glass didn’t flinch. He looked pretty much as I remembered him, only . . . better, somehow. Stronger. Tall, built, golden hair that waved and curled surfer-style. He had blue eyes, and they were fixed on Brandon. Not afraid, but wary.
“You okay?” he asked me. I nodded, unable to say anything that would really cover how I felt. “Then get out of the way.”
“Huh?”
“Your legs.”
I pulled them in, and he calmly shut the door in Brandon’s face. I sat there on the wooden floor, knees pulled in to my chest, and tried to slow my heart down from triple digits. “God,” I whispered, and rested my forehead on my knees. “That was close.”
I heard the rustle of fabric. Michael had crouched down across from me, back to the opposite wall. He was wearing some comfortable old jeans, a faded green cotton shirt, and his feet were long and narrow and bare. “Eve?” he asked. “What the hell was that?”
“Um . . . my eighteenth-birthday present.” I was shivering, and I realized my skull shirt was displaying a whole lot more bra than I’d ever intended. Kind of a plunge bra. Victoria’s Secret. Not so much of a secret right now. “Brandon’s pissed.”
Michael rested his head against the wall and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t sign.”
I shook my head, unable to say much about that.
“You can stay until dawn, but you need to go then. You got someplace to go?”
I just looked at him miserably, and I felt tears starting to bubble up again. What had I been hoping for? Some white knight hottie to save me? Well, I wasn’t going to get it from Michael. He hadn’t even come outside to get me; he’d just thrown a chair or something.
Still, he’d opened the door. Nobody else on this street had, or would have.
“Okay,” Michael said softly. He stretched out a hand and awkwardly patted me on the knee. “Hey. You’re okay, right? You’re safe in here. Don’t cry.”
I didn’t want to cry, but that was how I vented, and boy, did I need to vent. All the fury and grief and rage and confusion just boiled up inside, and forced their way out. I was shaking, sobbing like a punk, and after a couple of shaking breaths I felt Michael move across to sit next to me. His arm went around me, and I turned toward his warmth, soaking his shirt with tears. I would have told him everything then, all the bad stuff . . . the van, my friends, Brandon. I would have told him how Brandon gave my dad a pay raise when I was fifteen in return for unrestricted access to me and Jason. I would have told him everything.
Lucky for him I couldn’t get my breath.