I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch somebody. I felt pressure building up inside, and my hands were shaking. “What the hell are you doing to him?”
I didn’t know who he was, this guy in the leather jacket looking at me. He looked like a tired, middle-aged biker, with his straggly graying hair, his sallow, seamed face, his scars and tats. Only his eyes seemed like they belonged to my dad, and even then, only for a second.
“It’s a vampire,” he said. “It’s not your friend, Shane. You need to be real clear about that—your friend is dead, just like Jerome here, and you can’t let that get in the way of what needs to be done. When we go to war, we get them all. All. No exceptions.”
Michael had played at our house. My dad had tossed a ball around with him and pushed his swing and served him cake at birthday parties.
And my dad didn’t care about any of that anymore.
“How?” My jaw felt tight. I was grinding my teeth, and my hands were shaking. “How did you do this? What are you doing to him?”
“I’m bleeding it and storing the blood, just like they do us humans,” Dad said. “It’s a two-part spell—the tattoo, and the blood of a vampire. It’s just a creature, Shane. Remember that.”
Michael wasn’t a creature. Not just a creature, anyway; neither was what Dad had pulled out of Jerome’s grave, for that matter. Jerome wasn’t just a mindless killing machine. Mindless killing machines didn’t fill their spare time with the adventures of Dorothy and Toto. They didn’t even know they had spare time. I could see it in Jerome’s wide, yellowed eyes now. The pain. The terror. The anger.
“Do you want to be here?” I asked him, straight out.
For just that second, Jerome looked like a boy. A scared, angry, hurt little boy. “No,” he said. “Hurts.”
I wasn’t going to let this happen. Not to Michael, oh, hell no. And not even to Jerome.
“Don’t you go all soft on me, Shane. I’ve done what needed doing,” he said. “Same as always. You used to be weak. I thought you’d manned up.”
Once, that would have made me try to prove it by fighting something. Jerome, maybe. Or him.
I turned and looked at him and said, “I really would be weak if I fell for that tired bullshit, Dad.” I raised my hands, closed them into fists, and then opened them again and let them fall. “I don’t need to prove anything to you. Not anymore.”
I walked out the front door, out to the dust-filmed black car. I popped the trunk and took out a crowbar.
Dad watched me from the door, blocking my way back into the house. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Stopping you.”
He threw a punch as I walked up the steps toward him. This time, I saw it coming, saw it telegraphed clearly in his face before the impulse ever reached his fist.
I stepped out of the way, grabbed his arm, and shoved him face-first into the wall. “Don’t.” I held him there, pinned like a bug on a board, until I felt his muscles stop fighting me. The rest of him never would. “We’re done, Dad. Over. This is over. Don’t make me hurt you, because, God, I really want to.”
I should have known he wouldn’t just give up.
The second I let him go, he twisted, jammed an elbow into my abused stomach, and forced me backward. I knew his moves by now, and sidestepped an attempt to hook my feet out from under me.
“Jerome!” Dad yelled. “Stop my—”
The end of that sentence was going to be son, and I couldn’t let him put Jerome back in the game or this was over before it started.
So I punched my father full in the face. Hard. With all the rage and resentment that I’d stored up over the years, and all the anguish, and all the fear. The shock rattled every bone in my body, and my whole hand sent up a red flare of distress. My knuckles split open.
Dad hit the floor, eyes rolling back in his head. I stood there for a second, feeling oddly cold and empty, and saw his eyelids flutter.
He wouldn’t be out for long.
I moved quickly across the room, past Jerome, who was still frozen in place, and opened the door to the cell. “Michael?” I crouched down across from him, and my friend shook gold hair back from his white face and stared at me with eerie, hungry eyes.
I held up my wrist, showing him the bracelet. “Promise me, man. I get you out of here, no biting. I love you, but no.”
Michael laughed hoarsely. “Love you, too, bro. Get me the hell out of here.”
I set to work with the crowbar, pulling up floorboards and gouging the eyebolts out for each set of chains. I’d been right; my dad was too smart to make chains out of solid silver. Too soft, too easy to break. These were silver-plated—good enough to do the job on Michael, if not one of the older vamps.
I only had to pull up the first two; Michael’s vampire strength took care of yanking the others from the floor.