Michael’s eyes flared red when I leaned closer, trying to help him up, and before I knew what was happening, he’d wrapped a hand around my throat and slammed me down, on my back, on the floor. I felt the sting of sharp nails in my skin, and saw his eyes fixed on the cut on my head.
“No biting,” I said again, faintly. “Right?”
“Right,” Michael said, from somewhere out beyond Mars. His eyes were glowing like storm lanterns, and I could feel every muscle in his body trembling. “Better get that cut looked at. Looks bad.”
He let me up, and moved with about half his usual vampire speed to the door. Dad might not let Jerome have at me, but he wasn’t going to hold back with Michael, and Michael was—at best—half his normal strength right now. Not exactly a fair fight.
“Michael,” I said, and put my back against the wall next to him. “We go together, straight to the window. You get out—don’t wait for me. The sun should be down far enough that you can make it to the car.” I gathered up a handful of silver chain and wrapped it around my hand. “Don’t even think about arguing right now.”
He sent me an Are you kidding? look, and nodded.
We moved fast, and together. I got in Jerome’s way and delivered a punch straight from the shoulder right between his teeth, reinforced with silver-plated metal.
I intended only to knock him back, but Jerome howled and stumbled, hands up to ward me off. It was like years fell away, and all of a sudden we were back in junior high again—him the most popular bully in school, me finally getting enough size and muscle to stand up to him. Jerome had made that same girly gesture the first time I’d hit back.
It threw me off.
A crossbow bolt fired from the far corner of the living room hissed right over my head and slammed to a vibrating stop in the wooden wall. “Stop!” Dad ordered hoarsely. He was on his knees, but he was up and very, very angry. He was also reloading, and the next shot wouldn’t be a warning.
“Get out!” I screamed at Michael, and if he was thinking about staging a reenactment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he finally saw sense. He jumped through the nearest window in a hail of glass and hit the ground running. I’d been right: the sun was down, or close enough that it wouldn’t hurt him too badly.
He made it to the car, opened the driver’s side door, and slid inside. I heard the roar as the engine started. “Shane!” he yelled. “Come on!”
“In a second,” I yelled back. I stared at my father, and the moving tattoo. He had the crossbow aimed right at my chest. I twirled the crowbar in one hand, the silver chain in the other. “So,” I said, watching my father. “Your move, Dad. What now? You want me to do a cage match with Dead Jerome? Would that make you happy?”
My dad was staring not at me but at Dead Jerome, who was cowering in the corner. I’d hurt him, or the silver had; half his face was burned and rotting, and he was weeping in slow, retching sobs.
I knew the look Dad was giving him. I’d seen it on my father’s face more times than I could count. Disappointment.
“My son,” Dad said in disgust. “You ruin everything.”
“I guess Jerome’s more your son than I am,” I said. I walked toward the front door. I wasn’t going to give my father the satisfaction of making me run. I knew he had the crossbow in his hands, and I knew it was loaded.
I knew he was sighting on my back.
I heard the trigger release, and the ripped-silk hiss of wood traveling through air. I didn’t have time to be afraid, only—like my dad—bitterly disappointed.
The crossbow bolt didn’t hit me. Didn’t even miss me.
When I turned, at the door, I saw that he’d put the crossbow bolt, tipped with silver, through Jerome’s skull. Jerome slid silently down to the floor. Dead. Finally, mercifully dead.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fell facedown next to his hand.
“Son,” my dad said, and put the crossbow aside. “Please, don’t go. I need you. I really do.”
I shook my head.
“This thing—it’ll only last another few days,” he said. “The tattoo. It’s already fading. I don’t have time for this, Shane. It has to be now.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck.”
He snapped the crossbow up again.
I ducked to the right, into the parlor, jumped the wreckage of a couch, and landed on the cracked, curling floor of the old kitchen. It smelled foul and chemical in here, and I spotted a fish tank on the counter, filled with cloudy liquid. Next to it was a car battery.
DIY silver plating equipment, for the chains.
There was also a 1950s-era round-shouldered fridge, rattling and humming.
I opened it.
Dad had stored Michael’s blood in bottles, old dirty milk bottles likely scavenged from the trash heap in the corner. I grabbed all five bottles and threw them one at a time out the window, aiming for a big upthrusting rock next to a tree.
Smash. Smash. Smash. Smash . . .
“Stop,” Dad spat. In my peripheral vision I saw him standing there, aiming his reloaded crossbow at me. “I’ll kill you, Shane. I swear I will.”