“Yeah? Lucky you’ve already got me tattooed on your chest, then, with the rest of the dead family.” I pulled back for the throw.
“I could bring back your mother,” Dad blurted. “Maybe even your sister. Don’t.”
Oh, God. Sick black swam across my vision for a second.
“You throw that bottle,” he whispered, “and you’re killing their last chance to live.”
I remembered Jerome—his sagging muscles, his grainy skin, the panic and fear in his eyes.
Do you want to be here?
No. Hurts.
I threw the last bottle of Michael’s blood and watched it sail straight and true, to shatter in a red spray against the rock.
I thought he’d kill me. Maybe he thought he’d kill me, too. I waited, but he didn’t pull the trigger.
“I’m fighting for humanity,” he said. His last, best argument. It had always won me over before.
I turned and looked him full in the face. “I think you already lost yours.”
I walked out past him, and he didn’t stop me.
? ? ?
Michael drove like a maniac, raising contrails of caliche dust about a mile high as we sped back to the main highway. He kept asking me how I was doing. I didn’t answer him, just looked out at the gorgeous sunset, and the lonely, broken house fading in the distance.
We blasted past the Morganville city limits sign, and one of the ever-lurking police cars cut us off. Michael slowed, stopped, and turned off the engine. A rattle of desert wind shook the car.
“Shane.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“I know that.”
“I can’t just let this go. Did you see—”
“I saw,” I said. “I know.” But he’s still my father, some small, frightened kid inside me wailed. He’s all I have.
“Then what do you want me to say?” Michael’s eyes had faded back to blue now, but he was still white as a ghost, blue-white, scary-white. I’d spilled all his blood out there on the ground. The burns on his hands and wrists made my stomach clench.
“Tell them the truth,” I said. If the Morganville vampires got to my dad before he could get the hell out, he’d die horribly, and God knew, he probably deserved it. “But give him five minutes, Michael. Just five.”
Michael stared at me, and I couldn’t tell what was in his mind at all. I’d known him most of my life, but in that long moment, he was just as much of a stranger as my father had been.
A uniformed Morganville cop tapped on the driver’s side window. Michael rolled it down. The cop hadn’t been prepared to find a vampire driving, and I could see him amending the harsh words he’d been about to deliver.
“Going a little fast, sir,” he finally said. “Something wrong?”
Michael looked at the burns on his wrists, the bloodless slices on his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “I need an ambulance.”
And then he slumped forward, over the steering wheel. The cop let out a squawk of alarm and got on his radio. I reached out to ease Michael back. His eyes were shut, but as I stared at him, he murmured, “You wanted five minutes.”
“I wasn’t looking for a Best Supporting Actor award!” I muttered back.
Michael did his best impression of Vampire in a Coma for about five minutes, and then came to and assured the cop and arriving ambulance attendants he was okay.
Then he told them about my dad.
They found Jerome, still and evermore dead, with a silver-tipped arrow through his head. They found a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz next to him.
There was no sign of Frank Collins.
Later that night—around midnight—Michael and I sat outside on the steps of our house. I had a bottle of most illegal beer; he was guzzling his sixth bottle of blood, which I pretended not to notice. He had his arm around Eve, who had been pelting us both with questions all night in a nonstop machine-gun patter; she’d finally run down, and leaned against Michael with sleepy contentment.
Well, she hadn’t quite run down. “Hey,” she said, and looked up at Michael with big, dark-rimmed eyes. “Seriously. You can bring back dead guys with vampire juice? That is so wrong.”
Michael almost spat out the blood he was swallowing. “Vampire juice? Damn, Eve. Thanks for your concern.”
She lost her smile. “If I didn’t laugh, I’d scream.”
He hugged her. “I know. But it’s over.”
Next to me, Claire had been quiet all night. She wasn’t drinking—not that we’d have let her, at sixteen—and she wasn’t saying much, either. She also wasn’t looking at me. She was staring out at the Morganville night.
“He’s coming back,” she finally said. “Your dad’s not going to give it up, is he?”
I exchanged a look with Michael. “No,” I said. “Probably not. But it’ll be a while before he gets his act together again. He expected to have me to help him kick off his war, and like he said, his time was running out. He’ll need a brand-new plan.”
Claire sighed and linked her arm through mine. “He’ll find one.”
“He’ll have to do it without me.” I kissed the soft, warm top of her hair.
“I’m glad,” she said. “You deserve better.”