Last Breath tmv-11 Page 2

  “That’s racist!”

  “It has nothing to do with race,” Oliver said. “It has everything to do with species. Vampires and humans have a set relationship, and from the vampire standpoint, it’s one of predator and prey.”

  “I still think you mean parasite and host.”

  Oliver’s temper flared, which was dangerous; his face changed, literally shifted, as if the monster underneath was trying to get out. Then it faded, but it left a feeling in the room, a tingling shock that made even Shane shut up, at least for now. “Some don’t want Michael and Eve to marry,” he said. “You may take it from me that even those who are indifferent believe that it will go badly for all involved. It’s unwise. I’ve told him this, and I’ve tried to tell her. Now I’m telling you to stop them.”

  “We can’t!” Claire said, appalled. “They love each other!”

  “That has exactly nothing to do with what I am saying,” the vampire told her, and opened the door to the room. “I care nothing about their feelings. I am talking about the reality of the situation. A marriage is politically disastrous, and will ignite issues that are best left smoldering. Tell them that. Tell them it will be stopped, one way or another. Best if they stop it themselves.”

  “But—”

  The door shut on whatever she was going to say, and anyway, Claire wasn’t sure she really had any idea. She looked over at Shane, who seemed just as speechless as she was.

  But he was, of course, the first to recover his voice. “Well,” he said, “I told him so.”

  “Shane!”

  “Look, vampires and humans together have never been a good idea. It’s like cats and mice hooking up. Always ends badly for the mouse.”

  “It’s not vampires and humans. It’s Eve and Michael.”

  “Which is different how, exactly?”

  “It—just is!”

  Shane sighed and put his head back against the cushions. “Fine,” he said. “But no way am I breaking Eve’s heart. You get to tell her the wedding’s off, courtesy of the vampire almost-boss. Just let me know so I can put my headphones on the going-deaf setting to drown out the screaming and wailing.”

  “You are such a coward.”

  “I am bleeding into a bag,” he pointed out. “I think I’ve achieved some kind of anticoward merit badge.”

  She threw her red rubber ball at him.

  Not that Claire hadn’t secretly seen all this coming.

  She hadn’t wanted to believe it. She’d been involved in all the party preparations—Eve had insisted. Between the two of them, they’d planned absolutely everything, from the napkins (black) on the tablecloths (silver) to the paper color on the invitations (black, again, with silver ink). It had been fun, of course, sitting there having girl time, picking out flowers and food and party favors, setting up playlists for the music, and best of all picking out clothes.

  It had been only this week, as everything got . . . well, real . . . that Claire had begun feeling that maybe it wasn’t all just fairy tales and ice cream. Walking with Eve downtown had turned into a whole new experience, a shocking one; Claire was used to being ignored, or (more recently) being looked at with some weird wariness—wearing the Founder of Morganville’s pin in her collar had earned her an entirely unwanted (possibly undeserved) reputation as a badass.

  But this week, walking with Eve, she’d seen hate close up.

  Oh, it wasn’t obvious or anything.... It came in sidelong glances, in the tightening of people’s lips and the clipped way people spoke to Eve, if they spoke at all. Morganville had changed somewhat, in these past couple of years, and one of the most important changes had been that people were no longer afraid to show what they felt. Claire had thought that was a positive change.

  At first, Claire had figured the dissing was just isolated incidents, and then she’d thought that maybe it was just the normal small-town politics at work. Eve was a Goth, she was easily recognizable, and although she was crushingly funny, she could also piss people off who didn’t get her.

  This was different, though. The look people had in their eyes for Eve . . . That had been contempt. Or anger. Or disgust.

  Eve hadn’t seemed to notice at first, but Claire detected a weakening in her usual glossy armor of humor about midway through their last shopping trip—about the time that an unpleasant lady with church hair had walked away from the counter while Eve was checking out with a bagful of stuff for the party. As she walked away, the Church Lady had reached out to mess with a stacked display of sunglasses, and Claire had caught sight of something odd.

  The woman was too old for a tattoo—at least, too old for a fresh one—but there was a design inked on her arm that was still red around the edges. Claire saw only a glimpse of it, but it looked like some kind of familiar shape.

  A stake. It was a symbol of a stake.

  Another, younger lady had come hustling from the back of the shop to wait on Eve, flushed and flustered. She’d avoided meeting their eyes, and had said the bare minimum to get them out of the store. Church Lady hadn’t bothered to look at them at all.

  Claire had waited until they were safely out of earshot of any passersby before she said, “So, did you see the tat? Freaky.”

  “The stake?” Eve’s black-painted lips were tight, and even in sunlight, her kohl-rimmed eyes looked shadowed. Her Urban Decay makeup normally looked really cool, but in the harsh winter sunlight, Claire thought it looked a little . . . desperate. Not just crying out for attention, but screaming for it. “Yeah, it’s the new big thing. Stake tats. Even the geezers are lining up for them. Human pride and all that crap.”

  “Is that why—”

  “Why the bitch refused to wait on me?” Eve tossed her black-dyed shag hair back from her pale face in a defiant shake. “Yeah, probs. Because I’m a traitor.”

  “Not any more than I am!”

  “No, you signed up for Protection, and you made a really good deal at it, too—they respect that. What they don’t respect is sleeping with the enemy.” Eve looked stubborn, but there was despair in it, too. “Being a fang-banger.”

  “Michael’s not the enemy, and you’re not—how can anybody think that?”

  “There’s always been this undercurrent in Morganville. Us and them, you know. The us doesn’t have fangs.”

  “But—you love each other.” Claire didn’t know what surprised her more . . . that the Morganville folks were turning on Eve, of all people, or that she wasn’t more surprised by that herself. People were petty and stupid sometimes, and even as fabulous as Michael was, some people just would never see him as anything but a walking pair of fangs.

  True, he was no fluffy puppy; Michael was capable of really bringing the violence, but only when he absolutely had to do it. He liked avoiding fights, not causing them, and at his heart, he was loyal and kind and shy.

  Hard to lump all that under the vampire, therefore evil label.

  An old cowboy, complete with hat and boots and a sheepskin-lined jeans jacket, passed the two of them on the sidewalk. He gave Eve a bitter, narrow glare, and spat up something nasty right in front of her shiny, high-heeled, patent leather shoes.

  Eve lifted her chin and kept walking.

  “Hey!” Claire said, turning toward the cowboy in an outraged fury, but Eve grabbed her arm and dragged her along. “Wait—he—”

  “Lesson number one in Morganville,” Eve said. “Keep walking. Just keep walking.”

  And they had. Eve hadn’t said another word about it; she’d put on bright, fragile smiles, and when Michael had come home from teaching at the music store, they’d sat together on the couch and cuddled and whispered, but Claire didn’t think Eve had told him about the attitudes.

  Now this thing with Oliver, telling her outright that the marriage was off, or else.

  Very, very bad.

  “So,” she said to Shane as they walked home, arms linked, hands in their pockets to hide from the icy, whipping chill of the wind. “What am I going to say to Eve? O
r, God, to Michael?”

  “Nothing,” Shane said.

  “But you said I should—”

  “I reconsidered. I’m not Oliver’s messenger monkey, and neither are you. If he wants to play Lord of the Manor with those two, he can come do it himself.” Shane grinned fiercely. “I would pay to see that. Michael does not like to be told he can’t do something. Especially something to do with Eve.”

  “Do you think—” Oh, this was dangerous territory, and Claire hesitated before taking a step into it. Filled with land mines, this was. “God, I can’t believe I’m asking this, but . . . do you think Michael’s really serious about her? I mean, you know him better than I do. Longer, anyway. I get the sense, sometimes, that he has . . . doubts.”

  Shane was silent for a long moment—too long, she thought—and then he said, “You’re asking if he’s serious about loving her?”

  “No, I know he loves her. But marrying her . . .”

  “Marriage is a big word for all guys,” Shane said. “You know that. It’s kind of an allergy. We get itchy and sweaty just trying to spell it, much less do it.”

  “So you think he’s nervous?”

  “I think . . . I think it’s a big deal. Bigger for him and Eve than for most people.” Shane kept his eyes down, fixed on the sidewalk and the steps they were taking. “Look, ask him, okay? This is girl talk. I don’t do girl talk.”

  She punched him in the shoulder. “Ass.”

  “That’s better. I was starting to feel like we should go shoe shopping or something.”

  “Being a girl is not a bad thing!”

  “No.” He took his hand out of his pocket and put his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. “If I could be half the girl you are, I’d be—Wow, I have no idea where I was going with that, and it just turned out uncomfortable, all of a sudden.”

  “Jackass.”

  “You like being a girl—that’s good. I like being a guy—that’s also good.”

  “Next you’ll be all Me, Tarzan, you, Jane! ”

  “I’ve seen you stick arrows in vampires. Not too damn likely I’d be thumping my chest and trying to tell you I wear the loincloth around here.”

  “And you changed the subject. Michael. Eve.”

  He held up his left hand. “I swear, I have no idea what Michael’s thinking. Guys don’t spend all their time trying to mind-read each other.”

  “But—”

  “Like I said. If you want to know, ask him. Michael doesn’t lie worth a damn, anyway. Not to people he cares about.”

  That was true, or at least it always had been before. A particularly cold slash of wind cut at the exposed skin of Claire’s throat and face, and she shivered and burrowed closer to Shane’s warm side.

  “Before you ask,” Shane said, bending his head low to hers, “I love you.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “Oh, you were going there in your head. And I love you. Now it’s your turn.”

  She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face, or the warmth that burst up inside her, a summer contrast to the winter’s day. “Well, you know, I’m still analyzing how I feel, in my completely girly way.”

  “Oh, now, that’s just low.”

  She turned, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Shane’s lips were chilled and a little dry, but they warmed up, and a lick of her tongue softened the kiss into silk and velvet. He tasted like coffee and caramel and a dark, spiced undertone that was all his own. A taste she craved, every day, every hour, every minute.

  Shane made a pleased sound in the back of his throat, picked her up around the waist, and moved her backward until she felt a cold brick wall against her shoulders. Then he set about really kissing her—deep, sweet, hot, intent. She lost herself in it, drifting and delirious, until he finally came up for air. The look in his brown eyes was focused and dreaming at the same time, and his smile was . . . dangerous. “Are you still analyzing?” he asked.

  “Hmmm,” Claire said, and pressed against him. “I think I’ve come to a conclusion.”

  “Damn, I hope not. I’ve still got a lot of ways left to try to make my case.”

  Someone cleared a throat near them, and it was unexpected enough to make Shane take a giant step back and turn, putting himself between the source of that noise and Claire. Protecting her, as always. Claire shook her head in exasperation and moved to her right, standing next to him.

  The throat clearing had come from Father Joe. The priest of Morganville’s Catholic church was a man in his early thirties, with red hair and freckles and kind eyes, and the smile he gave them was only just a touch judgmental. “Don’t mean to disturb you,” he said, which was a lie, but maybe only a small one. “Claire, I wanted to thank you for coming to last Sunday’s choir practice. You have a very nice voice.”

  She blushed—partly because a priest had just closely observed her thinking very impure thoughts about her boyfriend, and partly because she wasn’t used to those kinds of compliments. “It’s not very strong,” she said. “But I like to sing, sometimes.”

  “You just need practice,” he said. “I hope we’ll see you again at mass.” He raised those eyebrows at her, then nodded to Shane. “You’re always invited, too.”

  “Thanks for asking,” Shane said, almost sincerely.

  “But you won’t come.”

  “Not too damn likely, Father.”

  Claire continued to blush, because as Father Joe walked away, hands clasped behind his back, Shane had turned to stare at her. “Mass?” he echoed, raising his eyebrows. “Tell me you’re not confessing, too.”

  “No, you have to be a real Catholic to do that,” she said.

  “So—what was the attraction?”

  “Myrnin wanted to go.” That said volumes, brief as it was. Claire’s boss—a dangerously nuts vampire who was an utter sweetheart, most of the time, until he wasn’t—was not a subject Shane really liked very much, and she hurried on as she saw his expression shift a little toward annoyance. “I went with him a couple of times as, you know, sanity control. But I’m more of a Unitarian, I guess. The church is nice, though. And so is Father Joe. Hey, did you know there’s a Jewish temple in town, too, and a mosque? They’re both really small, but they’re here. I don’t think the vamps are too welcome there, though.”

  “Just don’t go telling him about, you know, anything personal. About us.”

  “Embarrassed?”

  He buffed his fingernails on his coat and looked at them with an exaggerated smugness. “Me, embarrassed? Nah, I was just worried he’d feel bad about his celibacy thing.”

  “God, you are such a jackass.”

  “That is three times you’ve called me that in one walk. You need a new compliment.” He tickled her, and she mock-shrieked and ran, and he chased her, and they raced each other around the block, down the street, all the way to the white fence around their not-very-attractive yard, up the walk to the big pillared porch of the peeling Victorian house. The Glass House, called that because the last (and current) owners were the Glass family—Michael being the last of that family still in residence. The rest of them were, technically, renting rooms, but over time Shane, Claire, and Eve had become Michael’s family. As close as family, anyway.

  As evidenced by the fact that when Shane opened the door, he yelled out, “Put your pants on, people; we are back!”

  “Shut up!” Eve yelled from somewhere upstairs. “Jackass!”

  “You know, when people say that, I just hear the word awesome ,” Shane said. “What’s for lunch? Because personally I am down two pints of blood and I need food. Cookies and orange juice did not cut it.”

  “Hot dogs,” Eve’s distant voice said. “And no, I didn’t make chili. You’d just criticize how I make it. But there’s relish and onions and mustard!”

  “You’re a princess!” Shane called back on his way to the kitchen. “Okay, a lame Goth half-dead princess, but whatever!”

  “Jack. Ass!”

  Cla
ire shook her head as she dumped her backpack on the couch. She was glowing and tingling from the run, and felt a little light-headed—probably hadn’t been smart, doing that so soon after giving blood, but that was one thing you learned quick in Morganville: how to run even with blood loss. Shane wandered into the kitchen, and she heard things banging around for a few minutes. He came back with two plates, one with plain hot dogs, one with hot dogs buried under a mound of whatever that stuff was—onions, relish, mustard, probably hot sauce, too.

  Claire took the plain plate. He dug a can of Coke out of his pocket and handed that over, too. “You’re officially no longer a jackass,” she told him, as he thumped down on the couch beside her and started shoveling food in his mouth. He mumbled something and winked at her, and she ate in slow, measured bites as she thought about what she was going to do about Eve.

  Shane finished his plate first—not surprisingly—and took hers away into the kitchen, leaving her holding the second hot dog. He was gone—conveniently—when Eve came downstairs. Her poufy black net skirt brushed the wall with a strange hiss as she descended, like a snake’s, and Eve did look poisonously fierce, Claire thought. A leather corset and jacket, skull-themed tights under the skirt, a black leather choker with spikes, and loads of makeup. She flung herself on the couch in Shane’s deserted spot and thumped her booted feet up on the coffee table with a jingle of chrome chain.

  “I can’t believe you actually got him to donate without some kind of four-point restraint system,” Eve said, and reached for the game controller. Not that the TV was on, but she liked to fiddle with things, and the controller was perfect. On her left hand, the diamond engagement ring twinkled softly in the light. It was a silver ring, not gold; Eve didn’t do gold. But the diamond was beautiful. “You’re going to be around on Saturday to decorate, right?”

  “Right,” Claire agreed, and took a bite of her hot dog. She was still hungry, and focused hard on the delicious taste to take her mind off what Oliver had said. “Anything you want me to get?”

  Eve smiled, a happy curve of dark red lips, and dug in the pocket of her jacket. She came out with a piece of paper, which she handed over. “Thought you’d never ask, maid of honor,” she said. “I had some trouble finding the right party supplies. I was hoping maybe you’d take a look . . . ?”