Rachel Caine - Ghost Town

Shane backed up a step and ran into Claire. She steadied him and whispered, “I told you.”

“It can’t be,” he said. “There’s some kind of—”

“Mistake?” Frank said, and jumped over the couch in one smooth, ominous vampire move to land right in front of them. They were up against the wall now, next to the TV. “Only mistake I ever made was coming back to this cursed town in the first place, Shane. And sending you back here to help. If we’d stayed on the road, we’d still be running, but at least we’d be together.”

“Running. Running from what?”

“Oh, come on, son. You think they really let us leave, just like that? We had help getting out, but they’d have brought us back, or killed us, if they’d caught us. Just like they killed your mother.”

Shane’s breath went out in a rushing moan, as if his dad had punched him. Claire put her hand on his shoulder and glared at Frank. “Stop it,” she said.

“You started it,” Frank said. “You told him part of the truth, didn’t you? Told him about Alyssa? Well, he needs to know everything. He needs to know how his mother got into drugs to forget the pain. He needs to know how we got chased from one ratty motel to another across the state. He needs to know those bastards cut her wrists and dumped her in a tub to pretend it was suicide—”

“Stop it!” Claire screamed, and put herself in front of Shane, like she could protect him from the words the way he protected her from fists.

“And how he found her,” Frank finished, softly, “floating there. Dead. I thought I’d lost you, too, son. You didn’t talk for days, didn’t sleep, didn’t eat. But then you told me you wanted to come back here, to Morganville. To make them pay.”

Shane had gone almost as white as his vampire father now, and his eyes were huge and dark and empty. Claire turned toward him and put her hands on his cheeks, trying to make him look at her. He didn’t. He couldn’t look away from Frank. “Shane, Shane, listen, he’s trying to hurt you; he always tries to hurt you—”

“Not always,” Frank said. “Somebody’s got to tell the boy what he needs to hear, even though it hurts. He needed to know what happened to his mom. You weren’t going to tell him, were you?”

“There wasn’t any reason! You just like to watch him suffer!” Claire snapped. “You’re a mean, vicious, evil—”

“I love my son,” Frank said. “But he had to grow up in those three years after Alyssa died. And he has to do it all over again, now even faster. Can’t sugarcoat that, Claire.”

Shane put his hands on Claire’s shoulders—the first time he’d actually touched her gently, she thought, since waking up this morning—and moved her out of the way. “So I’m what, eighteen now? Not fifteen?”

“Almost nineteen,” his dad said.

“Good.” And Shane punched him in the face.

Well, he tried to. Frank caught his fist about an inch away from landing. He didn’t punch back, or shove, or squeeze Shane’s hand into a mess, although Claire knew he could have. He just held it there, even though Shane tried to pull back. “Son,” he said, “I was bad at being a father, just as bad as I was at everything else. You were the one who took care of your mother and Alyssa. You did the job I was supposed to do, being the man of the house, from the time you were eight years old. And I’m sorry for that.”

He pulled Shane forward and hugged him. Shane was stiff as bundled wire, but after a moment, he relaxed a little, and then stepped away. Frank let him go.

“So now you want to make it up to me,” Shane said. “Well, you can’t. I didn’t trust you before. I damn sure don’t trust you as a bloodsucker.”

“Right now, you two need a bloodsucker,” Frank said. “At least, that’s what I heard the girl saying. Isn’t that right, Claire?”

She didn’t like agreeing with Frank Collins, ever, but she had to nod. “You aren’t affected yet.”

“There are a few who aren’t,” Frank said. “Don’t know why; maybe our brains are just wired different, or maybe it’s just random. Most of the others are hiding out; can’t say I really blame them. I might be able to get a couple of people on board if we need them.”

“Vampire people.”

Frank bared his fangs. “I’ve still got friends on both sides of the bloodline. You want’em or not?”

Claire and Shane exchanged a look. He still didn’t know her, she thought. He still didn’t really trust her. But clearly, next to Frank, she had gotten a major boost on the cool scale.

“Up to you,” Shane said. “You’re the one who knows what’s going on. I’m just the muscle.”

“That’s not true. You’re smart, Shane. You just hide it.”

Frank smiled. “You never had to sign his report cards.”

“Shut up , Frank; I wasn’t talking to you,” Claire said sharply. “Go . . . lurk, or something. I need to talk to Shane alone.”

Frank shrugged and walked away. He picked up Shane’s Coke can and drained it as he toured the living room, messing with things.

“And don’t you dare touch Michael’s guitars.”

He waved without looking back.

Claire grabbed Shane by the shirt and towed him with her into the little-used parlor at the front of the house, the farthest she could get from Frank, although she knew it really wasn’t any use. He was a vampire; he could probably hear ants walking. Well, at least it felt like privacy.

She let go of Shane, who looked down at her with what seemed like a kind of amusement. “You know,” he said, “most people were scared to death of my dad, at least when he was drinking. Including me, mostly. Now he’s a vamp, and you just ordered him around like you don’t give a crap.”

“I don’t like him very much.”

“Yeah, got that. You look like a strong wind will snap you off at the knees, but you’re a tough little thing, aren’t you?”

She smiled and wished that for once she wouldn’t blush at a compliment, but that was a lost cause. “I guess,” she said. “I’m still here. That counts.”

“Yeah,” he said, and moved a strand of hair back from her face. “That counts.” He suddenly realized what he was doing and cleared his throat. “Okay, so what’s the plan? We get Frankenstein and his friends to back us up?”

“I heard that!” Frank called from the living room. Shane silently shot him the finger, which Claire slapped down.

“Don’t do that!” she whispered.

“What, you think he can sense it with his magic vampire powers?”

“We need him, Shane.”

He smiled bleakly. “Yeah, well, Frank’s never been around when I needed him, so don’t put a lot of faith in that.”

“We need to come at this two ways,” Claire said. “First, you and I are going to go in the front entrance to the lab. Second, right about the time we get Myrnin distracted—”

“Who’s Myrnin?”

Claire controlled an urge to roll her eyes. “Badass crazy vampire scientist who’s my boss.”

“You realize no part of that sentence made sense, right?”

“Just stay out of his way. Don’t let him get close.”

“Yeah, that’s easy.”

“If you can get a crossbow bolt or a stake in him, do it,” Claire said. “It won’t kill him if you don’t use silver, but it’ll put him down and out of the way until we’re finished.”

“What if he has friends? You know, backup?”

“We do the same thing to them.”

Shane pointed a thumb at the living room. “And what about him and his friends?”

“They come in the back way,” Claire said. “Through the portal.”

“Good plan,” Shane said, and then paused. “What’s a portal?”