Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)(9)

Claire wanted to be brave and say that she didn’t need any kind of defenses, but she was no longer sure of that. Morganville, since the defeat of the draug, was…different. Different in small, indefinable ways, but definitely not the same, and she wasn’t sure that the rules she’d learned about interacting with Amelie, the vampire Founder, were the same, either. The old Amelie, the one she’d gotten almost comfortable knowing…that woman would not have hurt her just for disagreeing.

But this new, more powerful Amelie seemed different. More remote. More dangerous.

So Claire looked at the contents of the bag he’d opened, and took out two vials of liquid silver nitrate, which she put in the pockets of her blue jeans. She wasn’t exactly dressed for vampire fighting—not that there was a real dress code for that—but she was prepared to sacrifice the cute sky blue top she had on, in an emergency. Pity she hadn’t picked the black one this morning.

Ah, Morganville. Where dressing to hide bloodstains was just good daily planning.

“We should talk to Hannah first,” she said as Shane picked out a thin-bladed knife that had been coated with silver. He checked the edge on it, nodded, and jammed it back in the leather sheath before he stuck it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

“If you think that’ll help,” he said. Hannah Moses was the newly minted mayor of Morganville—she’d been the police chief, but with the death of Richard Morrell, she’d ended up being appointed the First Human of the town. It wasn’t a job Hannah wanted, but it was one she’d accepted like the soldier she’d once been. “Though I figure if Hannah could have done anything about this, it would have already been done. She doesn’t need us to bring her the news.”

That was true enough, but still, Claire couldn’t shake the feeling that they needed allies at their side before dropping in on Amelie. Strength in numbers, and all that; she couldn’t ask Michael, not without asking Eve, and Eve was a hot button for the vampires right now. Michael and Eve were married, really, legally married, and that had cheesed off a good portion of the plasma-challenged in their screwed-up community. Apparently, prejudices didn’t die, even when people did.

Not that the humans seemed all that happy about it, either.

“Still,” she said aloud, “let’s go talk to her and see what she can do. Even if she just comes with us…”

“Yeah, I know—she’d be harder to make disappear.” Shane stepped in and bent his head and kissed her, a sudden and warm and sweet thing that made her pull her attention away from her worries and focus utterly on him for a moment. “Mmmm,” he murmured, not moving back farther than strictly required for the words to form between their lips. “Been missing that.”

“Me, too,” she whispered, and leaned into the kiss. It had been a busy few months, rebuilding Morganville, finding their lives and place in things again. Then she’d been focusing on getting caught up at school again—once Texas Prairie University had reopened, she’d been determined not to have to repeat any credit hours she’d missed during the general emergency. Her boyfriend had been through some rough times—more than rough, really—but they’d come out of it okay, she thought. They understood each other. Best of all, they actually liked each other. It wasn’t just hormones (though right now, hers were fizzing like a shaken soda; Shane just had that effect on her); it was something else. Something deeper.

Something special that she thought was actually going to last. Maybe even forever.

Shane pulled back and kissed the tip of her nose, which made her laugh just a little. “Gear up, Warrior Princess. We’ve got some adventuring to do.”

She was still smiling when they left the house, hand in hand, walking through the blazing hot midafternoon. Lot Street, their street, was mostly intact from all the troubles Morganville had seen; it even had most of its former residents back in place. As they passed, Mrs. Morgan waved at them as she watered her flowers. She was wearing a bathing suit that was—in Claire’s opinion—way too small, especially at her age, which had to be at least thirty. “Hello, Shane!” Mrs. Morgan said. Shane waved back, and gave her a dazzling grin.

Claire elbowed him. “Don’t bait the cougars.”

“You just don’t want me to have any fun, do you?”

“Not that kind of fun.”

“Oh, come on—she’s not serious. She just likes to flirt. Gives her a thrill.”

“I’m not thrilled.”

Shane’s smile this time was positively predatory. “Jealous?”

She was, surprisingly, and hid it under a glare. “Disgusted, more like.”

“C’mon, you think that actor guy is hot, and he’s probably as old as Mrs. Morgan.”

“He’s on TV. She’s modeling a bikini for you two doors down from us.”

“Oh, so it’s about access. In other words, if he lived two doors down and was walking around in his Joe Boxers…”

She elbowed him again, because this was not turning out to be an easy win of a conversation. He grunted a little, as if she’d hurt him (which she hadn’t, at all), and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Okay, I surrender,” he said. “No more cougar baiting. I won’t even go outside without a shirt on when I mow the lawn. But you have to make the same promise.”