Dark Rides (3 page)

He did, moving slowly, and his massive muscle-bound arms raised as far as they could. I’d impressed him, at least this far. He might not take a .38 seriously, but he knew I couldn’t miss if I fired it into his heart from that distance. He could have grabbed my arm and broken it in two shakes, but that left the knife at his throat.

So we did the dance, moving backwards, until we were out of the bleachers … and that was when Michael said, from behind Mr. Big, “Need any help?”

I grinned tightly. “Well, I think I’ve got this, but sure. I wouldn’t want you to get bored.”

Michael grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck and swung him around like a bag of cotton balls, slammed him face-first into the cage bars with stunning force, and Mr. Big dropped to the dirt floor limp as overcooked pasta. (I know about overcooked pasta. I am so not a cook.)

That left Mr. Slick, but he wasn’t just standing around, as it happened.

He’d unlocked Jeremy’s cage, and stepped back to pull the silver bars in front of him as protection from attack. I decided, from the way he moved, that he was the local lion tamer. Or, more likely, lion-abusing a-hole. “This is your chance,” he said to Jeremy. “Kill them and go.”

Jeremy looked at him through the bars, close range, and said, “What if I want to start with you first?”

You’d think Mr. Slick would be freaking scared, but this was – unfathomably, to me – a guy who’d managed to capture a sociopathic machine like Jeremy and keep him under control for what looked like quite a while. He didn’t seem scared, or even ruffled. “You won’t,” he said. “You can keep the girl, I know you like to play with them first.”

“Hey!” I said, and pointed the gun at Slick. “Standing right here!”

Jeremy hadn’t moved his gaze away from his – I guess? – jailor, but somehow, in less time than it took for me to register the blur, he was moving toward me. I didn’t have time to get the gun or knife up in my own defense, he was just that fast.

And then, he was past me.

Jeremy came to a sudden stop next to the unconscious bruiser Michael had left lying on the floor, picked him up like a rag doll, and – before even my vampire husband could stop him – had his fangs buried in the man’s neck.

Michael tried. He grabbed Jeremy by the shoulder and yanked hard, trying to separate victim from predator, but it was useless; the kid’s wiry strength wasn’t going to give, and anyway, it was over fast.

When Jeremy dropped the corpse formerly known to me as Mr. Batty, it was paper-white and drained of every drop of blood.

Mr. Slick didn’t move for a second, clearly stunned, and then as Jeremy licked his lips clean of the thin smear of red that remained, he dashed around the cage door, threw himself inside, and slammed it behind him. Then he cowered in the center of the cage, eyes as big as headlights and just about as shiny. He’d thought he’d broken this lion he’d caged, but he’d just discovered that was completely wrong.

Michael was looking spooked, too, but he spoke gently. “Hey, man, Amelie sent us. She wants you to come with us, back to Morganville.”

“Morganville,” Jeremy repeated, without so much as a flicker of emotion. He’d just killed somebody, and he didn’t seem to have really cared at all, beyond looking a little less pallid. “Never been there.”

“You’ll be safe there. No one will hurt you.” Michael was being unaccountably gentle; maybe he hadn’t seen the flat, shark-worthy shine of the boy’s eyes as he drank up Mr. Batty. “Trust me, man. Please. We need to leave here.”

“You forgot something,” Jeremy said, and pointed one long, skinny, dirty finger at Mr. Slick cowering inside the cage. “He just heard where we’re going. Can’t be safe if he knows. Got to get rid of him.”

“No, we don’t,” Michael said. He moved to the bars and crouched down, and when he spoke next, I heard that scary vampire tone in his voice. He didn’t use it often, but when he busted it out, he had real power. “Look at me.”

He waited, and after a long few breaths, Mr. Slick uncovered his face and met Michael’s eyes. I couldn’t see them, but I knew how they would look – glowing, red, terrifying if you weren’t drowning in that pool of crimson and unable to feel anything at all.

Michael had one of the most powerful forget-about-me abilities Amelie had ever seen, apparently, and he proved it now, because he said, in low, measured tones, “Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage. Say it back to me.”

“Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage,” the man repeated in a dull, calm voice.

“And you’re feeling very bad about that.”

“I’m feeling very bad about that.” I watched Mr. Slick’s eyes suddenly fill up with wet, hot tears that spilled over and down his cheeks in messy trails. “Oh God …”

“You feel so bad that you’re never going to run this kind of show, ever again. Not with anyone who doesn’t sign up and get paid. And there are no things such as vampires. No real ones.”

“No real ones,” he echoed. His voice was shaking now, and so were his shoulders. Wow. Michael had really rocked his world, and not in a good way. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry …”

“How many others knew about Jeremy?”

Mr. Slick named them, but it was a small, tight circle of insiders – himself, Mr. Dead Batty, and one other woman named Isis, who was asleep in her trailer near the Ferris wheel.

“Do you have a key to this cage?” Michael finally asked. When the man nodded, he said, “Throw it out to me.”

Mr. Slick tossed it, and Michael effortlessly shagged it out of the air. He dropped it on Mr. Batty’s body and frowned down at Jeremy’s handiwork. “We need to make it look less – vampire,” he said.

I slowly held up the gun and the knife. “Man, I’m going to regret this,” I said, “but I think I’ve got that covered.”

Best to skip what came next, except to say that I made Mr. Batty’s body look like he’d been attacked with a knife to the neck, then shot. A decent coroner – like the ones on TV, say – would have figured out the wounds were post-mortem, but it was doubtful that this little burg would have anything like a coroner, much less a good one. If the carnies actually reported the death, which I thought was doubtful.

It’d pass. I felt faint, after, and Michael grabbed me when I staggered while trying to get up. He put his arms around me and held me tight for a few long seconds, and then whispered, “Eve – “

“I’m okay,” I said, and swallowed the nausea that threatened to bubble up. “Just another frakking day in Morganville.”

“You watch way too much TV.”

“Yeah, probs. So? What about this Isis lady?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Michael said, and loosed his hold just enough to put some air between us, but he didn’t let me go. I loved him for that, for knowing just what I needed, and when. “I love you.”

I managed a grin. “Back atcha, stud. You only love me for my body mutilation skills.”

His smile disappeared, and there was no trace of vampire in his blue eyes, none at all. He looked just like the boy I’d fallen so hard for in high school. An avenging angel, this one. And not a fallen one at all. “No,” he said. “I love you for you. Always.”

I kissed him, which was probably weird, given the circumstances, but I needed to feel his arms around me again, and the solid, safe weight of his body, and the cool, sweet taste of his lips. I needed to know it was okay.

He said, without words, that it was.

Then he stepped back, looked at Jeremy, and said, “I’m here to help you, but I swear to God, if you lay a finger on her, I’ll rip you apart. Are we clear?”

Jeremy shrugged, which I guessed was his version of a yes, and Michael glanced back at me. The silent exchange went something like this: You okay? Yeah. Love you. Love you too. Etc. Oh, and somewhere in that glance, he also warned me to keep the knife and gun handy, which I wasn’t about to give up anyway.

“We should go,” Jeremy said, as Michael blurred off through the open doorway. “Don’t want my boss man here to remember anything.”

He was right, but I felt bad leaving – Michael hadn’t said to stay put, but I was uncomfortable with the idea he might not be able to immediately locate me if I got into trouble. Because Jeremy was trouble. He gave off a kind of dark smoke around him – something shadowy in my peripheral vision, as if he clouded himself with it. I had to concentrate and watch him straight on to feel he was there at all. Useful skill, probably, but really scary when I felt like the warm-blooded prey to his cold-blooded, hungry predator.

He kept his word, though. He didn’t touch me, and he walked about three paces ahead, knowing I didn’t want him at my back. Once we were out of the room, though, I stopped, because I’d totally forgotten that this was a dark ride … that I’d only found this room in the first place because of Michael’s dark-adapted eyes.

I couldn’t see a damn thing.

I heard Jeremy’s faint, whispery chuckle from a few feet away, and I saw a flash of something that might have been his eyes. Creepy.

“No flashlight?” he asked. “Should be one on the dead guy.”

I went back for it, and didn’t look at Mr. Batty’s face while I pilfered it out of its holster. It was a heavy Maglite, which was good – one more weapon, though I had to put away the gun to hang on to it. The knife was of more use against Jeremy, anyway.

The Maglite had a brilliant beam, and it revealed all the monsters in their tacky glory – Dracula, in his threadbare cloak and dusty coffin; the Wolfman, whose fake fur was molting away; a large spider overhead made of Styrofoam and cloth and real spiderwebs, recently woven by some very ambitious arachnid. The place was filthy, and full of rats and cockroaches, and I was real glad of my stomping boots, again.

The worst, most real monster in here was Jeremy, who looked the color of exposed bone, and whose eyes were as alien as anything you’d find on earth. His smile was something he’d learned, not something he felt, and even though he was small and wiry and looked pathetic in his baggy khaki pants, I was so afraid of him it was hard to breathe.

But he kept his word.

We made it out, into the cold, sharp wind; overhead, the rusty Grim Reaper creaked as he swayed. I saw nothing moving outside except some rolling tumbleweeds and blowing trash.

Jeremy walked off a few feet, then stopped, staring up at the sky. He closed his eyes, and took in a deep, slow breath, as if he wanted to drink in the world around him. For that moment, he looked his physical age – I had no idea how old he really was, but he looked maybe a growth-spurt thirteen, maybe fourteen. Really young to become a vampire, but depending on when that had happened, thirteen or fourteen might have been adult, pretty much.

But my heart went out to him, anyway. He’d been locked away in a cage for peoples’ entertainment, for God’s sake. No matter how scary he was, how divorced from human emotions, he didn’t deserve that. Nobody did.

Jeremy said, without opening his eyes, “You’re wondering how old I am.”

Well, THAT was uncomfortable. “Yeah,” I said. “Kinda.”

“I died when I was fourteen,” he said. “But that was a really long time ago. I’m not a kid.”

“I guessed.”

“You know I could kill you and be gone before your boyfriend could catch me, right?”

“Husband,” I said, and held up my left hand, because I knew that even in the dark he could see the ruby wedding ring. “Newlyweds.”

I’d managed to surprise him, a little, because it looked like his eyebrows rose up just a touch. “Huh,” he said. “So you’re one of those who thinks vampires are some kind of sex gods, right?” He coupled that with a little, creepy laugh.

“No, I’m someone in love with a guy who happens, unfortunately, to be a vampire,” I said. I’d had lots worse hazing from lots worse people than him, especially after marrying Michael. “Personally, I think vampires are the opposite of sexy, mostly. Being dead and all. But he’s my guy, and he’s different.”

“We’re all different,” Jeremy said. “And deep down, we’re all the same. We’re alive because we didn’t want to die and we were ruthless enough to make it happen. Your man’s a killer too. Sooner or later, he’ll realize it, and so will you. Probably be kinder just to kill you now.”

“Try it,” I invited softly, and made sure I had the knife in a firm grip. “I grew up in Morganville, sonny. I’m not Bambi.”

That made him smile enough to show teeth. Wow, so not an improvement. “Even wolves get eaten,” he said. “Especially when they’re away from their pack – ah. He’s back.” He sounded a little disappointed, but in the way that someone might be at a restaurant when they learned the kitchen was out of their favorite dessert. I didn’t hear Michael coming back, but all of a sudden he was there, staring at Jeremy with flickering red eyes. Wary.

“Eve,” he said, and held out his hand. I went over and took it, and his fingers felt cool and strong as they closed over mine. “He’s got the ability to cloud himself. Most vamps do, to a certain extent, but he’s really strong. You’d never see him coming.”

“You either,” Jeremy said. He took in another deep breath and held it, as if he was enjoying the smell of the desert air. He let it out slowly, and said, “Tell Amelie I’ll be by when I feel up to it. Got to get some space around me right now. Ain’t fit for friendly company.” He looked sharply at Michael, suddenly. “Don’t you even think about stopping me. Ain’t got no reason to hurt you, but I will if you get in my way. You make Isis forget?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Better get going, then.”

Michael frowned, and pulled me closer. “Jeremy? What are you doing?”

“I’ll be to Morganville someday,” he said. “Not now. Tell her. Now leave unless you want to lose your wife. She’s a pistol, and she’d taste real good right about now.”

Michael had made Amelie a promise, but he wasn’t about to risk that. “We’re going,” he said. “I’ll tell her what you said.”

“Good.” Jeremy walked back to the dark ride, to the Grim Reaper with his cheap tin scythe looming overhead. He looked weirdly at home there, and even though I was watching him, focusing in, he seemed to just … blend into the darkness. “I’ll be around.”

He must have pushed a button, because suddenly the creepy organ music boomed out of the speakers, and lights flashed on and off, making the Grim Reaper look like he was all raved out. Cars began to shuttle forward, all empty.