He stopped in front of them, and Claire started to ask about Eve, but something in him kept her quiet and very still.
“I need you,” he said to Shane. Shane slowly rose to his feet. “You know who it was?”
Shane glanced at Claire, then nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
“Bro—,” Shane said, and for him, his voice sounded almost tentative. “Man, you’ve got to tell us something. We love her, too.”
“She has a concussion and a broken rib,” Michael said. “I can’t be here. I need to go, right now.”
Shane gazed at him for a long few seconds before he said, “I’m not letting you kill anybody, man.”
“I have the privilege to hunt. If you want to stop me from using it, you’d better come along.”
Shane cast a quick look of apology at Claire, and she nodded; there was no doubt that Michael was in a mood to get more violent than she’d ever seen him, and having Shane as wingman might actually save lives. “Stay here,” he said to her, and gave her a fast, warm kiss. “Do not leave without me.”
“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” she whispered. “And don’t you do anything stupid, either.”
“Hey,” he said with a cocky grin, “look who you’re talking to!”
He left before she could tell him—as if he didn’t know—that she loved him, so much, and Michael never even glanced back at her. Maybe he blamed her, she thought miserably. Maybe he figured she should have been able to stop it, to save Eve.
Maybe she ought to have been able to, after all.
She sat in silence, miserable and aching with guilt and grief, for hours. It was long enough that she got thirsty and bought a Coke, downed it, had to find the restroom, went through all the ancient magazines piled on the table, and actually napped a little.
It was almost eight o’clock when the doctor finally appeared from the treatment area. He looked around, frowned, and then came to her. “You’re here for Eve Rosser?”
“Yes.” She shot to her feet and almost stumbled; her legs had gone a little numb from sitting for so long. “Yes!”
“Where’s her immediate family?”
“He’s”—she tried to think of something more clever than blurting out Getting his revenge, and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other—“gone to tell her mom.”
That seemed to do the trick, because the doctor looked more satisfied with that. “Well, when he comes back, tell him she’s in recovery. We’ve got her stabilized, but we’ll have to keep her for a couple of days and make sure there’s no brain trauma. She’s lucky. The surgery went well.”
“Surgery?” Claire covered her mouth with her hand. “She had surgery? For what?”
He stared at her in silence for a moment, then said, “Just tell him she’s stable. I don’t anticipate more than one night here for her, unless there are complications we can’t foresee right now. But the internal bleeding is under control.”
He walked off before she could ask him if she could see Eve. He got all the way to the door, then turned back to see her settling miserably back into the plastic chair. “Oh,” he said. “If you want to see her, she’ll be waking up soon. I warn you, she’ll be in some pain.”
Claire climbed to her feet again and followed him to the recovery room.
He wasn’t kidding about the pain, and Claire was in tears trying to soothe Eve as she moaned and tossed and whimpered, but they finally gave her some kind of a shot that quieted her a little. Claire followed as they wheeled her into a room and hooked her up to machines, and this time, when Claire dozed off in a chair, it was a little more comfortable, and she pulled up to Eve’s bedside.
When she woke up, Morganville had gone still and dark, bathed here and there in the soft glow of porch lights and streetlamps. Car headlights crisscrossed the grid of streets. There were, as always, more out at night. Vampire vehicles.
She was still staring out at it when she heard a rustle of sheets, and Eve said, in a shockingly small voice, “Michael?”
Claire went to her side as Eve woke up. She had bruises on her face—red right now, but starting to turn purple at the edges. Both eyes were puffy. “Hey,” she said in as soothing a voice as she could manage. She took Eve’s hand, carefully, and held it. “Hey, you scared the hell out of me, sweetie.”
“Claire?” Eve blinked and tried to open her lids wider, then winced from the effort. “Crap. What car hit me?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Did someone run into us? Is my hearse—” Her voice faded off, and she was quiet for a moment, then said, “Oh. Right. They jumped me, didn’t they?”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “But you’re okay. You’re in the hospital. The doctor says you’re going to be fine.”
“Son of a—” Eve tried to lift her hand, but it had tubes coming out of it; she looked at it, then lowered it slowly back down. “Where’s Michael?”
“Ah—”
“Please don’t tell me he went after them.”
“I won’t,” Claire said. “Look, you just need to rest, okay? Get your strength back after surgery.”
“Surgery? For what?” Eve tried to sit up, but she groaned deeply and sank back down in the pillows. “Oh God, that hurts. What the hell…?”
The nurse came in just then, saw Eve was awake, and came to lift the bed up to help her sit. “You can sit up for a while,” the nurse said, “but if you start feeling sick, use this.” She pressed a bowl into Eve’s hands. “The anesthesia could make you vomit.”
“Wow. Cheery,” Eve said. “Wait—what kind of surgery did I have?”
The nurse hesitated, glanced at Claire, and said, “Are you sure you want me to tell you with your visitor present?”
“Claire? Sure. She’s like—like a sister.” Eve paled a little as she shifted. “It hurts.”
“Well, it will,” the nurse said, without much sympathy. “They had to remove your appendix. It was bleeding.”
“It what?”
“You were kicked in the stomach,” the nurse said. “Your appendix was badly damaged. They had to remove it. So it’s best if you stay still for a while and let yourself heal. The police are coming to interview you about what happened.”
“Good.”
The nurse smiled. There was something a little ominous about it, a little disturbing. “I’d advise you to refuse to give a statement. Might be healthier for you, all things considered. The people who hurt you might have friends. And you don’t have very many.”
Claire blinked. “What did you just say?” The nurse turned away. “Hey!”
Eve put a hand on her arm as Claire tried to get up. “I understand,” she said.
The nurse nodded, checked the readings on a couple of machines, and said, “Don’t keep her awake long. I’ll tell the police to come back later. Give you some time to think about what you’re going to say to them. You’re a smart girl. You know what’s best.”
The message, Claire thought, was chilling and clear: don’t tell the cops the names of the people who attacked you. Or else. And an “or else” from a medical professional was pretty nasty. If Eve wasn’t safe here…
Captain Obvious had always been a little bit of a joke, in most Morganville resident circles, but Claire was starting to think that this new, more aggressive Cap was something else entirely. He was inspiring people. And leading them into frightening extremes.
Like the vampires, with their identification cards and hunting licenses.
If both sides kept escalating, nobody could stand in the middle for long without having a price on his head—and it sounded as though that had already happened. Eve was the first, but any one of them could be next.
The nurse left. Eve watched her go, then closed her eyes and sighed. “Figured that would happen,” she said. “Humans first, and all that crap. They’ve gotten stronger. And now Captain Obvious is back. It’s a bad time to be us, Claire. I have to tell Michael to back off….”
Eve tried to sit up, but the effort left her pale and exhausted. “He never should have gone after them. That’s what they want; don’t you get it? They came after me to get to him. I’m not important. He is. He’s Amelie’s blood—kind of like her son. If they can hurt him, kill him—Claire, go find him. Please. I’ll be okay here. Just go. The worst thing they’re going to do to me is give me crap Jell-O.”