Many Bloody Returns Part 25

I'd almost forgotten about Miranda-the kid was sitting in the corner of the van, her knees drawn up, staring off into the distance. "It speaks," Trent said, and laughed maniacally. "I was starting to think you'd just brought the kid along to protect your virtue, Jane." He gave her a comical flutter of his long, lush eyelashes.

Miranda was still talking, or at least her lips were moving, but her words were lost in a particularly loud guitar crunch. "What?" I yelled, and leaned closer. "What do you mean?" Miranda's pale blue gaze moved and fixed on me, and I wished it hadn't. There was something really strange about the girl, all right, even if her rep as the town Ca.s.sandra was exaggerated. She'd supposedly known about the fire last year that burned the Collins family out; people even said she predicted that Alyssa Collins would die in the fire. Jane said Miranda made it all up after the fact, but who knew? The girl had a double helping of weird, with creepy little sprinkles on top.

"It doesn't matter what you decide to do," she said louder. "Really. It doesn't."

"Yeah?" Trent asked, and leaned over to snag another beer from the Coleman cooler in the center of the van floor. He twisted off

the cap and turned it over in his black-polished fingers. "Why's that, o Madame Doom? Is one of us going to die tonight?" They all made hilariously drunken ooooooooo sounds, and Trent upended the bottle and chugged.

"Yes," Miranda whispered. n.o.body else heard her but me.

And then her eyes rolled up in her skull, and she collapsed flat out on the filthy s.h.a.g carpet on the floor of the van.

"Jesus," Guy blurted, and crawled over to her. He checked her pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. "I think she's alive."

Jane hadn't moved at all. She looked more annoyed than concerned. "It's okay," she said. "She had some kind of vision. It

happens. She'll come out of it."

Trent said, "d.a.m.n, I was starting to get worried it was the beer."

"She didn't have any, moron."

"See? Serious beer deficiency. No wonder she's out."

"Shouldn't we do something?" Guy asked anxiously. He was cradling Miranda in his arms, and she was as limp as a rag doll, her

head lolling against his head. Her eyes were closed now, moving frantically behind the lids like she was trying to look all directions at once, in the dark. "Like, take her to the hospital?"

The Morganville hospital was neutral ground-no vampires could hunt there. So it was the safest place for anybody who was,

well, not working at full power. But Jane just shook her head.

"I told you, this happens all the time. She'll be okay in a couple of minutes. It's like an epileptic seizure or something." Jane looked at me curiously. "What did she say to you?"

I couldn't figure out how to tell her, so I just drank my beer and said nothing.

Probably a mistake.

Jane was right, it took a couple of minutes, but Miranda's eyes fluttered open, blank and unfocused, and she struggled to sit up in

Guy's arms. He held on for a second, then let go. She scrambled away and sat in the far corner of the van, next to the empty bottles, with her hands over her head. Jane sighed, handed me her beer, and crawled over to whisper with her sister and stroke her hair.

"Well," Trent said. "Guess the emergency's over. Beer?"

"No," I said, and drained my last bottle. I was feeling loose and sparkly, and I was going to be seriously sorry in the morning- oh, it was morning. Like, nearly 2 a.m. Great. "I need to get home, Trent."

"But the night's barely latemiddle age!"

"Trent. Man, I have to go."

"Party p.o.o.per. Okay, fine." Trent shot me a resentful look and jerked his head to Guy. "Help me drive, okay?"

"You're driving?" Guy looked alarmed. Trent had downed lots of beer. Lots. He didn't seem to be feeling it, and it wasn't like we

had far to go, but...yeah. Still, I didn't feel capable, and Guy looked even more bleary. Jane...well, she hadn't been far behind Trent in the Drunk-a.s.s Sweepstakes either. And letting a fourteen-year-old epileptic have the wheel wasn't a better solution.

"Not like we can walk," I said reluctantly. "Look, drive slow, okay? Slow and careful."

Trent shot me a crisp OK sign and saluted. He didn't look drunk. I swallowed hard and crawled back to sit with Jane and Miranda. "We're going home," I said. "Guess you guys get dropped off first, right? Then me?"

Miranda nodded. "Sit here," she said. "Right here." She patted the carpet next to her.

I rolled my eyes. "Comfy here, thanks."

"No! Sit here!"

I looked at Jane and frowned. "Are you sure she's okay?" And made a little not-so-subtle loopy-loop at my temple.

"Yeah, she's fine," Jane sighed. "She's been getting these visions again. Most of the time they're bulls.h.i.+t, though. I think she just

does it for the attention."

Jane was looking put out, and I guess she had reason. If Miranda was this much fun at parties, I could only imagine what a barrel of laughs she was at home.

Miranda was getting more and more upset. Jane gave her a ferocious frown and said, "Oh, G.o.d. Just do it, Eve. I don't want her

having another fit or something."

I crawled across Miranda and wedged myself uncomfortably into the corner where she indicated. Yeah, this was great. At least it was going to be a short drive.

It was what was waiting at the end of it that I was afraid of. Brandon. Decisions. The beginning of my adult life. Trent started the van and pulled a tight U-turn out of the high school parking lot. There were no side windows, but out of the back windows I saw the big, hulking '30s-era building with its Greek columns fading away like a ghost into the night. Morganville wasn't big on streetlights, although there were a c.r.a.pload of surveillance cameras. The cops knew where we'd been. They knew everything in Morganville, and half of them were vampires. G.o.d, I wanted to apply for the paperwork to get the h.e.l.l out, but it was a waste of time. I needed an acceptance letter to an out- of-state university or waivers from the mayor's office. I wasn't likely to get either one with my grades and 'tude. No, I had to face facts: I was a lifer, stuck in Morganville, watching the world go by.

At least, until somebody cut me out of the herd and I became a snack pack.

Trent was driving faster than we'd agreed. Not only that, the van was veering a little to the side of the road. "Yo, T!" I yelled.

"Eyes front, man!"

He turned to look back at me, and his pupils were huge and dark, and he giggled, and I had time to think, Oh s.h.i.+t, he's not drunk; he's high, and then he hit the gas.

Miranda's hand closed over my arm. I looked at her, and she was crying. "I don't want them to die," she said. "I don't."

"Oh, Jesus, Mir, would you stop?" Jane said, and smacked her hand away. "Drama princess."

But I was looking at Miranda, and she was staring at me, and she slowly nodded her head.

"Here it comes," she said, and transferred the stare to her sister. "I'm sorry. I love you."

And then something bad happened, and the world ended.

I walked away from the smoking wreckage. Staggered, actually, coughing and carrying the limp body of Miranda; she was alive, bleeding from the head but still alive.

My brain wouldn't bring up anything about Trent, Jane, or Guy. Nothing. It just...refused.

I walked until I heard sirens and saw flas.h.i.+ng lights, and dropped to my knees, with Miranda in my lap.

The first cop on the scene was Richard Morrell, the son of the mayor. I'd always thought that even though his family was poisonous, he was kind of a nice guy. He'd been kind to me when I'd had to testify against my brother, after Jason...did what he did. Richard proved it again now by easing Miranda out of my arms and to the ground, cus.h.i.+oning her head gently to keep it from b.u.mping against the pavement. His warm hand pressed on my shoulder. "Eve. Eve. Anybody else in there?"

I nodded slowly. "Jane. Trent. Guy." Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe I'd imagined all of that. Maybe they were about to crawl out of that twisted ma.s.s of metal and laugh and high five....

Too much imagination. I imagined dead, b.l.o.o.d.y bodies crawling out of the wreck and swayed. Nearly collapsed. Richard steadied me. "Easy," he said. "Easy, kid. Stay with me."

I did. Somehow, I stayed conscious even when the ambulance drivers wheeled the gurneys past me. Miranda was taken first, of course, and rushed off to the hospital with flashers and sirens.

They didn't bother hurrying for the others. They just loaded the black zippered bags into one ambulance, and it drove away. They wanted me to go with them, but I told them no, I was fine, because no way was I getting in there with the bodies of my friends. I couldn't.

The fire department hosed down the wreck, and it smelled like burned metal and reeking plastic, alcohol, blood....

I was still kneeling there on the pavement, pretty much forgotten, when Richard finally came back, did a double take, and looked grim. "n.o.body came to get you? From your family?"

"You called them?"

"Yeah, I called," he said. "Come on. I'll take you home."

I wiped my face. The white makeup was almost gone, and my skin was wet; I hadn't even known I was crying.

Not a mark on me.

Sit here, Miranda had told me. Right here. Like she'd known. Like she'd picked me over her own sister.

I couldn't stop shaking. Officer Morrell found a blanket in his patrol car and threw it around my shoulders, and then he bundled me in the back and drove me the five miles home. All the lights were on at my parents' house, but it didn't look welcoming. I checked the time on my cell phone. Three a.m.

"Hey," Richard said. "This is the big day, right? I'm sorry about your friends, but you need to focus now. Make the right choices,

Eve. You understand?"

He was trying to be kind, as much as he knew how to be; must have been hard, considering the a.s.shole genes he'd been given. I tried to think what his sister Monica would have said in the same situation. What a bunch of trashed-out losers. They shouldn't be in our cemetery. We've got a perfectly good landfill.

I knew Monica too well, but that wasn't Richard's fault. I nodded to him numbly, gave back the blanket, and walked up the ten steps from the curb to my parents' front door.

It opened before I reached for the k.n.o.b, and I was facing Brandon, the family's vampire Protector.

"I've been waiting for you, Eve," he said, and stepped back. "Come in."

I swallowed whatever smart-a.s.s remark I might normally have given him and looked back over my shoulder. Richard Morrell was looking through the window of the police cruiser at me, and he gave a friendly wave and drove off. Like I was in good hands.

You know every stereotype of the romantic, brooding vampire? Well, that's Brandon. Dark, broody, bedroom eyes, wears a lot of black leather. Liked to think he was bada.s.s, and what the h.e.l.l did I know? Maybe he was. He was bada.s.s enough to scare kids, anyway, with those sweet eyes and those cruel hands. Psycho b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

I hated his guts, and he knew it.

"Honey?" Mom. She was hovering behind Brandon, looking timid and nervous. "Better come inside. You know you shouldn't be out there in the dark."

Dad was nowhere to be seen. I bit my tongue and crossed the threshold, and when Brandon closed the door behind me, it was