Bite Club Page 0,8

dead. Not for long, Claire guessed, because blood still dripped from the wound in his neck.

It wasn't a vampire bite. There was a huge pool of blood soaked into the mattress beneath Doug, staining his T-shirt crimson.

Michael had gone very, very pale--marble white, in fact. He leaned over the body, maybe checking for signs of life, and shook his head. As Claire and Eve stood rooted to the spot in shock, he ransacked Doug's backpack, then patted down the dead man's pockets, pulling out keys, a cell phone, breath mints (it made Claire suddenly sad that he carried those when he was so generally unpleasant to the senses), a wallet, some change.

No vials of blood.

"We have to go," Michael said. "Now. Right now."

"Was it--Was it the vamps?" Eve asked. "Can you tell?"

"I don't think so."

"But--"

"The ones I know wouldn't be that bloody," Michael said. "We have to go."

They were heading for the stairs, and Claire was still feeling a strange, distant sense of disconnection, when the reality of what she'd seen actually hit her, like color and sound and smell all snapping into focus at the same instant.

Doug wasdead. He'd beenmurdered.

She stopped, put her back against the hallway wall, and slid down to a crouch. She couldn't breathe. Her whole body was shaking. She'd seen a lot of unpleasant things since moving to Morganville, but this...this was worse. This seemed so...cold.

And the worst part of it was, Michael thought that the monsters hadn't done it. Not the side of town she usually thought of as monsters, anyway.

Eve was bending over her, pulling on her arm. Having lost the Goth makeup, she looked stark right now, washed pale. "Come on, Claire, we need to get the hell out of here. Too many questions."

"But we can't...just leave him--"

"We won't," Michael said, and took her other arm. He pulled her to her feet and held her there until her knees stopped shaking. "But we're not staying. Eve's right."

Claire clung to the handrail on the way down. She couldn't get the image out of her mind, the way Doug's face had seemed so slack and empty, the way his eyes stared, all pupils. The way the blood had soaked his bed beneath him.

She stopped on the third-floor landing and put her head down, breathing fast. Eve and Michael were

already halfway down to the next level, but they turned and came back. They were talking, but she couldn't hear them.

It took forever to get moving again and, once they were out in the dorm lobby, to try to act normal. She held on to Michael's arm, mostly for support. Outside, he put his hat on again and led her to the shade of a tree, where she collapsed in a pathetic heap on the dying grass. Overhead, the dry leaves rattled and hissed. A few broke loose in the freshening breeze.

Michael crouched down beside her, and Eve knelt on the other side. "Claire?" he asked. His eyes were very blue, very clear, and very worried. "Claire, talk to me. You okay?"

"No," she said. Her voice sounded small and fragile and very far away. "He's dead. Someone killed him."

Eve and Michael exchanged worried looks. Michael shook his head. "I'll get hold of Richard and Hannah," he said. "This needs to be handled quietly. They need to know what happened before it gets out of hand."

And right on cue, the thundering music from the top floor of the dorm cut out, and from an open window came the sound of a girl's scream, long and loud, with razor-edged horror in it. That was the scream Claire hadn't voiced, the one that still bubbled inside her. Somehow, hearing someone else do it helped ease the pressure. She didn't feel quite as faint and sick.

"I think that ship's sailed, Michael," Eve said, staring toward the dorm. Without the makeup, she looked so young--and so determined. "Better make the call quick. This is going to get crazy fast."

Michael nodded, stood up, and used his cell phone. It wasn't a long conversation, but then he dialed another number, and that was a lot longer. Oliver, Claire figured, from the general tone and Michael's body language. Only Oliver could make him that tense.

He came back as he was ending the call, and looked down at her. "You going to be okay?" he asked.

"You mean now or generally?"

That made him smile a little. "Now."

"I can deal," Claire said. "Generally, that's going to be a little bit tougher. I wasn't born in Morganville. Still