Feast of Fools Page 0,6

short hair, then kissed it.

"I'm cool," he said. "Takes more than a punk with a switchblade to put a Collins down. Count on it."

Unspoken was the fact that they were up against a hell of a lot more than that, and he knew it.

"Don't do anything dumb," she said. "Or I'll kill you myself."

"Ouch, girl. Whatever happened to unconditional love around here?"

"It got tired of visiting you in the hospital." She held his eyes for a long few seconds. "Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't. We have to wait. We have to."

"Yeah, all the vampires say so. Must be true." She hated hearing him say the word quite that way, with so much loathing; when he said it, she always thought of Michael, of the way that he suffered when Shane's hatred boiled out. Michael hadn't wanted to be a vampire, and he was trying as best he could to live with it.

Shane wasn't making that any easier.

"Look." Shane put his hands around her face and stared earnestly into her eyes. "What if you take Eve and get out of here? They're not watching you. I'll cover for you."

"No. I'm not leaving my parents. I'm not leaving you."

And they didn't have time to talk about it, because there was a tremendous crash from the living room. The kitchen door flew open, and Michael stumbled backward through it, held by the throat by the handsome young vamp who'd come in with Bishop. He slammed Michael up against the wall. Michael was fighting, but it didn't seem to be doing him a lot of good.

The other vampire opened his mouth in a snarl, and his big, sharp vampire teeth flashed down like switchblades.

So did Michael's, and Claire involuntarily backed up against Shane.

Shane yelled, "Hey! Let him go!"

Michael choked out, "Don't!" but of course Shane wasn't listening, and Claire's grip on his arm wasn't going to stop him, either.

What did stop him was Eve, holding a big, nasty-looking knife. She gave Shane a wild warning look, then spun around and leveled the knife at the vampire holding Michael. "You! Let him go!"

"Not until this one apologizes," the vampire said, and emphasized it by banging Michael against the wall again, hard enough that every piece of glass in the room rattled. No - it wasn't the impact; it was a low-level vibration coming from the room itself. The walls, the floor . . . the house. Like a warning growl.

"You'd better let him go," Claire said. "Can't you feel that?"

The vampire frowned at her, and his pretty green eyes narrowed even as the pupils expanded. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Eve said, and gestured with the knife.

"You're doing it. The house doesn't like it when you play dirty with Michael. Now step away from him before something bad happens."

He thought they were bluffing - Claire could see it in his eyes - but he also didn't see much of a reason to push his luck. He let Michael go, his full lips curling in contempt. "Put that away, silly girl," he told Eve, and before any of them could even blink, he slapped it out of her hand - slapped it so hard it flew across the room and stuck in the wall. Eve grabbed her hand and cradled it close, backing away from him.

"Apologize," he told her. "Beg my forgiveness for threatening me."

"Bite me!" she snapped.

The vampire's eyes flared like hot crystal, and he lunged for Eve. Michael moved faster than Claire had ever seen him, just a confusing blur, and then the stranger was hurtling into the stove. He caught himself with both hands out, and she heard the sizzle as his palms hit the burners, followed by an enraged cry of pain.

This was going to get really bad, and there was nothing, nothing, they could do.

Shane grabbed Eve by the shoulder, Claire by the arm, and he hustled them into the corner by the breakfast table, where they had at least partial cover. But that left Michael on his own, fighting out of his weight class against something more like a wildcat than a man.

It didn't take long, maybe a few seconds, before Michael's strength failed. The stranger threw Michael to the kitchen floor and straddled him, fangs down and gleaming. The temperature in the kitchen plummeted to icy chill, cold enough that Claire could see her own breath as she panted in fear. That low-frequency rumble began again, jittering plates and glasses and pans.

Eve screamed and fought to get free of