AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Is he insane?" Michael blurted, looking paler than ever. "He's not even armed!"
He also wasn't bruised, Claire realized. This had been shot before today, before she'd seen all the bruises on his body. Because of that--and only because of that--she was able to watch as Shane and the vampire bobbed, weaved, feinted...and attacked. The vampire looked weakened, thanks to the first bout, but Shane looked incredibly fast and strong.
Even so, he got pounded down, time after time. Claire found herself flinching every time a vampire fist landed. Shane kept himself alive, barely, and actually broke off one of the vampire's fangs with an unexpected kick. That earned him a slam into the wire mesh so forceful it cut the pattern into his skin.
"I can't watch this. I can't," Eve said, and put her hands over her face. "He's bleeding!"
It dawned on Claire that if the fight had been dangerous before, now it was incredibly risky--a bleeding human was like catnip to a vampire, and the one Shane faced seemed to get a second wind, so to speak, and come after him with a vengeance.
And Shane went down. The vampire pinned him, and Claire caught a glimpse of red, glowing eyes and one fang as it lunged for his throat.
Shane slammed a fist into the side of the vampire's head and snapped it sideways, and managed to use the momentum to roll him over. Once Shane was on top, he pounded the vampire with merciless punches, over and over again, and Claire could see the horror and anguish and rage that she knew was trapped deep inside him bubbling over,taking over. He wasn't just fighting for fun or money--he was fighting for his mother, his sister, even his father.
He was fighting his nightmares and his own hatred of Morganville.
A black-shirted referee jumped in and stopped the fight, and hefted Shane's sweating arm into the air to signal victory. Shane collapsed to his knees and had to be helped out of the cage.
But he'd won. His vampire opponent had to be carried out.
When the screen went dark, there was silence in the room, and then Michael said, very quietly, "Look at the hit counter."
Hundreds of thousands of views for this video, at a hundred dollars per account. Millions, for whoever was running Immortal Battles.
"That doesn't even count the betting, and youknow there's betting. Shane's not just doing this for fun. He's getting paid," Michael said. "He's getting paid to fight vampires."
"Click the other one, the older one," Eve said. She sounded better now that she'd seen the ending of the first fight. Claire wasn't so sure she could handle another one; she never wanted to see Shane like that again, or be that afraid for him.
But she needn't have worried, because Shane wasn't in this one.
Stinky Dougwas.
Stripped down, with his hair tied back, Stinky Doug looked lanky, all muscle. His fight was over quicker than Shane's, although he displayed the same unnerving quickness and strength. It didn't go in his favor. Doug got his ass kicked by a slender young female vamp, and was dragged out unconscious. Not dead, Claire knew; from the date on the fight, this had been at least two weeks before he'd died.
So Stinky Doug had stolen blood from the lab experimentafter this fight was filmed--why?
"He already knew about the vamps. He must have needed proof," she murmured. "Proof of the vampires. That's why he took the blood. He was going to go public, or he was blackmailing them."
"What?"
Claire pointed to Stinky Doug's slack face as he was dragged out of the cage. "He fought two weeks ago, right? Maybe he wasn't happy with what he got paid. He stole vamp blood from a college lab experiment. I think maybe he was going to use it for proof, or to get more money out of the Immortal Battles people. After all, they're playing the vampire part of it like theater. Like a joke."
She was right; the comments proved it. People were playing along with it, but clearly, nobodybelieved there were vampires fighting on screen. They were guys in makeup. But they liked it all the same.
Claire remembered the phone call she'd gotten that had tipped her off to the Web site. Somebody inside Morganville knew for sure, and theywould take it seriously.
"There's something else," Michael said. "Shane's fast, yeah, sure, and he's always been strong. But he's not superhuman. Or he wasn't. But you saw him tonight. That was...different. He's gotten faster and stronger and able to take more punishment. They've done something to him."
And it all came together in Claire's head in a blinding flash. Doug...the lab experiment. Her discussion with Frank about why someone would want vampire blood in the first place. He'd told her it wouldn't make a decent drug, because there wasn't a high and it wore off too fast, butit made you stronger and faster.
"Vassily's giving them vampire blood," Claire said. "In the protein shakes, probably. It's a temporary boost, but it breaks down fast."
"Oh, God," Eve said. "That's bad. That's damn bad, isn't it?"
Michael didn't deny that at all. "Click on the link for upcoming bouts."
Claire did. In three days, Shane was scheduled to fight again, this time a vampire named......
"Jester," Michael murmured. "He's fighting Jester. And Jester will murder him." He didn't mean it figuratively. "We have to get to Shane and get him out of this. He can't survive that, not even with the help of whatever they're giving him. The human body's not made for it."
"We have to get him out of it before Amelie finds out," Claire said, "because she'll kill everybody involved, no questions asked. This is a high-security risk for the town. She won't hesitate."
Eve dropped down onto Claire's bed and buried her head in her hands. "And how are we supposed to do that, exactly? Shane's allgrrr now. He's not going to listen to us. And he's got an entourage of his very own tough guys who'd gladly beat the crap out of us for breathing his air."
"What are we going to do, then? Just let himdie ? Formoney ?" Claire stood up and glared at the Web site again in utter fury. Her hands ached, and she didn't know why until she realized she was clenching them into tight fists. That made her think about Shane fighting, and that made her even angrier. There was a red-hot pressure inside her head that felt like it might blow her apart. "We can't tell Amelie. We can't go to Shane. Thenwhat ?"
Her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and it said nothing at all again. Her breath hissed out in a sound of pure, enraged frustration, and she answered it in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. "If you're calling to tell me howhot it is to see my boyfriend get beaten up, I'm going to come over there and--"
"It's Frank," said the weird mechanical voice on the other end. That hit her like a bucket of ice-cold water, making her flinch and shiver at the same time.Oh, God, he could hear her. Frank could hear any of them, anytime, if they had their cell phones on them and he cared to listen. The ultimate eavesdropper, and she'd forgotten all about it. "Get here. Now."
"The lab," she said.
"No, Candyland! Of course the lab! And you'd better come prepared to explain to me what the hell is happening to my son, Claire." He hung up on her. She'd just been hung up on by a disembodied brain in a jar. Fantastic. She hadn't even had time to say,Don't tell Myrnin , but she didn't think Frank would, anyway. He'd have picked up on how dangerous this was for Shane, and if Myrnin knew, well...Myrnin wasn't Shane's biggest fan at the best of times. Claire didn't think he'd rat Shane out just because of that, but he was, ultimately, Amelie's friend first. And Amelie would want to know.
This was so dangerous.God , everywhere she turned there was risk. To Shane and to Morganville. Even to the vampires, though she didn't care quite as much about that, because the vamps could always take care of themselves...and would.
"Who was it?" Michael's face was carefully blank, but she saw the glitter in his eyes. He was waiting to see how much she was going to lie.
She sighed and told the truth. "Frank Collins," she said.
"Frank's dead."
"Yes," she said. "And...I have some things you'd better know before we go any further."
"Oh, this should be good," Eve said, in a "not really" voice. "Somebody make popcorn."
Claire told them about it on the drive to Myrnin's lab. It was darkest night now, and only vampires went out by choice; they took Michael's shiny, town-provided Vampmobile, with highly tinted windows, because Claire wasn't absolutely sure that they'd be back home before dawn, and, besides, it provided her and Eve with some extra protection from snack-inclined vampires. Just in case.
