Bitter Blood (Morganville Book #2)

Chapter 6

By the time we made our way out of Ada's cavern, it was night - full, dark night.

Which was a problem.

"We can't walk," I told Myrnin, for about the eleven hundredth time. "It's not safe out there. You really don't get it!"

"Of course I get it," he said. "There are vampires a-roaming the dark. Very frightening. I'm quaking in my beach sandals. Come on; buck up, girl. I'll protect you." And then he leered like a total freak show, which made me feel not so much reassured. I didn't trust him.

He was starting to get that jittery, manic edge I dreaded, and he kept insisting that he couldn't take the serum yet - or even the maintenance drug, the red crystals that I kept in a bottle in my backpack.

Past a certain point, Myrnin was crazy enough that he thought he was normal. That was when things got really, really dangerous around him.

"We could take the portal," I said. Myrnin, halfway up the stairs, didn't so much as pause.

"No, we can't," he said. "Not from this node. I've shut it down. I don't want anyone else coming here anymore. They'll ruin my work."

I took a look around at the wreckage - the smashed glass, the shredded books, the broken furniture. In my view, there wasn't anything left for vandals to destroy, and even if there was, sealing up the portal wouldn't stop them; it would only inconvenience me (and Myrnin) from getting here.

Only . . . maybe that was what he intended. "What about the entrance to the cave?" I asked. He snapped his fingers as if he'd forgotten all about it.

"Excellent point."

Myrnin dragged the largest, heaviest table over, top down, and covered up with it the hole he'd made in the floor. Then he took handfuls of broken glass and mounded it up on all sides.

"What if they move the table?" I asked.

"Then they'll find Ada, and my countermeasures will likely eat them," he said happily. "Speaking of that, I really must find some lunch. Not you, dear."

I would have been happier if he'd had some magical way to repair it, but I supposed that would have to do. It looked like the bad guys had been through this place a dozen times already, anyway; they probably wouldn't be back and in the mood to redecorate.

I unzipped my backpack. At the bottom, rattling around loose, were two sharpened wooden stakes. I took one out and slipped it into my pocket. It wouldn't kill a vampire by itself, but it would paralyze one until it was removed . . . and it would weaken one enough to die by other means.

If trouble came - even if it was Myrnin himself - I'd settle for slowing it down long enough for me to run for my life.

Myrnin artistically sprinkled some more broken glass. "There," Myrnin said, and backed off to the stairs again. "What do you think?"

"Fabulous." I sighed. "Brilliant job of camouflage."

"Normally, I'd add a corpse," he said, "just to keep people at bay. But that might be good enough."

"Yeah, that's . . . good enough," I said. "Can we go now?" Before he decided to go with the corpse idea.

As I followed Myrnin out of the wreck of a shack that covered the entrance to his lair, he took the time to carefully close and padlock the door. Which was really ridiculous, because I could have kicked right through the rotten old boards, and I wasn't exactly She-Hulk.

I pulled my phone out and flipped it open, scrolling for Eve's number.

Myrnin batted it right out of my hand, straight up into the air like a jump ball, and caught it with ease. He grinned smugly, all sharp teeth at crazy angles, and put the phone in his jacket pocket. "Now, now," he chided me. "Where's your sense of adventure?"