Bite Club: The Morganville Vampires by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine [Caine, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

SHANE

Once I started fighting, it was all I could think about over the next few days. There was nothing like it, especially when Gloriana was there with Vassily, watching…. I felt invincible. Even the punishment was just another kind of approval; every time Jester hit me, it felt like a pat on the back, and an invitation to hit harder.

So I did.

Yeah, I wondered about the sports drinks, the ones Gloriana kept in the refrigerator. We all drank them, and it made it easier to keep up with the vamps. Some part of me wondered what was in it, but that part was small, and got crushed down by the part that was excited by all the freedom. It was freedom—freedom to be all those things I’d been holding back. Freedom to hate. Freedom to crush. No rules; no conscience. I was fighting like them now.

Because that was what it was going to take to beat them. Fighting like an animal, without any fear.

“You’re fast,” Jester said on the last day of the scheduled sparring. “Getting faster all the time.” He sneered at me, and the sight of his fangs made my pulse jump—not with fear, but with aggression. Because I wanted to snap those fangs right off and wipe that sneer off his face. “You should take the bite,” he said. “You’d be a good vampire.”

“Shut up and fight.”

“What’s the matter? You afraid you’d bite your skinny little girlfriend?” Jester laughed. “She’s already someone else’s, you know. I can smell the bite on her. He’s marked her.”

Myrnin.

“Shut up,” I said, and kicked him in the face. He wasn’t expecting it, and he went down, but vampires were never that easy to put on the canvas for long. He bounced up, snarling now, and I danced back, watching his shifts of weight. He would come after me. Jester always came after me.

When he did, I hit fast, ducking under his rush, ramming my shoulder into his center mass and lifting him up off the canvas. Without leverage he wasn’t much better than a regular human, but I had to be careful of his hands; they could crush bone, and his fingernails were as sharp as knives. I slammed him down on his head behind me and pinned his arms fast behind his back. It must have hurt, because for the first time, I heard something like a cry of pain.

From a vampire.

It made me feel great.

Someone clapped. It was Gloriana, watching me, leaning against the ropes with beautiful grace. “That was wonderful,” she said. “Poor Jester. I think he may just be outclassed, Shane. You should let him up now. I think he’s learned his lesson. Don’t you?”

I twisted his arms tighter and felt something tear. This time, Jester screamed.

“Enough,” Vassily barked, and ducked under the ropes. He grabbed hold of my shoulder to pull me off. “I need him more than I need you, boy.”

I let go, because you didn’t fight Vassily. You just didn’t. It was the rule, one of the only rules left now.

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