MVMC - A Morganville Vampire Fan Fic
Waking up shouldn't have been this hard. Claire stretched out her arms far and wide, meeting a fistful of crumpled up Shane beside her. He slept entirely wrong with his neck lying awkwardly in the crook of her arm. She thought it was funny because if she could remember correctly, she was the one who'd fallen asleep in his arms. Still, he looked so adorable that she decided it wasn't worth waking him up for. And, okay, maybe she might enjoy giving him a little message later.
That wasn't all she wouldn't wake him up for. Ever since the things that happened to Frank Collins, his dad, it had become harder and harder to catch him in a good mood at all. At least while his eyes were closed you couldn't spot that far away look in his eyes that burned with guilt and regret. This way he looked almost peaceful. That wasn't the only reason it was becoming harder to look at him these days. Claire had some guilt of her own. It wasn't really her burden to carry but she was good at carrying other people's burdens, and who else was there to carry all of Myrnin's? He was kind of like Morganville's adopted child gone horribly wrong.
He was mad, completely mad, and recently he had tried to turn the town back several years while erasing everyone's memory and living in a fairytale where his precious love Ada-who was killed and had her brain imported into a machine by guess who-was still alive. He was also a genius, but the fact that he was a genius was his ultimate downfall. He believed that science could fix everything, and it just couldn't.
It sure couldn't fix the horrible chasm in Claire's chest when she thought of how Frank Collins gave his life to give everyone their memory back. Shane felt the weight of his past decisions to basically give his father the cold shoulder after years of him running for Worst Father Of The Year now, because he knew that his father couldn't have been that bad if he was willing to give up his life like that.
Except that he was still alive.
Oh, you know, your typical brain in jar procedure. Never heard of it? It's just when your mad scientist of a boss decides the only way to keep a town full of rabid vampires safely hidden from the rest of society, is to kill someone and import their brain into the basis of a machine. Following along? I guess the only thing he didn't do was kill someone, and rightfully, that made him a few more steps ahead of his dark past. But still, Shane's belated father?
Claire didn't want to think about it. It was making her sick all over again, and it was bad enough she would have to snarfle down some sort of food after her shower. She hardly ever visited the lab these days, because, well, Morganville was fixed. She also couldn't stand hearing Frank's voice alien and foreign coming out of any electronic device with a speaker. It just reminded her that this whole town was wrong. Forget that people had to wear a bracelet just so that they wouldn't be sucked dry with a straw. Now her boyfriend's undead father was controlling everything in the town, and she was one of the "lucky" select few who knew about it.
The steam in the bathroom made a sort of shelter for her mental frustration, but she knew as soon as those doors opened and the cool hair punched reality in her face she would be humming a different tune. It was five in the morning because when did Myrnin ever call at an appropriate time? And it was always the calls where she got two words in and nothing made sense. The only thing that made sense was that she had to "come here now".
The cereal she ate over the sink tasted a little too chewy. She wondered if the little marshmallows sprinkled about had a separate expiration date than the actual cereal. They hadn't gone grocery shopping in what seemed like months. Mostly everyone just ate a bunch of barbecue from Shane's job or Chili, and they had a bunch of left over cans that would last a century. There was a time where it was fun for them to cook things out of the norm like tacos or spaghetti, but that ship sailed when all of the unease floating around made everyone lose their appetites.
At least the rest of Morganville seemed okay, Claire noted. The people of Morganville were resilient like toddlers. They knew how to bounce back from a tragic event almost as if it never took place to begin with. It's not like the events weren't taking their tolls, because you could see it in every single person's eyes. Some were a little too shallow and drowned, some were a little too wide and alert, but everyone walked the same. They walked with acceptance and somehow that was considered okay.
The walk to Myrnin's lab seemed especially short this time. It could have been because she couldn't feel her legs for the entire walk there. For some reason, it was particularly chilly, and she'd chosen to wear shorts just because it was the first thing she grabbed. The sun was coming up in pretty sparks of oranges and blues coming to life. She might have enjoyed it if she were heading to a place like say, back in bed with Shane.
Shane.
Just the thought of him made her heart ache in all kinds of crazy.
She entered Myrnin's lab in a daze, literally. Smoke seemed to fill the entire place and she heard a faint coughing.
"Uhm, Myrnin?" She felt around to the first crowded table and dropped her backpack on the floor next to it. Something fell and shattered and in the next moment, Myrnin called "Just a minute!" in a sing song voice. It almost reminded her of a house wife calling her family for dinner.
"Why is it so smoky in here? We really don't have enough ventilation for this." Just as she felt like she was talking to a thin space of air Myrnin popped up beside her with what looked like a prehistoric fan.
"But you see, Claire, my plan is working."
Eyebrow raised, she studied him. "What plan, exactly?"
He was using the fan to wave smoke in every direction which burned her eyes and made her go into another coughing fit.
"Did you not leave the door open on purpose? Foolish. Claire. There's our ventilation."
"Oh, well, no that was an accident."
Myrnin looked at her with a bored smirk, if a smirk could ever look bored. "Any one person would have claimed to have purpose, but you chose the honest bout. You never cease to surprise me."
Claire's cheeks felt hot almost instantly. "Yeah, yeah, you didn't answer my question. What "plan"?"
"I am renovating this lab, it's far too messy." Like that wasn't already obvious, Claire thought, and looked beyond the clearing smoke to see that everything was still pretty much in place.
"I'm missing the improvement here. It looks worse if that's possible."
"Ah, we're starting from the inside out, that's why. This smoke is simply from all of the things that caught on fire. Now, would you go close that door, Claire. I can breathe."
She couldn't but that didn't matter. Instead of protesting she scrambled to shut the door and caught up to Myrnin who was hovering over the trapped door. She looked down it and saw the left over brims of things burning and caught unpleasant wafts of chemicals. "So you burned all of the chemicals?"
Myrnin looked up sharply, amused. "The chemicals burned themselves. You really should have seen it. Everything went up in a glowing glare of colors..." His voice trailed off. Claire could see that his pupils were unusually dilated.
"Uhm, Myrnin, are you...high?"
He laughed, he actually laughed. It had been a while since she heard him laugh in a totally non sarcastic way. Myrnin had a nice laugh, but Myrnin being even a little bit out of character spelt trouble with a capital T.
"Is that what you hellions call it these days? Perhaps, perhaps I do feel "high". This feeling is joyous, it really is."
He was slowly closing the distance between him and her. Claire swallowed hard and braced herself by holding onto one of the tables. "You need to snap out of it. Why did you want me here?"
For a second, it seemed like he did snap out of it. "Good question. I don't remember. Amelie said…Hm, it was something rather important. It slipped my mind when I was bringing the box of beakers down below and then suddenly, it was falling from my fingers. It was brilliant! I seem to accomplish that more and more these days without trying."
Claire was trying to make sense of what he was trying to say. She felt that he really did have an important message but whatever fumes had been released during his little slip up were messing with his way of thought. It made her tired. She was already getting the severe creeps out of feeling Frank's presence. She wasn't sure if anyone who knew him could just feel it if they stepped into the lab because it was so strong, or that if her being aware of the situation somehow made it seem that way. It didn't matter, because either way she wasn't ever letting Shane step foot in here again.
Momentarily caught up in her own thoughts, she didn't realize Myrnin's advance in contact. He was staring down at Claire with a familiar gleam in his eyes. She couldn't figure out where she'd seen that look before.
Oh, yeah, that was the face he gave her right before he tried to suck her dry.
Immediately she was on high alert and awkwardly reached down for her bag. "Look Mrynin, I have class later on today and I can get a few more hours rest in before then so I'm just going to-"
He was right there, right there in her face. Her backpack fell out of her hands and her whole body grew cold. Don't panic. Claire knew that was the bad thing to do. Vampires were like any other predator, if you showed fear, they attacked. She found out this rule applied even moreso to Myrnin than any other vampire who'd ever tried to devour her soul.
"Myrnin," She tried calmly, hiding the shudder in her voice. "Are you sure you're okay?"
His eyes sparkled and danced down towards her neck. Before he replied she saw his ghostly white hand in a flash tracing her collar bone and then wrapping itself around her neck. The weird thing was, he wasn't doing it forcefully. In fact, if she wasn't losing her mind she would have thought he was making a pass at her. Normally, that would have Claire thinking N-A-S-T-A-Y, as Eve would say. But the look in Myrnin's eyes just then had her mind in a much, much darker place.
"I didn't notice how tasteful you look until just now," He said, voice oddly silky. It was like the sound of fire crackling and wood burning in December. It made Claire want to curl up and nap. Her whole entire body went warm in a flash that made her tremble. It could have been fear or...something else.
She didn't have time to guess, because Myrnin's lips were on hers in a matter of seconds. At first, the kiss was awkward. Claire didn't really know what to do with his teeth so close to her neck, but Myrnin's hands seemed to be the only thing interested in her jugular veins, and they were making soft caressing movements used to bring their bodies closer together. And then she realized that it actually felt, well, nice. She didn't really know when the kiss turned from gross to not so gross, she just knew that she was burning and Myrnin's hands were starting to slip...slip...
She pulled away gasping. "Myrnin-" but he kept going. This time, his lips were hard and urgent. Any protest died on her tongue once his wrapped around it and some oddly pleasure filled sound grew in the back of her throat. She realized she wasn't the only one making sounds. Myrnin almost seemed to be growling, pushing her body roughly up against the table. He lifted her up on top of it so fast she became dizzy, and his hands became a death grip around her waists.
Some rational part of her mind said it was wrong, but there was something about the way Myrnin's lips met hers. It fit in a way she couldn't explain and the rush in her veins became a maddening hum of lives she never got to live being in Morganville. Her heart was hammering out of her chest, and she knew that Myrnin could hear. He pulled away this time and brought his lips to her ear. "Not even blood I have stolen right from someone's heart has ever tasted so delicious."
That would have frightened her any other day, but today it made her feel warm and dizzy. She felt his lips tracing her neck and her body mechanically arched and shaped itself almost as if it was screaming out more. She could feel his bottom teeth grazing her skin ever so lightly, and all she could think of was how she would let him, she would let him bite her because he felt so good right then in there she could cry.
Just as a hoarse plead rose up in her throat, a violent rouse of static shook the room. Myrnin was quicker, and left Claire's side to yank open her backpack and claw out her cell phone. It crunched between his fingers like nothing but dust.
"I don't like being interrupted, Frank." He said, his tone was like ice. Frank. Frank was interrupting? Frank, and Shane, oh god. That was enough for Claire to realize what she'd just done and scrambled down from the table. She was going to come up with something smart about him breaking her cell phone, but truthfully it didn't have anything in comparison to the weight she felt suddenly that held twice as much guilt as she already felt before. She reached down and got her backpack without looking up at Myrnin.
This time he wasn't waiting for her when she stood upright, and she made it almost all the way out to sanity before she heard him.
"Claire," His voice was soft. It was the caring Myrnin voice, the one who had nursed her back to health after spending over 50 hours on her feet. "I need you" was all that he said, before she left out into the chilly morning feeling her heart rip in two.
What had she done?