YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY

A Morganville Vampires short story by Rachel Caine

© 2015 Rachel Caine LLC

Timeline: Post DAYLIGHTERS

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"Michael? Michael! Jesus, wake up!"

I jerked out of a nightmare and into hell, and for a moment I couldn't put any of it into perspective. I couldn't see. I couldn't hear. I hurt. It was like being isolated in a black box, cut off from everything, but burning in every nerve ending ... and then I felt Eve's hands framing my face, and heard her fast, scared breathing, and my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark to show me a glimmer of faint moonlight outlining her cheek, her huge, dark eyes.

I put a hand over hers and whispered, "Sorry." My voice sounded thick and rough. All the pain faded into the background as I moved, and maybe was never there at all. Hard to tell. I no longer knew exactly what was real, and what wasn't. My body lied.

It was my third month of being human, and it wasn't going so well. At best, I was sweaty, had the shakes, and when I swallowed, nothing tasted right, no matter how tasty the food. The Daylight Foundation had given me their kill-or-cure serum, and on me, it had cured ... but like the drug commercials say, side effects may vary.

I mean, I understood what was going on. I'd been a vampire for long enough that it had become normal to me, all the supernatural night vision and the sharp hearing and heightened senses in general, and now, busted back to garden-variety human being, my body felt slow and weak and useless. Understandable, I guess. Understanding it didn't help the fact that I was trapped in a heavy, horribly vulnerable sack of meat and blood.

"Michael." Eve's voice was gentle now, and she scraped my sweaty, messy hair back from my face. "Sweetie, you have got to talk to somebody about this. Please."

"I know."

"Promise me that you will, okay? Please?"

"I said I would!" That snapped out of me in an angry burst, and I was immediately sorry; I couldn't see her face, but I felt the small tremor that went through her body. Dammit. I couldn't put my own frustration on her. "I didn't mean it," I said, and took her in my arms. This ... this hadn't changed. Feeling her against me had a weight, a reality to it that steadied me into something like ... normality. Not that I really knew what that was, normal. Not anymore.

"It's okay," she said, though clearly it wasn't. "You're just having a hard time. Ha, that was an understatement, right?"

I managed to summon up a laugh. It was a little hollow in the middle, but it was real enough. "Little bit. Got murdered, came back a ghost, got murdered as a ghost, came back a vampire, now I'm back to human ... I'm a walking drama, right? I just need time."

I was lying to her, if not to myself. Adjustment time wouldn't do it. There was a sense memory I couldn't shake off that told me this was wrong, I was wrong, and nothing would be right, ever again. I'd thought it would pass, and I'd start feeling better, but days had gone by, then weeks, now into months.

Surviving, I'd discovered, didn't mean living. I had to find out how to do that.

I had to do it fast, or I honestly thought I'd lose my mind.

Eve stirred next to me in the dark, and put her head on my bare chest. I loved it when she did that; her dark hair spread over me like warm silk, with the press of her cheek warmer still. I knew what she was doing. She was listening to the steady pounding of my heart—a sound neither one of us had quite gotten used to yet. Life. But not living.