by Rachel Caine
Okay, that explained him. It didn’t explain the lack of Adele and the others. We made awkward sign language Q&A for a bit, and I got that there had been a draug popping up, and his headphones had gotten snapped, and Adele and the others had chased the draug. No props to Adele for tactical smarts, obviously, but before he’d succumbed to the singing, my new buddy had seen which way they’d gone.
So we followed, both now armed with shotguns.
We rounded the corner into the middle of a micro-rainstorm.
I mean, one second it was clear, the next there was a blinding curtain of rain that smashed down from the sky in a thick silver flood, and it was as cold as ice and took my breath away as it hit me. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel a burning creeping over my exposed skin.
Draug, in the rain. They were concentrating on this one spot, flooding down to add their bulk to what looked like a flooded low spot in the road.
I could see them moving like shadows through the rain, surrounding Adele and the other vampires, who were shoulder to shoulder in a circle-the-wagons formation. Even through the earplugs I could hear the muffled blasts of the shotguns.
My fanged friend grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a halt. He was right—we couldn’t get closer; with three vampires firing in there, and taking a toll on the draug, we could get hit by friendly fire just as easily. He pointed to the silver nitrate glass jars that I’d clipped to my belt carabiner, and then to the thick, squirming puddle in the depression of the road.
I gave him a thumbs-up, passed him my gun, and unclipped the jars. My hands were cold and wet, and I had to concentrate to make sure I didn’t slip and drop them. And then it occurred to me that my brilliant plan was to run right into the middle of the draug.
It was suddenly not so brilliant.
The vampire bumped my shoulder and gave me an encouraging nod. He had a shotgun in each hand, like something out of a badass Old West movie; all he really needed was a big hat and bandoliers over his chest to complete the picture. And maybe a poncho. Ponchos are cool.
I got the message. He’d be right behind me, firing on the draug coming from the sides. Plus, they wouldn’t be nearly as interested in me if there was hot, tasty vampire within reach.
I gave him a firm, calm nod (and didn’t feel that way at all) and ran forward.
Adele must have spotted us, because her gunfire in our direction stopped, but behind me I heard the close percussive booms of my new friend’s shotguns going off as draug lurched out of the rain from the left and the right. Don’t stop, don’t stop, no matter what, don’t stop …
I ran directly into a draug.
Literally.
It was just forming itself out of the rain, and behind that human form was something vile and monstrous and formless, twitching and oozing.
I didn’t have the time to stop, even if I’d wanted to. I don’t know which of us was more surprised, actually.
I ran right into it, and through it.
It felt like half-congealed gelatin, or the thickest possible slimy mud. I retched at the feel of it on my skin, and it burned hard and fast, like an acid bath … but then I was out of it, and the rain, even draug-infested, was cleaner, and sluicing the ick away.
And then I was at the edges of the puddle.
A draug crawled up out of it, but passed me, heading for the vampire behind me. He shot it in half. I was really glad for excellent vampire aim, because my hands were trembling hard now, and I was scared to death, horribly and miserably terrified, and I felt like I was screaming and I probably was, but I managed to bring my hands up and smash the two jars together, hard enough to pop the glass.
Silver rained down into the water, and where it touched, the water turned black, rotten and foul with dead draug.
The singing must have changed pitch, because even through the earplugs I could hear the screaming.
A hand shoved me down flat, and a shotgun clattered to the pavement next to me. My new vamp friend was still upright, standing over me now, firing steadily as draug tried to escape from the pond’s poisonous waters.
I got up to my knees and fired, too, choking on the stench of gunpowder and the moldy flavor of the draug.
Finally, the rain eased, then puttered to a stop, and Adele fired the last shot into the pulpy mass of a draug, blasting it into slime …
… And it was over.
Me, and the vampires.
Victorious.
My new friend reached down and offered me a hand up. I took it, breathless and shaking, and the help turned into a handshake.
Adele gave me a cool assessment, raised an eyebrow, and mouthed, Not bad.
Just like that, I was part of the team.
Lucky for us, the rest of the trip wasn’t quite so eventful.
CHAPTER SIX
CLAIRE
“She should be back by now,” Michael said, checking his cell phone as they followed Myrnin out of the lab and into yet another maze of hallways. “Claire. You text her.”
“Her cell won’t work,” Claire said. “The human network’s still down, except for police and emergency workers.” The vampire network was, of course, fully operational … at least for now. “Maybe one of the guys with her …?”
“I don’t know who they are,” Michael said, and frowned at the screen. “She ought to be back.”
What he really meant was that he ought to be with her, Claire thought, but she didn’t say that out loud. “She’s okay,” she assured him. “Eve knows her way around town, just like you do. Just like Shane.” It was true, but she knew it wasn’t particularly comforting. The draug represented an entirely new dimension of danger that not even Morganville natives were fully equipped to handle. “She’s got loads of vamp firepower.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, and for a moment she saw a flash of red in his blue eyes. “Look how that turned out before.”
Ouch. She had a sudden vivid vision of him crouched over Eve’s motionless body, his fangs in her neck. The look on his face, the desperate and unholy joy of it … it haunted her. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be in his head right now, or for that matter, in Eve’s. That moment had destroyed all the expectations they might have had about themselves.
“She’ll be okay,” Shane said. “Let’s worry about us, bro. Because no matter how much of a little operation Myrnin wants to tell us this is, it ain’t.”
Michael nodded. He still looked pale and miserable, and he wasn’t going to get much better until Eve got back … and maybe not even then, if things were as bad as she feared.
Maybe mortal danger was the best thing for him right now.
It was still grudgingly daylight outside, but they didn’t go out in it … not at first. Myrnin said it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he led them down a maze of corridors into a storeroom, small and dark, that stank of chemicals. Claire remembered it. It seemed a whole lot smaller with the five of them packed inside, but Myrnin squirmed past her, shut the door, and flipped on the overhead bulb, which swung in true horror-movie fashion back and forth above their heads. Just barely above Shane’s, in fact; he hunched to avoid it.
“Great,” Shane said. “Look, I’d rather not be on janitorial duty. I have allergies to cleaners.”
“And to cleaning,” Michael said.
“Look who’s talking. Didn’t they do one of those Animal Planet documentaries about the roaches in your room?”
Myrnin gave a frustrated growl and crossed to the other side of the room, next to the industrial shelving that held bleach, gloves, scrub brushes, and other things that Claire didn’t think were going to be of much use against the draug. There was one uncluttered wall, and he faced it, took a shallow breath, and closed his eyes.
The wall wavered, as if a heat wave had passed over it, but then it solidified again into just … a wall, plain white, with the usual scuffs and dings any wall got over time. Claire poked it experimentally. Paint over drywall over boards. “I don’t think that’s working,” she said. “Isn�
��t Frank still, you know, on duty?”
“On and off,” Myrnin said. He tried again, with the same results—a flicker that might have signaled the establishment of a portal to another location, but too brief and unstable to step through. If it went where it was supposed to go, which might not have been the case. “Frank has been unreliable of late, to be perfectly honest.”
Frank was the town’s computer nerve center—literally. He was a brain wired into Myrnin’s computer in his lab, a sinister mixture of steampunkish brilliance and vampiric blood. Frank had started out a Morganville native, then left town, then came back at the head of a motorcycle gang to try to take it over. That hadn’t gone well, and he’d ended up a vampire himself … the last thing he’d ever wanted to be. From there, he’d become a brain in a jar, mainly because Myrnin had needed one and Frank’s had been not quite dead enough.
Oh, and Frank Collins was—had been? still was?—Shane’s father, a fact that had haunted Claire for a long time since she’d discovered what Myrnin had done, since Shane had thought his father was completely dead and gone. The discovery hadn’t gone over well, and even now, at the mention of his dad’s name, Shane’s face went stiff and blank, as if he’d reached for a mask. Self-defense. Frank hadn’t exactly been Father of the Year even before he’d taken up running with bikers and hunting vampires, much less become one.
“What’s wrong with Frank?” Shane asked. “Too much vodka in his blood smoothies? Or is he just being his usual bastard self?”
“Shane,” Claire murmured, half in reproof and half in sympathy. There really had never been all that much about his dad that she could find to like, and she tried to find something good in everyone. Frank had been drunk, abusive, and angry when he was a human; as a vampire, he’d been mostly suicidal from rage over his conversion. He’d hurt Shane, a lot, but a son never stopped loving a father, she supposed. Even if he didn’t want to.
“He’s been having trouble adapting,” Myrnin said. “I fear Frank won’t be able to bear the strain of disembodiment for too much longer. I’ll have to disconnect him and look for a new subject unless he stabilizes soon.” He must have thought about that for a second, because he said, not as if he really meant it, “Sorry.”
Even though he wasn’t glancing her way, Claire felt a kind of pressure settle on her; Myrnin’s original plan, which she very well knew, was that she would be the one to end up in the center of his machine, the eyes and ears and nervous system of Morganville. It wasn’t a role she ever wanted to play, and he knew that.
It didn’t mean he’d really given up his dream, though.
Though he might have been halfheartedly apologizing to Shane, too. Who knew?
After another try, Myrnin sighed and shook his head. “The portals aren’t working,” he said. “We will have to go in vehicles. It’s not my preference, but it’s the best option we have. Going on foot is a ridiculous risk. We will certainly need a fast escape route.”
“Lucky for you I have a bitchin’ pickup downstairs,” Shane said. “Which provides an excellent fire platform for a flamethrower, by the way.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a tank,” Myrnin said. “Pity we don’t have one.”
“Actually,” Michael said slowly, his forehead creased in thought, “we just might. Follow me.”
Anything was better, Claire thought, than the smelly, chemical-heavy cleaner’s closet, and she sucked down a deep, clean breath of air once they were back in the hall. It made her cough. She could almost imagine her breath puffing out the sickly gold color of Pine-Sol. Her clothes reeked of the stuff. She didn’t know if it was bothering any of the others, but it definitely wasn’t her favorite smell in the world, especially in that intense burst.
Michael led them down to the elevators and pressed the button for the parking garage. He looked … well, smug. Definitely smug.
“Spill it,” Shane said. “You look like you won a year’s shopping spree at the blood bank or something.”
“You’ll see,” he said, and then the elevator doors dinged and rolled open …
… And Eve was standing there. She was wet and muddy, and there were four other vampires with her. She actually took a surprised step back when she saw Michael.
And he took the same step back when he saw her.
Oh, so not good. Claire’s heart practically ripped in half at the expression on Eve’s face—a fast-changing mixture of longing, anger, fear, love, and finally, sadness. She reached up and pulled her earplugs out and said, “Sorry—I was just surprised.”
Michael didn’t answer. He was looking … well, sick was probably the only word for it. Myrnin ignored the whole thing and pushed past him, out of the elevator. Shane, after a hesitation, followed, with Claire. Michael stepped out last, and only because the doors started to shut on him.
In the sudden and uncomfortable silence, the brown-haired vamp standing next to Eve took his headphones off and said, “Is there some problem?” He was talking to Michael, but he was looking at Eve.
“No,” she said, and smiled brightly. “Thanks, Stephen. It’s all good. You guys go on.”
“Good work,” said the tall, dark-haired vampire woman, and opened the elevator doors again for the four of them to step inside while Eve lingered behind. “Call on us anytime, Eve.”
She nodded without taking her gaze off Michael, her dark eyes large and unreadable now.
“Making new friends?” he asked her. No mistaking the jealousy in that tone. “Stephen? I thought you were off vampires.”
“Lighten up,” Eve said. “I saved his life. It’s not like we’re going out.”
Even Shane winced at that one. Michael didn’t. He remained stone-faced, staring at his girl, and then he shrugged and said, “Well, you can go with your new friends or come with us. Your choice, I guess.”
“Where are we going?” Eve asked, like it wasn’t even a real question. Which it probably wasn’t.
“The water treatment plant,” Myrnin said. “I’ll catch you up if you’d like.”
“That’s—okay,” Eve said, and held up a hand when he would have kept talking. “I’m so not in the mood, Chatty Batty. Just hand me something to do.”
“Oh,” he said, and rubbed his hands together, “I think I can do that. Yes, absolutely. Michael? If you would lead on, please?”
Michael was no longer smug, but he led them toward the far end of the garage. It felt oppressive and damp down here, and smelled of wet concrete and mold—smells that reminded Claire vividly of the draug, the pool, the horrific fight to survive.
The fear.
She took hold of Shane’s hand, which was strategically stupid but emotionally smart; his warm, steady grip anchored her and made her feel less out of control. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he didn’t let go.
A boxy gray shape loomed up in the dark, and Myrnin said, “Ahhhhh,” in the way people do when they finally understand something. Claire squinted, but couldn’t see much until Eve flicked on her flashlight and cast a harsh white glare over the gunmetal gray surface.
It was an armored cash truck, with some logo on it that was too sun-faded to read. It had a thick metal hide and a very intimidating door on the back.
“Nice. Gun ports,” Shane said, flicking a fingernail at a round metal covering on the side of the truck. “Heavy steel. Run-flat tires. Bullet-resistant glass. Me likey, Mikey.”
“It’s a tank,” Michael said. “Or at least as close as we’re likely to get around here.”
“Pop quiz,” Eve said, and held up her black-fingernailed hand like a kid in school. “Does this thing actually, y’know, run?”
“Oh, yes,” Myrnin said. He was walking around the truck, tapping a finger on his bottom lip. His expression was elated but thoughtful. “It’s the Founder’s personal security vehicle, for her protection in emergencies. Used for her personal evacuation only.”
“Where are the keys?” Shane asked. He’d tried the driver’s side door, but it was, o
f course, locked.
“No one but Amelie and her assistant would know, and her assistant was evacuated with the others, I’m afraid. Don’t bother trying to force the lock, Michael. It’s hardened against vampires as well as humans. Without the proper keys, we’re not getting in. And yet … it is a good idea. Very good indeed.” Myrnin turned suddenly and focused directly on Claire. “I will go ask Amelie for the keys.”
“Excuse me?” Claire blinked. “That’s … really not a good idea. Oliver wouldn’t let me anywhere close to her. He said she was …”
“Unpredictable,” Myrnin said briskly. “Well, if anyone can handle unpredictable, I should think it would be me. Don’t worry. Oh, all right, then do worry, if that pleases you, but we need the key, and Amelie’s got it. There’s no choice.”
“Pickup truck,” Shane said. “That’s a choice.”
“Not a good one where we’re going,” Myrnin said. He held out a finger toward Michael, then Shane, then Eve, and said, “Stay.”
“Excuse me, we’re not your pets,” Eve said. “You don’t get to order us around …” But she was talking to empty air. Myrnin had already vanished, vampire-speed. The only one who might have caught him was Michael, but Michael wasn’t moving.
When Claire started after him, Michael grabbed her by the shoulder. “No,” he said. “He’s right. Nobody’s better qualified to handle unpredictable vampires than he is. Certainly not you. You are way too vulnerable.”
“I’m not staying here,” she said. “Are you coming or not? Because I don’t think you want to have to tie me up to make me stay.”
Shane heaved a sigh. “Nobody’s tying her up,” he said. “Sorry, Mike. It’s not that I don’t think you’re right, it’s that I know my girl. She’s going. We can either watch her back or stay here. And I’m not staying here, mostly because I don’t take orders from—what did you call him?”
