Black Dawn tmv-12

by Rachel Caine

  I was silent for a moment, struggling with that. He didn’t blink. There were tears running down his cheeks, which was weird, because my dad didn’t cry, had never cried, not even when my sister, Alyssa, died.

  It was as if his face were melting.

  “You’re dead, Dad. And you were never like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “A real human being,” I said. “You were never proud of me, or at least you never said it. You always wanted more. I was never good enough for you, even before I killed Alyssa.”

  “You didn’t kill her.”

  “I should have saved her. Same thing. Didn’t you tell me that a million times?”

  The tears were ice, and the ice was melting. “I’m sorry if I said that. I didn’t mean it, Shane. I’ve always been proud of you.”

  Liar. Liar liar liar liar.

  I pushed past that, because as much as I’d always wanted to hear it, always, there was something else bothering me. “But you’re dead.” The Frank Collins that existed in Myrnin’s lab was a cheat, a ghost, a two-dimensional image, a brain in a jar, not this flesh-and-blood person who didn’t even look right. I reached out and shoved his shoulder. He rocked back, real to the touch. “This isn’t you.”

  “It’s what you want,” the not-Frank said. “It’s what you always wanted. A father to be proud of you.”

  “I want a real life!” It burst out of me in a shout, and I knew it was true, the only true thing in a long time. “Dad, help me.”

  “I’ve been trying to help you,” he said. “Wake up, Shane. You can’t get what you want. Isn’t that what I would tell you? You can’t be the hero. You can’t wish the vampires away. You can’t marry the perfect girl and have a perfect little baby and get your dad back alive, and reformed into the model you always wanted. But now you have all that. What would you call that?”

  “A fantasy,” I said.

  “Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “Then wake up before it’s too late. ”

  His eyes were water, they were full of water, and I felt a surge of blinding terror and nausea. I felt that tingling burn again, all over my skin. Even though I’d turned the corner and I remembered turning it, I could see the Glass House right in front of me. Someone had painted it, and it glowed neon white in the rain, and Claire was looking at me through the window, smiling, holding our baby.

  What was our daughter’s name? I should know that. But I didn’t. I didn’t.

  Because she doesn’t exist. Wake up!

  “Dad—” I looked back. Frank was gone. There was just the sidewalk, and a gray fog, and the rain, rain beating down on my face, beading up on my skin. “If I wake up I’m going to lose them. I can lose everything but them. Dad—” I didn’t want this, but I didn’t want to let it go. I couldn’t. I started to walk back to the house, to Claire, to the baby whose name I hadn’t decided yet, to a future without vampires where I was respected and important and my dad loved me and …

  And I knew I couldn’t have that.

  Because I’m Shane Collins, and I don’t get those things.

  Because that isn’t how my world is.

  WAKE UP!

  I did.

  There was a solid sheet of glass above me, and water beading up on it and dripping down on my face. I was submerged in the water, except for my face. And everything burned.

  The water was thick, and turning pink from my blood.

  I hadn’t escaped the draug. I’d never escaped at all. Some people see their lives flash before their eyes; I’d flashed forward, to all the things I wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have. I’d escaped into dreams.

  I was a prisoner of the draug.

  And they were eating me alive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CLAIRE

  “No!” She’d been screaming it until her throat felt bloody, but Myrnin wouldn’t let go of her, and she couldn’t get Eve or Michael to do anything. Eve was huddled in the front seat, crying; Michael was driving and not looking in the rearview mirror at her. From the glimpses she’d had of his reflection, his face was set like a mask, but there were tears glittering in his eyes. Tears and fury. “No, you can’t leave him there, you can’t!” But that wasn’t what she was really saying. I left him, she was screaming to herself, inside. I left him there. I abandoned Shane and I can’t let that happen. I can’t live with that. I should have stayed.

  Myrnin was muttering under his breath, a liquid flow of what she was sure were curse words in a language she couldn’t recognize. Welsh, maybe. He broke off to say, sternly, “That’s enough. You won’t be helping him by all this, will you?”

  “You’re not helping him at all!”

  He wrapped both arms around her, pinning her helplessly with her back against his chest, and it was like being held in an iron vise. “Hush,” he said softly. “Hush, now. If we go back, we’ll die. All of us. He’s already gone.”

  “They have him, you know that, they have him, and they—they—maybe he’s still alive, maybe—”

  “He’s dead. There’s nothing to go back for. I’m sorry.”

  She screamed then, without words, just a tortured shriek that echoed around the metal box. It sounded like someone else’s voice, someone else’s pain, because no matter how tormented it was it couldn’t even begin to approach how much she hurt.

  Claire felt Myrnin’s cold lips brush her cheek, and heard him murmur, “You will never thank me for this, fy annwyl.” And then he moved a hand to her throat and pressed in a specific place, and in seconds, the world tunneled into gray, then black, and she was gone.

  She came to again with her head in Eve’s lap.

  They were sitting in their makeshift bedroom, the big ballroom with their cast-off clothes and sleeping bags littering the floor, cups of drying coffee sitting on antique tables that had been pushed to the wall. Claire’s head hurt, her throat hurt, and her eyes felt swollen, and for a moment she couldn’t remember why. Eve was silently stroking her hair. Upside down, Eve looked strange. Her eyes were red, and she looked very shaken and sad.

  She pulled in a deep breath as she realized Claire was awake. “Michael!”

  He was there in a flash beside her, kneeling next to Claire. He took hold of her hands and pulled her up into a hug.

  He didn’t say anything. Not a thing.

  She didn’t want to remember. Her hands fisted behind his back, her whole body shook with the need not to know. Michael was shaking, too. After a moment, he let go and sat back, avoiding her eyes as he wiped his face with an impatient gesture, but not before she saw the tears.

  “He’s not dead,” she said. “He’s not. They took him. I saw them take him.”

  “Claire—” Michael slowly shook his head. He looked tired, angry, and … just broken. “Myrnin said he was dead.”

  “He’s not.”

  It was Eve’s turn to put her arms around her. Unlike Michael, she wasn’t crying now. She’d finished, Claire supposed, and how was that fair, that anybody could ever finish crying? Ever?

  “If I believed there was a chance, any chance, I’d already be going,” Eve said. “But, sweetheart, he’s gone.”

  Claire shoved her back with a burst of white rage. She jumped to her feet. “Myrnin knocked me out,” she spat. “How long?” They didn’t answer her until she kicked at the limp sleeping bag and yelled it again. “How long?”

  “Five minutes, maybe,” Eve whispered. “Claire, don’t. We’re not your enemies—don’t do this …. We love him, too.”

  “Not fucking enough, you don’t!” she snapped, and left them there. She was walking first, then running. Nobody tried to stop her. She flew through confusing hallways, reversed course, her heart hammering, and tried three different routes before she saw the room at the end with the vampire guards standing sentry.

  They stepped out in front of her, right palms outstretched in a clear no way signal. Claire slowed, but she kept coming. “I need to see Oliver,” she said. “Right now
.”

  “He’s not available.”

  “I need to see him!”

  “Stop.”

  She didn’t. She wasn’t sure what her plan was, because right now there was nothing inside her but the burning, ripping need to do something … probably fifteen minutes had passed since she’d last seen Shane, and he was still alive, she was sure he was. Something had to be done. Someone had to listen. She locked gazes with the vampire on the right—she knew him, he was one of Amelie’s regular crew, and sometimes she caught him looking, well, not human but approachable.

  Not now. His expression had set like concrete, and his light brown eyes were cold. “Turn around,” he said. “Now.”

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t give up, because Shane wouldn’t have given up on her. He’d have fought like a wildcat, made them put him in a cage or let him go, and she couldn’t do any less for him, could she?

  It took about one second for the vampire to reach out, grab her, and carry her back down the hallway. She kicked and screamed but it didn’t do any good, and the fast motion made her dizzy and sick, disoriented, so that when he dumped her off and slammed and locked the door on her she was still too woozy to stand and fight.

  Claire screamed and kicked and battered the heavy wooden door with pure adrenalized fury until she collapsed in a gasping, shaking heap next to it.

  Then a voice said, “You finished?”

  She looked around, surprised, and found she wasn’t the only occupant of this makeshift cell. It had a couple of camp beds in it, some bottled water, and half a box of energy bars sitting on the floor nearby … and a boy she recognized. He was skinny, and he had a mass of greasy dark hair that flopped over his face.

  “Jason!” she blurted, and felt an immediate surge of fear. Eve’s brother wasn’t someone she could trust, not even at the best of times, and being locked in a room with him was definitely not the best of times.

  He was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, chewing an energy bar. “I hate being locked up, too,” Jason said, “but screaming at the door won’t get you anywhere, and you’re giving me a headache. So, you got on the wrong side of the vamps, finally. Good for you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He laughed dryly and held out his hands. They were cuffed. “Prison labor,” he said. “They’ve got me loading up shotgun shells. It’s my rest period, which you’re screwing up with all your screaming.”

  Claire knelt down to examine the lock on the door (new, and good) and then the hinges (located on the outside of the door, not the inside). Then she started looking around the room. No windows, like most of the rooms in this vampire shrine. Nothing but four walls, carpet, paneling, and the few things provided for comfort.

  Her gaze fixed on Jason. “What do you have?” she asked him. Myrnin, or someone, had searched her and there was nothing left now in her own jeans pockets but lint.

  “Not a damn thing,” Jason said. “Why, you gonna search me?” He laughed. “Shane’s gonna get a real kink in his tail over that.”

  “Shane’s in trouble,” Claire said, “and I swear to God that if you don’t help me, I’ll break your finger off and use the bone to pick the lock.”

  Jason stopped laughing and gave her a long, odd look. “You’re kind of serious,” he said. “Huh. That’s dark, for you.”

  “Shut up and help.”

  “Can’t. I got my own ass to save here. I do anything off-limits, like touching that door, and I end up bags of blood in a refrigerator, if I’m lucky. Sentence of death, remember?” He rattled his handcuffs for effect. “I’m working out my appeal.”

  Claire ignored him. Think. Think! She tried, but there wasn’t much to work with. Water. Plastic bottles. A box of energy bars that came in crinkly metallic wrappers …

  She lunged for those, stripped the wrapper loose from a bar, and began folding it in careful, precise movements.

  “I’m all for hobbies, but you think this is the time for origami? Whatcha making, a crane?”

  Claire made a thin metallic probe. It was too flexible to serve as a lock pick, but she searched the baseboards. One good thing about modern life—you were never far from an electrical outlet.

  She shoved one end of her probe into one of the flat sides of the plug, then bent it and jammed the other end of the U into the plug’s other side, completing the circuit. Getting shocked was inevitable, and she gritted her teeth and took the pain; it wouldn’t kill her. She’d been shocked plenty of times on things in Myrnin’s lab.

  She tore a piece from the cardboard box the energy bars had come in, and held it to the metallic strip. It started to smolder, then smoke, and then a thin edge of flame licked at the paper. Claire grinned without amusement and held the burning cardboard up to the rest of the box. Once that was burning, she dropped it on the carpet, which—flame-retardant or not—rapidly began smoking and melting.

  The fire alarm went off.

  “Holy shit,” Jason said. “You are crazy.”

  Vampires took fire seriously; it was something that would kill them, quickly, and every building in Founder’s Square was equipped with massive fire detection systems.

  The smoke was rising, and acrid, and Claire coughed involuntarily, then coughed again. The stench was bad. The plug sparked and a thin thread of fire ran up the wall.

  “Put it out,” Jason said, no longer even a little amused. When she didn’t, he grabbed a blanket and flung it over the burning carpet, stamping hard just as the alarms went off with a fierce shrilling sound. Greasy smoke billowed up, sending them both into a hacking fit, and now the wall was on fire, really, and Claire felt an awful surge of destructive joy as the door rattled and a guard stepped in with a fire extinguisher. He assessed the situation instantly, disregarded the two of them, and went to the wall to spray it with foam.

  Claire broke for the open door. She didn’t realize until she’d gained the hall that Jason hadn’t followed her; when she glanced back, he was standing right where he’d been, facing the open doorway.

  He raised his cuffed hands and gave her a finger wave.

  Fine. If he wanted to stay in prison, she had absolutely no objections.

  There were alarms all over the place, summoning people to fight the fire. It wasn’t a big one, and it’d be out in seconds, but she’d created chaos, and that was all she needed. She just had to get to the basement, find a car, and … she’d figure out the next part as she went along. She’d have to. If Michael and Eve weren’t going to help …

  She made it to the elevator and pushed the button for the parking garage. There had to be some car she could steal, something. She needed to get out of here and back to the treatment plant. Seconds counted. Shane was still alive; she believed it, despite what Myrnin said.

  She refused to believe him.

  The elevator doors opened, and Claire rushed out, then skidded to an immediate halt, because Hannah Moses, Morganville’s police chief, was standing there, gun drawn, looking really damn serious. She wasn’t aiming it, but it wouldn’t have been much work to take that step, either. Standing a couple of paces away was Richard Morrell, the mayor. He was tall, good-looking, and young, not even ten years older than Claire, but he looked older, way older now. Stress, she guessed.

  He was holding his sister, Monica, by both elbows as she twisted to get free in a storm of flying long, dark hair. She froze when she saw Claire. If Morganville had a queen bitch, it was Monica; she’d elected and crowned herself way before Claire had ever run afoul of her. It didn’t help that she was also pretty and had a huge budget for clothes and shoes. Monica’s lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. She tried to stomp on her brother’s foot with her high heels, but he was obviously used to handling her, and he must have been wearing steel-toed boots.

  “Let’s all just be calm,” Hannah said. She was a scary figure, Claire thought; there was presence to her, a cool and competent sort of aura that made you instantly believe, in any situation, that she’d been there, done that,
and written the how-to book. It was almost certainly not true some of the time, but it was impossible to tell that from her body language and expressions. She had her cornrowed black hair tied back in a messy knot, and although she was wearing her police uniform, she’d lost the hat somewhere. The scar that jagged its way down her face looked fearsome in the dim light, and her dark eyes were very, very steady. “I’d ask where’s the fire, but I’m guessing it’s upstairs.”

  “It’s out,” Claire said. “Hannah, I have to go. Right now.”

  “Not alone, you’re not.”

  “Why is Monica here? She left with the others.” Morganville’s privileged elite—mostly vampires, but a few well-connected humans—had fled before the draug had really attacked in force. Monica had cheerfully boarded the bus.

  “God, let go, Richard. I’m not going anywhere!” Her brother released her, and Monica made a show of smoothing down her entirely-too-high-priced dress, which ended just below illegal. “My brother’s all I have left, and he came running back here out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the little people. I couldn’t let him face danger without me, could I?” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Besides, I ran out of money. And my credit cards were frozen.”

  “So you came back here?” Claire stared at her for a second, stunned by the magnitude of the void that was Monica.

  Monica said, “Bite me, preschool. I don’t care what alligators you’re swimming with, anyway. I hope they eat all the best parts.”

  “Whatever. I don’t have time. Shane’s been taken by the draug, and I have to get him back. I have to.”

  Hannah’s whole body language softened. “If he’s been taken, you know how that ends, honey. I’m sorry about that, I truly am.”

  “No, he’s strong. Shane is so strong. If anybody can survive, he can—I believe that. Hannah, please, you have to help me ….” She gulped back tears, because tears wouldn’t help. “Please.”

  Even Monica had gone still now, and she’d lost some of her edge. Hannah considered all this in silence, and then slowly shook her head. “You’ve got no chance,” she said. “You don’t even know where he’s being held—”