by Rachel Caine
“Shane!”
He just … folded up, suddenly, and collapsed with a hollow boom of his back against the metal wall of the shed as he sat down. His eyes opened, and they were haunted, dark, empty. “This isn’t right,” he said. He looked at her, but it was as if he didn’t really see her. “You can’t be here. You weren’t here. You were safe. I’d never let you get hurt, Claire. Not again. It was just us, not you …”
“What in heaven is he talking about?” Myrnin snapped. “We don’t have time for this—”
“He’s remembering the dreams,” Michael said softly. “The draug make humans dream. I don’t think he can tell the difference anymore between then and now.”
Myrnin considered that for about, oh, a second, and then shook it off. “Irrelevant,” he said. “This substance he found changes everything. With this chemical, we can make weapons that will not just weaken but kill them, destroy them utterly, and do no harm to those vampires trapped inside the pools. Thousands of years of terror, death, running—all of it can end. We need to find a way to leave here and kill Magnus. He is the only one who matters now.”
Claire watched as Michael’s eyes narrowed and turned dangerously red. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention, but we’re surrounded by entire fountains full of draug. This stuff is awesome, but it’s not a magic shield or anything, and the car is dead. We need transportation to get out of here.”
“Well, that isn’t forthcoming at the moment, now, is it? Perhaps there are other vehicles close by. The boy’s fluent in stealing them, isn’t he?” Myrnin frowned at Shane. “I understood he had such skills.”
“Leave him alone,” Michael said, and his fists clenched. “We wait.”
“We cannot wait!”
“Hell we can’t!”
The argument didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and Claire found herself staring at something dimly glimpsed in the shadows. Something pale. For a heart-stopping moment, it resolved into a human shape, and all she could think was that somehow, the draug had found a way inside. Her heart slammed hard in instinctive alarm and shock, and she gasped out loud, but then she realized that it wasn’t the draug, or even some weird lurker … it was a white jumpsuit on a hanger.
A plastic jumpsuit. Suitable, she guessed, for rooting around in mucky landscaping crises or blown-up toilets or whatever.
She dashed for it, grabbed it off the wall, and yelled, “Turn around!” as she unzipped Shane’s jacket. She tossed it over her shoulder to Michael, then stepped into the legs of the jumpsuit, careful not to tear it; it was pretty thin stuff, but it ought to be waterproof. Basically, a form-fitting raincoat. It fastened with a plastic zipper up the front, and she hastily finished that and looked around for something for her hands.
Nitrile gloves, a whole box of them. She grabbed two and slid them on.
“Here,” Michael said, and handed her a battered, oily cowboy hat. “I think the janitor left it. It should keep the rain off your face and neck.” When she put it on, it dropped all the way to her nose. “Or maybe a lot more of you. Wait a second.” He scooped a plastic bag full of Super Slurper and handed it to her. “Use it if you have to.”
Myrnin shoved in between them and handed her a … wrench. A big, heavy thing. “There should be an emergency stop for the sprinkler system outside this building,” he said. “Shut it down, and we can all get out. If you can’t find it, run for help.”
For the first time, Claire realized that she was going to run away and leave them all here, trapped. Shane was almost catatonic, shivering, paralyzed by something she didn’t fully understand.
She had to do it. For him, if nothing else. She needed to get him out of here.
“Wait,” Michael said. “Maybe I should do this.”
“Run out into the draug? Are you crazy? If I do it, I’m just a puny little human, right? I get more time than you do. They’d be on you from the first second you step out the door.”
Myrnin said, “She’s right, boy. But Claire—Magnus will be looking for you. Be careful. You’re at risk, too.”
Claire held up the brim of the stupidly large cowboy hat and nodded to Michael and Myrnin both. “I’ll be back,” she said. “And I’m getting you out of here.”
Michael didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “I know. Just take care of yourself.”
Claire crouched down next to Shane and stared into his blank eyes for a long moment. “Can you hear me?” she asked, and put her hands on his face. He still needed a shave. “Sweetie, please, talk to me. Can you?”
“Claire,” he said, and a long, agonizing shudder went through him. “Are you really here?” He reached up and touched her fingers. Held them. “Are you?”
“Always,” she said. She kissed him, and felt something in him responding, urgent and desperate for reassurance. “You have to stay with me, Shane. I need you.” She dropped her voice to a bare whisper, lips right at his ear. “You promised me something, and you’d better not be backing out now.”
When she pulled back, though, the panic was worse, not better, and he said, “What’s her name? Claire, what’s her name?”
He wasn’t making any sense at all. She felt tears threaten, but she didn’t have time. Get him safe, then get him back. That was all she could do. “I’ll be back,” she said.
Michael said, “Claire. I’ll look after him.”
He always does, Claire thought. For all that Shane hated the vampire side of Michael, Michael never let them down. She never doubted that he would protect them, not for a second. She never doubted any of them, really. Eve, Michael, Shane … they were her family.
Looking at him right now, she felt a surge of breathtaking love, for Michael, and for what the four of them were, together.
“What?” Michael asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I just want to hug you right now,” Claire said. “You’re the most fantastic—” She couldn’t finish that, suddenly, because her throat closed up on her, and her vision dissolved into sparkles, refracted by tears. She cleared her throat, blinked, and said, “Never mind.”
He understood. She could see it in his eyes. “Nobody’s dying today,” he said. “Go.”
She ran.
It reminded Claire, stupidly, of running through the sprinklers when she was a little kid, squealing with delight as cold water slapped against her skin; she’d had a sunshine-yellow swimsuit when she was six, she remembered, with a big pink sun on it.
This was not nearly as fun.
The second she’d stepped outside the shed door, she’d had to revise her plan, because the umbrellas she’d left by the entrance were gone—carried off, she assumed, by the draug. She’d been hoping for the extra protection, but that was clearly not happening.
So she gripped the heavy, gritty weight of the wrench in her hand and took off running.
The draug were around her; she could see them in flickers, hidden in the falling streams of water. They weren’t quite manifesting in human form; that must take energy, and a lot of it, and they weren’t quite as strong now as they’d been before. They weren’t singing. We’ve hurt them, she thought, and felt a fierce surge of pride along with the adrenaline.
And then her running foot hung up on a sprinkler head hidden in a tuft of wet grass, and she lost her balance. Her arms grabbed for some kind of support, and the fall seemed to occur in slow motion, each sticky droplet of liquid shimmering in front of her eyes as she lurched forward, and then she had a close-up, almost microscopic view of the moisture-dewed dead grass and mud.
She hit hard and rolled, and felt the sprinkler head catch the leg of her plastic jumpsuit. It would tear, of course, that wasn’t even a question. She’d probably ripped a hole the size of Kansas in it. But she couldn’t stop, because there was a shadow in the falling drops, man-sized, forming into hands, pale and grubby and boneless, and they reached out for her. There were puddles in the low-lying areas of grass, muddy but filled with shimmering silvery movement as they heaved toward her.
Th
e hands—they felt like cold jelly through the plastic—closed around her ankle, and she felt herself sliding backward, toward the shallow puddle. It can’t be that deep. But she knew it didn’t matter; they could drown her in an inch of water if they held her down. It wouldn’t take long, but worse than that, Michael and Myrnin and Shane wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch her die; they’d come out to the rescue, and that would be the end of it. Nobody to tell the others what they’d discovered.
How they could win.
As she clawed at the wet grass, ripping up fibrous chunks and leaving muddy finger trenches, she saw Michael standing in the open door of the shed. He was tense, staring at her with fierce, angry, horrified focus. About to bolt outside.
“No! Stay there! Don’t let Myrnin come out, either!” she yelled. The draug’s liquid was pounding down on her back, and it felt like fists now, small but growing larger, the blows stinging with force. The pull on her ankle was as irresistible as being caught in a flood tide; she couldn’t kick free of it.
Wait. Wait for it.
She twisted around and saw that the hand was pulling her foot down into the muddy water of the pool.
Now.
Claire pulled out the plastic bag, opened it, and plunged her hand inside to grab up a handful of the flaky white powder. It felt gritty and dry, like bone dust. She flipped over, sat up, and threw the powder into the shallow pool of water.
All hell exploded.
It wasn’t just the puddle that reacted, it was everything, as if it was all one creature, connected. The puddle tried to crawl away, literally flowing out of the hollow and over the grass, but it didn’t have the chance. It was like watching something freeze solid in super fast-forward. The muddy water turned into a muddy, rubbery gelatin, turned solid, and stopped moving.
She watched it turn black, and crumble into black flakes. There was nothing living in that.
The water coming out of the sprinklers stopped acting like water; it rose up, straight up, arrowing directly into the clouds.
Escaping.
The sprinklers kept spinning, hissing out pressure, but only a little water made it out, and it seemed like natural stuff.
Claire yanked her foot free of the gelatinous substance with a squishing, squelching noise, and realized that a lot of the grass had dried off around her—the draug had taken most of the water with them. There was still some moisture, but it was just that. No draug.
They were running away from what she’d used.
She picked up a handy stick and poked at the rubbery mass that had been the draug …. It was heavy, solid, flaking into bits, and it smelled dead and rotten.
She stood up, sealed the bag, and gave Michael a big thumbs-up as she settled the hat at a better angle on her head. “I think that’s proof of concept,” she said. “Now we just have to get the stuff out of here.”
“Turn off the sprinklers!” Myrnin said, elbowing Michael out of the doorway. “Go on, shoo!”
“The draug took off, Myrnin, didn’t you see it? How often do you see drops go straight up?”
“I’m not coming out until you shut the valve.”
Chicken, she thought, but didn’t say. He was right, of course. Maybe they were lying in the pipes, waiting for a delicious bite of vampire. She would have been only a snack, but Michael and Myrnin would be a sixteen-course meal.
“Stay there,” she said, and jogged on around the side of the shed. Finding the valve was surprisingly easy; turning it off wasn’t so much, since she didn’t have vampire strength, but she managed to twist the wrench a couple of times until the valve snugged tight.
Overhead, thunder rumbled.
Claire looked up; the clouds looked dark and heavily loaded now with rain. The draug, back in their transportation, she supposed. They could come down again, anytime.
But what about Magnus? Could he travel that way, or was he different? She felt like he was, somehow … he could transform to liquid but he had more mass to him. He was more there, more real than the others. They were like pieces split off of him, but connected to him. That was how it felt, anyway.
A shadow blocked out her view of the clouds, and she pushed back the awkward cowboy hat to look up. It was Myrnin. He offered her a hand up, and she accepted it. Her gloved hand still felt gritty from the powder. There wasn’t a single speck of moisture on it. Even when she swiped it over the still-moist ground, nothing stayed on the plastic without being absorbed.
“It works,” she said. Somehow she sounded surprised, as if she’d been standing in the doorway watching instead of actually doing it. “Myrnin—it really works.”
“Yes,” he said. There was a look on his face that she couldn’t understand at all. “Take that hat off. It ill becomes you.”
She took that to mean it was stupid, which she agreed with, and tipped it off. It dripped a stream of water off the brim—clean rainwater, not the draug contamination. The cool air hit her damp hair—damp with sweat, she realized—and she shivered.
Michael wasn’t far away. Shane was with him, almost there; she could see the struggle in him when he smiled. “Nice moves,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “It was my very best muddy crawl.” Her heart ached to see how pale he seemed, how shaky.
Michael seemed to know it, too, because he cut in with the usual banter to take the focus away from Shane. “I agree. You threw that powder like a girl, though.”
She channeled her inner Eve. “Which means what? Awesomely? Because you’d better not mean it any other way, or I might get offended.”
Michael was smiling, but he still looked strained. There was a trace of fright somewhere in it. “Don’t make us do that again,” he said. “Don’t make us stand there while you—take those kinds of risks.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “And we’re going to be all right. Didn’t you say we were, before I came out here?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “But I was kinda lying.”
“I know, stupid.”
Myrnin cleared his throat. “The draug may be gone, but they can return at any time.” He cast an uneasy glance up at the clouds. “We need transportation. I can perhaps fix the car, but—”
“Won’t have to,” Michael said, and nodded toward the corner of the high school, where another car was slowly pulling around the corner. It was a police cruiser, sleek and dangerous, and there were two figures in it. One had a shotgun barrel pointed out the open window. Claire was surprised to realize that it was Richard Morrell.
Hannah Moses was driving.
She stopped the car and stepped out, frowning at them. “What the hell are you fools doing out here?” she asked.
“What brought you?” Shane asked.
Richard answered that one. “All vampire sedans are equipped with GPS and an automatic signal when there’s engine trouble,” he said. “We got an alert over her radio that one was out of service here. There wasn’t any reason for it to be here, so Hannah wanted to check it out.” He stepped out of the car, and seemed to lose his balance for a moment. Hannah gave him a sharp, concerned look, and he caught himself with a hand on the cruiser’s roof. “Damn. Low blood sugar.”
“And no sleep,” Hannah said. “And pushing yourself too hard. Richard—”
“I’m okay, Hannah.” Not, Claire noticed, Chief, or Chief Moses, which confirmed her intuition that there was more going on between the two of them than just professional courtesy. He even threw her a smile, and it was a sweet one. Hannah didn’t smile back. She continued to look concerned. “Everything okay, folks?”
“The car’s trashed,” Michael said, “but then again, I think it was worth it. We found a way to kill the draug.” He said it casually, but the gleam in his eyes gave it away.
Both Richard and Hannah looked at him with identical expressions of What did you just say? “Well,” Hannah said, “I know we can hurt them with silver, but—”
“Not silver,” Myrnin said. “Silver only wounds them, and it can’t kill Magnus, tho
ugh it can certainly make him very unhappy. No indeed. The boy’s right. We can kill them.” He dashed off, and came back with his hands full of the blackened mass—well, not his hands, because even Myrnin wasn’t nuts enough to actually pick up the draug with his bare skin. It was actually dumped into Claire’s abandoned cowboy hat. He shook it, and it jiggled like gelatin.
Lifelessly. Bits of it flaked away.
“What the …?” Hannah bent forward over the hat, then reeled back, hand to her nose. “Oh, man. That smells like a weeklong floater.”
Claire looked at Shane. “What’s a floater?”
“Dead body,” he said. “You don’t want to know, trust me.” His gaze lingered on her, as if he was still in doubt that she was okay.
Or there.
She stripped off the nitrile gloves and gripped his hand tight and fast. He sent her a fast, unsteady smile.
“What is it?” Richard asked. He was staying well back from what was in the hat, but he took a pen from his pocket and poked it into the mass. No reaction. “I mean, what caused this?”
“Chemicals. Janitorial chemicals, to be precise. Young Shane here thought of it.” That was generous of Myrnin to say so, Claire thought; Shane seemed surprised, too. “It’s led me to think of a few other things that might work as well, but this is surprisingly effective.”
Shane’s pride, however cautious and concealed, was catching; Claire caught the gleam of it in Hannah’s face, and Richard’s, too. No, not pride. Hope. A rare commodity in Morganville.
“There’s a full barrel of it in the trunk of the sedan,” Myrnin said. “We’ll need to get it in yours, quickly.” As if to emphasize that, the clouds overhead gave another ominous rumble; he flinched, moved vampire-speed to the black sedan, and popped the trunk open by breaking the lock with a sharp pull of his fingers. He and Michael wrestled the barrel out, but allowed Shane and Hannah to help him roll it over to the police car.
