Black Dawn: The Morganville Vampires

by Rachel Caine

  Theo was … less pragmatic about that than most. Thankfully. And Eve was right. He would have a calming effect here, if he wasn’t floating somewhere in a pool of water, being eaten alive.

  Claire shuddered.

  “Want to come with?” Shane asked, licking melted chocolate from his lips. Which was a little bit mesmerizing, actually. Claire had a dizzying impulse to help him with that, but she shook it off. Time and place, Claire, time and place …

  “She can’t come with us,” Claire said, as Eve opened her mouth to agree. “Come on, Eve, you lost about two pints of blood last night. You’re not strong enough yet and you know it. You need rest.”

  Eve’s mouth closed without making a comment, but she gave Claire a steady, cool look, as if she’d let her down by even mentioning what had happened. Although it was pretty clear that Eve, and Michael, were thinking a lot about it.

  “Right,” Shane said in the silence. “That was awkward. Eve, you stay and … bake or something.”

  “The hell I will,” she snapped back, way too tense. “If you don’t want me with you, maybe I’ll just grab a couple of Amelie’s boys and take them shopping for more weapons. We need to arm up, and we need to do it fast. That okay with you, or should I change into my pearls and an apron and die like a good girl?”

  Shane held up his hands in surrender and took a step back. “I—have nothing to say.” Smart boy, Claire thought. “But if you go out, you take more than a couple of vampires with you, Eve. I mean it. Take Michael.”

  “Well, you know what they say: less is more,” Eve said. She didn’t even comment on the Michael issue, but there was a stubborn, wounded look to her, and she didn’t meet Shane’s eyes.

  “Right now, more is more, and much more is much better. You can’t dick around with these … things. You know that, right?”

  “Oh, I know,” Eve said. Her dark eyes were filled with shadows, windows in a haunted house. “I was just thinking that it would be a good idea to start making weapons stockpiles around town. If we start a running fight, we need to be able to get to weapons when we need them.”

  That was … a very good idea, Claire realized, and she nodded without speaking. Shane even looked respectfully impressed, which was an odd look for him; he wasn’t impressed by much. “Get silver,” he said. “If you can, knock over a jewelry store and get all the silver chains. We can break them up into pieces. Makes a good grenade.” Silver hurt, or killed, both vampires and draug. Shane sounded practical about it, but then, he’d spent his high school years being dragged around with his vampire-hating father. He probably knew more about killing vampires than anyone else in town … except the vampires themselves, of course. “It’s about the only thing that does work on these bastards. Talk to Myrnin about making more shotgun shells, too.”

  Myrnin being Claire’s vampire boss—if a relationship that crazy could be called employer-employee, anyway. She was Igor to his Frankenstein. He had an underground lab and everything, which she’d managed to make a whole lot less creepy during her tenure with him … but not less chaotic. Myrnin was walking chaos, and a lot of the time that was fun.

  Sometimes, not so much.

  Eve rolled her eyes, now almost back to the old carefree girl Claire knew. “Yeah, Collins, I wouldn’t have thought of Myrnin ever. Of course I’ll talk to him. He’s the only one who had his crap together before we went out the first time.”

  “Hey!”

  “Present company excepted, supposedly.”

  “Better,” Shane said, and surprised her by suddenly enfolding her in a fierce hug. “Stay safe, all right?”

  “Safe.” Eve agreed, and then held him at arm’s length, studying him with thoughtful intensity. “Huh. You don’t hug, you know. Unless you get hugged first.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Nope. Never ever.”

  Shane shrugged. “Guess everybody changes once in a while.”

  All of a sudden Claire was struck by how different they all were now. Eve had grown steadier, more thoughtful. Shane had taken his aggression in hand and was starting to understand it, channel it. Even open up a little more than he had.

  Michael … Michael’s changes were more unsettling, less easy to appreciate, but he’d definitely changed. He was struggling not to change even more—not to drift further away from his lost human life.

  As for Claire herself, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t tell, really …. She supposed she had more confidence, more courage, more insight, but it was hard to imagine herself from the outside like that. She just … was. More or less, she was still Claire.

  Eve waved good-bye, hugged Claire hard—that was a typical Eve gesture—and headed toward the room where they’d left their stuff. Michael was in there. Claire hoped they could work out their … Problems didn’t seem a strong enough word, and issues sounded too mundane. There wasn’t really a word for what was going on between her best friends, other than complicated.

  Claire grabbed coffee to go, wolfed down a couple of cookies—premixed or not, they were hot, melty, and delicious—and followed Shane down another hallway. It might be, she thought, the one Oliver had used, but this place was confusing. If there were signs, they were visible only to vampires. But Shane took a right down an identical hallway, then a left, and then they were in another round room, this one with a massive barred door at one spoke of the wheel. The door also had guards … lots of them. Amelie’s personal detail, Claire thought as she recognized some of them. They didn’t look as spotlessly turned out as she was used to seeing. The dark tailored suits were gone, and so were the sunglasses. Instead, they wore clothing from the same archival stores that she and her friends had scavenged … and she supposed that what they’d chosen at least indicated what period in history they were most comfortable with.

  The two guards at the door, for instance. The taller, thinner one with the light hazel eyes and close-cut blond hair … he was wearing a chunky black leather jacket with spikes and buckles, and skinny jeans. Very eighties. His friend with the sharply drawn cheekbones and narrow eyes had on the tightest polyester pants Claire had ever seen, and a square-cut jacket to match, with a tight buttoned shirt in a loud earth-toned pattern.

  “It’s like disco inferno up in here,” Shane muttered, and she smothered a laugh. Not that it mattered; vampires could hear that, and if they wanted to take offense, they would. But the seventies addict just smiled a little, showing the tips of his fangs, and the eighties dude couldn’t be bothered with that much response. There were more guards standing around the walls, still as statues. Most had chosen clothing that wasn’t so … retro, but one was wearing what looked like a gangster suit from the Prohibition era. Claire half expected him to be toting a violin case with a machine gun in it, just like in the movies.

  “No one goes into the armory,” Disco Inferno said. He was apparently the spokesman for the door. “Go back, please.”

  “Order from Oliver,” Claire said. “We’re to find Theo Goldman.”

  “Yesterday,” Shane put in helpfully. “And we’d like to not die. So. Armory it is.”

  “No one goes into the armory,” the vampire repeated, sounding bored now and staring over the top of Shane’s head, which was quite a trick even for a tall guy. “Not without authorization.”

  “Which they have,” said a voice from behind the two of them. Claire turned quickly, which she tended to do now, when vampires talked behind her, and found that Amelie’s pretty blond vampire “sister”—not by family but by vampire blood, although she didn’t exactly get all of that relationship detail—Naomi was standing three feet behind them, having arrived in eerie silence. She smiled and bowed her head, just a little. She was still very formal, used to the manners beaten into her hundreds of years ago, but she at least was trying; it wasn’t a full curtsy or anything, not that such would have been practical with the khaki cargo pants and work shirt she was wearing. “I myself have spoken with Oliver. I am to accompany these two and help them locate Dr. Goldman.�
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  That held some weight. Disco Inferno and his eighties counterpart—Billy Idol?—did some heavy lifting on what looked like solid steel bars, plus a complicated lock, and finally swung the doors open for them. Naomi passed the two of them and looked over her shoulder with that same charming, though slightly awkward smile. “I hope that you do not mind me accompanying you,” she said. She had a bit of an accent, antique and French, and Claire could see that it had an effect on men in general, even Shane, who was more than a little anti-vampire in any form.

  “Nah,” he said, “I’m good. Claire?”

  “Fine,” she said. She liked Naomi. She liked that the ancient vampire was trying so hard to be … modern. And she liked that Naomi wasn’t, after all, attracted to Michael, as they’d all thought at first. “Uh, Naomi, do you know how to actually … fight?”

  “But of course,” she said, and led the way inside. They entered a big square room, which was—and this, Claire thought, was no real surprise—stacked floor to ceiling with racks of boxes. Vampire paranoia really did have no limits. Naomi stopped at the first one and opened the hinged top of it. There were shotguns inside. She removed one, broke it open, and snapped it shut again with a practiced flick of her wrist as she smiled. “All vampires can fight,” she said. “I am less familiar with modern weapons, but blades do not work so well on the draug, as we found to our horror long ago.”

  “What else did you use, the last time you fought them?” Claire asked. Naomi was opening another box. This one contained swords, and she shook her head sadly and let the lid fall shut.

  “Courage,” she said. “Desperation. And a good deal of luck. Silver is the best charm we have, but it burns us as well. We’ve found nothing else that will hurt them but fire, which is dangerous enough for us, too …. Ah.” She flipped back the lid on yet another box and lifted out something that looked big, clumsy, and complicated, with tanks and a hose. Definitely a Myrnin invention, judging by the brass ornamentation on it, but beneath that it looked sleek and industrial. “As you see.”

  “What is it?” Claire asked, frowning. It looked a little like one of those rocket jet packs that the science fiction movies loved so much.

  “That,” Shane said, taking it from Naomi’s delicate hands, “is freaking awesome.”

  “Yeah, but what is it exactly?” Claire asked.

  “Flamethrower,” he said, and huffed with effort as he lifted it to his shoulders like a giant backpack. It had quick-release buckles that he did up around his chest and over his shoulders. “So this will work on the draug?”

  “Yes,” Naomi said. “But be very careful. The draug are not only hiding in water, they are liquid—and when you touch liquid with fire it becomes steam. They can survive in the steam, for a short time. If you breathe it in, they will kill you very quickly from within. Even the touch of them on skin in any form is dangerous, to humans or vampires.”

  Shane’s enthusiasm for the flamethrower dimmed, but he didn’t take it off. That, Claire thought, was because there was something incredibly macho about walking around with flammable weapons that she would never quite understand. If she’d tried it, it would have just made her totally aware of how non-flame-retardant she was. “Right,” Shane said. “Keep it at a distance.”

  “And watch where you aim it, please,” Naomi responded coolly. “I believe I speak also for young Claire in that. Fire is no great friend to humans in battle, either.”

  Claire rejected the crossbows that she found in the next container—silver-tipped, but they wouldn’t do nearly enough damage. They’d just punch right through the draug, which had a body consistency somewhere between Jell-O and mud, except for the master draug, Magnus. He was plenty strong. Strong enough to snap necks, say—something Claire was horribly familiar with and tried hard not to think about. At all.

  “What about fire arrows?” Claire asked. “Would they work?”

  “Not very well. The draug’s nature will douse small fires. Only something on the order of what Shane is carrying will truly damage them. Even, say, bottles of gasoline and fire—”

  “We call those Molotov cocktails,” Shane said helpfully. Mr. Mayhem.

  Naomi gave him a blank look and continued. “These would not do much to slow them down. It would be as if you threw the bottle into water; most likely the flame would simply be extinguished. Perhaps there might be some effect, but I doubt this is a time when you would prefer to experiment. There’s going to be little time to refine your techniques and tools in the heat of battle.”

  “Well, I liked Myrnin’s shotgun shells,” Claire offered. “Has he made—”

  “More? Yeah. Found it,” Shane called, leaning over another open crate. He fished out a handful of shells and held them up.

  “Are you sure those aren’t just regular …”

  Shane silently flipped one to her. On the casing was drawn, in black marker, the alchemical symbol for silver. Definitely Myrnin, because only he would think to write a warning that nobody but the two of them could possibly read. “How do you know what this means?”

  Shane looked faintly injured. “I make it my business to know everything about silver. And I saw your notes. I study up on everything when it comes to your boss, anyway.” There was a flicker of jealousy about that, but she didn’t have time, or energy, to consider it very much. Not even whether she liked it.

  “There must be hundreds of shells in there,” Claire said wonderingly, as she leaned over the crate. Her hair, growing longer now, brushed over her face, and she impatiently pushed it back. It needed a wash, and that made her yearn for a shower, but cold bottled-water rinses were all she could look forward to for a while. “I thought he used everything he had during the battle last night.”

  “He’s worked straight through,” Naomi said. “Shut away in a room down the hall. He summoned guards to bring these here only an hour ago. I understand he has commandeered others to make these cartridges as well.”

  When Myrnin worked that feverishly, it meant one of two things: he was desperately afraid, or he was in a severely manic phase. Or both. Neither was good. When he was afraid, Myrnin was very unpredictable. When he was manic, he was inevitably going to crash, hard, and there was no time for that now.

  As if she’d read Claire’s thoughts, Naomi said, “He does need looking after, but it can wait until we find Theo.”

  “Amelie’s that bad?” Shane asked.

  “Yes. She is that bad, I’m afraid. If I still had a heart, it would ache for her, my brave and foolish sister. She should never have come after us. The law is the law. Those caught by draug are already dead. Rescuing us put all others at risk.”

  Claire stopped loading shotgun shells into her messenger bag to stare. “She saved you. And Michael. And Oliver.”

  “It doesn’t matter who she saved. The point is that she allowed herself, our queen, to be put at risk for others, and that is foolish, and emotional. The time of Elizabeth in armor is long over. Queens have ever ruled far from the battles.”

  “News flash, lady. There are no queens anymore,” Shane said. He loaded shells in a shotgun and snapped it shut, then searched for a place to strap it on that didn’t interfere with the flamethrower. “No queens, no kings, no emperors. Not in America. Only CEOs. Same thing, but not so many crowns.”

  “Vampires will always have rulers,” Naomi said. “It is the order of things.” She said it like the sky was blue, a plain and obvious fact. Shane shrugged and gave Claire a look; she shrugged back. Vamp politics were so not their business. “Come. We must find the doctor.”

  Shane shook his head. “He’s the only one you have?”

  “No,” Naomi said, “but he is the best, and the only one we have who has moved somewhat beyond medieval techniques of bleeding and cupping.” She handed Claire a shotgun and gave her a doubtful look. “You can shoot?”

  Claire nodded as she loaded the cartridges. “Shane taught me.” Not that it was easy for someone her size; a shotgun packed a hard kick to the sh
oulder, and she’d always come away from practice bruised and aching. Naomi was even more frail, but Claire was willing to bet that it would be nothing for her.

  Shane settled his flamethrower more comfortably on his shoulders. “Ladies? After you.”

  “Rude,” Claire said.

  “I was being polite!”

  “Not when you have a flamethrower.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  MICHAEL

  I miss my guitar.

  That sounded stupid in my head, and it probably was stupid, but my fingers ached to be holding the weight of it. Music always stilled the noise inside me, made everything seem orderly, logical, not so out of control and terrifying. From the first time I’d picked up an instrument I’d realized that those sounds that other people made, famous people … those could be mine, mine to control, mine to use to speak without words. And that had been more than magic.

  It had been survival.

  Now, without my guitar, I felt naked, alone, out of control. But it would be deeply risky to go back to the house to retrieve anything, much less something everybody would see as nonessential. Maybe I could get to the music store where I taught lessons; that was farther uptown, away from where the draug were holed up. Didn’t matter if it was closed. A vampire didn’t have to seriously worry about things like locked doors and steel screens over windows, and entry restrictions didn’t apply to stores.

  I still couldn’t quite reconcile that. I was a vampire.

  I know, it wasn’t a revelation, exactly …. I had been a vampire for a while now, and before that, I’d been half vampire, half ghost, trapped in my house, put on hold between life and death. But until today, I hadn’t felt so … wrong. So alien.