Black Dawn

“Yes,” I said. Pain sheeted through me, just as it did all the time now, red hot and icy cold, stinging and gnawing and grinding.

Something’s eating you.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” he said. “You deserve to be. You’ve made me proud, Shane.”

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