Black Dawn

away.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. The draug were swirling around me, devouring my blood fast now, trying to kill me before I could get away. They’d been holding back, I realized. Making me last. That was why they’d put me in shallow water, so I wouldn’t drown before they sucked out the last drops.

I managed to hold up a hand. It was pale and trembling, but I got it in the air, and Hannah grabbed it and pulled, hard. Once my shoulders were up, Richard took hold, too, and pushed, and I rolled over the lip of—what was it? A pool? No, some kind of container, maybe part of the purification process for the water treatment—and I hit hard steel grating with enough force to bruise, except I probably didn’t have much blood left to form any bruises. My skin was sunburn-red and stinging as if I’d rolled in broken glass, but I was alive.

Barely.

“Claire,” I whispered. I tried to get up, but my arms were too weak to lift me up. “Where’s Claire?”

Hannah crouched down next to me and took out her cell phone. She hit a button, listened for a tense few seconds, and hung up. “We need to get him out of here. Monica. Take his other side.”

“Me? Are you kidding? Blood is never coming out of this dress!”

I wasn’t imagining her, that was for sure, because I would never, ever, imagine Monica, and even if I did, why would I make her so damn useless? “Shut up,” I managed to say. She gave me a filthy look as she bent down and put her shoulder under mine. My right arm draped over her shoulder. I hoped I was bleeding on her.

“You shut up. I broke both heels off my shoes on these stupid grates of yours.” She looked pale, and scared out of her mind, but she was still Monica.

Maybe that did mean there was still a Claire out there, somewhere. It was hard to know. Hard to figure out what was real, what was false, what was just a dream.

This felt real. The pain felt very real.

Hannah and Monica muscled me up to a standing position, not that it did much good, because I couldn’t do more than shuffle along with them. “Richard,” Hannah said, and Richard Morrell turned to glance at her. “Watch our backs.”

“Done,” he said. He looked at me for a second, and nodded. “Glad you’re okay, Shane.”

I wasn’t, of course. But it was nice of him to think so. “Thanks,” I said. “For coming.” Like it was some kind of party that I’d thrown. How polite I was, all of a sudden.

“Thank Hannah. She was the one who signed us up.” He smiled, and all of a sudden he wasn’t the Dick Morrell I’d distrusted all my life, the one who was the shining football star and class president and perfect student, the good son of the bad mayor. He was just Richard, a guy who’d come to get me.

A guy who’d saved my life. “Hey,” I said, “sorry I’ve been such an asshole to you all your life.”

“Can’t really blame you,” he said. “Everybody judges me by my little sister and my old man. It isn’t unfair exactly.”

“Hey!” Monica said, and aimed a halfhearted, off-balance kick at her brother. Which he avoided. “I am so not voting for you next election.”

“I don’t think there will be another election,” he said, “or that I’d want to be mayor of this slow-motion disaster, anyway. I only did it because they said I had to.” He was walking backward now, facing away from us and watching our tails as we inched along the walkway. I began to wake up enough to see that we were in the water treatment plant’s lower levels, which reeked even though they were open to the air. There were tanks on all sides, and open pools on the other side of the chain link. Sewage was moving through there, or should have been, I guessed; it was no longer going anywhere, which was part of why it stank so badly.

I’d been locked in the last set of shallow tanks, where the recycled and treated water was given a final rinse before heading into the storage towers.

But it was worse than that, a whole lot worse. The pool we were passing now was large, and it was deep, and it had bodies. Just like the Civic Pool, but this water was a murky gray-green color, thick with draug and contaminants.

This was Magnus’s new blood garden, and it teemed with the draug, although few of them had any kind of shape to them. They were ignoring us, because we were human, and they were ripping into their favorite snacks. I felt the droplets of draug that were still on me sliding down, drawn toward the main pool, and a trickle of water ran from my feet to the edge.

Hannah had paused, staring. Monica made a strangled noise and tried to pull me forward, but I stayed put. “What?” Monica demanded. “Okay, fine, drowned people, gross, but we have to go!”

“Not yet,” Hannah said. “Hold on to him.” She slipped out from under my arm, and Monica staggered on her heel-less shoes as I sagged against her.

“Hey, watch the hands, Collins!” she snapped. As if I had any control over them, or wanted to feel her up anyway. She was just scared, and she wanted nothing more than to dump me and run.

I guessed that it was kind of impressive that she didn’t do that.

“Hannah?” Richard asked, backing toward her. “What are we doing?”

“We can’t leave this. They’re growing in numbers again. We have to take them down if we can.”

“How?”

“I have silver powder,” Hannah said. She grabbed the phone again and dialed. “I need to let them know to evac. Come on, come on …”

She finally got an answer.

I heard the screams coming out of the phone from four feet away.

CHAPTER TEN MICHAEL

Getting the attention of the draug wasn’t a problem. From the moment I ran into the water treatment plant I knew they’d felt me, seen me, sensed my approach; they could detect me the way I could feel a heartbeat across the room. Predator senses. They were tuned to vampires, and I was young, vulnerable, blasting full volume Come eat me. I’m easy.

So far, my brilliant plan was working. Shane would have been pleased; in fact, he would have been right in there with me, I knew that. Hang in there, bro, I silently begged him. We’d had our good times and bad times, but when I thought of Shane what I mostly remembered was holding on to him the night Alyssa died. Holding him back from running into the burning house to die along with her. Then holding him back from attacking Monica Morrell, who’d been standing there flicking a lighter.

That crazy suicidal streak of his had always scared me, because I knew it was still inside him. But this time … this time I was hoping he’d be holding on with both hands. He had things to live for now. People who loved him.

Yeah, and one of them is you, and you left him here.

Shane wasn’t the only one who could wallow in guilt. I was soaking in it, because I’d left him. I’d done it because at the time I’d thought Myrnin was right—that Shane couldn’t have survived more than a few minutes. Myrnin had taken advantage of our shock and confusion. Mine especially. I had the keys. I could have said, Hell no—screw you. I’m going back for my friend. Instead, I’d mostly thought of getting the girls away from there, cutting our losses. And that had been Myrnin’s focus. Claire wasn’t ever willing to admit it, but we all knew that Myrnin put her safety ahead of anyone else’s. Even his own.

Just as I had put Eve’s first, in the heat of the moment. Shane wouldn’t even blame me for that, the jackass. He’d have done exactly the same thing. And he’d be right here, right now, moving with the shadows, luring the enemy away from those we needed to protect and taking the worst of it on ourselves.

I sometimes thought he’d had a little too much influence on me. I never used to be suicidal.

I spotted a still pool of dirty water ahead, near the corner of the building, and slowed; there was no way to be sure if it was safe or infected with the draug, but I couldn’t take the chance. Avoiding its slippery edges took me