Black Dawn

vampire. Once, that would have scared her. Now it hardly raised her pulse rate at all. “I can’t tell you until we get the chemicals, make batches, and test them on vampires. Some may be toxic. Some probably won’t be. The question is, what’s effective on the draug? And that’s going to take time to figure out. Myrnin’s right. It’s not a magic wand.”

“Then I have no use for it,” Oliver snapped. “We will proceed without your assistance. If what’s been reported is correct, we have cut off the draug’s major method of advancement. They are pinned in two spots: this end of town”—he slapped the map with a pale, strong hand—“and here, at the treatment plant.” Another hard slap. “It’s time to launch attacks. We’ll use the weapons we have if we must, but we can’t delay.”

“Why not? Magnus already has all the vampires he can get for his blood gardens; if he draws unfortunate humans, they won’t last, and it’s the equivalent to animal blood for us. It can’t sustain him long. They can’t raise the call. They can’t reproduce now. Let them wait until we are ready,” Myrnin said. He sounded smug. Too smug, Claire thought, and Oliver must have thought so, too, because he reached out, grabbed the lapels of Myrnin’s lab coat, and dragged him very close.

“I. Do not. Take orders. From you,” Oliver hissed. “You take orders from me, witch. And for as long as I find you useful, you’ll enjoy your privileged status. Once you’re a liability, we’ll revise the terms of your … employment. Are we understood?”

“Amelie—”

“Is dying,” Oliver said. His face looked hard as a bone knife. “Sentiment aside, we cannot leave a vacuum of power, and you know that. Without leadership, the vampires will battle each other in bloodline conflicts, run wild, attract attention. She has been a strong, fair leader. I hope I can be half as much.”

“Which half?” Myrnin asked. “Not fair, surely.”

Oliver’s fangs extended to their full, terrifying length, and he hissed like a cobra. Myrnin didn’t flinch. And didn’t fight.

Oliver shoved him away. “Do as you like,” he said. “But don’t get in my way. Any of you.”

He stalked out, throwing the door open and leaving it that way, and Claire pulled in a long, slightly shaky breath. Myrnin straightened the lapels on his lab coat with an irritated snap of fabric.

And another figure stepped into the doorway.

Shane. Carrying a glass of what looked like sweet, delicious, life-giving Coke, and a sandwich. Michael was with him, carrying another plate. On it was … a bag of type O, it looked like.

“Hey,” Shane said. “Hope we’re not interrupting. He’s in a mood.”

“You are a Greek god,” Claire said, and grabbed the Coke and sandwich. She hesitated then, mortified, and said, “Uh, these are for me?”

“Thought you might be hungry,” he said. Michael silently handed the plate to Myrnin, who bit into the bag without even the pretense of politeness. “Okay, that’s disturbing.”

“Sorry,” Myrnin mumbled, and kept sucking. Claire turned her back. Funny; a year ago, seeing something like that would totally have put her off her meal, but nothing was going to separate her from a turkey sandwich now. She took a giant, delicious bite, chewed, and washed it down with tingling soda.

So much better.

“What’s the drama?” Shane asked, and pointed to the door. “With Lord High Cranky, I mean?” He sounded like his old self, Claire thought. Maybe a day of hanging around Michael had been really good for him. Maybe it was … all okay.

“He wants faster action,” Claire said. “I said we need chemicals from the university lab.”

“You never actually got that far,” Myrnin said, “but I did know what you meant. And you’re correct. They would have a far more elegant and extensive selection of things there. We shall go.”

Shane said, “You’re kidding. You actually think she’s going anywhere with you. Ever.” He gave Myrnin a humorless little smile. “Much less me, of course. But I promise you, she is not going without me.” He watched as Claire crammed more sandwich into her mouth, moaning a little from the deliciousness of actual food, and then said, “So what exactly is it that you’re making with your chemicals again?”

“Binding agents,” she said, but it came out sounding a little like a foreign language. Maybe Klingon. She swallowed and drank more soda. “Sorry. Binding agents.”

“Which are …?”

“Chemicals that bind to contaminants in water. Or chemicals that can change the composition of water itself—something that causes a reaction or a state change.”

“From liquid to solid?”

“Exactly.”

“Like … Jell-O,” Shane said. He sounded thoughtful. Claire blinked, suddenly taken by the idea of a dump truck full of gelatin being backed up to a pool. Some kind of world record in that, she was pretty sure. But not extremely useful.

Myrnin slowly straightened up, put down the empty blood bag, and licked type O from his lips. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, you have something to say, Mr. Collins. Please tell me it isn’t about snack foods.”

“Not exactly,” Shane said. “But I think I know exactly the chemicals you’re looking for. And you won’t find them at the university. But I know where you will find them.”

“Where?”

“Morganville High School.”

CHAPTER TWELVE EVE

My brother, Jason, was out of prison, again, which I found out because I walked into a room off of the Armory and saw him holding a shotgun.

It was like falling into a nightmare. I was younger, he was younger, it was four years ago, and he was facing me with my dad’s pistol and telling me that he was going to kill me. I still remember the way he said it. An eerily calm voice, and empty eyes.

See, my brother’s not someone you should trust with a gun. Or a sharp knife. Or empty hands, and it terrified me, a bolt of utter and paralyzing fear, to see him armed like that. And loose.

Jason’s my brother, and some of his screwed-up-ness is my fault, but he’s not the first guy I’d pick to hand any kind of weapon to, even in a crisis. Sure, he could fight. Sure, he could do damage. But he was the proverbial loose cannon, rolling around crushing everything in his path, friend or foe.

And some nitwit vampire had him on reloading duty. He was taking empty cartridges, filling them up, and sealing them using a reloader press. Oh, and he was cooking silver into shot, too, or rather coating regular shot with the stuff. Probably not as effective as solid pellets, but I wasn’t surprised we were running short of precious metals to toss randomly at the enemy. The vampires stored surprising amounts of things that would hurt each other, but even their paranoia had limits, and we were bumping up against them.

He cranked out another shell on the press, then slotted it home into the shotgun, snapped the breech shut, and put the weapon aside on a rack. Then he saw me, and stopped for a second.

Neither of us said a word.

My brother was a little shorter than me, not really muscular, kinda weedy and angular. He wore his hair longer than Shane’s, and most of it flopped down and hid his dark eyes. That was for the best. He had cold eyes, my brother. Really cold.

There was a scar on his forehead, angling from left to right. It looked pretty fresh. There was also a bruise on his jaw.

“Sis,” he said. It was a nothing kind of voice, waiting for me to make a move. I didn’t, because I didn’t dare; I’d walked in here alone, and as far as I knew nobody knew where I was. Not Michael, who was hanging out with Shane today; not Claire, who was locked in the lab with Myrnin. I was dreadfully and irrationally afraid that he would somehow know that, know I was alone and vulnerable.

Deep down inside, he was a sociopath, and I’d helped make him into that by walking away from him when he