Black Dawn

“What? What did I say?” Michael asked him. “You okay?”

Shane had just … shut down. Michael glanced aside at Claire, and she took Shane’s hand. No response. “Shane? What’s wrong?”

“Hero,” he whispered. “Michael said I was his hero.”

“Well, you’re mine, too.”

“Always wanted to be … but it isn’t right, that can’t be right. Isn’t there a pool inside? We have to get to the pool, put the silver in the pool ….” He squeezed his eyes shut, and he was trembling now. “This is wrong. I can’t be the hero. I can’t be. That’s how I know … know it’s wrong.”

“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.