Black Dawn

Michael shifted uncomfortably next to me. “I’m sorry, but we can’t wait here. We really need to get to Founder’s Square. This stuff in the trunk—”

“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

And I drove them back, as I thought about traps, and the draug, and revenge.

It was the only thing I could think of now.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN EVE

The vampire library was not my thing. It was maybe Claire’s thing, but I like current novels. Freaky ones, preferably, with black covers and red type on the front. My idea of research is looking at take-out menus.

So it was kind of ironic that Naomi’s concept of how to discover why Claire could see Magnus was … searching the library. The idea of me, sitting at a table, leafing through books that had been old before Columbus sailed was so very not right. Also, probably not very useful. But I didn’t much mind. Letter of the agreement, and all that. The worst that could happen was a paper cut—of course, any blood drawn around a hungry vampire was, by definition, a worst-case scenario in the making.

“Honestly,” I said as Naomi dropped another armload on the table, which was already overloaded with big, leather-bound selections, “I can’t read this. And I’m not even sure that this is written in English, anyway.”

“It is English. Middle English,” she said. “Don’t they teach Chaucer these days?”

“Well, they teach him,” I said. “I didn’t exactly learn him. Or, you know, translating. Isn’t there software for this or something? Don’t you digitize?”

Naomi had always struck me as calm. That had been her first characteristic: calm, then pretty. She was still pretty, but that was mostly an involuntary thing; she looked as tired as any vampire I’d ever seen. The calm was completely missing. She seemed just … focused. And annoyed.

“All you need do is look for one word,” she said. “If you find it, I will read the section. Or do you want me to reconsider our agreement? Your choice.” She pulled up a chair on the other side of the table and began scanning another book. Somehow she made it look effortless and graceful.

For me, it was very heavy lifting. We’d already been at it for an hour, and my eyes ached. So did my back. I went back to the stiff pages of the book I’d been examining—I wouldn’t say reading, really. The words were strangely formed, much more vertical than I was used to seeing. It wasn’t even typeset. Someone had actually written this out by hand. A copy of a book back in those days was just that: copied. By hand. With a pen.

Talk about carpal tunnel.

And then, to my shock, I focused in on a word.

The word. “Uh, I think I have something.”

“Good,” Naomi said, and was around the table in a flash, reading where I pointed. “That is not what I am looking for, but it does pertain to the draug. Keep searching.”

Draug, draug, draug. I was honestly sick of thinking about them. I wanted a day without a crisis. Just one. As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end.

It was another hour and a half before I got another hit. A spiky splash of letters on the page caught my eye just as I turned another leaf, and I flipped back. Yeah, that said draug, again. I held up my hand. Naomi glanced at what it was, then leaned forward and smoothed her fingers over the old ink.

She took the book from me and sank down in the chair beside mine. Even tired, even rumpled, she was beautiful, and I had a revival of the Jealousy Parade for a second or two, even though I knew Michael wasn’t interested in her … and even if he had been, Naomi was an iceberg. I knew that now.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her eyes had grown wider, and a bit of color bled into her ivory-pale cheeks. “Yes!” She stood up, pacing with the book held in both hands as she read aloud: “ ‘The draug are creatures of the hive. The workers die, but the master draug survives to found his hive anew.’ ”

“Yeah, we kind of knew that already,” I said. “He’s here. The hive’s breeding, it’s awful, et cetera. What does it say about stopping him?”

“That he cannot be killed,” she said softly. “Silver will not destroy him.” She put the book down and closed it, then rested her head on the palm of her hand as if she had a pounding headache. A really human gesture, for really human distress. Around us, the library was silent—deep carpets, big shelves, solid books. The dry smell of ancient paper. Books that the vampires had spent thousands of years gathering … I’m not Claire—I don’t get overwhelmed by that kind of stuff, but all of a sudden it seemed like I was standing in a tomb, or a museum, a building that was nothing but a memory of something long gone by.

The vampires were fighting their last fight here. The very last one, out of too many to ever count.

And Naomi, I realized, thought they were going to lose, big time, for all her talk of politics and future games.

“What about Claire?” I asked. “She can see him. How does that matter? Why does he care, if he can’t be killed?”

“That is what I have you here to learn. So keep reading. It may be our only real hope.”

Naomi threw the book in her hands violently. It hit a shelf and rocked the shelf back and forth in an arc that slowly settled back into stillness. The book flopped down onto the carpet, broken and dejected.

Like Naomi herself.

“Keep looking,” she ordered, and stalked off into the shelves again. “I don’t care how long it takes. Just find something I can use. If you don’t, I’ll have your brother for breakfast and make him mine. I promise you that.”

“I can’t find something that isn’t here!” I shouted after her. I felt short of breath, ready to cry. This was such a bad deal. And honestly, what did it matter? Some part of me wondered that. My brother wanted it, right? He endured the bites because he wanted to have the power. He wanted to make himself into something else. Something new, and probably terrifying.

No. It mattered not just for him, but for all the people he would hurt if he grew fangs and had virtual immunity from justice. I was doing it for them as much as him.

So I kept working. My eyes felt as if they were bleeding, and my back ached so badly I was sure it was broken in a few places. Naomi only appeared to harass me and dismiss the few things I located that might be of use. I had no idea what she was doing now, but it couldn’t be good.

And then … Then I found it. This time, since Naomi wasn’t there, I tried to puzzle out what it said myself. This wasn’t even Middle English. I had no idea whether it was High or Low or just plain bizarre, but it took me half an hour to make sense of it enough to realize what I held in my hands.

The answer. And an answer I couldn’t give Naomi. No way in hell. I shivered, staring at the paper, at the dry, ancient words.

“Well?” I raised my head with a startled gasp, and found Naomi leaning over the table, inches away. She smiled slowly. “I heard your heart rate increase. You’ve found something.”

“No,” I said, and turned the page. “I didn’t. False alarm.”

I didn’t expect that would work. It didn’t. Naomi grabbed the book from me and flipped the leaf, found the passage, and began to read. Her brow furrowed, and she sent me a dark look. “What is this?” She put the book down and spun it toward me, tapping the image inked on the fragile page. “Does the girl have this?”

“Not anymore,” I said, very reluctantly. “But she used to.” The drawing on the page of that book was of a gold filigree bracelet. Amelie had given it to Claire as part of her Protection agreement. She’d taken it back later, but Claire had worn it for a while. And she hadn’t been able to remove it. Not at all. “It’s not like it was magic or anything.” Except that it wouldn’t come off, which would kind of argue … magic. Oops.

Naomi read the paragraph below the image again. “Amelie hasn’t given a human a Protection agreement