Black Dawn

around herself and paced like an agitated tiger. “What remains is not my sister. That thing is a virus grown inside her body, stealing her soul—”

“People have said the same of vampires, time out of mind,” Theo said. “Are they right? Did you lose your soul when you lost your human life? I believe, I must believe, that I still cling to mine.”

“The draug are different!”

I couldn’t disagree with that, really. Everything that I’d seen about the draug made me think that Naomi had something there. None of the draug seemed to have the least bit of human feeling in them; they were monsters, predators, pure and simple. The vampires at least hung on to something—even the worst of them you could understand, even if you hated it, and them.

But there was nothing inside the draug to understand. It was like trying to reason with a hungry shark.

Theo sighed. “She’s my patient,” he said. “If the worst comes, then it’s mine to do, not yours. And I won’t do it without Oliver’s consent. He is the leader now. Unless you plan to dispute that.”

“Of course I plan to dispute it! He’s nothing but a jumped-up pretender!”

“I am not involved in the politics of kings and queens,” he said. “Or even those of pretenders. Go back, Naomi. Let me see to your sister.”

She bowed her head and curtsied, just a little. “Of course, Doctor. Thank you. I’m sorry.”

He turned his back on her to open the door. That was a mistake.

I didn’t have time to react at all when she pulled a wooden stake from the side of her boot and stabbed him in the back with it—between the ribs, and angling up to his heart. Theo made a little gasping sound, hardly loud enough for me to hear, and then she caught him as he fell and eased him to the carpet. She reached past him to turn the dead bolt lock on the door. Then she snapped it off, leaving the metal tongue in place.

I wasn’t getting out of there. Not easily.

“What are you doing?” I cried. “Guards! Get in here!”

“Yell all you like,” Naomi said placidly. She opened up Theo’s doctor bag and searched through it, calm as an ice sculpture. “Amelie is quite particular about her soundproofing. There’s a hidden alarm, if you can find it, but I should not waste my time if I were you. Stay here until I return.”

Theo was lying totally still, facedown on the floor. A wooden stake wouldn’t kill him immediately, I knew; it would pin him down, paralyze him, leave him helpless for whatever might come next.

I let Naomi think I was paralyzed, too, with fear; it wasn’t a tough job of acting. This was going too fast, and too crazy, and I had no idea what the right thing to do was, except that Theo had never hurt anyone, ever.

Naomi took something out of his bag, walked across to the other door, and closed it quietly behind her.

I dropped to my knees beside Theo, took hold of the stake, and yanked, hard. It was embedded between the ribs, and it took all my strength and three tries to pull it free.

He pulled in a tortured, gagging breath but didn’t move. I rolled him over, and he blinked and slowly focused on my face. “Naomi,” he whispered. “Of course.” He held out his hand, and I stood and helped haul him up, too. It must have been very hard; he leaned on me, and I could feel his whole body trembling. “Must stop her.” He pointed to his doctor bag, and I grabbed it and held it open while Theo sorted through with shaking hands. He finally pulled out a small aerosol can. “She’s taken the knife.”

Knife. Oh, God. I looked at the bedroom door. We might already be too late.

The door was locked, but not with a dead bolt, just the standard kind; I braced myself and kicked just above the knob with my heavy combat boot, putting all my leg strength into it. Wow, I was getting an unexpected upper- and lower-body workout. Inappropriate cheery aerobics music wandered through my head, but was quickly whited out by the pain from my knee.

It worked, though. The door flew open, and Theo staggered past me into the room.

Naomi was standing over the figure lying prone on the bed, with a silver knife held in both hands. She was trying to bring it down, clearly putting all her strength into it, but the figure had hold of her wrists and was keeping them suspended in midstab.

That was Amelie she was trying to kill. But not Amelie at all. I recognized her, but it was the kind of horrified, shocked recognition that you’d expect from seeing a dead body, or someone severely injured … and I knew something about both those things, big time. It was the same delayed jolt of adrenaline that hammered through my body—because Amelie wasn’t Amelie anymore.

I wasn’t sure what she was.

She looked … wet. Covered in damp slime, gray strands of it over her skin like fungus, hair loose and matted with the same stuff. Her eyes had turned a different color of gray—not ice now, more like fog, grayish white and completely opaque. The bed around her was soaked with the same horrible damp stuff.

“Stop,” Theo said sharply, and when Naomi didn’t pay attention he lurched over, grabbed her from behind and levered her wrists and the knife upward, away from Amelie. It wasn’t easy. Naomi didn’t give up, and Amelie didn’t let go, either … it was as if she couldn’t let go, really. I finally lunged over and pried her wet, slimy fingers off, one by one.

Where they’d fastened on Naomi’s thin wrists, they left red welts that overflowed with blood, as if whole patches of skin had been melted away.

“Let me go,” Naomi said, and twisted violently in Theo’s hold. She almost got loose, but he held on with grim determination. “Let me go. You know this is the only way. We can’t allow her to turn—we can’t.”

Theo took the knife from her hand, and shoved her away from Amelie’s bedside. She screamed in sheer frustration, but she didn’t try to steal it back. His expression was thoughtful, and his eyes were cool and distant.

He held that knife like someone who really knew how to wield it like an expert. That was what held her in place.

“You stabbed me in the back,” Theo said. “I suppose I should be appropriately grateful that you thought enough of me to only use wood, and little enough of Eve to leave her behind to free me. But then, you never intended for her to leave here alive, did you? A silver knife, a human at the scene—conveniently dead, killed by you in outrage. You wished me to believe that Eve staked me, overpowered you somehow, and killed Amelie in some pro-human rampage. It won’t wash, my dear. It simply won’t wash.”

I hadn’t thought about it, but now that I could catch my breath, fury burned up inside me like acid. That bitch. She’d set me up. Even if she hadn’t killed me, she could have blamed the whole thing on me, especially if she burned herself with a little silver. Me and my friends were well known to walk around armed with anti-vamp weaponry.

And the sentence for killing Amelie would, of course, be immediate, violent, and gruesome death.

“What are you going to do?” Naomi flung back at him. “Let her live? Let her become draug? A master draug, capable of destroying us all? Don’t be a fool, Theo! You know what I was doing is necessary!”

“And Eve?”

She glanced at me, then back to him. “A human, determined to marry a vampire? How long do you expect she would last, in any case?”

I risked another look at Amelie. She was as still as a statue now, hands folded across her chest. But as I watched, I felt her attention … shift. Toward me.

And I heard her, in my head. There was a clear, silvery sound to it, like bells and singing, sweet singing.

Go, Eve. Go and don’t come back.

I didn’t wait. My nerve just … broke, and I ran into the other room. Theo must have known where the alarm button was, because a few seconds later I heard the thumping of violent but muffled blows on the door, and it crashed open to admit Amelie’s two guards. I held up my hands. They disregarded me and ran into the other room.

And I got the hell out before anybody could ask me any questions. I didn’t know what Theo was going to say, but if I hung around, there was no way I wouldn’t end up somehow coming out of it badly.

I wished I’d never seen Amelie like that, because it was awful, and terrifying. If she was fighting, I couldn’t see any sign of it; she looked like she was slowly drowning in that slime, and the awful gray color of her skin and