Black Dawn

the pools. Do not waste it.”

More muttering, and one isolated, quiet laugh, but I ignored it, for all the fury it ignited inside me. I would rule these people. It was my right by blood and history. Surely Amelie would agree it was so, if she was able.

I led my force into the complex.

None of us breathed, and for that I was profoundly thankful; this was a foul place, even without the threat of the draug. Full of shadows, but that mattered little to our eyes. All was still, quiet, watchful within.

When the draug came for us, they came in a rush, and the battle was on.

I slashed my way through their assault, using silver where it was necessary; a few vampires were overcome and dragged into the pools, but by then Pennyfeather had reached their watery sanctuaries, and I heard the eerie, piercing screech of terror as he dumped his chemicals in. I began the same on my end, dumping my bag of powder into the murky, dark waters, and I watched black threads spread fast and toxic through their blood garden. There were vampires in there, anchored fast; as the draug died, I shouted at others to enter the waters and retrieve the victims. We saved most.

And the draug died. They died hard, and they died fighting, struggling to pull us into their own realm, but we poisoned that home against them, down to the last refuge. Those who emerged we killed with silver.

It was an unqualified triumph. We saved almost twenty vampires from their horrible fate, but most important, my command, my battle had been won, and I would return covered in glory.

No one would question my right to rule after this, after Oliver had abandoned his duties and left it to me to wage this war—and I had succeeded.

“We’ve won,” I said. I was already thinking of the future, of my rule. Though I greatly preferred the company of women, I would deign to take Michael Glass as consort, I decided; he was young, but he came of pure bloodlines and would satisfy those who wished a token thrown to our human servants. As to his human girl … Well, if he would not give her up, it would be simple enough to get rid of her.

“No,” Rickon said. “There’s no sign of the master draug. Unless he’s put down, there is no victory.”

“Surely we’ve killed him in the pools,” I said. “There’s no question.”

He gave me a cold, impudent look from those green eyes. “We must have proof.”

“My queen,” I told him, and showed my fangs. “I would prefer if you gave me my title, Lord Rickon.”

He ignored me. Ignored me. He turned away to deal with one of the last of the draug.

I found the very last of them, clinging to its filthy life, crouching in the shadows. I flung a bit of the magic powder over it, and watched as its legs turned black, solid, rotten. It was dying before my eyes. “Magnus,” I said. “Where is Magnus? Tell me!”

“Not here,” it whispered, and it laughed at me.

I needed to kill Magnus. Once I had done that, there would be no question of my superiority, my rights. Magnus was mine.

Pennyfeather was standing behind me; I sensed his cold, angular presence. Oliver’s man, but mine now. He knew which knee to bend, and when. “Send out search parties,” I commanded without turning from the sight of the last of the thralls dying. “Find Magnus at any cost, and bring him to me. And Oliver. I will require his head, of course. We must settle the question of who rules immediately.”

Pennyfeather didn’t move.

I became aware of a great stillness around me. The shrieking was done, the draug finished here, and the vampires, my vampires, were watching me.

Like Pennyfeather, unmoving.

“You heard me,” I said, and whirled on Pennyfeather …

… Just as he buried his slender silver knife in my heart.

I grabbed for it, wrapping my cold hands over his, and saw nothing in his face but my own death. “No,” I whispered. “No, I am your queen—”

“You’ll never rule here,” he said. “You should have remembered that.”

The silver coursed through my body, poisoning me. He left the dagger in me. It paralyzed me, and I could only watch as the vampires of Morganville left this place, and left me to die among the blackened corpses of our greatest enemies.

Not over, I thought. I wanted to shriek it at him, at all of them. This is not over!

But all I could do was watch them go. Amelie’s creatures. Oliver’s. Never mine.

I will have you, I promised them, in a burst of terror and fury. You should have made sure of me, Pennyfeather.

Because I would find a way to survive. To take this town, and our future, from them.

Somehow.

The draug I had poisoned was still alive, though blackened and crippled. Dying fast now. But it dragged itself to me and stared down into my open eyes.

And it pulled the silver dagger out of my heart.

For a long moment, I still was unable to move; the silver had weakened me, blackened me within. The draug dropped the dagger.

“Why?” I asked it.

And Magnus’s voice answered me, echoing through his own creature. “Waste not,” he said, “want not.”

And then he laughed, and the draug finished dying.

I retched up silver and stumbled to hands and knees, then upright.

The war was still on.

Magnus first.

But after that, those who’d betrayed me.

Amelie, my sister. And Oliver, whose creature Pennyfeather was.

Mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY EVE

I stood on the sidelines, with Michael, and watched the vampires go to war.

It wasn’t much of a seeing-off parade, really … just the two of us, standing together, holding hands. But I’d always thought of myself as the cocky sidekick type, and cocky sidekicks don’t have to go to war, right? They get to cheer from the sidelines and … be cocky.

I didn’t feel particularly cocky anymore. I felt terrified, and even with Michael holding my hand, I’d never been more aware of how much was at stake, how much was bound to go wrong. “What if it doesn’t work?” I asked him. “What if—what if none of them come back?” I could just see the nightmare of being trapped in Zombieland Morganville, the draug haunting every source of water we had.

“Then we grab everybody who’s left, steal a school bus, and head out,” Michael said. “I don’t like running, but sometimes it’s about all you can do.”

School buses. The last time I’d sat on these cold green fake-leather seats, I’d been the outcast praying for graduation and Michael had been in the back with the cool kids. He’d always been able to move between cliques— hottie, music nerd, closet Star Trek enthusiast. Fitting in was his superpower, and my deadly weakness. “Speaking of school buses, remember when Jamie Montgomery punched out what’s-her-name, the redhead …?”

“Carly,” I said. “Carly Fox.”

“Carly the Fox, right. I think she broke her nose.”

“Good times.” I remembered it vividly; it was one of the highlights of senior year, a hair-pulling, full-on hot girl catfight. Carly’s nose had never been the same. Neither had Jamie Montgomery, because she’d disappeared