Black Dawn

That got me a dry rustle of a laugh. “I never laid you at my feet, Oliver. Never you.”

She was wrong in that, and had been for some time, but there was no point in telling her. And I was still proud enough to want to conceal that … weakness. “If I am not defeated, then you cannot order me to leave you, can you?”

She released her hold on my wrist, but I kept my hold on her hand. She didn’t open her eyes, but I saw the faintest lift at the corners of her mouth. I had won a smile, at least.

But she said nothing else.

Not even good-bye.

I had no warning before she lost the battle. The draug rose in a glistening, heaving surge, coating her, consuming her. I fell backward in momentary shock; I could see Amelie’s form within it, trapped, but the thick, gelatinous coating on her skin grew in size, multiplying rapidly to cover her. She was only a shadow within it in seconds.

Gone.

I had known it could happen, would happen, but I had hoped … hoped for more time. For, perhaps, a miracle. I used to place such trust in miracles, in my breathing days when I was right with God.

I had not felt such an impulse to pray in many years, but this … this was the face of evil, overtaking us. God helps those who help themselves, I thought, and shook myself out of that dark hollow of fear. The draug were enemies, yes, but I had fought enemies all my life, and beyond. Some were well deserved; some I had created through my own actions, and those, I regretted.

But this was pure, a battle against something more evil than I could ever be, vampire or no.

And I had to win.

I drew the silver knife from my belt, the one that Naomi had urged me to plunge into Amelie’s chest, and I began to fight for my life.

Where the silver tugged through the draug’s gelatinous, rippling, changing form, it burned, blackened, and shriveled the thing; like us, they were vulnerable to it, but unlike us, the silver did not significantly slow it down. A master draug was strong, dangerous, fast, and cunning; a master draug fueled by Amelie was far worse. It was still fighting to absorb her power, still vulnerable in at least a small degree, but that would be done soon.

And this room was very small. Our plans were crumbling before my very eyes.

A sound drifted up through the house, shuddering it to its very bones, and I recognized the shriek of pain of a master draug.

Magnus was below, and something—someone—had hurt him. Badly. Yes. Yes, at last.

As if fueled by that scream, the draug came for me, and as it did, the form finally solidified, pulled into human-seeming flesh, and it was Amelie striding toward me, pale and strong, but with rot and foulness writhing behind those shining silver eyes.

I took a firmer hold on my dagger, and prayed.

And then I stabbed straight at her chest. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to kill her, but I had to get her back, the Amelie within. The Amelie who understood what was at stake.

Her hand caught my arm and paused the silvery point just as it touched the writhing slime that covered her body. I felt the stinging agony of the draug’s tiny mouths drawing away my blood, even through the protective leathers. “Amelie, you know the plan, you know what you must do. Hold on. Hold!”

“No,” the master draug that had been Amelie said, in a voice like rotten silk. “No more plans. No more scheming. Now you are mine.”

And I realized that the draug was in control. And this draug had Amelie’s power—the power to compel. The power to force a vampire to her will.

And I sank slowly to my knees under that cold silver stare, screaming inside, as the draug’s slime crept up my hand and under the leathers, and began to feed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CLAIRE

The only place she knew to run, the place she’d be safest, was Amelie’s hidden room upstairs. Claire didn’t hesitate. She knew the darkened house by memory, and dodged around chairs and tables on her way to the stairs. She didn’t dare look back. She could hear furniture crashing, the shotgun going off.

It was so unreal, suddenly. On the sofa Shane’s game controllers would be right where they’d dropped them, and the blanket crooked on the back of the cushions; she couldn’t remember if they’d washed the dishes or not, or just dumped the last things they’d used in the sink.

This was their home. She ought to be safe here.

She was used to the Glass House feeling alive, and she still felt it, a little—a pulse, beating slowly beneath her awareness like a big, sleeping beast. There had been a spirit trapped here of the original owner, but he hadn’t been the part that had really bonded with her, Eve, Shane, and Michael. That had been the house itself, alive on some level she didn’t truly understand.

It couldn’t help her now, even if it wanted to. It didn’t have the strength, or the will.

She reached the steps, slipped, and almost fell. As she grabbed the banister for balance, she heard the front door smash open, and heard a wild war-cry yell.

She knew that voice. Shane! She reversed course and ran for the hallway, then skidded to an off-balance halt. Shane had just come in, holding a shotgun. “Claire!” He locked eyes with her, just for a moment, then started forward …

Only to stop as Myrnin backed out of the parlor room firing his shotgun. Shane spun that way, too, aimed, and fired. Claire heard a high-pitched, angry screech. They’d hit Magnus again. Shane muttered a curse and fired twice in rapid succession, then shoved Myrnin up the hallway toward the living room. Toward her.

“Okay?” he shouted at her.

She managed a shaky smile and made an OK symbol with her thumb and forefinger.

Magnus slid/slithered/lurched into the hallway behind him.

Claire gasped and screamed, “Behind you!” Shane lunged forward, landed on his stomach, rolled, and fired upward at Magnus as he came toward him. From the doorway Claire saw more people entering the hall—Michael, Eve, Jason? And even, improbably, Miranda.

They all had shotguns. Even the kid.

Michael’s shot hit Magnus dead-on from behind as Myrnin and Shane rolled out of the line of fire, and Claire ducked behind the wall. Eve’s shot came a second later.

Magnus pitched forward to the wood floor, oozing blackened fluids.

He didn’t move.

“We got him,” Michael said. “Claire? Shane? You okay? We got him!”

“No,” Myrnin called, and kept crawling, well away from Magnus’s body. “Not so easily. Careful!”

It was good he said it, because it forced Michael to slow down—and when Magnus reared up, reaching for him with pale, strong hands, he had time to skip backward and fire again, point-blank.

Magnus made a horribly liquid gurgling sound, but it wasn’t pain; it was amusement.

Michael backed up fast, pulling Eve with him. They ran into Jason, who was staring at the whole thing as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “What the hell is it?” he asked. “That’s not a vamp. That’s—”

“Watch out!” Claire cried, and so did Miranda, almost in chorus, as Magnus’s vaguely man-shaped form rippled, changed, and rolled forward. Michael, vamp-fast, pulled Eve out of the way.

But Jason just … stood there.

Out of nowhere, Miranda stepped ahead of him and pushed him aside, looked straight at Claire, and said, “It has to be like this. It’s okay.”