Black Dawn

that easy when I don’t want to be grabbed. I moved back just enough and before she could register the fact that I’d done it, I was holding her forearms in my hands. Tightly. She flinched and I felt it shiver all the way through her body, but she didn’t try to pull away. “Michael, no, don’t do this. I just need time, that’s all. It just happened last night. Give me a little space to deal with it and I’ll be …”

“Fine?” I let my eyes go slowly red. I let my fangs come down. “Really. You’re going to be fine with me, like this.”

Now she did pull back. Hard. And I didn’t let her go. Her strength was nothing compared to mine, not here, where I had leverage. “You’re trying to scare me, and it’s not going to work!”

I let go of one of her arms and used a fingernail to cut the scarf away from her neck. The spots of blood on the pale square of bandage made something in me growl, deep inside, and even though I loathed that beast I also knew I couldn’t keep it caged up forever. That was why Morganville had hunting licenses, and allowed vampires to hunt on a carefully regulated basis. The beast was why Amelie allowed some measure of violence in Morganville— because without it, we turned toxic. As I’d turned toxic on Eve.

“Stop,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound so strong now. “Damn it, you jackass, stop it!”

“Isn’t that what you told me last night?” I asked her, and I shook her, hard. “Isn’t it? Did I stop, Eve? Did I?”

She twisted free and slapped me across the face. It didn’t hurt, but the explosion of sudden warmth on my skin from hers made me blink. I let go of her other arm. She rocked back and then, all of a sudden, something stabbed me. Not in the heart, but off to the side, and the sensation of it sliding in was cold and horrible and yet also burning.

Silver.

I looked down. There was a small silver knife buried in my right side to the hilt. The skin was starting to smolder and burn around it.

Eve was breathing hard now, and there were tears rolling down her face, but she looked tough all the same. Unyielding.

“I can stop you,” she said. “I can always stop you if I have to, Michael, damn you. I could have put that in your heart because you weren’t ready for it, because you’ll always be vulnerable to me even if you don’t want to be. So we’re even. Because I’ll always be that way to you, too. That’s called trust. It’s called love.” She grabbed the knife and pulled it swiftly out, and I choked and collapsed sideways on the sleeping bag. God, it hurt. Badly. I shuddered and writhed as the silver’s influence continued to punish me, but it wasn’t a fatal wound— not even close. She’d picked her spot, and the duration of the blow, very well. And in a weird way, I loved the pain. I needed it.

I deserved it.

“You hear me, Michael? Don’t even try to think you’re the only badass in this room. I will not let you do that to me again, ever, so you can stop obsessing about how damn powerful you are and how weak I am. I am not weak. Screw you for even thinking it. Get over yourself, your vampire angst, and your power trip.”

She pushed up to her feet, staring at me for a moment, then walked away with the silver knife glinting in her hand.

I pulled in just enough breath to gasp, in genuine surprise, “Is it crazy right now to say I love you?”

She didn’t even pause. “Given that I just stabbed you? Seems a little weird, yeah.”

“I do,” I said, and put my head down again. “God, Eve. I do so much it’s killing me. I just don’t want it to kill you, too.”

I watched her walk away, slow and steady steps, a woman totally in control of herself and what she was feeling.

I just didn’t know what that was, but I was afraid … afraid that it wasn’t love anymore.

I collapsed on my back and closed my eyes, and tried to heal.

CHAPTER THREE CLAIRE

The unfamiliar weight of the shotgun made Claire feel awkward. She’d fired guns, but she’d never carried them around, not like they were a normal, everyday kind of thing. Like a book bag, for instance. She deeply missed her book bag. It had symbolized everything important in her life, and suddenly being a poster child for the National Rifle Association … didn’t.

Around her waist she had added a belt Shane had dug up in the back of the armory—it held small sealed bottles on hooks that she could pull free easily. Silver nitrate. Very dangerous to vampires, and draug. She was now about as loaded down with advantages as she could be.

And she felt incredibly clumsy and awkward, but that fell away as the big, scary vampire guards manning the main entry door of the Elders’ Council building slid it open and she, Shane, and Naomi stepped outside.

It was midafternoon, but it was gray and raining. That had felt wrong enough when all this had started, with overcast skies and rain, because it almost never rained in Morganville, and when it did it was a violent burst that cleared the same afternoon. This had gone on for days … and it had brought the draug with it. Until they were gone, Claire thought, Morganville would never see the sun again.

Naomi glowed in the wan light like some kind of angel—the wrong kind, but still beautiful. She nodded to Claire and Shane and surveyed the world that they could see from the steps.

It looked … quiet. So terribly quiet. Stretching out in front of the Elders’ Council building—a big, Romanesque temple of a place, with stairs like Niagara Falls of marble—was the green of Founder’s Square, with its trees and ponds and footpaths and antique lighting that had come on to fight the gloom. Genuine gas lighting, the kind that hissed very softly, like snakes in the garden. In the center of the green was a wide, clear space with a raised platform. That was where they held town meetings, and where—not so very long ago—there had been a cage to hold humans who dared to attempt to kill vampires. Sometimes they were punished just by being caged. Sometimes, if the vampire actually died, the punishment was a whole lot worse.

But the cage was gone now. That was one thing Claire could be proud of, at least …. She’d gotten Amelie to get rid of it. Managed to secure some basic rights for the human population, but those were not exactly popular, or consistently honored.

She tore her gaze away from Founder’s Square and its bad memories, and looked over Morganville itself. Not a huge place. From this vantage point she could see the gates of Texas Prairie University, her school. It blazed with lights, still, like a beacon; when she squinted, she thought she could see that the gates were all closed. “They shouldn’t still be here,” she said to Naomi. “The students.”

“They aren’t,” Naomi said. “They’ve been evacuated, every one of them. Amelie could ill afford to explain a disaster of this magnitude; they are hard-pressed to cover the normal attrition rates.”

Attrition. That was what vampires called it. Claire called it murder. “What did she tell them?”

“Nothing. The dean made an address and said that deep cuts in the state budget required them to cut the semester short. All students have been granted excellent marks and will receive free admission to all courses at the beginning of next term. Then they announced an emergency evacuation based upon a chemical spill to drive off the faculty and the workers.”

“That’s going to bring a lot of attention to this place,” Shane said, scanning the horizon. “Last thing Morganville wants.”

Naomi shrugged. “It is the best we can manage now. Not that it will matter, when this is done; the university will never reopen, and of course we will leave this town. We must. Amelie will see the sense of it soon, or Oliver will. Morganville is dead to us.”

She said it as if it was vampire religion or something—that running was the only option. And Claire guessed