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 that given the long and terrible experience the vamps had with the draug, maybe that wasn't so unreasonable. But Amelie had decided to fight. Oliver would fight, too; he'd made it clear that he'd rather do that.
What scared Claire was that he might now be the only one, other than Myrnin, who really felt that way. The vampires weren't heartless, exactly, but they were extremely focused. If they stood a better chance of survival by sacrificing the humans who were supposedly under their Protection, well, they'd send flowers to the funerals and feel a little bit sad. You can't trust them, Claire reminded herself. Not when it comes to something like the draug, something that can kill them. They'll always put themselves first.
But how did that really match with how Myrnin acted? Or Amelie, or even Oliver, for that matter? Vampires were different, just like people were different. Some ran. Some didn't. Some fought. And some, a very few, actually cared.
"I can see our house," Shane said, and pointed. There it was, barely visible in the gloom-a white house no larger than a toy from this distance, distinguished from its neighbors by the Victorian shape. No lights burning there. No one to need them now. And there weren't many lamps burning out there anyway. A few candles or fireplaces flickered in windows, but the steady glow of electric power was out now, except here in the very heart of the city. Most people had left town already, when the vampires were distracted; Claire suspected Myrnin had lifted the barriers to allow them to do it undetected. The ones who remained were, like Shane, fighters. People who just didn't go when they got pushed. "I told you that the outside needed paint. Truth is, this whole town needs a damn makeover."
He was right. Morganville, soggy and dripping in the rain, did look horrible. The fierce desert sun wasn't much kinder to it, but at least it had looked ... clean. Not like this, so utterly washed of life, muddy and disheartened.
"First on my list," Claire said, "after we try not to die. Paint the house."
"It's good to have goals," he said, and held out his hand. "Watch your step."
Naomi gave them a curious look, but jogged down the stairs, moving as lightly as a cat, and with the alien, fluid grace of one, too. Claire and Shane followed more carefully, since the rain had left the marble slippery. "How can we tell if the draug are here?" Shane called to Naomi as his boot splashed into a puddle on the first landing. She was also wearing boots, big ones that laced up to her knees.
"I expect you will know when you feel their bite," she said. "In small, isolated puddles they are not so dangerous, but the rain keeps coming. Avoid any running streams and large bodies of still water. We're lucky the ground soaks up so much, so fast. An advantage of the desert."
"That's why she built here," Claire said. The rain was already soaking through the warm hoodie she'd thrown on over the T-shirt. She was, she thought, going to spend a lot of the day feeling cold and damp. Naomi had worn a full raincoat, with hood, though Claire felt it was less protection against the cold than against the idea of the draug drizzling down on her bare skin. "Very little rain, and people leave you alone way out here. She could control things."
"It's an illusion, control," Naomi said. "You ought to understand that by now, young Claire. We are never in control of our destinies, even the strongest of us. All we can hope to do is not be too badly damaged by events."
God, she did sound like Amelie. Depressing. Maybe they really were related after all. Shane shrugged; he wasn't big on the concept of destiny anyway, and even less so when it was being preached by vampires.
At the bottom of the stairs, Shane said, "Which way?"
"We must keep to high ground," Naomi said. She stood where she was for a moment, looking out over the town, and then shook her head. She pulled a device from the pocket of her raincoat; it was, Claire realized, one of Myrnin's, with all the crazy hallmarks of something he'd cobbled together-gears, wires, tubes with strangely colored liquids. One was bubbling. Naomi adjusted a dial on the side and nodded as she returned it to her pocket. "The magic is working, at any rate."
"Magic?"
"It wipes away the call of the draug," she said.
"It's not magic; it's noise cancellation," Claire said. "It's just physics. You build one wave to cancel another, the way you build one to amplify another."
Naomi just looked at her with polite, empty interest, and then said, "As you say. It appears to be working, which is fortunate, or this would be a very short venture for me. And for you." That last was added as an afterthought.
"You said you had a way to find Theo," Shane said. "Time to bust it out, lady. I don't want to be out here when it gets dark. Well, darker."
Naomi reached in the other pocket of her raincoat and took out a sealed vial. It was half full of a red powder, and she popped the cap and added a dash of water from a flask before she recorked it and shook it to mix. The liquid turned the dark red of blood. She uncapped the vial again, put it to her lips, and drank.
"The hell?" Shane stared. "Seriously, you brought a snack?"
"It's Theo's bloodline," Naomi said. She grimaced and dropped the vial, then crushed it into tiny shards beneath her foot. "All the bloodlines have trace records in our libraries. It is so we can find them as we need. I could likely find him easily were he of Bishop's bloodline, but he is not, so I must rely on this. It tastes foul, dried so ..." She stopped talking, stood in silence for a few seconds and then suddenly bent over and retched violently. Then she sat down on the lowest step, as if she couldn't find the strength to stand.
"This plan doesn't exactly fill me with confidence," Shane said to Claire. "Even with the cool flamethrower."
Naomi held up a shaking hand, palm out, to signal them to wait, but then the hand curled into a fist before it finally relaxed. She sat back and raised her face to the cold rain, looking ... well, not pale, but almost blue. Her lips had taken on a light tint of cyan. She looked like she'd been carved out of cloudy ice.
"Different bloodlines," she whispered. "It is like different blood types to you."
"It makes you sick," Claire said, and got an erratic nod.
"How sick?" Shane asked. "Can you walk?"
"A moment," Naomi said. She sounded stronger already. "We must go before my bloodline destroys his within me, but the battle between them is ... challenging. He comes of strong stock." She gave them a faded smile, and pushed to her feet; Claire was prepared to prop her up, but she didn't need it. "He is in that direction."
"That's ... not so good," Shane said, because the way Naomi was pointing was toward the interdicted end of Morganville, the one the draug had slowly claimed as their stronghold. "Why would he be staying in there? Why not get out?"
"It's possible they have him," Naomi said, but then shook her head to correct herself. "No, I would feel that, through this link. He is alive, and in hiding. But it won't be easy to get to him, even now."
"Less talking," Claire said. "More walking. I mean it, we're not out here after dark, no matter what happens."
Naomi's eyebrows climbed higher. "Even if one of us must be left behind?"
"If one of us is," Shane said, hefting the flamethrower higher on his shoulders like a heavy backpack, "it's going to be you. No offense."
Naomi smiled, very prettily. "Oh, but it is very much taken." Claire wasn't actually sure, looking at her, whether she meant it or not, but it was better to be safe with a vampire than really, really sorry. She nudged Shane sharply in ribs that weren't protected by the flamethrower straps.
"Sorry," Shane muttered. "I mean, we'll all come back or none of us. Of course. I'm sure you're thinking the same thing."
"Assuredly." That same sweet, impartial smile, and again, there was just no figuring out if she meant it or not. But it didn't matter, because they were in it now, together, and they needed to move.
Fast.
Leaving Founder's Square, with its safe little circle of lights still burning and its cordon of police and vampire guards ... That was difficult. Not just because, deep down, Claire didn't want to go, but also because the guards wouldn't let them go. As in the Elders' Council building, everyone had been given strict orders, and Claire imagined they'd been along the lines of Whatever you do, don't let those bastards in here, or let anybody else go out. Naomi, though, wasn't taking no for an answer, and there were few human cops who were willing to stand up to a vampire with an attitude, and a gun.
"Nice," Shane said under his breath as she led them out into the street. The wreckage of cars and dropped weapons had been mostly cleared from that area-residue of the not-so-successful riot that humans had staged the night before against the vamps; it hadn't been effective, but it had definitely been enthusiastic. "Any idea of how far we have to go?"
"No," Naomi said, and furrowed her brow. "Why?"
"Just thinking that it might be better to go in a vehicle than on foot. For safety."
"You," Naomi said, "have a flamethrower, which is not of much use in the enclosed space of an automobile. Perhaps you might have considered that in your choice of weapons."
"Not a car. A pickup," he said without hesitation. "I get the back. Ladies in the front. Maximum speed, minimum exposure, plus a good firing platform for me and Claire, with the shotgun. Or you. Whichever."
Naomi cocked her head and looked at him in silence for a few seconds, then nodded. "Very well," she said. "Obtain one, if you please."
"I always knew hot-wiring skills would come in handy, other than getting me more frequent-flier jail points," Shane said. "Stay here." He jogged away, light and lithe even under the weight of the heavy equipment he was carrying, and Claire watched him go with a hungry little stab of anxiety. For all his easy comebacks, Shane was as vulnerable as any of them. Even Naomi, who was also watching her boyfriend with a thoughtful frown grooved between her brows.
"I was told Shane Collins was unreliable," she said, "but I see little sign of it now. I was also told he loathed my kind and would see us dead if he could. Yet he came with you to rescue us. Odd."
"People change," Claire said.
Naomi shrugged, and made it look like some exotic foreign gesture. "Assuredly," she said. "But mostly I find they change for the worse, not the better. In fact, some who once liked me have changed so much that they tried to burn me as a monster."
"Well, then you're even," Claire shot back, "because Amelie had Shane in a cage and was going to burn him for something he didn't even do. He's changed. For the better. And he didn't have to."
"Perhaps he has changed for you."
For some reason the whole idea of that just made Claire ... angry. "No. Not for me. He's a good guy, deep down, and he wants to make things better. Same as me. So just-shut up about it." She was, she realized, short of sleep, tired, anxious, and scared, and Naomi's cool analysis of someone she loved made her unreasonably irritated.
Naomi said nothing, just gazed at her with placid, polite interest. There was a lot of frost inside her. She'd been nicer when there hadn't been lives at stake, Claire thought; now survival was a big and increasing concern for her, and it was testing the limits of her willingness to put up with disrespectful humans.
But she didn't snarl, glow red eyes, flash fangs, or otherwise try to make a vampiric comeback, so Claire had to be satisfied with that. They waited in silence for a few uncomfortable moments before the growing throb of an engine and a splash of headlights across the pavement signaled the arrival of a massive pickup truck that pulled to a stop neatly ahead of them. It idled slow and deep, and the bed of the thing was approximately the size of a blue whale. The interior of the cab could hold a soccer team. It even had a handy-though empty-gun rack in the back window.
The bumper sticker read: YOU CAN HAVE MY GUNS WHEN YOU PRY THEM FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS. Some joker-possibly the owner of the truck-had added UN before DEAD with a black marker. Claire cast a glance at Naomi, who was focused on the same words. There was an odd, vaguely amused smile on her lips that was not just a little creepy.
Shane leaned out the window of the truck and said, "God, I love rednecks. Who wants to drive this bad boy?"
"Not me," Claire immediately said, at the same time that Naomi said, "I do not know how."
Shane jumped down from the cab, paused, and stared at the two of them with a blank expression. "Don't want to?" he asked Claire, and then swung his attention to Naomi, looking even more stunned. "Can't? Seriously, there's something wrong with the two of you."
"If by wrong you mean sane," Claire said. "That thing is like a tank, only a tank gets better gas mileage."
"This is your biggest concern right now? Gas mileage?"
"No, I don't think I can actually see over the dash! Who drives this thing? Bigfoot?"
"Rad," Shane said. "You know, Rad, who owns the mechanic shop and sells bikes? That guy. C'mon. I'll buy you a booster seat."
Claire gave him a doubtful look, but he pointed to the pale gray sky, at the brightest point. A silent reminder that the day wasn't getting any younger and their chances of finding Theo were dimming with the afternoon sun.
"Fine," she said. Shane had to boost her up to the chrome step, and then she climbed into the cab of the truck itself. There were eighteen wheelers that were lower to the ground, she was convinced. Naomi had no such issues; she made her entrance to the passenger side look graceful. Claire slotted her shotgun into the rack behind them, but Naomi kept hold of hers, eyes distant and watchful.
It turned out she could see over the dash, after all, though she had to pull the seat all the way forward to reach the pedals. Shane vaulted up into the open bed of the truck and slapped the side of the truck in a signal to go.
"Well," Claire muttered, "here goes nothing."
Literally.
She stalled the truck immediately, then leaned out the window to yell at Shane, "Who drives a standard transmission these days?"
"Manly men," he called back. "C'mon, Claire, you can do it!"
She could, but she just hated shifting. Too much to think about, especially in their current, extremely complicated situation. No help for it, though; she gritted her teeth, adjusted the seat even closer, and got familiar, again, with the clutch. It was painful and humiliatingly awkward, but she managed. The truck leaped forward with a low, rumbling growl, and she thought, We could probably pull down a building with this thing. Worth noting, anyway.
Leaving the false circle of safety-false, because Claire knew it was just an illusion, sponsored by all those lights-still felt like a Very Bad Idea. She flipped on the headlights, on bright, even though it was still murky afternoon, and after a moment reached out and turned on the truck's heater as well. The hot, dry blast of air made her shiver in relief. She felt chilled to the bone, and slimy, even though she knew there probably hadn't been any draug in the raindrops that had soaked through her clothes.
What if there had been? How many of those contaminated raindrops does it take to make a whole draug? They knew next to nothing about these things, and lack of knowledge always bugged her. She glanced over at Naomi-or, actually, at the back of Naomi's head, because the vampire was turned to hold her shotgun out of the passenger window, watching for any sign of attack.
"Left," Naomi said in a flat voice. "Then straight ahead." She didn't sound like she was much better than she had been, back on the steps ... coping, but not happy about it. Claire wondered how long it would take for her antibodies-if vampires had such things-to destroy the invading blood ... and what would happen if a lot of foreign vampire blood was introduced, all at once. Her skin prickled, and it wasn't from the chill. It might kill them. It would certainly go a long way toward knocking them down, fast. She wondered how many humans knew that. It was good information, but it made her shudder to have it in her head. They didn't like having their vulnerabilities known.
Claire turned left at the dead stoplight, after a brief pause. Kind of stupid, really, because there wasn't any traffic to worry about. As far as she could tell, they were the only headlights moving in town. The rain had slacked off to a dully falling mist, and she kept the wipers working to clear the windshield. The steady thump-thump-thump had a soothing, normal kind of rhythm.
And then she heard something singing along with it.
At first she thought it was Naomi, unlikely as that was; it was a low hum of sound, elegant and just at the edge of her hearing. Then she thought it was the truck's radio, or maybe a CD playing, but turning the dial didn't bring up the sound.
She should have known it was the draug, but something kept her from remembering that. Instead, she found herself gradually turning the wheel toward the sound, hunting for it, trying to understand what that song was, a song she knew and loved and could almost remember ....
As she was gliding into a slow right-hand drift toward the infected part of town, a drift that would take them on a wide turn into a main street, Naomi suddenly reached out and grabbed the wheel in a bone white hand, wrenching it back the other way. Holding it there.
Claire stomped on the brakes, suddenly and violently aware, and glared at her. From the back of the pickup she heard a metallic clang as Shane's back hit the cab of the truck, and then an outraged, "Hey! Flamethrower!"
"I must adjust frequencies," Naomi said, and twisted knobs on the device she'd taken out of her pocket again; suddenly the faint singing faded into a blessed white-noise silence. "You need to be careful, Claire. If you hear them, then they hear you-sense you, at any rate. Magnus has a taste of you now. He's curious about your return. You don't want to be in his hands again."
Magnus. The head of the draug-their master, as Claire understood it. They all looked identical, but there was something about Magnus that was just more ... there. A kind of density that pulled everyone around him into the dark.
In his hands again. She couldn't help but remember the cold, damp feeling of his hands around her neck, and a violent shiver seized her, as if her whole body wanted to throw off that memory. Deep, calming breaths, and then she nodded at Naomi. "I'm okay," she said. "I know what to listen for now."
"The point is not to listen," Naomi said, but she let go of the wheel. "I assume you may have read a classical text or two, in your education, or is that no longer done?"
Claire was a little bit ashamed to think that it wasn't, but she only said, "One or two."
"You remember Odysseus, lashed to the mast of his ship, screaming to be released while his men rowed on, with wax blocking their ears?"
She did. It had been one of the stories her dad liked, one he'd read to her and they'd discussed when she was still just a girl. All of the great Greek myths, especially the ones about Odysseus. She'd always liked him. He was clever and dangerous, and he didn't have any special godlike powers, either. Just his mind, and his will.
Listening to the sirens' singing had been his own test.
"Odysseus was rarely a fool," Naomi said, "but he was a fool then. That was the draug, singing to him, though the Greeks had a different name for them. He wanted to hear their song, and he did; he was lucky to avoid madness."
Shane slid the back window open and stuck his head in. "Ladies, I'm sure this a fascinating conversation about shoes or whatever, but could we maybe not sit out here like a big old piece of bait? And by we I mean mainly me."
He was right; this probably wasn't the best time to be holding a review of the classics. Claire cleared her throat and put the truck back into gear to ease it straight down the road, in the direction Naomi pointed.
It was odd to realize, looking at her, that Naomi wasn't much older than Claire herself; she must have been frozen at the age of eighteen or nineteen. Of course, at the time she'd been alive, eighteen or nineteen was old enough to rule kingdoms and have multiple children, so Naomi had been considered an adult long before she'd become a vampire. It all felt very new to Claire, still.
Naomi suddenly pointed to the right. The street name sign flashed briefly in the truck's headlights but Claire didn't really see it; everything in Morganville looked strange to her, shrouded by the falling rain and the lack of lights, and life. This was a residential street, and it looked completely deserted. Not even a candle flickering in a window, much less anyone in view outside.
Naomi's hand clenched into a fist, and Claire drifted the truck to the curb and stopped-gently this time, careful of throwing Shane around in the back. He opened the back window again and watched as the vampire pointed straight at one of the houses in the middle of the block. It was just like a hundred other houses in Morganville-plain wooden frame, built probably in the 1940s, small by modern standards. Its pale paint (no telling what color it had originally been, since the sun faded everything to a uniform gray) peeled liberally from the boards, and some of the trim was rotted and falling off. There was a rusted bicycle lying in the weed-tangled yard and a metal swing set that listed so far to the right any child that sat on it would probably be killed in the collapse.
Typical.
The name on the mailbox, written in messy black paint, was SUMMERS, but there was nothing in the box itself when Shane snapped it open. He shrugged and closed it, then unshipped the flexible hose of the flamethrower from behind him.
Claire mouthed, It's a wooden house! She had to try three times before comprehension dawned on him. He looked disappointed, but he put the flammable fun away and got out his silver-loaded shotgun instead. Claire had hers hanging heavy in the crook of her arm, pointed so that if anything happened it would fire into the ground (and probably her foot, but that was better than the alternatives). Hunters would be so disappointed in me, she thought. She didn't even really know how to carry the thing safely.
The front door-plain wood, warped from wind and weather-was tightly closed. Naomi studied it for a moment, then kicked, and the entire door and the frame slammed inside to lie flat on the narrow hallway floor.
Even Shane looked respectfully impressed ... until she stopped at the threshold. She made a sign shooing them inside, and Claire finally understood that there was still some kind of barrier in place on the house itself. Someone-someone human-was still in residence here, and without an invitation Naomi was barred from entry. The rules of ownership were complicated in Morganville-ancestral houses and bloodlines, current occupants, whether vampires lived inside, all factored in, but clearly this was a human house, with a human barrier that kept vampires out, period.
Great. Well, at least she'd opened the door.
Shane must have figured it out, too, because he nodded to Claire, winked, and stepped through the doorway, walking on the unsteady fallen door itself. There was a faint dust of plaster in the air, and Claire sneezed, but she didn't figure they were being particularly stealthy, what with the door blowing in and all. Shane was holding his shotgun easily, pointed at an angle toward the floor, so she imitated him. The wisdom of that became apparent when she tripped; she realized, with a cold start, that if she'd had the shotgun pointed up, near her face, she might have killed herself if she'd hit the trigger.
Shane checked the open room on the left, and she took the room on the right. Whoever had lived here, they hadn't been more concerned with the inside of the house than the outside; it needed work, badly. The ceiling was sagging as if there'd been a bad leak that was dissolving the plaster. In fact, she could see water drops running down the wall from the light fixture, which wouldn't have been safe if the power had been on. Even on its best days, though, this house would have earned a failing score on any of those how-clean-is-your-home reality shows; it smelled of mold and rotten food, and it felt icy cold. The furniture had the off-kilter look of a nightmare, and where there were children's toys, they too had the look of something a serial-killing tot would drag around.
This did not look like a place where one would find Theo Goldman. Not at all.
She and Shane searched the whole house, even the attic, which revealed a bucket-sized hole in the roof through which water continued to drip. No wonder the place was falling apart. But no sign of anyone, human or vampire.
"This place needs housekeeping," Shane said. "With my flamethrower." It was a sign of just how bad things were that Shane thought that.
She looked up to smile at him, and although she heard nothing, she saw the sudden dawning of shock and alarm in his face, and had just enough time to gasp and try to turn around before a heavy, sweaty, muscular arm went around her neck and jerked her off balance. Shane instantly put the shotgun up to a firing position, but then realized what he was doing and put it down again. He set it carefully on the table and held up both hands in an I surrender kind of position.
Claire squeaked for air, went up on her toes, and tried to ease the strain on her throat. She was having a terrifying, white-out flashback of the moment that Magnus had seized her, had twisted until she'd felt and heard the crackle-snap of bones. Her heart was as loud as a jackhammer in her chest, and her pulse was roaring so loudly it sounded like a hurricane in her ears. She couldn't see who held her, but it was a man's body, a man's hairy arm. She clawed at it, but her blunt nails weren't going to do much. Think, Claire. Shane had taught her some basic things to do. Everyone is going to be bigger and stronger than you, he'd said, without being critical about it. You have to learn how to hit them in the weak spots.
The first thing he'd taught her to do was not to do what she was doing now ... standing on her tiptoes, cooperating with her captor. It was terrifying, but it was Shane's calm voice in her head now, telling her exactly what to do. Turn your head toward his elbow. Tuck in your chin. Grab his left wrist in your right hand. Punch down and behind you with your left as you turn and pull. Then don't stop when he lets go, move in, go for his eyes and punch his throat. Never run. Never let him get his momentum again.
She did it, calmly, turning and tucking and punching, and suddenly she was free, and she was facing her attacker. She registered him only as a foot taller than she was, and only for geometry's sake; faces and names didn't matter right now. Her right fist blurred as she went for a fast, hard punch to his exposed throat ...
But she stopped, because Theo Goldman stepped in like a shadow and grabbed her fist before it landed.
Her attacker stumbled back, white-faced with shock; he clearly hadn't expected the little girl to come at him like that, and Claire felt a savage sense of victory before sanity kicked in again.
"Theo? What the hell?" He really hadn't changed, but then, vampires didn't, did they? He just looked ... kind, with warm dark eyes and hair dusted with gray, and lines on his face that most vampires didn't have. Smile lines.
He did, however, look tired.
Shane hadn't moved, except to pick up the shotgun. His eyes were steady and cold on the man with Theo who'd grabbed her, and Claire sensed that he was waiting for the guy to make a second attempt.
The guy didn't move, though Claire, still trembling and adrenaline fueled, was almost sorry.
Theo shook his head, then walked to the table and picked up a curling piece of paper. He turned the sheet over and wrote swiftly, then held it up so they both could see through the dim light of the kitchen window. HAROLD IS A FRIEND. HE WAS TRYING TO PROTECT ME. APOLOGIES.
"Great," Claire muttered, but her fury was rapidly fading as she looked at Harold. He looked ... wrong, a little. He seemed awkward, and fidgeted uncomfortably like a schoolkid caught cheating on a test. He also seemed scared.
In fact, despite his large size, he was acting exactly like a kid. Even down to the body language. There was something developmentally off about him, and he looked at Theo with miserable distress, as if he knew he'd done wrong but didn't know why.
Claire backed up next to Shane and pushed down on the barrel of his shotgun. He was getting the same impression, she saw, and he nodded and dropped his guard. Slightly.
Shane said, "We're here to get you," but Theo shook his head and pointed to his ears. There was something weird about the way they looked, but Claire honestly couldn't make out the details in the shadows. Shane claimed the pencil again and wrote, WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE. HAVE TRUCK. WILL TAKE YOU.
Theo read it, considered, and shook his head. He marked through it and responded, MUST TAKE HAROLD, TOO.
Shane shrugged, marked through it, and wrote (in smaller letters, since the paper was running out), BIG EFFING TRUCK.
Theo circled the word EFFING and raised his eyebrows. Claire made a frustrated noise in her throat, grabbed the pencil, and marked it out.
Ah, Theo mouthed, and smiled. Good.
The paper was scribbled over, thoroughly, so Claire hunted around in the wreckage of the kitchen, avoiding the piles of trash and really avoiding the sink full of dried, filthy dishes, until she found a balled-up flyer in the corner of the room. It was, she realized, the gym flyer, the one that had caused them so much trouble when Shane had taken up self-defense classes there a few months back. Another aftershock, but less terrifying.
She turned it over and wrote, AMELIE NEEDS YOU. URGENT. VERY SICK.
Theo's face went blank, and then tight with alarm. He scribbled back, WHAT HAPPENED?
DRAUG, she replied. BIT HER.
He mouthed something that she didn't understand, and covered his mouth in a gesture of real distress. Then he nodded decisively and turned to Harold. He made a series of fluid hand signs, and Harold brightened up and nodded.
It was right about then that Claire realized what was so weird about Theo's ears. There was something sticking out of them, sideways. Like ...
Like needles. Really long needles. Knitting needles.
It was so shocking that she took a step back, eyes wide, and finally recovered enough to point to Theo and then gesture at his ears, urgently.
He smiled, but there was something dark in it. He took the paper back and wrote, MUST KEEP MY EARDRUMS PIERCED. OTHERWISE CANNOT RESIST THE CALL.
The vampire version of earplugs, she realized ... literally disabling his ears. But it must have hurt horribly, keeping those needles in place to block healing. She felt faint imagining it.
Harold fell in docilely enough behind Theo, heading for the door; Claire, at Shane's hand wave, darted on ahead to make sure Harold didn't do anything crazy when he saw Naomi.
But Naomi was gone, and for a second Claire was terrified that something had happened to her. Then she heard the rumble of the truck's engine and saw that Naomi had started it up. She might not have driving experience, but she'd learned how to turn an ignition key, at least.
It all looked safe.
Claire put the gun at a ready position and stepped outside ... just as a sudden gush of liquid rushed out of a rusty drainpipe at the corner of the porch, sending a thick wave across her path. At the same time, rain started falling faster, and harder, pounding like ball bearings on the fabric of her jacket and stinging her exposed skin.
She had just enough time to bring the shotgun up as the draug rose up out of the pool of water in front of her, clawed hands outstretched.
Still, even now, she couldn't say what it actually looked like ... because the human brain tried and tried to fit it into some sense, some pattern, but failed utterly. There were eyes, horrible gelatinous eyes that somehow weren't eyes at all; there was a body that was not a body. What she registered as clawed hands was probably something else again, something worse, but it was the biggest warning her uncomprehending brain could screech at her, and she reacted instantly.
She pulled the trigger.
The impact slammed the stock of the shotgun against her shoulder so hard that she felt something crack-bone, probably-and a white snap of pain sizzled through her from neck to heels. At the same time, the roar of the shot hit her like a physical slap.
But that was nothing compared to what the silver did to the draug.
The pellets didn't have time to spread far, but tore a neat circular hole four inches across straight through the draug's-well, head, she supposed, was the nearest equivalent. There was a shriek of high-pitched agony, and then the draug collapsed in a wet slap as it lost all consistency and shape. Claire yelped as she leaped out of the way of the wave of its ... corpse? If it was dead, which she couldn't assume. But it wasn't coming for her, and that was what was important.
There were more of them, rising out of hidden pools in the muddy yard, out of the drain in the street, condensing out of the rain itself.
Oh God. There were so many.
The sound of Shane firing as he pushed forward shocked her into pumping her shotgun, raising it, and firing again. It hurt, but she kept it up, racking and firing again and again. Shane was clearing a path to the truck, so she concentrated on keeping the draug away from the sides. She fell back behind Theo and Harold, keeping them as safe as she could.
The draug didn't really care about humans; too little gain for them, so it was Theo she really had to worry about. They'd kill to get to him, of course, but unless Harold got in the way he'd be all right ... for now. She killed, or at least discorporated, at least five draug before they reached the truck.
Theo didn't get in. He stood aside, calm as ice water, as Harold scrambled up first. Claire and Shane took up positions on either side of him, firing to keep the draug away, and even though her ears were ringing and her heart racing, Claire could hear another shotgun going off. Naomi was keeping them away from her side of the truck as she waited.
Finally Theo jumped up and into the bed of the truck, and Shane followed last.
Now he tossed the shotgun to Theo, unhooked the nozzle of the flamethrower, and hit the ignition button.
Claire gasped and dived for the driver's side of the truck. Naomi let fly with one last blast at a draug ten feet away, then slid over, and Claire climbed in. Had she thought the truck was too tall before? She didn't even remember jumping up this time.
The dim afternoon suddenly exploded in orange light behind them, and Claire looked in the rearview mirror to see her boyfriend spraying the entire street with an intense stream of pure, concentrated flame. Where it touched the draug, they evaporated. She could hear the grating, metallic screaming even through the hearing protection of Naomi's noise cancellation. They sure weren't singing anymore.
As she put the truck in gear and popped the clutch, Shane lurched forward and nearly fell out of the open bed of the truck-right into the draug.
But Theo grabbed him by the shoulder and held him in place as Harold crouched in the corner of the truck's bed, looking scared out of his mind.
Claire sighed in relief, and hit the gas pedal hard. In less than thirty seconds, the rain had lessened again to a gentle patter on the roof, and Shane shut off the flamethrower's little ignition burner.
Naomi kept watch out her window, shotgun ready, all the way back to the warm, welcoming lights of Founder's Square.
