Black Dawn

CHAPTER FOUR CLAIRE

Eve’s coffee and breakfast and cookies were still out on the table when Claire, Theo, and Harold passed through the big round hall. Well, some of it was still there; it looked as if her cooking had been popular this morning. Claire didn’t see Eve, which was odd; she would have expected her to still be working off her nervous caffeinated high. Probably still baking. Or, more worrying, maybe she really had gone out with vampires to put together caches of weapons around town.

Please be made up, she thought to both Michael and Eve. I don’t like it when things are bad.

But she had a sinking feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better between those two.

“Harold,” Theo said, and opened up a door. “You’ll be safe here. I will be back soon.”

Harold made urgent signs to him—deaf, which was probably the only reason he’d survived out there in draug-held Morganville. Theo smiled and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No one will bother you here. You have my word.”

Harold didn’t seem convinced, but he went into the room and Theo shut the door behind him.

“So … is he a friend of yours?” Claire asked.

“A patient,” Theo said. “And now we must go to another of my patients: Amelie.”

All the doors leading out of this room looked alike to Claire, and she hesitated, wondering which one led to the Founder of Morganville, but Theo didn’t. He made straight for one of them, opened it, and hurried through; she sped to catch up before the door closed again.

They were in one of the building’s endless, identical carpeted hallways, with the tasteful (and probably outrageously expensive) art on the walls. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, guarded by two vampires. Amelie’s bodyguards.

“Theo Goldman,” Theo said as he approached. “I’m expected.”

“Doctor.” One of them nodded, and reached to open the door for him. “First room on the left.”

Claire followed him in. The guards eyed her, but neither moved to stop her. They just closed the door quietly behind her.

It was odd, but the smell struck her first. Vampires generally didn’t smell of anything … maybe a faint rusty whiff of blood if they’d just fed, or faded flowers at the worst, but nothing like the cloying, damp, sickroom aroma that had sunk deep into the room’s thick carpet and velvet drapes. The place looked beautiful, but it smelled … rotten.

Oliver stepped out of the first room on the left and closed the door behind him. He had his sleeves rolled up to expose pale, muscular forearms. There was a fading bite mark on his right wrist, and a bright smear of blood. He looked … tired, Claire thought. Not the Oliver she was used to seeing.

When he saw them, he straightened to his usual stick-up-his-butt posture and nodded to Theo. His gaze passed over her, but he didn’t say anything. It’s like I’m not even really here, she thought, and felt a surge of anger. We just risked our lives for you, jerk. The least you could do is say thanks.

“How much did they tell you?” Oliver asked Theo, who shrugged.

“Not much,” he said. “She has been bitten, yes?”

“By the master draug. Magnus.”

Theo paused and went utterly still, his gaze locked on Oliver’s face. Then he glanced down at the bitten skin, and the faint bloodstain. “That won’t work,” he said. “You know that. You only endanger and weaken yourself.”

Oliver said nothing. He just stepped aside and let Theo proceed into the room.

When Claire would have followed him, just like the shadow she appeared to have become, Oliver’s hand flashed out and grabbed hold of her shoulder. “Not you,” he said. “She is too ill for human visitors.”

What that meant, Claire thought, was that Amelie was beyond distinguishing between friends and, say, food. She shuddered. She’d seen Amelie go savage, but even then it had been Amelie in control, just in full vampire mode.

This would be different. Very different, and very dangerous.

Oliver was not looking at her, though he still held her shoulder in a tight grip. He said, in a distant voice, “I suppose I should thank you for finding him.”

“I suppose,” she said, and pulled loose from him. He let her do it, of course. Vampires could smash bone with their kung fu grip if they wanted to hold on to something badly enough. “Is she that bad, really?”

“No,” Oliver said in that same quiet, remote tone. “She’s much worse, as he’ll presently see.” He looked at her then, and Claire saw just how … empty he looked. “She will die soon.”

“Die—but I brought Dr. Goldman …”

“For easing her pain,” he said. “Not for saving her. There is no saving one of us from the bite of a master draug, save by measures that are … fatal themselves.”

Claire waited, but she didn’t feel any shock or surprise. She’d known, she supposed, known from the moment that Amelie had fallen to the ground outside the Morganville Civic Pool. But the town wouldn’t be the same without the Founder. There was something distantly kind about Amelie that was missing in the other vampires. Not kind the way humans were, and not emo about it even when she was, but it was hard not to feel some kind of loss at the thought of her being … gone.

Even if it was just fear of the unknown who would step up and take her place.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. Oliver snapped back to himself, then—or, at least, the himself she expected him to be.

“So you should be,” he said. “I promise you, Amelie tolerated much more than I ever will from you and your kind. She let herself believe that we can live as equals, but I know better. There is an order to all things in the world, and in that order, humans are lower than vampires. They always will be.”

“And vampires are lower than the draug,” Claire said. “Right?”

He slapped her. It happened so fast that she registered only a faint blur of motion, and then a sharp, hot sting on her cheek. She rocked back, caught off guard, and was then furious because of it.

“Know your place,” he said. She could barely hear it over the angry rush of blood pounding in her ears. “Amelie tolerated your sarcasm. I will not.”

She was, to her surprise, not afraid of him at all. And he must have seen it. Claire lowered her chin and stared at him with unblinking eyes, the way she’d seen Shane do when he was ready to deliver serious mayhem. “Let’s get it straight: you need us. Not just for our blood and our tax money and whatever stupid buzz you get from ordering us around. You need us to protect you from the draug, because they are coming for you right now, and you haven’t got enough vamps to fight them off, do you? So we’re not your minions, and we’re not your servants. If you don’t want us to be equals, fine. We can get out of this town anytime we want.”

“Not if I order Myrnin to keep you here. We still control the borders of this town.”

She laughed, and it sounded as bright and bitter as tinfoil. “I’d like to see you order Myrnin to do anything. He likes Amelie. It’s the only reason he came here in the first place. He doesn’t like you.”

Oliver was … well, speechless was the only way she could really think of it. She’d never actually seen that happen before.

“I know you’re angry and you’re scared,” Claire continued, “but don’t take it out on your friends. And if you hit me again, I’ll hit you back with a pair of silver-coated brass knuckles Shane made me. And it’ll hurt. Promise.”

“Friends,” Oliver repeated, and the sound he made was almost a laugh. “Really.”

“Well, in principle. Not if you ever hit me again.”

She held the gaze until he finally leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. His head tilted a little to the left, and she saw the gray-threaded brown hair of his ponytail tied back behind his shoulder. The lines on his face seemed to smooth out, just a bit.

“How long have you been here, Claire?” he asked, in a very different tone. “Almost two years, yes?”

“Almost.” Her eighteenth birthday was approaching fast. Once, she’d have been so focused on that milestone that nothing else would have mattered, but it almost seemed meaningless now. In every way that could possibly count, she was already adult. In Morganville, you really did grow up fast.

“I’ve only been here a bit longer than you,” he said. “Did you realize that?”

She hadn’t really. Oh, she supposed she knew intellectually that Oliver had drifted into town about six months before she’d made it to Texas Prairie University, but he’d seemed such a longtime fixture by then that imagining Morganville without him had been impossible. “What’s your point?”

“I am as ill-equipped to lead here as you,” he said. “Most vampires came with Amelie, or soon after; a few entered gradually over the long years. But I came to conquer. I came to take my rightful place as the leader of the last of our kind. I came to kill Amelie and destroy this place. And they all know it. It makes my situation somewhat … difficult.”

She knew it, too—at least she’d always suspected it; by the time she’d arrived there had been a cautious truce between Amelie and Oliver, but they were pretty much equally matched in power and ruthlessness, and Claire had always figured that Oliver had made an attempt to take over at least once before she’d come to town.

And Amelie, weirdly, had let him live to try again.

“She’s so very intelligent, and so very cold,” Oliver said. He was no longer exactly talking to Claire, more just … talking. “She knew that forcing me to act as her second-in-command would seem a worse punishment than outright death, and Amelie, above all others, dislikes to do her own violence; queens never dirty their own hands. I was … suited, and after a short time it ceased to be such a shackle dragging on me. She had—has—no reason to trust me. None. But she did, and I was forced to … respect that. And her.” He paused then, and said, “I find myself in the curious position of saving humans. Saving this town. Saving her. These are not instincts that come to me naturally.”

That was, she supposed, some kind of roundabout apology. She didn’t think she accepted it, mostly, but she did see his point, a little: Oliver wasn’t built, like Amelie, to be a calm, ice-cold ruler. He was a warlord, impatient and brutal, and he had no long-term interest in the little people.

“So you are right,” he finished, even more quietly. “In order to accomplish these things, I will need the help of humans, and of you and your friends. It galls me, but there is no possibility of success without mortal assistance. Vampires have battled the draug, fled from the draug, and died. But the draug are not used to fighting mortals. You are … unpredictable. And as a general, I will use whatever weapons come to hand to win my battles. Do you understand me?”

She gave him a small, thin smile. It felt like a cut in her lips. “You’re saying that we’re expendable.”

“All soldiers are expendable, young or old, vampire or human, and ever have been.” He turned his head a little, as if he’d heard something, and a moment later the door to Amelie’s room opened and Theo Goldman stepped out. They exchanged a look, and Theo shook his head.

“It won’t go well,” he said. “Her transformation is … under way. She can hold to herself for a while longer, but within another day, two at most, she won’t be the Amelie we know. I can’t stop the poison inside her without destroying her as well. Nothing can. We have to take action before she becomes … what he intends her to be.”

“But not yet,” Oliver said.

“Soon. Would you like me to do it? An injection of silver nitrate would be …”

“A cruel death,” Oliver finished. “And not one due a queen. I’ll care for her when the time comes, you may mark me on it, with a straight, sharp blow.”

Theo shook his head. He seemed very sad now, Claire thought, but in a grave, distant way … the way doctors were sad about terminal patients. “Be sure you don’t wait too long, Oliver. Now—I must see to Naomi. She took a great risk to find me, and she’s paid a price for ingesting the blood. I shall need a donor of Bishop’s line to help her.”

“Naomi.” Oliver’s voice was a little too flat. “Save her, then. I care not. Make Amelie comfortable first. That is all I ask of you.”

Theo nodded, frowning a little. “You’re going to fight the draug, I gather.”

“It is what she wanted. And in truth, what I want as well.” Oliver’s eyes gleamed a little with red sparks. “Not many good fights left in this sad, pallid world, with its frail, sensitive people. The draug at least do not mewl and whine about a few bruises.”

“You’ve always been insane,” Theo said. “Insane for your beliefs, insane for power, insane for blood. I suppose that may be what we require now. More insanity.”

“That may be the kindest thing you’ve ever said about me, Doctor.”

“I didn’t mean it kindly. Come, Claire. I don’t like leaving you in the company of such a—” Theo stopped, looking at her, and his eyes widened, just a little. She didn’t know why, and then realized that there must have been a mark on her cheek. Maybe not quite a bruise.

Theo turned back to Oliver. “You struck her.”

“She was impertinent.”

“Hit one of them again, and you will answer to me.”

Oliver smiled. “You terrify me.”

“I should,” Theo said softly. His eyes glowed with hellfire, just for a moment. “There is nothing more frightening than a medical man willing to inflict pain, Oliver. And I will, should you abuse the power you’ve been given. Or taken.” He took Claire by the arm. “Come. There’s nothing here for you, and we should see to Naomi as quickly as possible.”

When she and Theo left Amelie’s rooms, Myrnin was standing in the round area with the coffee station, staring at the remaining bits of breakfast on the trays and frowning as if he couldn’t quite work out what to do with the cup and saucer in his hand.

I’m in vampire central, Claire thought. She wasn’t used to being constantly surrounded by the nonbreathing sort of people; most of the time it was just her, Shane, Eve … and she never really thought of Michael as a vampire, much. Myrnin was familiar, but she never forgot how sharp his fangs were, either. She was with Theo, had just come from Oliver, and now there was Myrnin, and she was starting to feel a little like a hamburger at a dieters’ convention. Nobody was likely to snack on her, but absolutely everybody noticed she was edible.

Myrnin was, not surprisingly, dressed weirdly. Well, not weirdly for him, but Theo’s old-fashioned suit jacket and pants were positively wallpaper by comparison. Myrnin had dragged out the Hawaiian shirts again; today’s was neon yellow, with palm trees and surfboards. He was also wearing baggy knee-length shorts, which left his legs looking … pale. Very, very pale.

He’d actually matched the whole thing with sandals this time, instead of bunny slippers, which indicated a certain razor-sharp focus in his thinking, the coffee confusion notwithstanding. He set the cup and saucer down empty with a rattle as his gaze focused on Claire.

“How is Amelie?” he asked, moving from her to Theo. “Oh, and hello, glad you’re not dead, Doctor.”

“Likewise,” Theo said pleasantly. “But she is not well, my friend. As you no doubt already know.”

“You were up all night,” Claire said. “I saw the weapons room. How long did all that take you?”

Myrnin flipped a hand impatiently, pushing the whole question, and her concern, aside. “Weapons are simple,” he said. “I’ve set up a workshop for them, and I’ve put Amelie’s bully boys to work, as well as a few human … volunteers, from the prisons. We have more important concerns than that, if we are to save ourselves. Defense alone won’t work. We need to launch an offensive operation.”

Myrnin was talking like a soldier. Myrnin. Claire looked at him doubtfully. “Have you, ah, talked to Oliver?”

“Yes,” Myrnin said. “He thinks I am insane.”

That did not bode well, not at all. “Ah … okay. Let me … get back to you.”

He put his hand on her arm and said very seriously, “I am not exaggerating when I tell you that if we do not take a more aggressive and scientific approach to this problem, we lose the rest of the town, and we will all die. Do you understand me? We cannot hold here unless we plan our moves now, in detail.”

“And Oliver’s not giving you help, if things are that bad?”

“Oliver has his own concerns, and just now those revolve around Amelie. While I have no such constraints, dear as she may be to me. Gather your friends and I will show you why I have such concerns. Please.” He turned to Theo then. “And you, good doctor, could be quite the asset as well.”

But Theo was already shaking his head. “Quite impossible,” he said. “Naomi is very ill, and I must see to her immediately. Dragoon someone else, Myrnin.” He walked to one of the guards who had just entered the room—it was Billy Idol—and they exchanged words. Billy Idol pointed a spike-braceleted arm down one of the spoke hallways, and Theo left without a backward glance.

“Claire? Please.”

When Myrnin asked like that, with those dark, puppy-dog eyes pleading his case, she couldn’t really do much except nod. “I’ll find them,” she said, “and then you’re going to explain this. In detail. And you’d better not be wasting our time.”

“True, there is no time to waste,” he agreed, and picked up his cup and saucer again. “There is a shocking lack of tea in this array of choices, do you realize that? Also, the carafe of type O is quite empty.”

Claire gave him a wordless stare and headed for the door.

“But the AB is still warm. Lovely.”

Claire shuddered and reached for the knob of the door, but it twisted before she touched it, and opened to admit Shane. “Hey,” he said, and the warmth she felt at his brief smile was out of all proportion to the moment. “Where’s Theo? Naomi’s looking pretty bad.”

“He just headed that way,” she said.

His dark gaze stayed on hers. “And Amelie?”

“They wouldn’t let me see her,” Claire said. “Which I think we both know means she’s not doing all that well.”

He nodded slowly, his face settling into grim, hard-edged lines. “Oliver takes over, we’re long-term screwed, you know that. Maybe we win against the draug, but what happens then? He’s old-school vamp, with old-school ideas about how humans ought to behave.”

She couldn’t really dispute that, not at all, and it gave her a sick, rolling feeling in her stomach. She hoped that Shane couldn’t see where Oliver had hit her, because if he did, the human/vampire war wouldn’t even be that far off. But luckily, he didn’t see it—or if he did, he must have assumed it was due to all their running, jumping, and fighting the night before. Not unreasonably.

“Where are your friends?” Myrnin asked, as he sipped on whatever blood type was in his coffee cup. “Michael and Shreve.”

“Eve.”

“Yes, yes, that one.” He flipped a hand impatiently. “Get them.”

“Eve’s not here,” Shane said. When Claire sent him a startled look, he shrugged. “I asked. She took about a dozen vampires, got Oliver’s approval, and went out to set up weapons caches at different places around town. She’s not back yet.”

“Did Michael go with her?”

He didn’t say anything, but she knew all too well what that meant—even before Michael came walking in, looking rumpled, tired, and about as depressed as she’d ever seen him. He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he walked over to the center table and tested the carafes.

“That’s AB,” Myrnin said helpfully. “It’s still warm. Oh, and there’s a hint of sweetness in it. High triglycerides. I think the donor needed a bit of medication.”

“Are you high?” Michael asked him, in a totally colorless voice.

Myrnin blinked, and looked at Claire for help. “He means, are you on drugs.”

“Well, obviously.”

“More than usual?”

“Oh. No, no, just the usual doses. And where is Shreve?”

“Eve,” they all said in unison, and exchanged a look. Well, Shane and Claire did, and Michael made a fast-aborted effort at it. Shane licked his lips and continued, “She’s out.”

“Of the building?” Michael asked, still in that same nothing voice.

“Yeah. She’s got escorts, though.” That sounded weak, even from Shane, and he clearly didn’t know where to take it from there. “I mean, I’m sure she’s okay and everything.”

Michael just nodded. He looked tight and grim, and he sipped his cup of blood as if he really didn’t want it at all. Myrnin looked from him to the others, eyebrows going up and down as if he was about to blurt out a question that none of them wanted to answer, and then shrugged. “Very well,” he said, “evidently there is some difficulty that I really don’t care about, and is no doubt quite dramatic. Does anyone else care for coffee?”

Claire glanced at the red-stained cups he and Theo had left, and shuddered. “No, thanks.”

Shane clearly decided a change of subject was in order. He turned his most harassed expression on Michael. “Bro,” he said, in an injured tone, “I had to go out with a flamethrower, and you weren’t there to see it.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.”

“Dude, little busy for pics. You know, throwing flame.”

That earned a glance up, and a brief grin, and some of the tension leaked out of Michael’s body language … but not all. And the grin didn’t last. “Wish I’d been there,” he said, with a clear implication of anywhere but here. Which did not, again, bode well for the whole deal with Eve.

Myrnin rolled his eyes. “Oh, enough of this. Follow me.” He immediately set off at a rapid, though not vampire-quick, walk down yet another hallway, identical to all the others; Claire fell in with Shane, behind Michael.

“What the hell are we into now?” Shane asked her.

“Nothing good,” she replied. “But then, that kind of describes our day, right?”

“Speak for yourself. It describes my whole life.” He reached out and took her in his arms, a sudden and unexpected crush that drove her breath right away. “Except for you.” He kissed her, and despite everything, despite the hurry and the vampires and the draug and the doom hanging over them, it felt like sunlight shining right through her skin, melting her bones into soft, pliable gold. It couldn’t have lasted long, that kiss, but it felt eternal to her, as if it might echo forever. “I can handle anything now.”

“Well,” she whispered with their lips still touching, “as long as you have a flamethrower.”

He laughed, and let go … but kept hold of her hand.

Myrnin led them into a room that had obviously started life as another ballroom … but in the course of what could have been only hours, or at most a day, he had managed to transform it into a chaotic mess that reminded Claire strongly of his original laboratory. Books were stacked, scattered, and dropped everywhere, some open to a possibly important reference, or maybe just opened at random. He’d dragged furniture in to improvise work space, with limited success, and he’d taken the shades off the elegant lamps to let the bright incandescent bulbs glare freely. The room smelled strongly of oil and metal, and … burned hair?

Myrnin strode across the deep maroon carpet (now liberally smudged with spots of dirt, oil, and who knew what else) to what had once been a giant sideboard, except that he’d ripped it away from the wall and shoved it into the middle of the room. It held about a dozen books, scraps of metal, bars of silver, and nails; he swept the whole thing clean with one dramatic gesture and then unfurled a set of blueprints across the lavish marble top—already stained from at least one chemical spill.

It was a map of Morganville. A standard-issue civilian kind of map, but there was a clear plastic overlay on it, marked with careful, precise handwriting and colored dots—Myrnin’s writing, though far more controlled than Claire had ever seen it. The entire side of town from the border up to the TPU gates had been colored in flat black, simply marking it out.

Draug territory.

“Now,” he said, and set random pieces of junk at the four corners of the map to hold it open. “Obviously, we’re here.” He pointed to a red dot overlay on the building at Founder’s Square. “This is the police perimeter around us.” A solid red line, as precisely drawn as with a compass. “This is the outer ring of our defenses.” Another ring, but this one of individual red dots, spread evenly. It reached as far as Lot Street, where the Glass House—their home—sat empty. “There is nothing within this circle that has not been drained of standing water, or salted with silver if we couldn’t drain it, so the draug cannot get here easily.”

“The rain—,” Shane began, but Myrnin cut him off.

“They can use the rain only when it is heavy and constant, and even then it’s a risk; by spreading themselves so thin, they lose many parts into the dry soil. It’s a bit of a kamikaze attack, to put it in human terms, and they dare not employ that method to attack us here, in our stronghold; there’s no catch basin for them to use that hasn’t been treated and prepared against them. But our problem is outside of this circle.” He tapped the other two-thirds of the town, where black dots and puddles of dark ink marred the surface. “I’ve tracked all the reports I could find. Claire, you said the draug came after you just now, correct?”

She nodded. “Came after Theo and Naomi, probably. But there were a lot of them.”

“Not so many now,” Shane said, and yeah, that was smug. “Flamethrower.”

“Still, worrisome,” Myrnin said, and marked the map where Shane pointed. “That is far out of the area that Oliver predicted they would occupy. Could you hear the singing?”

“Naomi had that noise cancellation device, but Theo—” Claire’s throat closed up on the words, but she forced them out anyway. “Theo had needles in his ears. To keep himself from hearing.”

Myrnin’s eyebrows climbed again, and he tapped the marker against his lips. “An interesting tactic. Perhaps one we should think about as emergency equipment to be issued to all personnel.”

“Ugh. No. Human eardrums don’t grow back, Myrnin.”

“Oh, right. Well, just the vampires, then.” He scribbled a note on a random piece of paper—actually, over the printing in a book—and went on. “Oliver believes the draug are consolidating their position here, in the occupied areas, but I think he is very wrong. Look at the blue marks.”

For a few seconds they didn’t seem to make any sense; it was Michael who said quietly, “Bodies of water.”

“Fountains,” Myrnin said, and tapped a couple of spots. “I’ve sent operatives to shut off any flow to or from them, and poison them; Oliver discounts them strategically, and he’s likely correct. But our biggest issue is obviously here.”

That was a large blue dot. Very large.

“What the hell is that?” Shane asked, frowning. “Morganville High?”

“No, that’s taken care of,” Myrnin said, and tapped another dot. “The pool there has been drained and filled in. No, this is a far different sort of problem altogether.”

“That’s the water treatment plant,” Michael said. “Out on the edge of town.”

“There are exposed pools of water there, and inflow and outflow controls for the pipes in the city. If I were Magnus, I would move my headquarters immediately to that as the most strategic point. No doubt he has already done so, or is in the process.”

“You’re kidding. He’s hiding in sewage?” Shane asked.

“Not sewage, no, though that gets treated through this operation as well. What is in those exposed pools is commonly known as gray water—the water from baths, showers, sinks, washing machines, and such. It needs treatment to be clean for drinking again, but it doesn’t contain sewage. By preference, this is where we will find the draug. Not in the sewage tanks. Even the draug have some standards.” Myrnin shook his head slowly. “The difficulty is that there are two necessary tasks to be performed. First, of course, we must attack the draug directly in those pools, if they exist there—and Oliver does not believe they do. He says he has sent operatives and they have reported it clear.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“I think the draug are more than capable of strategy,” Myrnin said, “and strategically, they are in a defensive mode at this point. We’ve hurt them; they have not overwhelmed us as quickly as they’d hoped, and they can’t attack us directly at Founder’s Square. So they’re hiding until they regain their numbers, and I believe they will conceal themselves here, at the treatment plant. It is a natural stronghold for them—they can infest this maze of iron and water like a horde of starving cockroaches, and they’ll be just as hard to anticipate and to kill in such close quarters.”

“Wow,” Shane said. “You really know how to drum up team spirit. Did you print up Team Total Fail jerseys, too?”

Myrnin gave him an entirely crazy smile. “Would you be surprised if I had?” He threw another large sheet of paper out over the map. It was a blueprint. “There are two phases to this operation, if there is to be one. The pools are a direct attack, but there is something else that is entirely necessary before that can occur: we must stop them from easily traveling through the pipes in Morganville. Right now, they have easy access through those pipes into homes, businesses, all of the abandoned structures. The university. We cannot allow them to have such easy mobility.”

“Okay, it isn’t manly to admit it, but I don’t speak blueprint,” Shane said. “So what are we talking about exactly?”

“We need to shut off the water system,” Myrnin said. “There are emergency cutoff valves that will stop the flow of water in the pipes throughout Morganville, trapping the draug where they are if they’ve infested them, and stranding those at the treatment plant there, unable to retreat.”

“It’s still raining,” Shane pointed out.

“True, but in this desert it can’t last forever. The only reason they attempted it was that it was the only way they could reach Morganville at all. Amelie chose this town specifically for its isolation, dry climate, and lack of standing water. It’s served us well, until now.”

Myrnin, Claire thought, was sounding remarkably together, but he also looked tired. She could see the bruised skin under his eyes, and the slight tremor in his hands. Even bipolar vampires needed sleep from time to time, and he was well past his recommended safe dosage of stress.

Michael was staring at the blueprints as if he really understood what he was seeing. He was even nodding. “Right,” he said. “So it looks like there’s a main control room here”—he tapped the plans, then traced a line—“and physical shutoffs here, for emergencies. What are our chances that the draug haven’t already figured out this is a point of danger for them?”

“Zero,” Myrnin said cheerfully, “since Magnus is remarkably intelligent about such things. The draug in general are poor and limited in their reasoning skills, but their master is another matter altogether.”

“Why can’t we go after him?” Michael said. “What happens if we kill Magnus?”

“That would, of course, be ideal, if we could find him. However, Magnus in particular has developed excellent chameleon skills, and fashioned his draug to exactly resemble himself, so it is a fool’s game to target him. He can hide himself in plain sight, and if that fails, he can surround himself with copies. It would take someone with the ability to see through his …” He blinked, and turned toward Claire. “See through his glamour.”

She felt suddenly exposed and uncomfortable, as if he’d turned a spotlight on her and asked her to dance. “Why are you looking at me?”

“You’re the only one who noticed him originally,” Myrnin said. “When no one else took note of his presence at all. Even vampires. Now, the question is, can you distinguish him from his vassals?”

“I don’t …” She thought back on it, on the draug in the Civic Pool building. There had been a lot of them, but when she’d seen Magnus she’d known, deep down, that it was him. He had more … well, just more density, she supposed. “Maybe. I don’t know if I can do it all the time or anything. He might not know—” Wait, he did know. There had been a reason for Magnus to follow her home in the rain from the store, to invade their home, the Glass House, to kill her. He must have been tracking down and dealing with what he perceived to be a genuine threat.

She was a threat to him. Somehow.

“An interesting question,” Myrnin said, “and one we will have to explore as we go along, I suppose.” His gaze lingered on her for a moment, cool and assessing, and then he went back to the blueprints. Claire gave up quickly; the maze of lines made about as much sense as trying to read a bowl of spaghetti. Michael and Shane, though, were much more interested, and Myrnin was happy to be chattering away.

Her attention wandered to the idea of water … flowing through pipes, carrying the draug into every house, every business. The vision of a draug emerging from a toilet bowl made every kind of nightmare she’d ever had about the bathroom pale in comparison. And showers. It was bad enough being out in the rain, knowing what was out there, but being naked and vulnerable, with the draug building themselves out of drops around you in the shower … yeah, that was Psycho times ten. And forget about baths. She’d never be taking a bath again. Horror movie time.

“You’re going to need Oliver’s permission for any of this,” Michael said. “You know that, right?”

“In fact, I do not. He specifically told me I was not allowed to initiate any battles,” Myrnin said. “This is not a battle. I need you to go into the building and turn the cutoff wheels. Nothing more. It’s a simple enough operation, and quite obviously necessary. Oliver will be happy with the results.”

Michael shot Shane a look. “Translation: what Oliver doesn’t know won’t hurt us, theoretically,” he said. “So we’re doing it on our own.”

“How exactly is that any different from any other day?” Shane asked. “We got this, man. And if he’s right, it needs to happen or we have no shot at all at controlling these things. They’ll take the town away from us until there’s no place left to hide except right here in Founder’s Square, surrounded. Food and water will run out, sooner or later, even if they can’t break through.”

“And vampires must also feed. They will begin to take blood where they can get it,” Myrnin said softly. “It’s something I very much wish not to happen, Shane. But at this point it is inevitable if we don’t act now. This is as much to save your lives as ours. Oliver refuses to see that just now, and we cannot wait. Will you do it?”

“I only need to know one thing. Am I going to need the flamethrower?” Shane asked.

Myrnin smiled, with fangs. “Absolutely.”