Black Dawn tmv-12

by Rachel Caine

  “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.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EVE

  So, I was running around Morganville in what was just about twilight with a bunch of vampires, none of whom were Michael. Or even Myrnin. Or even Oliver.

  This was not comforting.

  I know, my idea, and it was a good one, but being surrounded by fangs when my body was still shuddering off the effects of … what had happened … wasn’t a personal best time ever. I’d briskly introduced myself to the female vamp who seemed to be in charge; she’d said her name was Adele, but not in any way that encouraged me to use it. The other vamps didn’t volunteer so much as a nod. I was invisible.

  And maybe, thinking about it, that was kind of a good thing. I mean, I’d rather be invisible than a walking snack-pack. But at least worrying about my veins kept me from thinking about the dangers of running around in a town where the draug could pop up at any time.

  Oh, and the vamps were wearing what looked like headphones, with some kind of bubbling copper attachments on the sides—Myrninwear, apparently, to cancel out the draug’s siren song. I hoped they were efficient noise cancellation. Me, I stuck to foamy earplugs.

  Of course, we were in a vamp sedan, which meant I couldn’t even look out at scenery, such as it was in Morganville, since the window tinting was on the extreme side. I could only admire the pale skin of my co-riders, and think about the many, many awful ways this could go wrong.

  And miss Michael, in a traitorously angry kind of way. I couldn’t believe that I’d stabbed him, but then, he’d not only hurt me, he’d tried to scare me. Seriously tried. And I wasn’t going to let that kind of bad boyfriend behavior go on without some kind of response, though in retrospect, escalating the domestic violence might not have been the most positive choice.

  Got the point across, though, and I wasn’t sure that when you were dealing with a vampire, counseling really worked. God, Michael. Why did this happen to us? I wanted to ask him that, not that he’d have any kind of an answer. I wanted to be in his arms, snuggled together under layers of warm blankets, safe from the world.

  But I wasn’t sure anymore—or at least, my body wasn’t sure—that I was safe with him. Which was exactly what Michael had been afraid of this whole time. What all the vamps, including Amelie, had warned us about.

  What I’d totally refused to believe, until that moment when his eyes had opened bloodred, and his teeth had slid down sharp as steel, and his hands had grabbed my shoulders so hard they left blue-black bruises, and for an instant I shivered at the touch of his hot breath on my neck and then, and then …

  I squeezed my eyes tight shut because I did not want to remember him that way. Or me that way. Or us that way, out of control, careening toward the darkness. That wasn’t Michael, my sweet golden Michael with his music and his strength and his gentle touch; that wasn’t me, with my confidence and quips.

  That was a killer and a victim, and there was nothing romantic about it, nothing sexy, nothing but pain and blood and darkness coming on fast. I believed in Michael enough to know that if he’d actually done it, if he’d drained me dry, when he’d come to his senses he would never have been able to live with what he’d done. Shane would have killed him, but it wouldn’t have mattered to him because he’d have been dead inside already. Walk-into-the-sunlight dead inside.

  Toxic love.

  Maybe he’s right, some part of me kept whispering. Maybe you should give it up. Move on. Let him find some nice vampire girl he doesn’t have to be afraid to be around.

  I hated that part of me so much I wanted to kill it with fire. But I was also afraid it was the smartest part.

  I was crammed in the backseat between two motionless vamps, both male, who had been staring out the darkened windows; now, as the car pulled to a halt, they opened their doors and got out. By the time I’d scrambled out, they were taking up positions facing away from the car, and Adele, the driver, had popped the trunk open. She pointed to me, then to the trunk, then to a house.

  I was still getting my bearings, which wasn’t easy to do; the rain had stopped for the moment, but the clouds were thick and dark, and with no lights on, this was a totally anonymous street … until I caught sight of the sagging white picket fence and the bleached-white bulk of our house, the Glass House, rising up in menacing Victorian angles toward the sky. No lights on. It totally looked haunted, even though just now it actually wasn’t for a change.

  She gestured to the other vamp, who reached in the trunk and handed me a thick canvas bag. I staggered under the weight, but grabbed it in both hands and lugged it up the steps and onto the porch. I had the front door key in my pocket, where it always was, and as I unlocked the door I felt a sense of relief, of coming home.

  But stepping over the threshold didn’t bring any rush of warmth, or welcome, or anything that I expected to feel. The Glass House felt … dead. Abandoned.

  I leaned the canvas bag full of weapons and ammo in the corner by the front door and flipped the light switch. No response. The power was out in this part of town, but I hadn’t come unprepared; I took a mini flashlight out of my cargo pants pocket and dragged the bag into the parlor room. It was as dusty as ever. Shane had left a jacket thrown over the wing chair. I unpacked the weapons and ammunition and laid everything out carefully on the coffee table and sofa, easy to grab if we needed it … and then considered the empty canvas bag.

  I was here, and having our own clothes would feel a whole lot more comfortable in exile. So despite the vamps waiting impatiently outside, I ran upstairs, rummaged in each of our rooms as fast as possible, and shoved shirts, pants, underwear into the bag.

  I wanted to take everything, but there wasn’t time. On the way out, though, I hesitated, then put Michael’s guitar into its case and clicked it shut.

  The vamps could just stuff their objections.

  I came out on the porch and locked the door—habit, I suppose—and turned to see …

  … Nobody.

  The vamps had all vanished.

  The sedan was sitting at the curb idling. All the doors were shut. The trunk was still open.

  I didn’t like the feeling of the earplugs, suddenly; they felt oppressive, magnified my fast breathing, made me feel oddly suffocated. I wanted to take them out, and I actually reached up for the left one before I realized what I was doing. I could make out, very faintly, a high-pitched sound.

  Singing.

  Dammit.

  I ran for the car, threw the bag and guitar into the trunk, and grabbed a shotgun pre-loaded with silver shot, plus a couple of the vials of silver nitrate. Then I pulled open the door of the sedan.

  I wasn’t exactly shocked to find it empty. The impulse to get in and drive away—even if I’d be driving blind, given the opaque tinting—was almost irresistible, but though the vamps hadn’t even wanted to give me their names, I was the one who’d gotten them out into this. The noise cancellation headsets clearly hadn’t worked … or else something else had drawn them off. Either way, I owed it to them to find them.

  So I went looking.

  I mean, it was my own neighborhood. I lived here. That was the Farnhams’ house right there; I didn’t like them, because they were a mean, bitter old couple of the get-off-my-lawn variety, but they were familiar. Across the street was Mrs. Grather, who’d been a librarian since books were carved on stone or something. She
was always out puttering around with dying flowers. I knew each and every person who lived on this block, or at least had lived here, before the events of the past few days. Maybe they were still locked up inside, hiding. Maybe they’d left Morganville for good.

  Maybe they were dead and gone.

  But it was my neighborhood, and we didn’t allow bad things to happen here. Not here.

  Not even to vampires who wouldn’t give me their names.

  I found the first one walking along half a block down; it was one of the two who’d been in the backseat with me. His headphones were gone, and he looked … vacant. Dammit. I didn’t know how to stop him, short of killing him; he was shambling along with a purpose, drawn by the eerie song of the draug toward a watery grave.

  I ran back toward the car, looking, and found signs of a struggle. Smashed fence at Mrs. Grather’s house, some bloodstains, and a broken headset. I tried it, and it still lit up, even though the headband had snapped in half. I ditched the shotgun and dashed back to the vamp, who was still walking along, and sneaked up behind him to slap the two halves of the headphones in place over his ears.

  He took another couple of steps, with me awkwardly duck-walking with him as I held the pieces in place, then stopped and reached up to hold the headphones himself as I pulled back. Then he turned and faced me, and instead of seeing just another vampire, I saw … a young man, maybe twenty-five or so. He had thick brown wavy hair, cut into a vaguely old style, and he had dark eyes, or at least they looked that way in the gloomy afternoon.

  Kinda cute, in a bookish sort of way. He nodded to me and said, “Thank you.” At least, that was how I read his lips. He gave me an awkward, shallow bow, too.

  I wished I knew his name, suddenly, but there wasn’t much point in conversing, seeing as how he had his headphones on and I had squishy earplugs. I gestured for him to follow me, and ran back toward where I’d dropped the shotgun. No sign of draug, at least here; my new friend kept up with me easily. He nodded in a way that I interpreted to mean wait here, and dashed in a blur back to the car, where he dropped his broken headphones and, in almost the same gesture, grabbed a new pair from the dashboard and snugged them in place. I saw his body language relax as they kicked in.