by Rachel Caine
When I knelt beside Amelie with the dampened towel and began to sponge her face clean, her eyes suddenly shifted to fix on me. For the first time in hours, I saw a spark of recognition in them. She didn’t move otherwise; I continued my work, wiping the damp residue of the draug from her pale cheeks, her parted lips.
Her hand moved in a flash, and caught my wrist to hold it in an iron grip.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t hold, Oliver. You know what to do. You can’t allow me to lose myself. Naomi was right. Unkind, but right.”
“We still have time,” I told her, and put my other hand over hers—not to pull it free, but to hold it close, even if it hurt me. “If Magnus can be killed, this will stop. It will all stop.” Because that was the secret of the draug, the one that Magnus had sought to keep so close. That was why he had targeted Claire, who could see through his disguises and defenses. He was the most powerful of the draug, and the most vulnerable. Kill him, and his vassals died. They were nothing but reflections, shells, drones serving a hive.
But Amelie was shaking her head, just a little. As much as she could. “The master draug cannot be killed. Not by steel or silver, bullets or blades. The most we can do is force him to flee and regroup. You must kill me before the transformation is complete, do you understand? I thought perhaps, this time—but we are not so lucky, you and I.” Her smile was terrible, but beneath the alien taking her body, I could still see the ghost of Amelie. She had been my bitter enemy, my gadfly, my bane—we had hundreds of years of bile and ambition between us, but here, at the end, I saw her for what she was: a queen, as she had always been. In my mortal life I had brought down kings, laid low monarchs, but never her. There was something in her stronger than my ambition. “Do me the kindness, my old enemy. It’s fitting.”
“In a while,” I promised her. “Bide with me.”
“I will,” she said, and closed her eyes. This time, the smile was utterly her own. “I will try.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NAOMI
Finally, finally, I was taking my rightful place. Thirty vampires, all at my unquestioned command. It rankled me that Oliver had been the one to grant it to me, but I would see to him soon enough. I was royalty. He was nothing but a jumped-up king-killer and fanatic who’d once stolen a throne, and there would be a reckoning. It had been foolish of him to give me his vassals to command.
I would use them to do more than finish the draug. I would do it for my sister’s sake. Amelie was queen, true, but when a queen can no longer rule, her heir must act, swiftly, to ensure that no chaos erupts.
I was the heir. Not Oliver.
The only vehicle large enough to carry us all was a yellow-painted bus; it stank of human children, and other less pleasant things, and I ordered the windows put down. The clouds were rolling away on the winds, leaving the skies over Morganville finally clear and ice-cold, with stars glittering in spills of diamond. So many stars here. My sister had chosen her defensive ground well, and if the weapon Oliver had given us worked as he claimed, this would be the final, triumphant victory.
And I would lead it.
I was already planning for what would occur after this battle. First, I would ensure that Amelie did not rise a draug; next, I would bind her people close to me by right of blood. Oliver could be exiled, or dispatched if he refused to go. And Morganville, such kingdom as it was, would be mine. Once the draug were finished, we would rebuild this town in the right and proper way … and the nonsense that Amelie had allowed, this equality between humans and vampires, that would stop.
It would stop with her niais, Michael. As her direct blood descendent, he would have to set an example for the others. I would ask him to put aside his human girl and behave as a vampire ought; this confusion of servants and masters was maddening. Courtesy toward them was proper, to be sure, and if he chose to keep her as a personal sort of pet, I could look the other way. But marriage was an alliance by law and custom that could not be allowed.
It gave the humans incontestable rights.
“My lady,” said one of Amelie’s favorites, bowing to me as he stood in the aisle next to my seat. He had adopted modern dress, but I remembered him in armor, from earlier times. A good man. Good warrior.
“Your name is Rickon,” I said. “I remember you.”
“You have a long memory, lady. Rickon it is.” He watched me with pale green eyes that were a little too sly, a bit too knowing. How well had I known him? Out of so many ages, it was difficult to remember. I scarce knew how Amelie kept such things straight. She even remembered the names of humans. I’d had to memorize the three she allowed to live as company for Michael, and that had been a struggle. “We’re approaching the treatment plant. The other bus signals that they have arrived at the university and are prepared to work their way through to the edge of town.”
“Then it begins.” I gave him a warm smile. “Do well, today, Lord Rickon, and there will be rewards. Significant ones.”
He lifted an eyebrow and said, “I am no lord now, my lady. Only a shopkeeper, and a happy one. And I require no rewards; this is my home. I don’t take pay to defend my own land.”
I had mistaken him. He was, it seemed, one of those sad vampires who had believed Amelie’s strange philosophy that required us to give up our rights to status, and become … ordinary. Well, I was not ordinary. I’d not allow her to make me into some … shopkeeper. Lords and ladies we were, and would remain.
I gave him a nod, as if I agreed with him, and he withdrew without another word. At least the man was capable of a proper exit, with a deep bow from the waist before turning his back. Manners had not faded quite so far among the old ones.
The gravekeeper, Ransom, sat behind me in the bus. He was a dusty old thing, ancient in appearance; I had always wondered why anyone had bothered to make him vampire. It hardly seemed worth the trouble. Turning someone so old was useful only when they had considerable gifts; this one hardly seemed to remember his own name most days, though he was, I will admit, fully capable of fast action when needed. I glanced at him, and he nodded and gave me a smile, and vampire or not, royal or not, I shivered. Some of Amelie’s followers were … unpleasant.
“Highness,” murmured my next visitor, the tall Pennyfeather—one of Oliver’s favorites, another fanatic who had, in breathing days, administered tortures for the church. I did not trust him, but he had a useful streak of coldness, and proper respect. He bowed over my hand without being so vulgar as to brush his lips over it. “When this is over, I will be happy to follow you wherever you may lead.”
I accepted him with a regal nod and smile. We were understood, the two of us. And there were more here, dissatisfied with the disorderly state of Morganville, who would gladly follow a banner when I raised it. Even Ransom might, though Lord Rickon was, I feared, a lost cause.
I felt the speed of the bus slow, and then stop. We were here. It was my moment, mine, to draw their love and loyalty, and I stood and made myself the queen I knew I was.
Ransom shoved past me as I drew breath to speak. “We know what to do,” he said. “Get out of the way, girl.”
The green-eyed shopkeeper smirked as he followed Ransom. Others fell in behind him, ignoring me. Rejecting me.
Pennyfeather said, “Ignore the rude peasants, Highness. Once you have won the day, they will fall in.” He had a soothing tone to his whisper, and I allowed it to calm my rage. I would use it against the draug.
For now.
Instead of being in the vanguard, I was solidly in the middle of the group who descended from the bus. I was forced to fight my way through to the front, where I finally took command. “You’ve all been armed with this,” I said, holding up the bag of powder. “I have been told that the draug cannot resist it. You must be prepared for anything; each of you has been armed with silver as well, but be cautious in its use—”
Someone made a muttered comment, a rude one, and I fixed him with a stare. It didn’t seem to have the same effect that
my sister’s stare would have. “Pennyfeather will lead one team. I will lead another. We approach from either end. The draug cannot sing; do not let them touch you if you can avoid it. Use the chemical powder on the pools. Do not waste it.”
More muttering, and one isolated, quiet laugh, but I ignored it, for all the fury it ignited inside me. I would rule these people. It was my right by blood and history. Surely Amelie would agree it was so, if she was able.
I led my force into the complex.
None of us breathed, and for that I was profoundly thankful; this was a foul place, even without the threat of the draug. Full of shadows, but that mattered little to our eyes. All was still, quiet, watchful within.
When the draug came for us, they came in a rush, and the battle was on.
I slashed my way through their assault, using silver where it was necessary; a few vampires were overcome and dragged into the pools, but by then Pennyfeather had reached their watery sanctuaries, and I heard the eerie, piercing screech of terror as he dumped his chemicals in. I began the same on my end, dumping my bag of powder into the murky, dark waters, and I watched black threads spread fast and toxic through their blood garden. There were vampires in there, anchored fast; as the draug died, I shouted at others to enter the waters and retrieve the victims. We saved most.
And the draug died. They died hard, and they died fighting, struggling to pull us into their own realm, but we poisoned that home against them, down to the last refuge. Those who emerged we killed with silver.
It was an unqualified triumph. We saved almost twenty vampires from their horrible fate, but most important, my command, my battle had been won, and I would return covered in glory.
No one would question my right to rule after this, after Oliver had abandoned his duties and left it to me to wage this war—and I had succeeded.
“We’ve won,” I said. I was already thinking of the future, of my rule. Though I greatly preferred the company of women, I would deign to take Michael Glass as consort, I decided; he was young, but he came of pure bloodlines and would satisfy those who wished a token thrown to our human servants. As to his human girl … Well, if he would not give her up, it would be simple enough to get rid of her.
“No,” Rickon said. “There’s no sign of the master draug. Unless he’s put down, there is no victory.”
“Surely we’ve killed him in the pools,” I said. “There’s no question.”
He gave me a cold, impudent look from those green eyes. “We must have proof.”
“My queen,” I told him, and showed my fangs. “I would prefer if you gave me my title, Lord Rickon.”
He ignored me. Ignored me. He turned away to deal with one of the last of the draug.
I found the very last of them, clinging to its filthy life, crouching in the shadows. I flung a bit of the magic powder over it, and watched as its legs turned black, solid, rotten. It was dying before my eyes. “Magnus,” I said. “Where is Magnus? Tell me!”
“Not here,” it whispered, and it laughed at me.
I needed to kill Magnus. Once I had done that, there would be no question of my superiority, my rights. Magnus was mine.
Pennyfeather was standing behind me; I sensed his cold, angular presence. Oliver’s man, but mine now. He knew which knee to bend, and when. “Send out search parties,” I commanded without turning from the sight of the last of the thralls dying. “Find Magnus at any cost, and bring him to me. And Oliver. I will require his head, of course. We must settle the question of who rules immediately.”
Pennyfeather didn’t move.
I became aware of a great stillness around me. The shrieking was done, the draug finished here, and the vampires, my vampires, were watching me.
Like Pennyfeather, unmoving.
“You heard me,” I said, and whirled on Pennyfeather …
… Just as he buried his slender silver knife in my heart.
I grabbed for it, wrapping my cold hands over his, and saw nothing in his face but my own death. “No,” I whispered. “No, I am your queen—”
“You’ll never rule here,” he said. “You should have remembered that.”
The silver coursed through my body, poisoning me. He left the dagger in me. It paralyzed me, and I could only watch as the vampires of Morganville left this place, and left me to die among the blackened corpses of our greatest enemies.
Not over, I thought. I wanted to shriek it at him, at all of them. This is not over!
But all I could do was watch them go. Amelie’s creatures. Oliver’s. Never mine.
I will have you, I promised them, in a burst of terror and fury. You should have made sure of me, Pennyfeather.
Because I would find a way to survive. To take this town, and our future, from them.
Somehow.
The draug I had poisoned was still alive, though blackened and crippled. Dying fast now. But it dragged itself to me and stared down into my open eyes.
And it pulled the silver dagger out of my heart.
For a long moment, I still was unable to move; the silver had weakened me, blackened me within. The draug dropped the dagger.
“Why?” I asked it.
And Magnus’s voice answered me, echoing through his own creature. “Waste not,” he said, “want not.”
And then he laughed, and the draug finished dying.
I retched up silver and stumbled to hands and knees, then upright.
The war was still on.
Magnus first.
But after that, those who’d betrayed me.
Amelie, my sister. And Oliver, whose creature Pennyfeather was.
Mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY
EVE
I stood on the sidelines, with Michael, and watched the vampires go to war.
It wasn’t much of a seeing-off parade, really … just the two of us, standing together, holding hands. But I’d always thought of myself as the cocky sidekick type, and cocky sidekicks don’t have to go to war, right? They get to cheer from the sidelines and … be cocky.
I didn’t feel particularly cocky anymore. I felt terrified, and even with Michael holding my hand, I’d never been more aware of how much was at stake, how much was bound to go wrong. “What if it doesn’t work?” I asked him. “What if—what if none of them come back?” I could just see the nightmare of being trapped in Zombieland Morganville, the draug haunting every source of water we had.
“Then we grab everybody who’s left, steal a school bus, and head out,” Michael said. “I don’t like running, but sometimes it’s about all you can do.”
School buses. The last time I’d sat on these cold green fake-leather seats, I’d been the outcast praying for graduation and Michael had been in the back with the cool kids. He’d always been able to move between cliques—hottie, music nerd, closet Star Trek enthusiast. Fitting in was his superpower, and my deadly weakness. “Speaking of school buses, remember when Jamie Montgomery punched out what’s-her-name, the redhead …?”
“Carly,” I said. “Carly Fox.”
“Carly the Fox, right. I think she broke her nose.”
“Good times.” I remembered it vividly; it was one of the highlights of senior year, a hair-pulling, full-on hot girl catfight. Carly’s nose had never been the same. Neither had Jamie Montgomery, because she’d disappeared without a trace about two weeks later—escaped from town, rumor said, but I knew most of those rumors were bull. She’d probably gotten drained by Carly’s vamp Protector out of sheer annoyance that he had to mediate high school girls. These things happened. “Hey, whatever happened to Jamie, anyway?” Because Michael was on the other side now. He’d know.
“She left town,” Michael said.
“Is that code for …” I mimed fangs in the neck. He raised his eyebrows and said nothing. So that was a yes, then. “Damn.”
“You already knew.”
I had, kinda. But still. Thinking back on our class, I wondered how many of them had survived; most, sure, but a few would have fal
len off the radar, gotten bitten, tried to run, or just had the proverbial fatal accident. Morganville’s rate of missing was pretty high, and most of them weren’t missing at all.
“So,” I said, and turned to Michael. “Enough reminiscing. I guess it’s just us around here.”
“Private,” he replied.
“As much as we ever get. And … there’s not a lot to do right now.”
“No.” He was playing along with me, waiting for me to get to the point.
So I did. “We need to talk about things.”
That was not where he had expected the next turn to go. I knew that, but it was his fault for letting me drive the metaphorical conversation bus. But to his credit, I caught only a small flash of impatience and disappointment, quickly submerged. “Okay,” he said. Not as if he really wanted to have the heart-to-not-beating-heart, but as if he knew there was no getting around it. “You want to do it here?”
I shrugged. “Shane’s in our room with Claire, I think. They’ve been tense since he got back. Better let them have some time.” I led Michael over to a set of chairs and pulled two of them together.
And then I felt oddly weird about starting the conversation. There had been a moment, when I’d run away from Naomi and into his arms, when all that had happened between us had vanished, but now … now here it was again, big and bad and getting bigger with every moment we didn’t deal with it. Or rather, I didn’t. He was trying.
So I looked up and said what was in my heart. “I love you.”
He met my eyes squarely, and my God, he was beautiful. It always surprised me, a bit, how everything just worked with him—his eyes, and his hair, and his cheekbones, and his mouth, and … everything. Living art, so gorgeous that sometimes, like now, it hurt. But if his looks burned a little, the expression on his face soothed it; he was intent on me, as if I was the only thing in the world. Nothing in his eyes but open, honest feeling.
“I love you, too,” he said. “What are we going to do about this?”