Black Dawn

EVE

The vampire library was not my thing. It was maybe Claire's thing, but I like current novels. Freaky ones, preferably, with black covers and red type on the front. My idea of research is looking at take-out menus.

So it was kind of ironic that Naomi's concept of how to discover why Claire could see Magnus was ... searching the library. The idea of me, sitting at a table, leafing through books that had been old before Columbus sailed was so very not right. Also, probably not very useful. But I didn't much mind. Letter of the agreement, and all that. The worst that could happen was a paper cut-of course, any blood drawn around a hungry vampire was, by definition, a worst-case scenario in the making.

"Honestly," I said as Naomi dropped another armload on the table, which was already overloaded with big, leather-bound selections, "I can't read this. And I'm not even sure that this is written in English, anyway."

"It is English. Middle English," she said. "Don't they teach Chaucer these days?"

"Well, they teach him," I said. "I didn't exactly learn him. Or, you know, translating. Isn't there software for this or something? Don't you digitize?"

Naomi had always struck me as calm. That had been her first characteristic: calm, then pretty. She was still pretty, but that was mostly an involuntary thing; she looked as tired as any vampire I'd ever seen. The calm was completely missing. She seemed just ... focused. And annoyed.

"All you need do is look for one word," she said. "If you find it, I will read the section. Or do you want me to reconsider our agreement? Your choice." She pulled up a chair on the other side of the table and began scanning another book. Somehow she made it look effortless and graceful.

For me, it was very heavy lifting. We'd already been at it for an hour, and my eyes ached. So did my back. I went back to the stiff pages of the book I'd been examining-I wouldn't say reading, really. The words were strangely formed, much more vertical than I was used to seeing. It wasn't even typeset. Someone had actually written this out by hand. A copy of a book back in those days was just that: copied. By hand. With a pen.

Talk about carpal tunnel.

And then, to my shock, I focused in on a word.

The word. "Uh, I think I have something."

"Good," Naomi said, and was around the table in a flash, reading where I pointed. "That is not what I am looking for, but it does pertain to the draug. Keep searching."

Draug, draug, draug. I was honestly sick of thinking about them. I wanted a day without a crisis. Just one. As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end.

It was another hour and a half before I got another hit. A spiky splash of letters on the page caught my eye just as I turned another leaf, and I flipped back. Yeah, that said draug, again. I held up my hand. Naomi glanced at what it was, then leaned forward and smoothed her fingers over the old ink.

She took the book from me and sank down in the chair beside mine. Even tired, even rumpled, she was beautiful, and I had a revival of the Jealousy Parade for a second or two, even though I knew Michael wasn't interested in her ... and even if he had been, Naomi was an iceberg. I knew that now.

"Yes," she whispered. Her eyes had grown wider, and a bit of color bled into her ivory-pale cheeks. "Yes!" She stood up, pacing with the book held in both hands as she read aloud: " 'The draug are creatures of the hive. The workers die, but the master draug survives to found his hive anew.' "

"Yeah, we kind of knew that already," I said. "He's here. The hive's breeding, it's awful, et cetera. What does it say about stopping him?"

"That he cannot be killed," she said softly. "Silver will not destroy him." She put the book down and closed it, then rested her head on the palm of her hand as if she had a pounding headache. A really human gesture, for really human distress. Around us, the library was silent-deep carpets, big shelves, solid books. The dry smell of ancient paper. Books that the vampires had spent thousands of years gathering ... I'm not Claire-I don't get overwhelmed by that kind of stuff, but all of a sudden it seemed like I was standing in a tomb, or a museum, a building that was nothing but a memory of something long gone by.

The vampires were fighting their last fight here. The very last one, out of too many to ever count.

And Naomi, I realized, thought they were going to lose, big time, for all her talk of politics and future games.

"What about Claire?" I asked. "She can see him. How does that matter? Why does he care, if he can't be killed?"

"That is what I have you here to learn. So keep reading. It may be our only real hope."

Naomi threw the book in her hands violently. It hit a shelf and rocked the shelf back and forth in an arc that slowly settled back into stillness. The book flopped down onto the carpet, broken and dejected.

Like Naomi herself.

"Keep looking," she ordered, and stalked off into the shelves again. "I don't care how long it takes. Just find something I can use. If you don't, I'll have your brother for breakfast and make him mine. I promise you that."

"I can't find something that isn't here!" I shouted after her. I felt short of breath, ready to cry. This was such a bad deal. And honestly, what did it matter? Some part of me wondered that. My brother wanted it, right? He endured the bites because he wanted to have the power. He wanted to make himself into something else. Something new, and probably terrifying.

No. It mattered not just for him, but for all the people he would hurt if he grew fangs and had virtual immunity from justice. I was doing it for them as much as him.

So I kept working. My eyes felt as if they were bleeding, and my back ached so badly I was sure it was broken in a few places. Naomi only appeared to harass me and dismiss the few things I located that might be of use. I had no idea what she was doing now, but it couldn't be good.

And then ... Then I found it. This time, since Naomi wasn't there, I tried to puzzle out what it said myself. This wasn't even Middle English. I had no idea whether it was High or Low or just plain bizarre, but it took me half an hour to make sense of it enough to realize what I held in my hands.

The answer. And an answer I couldn't give Naomi. No way in hell. I shivered, staring at the paper, at the dry, ancient words.

"Well?" I raised my head with a startled gasp, and found Naomi leaning over the table, inches away. She smiled slowly. "I heard your heart rate increase. You've found something."

"No," I said, and turned the page. "I didn't. False alarm."

I didn't expect that would work. It didn't. Naomi grabbed the book from me and flipped the leaf, found the passage, and began to read. Her brow furrowed, and she sent me a dark look. "What is this?" She put the book down and spun it toward me, tapping the image inked on the fragile page. "Does the girl have this?"

"Not anymore," I said, very reluctantly. "But she used to." The drawing on the page of that book was of a gold filigree bracelet. Amelie had given it to Claire as part of her Protection agreement. She'd taken it back later, but Claire had worn it for a while. And she hadn't been able to remove it. Not at all. "It's not like it was magic or anything." Except that it wouldn't come off, which would kind of argue ... magic. Oops.

Naomi read the paragraph below the image again. "Amelie hasn't given a human a Protection agreement since she founded Morganville," she said, "save those she put in Founder Houses. Each had to be made for the person, and could not be used again. They were made with ..." Her eyes widened. "With a drop of draug blood in the metal. And when the last of it was used up, she could make no more. Claire's was the last."

"But she doesn't have it!" I protested. "Really! Claire hasn't worn it for-for almost a year!"

"And yet she can see Magnus, separate him out from his reflections and shadows." Naomi's smile took on sharp edges. And teeth. "The bracelet infected her with just a tiny inoculation of draug blood, as it had all of those in the Founder Houses who wore them when the vampires first came here. They were Amelie's eyes. Amelie's early warning. And that is why Claire continues to see him, and why Magnus wants her dead, very badly."

"Then why didn't Amelie use her to find him?"

"Because she didn't realize the charm still worked, of course. Not until it was too late. The girl no longer wore the bracelet; it was reasonable to assume that she no longer had the ability."

Oh, I didn't like this. I didn't like it at all. "You're not going to hurt Claire."

"Of course not. Good work, Eve. Very satisfactory work indeed. Your brother's agreement has been canceled. I won't touch him again. I make you that solemn pledge."

I didn't believe that first part at all. I stood up in a rush, hands in fists. "What are you going to do to Claire?"

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing at all. She's a good pet to keep, for the future. I'm sure we can make great use of her, Eve." She gave me that sweet, charming smile again, the expression of a marble angel. "And of you, of course. All will be well. You must trust me. When I am queen, you will do very well indeed."

"Queen of what?"

"Morganville. Of course." Naomi seemed way too complacent now. "Now that you've found this volume, we can construct more of these bracelets, whether Myrnin cooperates or not. And draug blood will surely not be in short supply when Oliver is finished. He will win, of course. I have every confidence in him as a military leader. Just not as a ruler."

I was in over my head. Way, way over, and I knew it. "Amelie's the ruler of Morganville," I said. "And I have the feeling she'll never let you near that title."

"My sister is dying," Naomi said. For a moment there was a flash of sadness in her eyes-almost real. Almost. "Come with me."

"Where?"

That earned me a look that was back to cool, calm remoteness. "I don't answer your questions," she said. "You haven't yet earned those rights from me. Careful how you address your queen, Eve. You are not married to Michael just yet. Now come."

I didn't know where she was taking me, but I had the sinking feeling that it wasn't anyplace I wanted to go.

I had made a mental map of this place by this time, and it was basically a maze-four central hubs, each with spoke hallways filled with doors. Nothing was labeled, and there were no signs, but if you stare at identical things long enough, you can start to pick out little differences. The hub where we made our first turn was the one I'd nicknamed Scratchy, because in all the moving of furniture someone had nicked the far wall in three places, at about knee level. The hallway we took had a slightly lighter strip of paint at one corner, where some old damage had been repaired and not precisely color-matched. At the next hub there was a particularly memorable portrait of some crusty old dude in a curly wig who'd been painted with his fangs showing. Charming.

There were more guards here. Amelie's guards.

Naomi walked up to them and got blocked-bodies in the way, palms outstretched.

"I wish to see my sister," she said. "Surely you will allow me to pass." It was one step short of Don't you know who I am?-but not quite over the line.

"Sorry, my lady. Orders from Lord Oliver," he said. Oh, God, it was Lord Oliver now? Better and better. "I'll pass the information on to him, if you wish ...." His voice trailed off. He was looking at someone behind us who was approaching, I guessed, and when I turned my head I saw Theo Goldman coming down the hallway into the hub. He had his black leather bag in one hand, and he smiled and nodded politely when he saw us.

For a vampire, he was one of the nicest I'd ever met. Or at least, he had the best manners. I never had the feeling he looked at humans any differently from vamps; we were all just potential patients to him. "Hello," he said pleasantly, and then nodded again to the guards. "If you'll excuse me."

They stepped aside for him immediately.

Naomi quickly seized the opportunity. "Theo," she said, "may I visit my sister? I only wish to give her my love before-" She looked so sweet and pretty and vulnerable it made my stomach turn. "Please?"

He shook his head. "I think it would not be wise," he said. "She's not ... herself just now. It's dangerous enough for me .... And you, my dear, with your history together-no. I'm afraid that would be very dangerous to you."

He started to turn away, but Naomi put a hand on his shoulder, and Theo turned toward her. And something weirdly extraordinary happened. She leaned forward, put her lips close to his ear, standing on tiptoe to do it. I didn't hear what she whispered, but I saw the expression smooth out on Theo's face.

It turned ... oddly blank.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, perhaps you're right. It would be good for her to see family."

"Ah," Naomi said. "And may I bring Eve?"

Theo should not have said yes to that, of course; no way. But he just nodded as if it was the Best Idea Ever. He turned to the guards and said, in a warm and perfectly self-assured voice, "Yes, I think they should both come with me. My responsibility, gentlemen."

The guards looked doubtful, and they must have known something weird was up, but they didn't stop us. I guess Naomi really did outrank most vampires. We walked with Theo down the hall.

He opened the locked door to a room there, and we went inside, and my hand instinctively flew to cover my nose and mouth, because this place smelled. It looked fine, but ... it was a horrible, wet, nasty stench.

Theo didn't seem at all surprised.

"She's in the other room?" Naomi asked.

Theo turned to face her. "Naomi, perhaps now would be a good time to mention to you that I am quite immune to your powers of persuasion. You'd do well to not try that on someone less ... forgiving. Oliver would have crushed you if you'd tried it."

"Oh." Naomi was, I thought, honestly taken aback. "But you-"

"Allowed you to come with me? Yes. Because I want to talk to you without prying ears. That's why I didn't crush you myself. I can, you know. One doesn't survive as long as I have without knowing how to do these things, even if they don't come naturally." For a moment Theo actually looked dangerous. "What do you really intend here, Naomi?"

"I intend to save our lives," she said. "As I expect you secretly want, Theo. My sister cannot be saved, can she?" At a slow shake of his head, she sighed. "Then there's nothing for it. Oliver's a fool if he lets the transformation become complete. I know my sister. I know her powers. If she transforms into a master draug, as Magnus intends, she will be able to force any of us to her will; it's a power that only a few have, as you know, but my sister has it in full strength. Combined with the will and hunger of a draug ... she would end us all."

Theo, I realized, wasn't surprised. Just wary. "And you propose?"

"You know what I propose. You're no fool."

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he said, "No. I don't accept defeat so easily, and you shouldn't either. We are vampire, whether we ever wanted it or not, and vampires survive. It is the core of what we are. We fought for life when life wasn't ours to keep. And she is still fighting. She has not lost the battle yet."

"We can't wait until she does!" Naomi hissed, and shoved herself away from him. She wrapped her arms around herself and paced like an agitated tiger. "What remains is not my sister. That thing is a virus grown inside her body, stealing her soul-"

"People have said the same of vampires, time out of mind," Theo said. "Are they right? Did you lose your soul when you lost your human life? I believe, I must believe, that I still cling to mine."

"The draug are different!"

I couldn't disagree with that, really. Everything that I'd seen about the draug made me think that Naomi had something there. None of the draug seemed to have the least bit of human feeling in them; they were monsters, predators, pure and simple. The vampires at least hung on to something-even the worst of them you could understand, even if you hated it, and them.

But there was nothing inside the draug to understand. It was like trying to reason with a hungry shark.

Theo sighed. "She's my patient," he said. "If the worst comes, then it's mine to do, not yours. And I won't do it without Oliver's consent. He is the leader now. Unless you plan to dispute that."

"Of course I plan to dispute it! He's nothing but a jumped-up pretender!"

"I am not involved in the politics of kings and queens," he said. "Or even those of pretenders. Go back, Naomi. Let me see to your sister."

She bowed her head and curtsied, just a little. "Of course, Doctor. Thank you. I'm sorry."

He turned his back on her to open the door. That was a mistake.

I didn't have time to react at all when she pulled a wooden stake from the side of her boot and stabbed him in the back with it-between the ribs, and angling up to his heart. Theo made a little gasping sound, hardly loud enough for me to hear, and then she caught him as he fell and eased him to the carpet. She reached past him to turn the dead bolt lock on the door. Then she snapped it off, leaving the metal tongue in place.

I wasn't getting out of there. Not easily.

"What are you doing?" I cried. "Guards! Get in here!"

"Yell all you like," Naomi said placidly. She opened up Theo's doctor bag and searched through it, calm as an ice sculpture. "Amelie is quite particular about her soundproofing. There's a hidden alarm, if you can find it, but I should not waste my time if I were you. Stay here until I return."

Theo was lying totally still, facedown on the floor. A wooden stake wouldn't kill him immediately, I knew; it would pin him down, paralyze him, leave him helpless for whatever might come next.

I let Naomi think I was paralyzed, too, with fear; it wasn't a tough job of acting. This was going too fast, and too crazy, and I had no idea what the right thing to do was, except that Theo had never hurt anyone, ever.

Naomi took something out of his bag, walked across to the other door, and closed it quietly behind her.

I dropped to my knees beside Theo, took hold of the stake, and yanked, hard. It was embedded between the ribs, and it took all my strength and three tries to pull it free.

He pulled in a tortured, gagging breath but didn't move. I rolled him over, and he blinked and slowly focused on my face. "Naomi," he whispered. "Of course." He held out his hand, and I stood and helped haul him up, too. It must have been very hard; he leaned on me, and I could feel his whole body trembling. "Must stop her." He pointed to his doctor bag, and I grabbed it and held it open while Theo sorted through with shaking hands. He finally pulled out a small aerosol can. "She's taken the knife."

Knife. Oh, God. I looked at the bedroom door. We might already be too late.

The door was locked, but not with a dead bolt, just the standard kind; I braced myself and kicked just above the knob with my heavy combat boot, putting all my leg strength into it. Wow, I was getting an unexpected upper- and lower-body workout. Inappropriate cheery aerobics music wandered through my head, but was quickly whited out by the pain from my knee.

It worked, though. The door flew open, and Theo staggered past me into the room.

Naomi was standing over the figure lying prone on the bed, with a silver knife held in both hands. She was trying to bring it down, clearly putting all her strength into it, but the figure had hold of her wrists and was keeping them suspended in midstab.

That was Amelie she was trying to kill. But not Amelie at all. I recognized her, but it was the kind of horrified, shocked recognition that you'd expect from seeing a dead body, or someone severely injured ... and I knew something about both those things, big time. It was the same delayed jolt of adrenaline that hammered through my body-because Amelie wasn't Amelie anymore.

I wasn't sure what she was.

She looked ... wet. Covered in damp slime, gray strands of it over her skin like fungus, hair loose and matted with the same stuff. Her eyes had turned a different color of gray-not ice now, more like fog, grayish white and completely opaque. The bed around her was soaked with the same horrible damp stuff.

"Stop," Theo said sharply, and when Naomi didn't pay attention he lurched over, grabbed her from behind and levered her wrists and the knife upward, away from Amelie. It wasn't easy. Naomi didn't give up, and Amelie didn't let go, either ... it was as if she couldn't let go, really. I finally lunged over and pried her wet, slimy fingers off, one by one.

Where they'd fastened on Naomi's thin wrists, they left red welts that overflowed with blood, as if whole patches of skin had been melted away.

"Let me go," Naomi said, and twisted violently in Theo's hold. She almost got loose, but he held on with grim determination. "Let me go. You know this is the only way. We can't allow her to turn-we can't."

Theo took the knife from her hand, and shoved her away from Amelie's bedside. She screamed in sheer frustration, but she didn't try to steal it back. His expression was thoughtful, and his eyes were cool and distant.

He held that knife like someone who really knew how to wield it like an expert. That was what held her in place.

"You stabbed me in the back," Theo said. "I suppose I should be appropriately grateful that you thought enough of me to only use wood, and little enough of Eve to leave her behind to free me. But then, you never intended for her to leave here alive, did you? A silver knife, a human at the scene-conveniently dead, killed by you in outrage. You wished me to believe that Eve staked me, overpowered you somehow, and killed Amelie in some pro-human rampage. It won't wash, my dear. It simply won't wash."

I hadn't thought about it, but now that I could catch my breath, fury burned up inside me like acid. That bitch. She'd set me up. Even if she hadn't killed me, she could have blamed the whole thing on me, especially if she burned herself with a little silver. Me and my friends were well known to walk around armed with anti-vamp weaponry.

And the sentence for killing Amelie would, of course, be immediate, violent, and gruesome death.

"What are you going to do?" Naomi flung back at him. "Let her live? Let her become draug? A master draug, capable of destroying us all? Don't be a fool, Theo! You know what I was doing is necessary!"

"And Eve?"

She glanced at me, then back to him. "A human, determined to marry a vampire? How long do you expect she would last, in any case?"

I risked another look at Amelie. She was as still as a statue now, hands folded across her chest. But as I watched, I felt her attention ... shift. Toward me.

And I heard her, in my head. There was a clear, silvery sound to it, like bells and singing, sweet singing.

Go, Eve. Go and don't come back.

I didn't wait. My nerve just ... broke, and I ran into the other room. Theo must have known where the alarm button was, because a few seconds later I heard the thumping of violent but muffled blows on the door, and it crashed open to admit Amelie's two guards. I held up my hands. They disregarded me and ran into the other room.

And I got the hell out before anybody could ask me any questions. I didn't know what Theo was going to say, but if I hung around, there was no way I wouldn't end up somehow coming out of it badly.

I wished I'd never seen Amelie like that, because it was awful, and terrifying. If she was fighting, I couldn't see any sign of it; she looked like she was slowly drowning in that slime, and the awful gray color of her skin and eyes made her look like something washed up on a beach.

We were losing the Founder of Morganville, and once we lost her ...

... We lost everything.

I dashed down the hallway, blind with tears and anguish, and ran headlong into Michael. I stopped, trembling, and stared at him for a few long, horrible seconds. What I'd just seen ... what I'd just escaped ...

He didn't ask. He just opened his arms, and I fell into them, sobbing my heart out as he stroked my hair.

"It's okay," he whispered to me.

But it wasn't. It really, really wasn't.