Black Dawn

OLIVER

I felt Amelie's hand tighten on mine, and looked up to see her watching me. Her eyes were no longer her own-still gray, but a muddy, watery gray, not the shining steel that they had always been.

She was drowning just as surely as the draug's other victims, but this was somehow even worse than what I had expected. She was trapped within the prison of her own body, drowning in her own extracted and infected fluids. Nothing I could do for her would save her.

"You need more blood," I said, and bared my wrist, but she shook her head.

"It only feeds the other side now. Oliver, I can't. I can't hold."

"You must," I said.

"Kill me or go. You have whatever's left of my city to protect. My people." For a moment, the queen was there, gazing at me, her vassal. "You will save them, Oliver. You must. No matter the cost. Do you understand?"

I smiled thinly. "It has always been my goal. We have simply had differences of opinion about what it meant to save them."

"Humans, too. Don't betray my dreams. My promises." Her eyes slowly closed. "I am very tired now. So tired. It has been a long fight, has it not?"

"Ages," I said. "Against Bishop. Against me. Against a thousand foes, all laid at your feet."

That got me a dry rustle of a laugh. "I never laid you at my feet, Oliver. Never you."

She was wrong in that, and had been for some time, but there was no point in telling her. And I was still proud enough to want to conceal that ... weakness. "If I am not defeated, then you cannot order me to leave you, can you?"

She released her hold on my wrist, but I kept my hold on her hand. She didn't open her eyes, but I saw the faintest lift at the corners of her mouth. I had won a smile, at least.

But she said nothing else.

Not even good-bye.

I had no warning before she lost the battle. The draug rose in a glistening, heaving surge, coating her, consuming her. I fell backward in momentary shock; I could see Amelie's form within it, trapped, but the thick, gelatinous coating on her skin grew in size, multiplying rapidly to cover her. She was only a shadow within it in seconds.

Gone.

I had known it could happen, would happen, but I had hoped ... hoped for more time. For, perhaps, a miracle. I used to place such trust in miracles, in my breathing days when I was right with God.

I had not felt such an impulse to pray in many years, but this ... this was the face of evil, overtaking us. God helps those who help themselves, I thought, and shook myself out of that dark hollow of fear. The draug were enemies, yes, but I had fought enemies all my life, and beyond. Some were well deserved; some I had created through my own actions, and those, I regretted.

But this was pure, a battle against something more evil than I could ever be, vampire or no.

And I had to win.

I drew the silver knife from my belt, the one that Naomi had urged me to plunge into Amelie's chest, and I began to fight for my life.

Where the silver tugged through the draug's gelatinous, rippling, changing form, it burned, blackened, and shriveled the thing; like us, they were vulnerable to it, but unlike us, the silver did not significantly slow it down. A master draug was strong, dangerous, fast, and cunning; a master draug fueled by Amelie was far worse. It was still fighting to absorb her power, still vulnerable in at least a small degree, but that would be done soon.

And this room was very small. Our plans were crumbling before my very eyes.

A sound drifted up through the house, shuddering it to its very bones, and I recognized the shriek of pain of a master draug.

Magnus was below, and something-someone-had hurt him. Badly. Yes. Yes, at last.

As if fueled by that scream, the draug came for me, and as it did, the form finally solidified, pulled into human-seeming flesh, and it was Amelie striding toward me, pale and strong, but with rot and foulness writhing behind those shining silver eyes.

I took a firmer hold on my dagger, and prayed.

And then I stabbed straight at her chest. Forgive me. I didn't mean to kill her, but I had to get her back, the Amelie within. The Amelie who understood what was at stake.

Her hand caught my arm and paused the silvery point just as it touched the writhing slime that covered her body. I felt the stinging agony of the draug's tiny mouths drawing away my blood, even through the protective leathers. "Amelie, you know the plan, you know what you must do. Hold on. Hold!"

"No," the master draug that had been Amelie said, in a voice like rotten silk. "No more plans. No more scheming. Now you are mine."

And I realized that the draug was in control. And this draug had Amelie's power-the power to compel. The power to force a vampire to her will.

And I sank slowly to my knees under that cold silver stare, screaming inside, as the draug's slime crept up my hand and under the leathers, and began to feed.