Black Dawn

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.

Okay, that explained him. It didn't explain the lack of Adele and the others. We made awkward sign language Q&A for a bit, and I got that there had been a draug popping up, and his headphones had gotten snapped, and Adele and the others had chased the draug. No props to Adele for tactical smarts, obviously, but before he'd succumbed to the singing, my new buddy had seen which way they'd gone.

So we followed, both now armed with shotguns.

We rounded the corner into the middle of a micro-rainstorm.

I mean, one second it was clear, the next there was a blinding curtain of rain that smashed down from the sky in a thick silver flood, and it was as cold as ice and took my breath away as it hit me. I couldn't see a thing, but I could feel a burning creeping over my exposed skin.

Draug, in the rain. They were concentrating on this one spot, flooding down to add their bulk to what looked like a flooded low spot in the road.

I could see them moving like shadows through the rain, surrounding Adele and the other vampires, who were shoulder to shoulder in a circle-the-wagons formation. Even through the earplugs I could hear the muffled blasts of the shotguns.

My fanged friend grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a halt. He was right-we couldn't get closer; with three vampires firing in there, and taking a toll on the draug, we could get hit by friendly fire just as easily. He pointed to the silver nitrate glass jars that I'd clipped to my belt carabiner, and then to the thick, squirming puddle in the depression of the road.

I gave him a thumbs-up, passed him my gun, and unclipped the jars. My hands were cold and wet, and I had to concentrate to make sure I didn't slip and drop them. And then it occurred to me that my brilliant plan was to run right into the middle of the draug.

It was suddenly not so brilliant.

The vampire bumped my shoulder and gave me an encouraging nod. He had a shotgun in each hand, like something out of a badass Old West movie; all he really needed was a big hat and bandoliers over his chest to complete the picture. And maybe a poncho. Ponchos are cool.

I got the message. He'd be right behind me, firing on the draug coming from the sides. Plus, they wouldn't be nearly as interested in me if there was hot, tasty vampire within reach.

I gave him a firm, calm nod (and didn't feel that way at all) and ran forward.

Adele must have spotted us, because her gunfire in our direction stopped, but behind me I heard the close percussive booms of my new friend's shotguns going off as draug lurched out of the rain from the left and the right. Don't stop, don't stop, no matter what, don't stop ...

I ran directly into a draug.

Literally.

It was just forming itself out of the rain, and behind that human form was something vile and monstrous and formless, twitching and oozing.

I didn't have the time to stop, even if I'd wanted to. I don't know which of us was more surprised, actually.

I ran right into it, and through it.

It felt like half-congealed gelatin, or the thickest possible slimy mud. I retched at the feel of it on my skin, and it burned hard and fast, like an acid bath ... but then I was out of it, and the rain, even draug-infested, was cleaner, and sluicing the ick away.

And then I was at the edges of the puddle.

A draug crawled up out of it, but passed me, heading for the vampire behind me. He shot it in half. I was really glad for excellent vampire aim, because my hands were trembling hard now, and I was scared to death, horribly and miserably terrified, and I felt like I was screaming and I probably was, but I managed to bring my hands up and smash the two jars together, hard enough to pop the glass.

Silver rained down into the water, and where it touched, the water turned black, rotten and foul with dead draug.

The singing must have changed pitch, because even through the earplugs I could hear the screaming.

A hand shoved me down flat, and a shotgun clattered to the pavement next to me. My new vamp friend was still upright, standing over me now, firing steadily as draug tried to escape from the pond's poisonous waters.

I got up to my knees and fired, too, choking on the stench of gunpowder and the moldy flavor of the draug.

Finally, the rain eased, then puttered to a stop, and Adele fired the last shot into the pulpy mass of a draug, blasting it into slime ...

... And it was over.

Me, and the vampires.

Victorious.

My new friend reached down and offered me a hand up. I took it, breathless and shaking, and the help turned into a handshake.

Adele gave me a cool assessment, raised an eyebrow, and mouthed, Not bad.

Just like that, I was part of the team.

Lucky for us, the rest of the trip wasn't quite so eventful.