Black Dawn

OLIVER

I had been waiting for this moment, and finally it had come. Our enemies, vulnerable. Our future, finally visible, if only we could reach out and take it. On that far horizon was freedom from the fear vampires had carried in their bones since before I'd been made immortal.

Freedom to rule unchallenged, again.

Whatever magic Myrnin had worked, there was no doubt that if he said such drab stuff as this powder would work against the draug, it would work; he was insane, and of doubtful loyalty to me, but on one front he had always been unshakable, and that was his commitment to destroying our enemies. Even when it had been advisable to run, perhaps necessary, he had been one to argue for the fight.

We had that in common, unlikely as it seemed.

His message over the radio had been simple: The powder in the drum in the lab will kill the draug. You will find them at the locations marked on the map. Dispatch your teams. Destroy them all. Myrnin was capable of surprising ruthlessness when pushed. We had that in common, too.

But it was the other part of the message that had startled me. Myrnin had, I realized, known all along how this would end. It was a measure of him that he had not given me any indication of that-or, as far as I understood it, anyone. Not even his pet, Claire.

No. Surprising did not, in fact, quite cover things, I found. Shocking might come close.

Before following his instructions, however, I had a problem to address. Amelie's sister was a danger to her rule and a potential usurper, but by definition that made her a competent enough leader, and I needed all our resources now. I had the guards summon her as I put on my battle clothing; I missed armor, but it had never done us any good against the draug. It had only weighed us down, and that was never an advantage when fighting something that thrived in water. Leathers would do.

Naomi must have thought the same, because when she appeared in the anteroom of the Founder's apartments, she, too, had donned thick leathers. The black made her stark as bone by contrast, a pale, sharp face and blond hair pulled back in a simple style for battle. She looked a great deal like Amelie-but there was no tug of connection between us at all. She eyed me coldly and said, "I will not be summoned like a servant by you, Oliver. This had best be important."

"I have need of your skills," I said. "You heard the call to battle, I assume."

"Of course."

"Then I need not tell you that this is the time to strike, hard and fast." I smiled thinly, allowing my fangs to show. She responded with the same, measure for measure. "I shall entrust you with command of this mission."

That set her back a step. "Me? You won't be leading it?"

"No," I said. "I have another duty to perform. A more difficult one."

She understood, then, or thought she did, and bent her head to me, just a little. "You have my respect, Oliver. And my sympathy. It is a terrible thing to do."

At that point Theo stepped out of the shadows near the door. "You seemed ready enough," he observed. When she sent him a murdering look, he shrugged. "I told you I don't play politics. I don't. But you, my dear, stabbed me in the back. Quite literally."

"I wanted to spare my sister the agony to come," she said. "As you do now, Oliver. I think we understand each other well enough. Whatever this heretic liar has said ..."

"We are all heretics together, now," I said. "Theo's beliefs are between him and God above."

She laughed at that and crossed her arms. "Quite a change from you, the warrior of God."

She was right. I had changed. Vampirism does that-carves away all the arrogance of your place in the world and forces you to accept new, starker realities. It builds a far different kind of arrogance, which both Naomi and I had in full, violent, dark portions.

"I task you with the attack, Naomi, but be certain you understand: you are not Amelie, nor will you ever be Amelie. You will not rule Morganville, now or ever, while I survive. I am her successor. Not you. We can dance around it until you try to stick your stake into my back, but I can promise you, I won't be as forgiving or as just as Dr. Goldman. Are we clearly understood?"

That earned me a full, cool stare. Full of steel, this one, underneath all the fine manners and kind graces. I wondered if the humans who liked her really understood her depths. Likely not. Amelie had been the same, capable of things no one would have ever guessed, and she had possessed more of a human conscience than Naomi ever had. There were many bodies in this one's past, and that was well before she'd taken the path of immortality.

Politics was a game of murder, and always had been.

That was why she believed me now. And why she bent her head, very slightly this time, to acknowledge my sovereignty. For now. She knew it was not the time to challenge me.

But the time would never come. Not for her.

I accompanied her out into the area where the vampires were gathering. Eve and Michael were there, parsing out bags from the ridiculous barrel that-so Myrnin said-held the final victory of the vampire nation; I supposed I should not feel so disappointed that the fight would not be won with steel and silver, but with something so ... humanly mundane. It was not my affair any longer. Naomi quickly took charge, once I showed the flag and acknowledged that I made her commander; she tried to appropriate Michael and shut out Eve, a tactic I knew to be doomed from the start. I didn't bother to enlighten her.

"But there is no place for a human in this fight!" Naomi said, trying for her usual innocent charm. "Michael, you must understand that I am only trying keep her from danger. There will be no mortals at risk in this fight."

"I'm not leaving him," Eve said. "You take him, you take me. Or you leave us both. We're a package deal."

"But-"

"No," he said, and stared Naomi down. "We stay together. Eve's told me about your little plots. You don't get to have either of our backs." He looked past Naomi to me. "You can punish me if you want, but I don't trust her. Not with Eve."

The boy was right. He had matured considerably, I thought, from the unsure, tragically trusting young man I had so nearly murdered on my first night in Morganville. I'd meant to turn him, make him one of my vassals, but instead the outcome had been ... less ideal. He had not fully trusted me since, of course. I couldn't blame him for that.

It was a little amusing that he trusted Naomi less.

"Remain here," I told him. "You won't be needed in this, in any case. Not if this chemical Myrnin so loves is truly effective."

"Oh, it is," Michael said. "I've seen it."

"Then you won't require his assistance," I told Naomi.

"I thought you said I was to lead this attack."

"You are," I said. "Delegated to lead. Don't confuse it with commanding." I nodded to Michael and Eve, who nodded back and kept filling plastic bags with the chemical to hand to my ... what were they to me, precisely? Vassals? No, they owed their allegiance, such as it was, to Amelie. Kinsmen? Some I might claim, but no.

They were my army, though. Mine. And a fierce and angry one that had finally seen the chance to strike back at an enemy that had haunted us since the earliest memories of vampires.

I did not see them off on their mission. There was no need; Naomi would not thank me for taking the focus from her moment of glory, and there was nothing I could add. Michael and Eve would stay or not, as they pleased; I had given them my blessing to do so. There was no sign of Shane, which was a very good thing. I did not need the complication of his involvement just now.

I returned to Amelie's apartments, now unguarded; her loyal men and women had gone to fight the draug, of course. I opened the door to her bedroom and stopped there, because the sight was ... grim.

Amelie was hardly recognizable now. Still fighting, because there was still a human form to be seen beneath that ... growth, but she was losing, slowly and grimly. I pulled the soft silk comforter from beneath her to wrap around her body. I needed the full thickness to cover her. Once I had cocooned her so, I tied it off with ripped curtain cords, and took her slight weight over my shoulder. The smell of the draug settled around me, rotting fish and flesh, and I fought the urge to gag. She is not one of them. Not yet. I stopped breathing. A convenience of vampire physiology, but not always effective; our senses are too acute.

Smells pervade.

Amelie didn't move. She could well have been an inconvenient corpse I was removing for disposal; that would not be unique in my lifetime, either in my human days or in my new life. She felt heavier than she should have, but that might have been the burden of what I was about to do. I did not waste time; I was well aware there was little left. I carried her through the halls, now mostly deserted. I heard a buzz of human conversation from one room, and identified voices I knew. The Morrell girl, mourning her lost brother; she was right to do so, because he would be a grave loss to the town. A smart, fair man, unlikely as one was to arise from such low beginnings. The girl had no such ... quality.

I could sense that only humans were left in the building now, save for Michael. It allowed me to easily avoid them all.

My car was parked below, silently waiting, and I put Amelie in the trunk, not so much for her protection as for mine, should she finish her transformation before I was ready. Driving out into the cloudy night, I saw signs everywhere of decay and destruction. The draug accelerated such things, turning creaking structures in need of paint and repair into crumbling, sagging ruins. They would destroy Morganville and rot it into the desert in a few months if left unchecked.

There were more than a few humans remaining in town; some had come against us in force a few nights ago, hoping to wrest control from the vampires. Those had scuttled back to their hiding places to await the end, whatever it might be, of our fight. I did not blame them. When giants fought, ants were crushed.

I navigated the streets without encountering a single draug, though I sensed their heavy presence. The lack of singing from them was an important and blissful indication of their wariness, their fear. Yes, I thought. You are right to be afraid. This time, we will end you. I imagined Magnus had felt the same exultation in discovering Morganville, the last bolt-hole of a doomed species. He'd gloried in the chance to finally, completely, eradicate us, even if it meant the end of his own-or would it? Without vampires to destroy, the draug would turn more toward less nutritious but more plentiful prey. Shane's captivity was proof enough of that. They could make do with humans.

In a way, as we saved ourselves, we saved those who served us as well.

I parked at the mouth of the darkened alley, opened the car door and checked around the area. There were shadows, ominous ones, but those were quite normal for this place. No sign or smell of the draug, save what was coming from the trunk. I reeked of it myself, I realized. A filthy business, and heartrending.

I carried Amelie down the narrowing alleyway to the shack set at the end of it. Myrnin's hovel, which contained only a stairway leading down to his laboratory and nothing else but the flickering glances and scuttles of nighttime lower-form intruders. It was dark there, all lights extinguished, but as I descended lamps flickered on in response to the motion. Claire's improvement, I should imagine. Myrnin would hardly have cared much.

The lab was a shambles, but that also was normal; Myrnin was, to put it mildly, not concerned with appearances. The girl had made attempts to clear it, but they never lasted long. I navigated around broken glassware, fallen chairs, scattered loose books and papers, and stopped in front of a large, locked cabinet marked DANGER, with many different dire-looking symbols and icons stickered on the face of it.

As I reached out for it, I felt a flicker of energy behind me, and glanced back to see a shape forming in mist and static. Not the draug.

Myrnin's creation.

It was unnatural, this thing, this apparition; he had used the brain of a vampire to power it, and the spirit of the man remained. A reluctant vampire, to be sure; Bishop's little joke, making our bitterest enemy into one of our own. Punishment for both the father and the son. I wondered how Shane Collins felt, knowing his father survived-if it could be called that-in this pathetic, impotent form.

Frank Collins was an image, nothing more. He existed as flat as a photograph, and with about as much power. He was indefinably degraded since last I'd seen him; then, he'd worn a certain cockiness, but now he seemed ... faded. And old. The power in the lab flickered unsteadily, and so did his image.

He said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him. There was no point in bantering with the dead.

As I rolled the cabinet aside on its concealed track, he finally spoke up. "Is my son still alive?" he asked.

"I am much surprised you care," I responded. "But yes, so far as I am aware."

"Tell him-" Frank hesitated, and I had the curious sense that he was struggling to remember how to form words. "Tell him I said I was sorry."

"I doubt that will matter very much," I said, "given your history together. But if I survive the day, I will do so."

"I'm dying," he said. "My brain, I mean. The power keeps going out. Maybe that's ... that's good."

"Maybe it is," I said. I was not without sympathy, but I chose where to give it, and Frank Collins was not my choice. I opened the door to the portal that led from Myrnin's lab, and beyond it was thick, black, empty space. "Are the portals still functioning?"

"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes. Yes. Maybe. I don't know ..." And his image flickered and faded, and didn't return.

Not reassuring, perhaps. The portals were Myrnin's creation as well-magical doorways (though he assured me they were based on his blend of alchemy and science) that tunnel through space, linking places together as if adjacent rooms in a single house. One could cross town in only a few moments, theoretically, if one knew the secrets of the portals and their locations. I knew a few. Myrnin never shared the full extent of his invention with anyone save Amelie.

I faced the portal and concentrated hard. There was a whisper of color through the dark, dim but definite. I traced the outlines of the place I wished to see in my mind-the brightly colored stained-glass lamps, the red velvet sofa with its lion's-head arms, the thick, dusty carpeting. There was a small Monet painting that Amelie had favored, hanging just there ...

I felt another force suddenly add itself to mine in one intense surge, and color exploded out of the dark, showing me the room in shining, perfect focus.

No time.

I plunged through, into freezing cold, then heat, and then I was stepping/falling through the dark and into the light.

The portal snapped shut behind me with an almost metallic shriek, and I sensed that it wouldn't be opening again, not without repairs. Morganville was shattering all around us. Soon there'd be nothing left to save.

That power. It hadn't been Frank; he'd had little or nothing left to give. No, this had been power with a familiar sort of feel. Amelie was, at least on some level, still awake. Aware.

Alive.

Perhaps because of this place. This room, this house, still held a sense of eternity, peace, and a measure of her own power. Here, of all places, Amelie could find strength. In many ways, the Glass House was the unbeating heart of the town-the first of her Founder Houses to be completed, the first of her homes. When the structure had been built, it had been the first of thirteen identical buildings, all linked, connected, strengthened by blood and bone and magic and science.

Here, in this place of power, I hoped she could maintain a little longer. And if not ... it was a fitting place for it to end.

I put her down as gently as possible on the red velvet sofa, and unwrapped the silken covers from around her body. They pulled away wet and sticky, and beneath she was a melting wax sculpture with pale, blind eyes.

I left the hidden attic room and went to the second floor. The young people who lived here-Claire, Eve, Michael, Shane-were indifferent housekeepers, but the bathroom held clean towels. No water, of course, but in the kitchen I found a sealed, safe bottle of water, and a not-yet-curdled supply of blood that Michael Glass must have stored against emergencies. Prudent. I would have stored more than that, but I am by nature cautious and paranoid.

The house had a curiously empty feel. I had been here many times, but always there had been a sense of presence to it, of something living within it that was not just the occupants, but the spirit of the house itself. Myrnin's creations had odd effects, and the oddest had been the awakening of these immobile, unliving buildings made of brick, wood, mortar, and nails. But the spirit that had dwelt here seemed as dead as Morganville itself.

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."