Black Dawn: The Morganville Vampires (9 page)

E
ve’s coffee and breakfast and cookies were still out on the table when Claire, Theo, and Harold passed through the big round hall. Well, some of it was still there; it looked as if her cooking had been popular this morning. Claire didn’t see Eve, which was odd; she would have expected her to still be working off her nervous caffeinated high. Probably still baking. Or, more worrying, maybe she really had gone out with vampires to put together caches of weapons around town.

Please be made up,
she thought to both Michael and Eve.
I don’t like it when things are bad
.

But she had a sinking feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better between those two.

“Harold,” Theo said, and opened up a door. “You’ll be safe here. I will be back soon.”

Harold made urgent signs to him—deaf, which was probably the only reason he’d survived out there in draug-held Morganville. Theo smiled and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No one will bother you here. You have my word.”

Harold didn’t seem convinced, but he went into the room and Theo shut the door behind him.

“So … is he a friend of yours?” Claire asked.

“A patient,” Theo said. “And now we must go to another of my patients: Amelie.”

All the doors leading out of this room looked alike to Claire, and she hesitated, wondering which one led to the Founder of Morganville, but Theo didn’t. He made straight for one of them, opened it, and hurried through; she sped to catch up before the door closed again.

They were in one of the building’s endless, identical carpeted hallways, with the tasteful (and probably outrageously expensive) art on the walls. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, guarded by two vampires. Amelie’s bodyguards.

“Theo Goldman,” Theo said as he approached. “I’m expected.”

“Doctor.” One of them nodded, and reached to open the door for him. “First room on the left.”

Claire followed him in. The guards eyed her, but neither moved to stop her. They just closed the door quietly behind her.

It was odd, but the smell struck her first. Vampires generally didn’t smell of anything … maybe a faint rusty whiff of blood if they’d just fed, or faded flowers at the worst, but nothing like the cloying, damp, sickroom aroma that had sunk deep into the room’s thick carpet and velvet drapes. The place looked beautiful, but it smelled … rotten.

Oliver stepped out of the first room on the left and closed the door behind him. He had his sleeves rolled up to expose pale, muscular forearms. There was a fading bite mark on his right wrist, and a bright smear of blood. He looked … tired, Claire thought. Not the Oliver she was used to seeing.

When he saw them, he straightened to his usual stick-up-his-butt posture and nodded to Theo. His gaze passed over her, but he didn’t say anything.
It’s like I’m not even really here,
she thought, and felt a surge of anger.
We just risked our lives for you, jerk. The least you could do is say thanks
.

“How much did they tell you?” Oliver asked Theo, who shrugged.

“Not much,” he said. “She has been bitten, yes?”

“By the master draug. Magnus.”

Theo paused and went utterly still, his gaze locked on Oliver’s face. Then he glanced down at the bitten skin, and the faint bloodstain. “That won’t work,” he said. “You know that. You only endanger and weaken yourself.”

Oliver said nothing. He just stepped aside and let Theo proceed into the room.

When Claire would have followed him, just like the shadow she appeared to have become, Oliver’s hand flashed out and grabbed hold of her shoulder. “Not you,” he said. “She is too ill for human visitors.”

What that meant, Claire thought, was that Amelie was beyond distinguishing between friends and, say, food. She shuddered. She’d seen Amelie go savage, but even then it had been Amelie in control, just in full vampire mode.

This would be different. Very different, and very dangerous.

Oliver was not looking at her, though he still held her shoulder
in a tight grip. He said, in a distant voice, “I suppose I should thank you for finding him.”

“I suppose,” she said, and pulled loose from him. He let her do it, of course. Vampires could smash bone with their kung fu grip if they wanted to hold on to something badly enough. “Is she that bad, really?”

“No,” Oliver said in that same quiet, remote tone. “She’s much worse, as he’ll presently see.” He looked at her then, and Claire saw just how … empty he looked. “She will die soon.”

“Die—but I brought Dr. Goldman …”

“For easing her pain,” he said. “Not for saving her. There is no saving one of us from the bite of a master draug, save by measures that are … fatal themselves.”

Claire waited, but she didn’t feel any shock or surprise. She’d known, she supposed, known from the moment that Amelie had fallen to the ground outside the Morganville Civic Pool. But the town wouldn’t be the same without the Founder. There was something distantly kind about Amelie that was missing in the other vampires. Not kind the way humans were, and not emo about it even when she was, but it was hard not to feel some kind of loss at the thought of her being … gone.

Even if it was just fear of the unknown who would step up and take her place.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. Oliver snapped back to himself, then—or, at least, the himself she expected him to be.

“So you should be,” he said. “I promise you, Amelie tolerated much more than I ever will from you and your kind. She let herself believe that we can live as equals, but I know better. There is an order to all things in the world, and in that order, humans are lower than vampires. They always will be.”

“And vampires are lower than the draug,” Claire said. “Right?”

He slapped her. It happened so fast that she registered only a faint blur of motion, and then a sharp, hot sting on her cheek. She rocked back, caught off guard, and was then furious because of it.

“Know your place,” he said. She could barely hear it over the angry rush of blood pounding in her ears. “Amelie tolerated your sarcasm. I will not.”

She was, to her surprise, not afraid of him at all. And he must have seen it. Claire lowered her chin and stared at him with unblinking eyes, the way she’d seen Shane do when he was ready to deliver serious mayhem. “Let’s get it straight: you need us. Not just for our blood and our tax money and whatever stupid buzz you get from ordering us around. You need us to protect you from the draug, because they are coming for you right now, and you haven’t got enough vamps to fight them off, do you? So we’re not your minions, and we’re not your servants. If you don’t want us to be equals, fine. We can get out of this town anytime we want.”

“Not if I order Myrnin to keep you here. We still control the borders of this town.”

She laughed, and it sounded as bright and bitter as tinfoil. “I’d like to see you order Myrnin to do anything. He likes Amelie. It’s the only reason he came here in the first place. He doesn’t like you.”

Oliver was … well, speechless was the only way she could really think of it. She’d never actually seen that happen before.

“I know you’re angry and you’re scared,” Claire continued, “but don’t take it out on your friends. And if you hit me again, I’ll hit you back with a pair of silver-coated brass knuckles Shane made me. And it’ll hurt. Promise.”

“Friends,” Oliver repeated, and the sound he made was almost a laugh. “Really.”

“Well, in principle. Not if you ever hit me again.”

She held the gaze until he finally leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. His head tilted a little to the left, and she saw the gray-threaded brown hair of his ponytail tied back behind his shoulder. The lines on his face seemed to smooth out, just a bit.

“How long have you been here, Claire?” he asked, in a very different tone. “Almost two years, yes?”

“Almost.” Her eighteenth birthday was approaching fast. Once, she’d have been so focused on that milestone that nothing else would have mattered, but it almost seemed meaningless now. In every way that could possibly count, she was already adult. In Morganville, you really did grow up fast.

“I’ve only been here a bit longer than you,” he said. “Did you realize that?”

She hadn’t really. Oh, she supposed she knew intellectually that Oliver had drifted into town about six months before she’d made it to Texas Prairie University, but he’d seemed such a longtime fixture by then that imagining Morganville without him had been impossible. “What’s your point?”

“I am as ill-equipped to lead here as you,” he said. “Most vampires came with Amelie, or soon after; a few entered gradually over the long years. But I came to conquer. I came to take my rightful place as the leader of the last of our kind. I came to kill Amelie and destroy this place. And they all know it. It makes my situation somewhat … difficult.”

She knew it, too—at least she’d always suspected it; by the time she’d arrived there had been a cautious truce between Amelie and Oliver, but they were pretty much equally matched in power and ruthlessness, and Claire had always figured that Oliver had made an attempt to take over at least once before she’d come to town.

And Amelie, weirdly, had let him live to try again.

“She’s so very intelligent, and so very cold,” Oliver said. He was no longer exactly talking to Claire, more just … talking. “She knew that forcing me to act as her second-in-command would seem a worse punishment than outright death, and Amelie, above all others, dislikes to do her own violence; queens never dirty their own hands. I was … suited, and after a short time it ceased to be such a shackle dragging on me. She had—has—no reason to trust me. None. But she did, and I was forced to … respect that. And her.” He paused then, and said, “I find myself in the curious position of saving humans. Saving this town. Saving her. These are not instincts that come to me naturally.”

That was, she supposed, some kind of roundabout apology. She didn’t think she accepted it, mostly, but she did see his point, a little: Oliver wasn’t built, like Amelie, to be a calm, ice-cold ruler. He was a warlord, impatient and brutal, and he had no long-term interest in the little people.

“So you are right,” he finished, even more quietly. “In order to accomplish these things, I will need the help of humans, and of you and your friends. It galls me, but there is no possibility of success without mortal assistance. Vampires have battled the draug, fled from the draug, and died. But the draug are not used to fighting mortals. You are … unpredictable. And as a general, I will use whatever weapons come to hand to win my battles. Do you understand me?”

She gave him a small, thin smile. It felt like a cut in her lips. “You’re saying that we’re expendable.”

“All soldiers are expendable, young or old, vampire or human, and ever have been.” He turned his head a little, as if he’d heard something, and a moment later the door to Amelie’s room opened and Theo Goldman stepped out. They exchanged a look, and Theo shook his head.

“It won’t go well,” he said. “Her transformation is … under way. She can hold to herself for a while longer, but within another day, two at most, she won’t be the Amelie we know. I can’t stop the poison inside her without destroying her as well. Nothing can. We have to take action before she becomes … what he intends her to be.”

“But not yet,” Oliver said.

“Soon. Would you like me to do it? An injection of silver nitrate would be …”

“A cruel death,” Oliver finished. “And not one due a queen. I’ll care for her when the time comes, you may mark me on it, with a straight, sharp blow.”

Theo shook his head. He seemed very sad now, Claire thought, but in a grave, distant way … the way doctors were sad about terminal patients. “Be sure you don’t wait too long, Oliver. Now—I must see to Naomi. She took a great risk to find me, and she’s paid a price for ingesting the blood. I shall need a donor of Bishop’s line to help her.”

“Naomi.” Oliver’s voice was a little too flat. “Save her, then. I care not. Make Amelie comfortable first. That is all I ask of you.”

Theo nodded, frowning a little. “You’re going to fight the draug, I gather.”

“It is what she wanted. And in truth, what I want as well.” Oliver’s eyes gleamed a little with red sparks. “Not many good fights left in this sad, pallid world, with its frail, sensitive people. The draug at least do not mewl and whine about a few bruises.”

“You’ve always been insane,” Theo said. “Insane for your beliefs, insane for power, insane for blood. I suppose that may be what we require now. More insanity.”

“That may be the kindest thing you’ve ever said about me, Doctor.”

“I didn’t mean it kindly. Come, Claire. I don’t like leaving you in the company of such a—” Theo stopped, looking at her, and his eyes widened, just a little. She didn’t know why, and then realized that there must have been a mark on her cheek. Maybe not quite a bruise.

Theo turned back to Oliver. “You struck her.”

“She was impertinent.”

“Hit one of them again, and you will answer to me.”

Oliver smiled. “You terrify me.”

“I should,” Theo said softly. His eyes glowed with hellfire, just for a moment. “There is nothing more frightening than a medical man willing to inflict pain, Oliver. And I will, should you abuse the power you’ve been given. Or taken.” He took Claire by the arm. “Come. There’s nothing here for you, and we should see to Naomi as quickly as possible.”

When she and Theo left Amelie’s rooms, Myrnin was standing in the round area with the coffee station, staring at the remaining bits of breakfast on the trays and frowning as if he couldn’t quite work out what to do with the cup and saucer in his hand.

I’m in vampire central,
Claire thought. She wasn’t used to being
constantly
surrounded by the nonbreathing sort of people; most of the time it was just her, Shane, Eve … and she never really thought of Michael as a vampire, much. Myrnin was familiar, but she never forgot how sharp his fangs were, either. She was with Theo, had just come from Oliver, and now there was Myrnin, and she was starting to feel a little like a hamburger at a dieters’ convention. Nobody was likely to snack on her, but absolutely everybody noticed she was edible.