Morganville Vampires 11: Last Breath (40 page)

“Well,” Myrnin said, in a light and oddly happy voice, “I believe it’s time for a field test.”

And he aimed at the wall of draug closing on him, and fired.

I spun toward mine and fired at the same instant, sending a devastating spray of silver pellets into them. The friction of the air softened the metal and spread it, adding to the chaos of the effect, and with one shot, three draug shrieked and blew apart into liquid that rushed across the cracked tile floor toward the sparkling blue pool.

I pumped the shotgun and fired, keeping time with Myrnin’s blasts. Vampire ears are sensitive, and the noise was painfully loud, but a fierce joy was on me as I saw our enemies fall. It was like the old times, the
oldest
times, riding to battle with a sword singing in my hand and a scream rising in the back of my throat, my hair flying like a banner….

I heard a splash. Shane had entered the pool. I pumped another round into the shotgun and fired, and risked a glance his direction. The boy’s form glided through the water, heading toward the deeper end.

I saw Oliver, face upturned and pallid. His eyes were wide and blank as a doll’s, consumed with agony.

I snarled, turned back to the draug, and obliterated another line of them.

“I’m out,” Myrnin said in a businesslike tone. “Reloading.”

I spun to cover him and fired into the draug that were lurching toward him as he fed new shells into the shotgun, moving as calmly and carefully as if he’d been all alone on a target range. I fired my last load to protect him as he finished.

And a draug took me from behind.

I dropped my empty shotgun, drew a silver-coated knife from the sheath at my belt, and turned. I sliced it across the false skin, dragging deep. The draug collapsed against me, sticky almost-flesh, and its liquid essence flooded over my skin and stung hard.

I gagged as it tried to force its way down my nose and throat.

In the pool, Shane surfaced, sputtering and screaming with pain. He was towing a vampire toward the edge. Not Oliver.

Michael.

He shoved Michael up to flop bonelessly onto the tiles, and I saw that Shane’s face was red with tiny needle-sharp stings. He was gasping and cramping with agony, but he sucked in a deep breath and submerged, again.

I had rarely admired the courage of humans, but in that moment, I loved him for it.

I clawed the draug’s cold, thick liquid from my face, spit out the foul taste of it, and slashed at the next one to come at me. Behind me, Myrnin’s shotgun was roaring again. I needed time to reload, but I couldn’t pause. Michael was lying at my feet, vulnerable and shuddering. I was no longer fighting for just my own existence, but his.

I should have known that Claire would fail to follow orders.

She charged toward me with two bottles in her hands—some kind of water bottles, with the caps dangling free. A squeeze of her hands sent a spray of silver into the mass of draug, and the shrieks were so deafening that I felt the pull of them even through the roar of Myrnin’s machine. She emptied the bottles and dropped them to grab Michael under the arms, and dragged him away, toward the hallway.

I took advantage of the temporary lull to take up my shotgun, reload with quick, sure flicks of my fingers, and begin firing again. The room stank of terror, mildew, cordite, and the rotten stench of death and draug, but against all odds, we were still alive.

Shane pushed another limp body out of the pool and went down again. I risked a fast look. Naomi. My blood-sister looked drained and very near to her final death.

She reached out toward me, and I saw the desperate terror in her eyes. I touched her hand with mine, then pumped a fresh shell and fired.

The draug kept coming. I sensed Claire coming back and dragging Naomi away, sensed Shane bringing another body out.

“Get out!” Myrnin was shouting—not to me, to the young man, who was struggling toward the shallower end of the pool. He was being pulled down, I realized. The draug, in their liquid form, had coated his body. He was too weak now to fight.

He wasn’t going to make it.

“Bother,” Myrnin said. He turned toward me, and flung his shotgun in my direction; I grabbed it out of the air, pumped it, and fired at both my opponents and his simultaneously, driving them back.

It was a miracle from the hands of God that we had gotten this far, I thought.

Myrnin
jumped into the pool
, grabbed Shane’s shoulders, and pulled him to the steps, dumped him on the tile, and I saw the liquid that had coated Myrnin’s skin during that brief immersion writhe, thicken, and squirm up his body toward his face. He scraped the worst of it off, grabbed Shane, and threw him bodily toward the door.

I looked down. There were so many more trapped there in the pool. So many of my people, my responsibilities, and I could not save them. Some I knew and loved. Some I disliked. All were precious to me, for one reason or another, even if because they were now so rare in this world.

Oliver was the last one that Shane had dragged from the pool, and he lay at my feet, limp and still.

“Myrnin!” I shouted. “Get Oliver!” I pumped and fired both shotguns again, and Myrnin ducked under the blasts to take Oliver under the shoulders. “Get him out!”

Myrnin’s gun was out, and there would be no opportunity now to reload. Mine had two shells left. As Myrnin dragged Oliver for the exit, I fired them in rapid succession, dropped both weapons, and turned to go.

Magnus was in my way.

I grabbed for my knife, but he was faster. His hand went around my throat, and the singing, the
singing
… it crawled inside my mind and ripped apart my fury, my will, my soul.

“Not you,” he said. “You don’t escape, Amelie. Not this time.”

He was right. There was no escape. There was nothing now but darkness, and drowning, and despair.

But I had one thing left. Just one.

I couldn’t reach my knife, but I could reach the glass vial in my pocket. I crushed it in my hand and let it fall into the water in a bright rush of silver.

The silver flecks spread, and where they touched, draug glittered, turned visible, and died.

My own people would die, too, from the poison, but at least they would be at peace, and he’d be denied using them so cruelly.

“No!” Magnus flung me back, too late; it was done, and there was no undoing it. What I’d dropped into the pool was enough silver poison to kill everything in it.
“No!”

He snarled and jumped for me, and I got my knife out, but in the end, his fangs sank deep enough in me to inject a cold, black poison, and I fell.

I heard shouts, and a confused clatter of a shotgun firing, and then …

… Then it was gone, and my last thought was one of odd satisfaction.

Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

G
oing after Michael was sheer instinct, because Claire knew that Eve would do it in the next heartbeat, and Claire could feel the lingering, if weakened, rush of vampire blood in her own veins. It made her faster, and a little stronger, and right now, that made her the only real choice. “Stay!” she shouted at Eve, and tossed her the silver knife she’d been holding. Eve caught it and slashed at a draug—God, at least they knew what to call them now—who oozed out of the darkness at her. It screamed that awful noise and collapsed into a sticky, skin-thickened puddle.

Claire raced into the pool room.

It would have been an incredible sight, if she’d been able to stop to appreciate it; she got a blurred snapshot impression of Amelie and Myrnin, standing with their backs to each other, firing their shotguns in shattering roars that blasted apart draug in greasy black and silver splatters. Not
killing
them, really, Claire thought; she saw the sticky fluid slipping over the sides of the pool. They’d be feeding now, and gathering the strength to come back out.

Shane was in that water. It made her sick and hopeless to see him there, diving again with a kick of his feet.

Michael lay limp on the tiles, oozing a thick liquid that wasn’t really water, or at least not completely.

Amelie was in trouble. Claire didn’t think; she pulled the squeeze bottles that Shane had given her out of her pockets, popped the caps, and yelled as she squirted the contents at the attacking draug in two silvery arcs.

It worked, and even as it did, she was aware of Amelie methodically working in a blur, shoving shotgun shells into her weapon. By the time the bottles were empty, she was pumping the action and ready to fire.

Claire dropped the bottles and ducked as Amelie aimed and fired over her head. She grabbed Michael and immediately felt the sting of draug on her hands, but she pulled anyway, fast, for both their lives.

Eve looked at her as Claire reappeared in the hall. Claire stopped and hefted Michael up higher, braced him, and said, “I need you to keep us clear!” Eve’s gaze was riveted on Michael’s white, slack face, but she nodded. She slashed her silver sword across a draug that blocked the path to the door, then forced another one out of the way as Claire dragged Michael out.

The night air hit her in a rush. It was staggering how different it was from the atmosphere in that building, and Claire coughed and choked now as she bumped him down the steps. Eve ran ahead and yanked open the door of the Bloodmobile. A draug lunged out from under the vehicle, and she stabbed at him, yelping in surprise. It slithered into a drain.

Claire got Michael up and into the Bloodmobile. “Clean him off!” she told Eve, and tossed her a towel. “Blood’s in the cooler! I have to get the rest of them!”

Eve, for once, was speechless. She took the towel and began wiping Michael’s face clear of the thick, crawling slime as he began to spit it up in uncontrollable coughs.

His eyes were bright, bright red.

Claire plunged back into the night. Her only defense right now was speed; she couldn’t carry weapons and drag victims. Luckily, the draug hadn’t regrouped yet in the foyer; most of them were concentrated on Amelie and Myrnin, at the pool. She skidded into the big, open room with its glittering blue pool and foul, choking smell, just as Shane rolled another body out. Naomi.

She was easier to pull—frail, in fact—and Claire got her out without even a single draug coming for them, all the way to the Bloodmobile.

She got her in and on one of the donation chairs, and realized that Eve and Michael were no longer where she’d left them. “Eve?”

She heard a gasp, and went toward the back, where the coolers were.

Eve was lying on the floor. One of the coolers was open, and a blood bag lay fallen next to her hand.

And Michael was crouched over her, feeding.

“No!” Claire screamed. He whirled on her, snarling, and she backed up a step. “No, Michael,
stop
! She’s trying to help you!
Stop!
You have to stop!”

He had blood all over his mouth, and he looked… savage. Desperate. The glow in his eyes was as bright as hellfire, and Eve moaned and tried to turn over.

He looked down at her, and snarled with sharp, glittering fangs fully extended.

“God,” Claire whispered, and didn’t really think. She just threw herself on him, locked her forearm under his chin, and pulled, hard.

It was just enough to get him away from Eve, who rolled, grabbed the blood bag, and shoved it in Michael’s mouth. He bit down, and the blood squirted out. He gulped, and sucked, and drained it. Eve pulled another one out and gave him that, then a third one.

And Claire felt his body language change. It wasn’t gradual—it was sudden, as if he’d been possessed or something.

Michael spat the empty blood bag out and after a second, said, “Oh my God, no …”

That sounded like him. Claire let go, and he collapsed backward, throwing himself
away
from Eve, who was holding her wounded neck. She looked pale and very shaky.

“Eve,” he said. “Eve. No …”

“It’s all right,” she said. It wasn’t. Claire could see the blood running out from under her hand, but there wasn’t time—there wasn’t any
time
. She grabbed the first aid kit and shoved it in Michael’s limp hands.

“Help her!” she screamed at him. She grabbed a handful of blood bags and went back to Naomi; if Michael had gone nuts, Naomi would be next, and they didn’t need her attacking from behind. The slender female vamp snarled at Claire when she came closer, and she threw her first blood bag to her. Naomi swiped it out of the air and bit viciously into it.

Claire fed her three that way and left a fourth next to her, then ran for the doors.

She reached the hallway just as Shane came sliding her way with bowling-ball velocity, and ran right into her. He was soaking wet, and he was
bleeding
—all over, as if he was sweating it. He shuddered and made little horrible sounds in the back of his throat, but he scrambled to his feet, grabbed her hand, and they ran. She’d never seen him really run like that before, like someone really in the grip of mindless fear, but she understood it.