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At first glance, I thought there was only one draug in the room; we could not see them, not clearly, even concentrating on them directly.
But Magnus wanted me to see him. It pleased him to show me his mask, and, behind that, his true nature. The mask was a rubbery caricature of humanity, exactly bland; the thing behind it was made of darkness and rot, and was only vaguely in a shape that mimicked our own.
"Amelie," he said. Unlike the draug's call, this was a humanlike voice, one that cut through Myrnin's device cleanly. "You surprise me. I thought you'd run. You always have."
"I am happy to surprise you," I said, and pointed my shotgun at his chest. He was too far away for it to be effective, and he knew it; he smiled, a rubbery stretch of falsely human lips while the thing behind it bared teeth.
I sensed the draug rather than saw them as they emerged from the mold-encrusted walls, flooding down in pools and forming into shapes. They were all around us. I cast a lightning-fast look at Myrnin, who was slightly behind me to my right. He, too, was surrounded.
"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.
At last, I have stopped running.
Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.
Chapter Nineteen
CLAIRE
Going 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.
