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She said, "I am a queen. I take no orders." She plunged the silver knife deep into Magnus, punching through the slimy shell. He gave a horrible metallic screech as Amelie dropped the knife and reached into his broken shell with her bare, pale hands.
"No one," she said, almost in a whisper, "commands me in Morganville. I command you. I command you to be still."
His mouth stayed open, but the sound just ... stopped. He wasn't fighting her. It was as if he couldn't. This, Claire remembered, was Amelie's terrifying gift. She could compel vampires.
And now she could compel draug.
In that awful ringing silence, Claire heard the queasy squishing sound of Amelie's hands pulling out of Magnus's body. Something thrashed in her hands, alive and covered in suckers, mouths, teeth, something horrible dragged up out of the depths of the ocean where monsters lived.
The real form of a master draug, stripped of all its defenses.
Amelie crushed it. It made a wet sound, like a sponge being wrung out, and then there was a sudden, glassy snap.
Magnus's shell collapsed, and the thick, murky fluid that inhabited it flooded out in a sticky, stinking rush to the thick old carpets. Claire scrambled up to a sitting position and crawled away from the mess, retching.
Amelie turned to Oliver and gave him that awful draug smile, full of death. "Now," she said, "now it is mine. All of Morganville. All of you."
"Not quite," he said. He sounded far too calm, Claire thought, for someone who was about to be horribly killed by something as beautiful and terrible as Amelie was now. "Your transformation isn't complete. You never made a thrall. Never made a hive. And now your maker is dead." He smiled as she reached down for him. "And you will never be a master draug."
She paused, and just for a flicker of a second Claire saw terror in her face. "I rule here."
"You are wrong," he said. "The woman inside you has never surrendered to you, never fully allowed the draug control." He held out his hand, and in it was the leather-wrapped handle of a silver knife. "And never will. Remember who you are, Amelie. Reject this. You have the power to kill her. Do it now."
She took the knife. And then she plunged it into her own body, and with her own hands tore out a small, weaker version of the creature that had existed within Magnus's shell. It shrieked in high, thin tones that made Claire's ears ring, and then Amelie's cold white fingers closed around it and squeezed with remorseless strength.
It died.
Silence.
Amelie's shell cracked like glass, and the liquid flooded out of her, too, in a black gush ... and underneath lay her vampire body. Horribly shrunken, covered in black spots like mold, but still there. Unconsumed.
The real Amelie, the Founder of Morganville, looked a thousand years old, and she collapsed in a heap like a skeleton held together by nothing but string.
Oliver grabbed her, pulled her away from the blackening spot of the decaying draug, and held her in his arms as he sank down in the far corner of the room. Her eyes were open, but filmed and blind. He fumbled for the sleeve of his leather jacket and yanked it apart with one sharp move, baring a pale, muscular forearm covered with red marks that Claire recognized. Draug stings, in the shape of hands. Amelie had been feeding on him.
And now he was ripping open his wrist with his teeth and forcing her lips apart, giving it to her freely.
It seemed to take ages for her to move, but she finally did, raising her gray hands and taking hold of his arm. Claire had seen vampires feed when they were starving; they wouldn't let go. Couldn't.
But it wasn't like that. Amelie's touch stayed light on his arm, and after a moment she pushed his wrist away. She still looked awful, but the film was off her eyes, and there was a little more of her, as if the blood had inflated her dehydrated tissues. Still a mummy, but able to blink, move, and speak.
She said, "Let me die, Oliver."
"No," he said. There was no real emotion behind it, just a straightforward denial, as if she had asked to borrow a dollar. "You've won. You killed him before your transition was complete. You'll heal."
"I won't," she whispered. "I can't. There is part of me-"
"You'll heal," he repeated. "I'll hear no more of this. You are the Founder, you will heal, and everything else can be dealt with. Your subjects need you, my queen."
"I have no subjects. I am no queen."
Oliver smiled. It wasn't a good thing. "You have been, and will be again. There's nothing to fear. You've won, Amelie. Your enemies, at your feet."
She smiled back a little. "You were my enemy once. I never laid you at my feet."
"Not yet," he agreed. "But for just now, there will be a truce. It's a new age. A bright new age for vampires."
Claire moved, and both of them immediately focused on her, and she wished she hadn't. There was something shining and predatory about their eyes.
"Claire," Amelie whispered, "come here."
She backed away slowly. There wasn't any real chance of her escaping, not from the two of them. She'd seen too much; she knew that. Heard too much they wanted to conceal.
And she'd served her purpose in luring Magnus there. They didn't need her anymore.
"No way in hell," she said, and broke for the stairs.
She didn't quite make it there before Amelie had her in those ice-cold wrinkled hands. She bent Claire's head to one side, brushed her hair aside with a calm, gentle gesture, and said, "You'll have a rare honor, Claire. You will become one of us. Few deserve it more. It is the highest compliment I can give. And it will please Myrnin, as well."
"No," Claire whispered. "No, don't-"
"No," echoed another voice, and it was punctuated by the thick metallic sound of a shotgun being pumped for the next round. "Not her. No way in hell."
She somehow thought she'd see Shane there, Shane defending her, but it wasn't him at all.
Eve's brother Jason was standing at the top of the stairs, a shotgun in his hands. He still looked pale and shaky, but determined. "No way in hell do you take her instead of me," he said. "Naomi promised. She promised I'd be turned. You're going to do it or I'll kill you all."
Oliver snarled, showing teeth, but Amelie held out a hand toward him. "No," she said as Jason aimed the shotgun. "He's quite serious. He will fire. He's too close for it not to do significant damage to at least one of us." She considered him for a moment, then gave him a slow, cool smile. "Very well."
"Very well what?" Jason didn't lower the shotgun. His eyes were wild behind it. "Swear. Swear as the Founder that you'll turn me."
"I swear as the Founder that you will be turned," Amelie said. "I need the blood, and we have lost significant numbers of our ranks in this war. You will be ... useful."
Jason nodded, took a deep breath, and lowered his weapon. "Let Claire go first."
Amelie opened both hands and spread them wide, stepping away from Claire. She stumbled forward, not quite daring to come near Jason, either. He gave her a disinterested glance, then moved away from the stairs.
He walked straight toward Amelie.
She came up in one smooth, vicious motion, and all the restraint she'd shown with Oliver was suddenly, awfully gone. Her eyes flared bloodred, and she buried her fangs in Jason's neck. Claire couldn't look away, somehow; that could have been her, should have been her.
It didn't take long. Jason collapsed, and Amelie took his weight in her arms, drinking until finally she shuddered, pulled away, and let him fall limply to the carpet.
She looked at Oliver as she wiped the blood from her mouth. She seemed almost herself again. Almost. But there was something savage and bright in her eyes that Claire had never seen before.
"He's yours to finish and raise," she said to Oliver. "I'll not have him as my get. He's damaged."
He nudged Jason with a foot. "I'll find good use for him," he said. "We need new, strong blood in Morganville." Oliver's shining, alien gaze came up to rest on Claire. "You should go now if you want to survive."
For the first time in a long time, Claire turned and ran ... from the Morganville vampires.
And straight into Shane's arms, as he came charging up the stairs to her rescue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SHANE
It hadn't been much of a fight, because it isn't a fight when your enemy just completely ignores you. I'd never seen anything like that .... Magnus was hard to see-he kept slipping in and out of shadow, blending into the background-but whenever I caught a glimpse of something, I nailed it with buckshot.
