I uncorked it and drained it in one small gulp. The taste of her essence exploded on my tongue in a rush, and I felt my pupils contract and my fangs come down in response. It’s hard to describe what it feels like, except that it’s a whole lot like wanting something you know isn’t good for you. Craving, lust, hunger, fear, all balled up inside a sense of wonder, because you can actually feel the person the blood came from, at least a little. The fresher the blood, the sharper that sensation.
I held that taste in my mouth for a long second that seemed to stretch toward eternity, and then finally swallowed. The blood trickled in warm drops down toward my stomach, and I felt a spurt of energy run through me. Not much, because it wasn’t much blood, but it helped.
I knelt down and stretched out as far as I could; I had to hang at a precarious angle, but I finally got a scoop of the turquoise water into the vial and corked it. Even in the bottle, the liquid looked opaque with whatever was suspended in it. I looped the chain back around my neck and rolled to my feet.
Ahead of me, more turbulence in the next pool. Behind me, the draug were definitely ready to welcome me back.
“The things I do for you, bro,” I said, and ran straight ahead, top speed. The railing flew by in a blur, and as I approached the sharp V-shaped turn that angled across the next pool, also dangerously active, I calculated the distance, propelled myself up and onto the railing, and leaped across. I hit the other catwalk still running, but this time the draug had anticipated me, and the waves were heading toward me, building fast.
They were going to build high enough to swamp the catwalk, and once they were on it, they could pull me off balance and down into the depths.
I snarled, fangs out, and timed it carefully. Wait … wait … I kept running, faster and faster, building up momentum as the wave broke through the catwalk’s grating and raced toward me, and then I slammed both feet down, hard. It was a risk. The catwalk was old, and rusty, and if my feet had broken through I’d have been done, but the hard old bridge held, and I arced up, up and over. The wave reached up for me, and I pulled my knees up in midair.
The draug’s murky liquid form slapped at the soles of my shoes, and then dissolved and fell back into the pool. My jump carried me forward, and I landed hard, rolling with it to shed momentum, then bouncing back to my feet before they could react.
I made it to the end and leaped the railing into the tall winter-scorched weeds.
They didn’t come after me. The waves subsided back into the pool. I stared at them for a second, wondering what the hell it was going to take to really make them come out of their hiding place after me, and finally thought to look back at the other pools.
The one that I’d just crossed was agitating just enough to keep my attention, but the ones on the ends were suspiciously quiet.
Ah. The draug were crawling out from my right and left, silently circling toward me. That was better. As long as they were focused on me, they weren’t going to be going after Claire and Eve and the others …
Except that there weren’t enough of them. A few, sure—five, six on each side. There had to be a lot more of them that were strong enough to leave the pool. We’d killed many of them, but not that many; they’d been all over us inside when we’d come earlier. That meant that they were likely still inside.
With Eve.
I needed to draw them out, and to do that I had to present either a genuine opportunity … or a genuine threat. Preferably both.
I did two things.
First, I extended my fangs and ripped open my own wrist, and let the dark red blood—loaded with those delicious vampire pheromones the draug loved—spray out all over the ground around me. “Soup’s on, guys. Come get some.”
Next, as the draug charged me, I backed up against the fence, pumped the shotgun, and began to methodically kill them all. I’d never been one for killing things, but I’d had plenty of video game practice.
Turns out all that first-person shooter stuff is actually good for something. Especially in Morganville.
I was killing the last one—or at least, turning it back into splatters of liquid that crawled away to the safety of a pool—when my cell phone rang. Eve had changed my ringtone, again. She’d sampled one of my concerts. Weird, to hear my own music coming out of the speaker.
I grabbed the phone and thumbed it on. “Kind of busy right now!” I said, before the novelty of my cell phone actually working dawned on me. “Who is this?”
“Moses,” came the breathless reply. “We’ve got Shane. Heading for the truck. Claire and Eve are pinned down on the main stairs. Go get them.”
I was about to confirm all that when I heard the draug start shrieking. I wasn’t prepared for it; the noise went through me like an arrow through the head, and I almost dropped the phone, but I managed to hang it up and get it back in my pocket. I didn’t know what had happened to hurt them that badly, but even though the screaming hurt, it made me savagely happy, too.
It would damn sure keep them busy.
I raced back over the catwalk that led through the safe pool, and broke the lock on a door to the inside of the building. There were more pools in here, just a couple, with more catwalks, and I saw that one of the pools was a thrashing, shrieking mess of silver and black that, even as I watched, quieted into stillness.
There were open canisters of silver nitrate discarded nearby. And blood. Lots of fresh human blood.
Shane’s.
The blood trail went off to the left, but I plunged straight ahead, for the stairs that went up a floor into the main lobby. I caught sight of the truck outside the doors, and figures moving around it—Hannah’s distinctive form was standing guard, so they were all safe, for now.
I ran upstairs, toward the smell of burned gunpowder, rot, and fear.
I met Claire and Eve coming down. Claire was supporting Eve; she seemed to be limping and cursing a lot. Claire still had her shotgun, but Eve’s hands were empty. Unarmed.
I didn’t think, I just took Eve in my arms and lifted her. The scent and warmth of her wrapped around me, and she leaned her head wearily against my chest. “Hannah found him,” she said. “Shane’s okay. He’s alive.”
I kissed her forehead. “I know. You’re safe now.” She wasn’t bleeding, which was a relief; the limping must have been from a twisted ankle. Tenderness flowed through me, relaxing muscles I hadn’t even known were tense; her fingers crept around my neck, and even though she didn’t lift her lips to mine, she didn’t flinch. “I swear, you’re safe, Eve.”
“They had us,” Claire told me. “The draug had us cornered. But they ran.”
“Yeah. Looks like Hannah threw a bomb in their party pool,” I said.
“Shane—”
“I know, she’s got him. You were right. He’s okay.” I knew, but didn’t say, that he’d lost a lot of blood; she could probably figure that out on her own. The important thing was that Shane had come out of this alive.
We all had, as far as I could tell.
Win.
Claire took a deep breath, racked her shotgun like a professional, and said, “I’ve got your back. You just take care of her.”
I escorted her, or she escorted me and Eve, to the truck. I opened the back to find Shane sitting in the cushy throne chair, covered in painful draug stings, his whole body seeping blood all over the upholstery. He looked paper-pale and shaky, but he raised his hand and said, “Hey, bro.”
“Hey,” I said. It was all I could manage. I realized, looking at him, that we’d been maybe a minute or two away from all this being utterly useless. He couldn’t have held out much longer.
It scared me.
Richard and Monica were standing, though Monica looked mutinous; her expensive shoes were broken, and her dress was smeared with blood. She glared at me as if daring me to make some kind of comment.