He didn’t have time to finish, because the sprinkler system went off. It happened with a click, as the metal heads pushed up through the grass, and then a cough and hiss as water started spraying out in all directions. A lot of water. Much more, and more pressurized, than a normal sort of system. Fat drops hit the windshield of the car, and Claire felt them slap against her skin as well—not water, or not completely, because it had a different, thicker consistency.
And it burned.
Shane reacted fast. He grabbed a shotgun from her and pushed her toward the car; she dived in, and he got in after, rolled down the window and put the barrel out as he tried to pick out targets through the artificial rain. It was the draug; it had to be. Michael took the third shotgun and mirrored him on the other side of the car. The downpour of sprinklers—mixed with actual rain now— sounded like hail as it hit the roof and hood of the car, and Myrnin cranked up a dial on the boom box. Claire heard it as a thick mist of static.
“Get us out of here,” Myrnin said grimly. “Quickly.”
Michael tried. He put the shotgun in his lap, rolled up the window, and started the car.
It caught, roared, sputtered, and died with a rattle of broken metal.
There was a second of silence, with only the static and rain to fill it, and then Myrnin said, with soft viciousness, “Damn.”
“So? What are we doing?” Shane asked, without taking his eyes off the constant artificial rain pouring down outside the car, running in rivulets, dripping down the paint. It was splashing in on him, and when he wiped the drops off, Claire could see the red welts that were left. “This is not the time to freeze, man. I’ll take any kind of plan.”
Myrnin hesitated, then … grabbed at Claire. He was fumbling at her, and she was so stunned that she started hitting him—with no result, of course—as he patted down her pockets and shirt, quick light touches as he muttered, “Sorry, sorry, beg pardon, sorry …” And then he pulled back with her cell phone in his hand. He squinted at the screen, awkward still with the technology.
There was a shadow forming in the rain outside, dark and ominous. A human-shaped shadow that took on form and substance.
It smiled at them.
“Yeah, happy to see you too,” Shane said, as he aimed. The stunning smash of the shotgun’s roar whited out Claire’s hearing for a moment, and she missed what Myrnin was doing until the keening noise in her ears began to subside again.
“—School,” he was saying, or at least she thought he was. “What? Yes, Shane is target shooting, and we are going to die. I just thought you should know.” He listened for a moment, then said, “That is not comforting, you know.” Then he hung up the call and handed the phone back to her.
Shane, and now Michael, were still focused on the shapes forming outside. More than one this time. Shane had exploded the first one, but they’d responded by making more.
“Why are the sprinklers on?” she asked. “We shut off the water! The cutoff valves!”
“Except one,” Shane pointed out. “That’s right, isn’t it? We left one open.”
“You what?” Myrnin whipped around in the seat to look at him with a wide-eyed stare.
“Partly open,” Shane clarified. “At least, I think—” He looked uncertainly at Claire. She nodded. “Yeah. Partly open.” Why didn’t he remember that clearly? She saw growing panic in his eyes. “There’s no pool in the building, is there?”
Michael exchanged a long, significant look with Claire. Something’s wrong, it said. No kidding. “No, bro,” he said gently. “No pool.”
“Because they could be coming out of the pool.”
“Shane. There’s no pool.”
Shane huffed in a deep breath, and nodded, visibly getting a grip. “Right. They filled it in. I know. It just seems—doesn’t that seem convenient for us right now? That they filled it in?”
He wasn’t making any sense, and this was the worst possible time. Claire swallowed and switched her focus to Myrnin. “Who were you calling?” she asked.
“Oliver,” Myrnin said. “He’s sent some of his forces out to attack the draug in the heavily infected area. No rescue will be forthcoming from Founder’s Square at the moment. We’re quite on our own.”
Claire watched as other figures appeared beyond the heavy drops slamming down on their car and smearing the windshield.
All Magnus. All not Magnus. She could tell the difference. He’d sent his creatures, but he hadn’t come himself.
Yet.
“What are we going to do?” she asked. Shane had no answer for her. Neither did Myrnin, or Michael. “Guys, we need something!”
Shane pulled his shotgun back in and rolled up the window, sealing out most of the sound of the pounding drops hitting glass, metal, ground. “We’re going to have to run for the shed, or stay here sealed up.”
“They will find a way inside here,” Myrnin said. “Look.” He pointed to the air-conditioning vents, and Claire saw there was now a thin, silvery stream of liquid pouring down from each of them. Not a lot, but enough. It was starting to pool on the floor mats.
She pulled her feet up with a sound of raw disgust.
“So we run,” Michael said. “The shed must be built watertight, because of the chemicals stored inside. We should be okay there for a while.”
A while. Not permanently. But there was no such thing as safe now, only … not yet caught. This cat-and-mouse game could end only one way: the cat’s way.
But the mice had a trick or two left yet, and even a cat could get hurt if the mice bit hard enough.
“Did you bring the iron hydroxide?” Claire asked Myrnin; he nodded, gaze fixed outside the car windows. His face looked still, pale and empty, but his eyes were full of shadows. And fear. “Don’t use it until you have to. They adapt.”
“I know,” he said. “But we have another secret weapon we should use first.” Michael looked pleased with that … until Myrnin handed him an umbrella and said, “Don’t open it in the car. It’s terribly unlucky.” He passed out more to Shane and Claire.
“I told you,” Claire said as she threw open the passenger door on the roaring downpour. “Humans are more ingenious than vampires. We invented umbrellas.”
And, for once, she got the last word.
They probably should have died running for the shed, and likely they would have if Shane and Michael hadn’t been so fast and so good with their weapons. She gave her gun to Myrnin and held the umbrellas for them, which left her half uncovered and drenched in draug-infected water by the time they gained the shelter of the shed. She dumped the dripping umbrellas outside, and Shane pulled her inside as Myrnin slammed the door and bent the steel frame to lock it firmly closed.
“Crap, Michael, she’s soaked,” Shane said, pulling his hand back from her wet skin. She was trying not to scream in horror from the tingle—rapidly turning to pinprick bites—all over her body. “Stay calm, baby, just stay calm—” He stripped off his jacket and tossed it to Myrnin, who caught it out of the air, frowning. “Hold that up in front of your face. If I see you drop it even half an inch, I’m blowing you in half.”
“What?”
“Just do it. Michael—”
“Yeah,” Michael said, and turned his back. “Got it.”
Shane grabbed Claire’s shirt from the hem and stripped it up over her head. She squeaked in protest, but it was too late. Myrnin had done as asked; his face was hidden behind the upheld leather jacket. Shane skinned off his own shirt, beaded with drops of water but far less compromised, and wiped her down with it to dry her off. Then he walked her over to stand behind a pile of boxes and went back to retrieve his jacket.
She stood there half-naked and shivering, feeling utterly exposed, until he came back and settled his jacket around her, then zipped it up. “There,” he said. He spread their shirts over a box to let them dry. “All better?”