I returned to Amelie’s apartments, now unguarded; her loyal men and women had gone to fight the draug, of course. I opened the door to her bedroom and stopped there, because the sight was … grim.
Amelie was hardly recognizable now. Still fighting, because there was still a human form to be seen beneath that … growth, but she was losing, slowly and grimly. I pulled the soft silk comforter from beneath her to wrap around her body. I needed the full thickness to cover her. Once I had cocooned her so, I tied it off with ripped curtain cords, and took her slight weight over my shoulder. The smell of the draug settled around me, rotting fish and flesh, and I fought the urge to gag. She is not one of them. Not yet. I stopped breathing. A convenience of vampire physiology, but not always effective; our senses are too acute.
Smells pervade.
Amelie didn’t move. She could well have been an inconvenient corpse I was removing for disposal; that would not be unique in my lifetime, either in my human days or in my new life. She felt heavier than she should have, but that might have been the burden of what I was about to do. I did not waste time; I was well aware there was little left. I carried her through the halls, now mostly deserted. I heard a buzz of human conversation from one room, and identified voices I knew. The Morrell girl, mourning her lost brother; she was right to do so, because he would be a grave loss to the town. A smart, fair man, unlikely as one was to arise from such low beginnings. The girl had no such … quality.
I could sense that only humans were left in the building now, save for Michael. It allowed me to easily avoid them all.
My car was parked below, silently waiting, and I put Amelie in the trunk, not so much for her protection as for mine, should she finish her transformation before I was ready. Driving out into the cloudy night, I saw signs everywhere of decay and destruction. The draug accelerated such things, turning creaking structures in need of paint and repair into crumbling, sagging ruins. They would destroy Morganville and rot it into the desert in a few months if left unchecked.
There were more than a few humans remaining in town; some had come against us in force a few nights ago, hoping to wrest control from the vampires. Those had scuttled back to their hiding places to await the end, whatever it might be, of our fight. I did not blame them. When giants fought, ants were crushed.
I navigated the streets without encountering a single draug, though I sensed their heavy presence. The lack of singing from them was an important and blissful indication of their wariness, their fear. Yes, I thought. You are right to be afraid. This time, we will end you. I imagined Magnus had felt the same exultation in discovering Morganville, the last bolt-hole of a doomed species. He’d gloried in the chance to finally, completely, eradicate us, even if it meant the end of his own—or would it? Without vampires to destroy, the draug would turn more toward less nutritious but more plentiful prey. Shane’s captivity was proof enough of that. They could make do with humans.
In a way, as we saved ourselves, we saved those who served us as well.
I parked at the mouth of the darkened alley, opened the car door and checked around the area. There were shadows, ominous ones, but those were quite normal for this place. No sign or smell of the draug, save what was coming from the trunk. I reeked of it myself, I realized. A filthy business, and heartrending.
I carried Amelie down the narrowing alleyway to the shack set at the end of it. Myrnin’s hovel, which contained only a stairway leading down to his laboratory and nothing else but the flickering glances and scuttles of nighttime lower-form intruders. It was dark there, all lights extinguished, but as I descended lamps flickered on in response to the motion. Claire’s improvement, I should imagine. Myrnin would hardly have cared much.
The lab was a shambles, but that also was normal; Myrnin was, to put it mildly, not concerned with appearances. The girl had made attempts to clear it, but they never lasted long. I navigated around broken glassware, fallen chairs, scattered loose books and papers, and stopped in front of a large, locked cabinet marked DANGER, with many different dire-looking symbols and icons stickered on the face of it.
As I reached out for it, I felt a flicker of energy behind me, and glanced back to see a shape forming in mist and static. Not the draug.
Myrnin’s creation.
It was unnatural, this thing, this apparition; he had used the brain of a vampire to power it, and the spirit of the man remained. A reluctant vampire, to be sure; Bishop’s little joke, making our bitterest enemy into one of our own. Punishment for both the father and the son. I wondered how Shane Collins felt, knowing his father survived—if it could be called that—in this pathetic, impotent form.
Frank Collins was an image, nothing more. He existed as flat as a photograph, and with about as much power. He was indefinably degraded since last I’d seen him; then, he’d worn a certain cockiness, but now he seemed … faded. And old. The power in the lab flickered unsteadily, and so did his image.
He said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him. There was no point in bantering with the dead.
As I rolled the cabinet aside on its concealed track, he finally spoke up. “Is my son still alive?” he asked.
“I am much surprised you care,” I responded. “But yes, so far as I am aware.”
“Tell him—” Frank hesitated, and I had the curious sense that he was struggling to remember how to form words. “Tell him I said I was sorry.”
“I doubt that will matter very much,” I said, “given your history together. But if I survive the day, I will do so.”
“I’m dying,” he said. “My brain, I mean. The power keeps going out. Maybe that’s … that’s good.”
“Maybe it is,” I said. I was not without sympathy, but I chose where to give it, and Frank Collins was not my choice. I opened the door to the portal that led from Myrnin’s lab, and beyond it was thick, black, empty space. “Are the portals still functioning?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know …” And his image flickered and faded, and didn’t return.
Not reassuring, perhaps. The portals were Myrnin’s creation as well—magical doorways (though he assured me they were based on his blend of alchemy and science) that tunnel through space, linking places together as if adjacent rooms in a single house. One could cross town in only a few moments, theoretically, if one knew the secrets of the portals and their locations. I knew a few. Myrnin never shared the full extent of his invention with anyone save Amelie.
I faced the portal and concentrated hard. There was a whisper of color through the dark, dim but definite. I traced the outlines of the place I wished to see in my mind—the brightly colored stained-glass lamps, the red velvet sofa with its lion’s-head arms, the thick, dusty carpeting. There was a small Monet painting that Amelie had favored, hanging just there …
I felt another force suddenly add itself to mine in one intense surge, and color exploded out of the dark, showing me the room in shining, perfect focus.
No time.
I plunged through, into freezing cold, then heat, and then I was stepping/falling through the dark and into the light.
The portal snapped shut behind me with an almost metallic shriek, and I sensed that it wouldn’t be opening again, not without repairs. Morganville was shattering all around us. Soon there’d be nothing left to save.
That power. It hadn’t been Frank; he’d had little or nothing left to give. No, this had been power with a familiar sort of feel. Amelie was, at least on some level, still awake. Aware.