Alive.
Perhaps because of this place. This room, this house, still held a sense of eternity, peace, and a measure of her own power. Here, of all places, Amelie could find strength. In many ways, the Glass House was the unbeating heart of the town—the first of her Founder Houses to be completed, the first of her homes. When the structure had been built, it had been the first of thirteen identical buildings, all linked, connected, strengthened by blood and bone and magic and science.
Here, in this place of power, I hoped she could maintain a little longer. And if not … it was a fitting place for it to end.
I put her down as gently as possible on the red velvet sofa, and unwrapped the silken covers from around her body. They pulled away wet and sticky, and beneath she was a melting wax sculpture with pale, blind eyes.
I left the hidden attic room and went to the second floor. The young people who lived here—Claire, Eve, Michael, Shane—were indifferent housekeepers, but the bathroom held clean towels. No water, of course, but in the kitchen I found a sealed, safe bottle of water, and a not-yet-curdled supply of blood that Michael Glass must have stored against emergencies. Prudent. I would have stored more than that, but I am by nature cautious and paranoid.
The house had a curiously empty feel. I had been here many times, but always there had been a sense of presence to it, of something living within it that was not just the occupants, but the spirit of the house itself. Myrnin’s creations had odd effects, and the oddest had been the awakening of these immobile, unliving buildings made of brick, wood, mortar, and nails. But the spirit that had dwelt here seemed as dead as Morganville itself.
When I knelt beside Amelie with the dampened towel and began to sponge her face clean, her eyes suddenly shifted to fix on me. For the first time in hours, I saw a spark of recognition in them. She didn’t move otherwise; I continued my work, wiping the damp residue of the draug from her pale cheeks, her parted lips.
Her hand moved in a flash, and caught my wrist to hold it in an iron grip.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t hold, Oliver. You know what to do. You can’t allow me to lose myself. Naomi was right. Unkind, but right.”
“We still have time,” I told her, and put my other hand over hers—not to pull it free, but to hold it close, even if it hurt me. “If Magnus can be killed, this will stop. It will all stop.” Because that was the secret of the draug, the one that Magnus had sought to keep so close. That was why he had targeted Claire, who could see through his disguises and defenses. He was the most powerful of the draug, and the most vulnerable. Kill him, and his vassals died. They were nothing but reflections, shells, drones serving a hive.
But Amelie was shaking her head, just a little. As much as she could. “The master draug cannot be killed. Not by steel or silver, bullets or blades. The most we can do is force him to flee and regroup. You must kill me before the transformation is complete, do you understand? I thought perhaps, this time—but we are not so lucky, you and I.” Her smile was terrible, but beneath the alien taking her body, I could still see the ghost of Amelie. She had been my bitter enemy, my gadfly, my bane—we had hundreds of years of bile and ambition between us, but here, at the end, I saw her for what she was: a queen, as she had always been. In my mortal life I had brought down kings, laid low monarchs, but never her. There was something in her stronger than my ambition. “Do me the kindness, my old enemy. It’s fitting.”
“In a while,” I promised her. “Bide with me.”
“I will,” she said, and closed her eyes. This time, the smile was utterly her own. “I will try.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NAOMI
Finally, finally, I was taking my rightful place. Thirty vampires, all at my unquestioned command. It rankled me that Oliver had been the one to grant it to me, but I would see to him soon enough. I was royalty. He was nothing but a jumped-up king-killer and fanatic who’d once stolen a throne, and there would be a reckoning. It had been foolish of him to give me his vassals to command.
I would use them to do more than finish the draug. I would do it for my sister’s sake. Amelie was queen, true, but when a queen can no longer rule, her heir must act, swiftly, to ensure that no chaos erupts.
I was the heir. Not Oliver.
The only vehicle large enough to carry us all was a yellow-painted bus; it stank of human children, and other less pleasant things, and I ordered the windows put down. The clouds were rolling away on the winds, leaving the skies over Morganville finally clear and ice-cold, with stars glittering in spills of diamond. So many stars here. My sister had chosen her defensive ground well, and if the weapon Oliver had given us worked as he claimed, this would be the final, triumphant victory.
And I would lead it.
I was already planning for what would occur after this battle. First, I would ensure that Amelie did not rise a draug; next, I would bind her people close to me by right of blood. Oliver could be exiled, or dispatched if he refused to go. And Morganville, such kingdom as it was, would be mine. Once the draug were finished, we would rebuild this town in the right and proper way … and the nonsense that Amelie had allowed, this equality between humans and vampires, that would stop.
It would stop with her niais, Michael. As her direct blood descendent, he would have to set an example for the others. I would ask him to put aside his human girl and behave as a vampire ought; this confusion of servants and masters was maddening. Courtesy toward them was proper, to be sure, and if he chose to keep her as a personal sort of pet, I could look the other way. But marriage was an alliance by law and custom that could not be allowed.
It gave the humans incontestable rights.
“My lady,” said one of Amelie’s favorites, bowing to me as he stood in the aisle next to my seat. He had adopted modern dress, but I remembered him in armor, from earlier times. A good man. Good warrior.
“Your name is Rickon,” I said. “I remember you.”
“You have a long memory, lady. Rickon it is.” He watched me with pale green eyes that were a little too sly, a bit too knowing. How well had I known him? Out of so many ages, it was difficult to remember. I scarce knew how Amelie kept such things straight. She even remembered the names of humans. I’d had to memorize the three she allowed to live as company for Michael, and that had been a struggle. “We’re approaching the treatment plant. The other bus signals that they have arrived at the university and are prepared to work their way through to the edge of town.”
“Then it begins.” I gave him a warm smile. “Do well, today, Lord Rickon, and there will be rewards. Significant ones.”
He lifted an eyebrow and said, “I am no lord now, my lady. Only a shopkeeper, and a happy one. And I require no rewards; this is my home. I don’t take pay to defend my own land.”
I had mistaken him. He was, it seemed, one of those sad vampires who had believed Amelie’s strange philosophy that required us to give up our rights to status, and become … ordinary. Well, I was not ordinary. I’d not allow her to make me into some … shopkeeper. Lords and ladies we were, and would remain.
I gave him a nod, as if I agreed with him, and he withdrew without another word. At least the man was capable of a proper exit, with a deep bow from the waist before turning his back. Manners had not faded quite so far among the old ones.
The gravekeeper, Ransom, sat behind me in the bus. He was a dusty old thing, ancient in appearance; I had always wondered why anyone had bothered to make him vampire. It hardly seemed worth the trouble. Turning someone so old was useful only when they had considerable gifts; this one hardly seemed to remember his own name most days, though he was, I will admit, fully capable of fast action when needed. I glanced at him, and he nodded and gave me a smile, and vampire or not, royal or not, I shivered. Some of Amelie’s followers were … unpleasant.