“Highness,” murmured my next visitor, the tall Pennyfeather—one of Oliver’s favorites, another fanatic who had, in breathing days, administered tortures for the church. I did not trust him, but he had a useful streak of coldness, and proper respect. He bowed over my hand without being so vulgar as to brush his lips over it. “When this is over, I will be happy to follow you wherever you may lead.”
I accepted him with a regal nod and smile. We were understood, the two of us. And there were more here, dissatisfied with the disorderly state of Morganville, who would gladly follow a banner when I raised it. Even Ransom might, though Lord Rickon was, I feared, a lost cause.
I felt the speed of the bus slow, and then stop. We were here. It was my moment, mine, to draw their love and loyalty, and I stood and made myself the queen I knew I was.
Ransom shoved past me as I drew breath to speak. “We know what to do,” he said. “Get out of the way, girl.”
The green-eyed shopkeeper smirked as he followed Ransom. Others fell in behind him, ignoring me. Rejecting me.
Pennyfeather said, “Ignore the rude peasants, Highness. Once you have won the day, they will fall in.” He had a soothing tone to his whisper, and I allowed it to calm my rage. I would use it against the draug.
For now.
Instead of being in the vanguard, I was solidly in the middle of the group who descended from the bus. I was forced to fight my way through to the front, where I finally took command. “You’ve all been armed with this,” I said, holding up the bag of powder. “I have been told that the draug cannot resist it. You must be prepared for anything; each of you has been armed with silver as well, but be cautious in its use—”
Someone made a muttered comment, a rude one, and I fixed him with a stare. It didn’t seem to have the same effect that my sister’s stare would have. “Pennyfeather will lead one team. I will lead another. We approach from either end. The draug cannot sing; do not let them touch you if you can avoid it. Use the chemical powder on the pools. Do not waste it.”
More muttering, and one isolated, quiet laugh, but I ignored it, for all the fury it ignited inside me. I would rule these people. It was my right by blood and history. Surely Amelie would agree it was so, if she was able.
I led my force into the complex.
None of us breathed, and for that I was profoundly thankful; this was a foul place, even without the threat of the draug. Full of shadows, but that mattered little to our eyes. All was still, quiet, watchful within.
When the draug came for us, they came in a rush, and the battle was on.
I slashed my way through their assault, using silver where it was necessary; a few vampires were overcome and dragged into the pools, but by then Pennyfeather had reached their watery sanctuaries, and I heard the eerie, piercing screech of terror as he dumped his chemicals in. I began the same on my end, dumping my bag of powder into the murky, dark waters, and I watched black threads spread fast and toxic through their blood garden. There were vampires in there, anchored fast; as the draug died, I shouted at others to enter the waters and retrieve the victims. We saved most.
And the draug died. They died hard, and they died fighting, struggling to pull us into their own realm, but we poisoned that home against them, down to the last refuge. Those who emerged we killed with silver.
It was an unqualified triumph. We saved almost twenty vampires from their horrible fate, but most important, my command, my battle had been won, and I would return covered in glory.
No one would question my right to rule after this, after Oliver had abandoned his duties and left it to me to wage this war—and I had succeeded.
“We’ve won,” I said. I was already thinking of the future, of my rule. Though I greatly preferred the company of women, I would deign to take Michael Glass as consort, I decided; he was young, but he came of pure bloodlines and would satisfy those who wished a token thrown to our human servants. As to his human girl … Well, if he would not give her up, it would be simple enough to get rid of her.
“No,” Rickon said. “There’s no sign of the master draug. Unless he’s put down, there is no victory.”
“Surely we’ve killed him in the pools,” I said. “There’s no question.”
He gave me a cold, impudent look from those green eyes. “We must have proof.”
“My queen,” I told him, and showed my fangs. “I would prefer if you gave me my title, Lord Rickon.”
He ignored me. Ignored me. He turned away to deal with one of the last of the draug.
I found the very last of them, clinging to its filthy life, crouching in the shadows. I flung a bit of the magic powder over it, and watched as its legs turned black, solid, rotten. It was dying before my eyes. “Magnus,” I said. “Where is Magnus? Tell me!”
“Not here,” it whispered, and it laughed at me.
I needed to kill Magnus. Once I had done that, there would be no question of my superiority, my rights. Magnus was mine.
Pennyfeather was standing behind me; I sensed his cold, angular presence. Oliver’s man, but mine now. He knew which knee to bend, and when. “Send out search parties,” I commanded without turning from the sight of the last of the thralls dying. “Find Magnus at any cost, and bring him to me. And Oliver. I will require his head, of course. We must settle the question of who rules immediately.”
Pennyfeather didn’t move.
I became aware of a great stillness around me. The shrieking was done, the draug finished here, and the vampires, my vampires, were watching me.
Like Pennyfeather, unmoving.
“You heard me,” I said, and whirled on Pennyfeather …
… Just as he buried his slender silver knife in my heart.
I grabbed for it, wrapping my cold hands over his, and saw nothing in his face but my own death. “No,” I whispered. “No, I am your queen—”
“You’ll never rule here,” he said. “You should have remembered that.”
The silver coursed through my body, poisoning me. He left the dagger in me. It paralyzed me, and I could only watch as the vampires of Morganville left this place, and left me to die among the blackened corpses of our greatest enemies.
Not over, I thought. I wanted to shriek it at him, at all of them. This is not over!
But all I could do was watch them go. Amelie’s creatures. Oliver’s. Never mine.
I will have you, I promised them, in a burst of terror and fury. You should have made sure of me, Pennyfeather.
Because I would find a way to survive. To take this town, and our future, from them.
Somehow.
The draug I had poisoned was still alive, though blackened and crippled. Dying fast now. But it dragged itself to me and stared down into my open eyes.
And it pulled the silver dagger out of my heart.
For a long moment, I still was unable to move; the silver had weakened me, blackened me within. The draug dropped the dagger.
“Why?” I asked it.
And Magnus’s voice answered me, echoing through his own creature. “Waste not,” he said, “want not.”
And then he laughed, and the draug finished dying.
I retched up silver and stumbled to hands and knees, then upright.
The war was still on.
Magnus first.
But after that, those who’d betrayed me.
Amelie, my sister. And Oliver, whose creature Pennyfeather was.
Mine.