Shane said, “We’re here to get you,” but Theo shook his head and pointed to his ears. There was something weird about the way they looked, but Claire honestly couldn’t make out the details in the shadows. Shane claimed the pencil again and wrote, WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE. HAVE TRUCK. WILL TAKE YOU.
Theo read it, considered, and shook his head. He marked through it and responded, MUST TAKE HAROLD, TOO.
Shane shrugged, marked through it, and wrote (in smaller letters, since the paper was running out), BIG EFFING TRUCK.
Theo circled the word EFFING and raised his eyebrows. Claire made a frustrated noise in her throat, grabbed the pencil, and marked it out.
Ah, Theo mouthed, and smiled. Good.
The paper was scribbled over, thoroughly, so Claire hunted around in the wreckage of the kitchen, avoiding the piles of trash and really avoiding the sink full of dried, filthy dishes, until she found a balled-up flyer in the corner of the room. It was, she realized, the gym flyer, the one that had caused them so much trouble when Shane had taken up self-defense classes there a few months back. Another aftershock, but less terrifying.
She turned it over and wrote, AMELIE NEEDS YOU. URGENT. VERY SICK.
Theo’s face went blank, and then tight with alarm. He scribbled back, WHAT HAPPENED?
DRAUG, she replied. BIT HER.
He mouthed something that she didn’t understand, and covered his mouth in a gesture of real distress. Then he nodded decisively and turned to Harold. He made a series of fluid hand signs, and Harold brightened up and nodded.
It was right about then that Claire realized what was so weird about Theo’s ears. There was something sticking out of them, sideways. Like …
Like needles. Really long needles. Knitting needles.
It was so shocking that she took a step back, eyes wide, and finally recovered enough to point to Theo and then gesture at his ears, urgently.
He smiled, but there was something dark in it. He took the paper back and wrote, MUST KEEP MY EARDRUMS PIERCED. OTHERWISE CANNOT RESIST THE CALL.
The vampire version of earplugs, she realized … literally disabling his ears. But it must have hurt horribly, keeping those needles in place to block healing. She felt faint imagining it.
Harold fell in docilely enough behind Theo, heading for the door; Claire, at Shane’s hand wave, darted on ahead to make sure Harold didn’t do anything crazy when he saw Naomi.
But Naomi was gone, and for a second Claire was terrified that something had happened to her. Then she heard the rumble of the truck’s engine and saw that Naomi had started it up. She might not have driving experience, but she’d learned how to turn an ignition key, at least.
It all looked safe.
Claire put the gun at a ready position and stepped outside … just as a sudden gush of liquid rushed out of a rusty drainpipe at the corner of the porch, sending a thick wave across her path. At the same time, rain started falling faster, and harder, pounding like ball bearings on the fabric of her jacket and stinging her exposed skin.
She had just enough time to bring the shotgun up as the draug rose up out of the pool of water in front of her, clawed hands outstretched.
Still, even now, she couldn’t say what it actually looked like … because the human brain tried and tried to fit it into some sense, some pattern, but failed utterly. There were eyes, horrible gelatinous eyes that somehow weren’t eyes at all; there was a body that was not a body. What she registered as clawed hands was probably something else again, something worse, but it was the biggest warning her uncomprehending brain could screech at her, and she reacted instantly.
She pulled the trigger.
The impact slammed the stock of the shotgun against her shoulder so hard that she felt something crack—bone, probably—and a white snap of pain sizzled through her from neck to heels. At the same time, the roar of the shot hit her like a physical slap.
But that was nothing compared to what the silver did to the draug.
The pellets didn’t have time to spread far, but tore a neat circular hole four inches across straight through the draug’s—well, head, she supposed, was the nearest equivalent. There was a shriek of high-pitched agony, and then the draug collapsed in a wet slap as it lost all consistency and shape. Claire yelped as she leaped out of the way of the wave of its … corpse? If it was dead, which she couldn’t assume. But it wasn’t coming for her, and that was what was important.
There were more of them, rising out of hidden pools in the muddy yard, out of the drain in the street, condensing out of the rain itself.
Oh God. There were so many.
The sound of Shane firing as he pushed forward shocked her into pumping her shotgun, raising it, and firing again. It hurt, but she kept it up, racking and firing again and again. Shane was clearing a path to the truck, so she concentrated on keeping the draug away from the sides. She fell back behind Theo and Harold, keeping them as safe as she could.
The draug didn’t really care about humans; too little gain for them, so it was Theo she really had to worry about. They’d kill to get to him, of course, but unless Harold got in the way he’d be all right … for now. She killed, or at least discorporated, at least five draug before they reached the truck.
Theo didn’t get in. He stood aside, calm as ice water, as Harold scrambled up first. Claire and Shane took up positions on either side of him, firing to keep the draug away, and even though her ears were ringing and her heart racing, Claire could hear another shotgun going off. Naomi was keeping them away from her side of the truck as she waited.
Finally Theo jumped up and into the bed of the truck, and Shane followed last.
Now he tossed the shotgun to Theo, unhooked the nozzle of the flamethrower, and hit the ignition button.
Claire gasped and dived for the driver’s side of the truck. Naomi let fly with one last blast at a draug ten feet away, then slid over, and Claire climbed in. Had she thought the truck was too tall before? She didn’t even remember jumping up this time.
The dim afternoon suddenly exploded in orange light behind them, and Claire looked in the rearview mirror to see her boyfriend spraying the entire street with an intense stream of pure, concentrated flame. Where it touched the draug, they evaporated. She could hear the grating, metallic screaming even through the hearing protection of Naomi’s noise cancellation. They sure weren’t singing anymore.
As she put the truck in gear and popped the clutch, Shane lurched forward and nearly fell out of the open bed of the truck—right into the draug.
But Theo grabbed him by the shoulder and held him in place as Harold crouched in the corner of the truck’s bed, looking scared out of his mind.
Claire sighed in relief, and hit the gas pedal hard. In less than thirty seconds, the rain had lessened again to a gentle patter on the roof, and Shane shut off the flamethrower’s little ignition burner.
Naomi kept watch out her window, shotgun ready, all the way back to the warm, welcoming lights of Founder’s Square.
CHAPTER FOUR
CLAIRE
Eve’s coffee and breakfast and cookies were still out on the table when Claire, Theo, and Harold passed through the big round hall. Well, some of it was still there; it looked as if her cooking had been popular this morning. Claire didn’t see Eve, which was odd; she would have expected her to still be working off her nervous caffeinated high. Probably still baking. Or, more worrying, maybe she really had gone out with vampires to put together caches of weapons around town.
Please be made up, she thought to both Michael and Eve. I don’t like it when things are bad.