“It was real bad.” Shane nodded in agreement with Michael. “And I wasn’t in there nearly as long. You hang in there, Mikey.” He reached out again and squeezed Michael’s shoulder briefly, then rose to a standing position. “You feel the need to scream like a girl, let it out, dude. No judging.”
Michael groaned and rubbed his hand over his face. “Screw you, Shane. Why do I keep you around, anyway?”
“Hey, you need somebody to keep you humble, rock star. Always have.”
Claire smiled then, because Michael was starting to sound like his old self again. Shane could always do that, to any of them—a flip remark, a casual insult, and it was all okay again. Normal life.
Even when nothing at all was normal. Nothing.
Now that her panic was receding, she wondered what time it was—the room gave no real hint of whether it was day or night. They had evacuated to the Elders’ Council building, which—like most vampire buildings—didn’t much favor windows. What it did have was plenty of sleeping bags, a few rollaway beds, and lots of empty space; the vampires, apparently, were all about disaster planning, which didn’t surprise her at all, really. They’d had thousands of years in which to learn how to anticipate trouble and what to have together to meet (or avoid) it.
Right now, she, Michael, and Shane were the only ones sleeping in the room, which could have held at least thirty without feeling crowded.
There was no sign of their fourth housemate, Michael’s girlfriend, Eve. Her sleeping bag, which had been near Michael’s, was kicked off to the side.
“Shane,” Claire said, her fear getting another kick start. “Eve’s missing.”
“Yeah, I know. She’s up,” he said, “organizing coffee, believe it or not. You can take the barista out of the shop, but …”
That was, again, a tremendous feeling of relief. Shane made a profession of taking care of himself (and everybody else). Michael was a vampire, with all the fun advantages that came along with that in terms of self-defense. Claire was small, and not exactly a bodybuilder, but she defended herself pretty well … at least in being smart, careful, and having all the friends she could manage on her side.
Eve was … Well, Eve liked to live on the edge, but she wasn’t exactly Buffy reincarnated. And in some ways her hard edges made her the most fragile of all of them. So Claire tended to worry at times like these. A lot.
“Coffee?” Michael asked, still rubbing his head. His hair should have looked crazy, but he was one of those people who had a natural immunity to bed-head; his blond hair just fell exactly the way it should, in careless surfer-style curls. Claire averted her eyes when he threw the sleeping bag back and reached for his shirt, because although he was always good to look at, he was seriously spoken for, and besides, Shane was standing right there.
Shane.
It came back to her in a dizzy rush, how he’d stopped her on the way into this place, in the faint dawn light. “I want you to promise me one thing. Promise me you’ll marry me. Not now. Someday.”
And she had promised, even if it was just their private little secret. She felt that shivery, fragile, butterfly-flutter feeling in her chest again. It was a fierce ball of light, a tangle of joy and terror and excitement and, most of all, love.
Shane looked back at her with an intense, warm focus that made her suddenly feel like the only person in the world. She watched him walk toward her with a diffuse glow of pleasure. Michael was hot, no denying that, but Shane just … melted her. It was everything about him—his strength, his intensity, the off-center smile, the hunger in his eyes. There was something rare and fragile at the center of all that armor, and she felt lucky and privileged that he allowed her to see it.
“You doing all right?” Shane asked her, and she looked up at him. His dark gaze had turned serious, and it saw … too much. She couldn’t hide how scared she was, not from him, but he was the last one to think it was a sign of weakness. He smiled a little and rested his forehead against hers for a second. “Yeah. You’re doing just fine, tough girl.”
She shoved the fear back, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Damn right.” She ran her fingers through her tangled shoulder-length auburn hair—unlike Michael’s, hers had suffered from a night on the hard pillows—and looked down at her T-shirt and jeans. At least they didn’t wrinkle much … or if they did, it didn’t much matter. They were clean, even if they weren’t her own. It turned out there was a storehouse of clothing in the Elders’ Council building basement, neatly packed in boxes, labeled with sizes. Some of it dated back to the Victorian age … hoop skirts and corsets and hats stowed carefully away in scented paper and cedar chests.
Claire wasn’t sure she really wanted to know where all that clothing had come from, but she had her sinking suspicions. Sure, the older clothes looked like things the vampires themselves might have saved, but there were a lot of newer, more current styles that didn’t seem to fit that explanation. Claire couldn’t see Amelie, for instance, wearing a Train concert shirt, so she was trying hard not to think about whether they’d been scavenged from … other sources. Victim-y sources.
“Did you have nightmares, too?” she asked Shane. His arm tightened around her, just for a moment.
“Nothing I can’t handle. I’m kind of an expert at this whole bad dreams thing, anyway,” he said. And oh God, he really was. Claire knew only a little of how many bad things he’d seen, but even that was enough to spark a lifetime’s worth of therapy. “Still, yesterday was dire, and that’s not a word I bust out, generally. Maybe it’ll look better this morning.”
“Is it morning?” Claire peered at her watch.
“That depends on your definition. It’s after noon, so I guess technically not really. We slept for about five hours, I suppose. Or you did. Eve bounced about an hour ago, and I got up because …” He shook his head. “Hell. This place creeps me out. I can’t sleep too well here.”
“It creeps you out more than what’s happening out there?”
“Valid point,” he said. Because the world out there—Morganville, anyway—was no longer the semi-safe place it had been just a few days ago. Sure, there had been vampires in charge of the town. Sure, they’d been predatory and kind of evil—a cross between old-school royalty and the Mafia—but at least they’d lived by rules. It hadn’t been so much about ethics and morals as about practicality …. If they wanted to have a thriving blood supply, they couldn’t just randomly kill people all the time.
Though the hunting licenses were alarming.
But now … now the vampires were in the food chain. They’d always been careful about human threats, but that wasn’t the issue, not anymore. The real vampire enemy had finally shown its incredibly disturbing face: the draug. All that Claire knew about them was that they lived in water and they could call vampires (and humans) with their singing, right to their deaths. For humans, it was fairly quick … but not for vampires. Vampires trapped at the bottom of that cold pool could live and live and live until the draug had drained every bit of energy from them.
Live, and know it was happening. Eaten alive.
The draug were the one thing vampires feared, really and truly. Humans they treated with casual contempt, but their response to the draug had been immediate mass evacuation, except for the few who’d chosen to stay and try to save the vampires already being consumed.
They’d all tried—vampires and humans, working together. Even the rebellious human townies, who hated vamps, had taken a drive-by run at the draug. It had been a heart-stopping military operation of a battle, the most intense experience of Claire’s life, and she still couldn’t quite believe she’d survived it … or that anyone had.