Rachel Caine - Black Dawn

It couldn’t help her now, even if it wanted to. It didn’t have the strength, or the will.

She reached the steps, slipped, and almost fell. As she grabbed the banister for balance, she heard the front door smash open, and heard a wild war-cry yell.

She knew that voice. Shane! She reversed course and ran for the hallway, then skidded to an off-balance halt. Shane had just come in, holding a shotgun. “Claire!” He locked eyes with her, just for a moment, then started forward …

Only to stop as Myrnin backed out of the parlor room firing his shotgun. Shane spun that way, too, aimed, and fired. Claire heard a high-pitched, angry screech. They’d hit Magnus again. Shane muttered a curse and fired twice in rapid succession, then shoved Myrnin up the hallway toward the living room. Toward her.

“Okay?” he shouted at her.

She managed a shaky smile and made an OK symbol with her thumb and forefinger.

Magnus slid/slithered/lurched into the hallway behind him.

Claire gasped and screamed, “Behind you!” Shane lunged forward, landed on his stomach, rolled, and fired upward at Magnus as he came toward him. From the doorway Claire saw more people entering the hall—Michael, Eve, Jason ? And even, improbably, Miranda.

They all had shotguns. Even the kid.

Michael’s shot hit Magnus dead-on from behind as Myrnin and Shane rolled out of the line of fire, and Claire ducked behind the wall. Eve’s shot came a second later.

Magnus pitched forward to the wood floor, oozing blackened fluids.

He didn’t move.

“We got him,” Michael said. “Claire? Shane? You okay? We got him!”

“No,” Myrnin called, and kept crawling, well away from Magnus’s body. “Not so easily. Careful!”

It was good he said it, because it forced Michael to slow down—and when Magnus reared up, reaching for him with pale, strong hands, he had time to skip backward and fire again, point-blank.

Magnus made a horribly liquid gurgling sound, but it wasn’t pain; it was amusement.

Michael backed up fast, pulling Eve with him. They ran into Jason, who was staring at the whole thing as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “What the hell is it?” he asked. “That’s not a vamp. That’s—”

“Watch out!” Claire cried, and so did Miranda, almost in chorus, as Magnus’s vaguely man-shaped form rippled, changed, and rolled forward. Michael, vamp-fast, pulled Eve out of the way.

But Jason just … stood there.

Out of nowhere, Miranda stepped ahead of him and pushed him aside, looked straight at Claire, and said, “It has to be like this. It’s okay.”

And Magnus then rolled over her.

Miranda disappeared into him, absorbed the way Shane had been at the water treatment plant—trapped inside the bubble of draug fluid. But unlike that time, where they’d been trying to keep Shane alive, Magnus had no interest in Miranda at all.

Claire saw her … dissolve. Like flesh dropped in acid. Miranda disappeared in a cloudy mist of red, and in a matter of seconds, what was left of her oozed out to clatter on the floor.

Bones.

Eve screamed, and Michael grabbed her and held her close. Jason had gone milky pale, but he raised his shotgun and fired, three times, straight into Magnus’s body.

Magnus ignored it.

Myrnin scrambled up and jammed more shotgun shells into the weapon, then racked it. “None of this will work,” he said. “There’s only one thing that can kill him.”

Shane was up, too, and he was breathing hard, fighting, Claire thought, not to be sick after what they’d just seen happen. “What?” he demanded. “Because this son of a bitch has to die.”

“Upstairs,” Myrnin said. “Lead him upstairs. Claire, go. He needs to destroy you, not us. Go now .”

After a breathless look at Shane, Claire turned and ran. She scrambled up the steps, only half balanced now, and made it to the top with a surge of relief. The hallway was so familiar, this was home , she loved it here, and there was Eve’s room with the door open on its crazy, dark chaos; Shane’s door was closed. Her own was open, her bed unmade. It hadn’t been long; the place still smelled of cinnamon and Eve’s perfumes, of chili, of the normal life that had been taken away from them.

We’ll get it back. We have to get it back.

Shane and Michael and Eve were down there, fighting for their lives. For their home. Please, God, please let them be okay. She could hear the sound of the shotgun s going off, but then … then suddenly they went silent.

She felt for the hidden controls in the paneling. For a heart-stopping moment she couldn’t find them, and then it seemed that they wouldn’t work; she glanced back down the hall and there he was, Magnus, standing motionless next to Michael’s closed door.

Watching with those terrible, monstrous eyes.

“What did you do?” she asked, and panic smothered her—not for herself but for them . For Shane. For her friends.

“They’re unimportant,” he said. “You have a power the others do not. You must not survive to lead them to me again.”

His whole body rippled in a sickening, wrong way, and she knew that she had seconds to live. No. Not again.

She slapped frantically at the controls to the hidden door, and it popped open in the paneling. She charged in and slammed it shut. It was inky in the shadows down here, but at the top of the steps she saw the warm, colorful glow of the Tiffany lamps. Safe up there. It had always felt like another world. If there was anyplace Magnus couldn’t reach her, it would be here.

Deep down, Claire knew it wouldn’t be enough. But there was a portal up here, and maybe, just maybe, she could get through, get out that way …

She reached the top of the stairs and saw … Amelie. But not the Amelie she knew. This was only the shell of her, glossy and hard, and underneath was the same rot and writhing awful foulness that was inside Magnus.

Amelie was a draug, a master draug .

The creature— like Amelie, but not her—was holding Oliver by both wrists. He was on his knees in front of her, face upturned and marble white, and Claire could see the horror in his eyes.

The loss.

There was a silver knife on the carpet next to Amelie, and Claire, not even thinking now, threw herself at it, grabbed it, and plunged it to the hilt into Amelie’s back.

The shrieking knocked her backward into the wall, then into a shuddering, fetal ball with her hands over her ears.

Amelie let go of Oliver and turned toward Claire, just as the wooden panel opened below with a sudden cold rush of damp air.

The smell of dead things doubled.

Oliver toppled over heavily to the floor, facing away from Claire. She tried to get up, tried hard , but nothing was working in her body. It was like receiving a violent electrical shock. She couldn’t stop shaking.

Something wet slithered over her outstretched foot, and she pulled it in closer, whimpering. That touch felt like worms and mold, filthy water, dead flesh. She was grateful it lasted for only a second, and then was past her as Magnus flowed up into his human form, facing Amelie—or at least the draug that had once been Amelie.

She pulled the silver knife out of her back and stopped screaming, and for a second neither of them moved.

Magnus said, “Your transformation is almost complete. You will be a beautiful and terrifying thing, my queen.”

She said nothing. Her silvery, shimmering eyes looked empty as a moonlit lake.

Oliver made a raw sound, and it took Claire a moment to realize that he was laughing. “You’ve lost, Magnus,” he said. “Your thralls are dead.”