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.
But she had a sinking feeling that things were going to get worse before they got better between those two.
"Harold," Theo said, and opened up a door. "You'll be safe here. I will be back soon."
Harold made urgent signs to him-deaf, which was probably the only reason he'd survived out there in draug-held Morganville. Theo smiled and shook his head.
"No," he said. "No one will bother you here. You have my word."
Harold didn't seem convinced, but he went into the room and Theo shut the door behind him.
"So ... is he a friend of yours?" Claire asked.
"A patient," Theo said. "And now we must go to another of my patients: Amelie."
All the doors leading out of this room looked alike to Claire, and she hesitated, wondering which one led to the Founder of Morganville, but Theo didn't. He made straight for one of them, opened it, and hurried through; she sped to catch up before the door closed again.
They were in one of the building's endless, identical carpeted hallways, with the tasteful (and probably outrageously expensive) art on the walls. At the end of the hall was a set of double doors, guarded by two vampires. Amelie's bodyguards.
"Theo Goldman," Theo said as he approached. "I'm expected."
"Doctor." One of them nodded, and reached to open the door for him. "First room on the left."
Claire followed him in. The guards eyed her, but neither moved to stop her. They just closed the door quietly behind her.
It was odd, but the smell struck her first. Vampires generally didn't smell of anything ... maybe a faint rusty whiff of blood if they'd just fed, or faded flowers at the worst, but nothing like the cloying, damp, sickroom aroma that had sunk deep into the room's thick carpet and velvet drapes. The place looked beautiful, but it smelled ... rotten.