No. They closed down the pool. Drained it. Filled it in. It's not there anymore. Wake up, idiot.
The voice in my head wouldn't shut up. Of course the pool was there. Now the surviving draug had withdrawn to this one spot, this place where I'd swum meets and won prizes. It was a personal place to me, and they'd violated it.
They were trapped.
So are you!
They were stranded, because of the closed valves on the pipes and the silver nitrate in the water.
Wake up, Shane!
I shot my first draug halfway through the hallway; he was hiding in a classroom and oozed out of the shadows to grab a vampire by the back of the neck. The vamp had twisted free, and as soon as she was out of range I yelled and fired, and the silver shotgun pellets ripped the draug apart in a splatter of colorless liquid that smoked on the floor. It tried to reform, but another vampire-Myrnin, in his black leather-took what looked like a salt shaker from his pocket and tapped out some metallic powder into the mess.
Silver. It set the scraps of the draug on fire, and when the blaze was done, there was nothing but a damp smear on the floor.
Myrnin bared his fangs in a fierce grin, and we went on.
Nothing had changed in the school since I'd last been inside-the same lockers, dented and scratched; the same classroom doors; the same trophies in the case. I'd won at least two of them.
They were still there, with my name shining on them.
You never won any trophies, Shane. Of course I had. I'd always wanted to win them, and I had. This is a fantasy-don't you get that? Wake up!
About a hundred draug later, we reached the pool, and we hadn't lost a single one of our party along the way. But the pool was a different story. Firing shotguns loaded with silver in a room full of vampires was pretty damn dangerous, so only the first and second ranks got to have the firepower; the rest of us had to wait until the first rank had to reload, and then we pushed forward, dropped to one knee, and fired steadily at the mass of draug-the identical faces, the bland and empty not-people with things shivering inside them-as they approached. A second rank fired over our heads. My ears went quickly numb from the pounding, shattering roars of the guns, but I didn't care. What I cared about was making every single shot count.
I wanted Magnus. I wanted the bastard who'd started this, who owned it, who had killed Claire and nearly killed me along with her, even though I'd gotten her back.
Magnus, of course, didn't risk himself.
Myrnin figured this out, because that was what Myrnin did; like Claire, he was a sideways thinker, and while the rest of us Joe Average idiots blasted away at the draug in front of us, he stepped away toward the edge of the pool and crouched down. He had a beaker in his hand, glittering and full to the brim with deadly silver and he set it down to pry the cap loose.
"He's in the water!" Myrnin shouted. "Keep them busy-"
But he didn't have time to finish whatever he was going to say, because Magnus reached up out of the water, grabbed him, and dragged him down.
I dropped my shotgun and ran for the beaker, pried the top off, and emptied it into the water.
The silver inside sluiced out into the water in a spreading, toxic stream. Myrnin had hold of something that had to be Magnus, the master draug, the first draug, and he was pulling him relentlessly toward the silver.
And into it.
I couldn't see Myrnin at all now, because the water went from murky to black, swirling with vivid veins of silver. And then boiling.
The vampires were just standing there, even Oliver, staring down into the water. Nobody was moving. Captain Obvious wasn't going to go racing to the rescue, either.
I'm not going to lie; I could have saved Myrnin. I was probably the only one who could have, who might have survived diving into that boiling, raging pool where the draug were dying.
But I didn't try.
I left him there to die.
Just like he left you. Remember? Left you to be eaten. You need to wake up. NOW.
Nobody had left me behind. I was fine. I was just fine.
It's you in there. You're being consumed, Shane. Eaten. Can't you feel it?
I did, for an agonizing second of utter horror. Felt it stripping me bare. Felt the invasion.
And then the calm settled over me, and it was all okay.
Everything was okay.
Always.
The clock ran faster after that.
The time between the pool and Claire's eighteenth birthday was a gauzy blur; I didn't remember much, but nothing much happened to remember, either. Amelie got better. Vampires came back. Morganville got rebuilt. Nothing ever changes, really-that's how Morganville is. It just ... exists.
I was just happy. We were all ... happy. Claire cried over Myrnin, but she was happy he had saved us, happy he had died a hero.
The hero of Morganville.
The martyr.
You're no martyr. You're a fighter. So fight. NOW. Stop this!
Everything was fine.
One year to the day from their not-so-successful engagement party, Michael and Eve finally tied the knot, in the church with Father Joe presiding. Amelie gave her blessing, and I had to wear a tuxedo and a tie. Eve wore bloodred. Of course she did. Claire was the one who looked like a bride, really; she was wearing some other color, but I didn't really notice except to see the light in her eyes and the smile on her lips as Michael and Eve kissed under the flower arch. Eve threw the bouquet, and as usual, her throwing arm sucked, especially backward, because somehow she managed to throw it to me. I tossed it back. On the second try she hit Monica Morrell, Bitch Queen, which was so not going to happen; no man in his right mind would go there.
At some point when we were passing around the champagne and cutting the cake and dancing, I remember Eve twirling in my arms, light and damp with sweat, and she looked me in the eye and said, "This is a lie, Shane. It's all a lie, and you know it deep down. Wake up. You have to wake up." But then she was gone, dancing away with Michael, and I forgot.
It was so much easier to just ... forget. Let go. Drift.
I think it was around this time that I went to see Claire's family. Her mom and dad had moved out of Morganville, because of his health problems more than anything else, though she'd been happy to have them out of the fray; they sort of remembered Morganville, but not the vampires. I went by myself, with Amelie's permission, and ended up standing in front of Claire's parents-her dad looked a whole lot healthier, which was odd-to tell them what was on my mind.
"I want to marry your daughter," I said. Pretty much just like that ... no hello, no buildup, nothing, because I was nervous and it just came out.
And Mr. Danvers smiled and said, "Of course you do." There was something great about that smile, and also, something ... off. It was exactly what I'd hoped to see. And that was ... weird.
No, there wasn't anything weird about getting what I wanted for a change. I deserved to be happy. I needed to be happy.
It's a lie, Shane. Wake up.
Mrs. Danvers said, "Shane, she couldn't have a better young man." And her husband nodded. I looked at them for a few seconds in silence. I was sitting in their living room, which looked a lot like the living room they'd had back in Morganville-but then, they would have kept the same furniture, wouldn't they? I even recognized all the pictures on the walls. They'd put them back in the same spots.
The last time I'd sat down with them like this, it hadn't gone nearly so well. Oh, no. Mr. Danvers had been angry, and I hadn't blamed him, because I'd never intended all this to go so fast with Claire, but I'd said I loved her and I meant it. I still did.
"You're not angry?" I finally asked. Mr. Danvers chuckled. He sounded just like one of those fathers on an old TV show, I forget which one.
"Of course not," he said. "Why would we be? You've always been there for her, Shane. You've always looked after her. And we know she loves you."
I found myself saying, "What about the stuff you said last time? That she had to wait until after college? About MIT and a career and everything?"
"Well," Mrs. Danvers said, with that warm, sweet smile that my own mother had never given me, although she'd done her best, "that's Claire's decision, of course, but we'll support whatever she feels is more important."
It's all so easy, isn't it? Like a dream. Exactly like a dream. Wake up.
I didn't want to wake up. I liked it here.
I found myself shaking Mr. Danvers's hand, and getting a hug from Claire's mom, and promising to work with her on the wedding, and all of a sudden I was in my car-when had I gotten the car? I couldn't remember, but it seemed like I'd had it all along, my own black, shiny, murdered-out car-and driving back to Morganville, with Claire's grandmother's wedding ring in my pocket. It was a diamond with rubies on both sides.