It was an unqualified triumph. We saved almost twenty vampires from their horrible fate, but most important, my command, my battle had been won, and I would return covered in glory.
No one would question my right to rule after this, after Oliver had abandoned his duties and left it to me to wage this war-and I had succeeded.
"We've won," I said. I was already thinking of the future, of my rule. Though I greatly preferred the company of women, I would deign to take Michael Glass as consort, I decided; he was young, but he came of pure bloodlines and would satisfy those who wished a token thrown to our human servants. As to his human girl ... Well, if he would not give her up, it would be simple enough to get rid of her.
"No," Rickon said. "There's no sign of the master draug. Unless he's put down, there is no victory."
"Surely we've killed him in the pools," I said. "There's no question."
He gave me a cold, impudent look from those green eyes. "We must have proof."
"My queen," I told him, and showed my fangs. "I would prefer if you gave me my title, Lord Rickon."
He ignored me. Ignored me. He turned away to deal with one of the last of the draug.
I found the very last of them, clinging to its filthy life, crouching in the shadows. I flung a bit of the magic powder over it, and watched as its legs turned black, solid, rotten. It was dying before my eyes. "Magnus," I said. "Where is Magnus? Tell me!"
"Not here," it whispered, and it laughed at me.
I needed to kill Magnus. Once I had done that, there would be no question of my superiority, my rights. Magnus was mine.
Pennyfeather was standing behind me; I sensed his cold, angular presence. Oliver's man, but mine now. He knew which knee to bend, and when. "Send out search parties," I commanded without turning from the sight of the last of the thralls dying. "Find Magnus at any cost, and bring him to me. And Oliver. I will require his head, of course. We must settle the question of who rules immediately."
Pennyfeather didn't move.
I became aware of a great stillness around me. The shrieking was done, the draug finished here, and the vampires, my vampires, were watching me.
Like Pennyfeather, unmoving.
"You heard me," I said, and whirled on Pennyfeather ...
... Just as he buried his slender silver knife in my heart.
I grabbed for it, wrapping my cold hands over his, and saw nothing in his face but my own death. "No," I whispered. "No, I am your queen-"
"You'll never rule here," he said. "You should have remembered that."
The silver coursed through my body, poisoning me. He left the dagger in me. It paralyzed me, and I could only watch as the vampires of Morganville left this place, and left me to die among the blackened corpses of our greatest enemies.
Not over, I thought. I wanted to shriek it at him, at all of them. This is not over!
But all I could do was watch them go. Amelie's creatures. Oliver's. Never mine.
I will have you, I promised them, in a burst of terror and fury. You should have made sure of me, Pennyfeather.
Because I would find a way to survive. To take this town, and our future, from them.
Somehow.
The draug I had poisoned was still alive, though blackened and crippled. Dying fast now. But it dragged itself to me and stared down into my open eyes.
And it pulled the silver dagger out of my heart.
For a long moment, I still was unable to move; the silver had weakened me, blackened me within. The draug dropped the dagger.
"Why?" I asked it.
And Magnus's voice answered me, echoing through his own creature. "Waste not," he said, "want not."
And then he laughed, and the draug finished dying.
I retched up silver and stumbled to hands and knees, then upright.
The war was still on.
Magnus first.
But after that, those who'd betrayed me.
Amelie, my sister. And Oliver, whose creature Pennyfeather was.
Mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY
EVE
I stood on the sidelines, with Michael, and watched the vampires go to war.
It wasn't much of a seeing-off parade, really ... just the two of us, standing together, holding hands. But I'd always thought of myself as the cocky sidekick type, and cocky sidekicks don't have to go to war, right? They get to cheer from the sidelines and ... be cocky.
I didn't feel particularly cocky anymore. I felt terrified, and even with Michael holding my hand, I'd never been more aware of how much was at stake, how much was bound to go wrong. "What if it doesn't work?" I asked him. "What if-what if none of them come back?" I could just see the nightmare of being trapped in Zombieland Morganville, the draug haunting every source of water we had.
"Then we grab everybody who's left, steal a school bus, and head out," Michael said. "I don't like running, but sometimes it's about all you can do."
School buses. The last time I'd sat on these cold green fake-leather seats, I'd been the outcast praying for graduation and Michael had been in the back with the cool kids. He'd always been able to move between cliques-hottie, music nerd, closet Star Trek enthusiast. Fitting in was his superpower, and my deadly weakness. "Speaking of school buses, remember when Jamie Montgomery punched out what's-her-name, the redhead ...?"
"Carly," I said. "Carly Fox."
"Carly the Fox, right. I think she broke her nose."
"Good times." I remembered it vividly; it was one of the highlights of senior year, a hair-pulling, full-on hot girl catfight. Carly's nose had never been the same. Neither had Jamie Montgomery, because she'd disappeared without a trace about two weeks later-escaped from town, rumor said, but I knew most of those rumors were bull. She'd probably gotten drained by Carly's vamp Protector out of sheer annoyance that he had to mediate high school girls. These things happened. "Hey, whatever happened to Jamie, anyway?" Because Michael was on the other side now. He'd know.
"She left town," Michael said.
"Is that code for ..." I mimed fangs in the neck. He raised his eyebrows and said nothing. So that was a yes, then. "Damn."
"You already knew."
I had, kinda. But still. Thinking back on our class, I wondered how many of them had survived; most, sure, but a few would have fallen off the radar, gotten bitten, tried to run, or just had the proverbial fatal accident. Morganville's rate of missing was pretty high, and most of them weren't missing at all.
"So," I said, and turned to Michael. "Enough reminiscing. I guess it's just us around here."
"Private," he replied.
"As much as we ever get. And ... there's not a lot to do right now."
"No." He was playing along with me, waiting for me to get to the point.
So I did. "We need to talk about things."
That was not where he had expected the next turn to go. I knew that, but it was his fault for letting me drive the metaphorical conversation bus. But to his credit, I caught only a small flash of impatience and disappointment, quickly submerged. "Okay," he said. Not as if he really wanted to have the heart-to-not-beating-heart, but as if he knew there was no getting around it. "You want to do it here?"
I shrugged. "Shane's in our room with Claire, I think. They've been tense since he got back. Better let them have some time." I led Michael over to a set of chairs and pulled two of them together.
And then I felt oddly weird about starting the conversation. There had been a moment, when I'd run away from Naomi and into his arms, when all that had happened between us had vanished, but now ... now here it was again, big and bad and getting bigger with every moment we didn't deal with it. Or rather, I didn't. He was trying.
So I looked up and said what was in my heart. "I love you."
He met my eyes squarely, and my God, he was beautiful. It always surprised me, a bit, how everything just worked with him-his eyes, and his hair, and his cheekbones, and his mouth, and ... everything. Living art, so gorgeous that sometimes, like now, it hurt. But if his looks burned a little, the expression on his face soothed it; he was intent on me, as if I was the only thing in the world. Nothing in his eyes but open, honest feeling.
"I love you, too," he said. "What are we going to do about this?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "I thought I did, but ... it's a little like being in a relationship with Superman. You sometimes don't know your own strength."