Black Dawn: The Morganville Vampires Read online

  Black Dawn

  THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES NOVELS

  Glass Houses

  The Dead Girls’ Dance

  Midnight Alley

  Feast of Fools

  Lord of Misrule

  Carpe Corpus

  Fade Out

  Kiss of Death

  Ghost Town

  Bite Club

  Last Breath

  Black Dawn

  THE

  MORGANVILLE

  VAMPIRES

  Black Dawn

  Rachel Caine

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, May 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Caine, Rachel.

  Black dawn: the Morganville vampires/Rachel Caine.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58534-4

  1. Vampires—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.O557B53 2012

  813′.6—dc23 2011052660

  Set in Centaur MT

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  This book is dedicated to my friend and writing mentor Patricia Anthony. Without her steady guidance, fantastic advice, and brilliant example, I would never have reached the place I am today. Thank you for pushing me, Pat. I hope you keep doing it for years and years to come.

  It’s also dedicated to the Bexter, and Ronan. Welcome to the world, little man! Congrats, Mom!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my friends at the Tucson Marriott University Park, especially Kat, Sandy, and Echoe, who made the last part of my writing task so much easier with their enthusiastic support and cheering-on.

  To the semi-official support group of the Smart Chicks, especially Kelley and Melissa. It’s so nice to be part of such an amazing group of women, never mind amazing writers. Rock on, Smart Chicks.

  To Joe Bonamassa, because, always.

  And to Cat, who puts up with the endless long days and deadlines and crises, and does it so gracefully. Love you, sweetie. I promise someday there will be a day without word count. But not today.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In previous books up through Bite Club, we’ve seen events in Morganville through the eyes of Claire Danvers; since then, we’ve been visiting other points of view, especially in Last Breath, the book immediately prior to this one.

  We’ll continue to see events this way in Black Dawn … so be sure to note who is narrating the scene for you at the beginning of each chapter. Because everyone has secrets …

  … And some of them will be deadly.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  Chapter One: Claire

  Chapter Two: Michael

  Chapter Three: Claire

  Chapter Four: Claire

  Chapter Five: Eve

  Chapter Six: Claire

  Chapter Seven: Shane

  Chapter Eight: Claire

  Chapter Nine: Shane

  Chapter Ten: Michael

  Chapter Eleven: Claire

  Chapter Twelve: Eve

  Chapter Thirteen: Claire

  Chapter Fourteen: Hannah

  Chapter Fifteen: Eve

  Chapter Sixteen: Shane

  Chapter Seventeen: Claire

  Chapter Eighteen: Oliver

  Chapter Nineteen: Naomi

  Chapter Twenty: Eve

  Chapter Twenty-one: Claire

  Chapter Twenty-two: Oliver

  Chapter Twenty-three: Claire

  Chapter Twenty-four: Shane

  Epilogue

  Track List

  INTRODUCTION

  Morganville, Texas, isn’t like other towns. Oh, it’s small, dusty, and ordinary in most ways, but the thing is, there are these … vampires. They own the town. They run it. And until now they’ve been the unquestioned ruling class.

  But now this dry, landlocked town has been flooded by unnatural rains, and the rains have brought something else … the predators who’ve hunted the vampires almost to extinction.

  The draug.

  They hide in the water. They feed on vampires by preference, humans by necessity, and even in a desert town, there’s no place safe now that they’ve arrived. Not for the vampires or for those few humans still standing beside them.

  So hold on tight. Because Morganville’s changed.

  And it’s a very dark new day.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CLAIRE

  It would have been better if he’d screamed.

  Michael Glass didn’t scream. Instead, he made a terrible keening noise in the back of his throat, arched his back, and began to flail violently inside his zipped-up sleeping bag. Fabric shredded under vampire strength, and insulation bulged out of the tears as he fought his way free, but even once the weight was off him he just kept … flailing.

  Across the room, Claire Danvers bolted straight to her feet, tripped over her own sleeping bag, and managed to catch herself against a wall just before she hit the floor face-first. Her heart was slamming too fast against her ribs, and she had the sour, helpless taste of panic in her mouth.

  They’re here was the only coherent thought in her head. She had to be ready to fight, to run, to react, but all she could think of was how utterly scared she was just now. And how helpless.

  There were things out there in the world, things that vampires feared, and now those things were here. She was only seconds out of a very light, fitful sleep, but she knew that the nightmares had followed h
er effortlessly right into the real world. The draug. They weren’t vampires; they were something else, something that moved through water, formed out of it, dragged vampires down to a slow and awful death.

  A week ago, she’d have laughed something like that off as a bad joke, but then she’d seen them come for Morganville, Texas. Come with the rains that rarely fell in this desert-locked, sunbaked town where the vampires had, finally, made their last stand.

  Today she woke up with the blind and panicked knowledge that no matter how bad the world was with vampires in it, a world that held the draug was vastly worse. They’d come to Morganville, infiltrated stealthily, built their numbers until they were ready to fight … until they could sing their awful song that somehow, impossibly, was also beautiful and irresistible. To humans as well as to vamps.

  The strongest of Morganville’s vampires had gone up against it, and scored a few hits … but not without cost. Amelie, the ice-queen ruler of the town, had been bitten; without her, it was all going to get worse, fast.

  Michael was still thrashing and making that terrible sound, and it came to Claire gradually that instead of cowering here while her brain caught up, she should go to him. Help him.

  And then the lights brightened from dim to dazzling in the big carpeted room, and she saw her boyfriend, Shane Collins, standing in the doorway, looking first at her, then over at Michael, who was still desperately struggling against … nothing.

  Against his nightmare.

  Claire pulled in a deep breath, shut her eyes for a second, then made the OK sign to Shane; he nodded back and went to their friend’s side. Michael was tangled up in the shredded remains of his sleeping bag, still flailing and, as far as Claire could tell, still dead asleep. Shane crouched down and, after a brief hesitation, reached out and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder.

  Michael came awake instantly—vampire speed. In one blurred second he was sitting up, one hand wrapped around Shane’s wrist, eyes open and blazing red, fangs down and catching the light on razor-sharp points and edges.

  Shane didn’t move, though he might have rocked back on his heels just a little. That was better than Claire could have done; she’d have fallen backward at the very least, and Michael would probably have broken her wrist—not intentionally, but sorry didn’t matter much when it came to shattered bones.

  “Easy,” Shane said in a low, calm voice. “Easy, man—you’re safe. You’re safe now. It’s over. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”

  Michael froze. The red died down to embers in his eyes, and when he blinked it was gone, replaced by cool blue. He looked pale, but that was normal for him now. Claire saw his throat work as he swallowed, and then he shakily pulled in a breath and let go of Shane’s wrist. “God,” he whispered, and shook his head. “Sorry, man.”

  “No drama,” Shane said. “Bad one, right?”

  Michael didn’t respond to that immediately. He was staring off in the middle distance. She didn’t need to wonder what his nightmare had been about …. It would have been about being trapped in the Morganville Civic Pool, anchored to the bottom under that murky, poisoned water … being fed upon by the draug. Drained slowly, and alive, by creatures that found vampires as delicious as candy. Creatures that were, right now, invading and taking everything they could. Including every juicy vampire snack, straight to the bottom of whatever pool of filthy water they were hiding in.

  There were, Claire realized, still tiny red marks all over Michael’s skin, like pinpricks … fading, but not quite gone. He was healing slower than usual—or he’d been hurt far more seriously than it had seemed. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I was dreaming I was still in the pool, and …” He didn’t go on, but he didn’t need to; Claire had been there, seen it. Shane had not only seen but felt it—he’d dived in to save lives. Vampire lives, but lives all the same. The draug had attacked him, too, and his skin had the reddish tint of broken capillaries to prove it.

  Claire had a vivid, flashback-quality vision of the pool … that insanely creepy underwater garden of trapped vampires, tied down, stunned and helpless as the draug sucked away their strength and life. It had been one of the worst, most horrifying things she’d ever seen, and it had also outraged her on a very deep, primal level. Nobody deserved that. Nobody.

  “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 do
ing 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.