Claire squeaked for air, went up on her toes, and tried to ease the strain on her throat. She was having a terrifying, white-out flashback of the moment that Magnus had seized her, had twisted until she'd felt and heard the crackle-snap of bones. Her heart was as loud as a jackhammer in her chest, and her pulse was roaring so loudly it sounded like a hurricane in her ears. She couldn't see who held her, but it was a man's body, a man's hairy arm. She clawed at it, but her blunt nails weren't going to do much. Think, Claire. Shane had taught her some basic things to do. Everyone is going to be bigger and stronger than you, he'd said, without being critical about it. You have to learn how to hit them in the weak spots.
The first thing he'd taught her to do was not to do what she was doing now ... standing on her tiptoes, cooperating with her captor. It was terrifying, but it was Shane's calm voice in her head now, telling her exactly what to do. Turn your head toward his elbow. Tuck in your chin. Grab his left wrist in your right hand. Punch down and behind you with your left as you turn and pull. Then don't stop when he lets go, move in, go for his eyes and punch his throat. Never run. Never let him get his momentum again.
She did it, calmly, turning and tucking and punching, and suddenly she was free, and she was facing her attacker. She registered him only as a foot taller than she was, and only for geometry's sake; faces and names didn't matter right now. Her right fist blurred as she went for a fast, hard punch to his exposed throat ...
But she stopped, because Theo Goldman stepped in like a shadow and grabbed her fist before it landed.
Her attacker stumbled back, white-faced with shock; he clearly hadn't expected the little girl to come at him like that, and Claire felt a savage sense of victory before sanity kicked in again.
"Theo? What the hell?" He really hadn't changed, but then, vampires didn't, did they? He just looked ... kind, with warm dark eyes and hair dusted with gray, and lines on his face that most vampires didn't have. Smile lines.
He did, however, look tired.
Shane hadn't moved, except to pick up the shotgun. His eyes were steady and cold on the man with Theo who'd grabbed her, and Claire sensed that he was waiting for the guy to make a second attempt.
The guy didn't move, though Claire, still trembling and adrenaline fueled, was almost sorry.
Theo shook his head, then walked to the table and picked up a curling piece of paper. He turned the sheet over and wrote swiftly, then held it up so they both could see through the dim light of the kitchen window. HAROLD IS A FRIEND. HE WAS TRYING TO PROTECT ME. APOLOGIES.
"Great," Claire muttered, but her fury was rapidly fading as she looked at Harold. He looked ... wrong, a little. He seemed awkward, and fidgeted uncomfortably like a schoolkid caught cheating on a test. He also seemed scared.
In fact, despite his large size, he was acting exactly like a kid. Even down to the body language. There was something developmentally off about him, and he looked at Theo with miserable distress, as if he knew he'd done wrong but didn't know why.
Claire backed up next to Shane and pushed down on the barrel of his shotgun. He was getting the same impression, she saw, and he nodded and dropped his guard. Slightly.
Shane said, "We're here to get you," but Theo shook his head and pointed to his ears. There was something weird about the way they looked, but Claire honestly couldn't make out the details in the shadows. Shane claimed the pencil again and wrote, WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE. HAVE TRUCK. WILL TAKE YOU.
Theo read it, considered, and shook his head. He marked through it and responded, MUST TAKE HAROLD, TOO.
Shane shrugged, marked through it, and wrote (in smaller letters, since the paper was running out), BIG EFFING TRUCK.
Theo circled the word EFFING and raised his eyebrows. Claire made a frustrated noise in her throat, grabbed the pencil, and marked it out.
Ah, Theo mouthed, and smiled. Good.
The paper was scribbled over, thoroughly, so Claire hunted around in the wreckage of the kitchen, avoiding the piles of trash and really avoiding the sink full of dried, filthy dishes, until she found a balled-up flyer in the corner of the room. It was, she realized, the gym flyer, the one that had caused them so much trouble when Shane had taken up self-defense classes there a few months back. Another aftershock, but less terrifying.
She turned it over and wrote, AMELIE NEEDS YOU. URGENT. VERY SICK.
Theo's face went blank, and then tight with alarm. He scribbled back, WHAT HAPPENED?
DRAUG, she replied. BIT HER.
He mouthed something that she didn't understand, and covered his mouth in a gesture of real distress. Then he nodded decisively and turned to Harold. He made a series of fluid hand signs, and Harold brightened up and nodded.
It was right about then that Claire realized what was so weird about Theo's ears. There was something sticking out of them, sideways. Like ...
Like needles. Really long needles. Knitting needles.
It was so shocking that she took a step back, eyes wide, and finally recovered enough to point to Theo and then gesture at his ears, urgently.
He smiled, but there was something dark in it. He took the paper back and wrote, MUST KEEP MY EARDRUMS PIERCED. OTHERWISE CANNOT RESIST THE CALL.
The vampire version of earplugs, she realized ... literally disabling his ears. But it must have hurt horribly, keeping those needles in place to block healing. She felt faint imagining it.
Harold fell in docilely enough behind Theo, heading for the door; Claire, at Shane's hand wave, darted on ahead to make sure Harold didn't do anything crazy when he saw Naomi.
But Naomi was gone, and for a second Claire was terrified that something had happened to her. Then she heard the rumble of the truck's engine and saw that Naomi had started it up. She might not have driving experience, but she'd learned how to turn an ignition key, at least.
It all looked safe.
Claire put the gun at a ready position and stepped outside ... just as a sudden gush of liquid rushed out of a rusty drainpipe at the corner of the porch, sending a thick wave across her path. At the same time, rain started falling faster, and harder, pounding like ball bearings on the fabric of her jacket and stinging her exposed skin.
She had just enough time to bring the shotgun up as the draug rose up out of the pool of water in front of her, clawed hands outstretched.
Still, even now, she couldn't say what it actually looked like ... because the human brain tried and tried to fit it into some sense, some pattern, but failed utterly. There were eyes, horrible gelatinous eyes that somehow weren't eyes at all; there was a body that was not a body. What she registered as clawed hands was probably something else again, something worse, but it was the biggest warning her uncomprehending brain could screech at her, and she reacted instantly.
She pulled the trigger.
The impact slammed the stock of the shotgun against her shoulder so hard that she felt something crack-bone, probably-and a white snap of pain sizzled through her from neck to heels. At the same time, the roar of the shot hit her like a physical slap.
But that was nothing compared to what the silver did to the draug.
The pellets didn't have time to spread far, but tore a neat circular hole four inches across straight through the draug's-well, head, she supposed, was the nearest equivalent. There was a shriek of high-pitched agony, and then the draug collapsed in a wet slap as it lost all consistency and shape. Claire yelped as she leaped out of the way of the wave of its ... corpse? If it was dead, which she couldn't assume. But it wasn't coming for her, and that was what was important.
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.