Magnus was below, and something—someone—had hurt him. Badly. Yes. Yes, at last.

As if fueled by that scream, the draug came for me, and as it did, the form finally solidified, pulled into human-seeming flesh, and it was Amelie striding toward me, pale and strong, but with rot and foulness writhing behind those shining silver eyes.

I took a firmer hold on my dagger, and prayed.

And then I stabbed straight at her chest. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to kill her, but I had to get her back, the Amelie within. The Amelie who understood what was at stake.

Her hand caught my arm and paused the silvery point just as it touched the writhing slime that covered her body. I felt the stinging agony of the draug’s tiny mouths drawing away my blood, even through the protective leathers. “Amelie, you know the plan, you know what you must do. Hold on. Hold!”

“No,” the master draug that had been Amelie said, in a voice like rotten silk. “No more plans. No more scheming. Now you are mine.”

And I realized that the draug was in control. And this draug had Amelie’s power—the power to compel. The power to force a vampire to her will.

And I sank slowly to my knees under that cold silver stare, screaming inside, as the draug’s slime crept up my hand and under the leathers, and began to feed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CLAIRE

The only place she knew to run, the place she’d be safest, was Amelie’s hidden room upstairs. Claire didn’t hesitate. She knew the darkened house by memory, and dodged around chairs and tables on her way to the stairs. She didn’t dare look back. She could hear furniture crashing, the shotgun going off.

It was so unreal, suddenly. On the sofa Shane’s game controllers would be right where they’d dropped them, and the blanket crooked on the back of the cushions; she couldn’t remember if they’d washed the dishes or not, or just dumped the last things they’d used in the sink.

This was their home. She ought to be safe here.

She was used to the Glass House feeling alive, and she still felt it, a little—a pulse, beating slowly beneath her awareness like a big, sleeping beast. There had been a spirit trapped here of the original owner, but he hadn’t been the part that had really bonded with her, Eve, Shane, and Michael. That had been the house itself, alive on some level she didn’t truly understand.

It couldn’t help her now, even if it wanted to. It didn’t have the strength, or the will.

She reached the steps, slipped, and almost fell. As she grabbed the banister for balance, she heard the front door smash open, and heard a wild war-cry yell.

She knew that voice. Shane! She reversed course and ran for the hallway, then skidded to an off-balance halt. Shane had just come in, holding a shotgun. “Claire!” He locked eyes with her, just for a moment, then started forward …