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.