“Stay with me,” Shane said, and she nodded. The weight of her shotgun was heavy in her right hand, but it didn’t slow her down any as they ran after their friends, into the dark.

The water treatment plant had a horrible smell to it, rotten eggs mixed with vomit, and Claire hadn’t expected that. Her eyes teared up, and she coughed and choked and made a completely useless fanning motion in front of her nose, as if the stench was something she could wave off. Shane seemed wretched, too, but stoic about it. “Burst pipe, probably,” he said. “Raw sewage. Try not to breathe too deep, but keep breathing. You’ll get used to it.”

“The not-breathing-deep part is easy,” she said. “This is really gross.”

“Did I ever tell you I worked trash and dead animal pickup? One of the many glamorous jobs I’ve held in Morganville. Not everybody can be a rock star or a mad scientist vampire assistant. Somebody has to clean up the crap. In my case, literally.”

The lights were on in the plant, but they seemed dim and discolored somehow, and they flickered from time to time. The electrical grid wasn’t too stable, Claire guessed, or else the place was running on emergency power. She felt for the small LED flash that she’d clipped to the belt loop of her jeans—still there. It wasn’t super bright, but it would help. Eve had brought some monster aluminum-cased thing that could double for a baseball bat, of course; she’d also blinged it up with Swarovski crystals, but that was just Eve. Always finding a fun use for the glue gun that nature never intended.

There were stairs going up and down. “Second floor,” Shane said, and she nodded. They went up fast but quietly, and as they reached the landing of the second floor, Claire heard something that sounded like a distant gush of water through pipes, and then the lights just … failed. Then they struggled back on, flickering badly.

“Not good,” Shane said. “Come on. This way.”

The hallway was long, straight, and uncomplicated, except that the pipes running overhead had developed leaks … some slow drips, some silvery (or brown) streams of water that had created thick pools on the floor. The smell was stronger here. Right, Claire thought. Avoid brown water at all costs. Not that the apparently clear water would be safer; it was just less disgusting.

“Hang back,” Shane said, and unhooked the nozzle from the pack on his back. He thumbed the ignition switch on the side, and the blue pilot flame wicked on, hissing slightly. “Fire in the hole!”

And he unleashed an incredibly dense stream of flame that rolled over the puddles, steaming them into a boil. When he took his finger off the trigger and the flames died, Claire blinked to bring her eyes back to pre-flamethrower focus, and looked for any sign of the draug.

Nothing. The way seemed clear.

“Go!” she said, and ran forward. Shane matched her. He had the nozzle still at the ready and the pilot light burning, but they didn’t need it after all; apart from splashes, the pools of water didn’t produce any evil beings, grab at their feet, or do anything at all. They raced breathless to the end of the hall, and Claire pointed at a panel of switches marked with red signs on their right. MANUAL VALVE SHUTOFF CONTROL, it read. USE ONLY IN AUTHORIZED EMERGENCY.