The Path of Razors

by Green, Chris Marie

  Except her.

  In the near distance, the thin sound of wailing graced the atmosphere—males. Victims.

  White ribbons ...

  She shuddered at the image, but it had also become colder, dimmer as they rounded a corner and went deeper into the Underground, where the wails defined themselves as weak cries for help. The lovely scent of male flesh, bitten only recently, filled the tunnel.

  Yet the blood—and the boys’ faint murmurings—filled her with courage, too, just as the screams had done earlier at the hotel when Della had recalled Violet’s death shrieks in front of Mrs. Jones.

  “Wolfie?” she asked softly.

  “Yes, my dear.”

  She stopped walking, halting him, too.

  “Have there been others for you?” she asked, thinking of the tub images, the skin-mouths. “Companions such as Mrs. Jones? Or has she been with you for centuries?”

  The question took him aback—she could sense it.

  “Well, now. That’s quite the private query.”

  She already could guess that he would not answer, at least not at this moment.

  But she thought it might be important to know, for some reason she had not fully come to terms with yet.

  He pushed against a door, and it moaned open, fully introducing Della to the blood here in the kitchens.

  Her sight adjusted to a thicker darkness that barely hid the counters with their pots and pans for mixing flavors. Along the walls, cages dwelled, embracing teenaged boys gone bad, boys who had been tempted down here by all the lovely girls.

  Wolfie went to an empty cage, then opened the door.

  Without question, Della stepped in, and he shut the bars. Then he went to the enclosure to the right of her, motioning the prey forward with one hypnotic, “Come, boy.”

  The prey obeyed, stretching out his arm for Wolfie, who scratched it lightly with his nails—not enough to maim or drain, just enough so Della would suffer the scent in her hungry state.

  He did the same with the male in the cage to the left.

  She thumped to the padded floor, trying not to sense the immediate blood, to crave it.

  But it was already too late.

  Shudders began to wrack her body; she had not eaten for over a day.

  Wolfie came to stand in front of her cell. “Anyone who visits the kitchens will see you and wonder why you’ve been treated so. You won’t tell them, Della, but Polly and Noreen will know. And although I understand why you did what you did with Violet, you took her from us. From me. That cannot happen again.”

  “Yes, Wolfie.”

  It seemed as if he wished to say something more, but he instead left the room, the cries of the captives growing in volume once Wolfie had shut the door.

  “Mercy,” one teenager said from across the way.

  And, in the cage to the right of Della, a young man stuck out a thin bloody arm to her, although she could not even dream of reaching him.

  “Mercy,” he said also, and she realized it was because he wanted to be put out of the misery of his own punishment.

  His yearning to be sucked.

  Della held her hands over her ears, but it did no good, because she could still hear them. Smell them.

  And she could still see the formation of yet another vision rotating in the dark of her mind, where all sorts of scattered, formerly unthinkable pieces were beginning to fall into place.

  THIRTEEN

  THE DEARLY DEPARTED

  AT headquarters, a miasma of colors expanded behind Dawn’s eyelids as Jonah continued to draw from her vein, pressing against her, sucking and sucking....

  She gripped his shirt, the strength ebbing from her, but it was replaced by the high of weakness and—

  Her bubble of ecstasy broke open, shattering into a dark so blinding that it swallowed her in the cold comfort of knowing that she had given just as much as she’d taken from Costin and even Jonah.

  That she’d done her time for the night.

  As Dawn struggled for breath, Jonah recovered, too, his open mouth against her throat. She squirmed away from him, using the remainder of her strength to lift her leg, plant her foot against his torso, then shove him away.

  He veered back, crashing against the wall. Strung out on blood, which reddened his fangs and lips, he planted his hands against the marble, using it to slide to the ground, where he closed his eyes.

  Dawn leaned back against the mirror. God, she wouldn’t have pushed him if Costin had been dominant in that body. But this creature on the floor wasn’t her lover. It was Jonah, who was obviously enjoying the taste of her way too much.

  A spiral of sensation—maybe it was appreciation for being so appreciated—drilled through her, and she slumped off the counter, one palm to her neck as she used her other hand to pull her bra over her breasts. Even with the healing gel, her skin stung.

  “Hold on,” Jonah said, holding a hand out for her and opening his eyes.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Would you stop being so stubborn?”

  The silver of his gaze was deepening to the normal blue of his humanlike facade, but his fangs were still evident as he reached out farther to latch his fingers around her arm and pull her to him.

  Too weak to react normally, Dawn slid across the marble floor in his grip, coming to bang against his leg. She made the token effort of bringing up an elbow to jar it down into his thigh, but he had his fingers on her neck before she’d even raised her arm all the way.

  “Just sit still for a minute,” he said softly, impatiently, pressing against her bite punctures. “Then you can beat me up all you want.”

  Healing waves streamed through her, but she didn’t move, didn’t let him see that it felt good with the heat flowing down her neck, through her chest, into her gut, where it unfurled and tickled her in spots that shouldn’t have felt anything when it came to Jonah.

  She tried to think about anything else—the need to get some supplement juice and food into her, the necessity of scrambling as far away from him as possible—but her pitiful libido was boss now.

  A sharp stiffness needled her between the legs, and her skin prickled until he took his fingers away and let her go.

  “I can heal all those cuts on you,” he said as she rolled from him, then crawled for the door.

  “You wish.”

  “Dawn,” he said before she made it out.

  In spite of herself, she glanced back.

  His fangs had receded, his eyes a full blue now, his skin a healthier shade of pale, his lips still red with the mark of her blood.

  The sight of that speared her, and she squeezed her thighs together, hoping this would get rid of the sensual twang.

  It didn’t.

  “You happy now?” she asked. “Glad to be back?”

  “ Very.”

  And she could tell it was true by the way his gaze was taking in every detail around him, as if he’d just been born again. Whoever was dominant in that body was the one who experienced everything firsthand: the texture of marble against fingertips, the stream of air from a heater over skin, the taste of blood.

  Back when Costin had recruited him, Jonah had accepted the deal based on an opportunity to escape a sheltered life. He’d possessed all the money a man could want but had lacked so much more. Passion. Purpose.

  And Costin the Soul Traveler had given those to him. That’s why Jonah loved being a vampire—because it provided everything he’d never had, a million times over.

  Jonah smiled as he finished his survey of the room, and he sprawled, long legs like a cowboy leaning against a fence at the OK Corral. “So the plan is for me to go under the ground at Queenshill ?”

  “That’s the plan for Costin.” Dawn’s neck still tingled, as if Jonah were still touching her. She brushed at the area, like you did when you tried to clean off a fly you’d just killed. “As cool as you think you are, you wouldn’t be able to detect any master if one was around.”

  “Then I’ll just get C
ostin belowground safely and he can come out to do the detecting. Afterward, I’ll bundle him up and protect him again when we go back above.”

  “Protect.” Dawn just about spit the word.

  She wiped her hands on her shirt, lending skids of blood to the material. Then she crawled the rest of the way out of the room, toward the walk-in closet with its minifridge and her supplement juice.

  “Maybe you misunderstand me,” Jonah said from the bathroom.

  As she pawed open the fridge and took out the plastic juice bottle, stripping off the cap and shakily lifting it to her mouth, she heard Jonah rustling around, coming out to stand at the entrance to the closet. Juice trickled down her chin because she could barely control herself.

  He stood there in Costin’s lounging suit, strong and flushed from the feeding, but the tousled hair, the nonchalant stance told her he was all Jonah.

  “Do you still think,” he asked, “that I would ever let Costin get hurt? Everything I do is for our own good in the end.”

  She kept drinking while eyeing him, trying to avoid how sincere Jonah sounded. She hated to admit it, but she knew that he was just as devoted to their cause as the rest of them. He just wanted a chance to prove it, after being relegated to the shadows in the pit of his own body for so long.

  He began perusing a line of black clothing that hung from the rack, no doubt getting ready to change into his own kind of hunting wardrobe. His assassin ensemble from last night had been perfect for all the blood-spraying trouble he’d caused by showing up at Queenshill to scare the schoolgirls off.

  “Like you,” he added, “I would do anything to make sure Costin gets these Underground guys.”

  She finished drinking, swiping her sleeve over her mouth. “I guess we’d be shit out of luck if the romance and adventure of all this didn’t appeal to you.”

  Picking out a black pea coat, he shrugged. “But it does. And you never know—maybe one day you’ll even realize that I’ve got a little nobility lurking somewhere in me.”

  She didn’t want to argue, because every time they did, she always ended up understanding too well that no one—not even Jonah—should have to live like he did: pressed down into his own body for as long as the Underground hunts or this vampiric state lasted.

  And that could be for centuries.

  Dawn grabbed a cookie from her stash, filling herself with it as Jonah continued to choose his clothes.

  Meanwhile, a stream of jasmine slithered into the atmosphere via the heating vent.

  Goody. Whenever Jonah took over, Kalin, Dawn’s least favorite Friend, appeared.

  “Back from searching for the schoolgirls?” Dawn said to the Friend, a.k.a. Fire Woman, a nickname earned because of her portrait of flames.

  Jonah greeted Kalin, too, but this time he didn’t seem as exasperated as usual. The Friend had a crush on him, and he wasn’t that into it.

  At least normally. Maybe he was just tolerating her tonight.

  “You didn’t find any of them, Kalin?” he asked.

  “No schoolgirls out at play,” the spirit said, her voice a reedy swirl of words that reflected a lower-class British accent from years and years ago. “Not in the places I was searchin’ along the Thames.”

  “Thanks for the progress report,” Dawn said. “Now leave us alone.”

  Kalin laughed, a tumble of mirth.

  Jonah didn’t react, and Dawn realized that he genuinely didn’t mind Kalin’s presence right now.

  Dawn took a stab at what was going on. “Is she going to be your protector, Jonah? Your best Friend?”

  “We all need our allies,” he said mildly, checking out a pair of badass boots he’d pulled out from below the hanging clothes.

  Great. Kalin and her hurt feelings had switched loyalty to Jonah because she’d always felt that Costin didn’t pay her enough attention. Bitter twit.

  But Dawn wasn’t about to let them off the hook so easily.

  “Kalin, bind Jonah.”

  He raised his eyebrows at Dawn while the jasmine air went still.

  Dawn got to her knees, waiting for the Friend to obey the command. They were supposed to take orders from team members.

  The spirit began to laugh again, and she even nudged Jonah ... who wasn’t laughing.

  “Dawn,” he said, a trace of disappointment in his tone, “you know a Friend can’t obey an order that harms Costin.”

  She got to her feet, her legs still rubbery, even though growing anger gave them some steel. “You’re not Costin.”

  “Yes, I am.” He cocked his head in vampire consideration as he watched her. “I’m very much a part of Costin, and he’s a part of me.”

  Dawn took the empty juice bottle and flung it at him, knowing he’d have the instincts to avoid it.

  And, yup, he did avoid it—gracefully. Easily.

  As she pushed past him out of the closet, Kalin’s jasmine flared around her, and Dawn swatted the Friend’s essence away.

  But her hand only caught air.

  “You know that Costin’s gonna banish your ass when he gets back,” Dawn said to the Friend.

  “Oh, Daaa-aawn,” Kalin called. “Almost forgot. You’re needed downstairs.... Urgently, I’d say.”

  Her first instinct was to tell Kalin to go to hell, but she was a Friend, first and foremost, so Dawn chose to believe that there was something going on that she needed to check out.

  While buttoning her shirt, she busted past the bedroom door, and when she got to the lower floor, she ran into Natalia.

  After recovering from a wave of dizziness—it was too soon to be up and walking around, even with the supplement in her—she realized that the new girl’s eyes were wide, her fingers plucking at her skirt.

  “Your mom ...” Natalia said.

  Maybe it was the half-panicked tone her coworker was using, but it set Dawn off. “What? What about Eva?”

  “I saw her run out the door a few minutes ago—”

  She hadn’t even finished before an adrenalized Dawn had taken off for the front door, where she found the locks in place.

  “I shut it and locked up,” the psychic said as Dawn’s legs went weak again, “because Eva left it partway open—”

  “Where did she go?” Dawn flung open the weapons cache and began to raid it.

  Then she realized something.

  “A Friend’s going to be with my mom,” she said, relief washing over her.

  Idiot Kalin. She’d freaked Dawn out for nothing. Eva had probably decided to go back to her flat for some reason and a spirit would be escorting her. Nothing to go Armageddon about.

  Then again, Eva had left the door half-open....

  “I don’t know what happened,” Natalia said. “And I don’t know where she went. But Dawn? She’s alone.”

  Dawn stopped, an illegal revolver halfway to the hip holster she’d just donned. “You mean ‘alone’ as in she’s got a Friend with her. Right? That kind of ’alone‘?”

  A bolt of jasmine rushed down the stairs, and Dawn glanced in its direction.

  “No,” Breisi said, her voice angry even in its melodic flow. “No Friend would go with her anywhere.”

  Dawn shoved an earpiece in, grabbed a few more weapons plus her jacket and phone, then bolted to the door.

  “Try calling Eva on her cell,” she said to Natalia before she changed her mind about going out the front and headed for the back.

  And no one stopped her.

  FOURTEEN

  THE MEET AND GREET

  DAWN had no idea where to start looking for Eva except for her mom’s nearby flat, which sat over a pub called the Bull and Cock.

  So she sprinted straight over after having the presence of mind to take the belowground back way out of headquarters, where she thought she could avoid the front door camera that’d been clouded earlier. But, even with all the talk about getting IDed by cameras, Dawn didn’t put on any wigs or change the raggedy schoolgirl shirt and skirt she’d been wearing since this morning’s Que
enshill visit.

  No time for anything else, she kept thinking, as much as she even had the capacity to think, what with her still feeling woozy after Jonah’s feeding.

  As she booked it to the Bull and Cock, the air stamped her face with a cold burn, but she wasn’t outside for very long before she barged into the warm pub.

  Everyone, from the guys throwing down ale at the bar to the couple getting cozy by the fireplace, glanced over to see what kind of freak had come through the door to let in the chill. But Dawn just flashed a “hi” sign at them, pulled her jacket around her, and headed for the stairwell that led to her mom’s rented room.

  Halfway up the steps, leaving behind the rock music playing in the common room, the adrenaline failed Dawn and she rested her hand against a wall, leaning forward so she wouldn’t fall backward.

  All she had to do was get up the stairs, and if Eva was in her room, bring her mom back to headquarters to sort through whatever had happened.

  That’s all.

  Her earpiece crackled. “Dawn?”

  It was Frank, and he sounded as sheepish as a kicked Doberman.

  But his voice got her going up the rest of the way to Eva’s room.

  “You gonna tell me what the deal is?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but first you should know that your mom’s not answering her cell. We could hear it ringing in her guest room. She left it here.”

  “I guess she was so busy running from something or another that she forgot it, huh, Frank?”

  At the door, Dawn realized that she didn’t have Eva’s key with her—she didn’t even have her lock picking tools—and she let out a word that probably even made her dad cringe.

  She decided that the music in the pub might be loud enough to distract from the noise she was about to make, so she said, “Dad, give me a sec before you start explaining. I need to get into Mom’s place.”

  “Tell me if she’s there,” he said.

  “I will.”

  Then Dawn stepped back from the door and closed her eyes, focusing.