The Path of Razors

by Green, Chris Marie

  Since they didn’t dare disable any sound from the cameras this time, they worked quietly and efficiently. Within a minute, Dawn had on her headlight and mobile camera, and had a small machete in her hand as she opened the wardrobe leading to the hidden spring door.

  She opened that, too, switching her headlight on full power. She’d already told Natalia about the darkness and the height issue on the stairway, so she hoped the new girl was prepared.

  But Natalia was surprisingly unafraid of heights as they descended those steps into the pit of blackness, where the coldness wormed its way into every exposed pore.

  Since no cameras had been found in these tunnels, Dawn felt all right about talking.

  “You doin’ okay?” she asked Natalia.

  “I don’t feel anything yet,” she said, referring to her vamp radar. She ran her gloved hand over the tunnel walls, her own headlight making squiggly patterns over the rock.

  Dawn accessed the earpiece—a new one since the old had been crushed last night. “Jonah, you can come on down now.”

  The air around her got heavy with jasmine, which seemed to quiver.

  Kalin, getting excited about Jonah’s big appearance.

  “Hey,” Dawn said to the spirit. “Focus, would you?”

  The Friend swept by Dawn, knocking her a bit.

  Could anyone be more useless? Dawn thought. Sure, Breisi had told Kalin everything she needed to know as far as directions belowground went, but Dawn didn’t have half as much faith in Fire Woman as she did in her old faithful. Maybe, if Kalin had retained the fire-throwing powers she’d possessed as a human hunter, things would’ve been different, but as far as Dawn was concerned, the older Friend was a menace waiting to happen.

  Soon, Jonah came below, halting in his speedy run to appear in a blink before Dawn and Natalia.

  “Now I feel something,” the new girl said.

  She was zeroing in on Jonah, but if other vamps were near, chances were Natalia’s tuning fork perception would increase in volume—or however she felt the creatures’ presence—depending on how many were around.

  That’s how the team thought she worked, anyway. They were learning on the job.

  Jonah was glancing around, and instead of a grin, he was frowning.

  “What?” Dawn asked.

  It looked like he was about to give her the patron saint of dis missive answers: nothing. But he seemed to decide against it.

  “It’s the boss,” he said, avoiding Costin’s name. They’d learned enough to know that saying it in the open wasn’t smart because you never knew who might recognize the moniker. “He’s doubting the wisdom of being here.”

  Dawn wished Jonah hadn’t said anything. She didn’t want to be afraid for Costin in any way.

  “If something goes wrong,” she said, “you’ll get him right back inside of that body. But this is going to go like clockwork. He’ll see.”

  Jonah seemed pleased that she’d just extended a vote of confidence in him.

  Deciding not to explain that it’d been for Costin’s benefit, not Jonah‘s, she followed Kalin’s quivery lead until they got to the thorn tunnel.

  Her pulser beat at her chest, jousting with her own rhythms.

  “Here’s where the good times start,” Dawn said, buttoning her thick jacket. Even though her cuts had healed significantly, thanks to the gel, she’d still made sure she and Natalia had worn a stretchy, wetsuit-type neoprene layer under their regular clothes to protect their skin.

  But as Dawn’s headlight shone on the roots, she noticed that the points were strangely ...

  Clean.

  She reached out to touch one, then drew her hand back. “Huh. It’s like ...”

  Descriptions escaped her.

  Natalia peered inside, too, multiplying the force of light. “Like what?”

  “Like they’re really spotless. Wiped down, even more than I tried to do when I left the first time.”

  Jonah crouched down to get a look. “Maybe these are movie monster roots. They eat whatever gets on them.”

  Dawn held back a retort. If Kiko had said it, it would’ve been funny.

  Damn if Jonah’s theory wasn’t a bad one, though. Not with the crap she’d seen in life recently.

  She took off her wig because she knew she’d lose it anyway, stored it in her bag, then entered. Natalia followed suit before she ventured into the thicket, and Jonah rounded them off.

  At the end of the short journey, their outerwear was worse off—jagged and torn—but they’d avoided cuts.

  That brought them to the Orlando Bloom room, and as they stood outside the orange and red beads that were swaying with the push of Kalin’s entrance, Dawn turned to Natalia.

  “Anything?”

  The new girl shook her head, her headlight whipping back and forth as she denied any blips on her vamp-dar.

  Dawn looked to Jonah and said, “We’ll wait for Kalin to make a sweep then ...”

  Then they’d let Costin loose.

  Her heartbeat seemed to hammer at the pulser. What if something did happen to their ultimate weapon?

  What if Costin . . . ?

  Don’t even consider it, she told herself.

  Jonah didn’t make her finish what she’d been saying about their plans, but Kalin burst past the beads before Dawn might’ve gotten another word out, anyway.

  “Clear,” the Friend said.

  Now Dawn’s pulse was knocking around like something in a straitjacket running into padded walls.

  “Ready to let out the boss?” she asked Jonah.

  His tilted grin returned. “Don’t miss me too much, Dawn.”

  “Oh, don’t you fret about that.”

  Kalin had gone eerily still, and it wasn’t beyond Dawn’s notice.

  He didn’t waste any time—he was that confident of the switch and the ability to reassume his place after this was over.

  Dawn’s headlight caught the change from blue eyes to topaz, from a casual posture and grin to a straight back and stoic pride.

  Her skin heated, her chest caving in on itself.

  Costin.

  As his gaze adjusted to her, she took his hand because it was okay to touch him now that Jonah was gone. His cool flesh balanced the sear of hers.

  A moment stretched—an instant where she had no idea what to say or how to define what she felt at having him back.

  Natalia strangled it. “Hurry?” she said softly, as if chancing to remind them that this wasn’t the time or place.

  And she was right.

  “Any vibes?” Dawn asked Costin, still holding his hand.

  He gripped it, as if getting used to her again.

  But then he let go.

  She tried not to make it a big deal. He needed to concentrate.

  As he surveyed the area, Dawn noticed that Kalin had backed off, as if waiting for Jonah to return before she got excited again. It was odd because, once, she and Costin had been close.

  Very close.

  He sauntered toward the beads but didn’t go beyond them.

  “Something,” he said. “Something barely here. A remnant of energy that is disappearing even now. But that happens shortly after they leave. One has been here recently—not more than two days past, though, or else I would not feel it.”

  A master.

  Dawn almost collapsed in relief. This place did have something to do with an Underground. Costin’s vibes had just validated it.

  Even Kalin was whizzing around in celebration, and Natalia was smiling above at the Friend.

  “Let’s get to that blade room then,” Dawn said. “Maybe the vibes will be stronger if it’s any closer to the big show or if a master has been there any more recently.”

  So they rushed forward, following Kalin, until they arrived at the entrance, where they’d previously done their best to clean up any trace evidence of their presence from the rubble, though they couldn’t hide how they’d smashed through the wall.

  Costin stayed outside the r
oom again. Actually, he didn’t even come within ten yards of it as Natalia and Kalin entered to look around.

  “Don’t you want to see it?” Dawn asked.

  “No.” His voice sounded raw.

  “Why. . . ?”

  “Because I can feel it from here. Whatever was down here is gone now.”

  “But—”

  He touched her cheek, and she shivered at the contact, at the sorrowful cast to his gaze.

  Then, before she even knew what was happening, he reared his head back.

  When he righted it, his eyes were blue.

  “Jonah!” Dawn shoved him. “Bring him back!”

  He didn’t even stumble under her push.

  “Bring him back!” she repeated.

  He didn’t seem smug now. He didn’t even seem cocky.

  “Dawn,” he said, as if working up to bad news. She knew the tone.

  She bunched her hand into a fist.

  “I wasn’t the one who pushed him under,” he said, stepping forward to cup his palm over her hand.

  Her arm trembled as she tried to raise it, but he wasn’t relenting.

  What did he mean, he wasn’t the one who’d pushed Costin back under . . . ?

  But she understood, even as he lowered his voice so no one else would hear.

  “He voluntarily went back in, Dawn.”

  As Jonah let her go and walked toward the blade room to inspect it, she didn’t go after him.

  Not this time.

  TWENTY

  THE HIGHGATE CHRONICLES

  sky had folded from dusk into full night, the rain letting up, by the time the team finished at Queenshill, where they were as careful as possible to clean up any further traces of themselves in the tunnels and rooms under the ground. Anyone who saw the ravaged blade room entrance would know it’d been breached, but there wasn’t much they could do about that.

  Afterward, thanks to the Dr. Hopkins interview, they turned their attention to Highgate—the village where Thomas Gatenby had once been sighted with those bad-news friends of his.

  Since the team had previously visited the cemetery there, they knew a little about this fresh-aired spot high on a hill overlooking the city. Highgate was bursting at its seams with tourists, shops, and pubs. Everyone, from Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman, to wealthy professionals raising families, to rock stars, was associated with the place.

  Parking their Sedonas near the tube station down the hill from the graveyard, the team took the opportunity to change their disguises so that anyone who might be tracking them on a camera would have a harder time establishing a pattern from Queenshill to here. There was no way they could wander around the village as themselves, because almost a week ago, Dawn, Natalia, and Kiko had gone into the eastern portion of the cemetery to check out psychic leads.

  Now, after banishing the males to the other vehicle and going to the back of the Sedona to change, Dawn put on another wig, a brunette bob, then donned some subtle makeup to age her face. She’d learned some tricks on movie sets, and it was as useful as hell now.

  When she checked herself in a handheld mirror, she almost laughed, and it wasn’t in hilarity. It’s just that she looked how she felt—way older than just twenty-five years.

  But she wasn’t going to dwell on what had happened with Costin at Queenshill today: How he’d allowed Jonah to take over. How he’d retreated when, until recently, he’d always pressed forward.

  Where was the line between careful and cowardly? she thought. And why couldn’t she stop wondering if Costin had crossed it?

  But she squashed it all to the back of her mind. To even think that Costin lacked bravery ... it was appalling, something she didn’t want to question.

  Something she really had no right to question, she added as she put on a different pair of jeans than before, these weathered instead of new. She added a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a striped scarf, then a long brown coat that lent her the casual blending factor of an American middle-class tourist.

  From now on, she definitely wasn’t going to question Costin, even though a constant heaviness was still dogging her.

  In the backseat with its blackened glass, Natalia was putting the finishing touches on her backpacker garb, complete with a braided red wig plus khakis and a flannel scarf over a down jacket and gloves. But she also wore a frown—a result of her frustration from their Queenshill visit. The psychic hadn’t heard any voices from the dead in any of the rooms, and Dawn suspected that Natalia often felt useless when she couldn’t get in contact with those victims she wanted to help so badly.

  The new girl kept looking toward the windshield. “There’s something going on out there, Dawn. I feel what I felt the last time we were here. It’s like walking into an empty room that’s really not so empty.”

  When Natalia had met Frank for the first time, she’d said something real similar, so Dawn could only think that the psychic was talking about vampiric presences nearby.

  A lot more than just a few, too, because Natalia usually had to be close to a source in order to feel it, and no one was in the vicinity of their vehicle right now.

  If there were a lot of them, they’d be having a bigger effect on Natalia.

  But could her stronger reaction have something to do with the Highgate Vampire and its minions wandering around the cemetery? Dawn wondered. The creature was legend, and a valid candidate for an Underground connection. Maybe Natalia was tuning in to him and his group because they were above the ground, just up the hill....

  Dawn gave the other girl a stalwart pat on the shoulder as Jonah and Kiko knocked on the back passenger-side door, then climbed into the car, locking up behind them. The entire time, Dawn kept scanning out the windshield for any shadow figures tracking them, but she knew that the Friends were patrolling the area, too.

  It reassured her a teeny-weeny bit.

  Kiko, who was dressed in a generic baseball cap, a heavy gold jacket with a Manchester United Football Club patch on the sleeve, and a scarf that would cover half his face, looked young enough not to be buying any booze in a pub. But as he sent a far more mature glance to Natalia—a questioning glimpse—he seemed older.

  “You’re feeling it again, huh?” he asked her.

  Natalia shrugged, then pulled her jacket closed.

  Dawn interpreted her response. “We’re near some kind of gold mine, but for all we know, she’s reading the Highgate Vampire and his cronies in the cemetery. We just have to figure out if they’re all connected to what we found below Queenshill.”

  Jonah pressed a key ring alarm button and aimed it at the other Sedona, causing it to whoop. If Dawn didn’t know any better, she would’ve spent a lingering glance on him, with his purple-tinted wire-rimmed glasses and sporty baseball cap that matched Kiko’s. Even in jeans, Doc Martens, and an L.L. Bean jacket, he managed to stand out, which was the last freakin’ thing they were supposed to be doing.

  “Jonah,” Dawn said, “the idea is to have people not look at you.”

  Kiko scanned Jonah’s appearance, too, then gave her a what’re-you-talkin’ -about? glance.

  “He looks normal,” Kiko said. “For a vamp.”

  Dawn stopped herself from arguing that anyone with eyes was going to notice Jonah—especially chicks. But she didn’t want Jonah to know that she’d noticed the draw he had on females.

  Yet he evidently did, because he got that cocky grin. “I think I come off like an everyday hubby just hanging out with the family on vacation.”

  He grasped both Kiko’s and Dawn’s upper arms in solidarity, suggesting that she could be the mama and Kiko the kid. At least, that’s how she took it.

  She was a second away from smacking his hand away when Kiko took it upon himself to make the situation even more intolerable.

  “If you and Dawn had a kid, he’d probably be all dark-haired and not a blonde like me. Details, Jonah.”

  “Perhaps,” Natalia added, probably trying to be helpful, “you were adopted, Kiko.”

>   Gah.

  Dawn shrugged off Jonah’s hand and tugged her own baseball cap onto her head, over her wig. “If anyone is nosy enough to ask, we tell them that we’re all cousins who met up here in London for a vacay and are in the mood for some good pub grub for the adults and kid. But, except for Kiko partnering up with Natalia, we should casually separate ourselves unless we need a powwow. It might be harder to ID us if we look like individuals instead of a group.”

  “Sounds fine to me.” Kiko slipped on his weapon-filled backpack. “On the same note, we should be careful while we’re talking to people around here. This Underground could have servants aboveground, and they might go back to their community to report anything out of the ordinary. As far as everyone’s concerned, we’re gung ho tourists who love to hear scary stories about the area. What visitor doesn’t?”

  With that, they activated their pulsers via tiny handheld re-motes, then got out of the vehicle separately, with Jonah going first, then Kiko and Natalia, then Dawn.

  All the while, her pulser pounded against her chest.

  After everyone else had started up the hill, she got out and hit the alarm button on her car keys, glancing around more out of paranoia than need; the Friends were patrolling and manipulating the cameras with their essences, so everything should go smoothly.

  Problem was, the camera manipulation required more than one Friend, and the team needed the spirits to be as spread out over the area as possible.

  But they’d make do while sticking to the plan they’d formulated before leaving Queenshill: sidle into what would hopefully be a locals’ pub, then strike up conversations with any casual historians to see if there were juicy rumors about Thomas Gatenby.

  There was also the possibility that Kiko or Natalia might be able to channel visions based on touch or their precognitive abilities, and Jonah might be able to make eye contact and carefully reach into the mind of anyone who appeared to be holding back information.

  But that was a last-straw option—if he could even do it without losing control of his vampire self, just like he had when he’d come to the team’s rescue with the Queenshill schoolgirls. Besides, using his vamp powers might open him up to a reading by creatures that the team wanted to get the jump on themselves.