The Path of Razors

by Green, Chris Marie

  The woman in the tub was shaking, closing her eyes, sweating such fear that Claudia took its hand away, but not before skimming the healed bite marks on her neck where it had taken blood from her earlier.

  “I wonder,” it said, trying to make its voice soothing before it fully charmed the woman’s mind to a deep, sleepy peace before a bath, “what those girls have told him. They’re far more clever than anyone suspects, aren’t they?”

  The victim’s eyes darted back and forth, searching for an answer in Claudia’s gaze.

  The vampiress tilted her head at that, for the victim presently reminded it of Della—that sweet, earnest student who had at first seemed quite harmless but was actually as vicious as they came.

  Yet Della was its child, after all, only taking after the vampire parents that had borne her. And Claudia had chosen to create progeny because of the dragon’s mandate. Go forth and give him a well-trained army.

  There had been another reason, as well, because Claudia had believed that sharing children with Mihas would create a bond that might never be broken. It thought this connection might hold him beyond beauty and the passion it always temporarily created.

  When Claudia had seen their first batch of children, it had been gratified, because when the girls turned into their vampire form, they were so very ugly: cat-wolves that looked older with wrinkled and hairless skin.

  This was Claudia’s petty revenge, and when it realized that Mihas didn’t always like to see the girls in this form, or even when a few years had passed and they lost the immediate freshness of their true youth, Claudia had experienced something like relief.

  No more the “blossoms” flowering into womanhood, entering a time that Claudia had left far behind in its own mortal life. There was an empowering element to that. And when it became a housematron at Queenshill to make the harvesting of beauty treatments all the easier, it had taken satisfaction in banning Mihas from taking the blood of Claudia’s girls, too.

  Everything had been going so well, it thought. Until tonight.

  The creature stroked its victim’s cheek again, and the woman choked on a silent cry.

  Claudia sighed, then turned away to dig through the female’s purse, where she found a mobile.

  “He must be wondering where I am,” the vampiress said, the echo of its voice against the dirty tile sounding hollow as it rang Mihas.

  But he didn’t answer.

  Of course he wouldn‘t, Claudia thought while redialing to connect with his answering service instead. If he were Underground, his mobile would lack reception. Same with their Awareness, which was also useless now because of the distance between them.

  It tried not to think of the alternative: Mihas cavorting with his girls. Mihas listening to their lies about what had happened with Claudia tonight. Mihas under their eager mouths.

  Keeping its voice steady, Claudia spoke on the mobile, telling his answering service all about the attack. But with every word, it kept seeing him kissing the girls, his teeth scratching their lips for a taste of blood....

  What if it came down to a choice between them and Claudia? it wondered.

  Like so many times before, it despaired of ever truly being loved by him.

  So why keep trying to call? Why dial his mobile number again, just to see if he might pick up this time? Why not contact a custode to facilitate Claudia’s entrance back into the Underground instead?

  A gush of jasmine halted Claudia from dialing anymore, and the vampiress stood, waving away the scent. The smell had been round since the escape from Highgate.

  “What are you?” it growled.

  Suddenly, the scent was gone, yet Claudia didn’t relax. Instead, it turned to the victim, and this time in the woman’s young face, it saw Della, Stacy, and the accompanying schoolgirls who had attacked.

  Yet then it saw the others from the past, as well: the classmates Claudia had used for blood over the years.

  The mouths on its skin were really working now, yowling without sound, and the vampiress flicked its claws to a longer sharpness as it assessed the woman in the tub.

  Beautiful. Claudia had to be as beautiful as possible for its return Underground.

  “There is so much I’ve tolerated from him,” it said to the victim. “It’s been the only way to hold on. Not even spells or potions or anything else I’ve tried over the centuries worked.”

  The question of when toleration became masochism poked at Claudia’s mind, but it had asked itself this so many times before that the meaning had become vague, like the wind or the night.

  Yet now?

  Now it genuinely wondered how much more it could take from Mihas, especially as it kept picturing him with the girls.

  But how could it care so much when it had allowed the behavior for centuries? Claudia had enabled him, even if it had thought it had found a form that controlled Mihas to a certain extent, that had enriched itself in a shape that had supposedly been so much weaker than any male.

  It caught a glimpse of its own reflection in a grimy mirror to the side, and it cocked its head, realizing that it didn’t even know who it was outside of Mihas.

  All these years of being with him, and here Claudia was, in a fetid bathroom, naked and cast out while wondering if he would even care.

  Claudia’s body rolled and twisted, and before it even knew what was happening, it had changed back into the true shape that had been pulling at it for so long.

  Claudius.

  Whole now, he looked closer in the mirror.

  How long had it been? Years? Nearly a century, ever since going Underground?

  The woman in the tub was kicking now, as if to get as far away from the vampire as possible.

  A hurt laugh escaped Claudius. “At least Mihas was never horrified by this body.”

  He ran a claw over its stronger features: the aquiline nose, the broader cheekbones. Then his throat burned around his next words.

  “The wandering masters used to tell him that we vampires either lose emotion or gain it to a level that would drive any human mad. I’ve loved him for so long that I don’t know any other way to exist but this, yet ...” Claudius got to his knees again. “He’s never going to feel about me as I feel about him, is he?”

  The woman began to weep, making no sound.

  “It’s taken me this long, but he’s never going to accept what I am,” Claudius added, leaning over to her. “He’s never going to see that I’m not an ‘it.’ ”

  The victim stared at him, and although his first instinct was to revert back to “it,” he stayed in his real form, feeling stronger for some reason.

  What would Mihas do if Claudius returned to him this way? They lived in a far more open-minded culture now. Couldn’t Mihas adjust to that as he had adjusted to every other societal convention in order to, one day, bring change to the world?

  Claudius didn’t know, because his mistake had always been in changing for Mihas.

  He hesitated in pulling the woman out of the tub so he might hang her and become gorgeous once again for the one he so loved.

  What if he refused to be “it,” anymore?

  He was so occupied in the asking that he never heard the footsteps coming up the stairwell. He didn’t even hear the door to the apartment creaking open, nor the one to the bathroom.

  Yet he did feel the biting line of a long blade as it nestled against the back of his neck.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE TROUBLE WITH BROTHERS

  DAWN had both hands on the hilt of her machete as she fit its blade to the back of the naked vampire’s neck, which was rough with bloodied wounds and the stringiness of tendons from the side to the front. Even his legs were scribbled with crusting gore.

  There’d been a fight with this one, she thought, and the team was going to find out why.

  Jonah was backing her up; so was an armed Kiko, even though his first priority was to guard Natalia at the door. All of them had no doubt this was a bloodsucker because the new girl had indis
putably IDed this vampire after the Friends had manipulated the cameras around the area and guided them up here, into this empty apartment building. Natalia might not be able to differentiate between various vampire levels, so the team was on major guard if this vamp was more powerful than one of the schoolgirls from Queenshill.

  Dawn didn’t look away from her target as she talked to Kalin, who hovered back by Jonah. “Thought you said this one was female.”

  They’d even seen her outside, when she’d turned back into a full woman before attacking her victim, and the Friends had identified her.

  Mrs. Jones, Dawn thought. Right in front of them.

  “It shifts,” Kalin said simply.

  A regiment of Friends crowded just outside the room, too, waiting, and Breisi was even on her way here from Southwark, leaving an even bigger contingent of spirits there to guard headquarters along with Frank. She wasn’t about to miss something that could lead to their endgame.

  Jones stirred under the machete, probably because of Kalin’s ethereal voice. Dawn took a moment to scan him: shining brown hair, his nudity showcasing a long, sinewy, smoothly pale body.

  “So we’ve got us a shifter,” Dawn said. “I’ve encountered a vamp before who was real good at that, and things didn’t turn out too well for him.”

  Benedikte.

  Dawn’s pulse began to echo in the darkness at the center of her, and adrenaline made each breath tight and laced with an excitement that had, somewhere over this past year, mutated from a healthy fright into this.

  There was a kicking sound from the bathtub.

  The victim. Dawn had been watching Jones, so she’d almost forgotten, but not quite.

  Without being told, Jonah went to the woman, gently scooping her into his arms before rushing her out of the bathroom. Dawn wondered if he was going to soothe her, then have a Friend lull her to sleep just until a spirit could see her safely home after they took care of matters here. Maybe he’d even mind-wipe her, even though the Hollywood line of vampires only did that under dire circumstances.

  But this would count, Dawn thought.

  The vampire moved under her machete again.

  “Not if you want your head to stay attached,” she told him, her tone sharp and icy. “We’ve got other blades ready to go, too, so don’t think you’ve got room to maneuver on us.”

  Dawn could hear Kiko readjusting his grip on a saw-bow—a mix between a crossbow and cutting machine that was generally too big for him. But he’d insisted on bringing it up here from the car because it offered coverage at a distance. He had good enough aim to swipe off any vamp’s head if Dawn were to get out of the way in time, so she hadn’t argued.

  As for Natalia, she’d chosen a machete just like Dawn‘s, even though the new girl had been directed to stay out of things unless the team got desperate.

  “Who are you?” the creature asked from his lower position. His accent carried only the barest indication of the East in there, much, much less than Costin’s. Dawn might not have been able to pick it out if she hadn’t been so used to the hint of it.

  She still hadn’t seen the vamp’s face because his brown hair was covering most of it.

  “I’m afraid that you misunderstand how this all works, Jones,” she said. “You’re going to be telling us who you really are, and what you have to do with those schoolgirls.”

  The vampire started laughing while raising his hands in a mild surrender. His shoulders shook, so Dawn pressed the machete blade harder against his neck. She wouldn’t kill him because there were too many questions that needed answering.

  Well, she wouldn’t kill him yet.

  A line of blood appeared as Jones kept laughing, sawing his own flesh under the blade as if he didn’t care about wounds at all.

  Masochist, Dawn thought, even though the slice was already starting to heal.

  But just as she was thinking it, the vampire whipped around with such speed that she barely had the machete raised before he smacked her across the room.

  No—

  She zoomed through the air, slammed against a wall, her head thunking against the tile. Her wig was only a slight cushion, sending her brain to reeling as she slid down to the floor while hearing the grinding swick of Kiko’s saw-bow, which he’d aimed only to disable the vampire.

  She tried to get a grip on herself as the metallic blade winged across the room, moving lazily in her dizzy perception.

  Costin’s soul, she thought, and it sounded like a tape that’d been left in the sun for too long.

  Helpless anger gathered, mostly at herself for being taken out so easily and so early.

  She couldn’t have failed him again....

  Then a flood overcame her—the blackness, filling her with strength and drive, slowly pushing her to her feet with such looming rage that all she saw was the color red bathing everything: the once-white room, the saw-bow blade as it took its time in sparking and spinning toward Jones, who was already calmly stepping out of its path.

  While anger loaded itself into Dawn, as if she were a weapon herself, the saw-blade flew past the vamp and ricocheted off the wall, flailing into a corner where it bit into the floorboard.

  Jones leveled a long, fiery look at Kiko, who had dropped the unloaded saw-bow and was standing in front of Natalia, guarding her, drawing a gun loaded with silver darts—the better to stun and poison the creature for questioning.

  The anger was still bringing Dawn to the point where she’d be able to do some damage, clarifying her sight and thoughts. But before it all came together for her, she blinked, bringing everything into better focus while Kiko fired.

  The dart thwacked into the vampire’s pulped neck.

  Jones only flinched with the contact, then curiously plucked out the silver with two delicate fingers.

  Silver ... It’d poisoned the Hollywood crowd, but it was no good on this one.

  Laughing again, the vampire began talking—his voice a limb-melting lull.

  “Come here, little one. Come, all of you.”

  The darkness tugged Dawn toward itself—herself—but she found her body disobeying her mind, and she took a leaden step forward, just like Kiko was doing, too.

  Couldn’t she fight it?

  And, God ... where was Jonah? What was keeping him out of the room—a struggle with Costin for dominance?

  Was Costin refusing to come out?

  “You’re the attackers from Queenshill,” the vampire continued with its charm-laden tone. “I can put two and two together because there aren’t many little men interested in my kind in this area—”

  As Kiko and Dawn took another step—damn it, why couldn’t she stop herself?—Natalia leaned forward into Jones’s words, too.

  But then she lifted an arm, aimed her wrist, and sent a stream of holy water at the vampire from one of the team’s Spidey bracelets.

  Was she ... immune?

  How?

  On contact, the water singed the surprised vamp, and he lost his power over Dawn as puffs of smoke curled from his bare skin. He cried out and attempted to shift into another form, his eyes slanting, his body growing dark gray hair, his teeth needling, leaving him looking only half-human now.

  Holy items were obviously the ticket, so Dawn mentally pushed the darkness through her, clearing herself. Then she targeted the thing with her own bracelet, and when the bolt of water sizzled into the vampire’s flesh, she felt the resurgence of dark joy giving her power. Control.

  As Jones’s yells of pain grew louder, she increased the water’s pressure, wanting the agony to go on and on....

  “Stop, Dawn.”

  It was a voice she’d never thought to hear again, and the sound of it jerked her out of the murky stupor.

  Costin. And he’d said her name like she was the bad guy here.

  She glanced at him, and with the way Jonah—no, Costin, Costin—was looking at her, Dawn knew he’d only stopped her from utterly losing control and tiptoeing into a place she shouldn’t be going.
r />   But she also saw a personal accusation in his gaze, too, and she knew why.

  The almost-bite, back in the car with Jonah.

  Yet this wasn’t a therapy moment; Costin had already turned toward the creature, and Dawn realized that the boss would have dared to go closer to the vampire for only one reason.

  If he had sensed a master from the other room.

  But this couldn’t be a master, she thought, her core still swirling with the craving to hurt. This vampire didn’t seem even half as powerful as Benedikte had been.

  The cat thing was staring at Costin, his arms shielding his face as he stayed caught in a stage somewhere between human appearance and full vampire.

  “That voice,” he said.

  “You recognize me, Claudius?”

  Claudius. During the past year, Costin had shared the names and traits of his former blood brothers with Dawn. He’d told her that Claudius had been the brightest of them all—the planner who used his brain rather than brawn. Costin had even predicted that Claudius, whose thirst for violence was relatively lacking on the battlefield, would never have survived on his own all these centuries.

  But he was a master vampire now, and the smart creature had been masquerading as Mrs. Jones.

  As the master vamp shook his head—he didn’t recognize Jonah’s body—Dawn churned inside, raging to get at him, to get to the question about the dragon’s location so they could tear this thing apart and be that much closer to winning. Killing Claudius would hopefully turn his own progeny human again, his termination restoring his children’s souls, and that would disable the Underground until the team could go to it and clean it up.

  But was that how a joint Underground would work, too? Costin had never told her. ...

  Dawn fisted her hands, her short nails digging into her palms.

  In the meantime, Claudius’s flesh was already healing from the holy burns Dawn and Natalia had inflicted.

  “I only recognize that you’re the vampire who tore at the dogs and went after the girls that night at Queenshill,” he said to Costin. “You match what I saw in Della’s report. Am I supposed to recognize more about you?”