The Path of Razors

by Green, Chris Marie

  Costin smiled, almost sadly at having to take responsibility for Jonah’s bloodlust.

  “Not yet, Claudius,” he said. “But you will recognize me.”

  Dawn moved forward to help him, but he violently held up a hand to her. The ferocity of his gesture halted her more than anything.

  But she couldn’t stop what had obviously repulsed him in the first place—the brutal longing inside of her.

  With a swish of jasmine, Breisi arrived to stand by Dawn, as if she’d sensed her turmoil, yet it only got worse as Costin fully focused on Claudius, who seemed so quiet—too quiet—in his corner.

  The enemy was about to throw all he had at them, Dawn thought. And what if Costin, who didn’t have access to his greatest powers while locked in Jonah’s body, couldn’t defend against it?

  She kept her inner fires burning, allowing the ire to consume her.

  She’d protect him, even if he was momentarily pissed at her.

  “You’re open to holy weapons,” he said to Claudius, tilting his head, a fellow, curious vampire. “There are other masters who aren’t. Perhaps you carry some guilt about a sin or two, and memories of your upbringing—the beliefs that you once held dear—consume you?”

  Claudius tightened his lips, and that’s when Dawn knew the creature wasn’t going to spill any information whatsoever.

  She mentally sidled up to Costin’s consciousness, throwing caution about using their connected powers to the wind. There could be no holding back now because they were so close to getting somewhere.

  At first, he barred her, but she pressed harder, and he finally allowed her in.

  Yet she could tell he was guarding everything from her.

  Let me make him talk, she thought. You can’t go out of that body to best him anymore.

  I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, he answered. I need you to restrain him, Dawn, and that’s all. Do you understand?

  She felt leashed, and the darkness ate at the restraints.

  Trust me, she thought. That’s all you have to do, Costin.

  But he blocked her out of his head, leaving her in a cold place.

  Alone.

  Yet then the darkness reared up to swallow her, letting her know that it wanted her.

  That it would never let her down.

  By the door, Kiko had abandoned his dart gun in favor of his mini flamethrower, covering Natalia, who was holding her machete like it was a crucifix.

  Costin stepped closer to his old blood brother.

  “Talk to me, Claudius,” he said, a deeply hypnotic sway to his tone. “Tell me everything, including where the dragon is.”

  Since the persuasion was targeted at Claudius, it didn’t affect the team, and the other vampire, still in half-cat form, closed his eyes, resisting. His claws grew, his sharp, thin teeth pushing over his bottom lip.

  Still not talking, Dawn thought.

  Well, they’d see about that.

  A black rush ripped through her, then out of her, pushing out toward Claudius. It wrapped around his neck, digging into the exposed tendons and meat with nailed force while sliding him partway up the wall.

  She heard Kiko and Natalia gasp, then smelled jasmine surrounding her as Breisi whispered, “Careful, Dawn!”

  Careful of what?

  Hurting a master?

  Going soft on a thing that wanted to wipe out humanity and keep Costin’s soul from him?

  The darkness rebelled against all arguments, shooting Claudius farther up the tiles until he banged into the ceiling, dangling there like a wilted leaf.

  Costin had told her to restrain him, and that’s all she was doing.

  Either he was too far into his hypnosis to come out of it and correct her or he thought she hadn’t gone overboard this time, so she didn’t stop, even as Claudius gripped his neck, gagging.

  “Tell me all, Claudius,” Costin said, and she could feel his mind opening so he could attack with his Awareness.

  But, baring his teeth, the other vampire blazed a look at Costin first.

  He stepped back with the force of it, and Dawn knew that Claudius was using his Awareness to rip at the opened link between the blood brothers.

  Without weighing the consequences, she busted into Costin’s gaping mind, finding herself in the midst of their communicated images.

  The night they had been turned by the dragon ...

  The blood-smeared battles against the enemies of the cross ...

  The love Claudius had for another brother ... Mihas? ... and the years of pining for his comrade ... Claudius’s shame and fear of how others would judge his love a sin ...

  Claudius, changing himself into another, more acceptable shape, a woman ...

  Then, in another time, another place, this woman grandly entering a set of doors that led to a bed where this Mihas was writhing under love bites from vampires who looked similar to the Queenshill schoolgirls ...

  Dawn’s thoughts wove into the images. An Underground of joint masters. Wicked masters.

  She found her voice, even while she was entangled in their Awareness.

  “The dragon,” she yelled at Claudius, asking the question that had to be asked before Costin destroyed each master. “Where’s the dragon?”

  It was like a black wall crashed down, blocking the rest of the images, but Dawn rammed against it, one time, two—

  Costin pushed her out of the Awareness, and with the snapping of her concentration, she lost her grip on Claudius and he fell to the floor.

  As Dawn recovered, mentally pinning the master vamp so he couldn’t move, she noticed that Costin had sunk to the ground, too, weary from losing the energy he’d expended, even while doing something that would’ve been so easy for him before he’d been trapped in Jonah’s body.

  But she didn’t lag on that, because the faint smile on Claudius’s face told her that he knew about the dragon, and he damned well wasn’t going to tell.

  Or that’s how she saw it as her gaze flushed red again.

  Was the dragon in this joint Underground of his?

  Then she heard something—a sound in the near distance—and Claudius’s needled smile got even bigger.

  Barking dogs, and they were approaching.

  Kiko heard it, too. “He’s summoning animals, just like those Queenshill girls did.”

  “If he’s their master,” Dawn muttered, “he gave them that power.”

  She moved her mind quickly, releasing Claudius only for the second it would take to shut the apartment door, slam abandoned furniture against it, then come back to hold him down again.

  Yet, it didn’t work that way.

  Just as she’d shored the door with the final chair, the enemy sprang to his feet, changing again, but this time, he seemed to be altering himself into the womanly form Dawn had seen in the Awareness.

  Mrs. Jones.

  For an instant, she seemed confused to be in this kind of state.

  Yet then she raised her chin and became male again before mutating into a full cat-vampire form, seething, wielding fangs and claws while aiming his body at Dawn.

  She armed herself for his attack, darkness sweeping around inside her, rising. But then Costin ...

  Costin stood and flashed his own fangs at Claudius, warning him off.

  Costin, who hated what he’d become and was finally using it.

  The two creatures jumped at each other, colliding as they ripped and clawed on the way down.

  While the Friends scrambled around, Kiko targeted with his flamethrower.

  “No!” Dawn said. He’d get Costin while trying for Claudius.

  “Then separate their asses!”

  Before Dawn could blast out with her mind, the Friends charged the fighting vampires, jamming against Claudius, trying to force him away, their voices raised as they tried their own lulling powers on the enemy.

  But they were ineffective against this master.

  Dawn was scared to death that Jonah’s body—which couldn’t possibly stand up to
even a weak master—would get destroyed and Costin would expire along with it, so she fired away with her mind power, hoping that the surge would help the Friends part the two vampires.

  Instead, the push of it banged Costin and Claudius against the wall near the tub, and they smashed down into the basin. Even though Dawn couldn’t see Costin anymore, it was obvious from Claudius’s position on top, where he slashed down with his claws, that he was tearing through Costin’s clothes to his skin.

  Oh, God, oh, God, this was it. She’d failed, and there was nothing she could do....

  Wait, she thought, coldness settling inside of her.

  There was something.

  She concentrated. Concentrated. Whipped herself to the height of a frenzy.

  Higher.

  Higher—

  It punched out of her, connecting to Claudius and jerking him by the cat hair out of the tub, arcing him up, then down to the ground.

  The crack of bones punctuated the vampire’s screech, but Dawn wasn’t done.

  She pounded him to the floor again and again until the vampire went limp. Then, before it could start healing, she wrapped around his ankles and hung him upside down from the ceiling.

  Meanwhile, Costin stayed in the tub, no doubt healing what damage had just been done to him.

  “You know where the dragon is,” she said to Claudius. “Tell us!”

  The vampire stayed silent, swinging back and forth from the ceiling, his mouth pressed shut.

  Dawn sliced out with her mind, and a rip formed in the vampire’s stomach.

  Her heart seemed to suspend its beating. Had she just ... ?

  Everyone else in the room froze as Claudius cried out and pressed his hands to the wound. Even so, his blood poured out, dripping to the tile, every thick, liquid bead impaling itself into Dawn’s chest, where it was so cold and still.

  “Where ... is ... the ... dragon?” she asked softly, shaking now with all the waning energy it took to keep attacking.

  Blood seeped out from between Claudius’s fingers, the red bathing his pale, naked body.

  In response, Dawn’s gaze turned to a deeper crimson, as if soaked. Breisi pushed at her, just like the Friend was trying to make her back off.

  But why? This wasn’t any time to be nice. Claudius would’ve killed Costin or any one of them.

  The blood brother lifted his head to stare up at the slice in his stomach. Then, as he went limp, he smiled, like he was appreciating some sort of irony.

  Did he know he was beaten?

  He broke that illusion when he spoke. “There is no dragon.”

  “Bullshit!” Dawn yelled.

  “No, truly.”

  He kept swinging, bleeding. And when he tried to use his charmed voice on her, she anticipated it, ripping at the vocal chords in his already damaged throat.

  She just damaged it a little more is all.

  The room plunged into an even deeper silence, but she wasn’t done.

  He was barely able to talk at all now, just in a grating wheeze. “There’s only my community of girls who live with me. You already met them. Sweet little vampire bitches who would have the both of us for breakfast.”

  Dawn wanted to take him apart bit by bit for being so damned smug. “You’re lying. We know there’re two masters in your community. We saw it in your Awareness.”

  Claudius twitched, like he was surprised at the extent of what she could do.

  “That’s right,” Dawn said. She was becoming more cognizant by the second that Kiko and Natalia were still covering Claudius with their own weapons, that the Friends were ready to attack if the vampire made another move. “We’ve got your number.”

  The vampire opened his mouth as his own blood trickled into it, then he laughed again, sputtering red, maybe because he knew he wasn’t going to get out of this after all.

  “Mihas,” he whispered with a combination of yearning and sorrow. But he said it in a way that also made Dawn think for some reason that Claudius had all the power of the Underground in his hands right now.

  Was there some sort of power play going on between the two joint masters?

  Would Claudius betray this Mihas with the proper persuasion?

  “What about Mihas?” Dawn asked. “You ought to tell me now before I decide to just go ahead and tear off that head of yours. And I can do it, too.”

  She didn’t know if that was true, but right now, she felt powerful enough to try.

  Claudius opened his mouth, as if to talk.

  But then, with a pained sigh, he closed it again.

  The darkness didn’t react well to that: It swamped Dawn with the urgency of getting the information that was at their fingertips. It crashed inside her, then screamed outward, surrounding Claudius’s head and squeezing—

  His face looked like two giant, invisible fingers were squishing it, vising his skull, ready to pop him open like a grape.

  “Dawn!”

  It was Breisi, who’d returned to Dawn while the other Friends flared around the room. In Dawn’s peripheral vision, she could see that some spirits were lifting Costin out of the tub, propping him up while he barely raised his head to watch what Dawn was doing. But his face was so serrated with wounds, her focus so limited, that she couldn’t tell what he might be thinking.

  She could also see that the Friends were urging Kiko toward Dawn, probably trying to get him to talk sense to her, but he was resisting, just as intent on getting the information from Claudius as she was; in fact, he, in turn, was holding Natalia back from Dawn.

  “What are you doing?” Breisi asked again as Dawn squeezed even harder.

  Harder.

  But Breisi wasn’t asking what Dawn was doing as much as how far she would go to get this information out of Claudius.

  The darkness felt like blood pulsing through her now, a part of her body, her composition.

  And she was good at this, she realized. She was so damned close to getting this master to talk, better than Costin even—

  She exerted more pressure, her vision red-thick and almost impenetrable.

  Squeezing ...

  Something seemed to explode on her cheek, a burst of heat and pain, a sparkler in the pitch of a summer night, but she ignored that and kept pressing....

  Breisi crashed against Dawn, jarring her, making her lose hold of Claudius, who clumped to the floor, where a rush of Friends held him down.

  In the clarity of Dawn’s restored vision, she saw that he wasn’t moving. He was only staring at the ceiling, as if Dawn had mushed his brains.

  Just as she started feeling relieved at that—she’d gotten Claudius before he’d gotten Costin—she saw Costin moving toward her, using some Friends as a crutch, and his gaze ...

  His gaze was sadder than she’d ever seen it.

  The discovery brought her back like a hard wallop, and she looked at Claudius, then at Costin, who’d never taken a thrill out of hurting his quarry, even though he was supposed to be more of a monster than she was.

  Shame heated her, and she became aware of the pain on her cheek. The mini explosion she’d felt.

  She touched it. No wound. Just a slight tenderness.

  Costin hovered above her, barely balanced, the injuries on his face and neck already starting to close.

  She started to explain why she had done it, why she had been fighting for him so thoroughly with all she had in her, but he only turned away.

  She wrapped her arms around her torso, sinking into herself.

  Kiko and Natalia, who stayed near the door, were staring at Dawn with even more fascination and ... disgust? ... than the other day when she’d puppeted the smoker in that pub. Slowly, she realized that there wasn’t any more barking outside because she’d broken Claudius’s hold on the animals.

  As Costin spoke, she locked her gaze on the master vampire, whose eyes were still fixed on nothing.

  “Now we transfer the master to headquarters,” he said in the low voice that had never chilled her as much as it
did at this second. “Afterward, Friends should inspect the area at Highgate where they first saw Claudius running.”

  Kiko blanched. “What about killing this thing?”

  “No,” Dawn said, startling even herself. “Claudius knows more than he’s letting on.”

  Costin didn’t acknowledge that. “I am going to use the security of our own territory to extract the information.” He barely glanced at Dawn. “In my own way.”

  She didn’t understand at all. Why be kind to the enemy that was keeping him from reclaiming his soul? Why handle the vampire with kid gloves when he had already tried to kill Costin and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again if he had the chance?

  But she had no high ground where she could throw down an argument. Not now, while everyone was avoiding even looking at her.

  That is, everyone except Kiko.

  “By bringing Claudius to headquarters,” he said tightly, “you’re inviting any vampire who’s connected with him to pay a visit.”

  Using a Friend for balance, Costin walked toward the doorway. “If they choose to bring the fight above, we will be ready.”

  He left the room in stunned silence, because before now, he’d been adamant about keeping the war under the ground, refusing to risk revealing their presence to the world. Once society knew about vampires, they’d go after Costin, too, since in their view he was one of them.

  Was he daring this Underground to come and get Claudius?

  Was he using the vampire as bait just as he’d used Dawn in Hollywood?

  There was no way to know, even if she and Costin were supposed to be connected.

  As Costin left the room, the Friends bound themselves around the unmoving Claudius, restraining him in case he had more fight in him than it looked like. Then Kiko got out his crucifix, telling Natalia to do the same so they could also visually bind the vampire if it came down to it. The remaining spirits then pushed the master out of the bathroom; they’d have to discreetly get him to the car, where, together, all of them would transport their interviewee to headquarters.

  Kiko glanced at Natalia. “He didn’t get to you with his charmed voice like he did to us.”

  She looked puzzled as she left the room. “No, he didn’t. Not very much. But don’t ask me why, Kiko, because I have no answers for you.” She started moving her face toward Dawn, but then stopped. “No answers at all.”