Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  Then again, Wolfie had always looked forward to the day when vampires would have the freedom to show themselves in public. With the way the Western world was moving—one debauchery becoming commonplace this year, another more shocking one the next—he estimated that their kind would be at home among humans within the decade.

  Clearly, his time spent here in the pub, more and more recently, was a part of his agenda.

  Della and the other survivors found more girls gathered round him in a back room. With his hair brambled over his shoulders, his leather pants and poet’s shirt, he was sitting in a chair, a leg propped on a bench, one recruited girl under each arm. He spared a glance at the new arrivals and cocked his head, assessing their burns. He didn’t even care to touch-heal them as he used to.

  They stared back at him. Della was hollowed out by the loss of her classmates. Shouldn’t he have felt the deaths of his half-offspring, too?

  Out of the survivors, Stacy spoke, the older vampire’s once-long platinum locks in crisped clumps on her skull as she pushed back her hood. By now, they had healed enough for skin and hair to begin growing back. Otherwise, they hadn’t bothered to tidy themselves yet. It hadn’t seemed important.

  “Sixteen of us, gone,” Stacy said, her voice flat, sounding for the first time as if she was truly far older than the teenager she seemed to be.

  Wolfie blinked, his eyebrows knitting as if he didn’t quite comprehend what Stacy was telling him. It was at this instant that Della thought that perhaps he did feel the loss of his darlings.

  But then his eyes seemed to glaze over. “Claudia—she’s still alive, yes? The cat’s abilities are still active in you. . . .”

  He turned to one of the girls in his grasp, cupping her under the chin, angling her face this way and that, lovingly assessing her, obviously searching for signs of the cat in her.

  The girl, with her short, curly black hair, dressed in knee- high socks and a miniskirt with a blouse, was reduced to a fizzy smile at his attentions. Being new to the main Underground, Della hadn’t met this recruited dear yet.

  But as Wolfie started raining kisses on her face, a jolt traveled through Della. And from the manner in which Noreen, Stacy, and the other survivors stiffened, she knew they had experienced the same shocking epiphany.

  Were they all little mirrors of Mrs. Jones to Wolfie? Didn’t he love any of them for who they were and not what they carried over from his mistress?

  And where was the sadness from Wolfie about his fallen vampire daughters as he continued kissing Mrs. Jones’s proxy?

  Della heard herself speaking, her tone just as dead as Stacy’s had been. “Mrs. Jones was with a group of hunters, the same crowd who attacked us at Queenshill.”

  “Hunters?” he asked, running a finger along the recruited girl’s cheek now.

  Surely he cared about hunters more than he did about Mrs. Jones, especially since hunters could represent a rival blood brother.

  “They must be that,” Stacy said, “based on their weaponry and expertise. And they’ve taken Mrs. Jones captive, unless she surrendered to them.”

  When Wolfie finally turned aside from the recruited girl, his eyes were a livid gold under his thick eyebrows. “Claudia would never surrender.”

  Della and the rest of them shrank under his statement, not daring to contradict him.

  He dismissed his two fawning admirers by lifting his arms off them, and they sulked away, easily cast aside.

  As any of them could be.

  “Why didn’t you bring me back the heads of those hunters?” he asked with the same condescension they’d often heard from Mrs. Jones.

  Noreen volunteered her only statement thus far. “It seemed they were ready for us, and they fought well. But they’re gone now.”

  “Where did they go?” Wolfie snapped.

  They all flinched, the other survivors cowering behind Della, Noreen, and Stacy, just as they had been doing since they’d entered the pub.

  Della knew the only way to get through this was to get through this. “We don’t know where they went, but their building is deserted now.”

  “Wonderful good that’ll do us,” Wolfie said. His fangs had emerged slightly to jut past his lips. “They still have Claudia.”

  “Yes,” all the girls said.

  “Then we shall continue tracking her.”

  “But Mrs. Jones’s trail has disappeared,” Della said softly. “We have very little to guide us now unless we can find the route the group used to escape. They took care to mask their scents, and the jasmine stink from ghosts who help them confused our senses since many of them remained behind.”

  Wolfie’s claws emerged, but then he seemed to come upon an idea that retracted them a bit. “My mobile and answering service. Perhaps Claudia left a clue to her whereabouts there. . . .”

  Oh, no, Della thought. Mrs. Jones had fled the Underground without her mobile; she had possessed nothing. Would she have stolen one? If so, who knew what Mrs. Jones might have said during a message?

  As Wolfie wiped his palm down his face, laughing at such an obvious option, Stacy glanced at Della, connecting minds.

  We must make certain he has no time to check messages.

  Her face purposely blank, Della gave no indication that she and Stacy had linked.

  Meanwhile, Wolfie said, “Taking a master, right out from under our noses. I wonder if they even know what they have.”

  A . . . master?

  Della wanted to ask Wolfie how Mrs. Jones could be a master if she was a female. All the Underground blood brothers were . . . brothers.

  But she didn’t enquire.

  “Who are these hunters?” he asked, almost to himself. “Were there any powerful vampires with them?”

  He was asking about a blood brother, and only now did he seem to recall how Della had mentioned that mean, dog- killing vampire after the Queenshill attack.

  When they didn’t answer right off, he hit the table, shaking the flowerpot that served as decoration. It jarred the girls, causing them to stand all the straighter, but not enough to make them lose all the composure that Queenshill, good breeding, and the lessons of vampire life had instilled in them.

  As Della waited for him to speak, she realized that they were more or less at attention, acting like the soldiers he and Mrs. Jones had raised them to be.

  But she had never wished to be a soldier. Just Wolfie’s girl, forever and always.

  He rose from his seat, hardly looking at them, his gaze focused inwardly, as if that was where he kept hope for the return of Mrs. Jones.

  Della glared at him—a prince on the outside, a prat underneath. He had promised them such happiness, but he had lied, hadn’t he?

  Lied.

  Shame covered her inside and out. Shame at having been fooled so easily.

  As a tremble began to shift under her skin, Wolfie addressed them as if they were a team of assassins. The finely trained, elite Queenshill girls. The dirty less-than-a-dozen, now that their numbers had been so chiseled down.

  “Sunrise is near and you’re weary. So before you go back out there for Mrs. Jones . . .” A small smile took over his mouth. “. . . Claudia . . .” The correction seemed to make him feel better. “. . . you will need sustenance and rest. Tomorrow night, when our powers are high again, you will succeed in tracking her and bringing her back to where she belongs. With us.”

  With you, Della corrected him in her mind. The tremble was turning into a quiver.

  Wolfie gestured to the remaining human males round the pub—boys who would be mind-wiped, no matter the risk, and taken care of so they would think they had only massive hangovers and a developing further illness come morning.

  “Drink up,” he told his girls, “then it’s to rest.”

  “Yes, Wolfie,” all of them said.

  From the way the survivors voiced it, Della knew that they all had realized they were his soldiers, not his darlings. Not any longer.

  And she knew that they, too, fe
lt just as much shame as she did for being taken in by Wolfie.

  ELEVEN

  THE NEW DIGS

  DAWN stood in the center of their new headquarters, her hands on her holstered hips.

  “What a dump,” she said, and it wasn’t for the first time. They’d been here a few minutes now, and she still couldn’t believe this.

  Their temporary HQ looked like one of those deep level underground shelters used during World War II. Dawn had heard most of them were being utilized as bureaucratic storage chambers now, but this one seemed to have been forgotten by society altogether. It stretched for what looked like a half mile, and an iron spiral staircase led up to another level, where there was probably a shaft. Along the concrete walls, there were lines of bunks, only a few of which had mattresses, pillows, and blankets. But the ventilation was good, and it’d been outfitted with a kitchen, foodstuffs, computers, and weapons lockers.

  Still, it was bare bones. And, since the heater had just been activated, it was colder than a witch’s tit.

  Dawn had cozied her way into a down jacket and gloves while getting used to the degraded conditions. Not that she was high maintenance, but . . .

  Jeez, maybe she’d gotten used to the luxury of Costin’s homes. Maybe she had become a frakkin’ princess lately. And this, coming from a stuntwoman who used to crash at buddies’ houses instead of getting a place of her own.

  A jacketed Kiko stood right next to her with an equally bundled Natalia, who was plugged into a portable scanner radio and earbuds. He wasn’t complaining about their new HQ, probably because he blamed himself for putting them here since he’d been the one to let in the first vampire. Plus, he was still dragging around because he wasn’t so happy about Costin just taking off for the Underground without a word to most of the team.

  “It’s good enough for temporary,” he said.

  The blanket-wrapped Claudius spoke from one of the bunks, where Friends were binding him, pushing him against the wall. “What I enjoy most about it is the knowledge that the vampires put you below the ground while they were last seen above. It begs the question of just who the hunters really are.”

  Kiko pointed at the vamp. “Shut it, Fangoria.”

  Frank, who’d been inspecting some private offices that contained single beds and doors, came out of one. Dawn supposed he’d claimed that particular room as his, since it’d be darker and better for vampire resting. Eva had settled in another of those closed-off rooms, and Dawn had yet to check in with her since her mom had arrived before the team. It was even possible that, by now, with all the bed rest, her mom should be taken to a doctor to see if there was something wrong.

  Just another thing on the to-do list.

  “Yeah, how about you shut your mouth up, Claudius?” Frank said, sauntering toward the group. He was dressed in layer upon layer of clothing, although Dawn doubted it was because of the cold. That amount of protection could only mean he wanted to block his skin from the sun.

  “My, my,” Claudius muttered in that hoarse voice before closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the concrete. It was about thirty minutes away from sunrise, but if he was thinking of falling into some rest, Dawn had news. She wasn’t letting up on him.

  Since the Friends had already sealed the tunnel entrance that’d led to this area, Frank was heading toward the stair exit, pulling a sun-proofed ski mask over his face to cover it from daylight. Even during these hours, he would be able to run fast enough outside so that no one would see much of him.

  “Hold on,” Dawn said. “I know you want to go after Breisi’s portrait, but don’t you think barging up top could attract attention, especially right now, when things are still level orange?”

  “True enough,” Kiko added. “We can’t take the chance of going out until we need to. We know the vamps have access to cameras around the city, and if one’s trained near our exit . . .”

  Not to mention that Ms. Shadow Girl was still out there, Dawn thought. Shouldn’t Frank be more cautious since Dawn had already mentioned the custode’s appearance—then disappearance—to the team?

  Frank kept going up the stairs. “There’s no cameras around here. A Friend already said so when I asked her.”

  The only thing that stopped him from reaching the upper level was another Friend who was winding her way down the stairs since there must’ve been an entrance for them near an exit shaft. She pushed him back toward the group.

  Natalia took out one of her earbuds as the Friend spoke.

  “There’s talk among the authorities,” the spirit rushed to tell the team. She was one of the Friends who’d been stationed with the police. Tammy, Dawn thought, recognizing the businesslike Midwestern accent. She’d been some kind of feminist CEO before dying. “The cops don’t know what to make of those charmed humans. Evidently, the vampires adjusted their victims’ memories before sending them away from our old headquarters. Maybe the girls barely mind- wiped them, because the humans are talking nonsense.”

  “Elaborate?” Dawn said.

  “They’re saying terrorists got to them and brainwashed them, but I suspect this is only their confusion talking.”

  “Shit,” Dawn said. “That’s high profile, and it might lead to the authorities canvassing the area.”

  “Or,” Kiko said, “the law could chalk it up to a bunch of loony chatter. Let’s pray the media doesn’t get ahold of this.”

  Dawn pulled her jacket closer around her. “Let’s also hope that we’ll already be through with this Underground and out of London before any full investigations can get underway.”

  Tammy the Friend flew off, and Natalia said, “Should we contact Detective Inspector Norton?” The team had never met him, but he was one of Costin’s sources. “Do you think he could help?”

  “We might be beyond the police now,” Dawn said, glancing at Claudius, who was clearly listening with his eyes closed and that maddening grin on his face.

  “But . . .” Natalia began, and Dawn knew exactly what the new girl was going to go off on.

  “Natalia,” she said, “this isn’t the time to be doing follow- up work on what you consider to be the most important part of this hunt. The Friends have already told us that Norton’s come up empty with the Kate Lansing case.”

  The psychic stared at the ground. She’d become attached to the first victim they’d “encountered.” Since Natalia could hear the dead, she’d latched onto Kate Lansing’s voice at the Billiter Street burial grounds, and she’d never let go. Dawn wouldn’t even be surprised if Natalia sneaked out to go to Kate’s upcoming inquest.

  In a lot of ways, Natalia—the most naïve one of them all, but also the most intuitive—was the team’s grounding force. But sometimes grounding wasn’t what a hunter needed.

  Dawn moved on. “Kalin? Where are you?”

  The Friend breezed over; she seemed energized by all the action.

  “Could you plug up Sleeping Beauty’s ears over there?” Dawn asked, jerking her chin toward Claudius. “We’ve got some sensitive issues to go over before I spend quality time with him. But it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

  Kalin shot over to the master vamp, who started to protest as the spirit pushed him to the bed, then nudged her essence over a pillow to the ear that wasn’t against the mattress. Her force, plus the pillow, should do the trick.

  Back to the team. “Even though Costin hasn’t run out of time to complete his attack yet, I want to know which one of you has the information about where he is. And don’t BS me. He told me someone on this crew would be privy to his destination and would be able to access his locator, if needed. I want to be as prepped as possible if dusk comes around and he’s still MIA.”

  She wouldn’t think about his other order. To go for the Underground instead of a rescue.

  Kiko was looking around at the team, and Dawn didn’t know if it was because he was the secret holder or if his pride was just as wounded as it’d been back when he’d found out that only Breisi had k
nown a lot of Costin’s secrets in Hollywood, when she’d been a human hunter, too.

  “Well?” Dawn asked when no one came forward.

  Kiko said, “I can start touch- reading. At least with Natalia. That’d tell me if she’s the one. I wouldn’t be much good with Frank though.”

  Dawn didn’t ask if Kiko’s mind was in decent order for any readings; he could’ve still been fuzzy from the lulling.

  He seemed to get that, and his posture slumped. Soon, he’d be promising her that he would wean himself off the lulling, but she’d heard it all before with the medication.

  Yet she couldn’t blame him, really. Not with all the visions and vibes that were always assaulting him, especially in this intense job.

  Natalia and Frank were still mum, so Dawn fixed her attention on the new girl, willing her to blurt out the truth—that Costin had entrusted her with this piece of the puzzle.

  But then Frank talked.

  “He didn’t want anyone to know until he got back.”

  You could’ve knocked Dawn over with mist. Even Kiko gaped at her dad.

  “You?” she asked him. “Costin gave the location to you?”

  Frank nodded. “I learned my lesson but good last time in Hollywood, when we shot off to help him. Breisi gave me what for, too, and I promised her and him that I’d keep everyone from joining in an attack this time. I guess Costin took that for worthiness. And the icing on the cake? Kiko can’t touch- read me for the information. I’m a vault.”

  “Where is Costin, Frank?” Dawn asked.

  He folded his arms in front of his barrel chest.

  She stepped up to her dad. “The last thing I want to do is go after him, but I’ll be honest. I’m getting nervous, here. He hasn’t even sent a Friend back with news. Not even a phone call, either, saying he’s on his way.”

  “You shouldn’t have expected any of that. He’s probably busy.”

  True, and maybe she was just overreacting. But there was something picking away at her, and she only wanted to be ready to go to him at the first opportunity, if required to.