Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  Though their old forms had been hideous, this somehow seemed worse to Della.

  She couldn’t take her gaze off of Stacy. No trace of femininity. No cat.

  “Look at her,” Della found herself saying to Wolfie as he kept hiding his gaze. “Can’t you look at her?”

  He didn’t raise his face, instead wallowing in his grief for Mrs. Jones. The murderer.

  Della’s body seemed to explode as she changed into her new vampire-wolf form and leaped just in front of him, reaching out her clawed hand to force him to look at her new bearing.

  He reared back from her ugly snout and hairy body—the unfamiliar shape of a different vampire.

  “Look!” Della said. “This is what you made us! You had to know there was a chance we would grow into something else one day, didn’t you? No matter how much you wanted us to stay the same, we didn’t.”

  Behind her, the other Queenshill girls crept closer. Della could hear them mutating into their vampire forms, as well. Even Polly, who had hated Della for what she had done to Violet, was here, backing her up.

  In the glassy reflection of Wolfie’s eyes, Della could have sworn that she saw the awful visages of her classmates warped and looming as they bared their teeth.

  She could withstand no more from him, so she asked the one question she had never wished to have answered.

  “You knew,” she said to him, her wolf voice mangled. “You knew everything about what Mrs. Jones was doing to us.”

  “No—” he began.

  Della swiped at his chest, drawing blood. Then, terrified, she held up her paw.

  The smell of his blood filtered into her, the wetness running down her clawed nails and into her numbing fingertips. Even though he was tinged with silver poison, her stomach growled.

  She thought she heard the same keening sound of hunger from her schoolmates, too.

  Wolfie finally looked at her, and he clearly realized that there was nowhere left to go but to the truth.

  “Yes,” he said. “I knew about Mrs. Jones.”

  Suddenly, all the girls were on Wolfie, ripping at him as he howled. Yet he didn’t struggle. Not even as they began sucking at his wounds, drawing blood because he had taught them never to be appeased.

  Della also drank of him as he groaned. She was too famished— always so starved—to turn the tainted blood aside, so she drank and drank and drank until . . .

  She broke away, the blood like bile to her, and not only because of the silver.

  But she seemed to be the only one who tasted the wrongness of it as she sought a corner, cowering there whilst the other girls continued to ravish Wolfie, who seemed to enjoy every suck and scratch.

  The blood . . . It felt like the food Della used to shove down during her human days, when she would be so upset that cakes and biscuits and ice cream would be the only comforting fillers. And like that food, it felt as if it didn’t belong.

  Just as she used to do, she brought it back up.

  When she was done, she panted on the floor, watching the other girls—soulless, monstrous beasts—feast on Wolfie.

  Our souls, she thought. He took everything, including those.

  And the only way to retrieve those souls would be through his death now that the cat was slain. But when she thought of the concept of humanity, she wasn’t certain she understood it anymore.

  Yet . . . couldn’t she return to it?

  As some recruits entered the room, wearing their new vampire-wolf forms as they whined and begged at Wolfie’s feet to tell them what had happened, Della wiped his blood from her mouth. She felt sluggish, numbed, from the blood that still traced silver in her.

  Her fingers stilled near her lips when she saw Wolfie grip one schoolgirl, then another, tossing them to the ground in ecstasy as they all began to tussle in rougher play than she’d ever seen.

  Rips, scratches, blood . . .

  But, the silver. He didn’t seem so addled by it.

  Della gaped. It hadn’t been enough to put the element on his skin, had it? They should have stabbed him with it so that it was more a part of him. He was a master vampire, after all, and the only thing they had done was to poison themselves by drinking from his slightly affected blood.

  With a mighty howl, he busted up and away from his girls, furiously breaking out of his chains, sending the silver links flying.

  It was a birth of sorts, a release from his progeny now that they didn’t appeal anymore, wasn’t it?

  He stood there, taking in great, hollow breaths, bathed in his own blood, his clothes in strips, his long hair covering most of his golden-eyed face as the girls scuttled away from the return of their commander.

  Della held her place in her own corner, for she’d been reborn, too.

  EIGHTEEN

  BELOWGROUND, I

  MY soldier, Lilly thought as she watched a live feed of Mihas and the girls on a telly screen in the monitor room. The terror of the battlefield had returned, and it’d be brilliant if he stayed this time.

  It seemed as if he just might, too, with him standing so resplendent in blood and ripped clothing, his arms outstretched while he let back his head and howled.

  The girls had confronted him with the truth about Mrs. Jones, and he had handled it as a master vampire should, rising above the trouble, seizing final control now that he couldn’t hide his sins any longer. Best of all, there would be no need for Lilly to use the tuner on the lower vampires now since he had them truly under control.

  Unless . . .

  She leaned closer to the screen, seeing if the girls would rebel against his show of aggression.

  When none of the female soldiers made a move to do so, Lilly reclined, smiling.

  She had done it—restructured the Underground as it needed to be. From this moment on, the dragon would have his army with a stronger commander, and this Underground would no doubt flourish. All it had taken in trade was Claudia’s banishment and death, which was obvious since the girls were no longer catlike. Dawn and her group had clearly helped Lilly in their own way by terminating the co-master.

  Behind her, Nigel entered the room. He and Lilly were running tardy for Relaquory. She had delayed the ritual to see to Mihas’s latest complication, but there was no need for further surveillance now that matters had come to a satisfactory point.

  She was just accessing stored computer messages before leaving when she came upon this:

  Menlo Hall

  Possible malfunction with library camera. Minor concern regarding mobility. Inspected and fixed. No further disturbances.

  She stared at the log entry from the Hall. The custodes intercepted relevant updates from the family properties aboveground, but there were rarely any significant messages until now.

  Menlo Hall. She remembered the place well—an ominous house she had visited only on occasion because her family resided on a different, more welcoming estate outside Oxford. However, her father often retreated to the Hall, honing his resentment at not being “fit enough” to be a custode, as she’d discovered after her own activation. Perhaps wandering the estate enabled his vitriol.

  But what she recalled best about the Hall was being told to keep away from the west wing during her younger days. After she’d been called to custode duty, she’d discovered the reason for the rule, when she’d been ushered to the library and given free rein to absorb all the knowledge housed in it.

  Menlo Hall. Camera problems.

  Bloody hell.

  From just over her shoulder, where Nigel had been reading, too, he muttered, “They were there.”

  Bloody, bloody hell. Had Claudia let the location slip while the hunters questioned her? How else would they have tracked it down?

  Chances had been next to nil they ever would have. . . .

  Turning their attention to the vampire they held captive, Lilly and Nigel highlighted the monitor screen that surveyed the far tunnel with its silver cage. The “mean vampire” ’s ghostly guards had still been strong after Nigel had
left them, but Lilly had been studying spirit warding techniques on the computer, and they were ready to employ those after they finished with Relaquory.

  “Nigel,” Lilly said, “perhaps you should inform Mihas that we might be receiving company soon.” The progress these hunters were making was unsettling, to say the least. If they had found Menlo Hall, they might have found more.

  This group was good. Very, very good, and for the first time in this Underground’s history, Mihas would have to earn his keep, to actively protect and serve right along with the custodes in the name of the dragon. Lilly chafed under the interference.

  In any case, it was time to see if her faith in Mihas would pay out.

  She readied the spirit defense items that she had already gathered—mint, iron swords, salt, and a printout of incantations to memorize. Lilly wasn’t certain how she or Nigel would fare with the last item since black arts weren’t a custode’s forte; that talent was more for breeders whose abilities would be increased tenfold once the dragon had risen. Nowadays, they were no more than fledgling witches whose power had decreased era by era. Custodes were the ones who had access to the benefits of Relaquory, and they were the ones with whom main responsibility rested.

  Meanwhile, Nigel went to Mihas. On the monitor, Lilly watched how the master vampire seemed to feed off the news of oncoming attackers as Nigel whispered to him, then disappeared into the darkness again.

  Mihas ordered his girl soldiers to their feet, and they obeyed, although Lilly noted that the Queenshill students—the vampires who had, for all intents and purposes, been schooled as officers—were unsteady in their balance. But that was because they had taken Mihas’s slightly silver-poisoned blood, the fools. Lilly could have told them silver would have more effect on them than it would on the master vampire.

  When Nigel returned, she finally went with him to the adjacent room, where she had healed herself earlier. They needed Relaquory perhaps now more than ever.

  They shed their drops of blood into the soil, taking strength and energy from the power that shuddered from the long box, and Lilly stole an extra moment to gaze down upon their dirt-covered charge.

  What sort of face was under there? She had seen portraits, of course—a long nose, green eyes, an arrogant heavy- lidded bearing—but no custode ever dared brush away the soil from the visible nose and mouth to see for themselves.

  Even so, she longed to do just that, witnessing another patch of pale skin, paying more homage to the object of her devotion . . .

  A piercing beep sounded, and the custodes bolted to their feet. A breach?

  Had the hunters already come?

  No words were even needed between her and Nigel as they bolted back to the monitor room, where they saw how the camera that covered their caged vampire had been altered to another position, the view featuring the rock of the opposite wall now.

  Another “malfunction.”

  Breathing deeply in order to tame their pulses, just as if they were commandos, Lilly and Nigel took up their ghost warding materials along with weapons, then brought everything to the well-protected Relaquory room, which had been prepared over the years by other custodes. Its surprises should prove fatal to even the best of hunters.

  But defending it was Lilly and Nigel’s first priority. More to the point, it was the one and only job of a custode now.

  DAWN knew that once they breached this entrance, there was a good chance the vamps would know the community was under attack, especially if this did lead to the Underground itself. She was only hoping that the creatures would be so thrown off guard that it would take longer for them to get organized than it would take for the team to infiltrate and destroy.

  But would Dawn and her crew be attacking vampires or rescuing Costin?

  They were about to find out.

  Friends had discovered a grassy, doorlike shape etched into a slope nearly one kilometer northwest of the New Gilby Hotel in a darkened, isolated area of the heath. Instead of using explosives, the team had opted for a quieter break- in as Dawn used her acid gun to trace the door. Then she’d pulled her mental energy together, shaping it inside of her, making it boil, and she punched out, knocking the door away and opening a hole.

  The spirits rushed through it, clearing the clouds of dirt as some went off to scout, some to find any and all cameras.

  Outside, Dawn, Kiko, and Natalia waited for a report, and it came an instant later via Kalin, who’d insisted on accompanying them, even though she could’ve used more rest.

  “Found the trap! Jonah, in a cage, no way out! Friends, on the ground, useless . . .” She zoomed ahead. “Go, go, go!”

  Costin . . . He had been hoodwinked by Claudius’s false information, but he was here, just seconds away.

  But was he animated or . . . ?

  A bang of dread and adrenaline pushed Dawn forward. Kiko and Natalia moved, too, their mini flamethrowers and silver- bullet-filled revolvers drawn. The lights they wore on their heads made crazed squiggle marks on the darkness in front of them as they slid down one decline, then another, deeper and deeper, farther below than anyplace Dawn had ever been, where the only sound seemed to be a pulse tearing through her ears.

  Don’t be hurt, she thought to Costin, even though she doubted he would hear her mind. Don’t you dare be deader than you already were. . . .

  Then her headlight caught the glint of silver.

  A cage—

  When she saw a flare of blue eyes behind the square bars, her heart jumped, hitting the walls of her body and trying to spin its way out. She didn’t care if the blue gaze belonged to Jonah and not Costin himself. The flash of them meant they were both still around.

  She ran to him, crashing into the cage and holding its bars, and Jonah rushed her, too. But he didn’t move as fast as usual.

  “Knew you’d show up,” he said, his skin really pale in her headlight. “We’re both safe, but time was running down.”

  ThankGodthankGodthankGod . . .

  Dawn couldn’t stop smiling. Alive. Safe.

  She didn’t tell Jonah to let Costin out, because she knew the host was only sheltering him. Plus, this wasn’t the moment to be all emotional about a reunion. Having him here and in decent working order was good enough.

  Fumbling, she took out a small cooler flask of blood from a bag she wore over her shoulder, handing it to Jonah by sticking her arm through the bars. She’d give him a bit of a live nip when she got inside, but it wouldn’t be nearly as intense as their usual feedings. They didn’t have time for anything major.

  Greedily, he uncapped the flask and drank her stored blood while she looked and looked at him, unable to get enough.

  She’d almost lost him. So close. But this was a second chance, right? As soon as they got out of here, she’d make all her shortcomings up to him. Each and every one.

  She heard the murmurs of the Friends trading information, the old guard catching the new one up with the tunnel’s layout and also how two different custodes had already approached the boss, failing to get to him. Then Jonah was done drinking, and he gave back the cooler, which still had some of her blood left in it. She reached through the bars again to get the object so he could avoid the silver.

  “Friends have been guarding us,” he said. “They’re in bad shape without being able to recharge.”

  “Figured as much.” Dawn secured the flask in her bag and got out the acid gun again. It would work through silver, too.

  “Those custodes have been dying to get at us,” Jonah said while she applied the acid to the cage, “but the Friends kept pushing them away. They never give up, our girls.”

  The bars began to dissolve enough so that she was confident her psychokinesis would allow her to bang the rest of the way through.

  Meanwhile, she could hear the Friends murmuring and, using her prerogative to command them—they’d follow orders from the team unless it meant hurting Costin—Dawn said, “Old guard, you should get on out of here and go home. Who knows how long
this battle’s going to last.” They could recharge and then come back here if it came down to it, but Dawn prayed there wouldn’t be a long-drawn-out battle that would require the spirits to return.

  None of the Friends stirred.

  “Get your asses gone!” Dawn yelled.

  Unable to resist the more strongly worded command, the Friends’ jasmine blew back the stray hairs from Dawn’s braid as they wound toward the exit, their essences like a breeze instead of the usual stronger wind. But Dawn could feel one Friend hesitating, shivering in rebellion, her own essence all but dissipated.

  Breisi. It had to be. No one was this damned stubborn.

  “You, too,” Dawn said, backing away from the cage and motioning for Jonah to take cover on his side.

  “Where’s Frank?” Breisi asked in a fragile voice.

  “Under the weather.” She only had time to be blunt. “He’ll be okay but he’s holding down temp headquarters. Now get, Breisi. I mean it.”

  Dawn almost expected Frank to pipe in from the earpiece, but as she’d suspected, they were down too deep for her to get an outside feed.

  Breisi began to inch away, as if compelled, but she managed to say, “I saw a custode using a trapdoor to get out of this tunnel. I think it leads to the Underground. I can show you.”

  Well, crap. Breisi had something good to trade on after all. “Okay,” Dawn said, rescinding the command. “You can show one of the fresh Friends where it is while I hammer on this cage. Then you leave—no more ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  “Dawn . . .”

  It had to be killing Breisi to be so weakened during this big moment. As a hunter, she also wanted to thrash the Underground, and Dawn knew she’d do anything to be here for it.

  Damn it, Dawn had to be the world’s biggest soft sell. “Then show us the trapdoor yourself, Breisi. But Frank’s waiting for you back home, you know.”

  That seemed to work, but if a Friend could trudge, that was what Breisi would be doing as she slid through the cage to wait on the other side of it.