Then, just behind her sister vampires, Della saw the most frightening sight of all.
The woman. The one who’d used mental powers at Queenshill. The one who’d faced Della in Southwark.
With her braid trailing round as she engaged Polly, one of the last girl vampires standing, in blade to claw combat, the woman looked every inch a hunter. And with each slash of her machetes, Della saw a reflection of her own personal need to strike out with something just as sharp.
Her claws. Her teeth. Her grief.
When the woman took both blades, crossed her arms, then sliced through Polly’s midsection both ways, following up with a backward cut to the neck that sent Polly’s head flying off, Della felt . . .
Nothing.
For Polly had hated Della for killing Violet, and Della had never forgotten this.
She didn’t even feel anything as Polly’s body shriveled and disappeared. She didn’t actually feel until the machete woman peered round for her next target, the light on her head sweeping the area, shining over the silver flakes coating the frozen vampires’ skin and hair as they posed in midmotion round her.
When the woman’s gaze found Della and her group hiding under the rock shelf, she hesitated, the blades at her sides.
It was almost as if . . .
No, she couldn’t have recognized Della, not in wolf form.
But then the woman suddenly glanced to her left, where Wolfie was engaging with a—
Oh.
Even with a white mask covering most of his face, she could see it was the mean vampire from Queenshill, and he had his own dagger blades, which were clashing with and sparking against Wolfie’s long claws and canine teeth. But the master had the mean one on the retreat. Even with the barrage of those jasmine ghosts assaulting Wolfie with their banshee cries and pounding him with their invisible essences, plus the silver flakes, her master was clearly stronger and faster than the mean vampire. The rips in the inferior creature’s long coat also told Della that Wolfie had put in some licks.
The machete woman was staring at Wolfie, and it reminded Della all too much of how she had appeared on that night at Queenshill, when Della could have sworn the woman was using her mind to attack them.
When Wolfie flew backward, hitting a wall, Della thought she might just be right about the woman.
The mean vampire ran at him with his blades aimed at Wolfie’s heart, but Della’s master vampire swiped out an arm, swatting the mean one away.
Then it was Wolfie who assumed a strange, concentrating expression, and the mean vampire flew backward, as if hit by something Wolfie was thinking.
The confrontation raged on as the woman kept staring at the fighting males, as if she were gathering her own energy to strike out again. . . .
Behind Della, a recruit let loose with a frenzied howl, then before Della could stop her, she took a run at the woman, straight through the forest of petrified wolf-vampire girls.
Hardly even looking back, the huntress casually raised her machete, and the girl impaled herself through the heart. Then the woman extracted the blade and simply chopped off the girl’s head without much effort at all.
There seemed to be no more lower vampires moving, save for Della and her own. But before the woman could set her sights on them, Wolfie cried out while he kept fending off the mean vampire with his mind powers.
“Della!”
He had summoned her—his final backup garrison. But with a salacious snap of glee, Della could hear that he was also wondering why she wasn’t fighting.
Her recruits responded to his call, galloping to him on all fours with their temporary shirt masks flapping away from their hairy faces. But even as he still held back the mean vampire, Wolfie kept his gaze on Della, as if checking to see why she had not yet come to him.
She realized that the attackers were outwitting her master, whose only recent combat exercise had been hunting with the girls and playing with them.
Very slowly, very surely, she stayed where she was and smiled at Wolfie, flashing her big wolf teeth.
Everything played out on his expression as it fell: He knew she wouldn’t come. He could see in her quivering smile that there were consequences for hurting her.
His brief loss of focus was all it took for the machete woman to fix her gaze on Wolfie again, and before Della could swallow the juices flooding her mouth, her master had zoomed back into a wall on a bolt of invisible energy from the woman, his head connecting with a splinter of rock thrusting out from it.
The recruits reached Wolfie just as that splinter jammed through the rear of his skull and out the front, but as they howl-screamed at the spray of Wolfie’s blood, the jasmine spirits whirled round and round at the remaining recruits’ feet, raising the silver flakes into a whirlpool. The wind lifted the girls’ shirt masks, allowing the silver to puff up to their snouts, causing the final girls to choke until they froze, as all the others had.
From her spot so far away under the rock shelf, Della returned her gaze to Wolfie as he was slammed back again and again by the woman’s mind powers, his eyes rolling in his head while the rock splinter kept ramming out his forehead.
Then, as if wanting to put an end to it, the mean vampire ran at Wolfie with his knives pulled, plunging them into Wolfie’s chest and slashing them about so quickly that, in the next instant, he was able to reach into the master’s body to yank out his heart just before everything about Wolfie shriveled to nothing.
Immediately, Della doubled over, flailing, pulling the shirt from her face in her panic to breathe, sucking in silver as she fell to the ground then froze like her mates. But, even statued, she could feel the last part of her own vampire being severed out, cell by wailing cell, as she became human again. It was as if Wolfie himself was snatching out each part of her, disassembling everything she had believed about him.
Minutes later, it was dark all round Della, who couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything.
But, most horrifically, it was dark inside, too, her returned soul like a seething stain of blackness.
MIHAS was dead, but the worst was yet to come.
In the aftermath of the initial attack, Dawn took out her earplug and slumped to the ground, recovering from the purge of hatred, the whipping she’d given to the master vampire. The only way she and Jonah had even matched up to him was with the aid of the Friends and their silver, plus . . .
God. Plus her anger.
It’d been primed when she’d seen the one big male wolf vampire who had to be Mihas dueling with Jonah, and it’d only gotten worse from there. And she’d taken great satisfaction in making sure that the master vampire wasn’t going to hurt the man contained inside of Jonah.
As skin burned on her neck in what was probably a new collection of beauty marks, she forced herself to stand and walk through the copse of posed, barely clothed vampire girls, who’d gone from semi-wolf form to their fully human ones upon the death of their master. Some had matured drastically, even though their motor skills were frozen, and the sight of old and middle- aged women in the rags of girly skirts and outfits seemed bizarre.
Then again, what wasn’t bizarre?
“Kiko, Natalia,” Dawn called, her voice sounding as if it’d just been put through a slashing machine, “Jonah and I are going on alone.”
Kiko, who had several pawed scratches marring his skin, said, “Not likely, Dawn.” He hated being left out, just like Breisi. “Those custodes are somewhere around, and I suspect they’ll be with the dragon, guarding the tar out of it.”
If they haven’t already evacuated the dragon, Dawn thought.
Or maybe the custodes were so confident in themselves that they hadn’t moved him anywhere. Besides, an evacuation might take too long.
Dawn could only hope. “If Jonah and I fail with the dragon,” she said, “we’ll need a second attack wave. You’d need to go to Frank, rebuild a team, and try again later.”
It’d be too late for Costin though. He would’ve already forfeited h
is soul if the dragon got the best of him. Yet it wouldn’t be too late for everyone else who’d have to suffer under the dragon’s rule.
Natalia wandered away from her inspection of a frozen former vamp girl with aged features and platinum hair run through with gray, then came to Kiko’s side. He glanced up at her, then sighed.
With just a gaze, Natalia had done Dawn’s work for her by somehow persuading Psychic #1 to see reason. This meant that Dawn was free to go to Jonah and see how he’d fared.
He was resting on the ground, his eyes blue above the surgical mask. His coat was ripped, gleaming with silver flakes, and the clothes underneath had been slightly shredded, too, blood running from the pale skin underneath. Jonah was already healing, but he must’ve been spent from keeping the master vampire out of his head during Mihas’s Awareness attack.
Thankful that they hadn’t gotten to the point where they’d had to let Costin loose to wield his own Awareness against Mihas’s, Dawn joined Jonah on the ground, brushing the silver off him, careful not to get any in his wounds.
“Did the flakes land in any of your scratches?” she asked.
“No.” The mask muffled his voice. “I would feel it.”
She reached into her bag, giving him the flask cooler containing the last of her blood.
After removing his mask, he drank, then put the mask back on so he wouldn’t have to smell the blood. Dawn eased off his coat, using it to wipe him down the best she could. Then she placed her fingers under his chin, raising his face so she could read his gaze.
When he looked into her, opening himself up much more eagerly than Costin had ever done, she saw that he would be okay. She’d just give him a few minutes to heal before they went on.
He glanced at her neck, where the new marks had settled.
Yeah. She’d noticed it when she’d been whaling on Mihas, smacking his head against the wall, scared to death that he’d destroy Costin and Jonah. Yet, she’d taken some contentment in the fact that she could stop the vamp. A lot of contentment. Mihas had been a master, but he’d lost strength and focus over the centuries. He’d been beatable.
But she’d paid a price for winning.
“So I’ve got more on me,” she said to Jonah. “I’m sure, after the dragon, I’ll be covered with beauty marks.”
When he didn’t say anything, she got ready to go, then offered her hand to help him up.
He accepted it, his grip strong but not overwhelming as they both pulled him to a stand. At first, she wondered if a vampire like him—a weaker one by most standards—would last against the dragon. He’d just faced a master, and that had to have drained just about everything out of him.
Then his hold on her strengthened. Was Jonah the only one clasping her hand?
Was Costin also telling her they’d get this done?
He reared back his head, facing front, his eyes changing to topaz. He was here, and it wasn’t just to reassure her. Costin would be using his master/progeny Awareness with his own creator to track down the dragon, then he would be giving his all to see this through.
He kept ahold of her hand as he led her out of the room and toward what very well might be their last stand together.
TWENTY
LOST
AT temporary headquarters, Eva had waited in her room until all of them but Frank had left.
His presence cut inside of her, pulling her apart and leaving a large, hungry tear down the middle. He hadn’t seemed as happy as the college boy had been to have her attentions. Yes, Frank’s body had responded to her, hardening, climaxing, but afterward she’d needed to clear his mind since there was nothing resembling joy in him.
What had she done wrong with Frank?
All she wanted from him was the love that used to be so easy for them to share.
And she was going to get as much of it out of him as she could.
She finished sponging herself with water from the basin in her restroom, then put on a new, plain flannel nightgown she’d found in the costume locker after Dawn had left and Frank had retreated to the communications room. She noticed that she felt a distant tweak of worry for her daughter, and this bothered Eva somewhat because it should’ve been more than just a twinge.
The pre-wine-bar Eva would have been pacing, entirely concentrating on the safety of Dawn and the others. But now . . . ?
She was worrying less and less about anyone else.
As she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a bed- headed woman she didn’t know. A flash came to her: the man in the bar, his tilted, light brown eyes filled with promise while he held her hands in the wine cellar. His black hair, which came to his chin, had added to his exotic sexuality.
“You’re so sad,” he’d told her, his voice as mellow as the flow of the wine she’d already drunk. Too much wine, and that had made her bold enough to come down here with him when he’d given her that look.
The kind of look every woman needed to see when she was down and out about herself.
“A woman like you has no business being so unappreciated,” he’d added, “so denied everything she deserves.”
“How would you know?” She’d been wary of how much he seemed to see in her, but she was tempted by him, too. He had an allure that she hadn’t seen in anyone since Hollywood, but he wasn’t a vampire.
He was . . .
Just a man?
“Eva,” he said, smiling. “You weren’t hard to discover. You’re just what I’ve been looking for—so beautiful. So elegant and perfect.”
His confession should have made her run. Was he a stalker who knew she wasn’t really “Mia Scott,” even after her plastic surgery to hide her real identity as Eva Claremont?
As he stroked the backs of her hands with his thumbs, she thought she sensed a vague, seething buzz on his skin, but she’d told herself that it was just the wine, and he had the touch of someone who didn’t think she was only a piece of baggage dragged along to a new place from a past life. That was all she was to Frank, and she was sure that, in spite of everything, Dawn felt the same way. The suspicion had isolated Eva, even in the middle of a city.
The man, with his soft words and caresses, had gone on. “What you’d give to be a part of something again. I know you, Eva. I know what you want and, because of that, I found you, like I find others.”
“Others?”
“Yes. Your souls all call out in one way or another. As for you, there’s a dark spot that only grew larger tonight, even after you tried so hard to contain it. I came before it overtook you.”
Eva couldn’t believe it. The soul stain, as Dawn called it. After Frank had refused her blood, had she sunk into the darkness of sorrow—the stain?
Whatever had happened, there she was, with the man.
He whispered. “I knew you would be ready now. Are you, Eva?”
Ready . . . for what?
His gaze had heated, and she’d understood. She didn’t know what he was, but she knew that she needed what he had. She could see it all in his eyes—a completion she hadn’t possessed since her vampire days, but . . .
Not a vampire, she kept thinking. Not in the way she thought of them, at least.
Then he’d changed. Or maybe it hadn’t been so much his appearance as the allure she’d noticed. All she’d seen when he suddenly pricked her palm with a hooked thimble he’d slipped on at some point was a fire in his eyes. True fire. And when he wounded himself, drawing a drop of blood from his own palm, he’d asked her one last question.
“Do you want it all back?”
Did she want everything she’d lost?
He’d pulled her in with his gaze, setting her in the midst of her glory days, when she’d received breathless letters from people who said that her movies had spoken to them, perfumed pages from young girls who confessed that they wanted to be just like her. When she’d been pursued by the silver screen’s most desirable men and she’d rejected them because she’d been so in love with Frank.
When she’d owned th
e world and she hadn’t even known it.
She looked at the globe of blood on his palm, and it held those everythings.
“You can really give it back to me?” she asked.
“Yes, I can make you feel loved, a thousand times over.”
He hadn’t said it outright, but she knew this meant he could get Frank to love her again, and her eyes went blurry with tears. She didn’t ask what the cost would be. She was fairly sure she already knew.
So she held her bloodied hand out to him, just as she’d offered it to Frank earlier that night.
“Yes,” she said.
This man had smiled, his mouth sensuous and tempting, with a glint of white teeth. Something flashed in his eyes again, red and irresistible as he touched his wounded skin to hers, melding the blood.
A spike of lust, happiness, orgasmic fulfillment drove through Eva, and she fought for breath, crumbling to the stone floor. It was like he’d reached into her and yanked her inside out, pain and pleasure fused and simmering as the soul she’d regained back in L.A. left her once again.
But this time its departure felt more like Eva was giving birth to a new life. A quiet, terrifyingly easy birth.
“You belong now,” the man whispered as she reveled in the chaos of her high. “And you’ll come to me soon.”
And, minutes later, when she came down from it, he was gone.
Even now, she had no idea what the man in the wine bar had made her—she was only finding out hour by hour.
Feeding by feeding.
Called by that hunger, she left her room to wander the hall, and she found Frank in the office studded with computers and communication equipment. Earlier, she’d heard him muttering to himself, encouraging his body to get better and fast, because he wanted to go to the team—to Dawn and Breisi. Eva wouldn’t be surprised if he was planning to join them after he could stand up without swaying.
Deep In the Woods Page 20