Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  He was holding an earpiece and what she knew was a locator unit as he sat in a chair, leaning his elbows on his thighs, as if still regaining strength from the encounter the two of them had enjoyed earlier.

  She’d fed him some of her blood, and he’d healed, just not as quickly as she’d expected. She had taken too much from him, and it startled her to realize she was that powerful. With a touch, she had even made Frank forget that they’d been together and that he had taken her own blood to help him recover.

  Next time, though, she’d have to give him more of herself, because obviously, it hadn’t been enough.

  But, as she’d thought, she hadn’t needed to bury him like the college boy she’d put into a grave in a nearby construction lot.

  Eva felt herself frowning, as if she were sad about the young man’s death. But was she really?

  Frank slowly looked over his shoulder at her, his forehead creased, almost as if he didn’t recognize her. Or maybe his mind was trying to work around what they were to each other now.

  He put down the locator and the earpiece. “You should get back to bed. A lot’s going down and I need to be on standby.”

  But she needed him.

  She walked closer, her nightgown brushing her legs, creating a waving friction against her—inside her—that she’d never experienced as a human or a vampire. She almost felt like she could float like a ghost, even though she was still solid. Yet, as she went to him, she also felt pulled away, as if something was reeling her in from outside headquarters.

  She had a feeling it was the mysterious man, asking her to find him now that she had evolved. And she would go, just as soon as she consumed more. Just as soon as she felt satisfied.

  “Frank,” she whispered, reaching out to run her hand through his brown hair, which had started to recede when he was human.

  “I’m busy.”

  He shrugged away, turning back to the locator, and she lifted her hand, stung. But then she rested her fingers on his neck, a tingle sending waves of bliss through her.

  He gripped her wrist, removing her from him.

  “I need you, Frank,” she said, the hunger for his adoration—for taking it from him since he wouldn’t give her any—rising and consuming her.

  “What are you?” he asked, stopping her.

  She shrank away from him. He didn’t know? He’d loved her and he had no idea?

  “I’m not sure there’s a name,” she said, holding a hand over her heart to still it. It was beating, just like any woman’s.

  Then Frank snapped his head toward the doorway and, at the same time, Eva scented the jasmine with her higher alertness.

  She smiled. “Ah. Breisi.”

  “Breez,” Frank said to his girlfriend as she blew into the room, “just get to your picture at old headquarters, okay? There’s nothin’ happening here.”

  “Eva . . .” Breisi said in her wispy voice. It sounded weak, but it grated in a drawn-out threat.

  “You’re about to collapse,” Frank said as the girlfriend circled him, surrounding him with her essence.

  Eva held up her arms, but not in surrender.

  No more surrendering.

  She caught a flash of herself in a mirror that had been positioned in a corner so the room occupant could see behind them. White and flowy . . . light hair that had matted into near coils from all the bed rest . . .

  Eva thought about what she’d done to that laser tracker back at the old headquarters—how she’d manipulated it and the security camera with only a touch. Thought of how she could make anyone shrivel.

  Try it on the spirit, said the instructive whisper in her head. But it was her own voice she heard.

  She reached out to Breisi, pulling at the spirit’s essence with a touch of her fingers.

  There was a scream, and the jasmine retreated, as if Breisi had been shocked.

  Eva went for her another time, connecting with the Friend’s essence again, and an electric bolt traveled up her skin. It didn’t go under it though—not like Frank’s or the college boy’s.

  It wasn’t the same at all, and Eva didn’t like it.

  Even so, when Breisi flew away, Eva attacked once more, enough to expel her enemy from the room as Frank grabbed Eva from behind. Without even turning around, she gripped him by the neck and lifted him off the ground as his energy zapped up through her arm and down into her core, making her want him all the more.

  Then, using her foot to back- slam the door after Breisi flew into the hallway, Eva lifted her husband even higher, realizing only now just how strong she was.

  Frightened by the level of it, she dropped him, and he slouched to the ground.

  He peered up at her, one hand raised as if to ward her off.

  She backed away, but it wasn’t enough to get her out of range of that mirror, where she saw all of her: a white-gowned Medusa bride with feral hair, her gaze famished.

  The woman he left behind, she thought. Me.

  Me . . . ?

  But then the hunger overcame her, and she rushed Frank, sealing her mouth to his and drawing as much of him in as she could.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE LAIR

  DAWN and Costin had unlinked hands far back in the tunnels, when they’d needed to get a grip on their weapons. She was holding her mini flamethrower in her right hand, then one of two regular grenades she’d brought in her left. He had a silver dagger and a revolver handy, even though silver bullets might not work against a custode who wore the kind of body armor Dawn had detected back in Southwark, when she’d come against Lilly.

  Most important of all, Dawn’s best weapon—her psychokinesis—was on amped-up standby after the fight she had just recovered from.

  As she illuminated the tunnel with her headlight, Costin kept his surgical mask on so any remainder of blood wouldn’t distract him. He tracked the dragon with his Awareness, and the closer they got, the more he trembled. The Friends also sensed the discord in the air as they wove in and out, darting around while they scouted ahead and behind. Hell, even Dawn felt the swampiness of bad vibrations.

  “He’s somewhere nearby,” Costin said in a near whisper under that mask. His usually low, composed voice was muddled and unsteady. “I think his power even permeates the rock nearest him.”

  “When we get to him, you should probably close yourself back into Jonah,” she whispered. It was all so quiet except for the “mmming” of her body. “Just until you’re ready to strike out.”

  “If my Awareness is even enough to affect him,” he said. “Remember, I encountered him once, long, long ago, and I was no match.”

  “But you trained through the years. You said you even holed up for a while so your own powers would grow.”

  Neither of them mentioned that, because of being encased in Jonah’s vamp body, those powers weren’t exactly at a high. But, then again, they’d just conquered Mihas along with the Friends’ help, and they had to believe that, united, the team would be able to throw down with the dragon, too.

  Because if not them, then who?

  The Whisper?

  Right. Like the enigma who’d made Costin into a Soul Traveler would come out of hiding to beat the dragon himself. If he’d been able to take on this mission, he wouldn’t have sworn in Costin to do it for him. It was definitely up to them to come up with the goods.

  God, if Dawn survived this, she was going to find whoever or whatever The Whisper was.

  One day.

  They moved rapidly down the tunnel, curving here, there, led by Costin’s intuition and the light on her head. But it was the smell that told them they’d arrived, even before Mary-Margaret zipped over with a hushed report.

  “Mint!” she said in her wind-tunnel Southern drawl. “Those custodes are trying to use mint to keep me and the girls away!”

  Dawn guessed Mary-Margaret sounded offended because mint was supposed to ward off evil spirits. But the Friends weren’t evil. Not to Dawn, anyway.

  Or did “evil” depend on
a point of view?

  Before she could ask Mary-Margaret if the smell was doing anything to the Friends, some of the invisible hunters sped ahead, prompting Dawn and Costin to pump up their pace, too.

  Lian, another Friend, said, “They’re just around the corner!”

  The air got heavier, pressing in. They rounded the bend with their weapons up.

  In the flash of Dawn’s headlight stood two custodes. Black masked and red-eyed, the taller of the two shadow figures was spreading salt in the air, calmly aiming it at the Friends and chanting in some unintelligible language with that baleful, electronically altered voice. Both keepers were surrounded by a bunch of mint sprigs and a semicircle of salt on the ground in front of a wall.

  Was it protecting the entrance that led to the dragon?

  Surely there’s more than this, Dawn thought, just before the smaller custode—Lilly?—sliced two swords that looked to be made of iron through the air at the prodding Friends.

  Iron—another ghost repellent.

  Dawn heard a squeal from a spirit and wondered if the element had warded her off or if she was just enjoying herself, being a dare-devil hunter and all. But then Dawn noticed that something had to be keeping the Friends at bay, because aside from whizzing around the area, they weren’t being very aggressive.

  Was it the mint? The salt, the iron . . . or the chanting?

  Black arts, Dawn thought, focusing on the taller custode who was uttering the mantra. She was pretty sure that malevolent incantations would ward off even the best intentioned of spirits.

  She recalled what she’d read in that book at Menlo Hall. Initially black-art bred from the best of military men and witches . . .

  Well, magic or not, she was pretty sure she could shut the keeper up.

  Holstering her mini flamethrower, Dawn activated one of Breisi and Frank’s modified, non-UV grenades, yelling a coded warning to her team, just in case the impact affected the structure of the tunnel itself.

  “DANCE!” she cried as she hucked it at the custodes.

  The force of the retreating Friends bolted against Dawn as Costin rammed against her, too, throwing them both away and back around the corner just before the explosive boomed.

  As rock shifted then thudded to the ground, Dawn turned to Costin while they both lay there. In the glare of her headlight, she saw that his eyes had silvered and he’d pulled the mask away from his face, exposing fangs.

  He was excited, probably because of the dragon vibrations, the prospect of finally coming to the end of his mission.

  Looking at him, she felt as if he’d already left her behind.

  But this was his soul they were fighting for. His eternal peace.

  “Jonah,” she whispered, the harshness of her tone betraying her hurt. “Come out to protect him while we get past these guardians.”

  She saw his body stiffen and guessed that Jonah had already taken over. Then she hopped back to her feet and darted around the corner, her flamethrower raised. She could feel her partner right behind her as they all rushed ahead, to where the custodes were still standing, the smoke clearing away from them.

  The taller keeper—it had to be Nigel—began chanting again, and the Friends hung back, even though they were trying to push forward against whatever those words were doing to them. Dawn heard one moan, then another spirit do the same.

  It would’ve been enough to dishearten Dawn if she hadn’t caught the gape in the rock wall behind the custodes.

  But it seemed as if the keepers didn’t give much of a care about the hole as Lilly pointed at Dawn with one of her iron swords, which Dawn could see was tipped to a wicked sharpness.

  In answer, Dawn let Lilly peer down the nozzle of her mini flamethrower as she started to squeeze the trigger.

  The only thing that stopped her was a slight metallic clicking sound from above.

  Being a vampire, Jonah had heard it before Dawn, and he tackled her, pummeling her far out of the way as two banks of long, gleaming blades swung down from opposite sides in front of the custodes.

  The Friends moved so fast that they sounded like screams as they smashed into Dawn and Jonah, too, pushing them farther away from the blades that crashed into each other like jagged teeth, sparks flying at the friction.

  As an out-of-breath Dawn glanced up at the composed keepers behind the barrier, she thought, The dragon is so here. Lilly and Nigel had lured them forward to a booby trap that not only could’ve killed the hunters—it now provided a sharp wall to the bit of grenade-blasted hole.

  Swirling into Plan B, the Friends cried out with their lulling voices to the keepers, but behind the blades, Dawn could see Lilly and Nigel glancing at each other as if the sound was hilarious.

  Lulling worked on the majority of humans. Then again, these guys weren’t quite that.

  But something had to bring them down.

  As the Friends switched to the banshee yells, in case that worked, Jonah whispered, “I can watch for more traps while you do your thing.”

  He was telling her to use her mind powers for all they were worth, but it felt like Dawn was just about near empty on the inside after all the energy she’d pulled on already. Yet she still had adrenaline kicking through her.

  She still had Costin to save.

  Making sure her anger was juiced, just in case she needed it, she grabbed her second and last grenade from her bag, activating it, yelling another code word.

  “FEVER!”

  She heaved the explosive at the bladed trap, and the custodes ducked into the hole behind them.

  Dawn and Jonah had already scrambled behind the corner when the grenade ka-bammed, sending blades flying into the wall opposite them like it was under attack by a Roman legion.

  After the metal finished clattering to the ground, Kalin zoomed over.

  “Tunnel’s still solid. Pursue?”

  “Sic ’em,” Dawn said, hoping Kalin would be bitchier than ever when she caught up to the keepers.

  As Kalin and her Friends shot ahead, Dawn and Jonah came out from the corner again and made toward the blade trap, which looked like a giant fist had punched it in the teeth and left some shattered dental work.

  To clear the rest of the way for Dawn and Jonah, the Friends slipped behind the top of the trap, then pushed the framework aside, using every ounce of their essences to open up just enough space for their more solid teammates to squeeze through.

  “Ears open?” Dawn said to Jonah, hoping he’d sense any booby traps ahead of time.

  “They’re open.”

  They negotiated their way through the sharpened entrance, through the hole in the wall.

  Luckily, Jonah had been listening, because within a second, he cried, “Down!” and clamped his hand on Dawn’s head, pushing her to the ground, where her face hit dirt just as a cutting breeze swooped above her neck. Peeking up, she saw a large scythe passing to the other side.

  Then Jonah picked her up, tossing her forward like a sack of feathers as a bank of knives came at their torsos. He dove over it as another scythe came down from the opposite side, and he grabbed her, flipping into the air with her pressed against him. Then spears barged out of the ground, one of them skimming the sole of Dawn’s boot, but he twisted her out of the way before it impaled her. As soon as Jonah gracefully hit the ground, he pushed her forward into a run.

  She raised her flamethrower, off balance, not knowing where to target yet, and impressions of the room came at her, all coalescing into one thought.

  A . . . temple?

  That was how it seemed in its reverent austereness. A rock altar lit by low lamps that were buried in the walls like sleepy eyes. A long, wooden box on that altar—

  She couldn’t see what was inside of the box, but the vibrating awfulness was a hundred times worse now, making the lining of her stomach shake, her limbs feel like weights were hanging from them.

  It seemed like an hour since Jonah had manhandled her into this room, past those blades, but just like that, time
snapped into fast motion as she spied the custodes stepping in front of that long box, both armed with swords now.

  Even behind their masks, they were staring at Dawn and Jonah with those goggled red eyes, as if stunned that the attackers had gotten this far.

  Dawn was a little stunned, too, as the taller keeper, Nigel, began chanting again. His words were rushed, as if maybe he was coming to the last tricks in his arsenal.

  Jonah leveled his revolver, no doubt aiming for the neck where there’d hopefully be no body armor; he intended to shut Nigel up so the Friends could come forward and help.

  Leaving her partner to his own devices, Dawn targeted the flamethrower at Lilly, but the keeper was too damned quick, and she was out of the way with a casual tuck, roll, and stand. But Dawn reacted fast, too, skinning her revolver from its holster with her other hand and faking Lilly out by shooting at one of the swords the keeper had already raised.

  As it clanged out of the custode’s grasp and to the floor, Lilly flipped her other sword in her hand, bringing it back, then throwing it at Dawn.

  The blade spun, and just as Dawn’s brain was registering its approach, she dodged, and it only struck her flamethrower away. The weapon clattered to the ground as Lilly jumped off the altar, crashing into Dawn and chopping at one of her arms, breaking it.

  At the burst of pain, Dawn stumbled back, crying out; it’d happened so suddenly that she wasn’t processing the injury beyond the initial shock. But the aftermath of the attack itself . . . ?

  It raged. It flamed all on its own.

  Now she had all the energy in creation, and she used her mental powers like a boulder pounding down on Lilly, sending the keeper flat to the floor.

  Lilly got right back up and kicked, sweeping Dawn’s legs out from under her with whip-fast speed.

  Maneuvering her body so that she thudded onto the side with the healthy arm, Dawn flipped to her feet again, then crouched, her injury throbbing as vaguely as her mind and pulse.