Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

In the background, she thought she heard Nigel’s custode chants going mum, and she knew Jonah had done something to him.

  More fuel for the fire.

  When she mentally punched out this time, it was like she was on the outside of her own body, watching Dawn Madison go to work. She was remote—a person controlling a video game that wouldn’t have any reset button.

  She watched Dawn push out with cutting violence, just like her mind power had become two machetes whipping through the air on their way to slicing a victim to ribbons. And when her power hit Lilly’s mask, Dawn heard whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk—

  The custode’s facial covering flew off bit by bit as she stumbled away from the attacking Dawn. The keeper was clearly unprepared, even though she should’ve expected something like this to happen with Dawn’s history of using her mental blasts before.

  And Dawn kept cutting, unstoppable now, even though her energy ebbed with every move. She left Lilly’s mask in strips that revealed a young girl’s face Dawn remembered from Eva’s flat, during their very first encounter.

  A panicked face that looked all too human with her mouth agape, her eyes filled with what-the-fuck questions.

  Out of control, Dawn kept going, cutting and cutting down Lilly’s body, leaving only slashes on the black uniform because the keeper had started to duck and dodge, groping on the ground for one of her swords.

  When she clasped a weapon, she swung the blade willy-nilly, parrying Dawn’s invisible attack, which didn’t do shit. On Lilly’s body, blood trickled in stripes where her uniform had fallen away.

  Then she pulled back her sword like a battering ram and lunged at Dawn, who was so caught up in her mental world that, in the physical, she didn’t react fast enough to move out of the way.

  Lilly’s blade gouged her in the thigh, not enough to run her through, but enough to rattle Dawn’s consciousness back into her own body, to make her yell in agony.

  Right away, a Friend wrapped her essence around Dawn’s thigh, putting pressure on it so she wouldn’t bleed out.

  “Got you,” said Kalin’s voice.

  That was when Dawn realized that Nigel hadn’t gone back to chanting.

  Time caught up to her. So did her surroundings. Kalin was here, and the Friends were flying around the room . . .

  In fact, they’d taken it over, banging their essences against Lilly, keeping her away from Dawn as the custode fought to get free of them, her iron sword useless against one spirit who pinned the keeper’s hands to her sides.

  Dawn’s arm and leg spiked with pain as more Friends arrived to contain Lilly.

  But the keeper wasn’t done. “You won’t win!” she yelled at Dawn. “You can’t!”

  She sounded like she was in denial, and she should’ve been, because when Dawn glanced at Jonah to see how he was doing, he and the Friends had Nigel at their mercy. They’d pressed the other custode against a wall, and Jonah was hissing, baring his fangs at the keeper, his bloodlust raging, just like that night at Queenshill when he’d gone nuts.

  This time, with the stakes this high, was Costin inside Jonah, lending urgency and strength during this final attack?

  As the spirits who were controlling Lilly forced the keeper to turn toward her partner, a berserking Jonah took Nigel by the masked head and tore it clean off, tossing it to the side.

  Lilly screamed as Nigel’s arms flopped against his decapitated body, as if he were still trying to fight.

  For a second, Jonah held his bloodied hands in the air, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done. Then, just as rapidly, he took out his daggers and extracted Nigel’s heart, stilling the body for good, then stepping back, his shoulders rising and falling with his gasps.

  Custodes weren’t vampires, but you couldn’t be sure, and when a Friend pushed Dawn’s mini flamethrower over to Jonah on the ground, he used that to burn the rest of Nigel.

  Lilly unsuccessfully tugged at the Friends’ restraints. “You can’t do this,” she said, her voice still electronic, disassociated. Dawn hadn’t gotten to her voice box. “We—”

  “—couldn’t have known what me and the team were,” Dawn said. “Mihas is dead and your schoolgirls are humanized. You’re done.”

  “Bugger off!” She didn’t sound moved by Mihas’s termination as much as by what she’d just witnessed Jonah doing to Nigel.

  But why would Lilly have been surprised about the Mihas news when they probably had cameras to update them?

  The remaining keeper stared at her, still fighting the binding Friend. Lilly was so young that Dawn felt as old and used as Claudius probably had, even though Dawn couldn’t have been too much older than the custode.

  Her thigh was being pressurized so thoroughly by Kalin that she felt her pulse in it, spreading through the rest of her body like something infecting her. She tried not to think about her broken arm, hanging at her side, the screech of its pain.

  As Jonah made his way over to Dawn, she felt another Friend carefully making herself into a sling to ease her arm’s anguishing position.

  “You were never prepared for an attack like ours,” Dawn said to Lilly.

  The girl shook her head. “We’ve always been prepared.”

  This one wouldn’t admit defeat. “I know. Your kind protected the big master for over a century. But we couldn’t allow him to rise.”

  Lilly stopped fighting the Friends. “You think the world is fine as it is? He will change it, just as he tried to make life better for many of his subjects when he was a prince.”

  Dawn had read the accounts of Vlad Tepes, national hero. Over on his side of the world, they still celebrated his historic attempts to keep his lands free of “the enemies of the cross of Christ.” Ironically, he’d become pretty much one of those enemies when he’d made his deal with the devil.

  “But good men don’t take pleasure in death like he did.” Dawn rubbed her neck with her healthy hand. The beauty marks were blazing on her skin. “No one should take that much pleasure.”

  By now, Jonah was next to her, his mask back over his nose and mouth so the blood wouldn’t overcome him. But she saw that the silver was gone from his eyes. And they weren’t even blue.

  Costin?

  Had he been the one who’d torn off Nigel’s head?

  From the shame and sadness in his gaze, she knew the answer was yes. The vampire hunger—or probably the hunger for freedom—had finally claimed him, and he’d taken what she’d just said to heart, too.

  Good men don’t take pleasure in death like he did.

  The both of them, just as bad as Vlad.

  They looked to the box—the unassuming, utilitarian coffin that had to be holding the sleeping dragon. Obviously, the creature wasn’t about to wake up before his two-hundred-year rest was done. That was why he’d needed bodyguards.

  “What should we do with her?” Dawn asked Costin, indicating Lilly.

  “We cannot leave her alive.”

  Lilly thrashed at the Friends again, and something spindly and black fell from her belt, clinking to the floor—a weapon?

  Costin began to walk toward the coffin. “Let’s finish this.”

  With the help of Kalin and the other Friend, Dawn made her way toward him, groaning with the effort. She was about to fall apart, she could’ve sworn it, and she didn’t just mean her body.

  “We’ll get you there,” said Mary-Margaret, coming from behind to help push Dawn forward.

  As she looked at the coffin, it seemed like such a long journey that Dawn couldn’t help but think that it’d never end, not even now, when they were just feet away.

  She didn’t want to imagine what would happen afterward, either, in real life with Costin.

  Her earpiece crackled to static, and Kiko’s rushed voice came on.

  “Dawn—damn it . . . The girls already woke up. They’re human, but they’re . . .” He battled for breath, as if he was running or fighting. “They’re freaking out and going for the exits, crying and shit. We’re going after th
em—will do our best to make sure they don’t lead anyone back down here before you’re done!”

  “Okay, Kik.”

  Maybe it was a positive thing that Kiko and Natalia wouldn’t be here in the Underground from this point on. Maybe the dragon would hit Dawn and Costin hard, and she didn’t want the others anywhere near that.

  Costin had heard the transmission, and he rested his hand in the small of her back while leading her the rest of the way to the coffin. As they passed Lilly, he stepped on whatever had fallen from her belt, and the custode moaned, as if she’d been a part of the item that had been ground into the floor.

  “No,” Lilly said, like this was her own dark chant—something that might keep Dawn and Costin away from the dragon. “No . . . no . . .”

  When they came to the foot of the altar, where the vibrations were so strong that Dawn felt like she was caught in a live wire, Costin stopped, lowering his gaze, concentrating.

  His Awareness, Dawn thought. He’s bringing it out for what could be the final time. . . .

  Without warning, the coffin exploded, sending wood and soil everywhere. A drill-on-teeth cry grated while green eyes came alive, peering through the debris as it fell.

  The Friends seemed to heave a massive breath, and they retreated, taking Lilly with them, but Costin held steady, glaring through the shrapnel as it clattered around him and Dawn, some of the wood smacking them as she raised her good arm to ward it off.

  Awake . . . This close to the coffin, Costin’s Awareness had woken up the dragon. . . .

  She realized that Costin was already connecting to the eyes of whatever had come out of that coffin, attacking as best as he could, but from the way he started rocking back and forth, Dawn knew he was already at a disadvantage.

  As the last of the debris clapped to the ground, she saw through the parting dust the vague shape of a stocky, naked long-haired man changing into something . . . else.

  Then, as the air fully cleared, she saw just what he was.

  Rising, swaying, stretching out from its deep sleep, a creature hovered, and it shuddered Dawn’s flesh, like scales were rippling over every inch of her, just as the dragon literally grew scales, itself, in a red, iridescent wave.

  She should’ve lashed out with every remaining bit of her mind powers, but she was too enthralled with what the creature was becoming.

  Its consciousness expanded in its gaze as the vampire locked onto Costin, completing its change, revealing a hulking dragon’s— or more accurately, serpent’s—head sitting on top of a slithery body with arms that extended into stiletto-like claws. With its long tongue wiggling past thick fangs, it looked like it was testing the air, still coming to the waking realization of where it was and when it was.

  Dawn couldn’t move. Scared . . . never been this fucking scared in all her life . . .

  The dragon paused, then snaked its tongue toward Costin, as if the loosed Awareness irritated it.

  The Friend who was slinging Dawn’s arm disengaged from the injury just in time to push Costin out of the way of that tongue, and the motion woke Dawn right the hell up.

  It was going after him.

  Key, she thought. I’m key.

  I’m supposed to do something.

  The darkness in her surged into every fiber of her body like never before, almost like the anger wanted to get to the dragon and join it. Almost like she was waking up with the monster.

  Costin’s swaying had become surreal, his body rooted to one place as it circled, like how one of those punching bags with sand on the bottom moves after it’s been pushed.

  Do something before it really wakes up. . . .

  Just like earlier, when Dawn had distanced herself from her body while fighting Lilly, she withdrew from herself. Then, with a drugged kind of wonder, she watched as Dawn Madison let loose with all the power she had, her body flinching with the burst of her projected rancor. She saw the force of her fury impaling itself into the dragon’s flesh, tearing it open, exposing its innards.

  Behind Dawn, Lilly screeched.

  Dawn barely heard it. Instead, she was locked to how the dragon’s blood and vital organs spilled out. Then it was as if teeth had fixed on the creature’s heart and was ripping that out, too. Blood spurted, covering one side of Dawn’s body, but not Costin’s, as her mind held the dragon’s heart in midair.

  The organ rotated there, as if she wanted the dragon to see it as the creature wavered, sleepily realizing that it had been gutted.

  Then, chunks began to fall out of the hovering heart, and Dawn realized that she was mentally dismantling it.

  The dragon bellowed, looking down at himself, then back up at her.

  Then he smiled with those dragon teeth before collapsing.

  At the thud of his body, Dawn jammed back into herself, gasping at the memory of that smile. Costin grabbed one of Lilly’s deserted swords plus the flamethrower, then leaped forward to chop away at his creator’s head then burn him to a crisp, all with such quickness that it happened in what seemed to be a strike of crimson lightning.

  When the first lick from the flamethrower consumed the dragon, Dawn stumbled backward from the fire—sheets and sheets of fire as the dragon burned.

  Armageddon, she thought. And it was here in her tiny corner of the world.

  As the Friends pushed her farther backward, Dawn felt the blood weighing on her skin, almost like in Kiko’s prophecy. She was covered in a vampire’s red, but only on one side, opposite her beauty marks. She was victorious. And she was . . .

  Dawn tripped as the Friends pushed her harder to leave. She felt like the dragon’s blood was acidly tunneling into her, far worse than any beauty mark, eating its way inside, down to her very bones.

  The dragon’s body exploded, and the entire room became a roll of thunder and orange, and as Costin grabbed her arm so they could both escape, he fell down.

  Just like that, losing all power, convulsing there at her feet, his eyes blue as he leveled a horrified look at her.

  Jonah was back?

  And what the hell was wrong with him?

  The Friends pushed against both him and Dawn, urging them to flee, and with Dawn’s good arm, she picked up Jonah to help him as a rumble of fire bit at their heels and the spirits jarred them to a higher speed.

  Flame breathed through the tunnels, chasing them out of the Underground while destroying it at the same time. Then, as Dawn and Jonah pushed toward some exit, the fire became a living/dead thing, spitting out Dawn and Jonah and the Friends as they tumbled over the outside grass, the flames waggling out of the exit like tongues, then sucking back in.

  Then . . .

  It was quiet.

  So quiet.

  Dawn collapsed onto her back on the heath grass under the moon, gasping for breath, her body a length of stabbing rips and breaks, her skin and everything underneath it prickling with its own fire on the side of her body where the dragon’s blood had covered her. She saw Jonah as immovable as the new night, eyes closed, but she didn’t find Lilly.

  Kalin’s voice came from the spot where she was still pressing down on Dawn’s leg. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Then she remembered the dragon. “I think I’m okay. Everything’s good, right? Isn’t it?”

  Kalin just held to Dawn, and she was real quiet, too, just like the cold air around them.

  But Dawn was getting used to others judging her in the aftermath of every fight because of the lines she’d crossed. It amazed her that Kalin would be one of them, even if this was a line Dawn herself didn’t understand.

  She’d made a mess of the dragon. Of course, the creature hadn’t been fully awake, but she’d really done a number on him. Bloodlust had made it possible.

  And, at the end, he’d smiled, just as if he’d appreciated her enthusiastic kill.

  Shoving the final image of him aside, Dawn shut off her headlight, groaning at her injuries, dragging herself toward the place where Jonah lay prone on the grass.


  Mary-Margaret made like a sling on Dawn’s arm again and said, “Lilly’s gone. When the fire exploded, we lost control of her, and she either got caught by the flames or found a way out. From all reports, she knew every trapdoor.”

  Another Friend skidded over. “It looks done down there. We’ll go back in soon to make sure, but we got it, y’all. We cleaned them out! Yee-haw!”

  As the stupefaction started to wear off of Dawn, her skin really acted up on the side of her face where the dragon’s blood had splashed. In its throbbing singe under her skin, she felt the bite of the dragon’s smile as it’d died. No matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to forget it.

  The immediacy of seeing that Costin was okay overcame her. When she got to him, he opened his eyes.

  Even in the moonlight, she could see they weren’t quite the same Jonah electric blue as before.

  “Jonah?” she asked.

  He glanced at her, and the blankness in his gaze hit her hard.

  He was looking at the burning side of her face, and she put her hand there.

  “Blood.” His tone seemed . . . changed. “You’re covered with his blood.”

  He was talking about Kiko’s prophecy, and he was getting even more confused as he sat up, testing his limbs with shaking hands.

  The Friends gathered around, watching.

  “What’s wrong?” Dawn asked. “Jonah . . .”

  His devastated expression made Dawn grasp his arm, and his body tone didn’t feel as hard as usual. A jolt of adrenaline rocked her, and she touched his face. It wasn’t as cool.

  A thought wormed into her mind: Vampire blood weakens from generation to generation, and the dragon’s blood had been more powerful than any master vampire’s or progeny’s. Its death would inflict more damage than when Benedikte or Claudius or Mihas had died, wouldn’t it? Its termination could turn all of its line human again. . . .

  Had Costin known this and he just hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up if he was wrong? Had she been so bent on saving him that she hadn’t thought beyond the obvious to this?

  “My body,” Jonah said.

  He’d only been a vampire for about a year, so he would’ve looked the same.

  But if he wasn’t vamp, wouldn’t that mean his body had stopped being undead? Wouldn’t that mean . . . ?