Break of Dawn

by Chris Marie Green

  Dawn pinched her arm. “I thought Jac was human, not a marrow-sucking backstabber. Big difference.”

  Eva smoothed her dress. It seemed to be a habit when she was gathering herself. “Whatever you think, I really was pretty innocent when everything started out. I never got used to going to parties and being visually prodded like meat at auditions. But when I snuck into a theater that was playing my first movie . . .” Eva held a hand over her heart. “Magic.”

  The rest was history. Eva’s rise had been meteoric. She’d possessed the type of face that defined the fantasies of a generation: an innocence lost, yet still available in the persona of one Eva Claremont, sunny dream girl.

  “Still,” Eva added, “that moment was nothing compared to when I had you.”

  As a tear slipped down her mother’s face, Dawn shook her head.

  “I call bullshit. If you gave so much of a damn, you wouldn’t have given me up for your extended career. You wouldn’t have given me up for anything.”

  “I know it’ll never make sense.”

  “You’ve got that right.” Dawn’s temper goaded her to stalk toward the front of the old-time-movie gingerbread house.

  But just as she was about to exit the room, she turned back around, finding Eva on her knees on the couch and holding the back frame, her face a riot of devastation.

  Slayed by her mother’s quiet show, Dawn stopped in her tracks. Then she gestured toward the living room. “Forgot my machetes.”

  “Dawn, I never had the opportunity to explain why I gave you up when you were only a month old. I’ve already told you that I was young and stupid . . . and so impressionable. My handlers were persuasive. It all made such sense when they pitched the idea of going Underground.”

  Dawn couldn’t believe it. Sense? How could being a vampire make sense?

  Eva continued. “They said that the faster I went Underground, the easier it’d be to leave you—I wouldn’t be so attached after only one month. But they were wrong. So wrong.”

  “Now’s a great time to have a lucid moment.”

  Eva lowered her voice. “I thought everything would be perfect after my comeback. I thought my time away would make having you accept me easier, not harder.”

  “How could you possibly believe that?”

  “I thought things would turn out differently. I was depending on my comeback to . . .”

  “Redeem you?”

  The vamp lifted a finger. “Listen. Men in Hollywood can deal with age a lot easier, but roles for older women? Good luck. Going out when I was young seemed to guarantee that I could continue succeeding when I made my comeback . . . again and again. It ensured that you’d always be taken care of.”

  Youth, beauty—both were at a premium in this town. And, clearly, Dawn and Frank had been easy enough to trade in, no matter how many justifications Eva had for doing it.

  Neither of them said anything, because it was just too obvious that talking wouldn’t make up for what had already happened, every hideous thing.

  Out of defensive attitude, Dawn stuck her hands in her back pockets. Her fingers jammed against the guts of the locator.

  Nowhere to turn. Nowhere to go now . . .

  Eva sank farther down on the couch. “I suppose that does it for the touchy-feely talk.”

  For a second, her mother looked so real, like a young girl who’d been disappointed by what affected most girls her age in life. Dawn wondered how much of that disappointment was really a part of Eva.

  “I have to tell you,” Dawn said, leaning her back against a wall, a position that relieved some of the tension, “that what you did with Bre—”

  Forcefully, Eva pressed her finger to her lips. Dawn didn’t say another word.

  While her mother rose from the couch, she gave a meaningful look. What it meant exactly? Dawn wasn’t sure.

  The vamp went to a table, opened up a slim top drawer, then extracted paper and a pen. After writing something down, she came over and gave the items to Dawn. Then she lingered, seeming to block the paper, as if the two of them were secretly trading “Best Friends Forever” notes and hiding the contents from the rest of the class.

  The paper said: There may be bugs here—they’ll know if I disable them, especially after what happened that night. I could be in trouble.

  All right. Why had Eva brought Dawn to her home if there could be eavesdroppers? Had she been instructed by the Underground to initiate some kind of mind game here? Or did her mother want to talk privately, but she couldn’t, hence the notes?

  Playing along for now, Dawn went to the couch’s back, using it as a shield, then sunk to the floor in order to write. She made sure she didn’t leave the paper in clear view. While she penned her message, she fake chatted, just as a distraction for anyone who might be tuned in. “I know how special the Underground is to you.”

  But she wrote this: They don’t know what happened?

  After seeing that, Eva answered out loud. “Right.” Then she launched into some more covering chatter while Dawn continued writing.

  What you did with Breisi = deal breaker.

  While her mother wrote a response, Dawn continued jawing. Underground bad, not worth abandoning your family for, yada yada yada.

  Eva’s answer was this: It would be a deal breaker for me, too. Ignore all attempts at sympathy. Ignore. Dawn took a deep breath, then let pen loose to paper. Afterward, Eva took the note and Dawn did the talking thing, wondering how Eva would react to what she’d written:

  I really did think you were going to help me and Frank rescue Breisi. You almost had me on your side. I might have followed through with that promise you made me take about giving you another chance if you’d just helped us save B. Did you plan to sabotage B’s rescue from the get-go, even when I promised that I would give you a chance to be my mom again?

  Eva scribbled furiously. B was coming between us—all of us—She stopped and exhaled.

  She did feel something like guilt. Dawn actually believed that.

  Something switched on inside her mind, even in the midst of her beaten weariness. The detective in her wouldn’t back off.

  Dawn took the note and turned it over to a clean side while Eva chatted inanely and went for more paper.

  So the Master doesn’t know what you did that night? Dawn wrote. Because you’re still with the “community.”

  Eva’s turn. Right—he doesn’t know. After I brought you and Frank to where B was being held, I left. But then I came back. Too much to lose. I used what you call a “mind screw” to block video transmission into the Underground. So no one saw me interfering with plans to have Cassie kill B.

  Dawn wanted to ask why Eva had bothered. Her master might have been real proud of Eva’s decision to let Cassie finally murder Breisi. But Dawn was getting good info here. Why blow it by ticking her mother off?

  When the paper was full, Eva went to the kitchen. The sound of running water ssssed, and she returned minutes later. Dawn thought she might have destroyed the messages in her sink by wetting the paper: blurring the words and turning it into an unreadable lump.

  “I’m planning to be around my family for years and years,” Eva said out loud, transitioning back into the spoken conversation they’d been using as a distraction. “We’ll be frozen in the happiest time of our lives. That’s all the explanation you need about why I want you Below, Dawn.”

  “Still doesn’t convince me.” This was odd. Eva had seamlessly gone from betrayer of the Underground to proponent of it. Did she believe in both views? Was it possible that her mother had only as much use for the Underground as it related to her?

  “You’re forgetting the part where I get fangs and drink blood,” Dawn said. “I’m not so keen on that.”

  The vamp got an understanding look on her face. “That’s all incidental. What matters is the way you feel when you become . . . us. Don’t deny you’re attracted to beauty.”

  Right—like Dawn hadn’t been on an antibeauty crusade her whole life. She�
�d either worn too little makeup or too much, depending on who she wanted to piss off that day. She’d rebelled against any association with Eva, becoming a stunt double and embracing the habits of a tomboy.

  Yet . . . Eva was on to something, wasn’t she? As much as Dawn deplored the superficial, she was drawn to it, wondering what it’d be like to be adored. . . .

  “Jonah Limpet,” Eva said, “wouldn’t ever give you the chance to feel this good. In fact, I suspect he makes you feel the opposite.”

  Every muscle in Dawn’s body clenched. “Don’t. Ever. Say that name to me. Again.”

  Her throat felt stripped from the force of her words, and Eva looked just as flayed, too.

  “Okay, I understand,” her mother said softly.

  “No, you don’t.”

  It was a conversation capper and, after an awkward moment, Dawn started for her machetes.

  “Looks like it’s time to kill me again,” Eva said.

  “Oh, stop being such a smug pill, would you? If you want me to continue any ‘peace talks,’ maybe you’ll reassure me that Frank is okay so I can at least murder you with that in mind.”

  “Yes. Frank.”

  Eva folded her hands, and Dawn couldn’t help noticing that her knuckles were white.

  “What the hell, Eva?”

  “I’m just going to tell you, even though it’s not easy—”

  “Come on, already!”

  “I don’t know where Frank is.”

  Dawn actually did one of those stupid cartoon head shakes. The last time she’d seen her dad, Eva had been enveloping him in her body-mist and carrying him off as he cried out in a rage over Breisi’s death.

  “Come again?” Dawn said.

  Eva carefully exhaled, then returned to the table for more paper. Dawn moaned, and they repeated the process of spelling everything out at the back of the couch while one covered for the other with a conversation about Frank in general now.

  Eva wrote, First, some background for you: I returned Underground after the Breisi/Cassie debacle and gave the Master a—she hesitated—certain version of what happened.

  Dawn’s turn. You mean you lied.

  I reimagined. When you deal with the Master, you’ll see he exists in a world that’s populated by movie stars and fantasy, so revisions are normal. He sees only what he wants, and I’ve been taking advantage of that.

  Hell. Looking at Eva, you saw a harmless, sweet girl blushing in a breezy dress. But, deep down, she had a devious mind. Getting to know it would only help Dawn when she figured out where she’d go after this tête-à-tête.

  What are you telling me? Dawn wrote while Eva jawed some more to cover their activities.

  Eva again: Frank escaped under the Master’s nose, and I facilitated it. And the Master hasn’t asked about the whole story yet.

  Eva went on to write about how she’d, on the spur of the moment, overloaded her husband with her blood and how that had allowed him to sneak out of the Underground undetected.

  The blood reference lurched to the shadows of Dawn’s mind. But, in all this confusion, she didn’t pursue questions about what that meant. She was too caught up in finding out where Frank was.

  Why did you let him go? she wrote back. She didn’t know what to think about her mother now. Yeah, Dawn knew she still hated her, but Eva’s allowing Frank to escape put a different spin on things.

  The vamp seemed to think about what she was going to write. You know the cliché that says, “If you love someone, set them free”? Frank needed that to come back to me. And he will, just as soon as he sees that what’s out here doesn’t appeal anymore.

  After a second, Eva added more. I had to crush his delusions about what waited for him Above. He won’t like what’s there now, and he’s not going to be strong enough to deal with daylight. Besides, Servants are on his case. He’ll get tired of running, and he won’t even be able to approach Limpet.

  More paper. As Eva went to get it, Dawn asked out loud, “Why’s that?”

  After a warning look, Eva came back to write: He accepted my bite just before you showed up. You had to know he became a vampire.

  At the blunt comment, everything splattered in Dawn’s mind—the blood reference, all her previous suspicions she’d had about Frank when he’d seemed to be able to read Cassie Tomlinson’s thoughts in a vampire mind screw. Dawn pulled her knees to her stomach, hugging herself.

  “At any rate, I truly don’t know where your father is,” Eva said out loud while getting up to go to the kitchen again. “He’s blocked me out of our Awareness. I was using it Above before I intercepted you, since that ex-boss of yours knows that we exist anyway. If he senses the communication, it won’t make much of a difference now.”

  While Eva ran the water in the kitchen, Dawn wondered if Frank really would be turned away by Costin and Friends. Why would her former boss deny a benevolent vampire when he claimed to be something similar himself?

  But Dawn wasn’t going back there to find out.

  By now, she’d come to a crouch in order to help her stomach calm itself. “It wasn’t enough to have Dad with you. You had to make him a vamp.”

  Eva returned. “It’s a beautiful life. Give it a chance.”

  “No way.”

  “What would it be like to be forever loved?” Eva whispered. “Have you really thought about that? It’s heaven. It’s all humans really want.”

  “You’re not going to convince me.” She sounded a little too emphatic.

  “Don’t be so quick to refuse. I’ve told you before that the Master wants you Underground and . . . Well, prepare yourself, because I’m going to be honest with you.”

  Surprised again by all this truth, Dawn met her mother’s intense gaze.

  “The Master knows where you are. He’s asked me to help ease you into the Underground, thinking I could do it without much turbulence. But . . .” She shrugged.

  The rest went unsaid. The Master had no idea what was between Dawn and Eva. He didn’t know just how much Dawn hated her mother for what she’d done during the Vampire Killer episode.

  “I’m not going to displease the Master, Dawn,” she added. “When he sees you, he’s going to be very happy.”

  So happy that he would forget about the other night and the part Eva might’ve played in it? It might be just a matter of time before he found out what happened, and Eva probably couldn’t afford to make him angry by withholding Dawn.

  “That’s cool,” she said. “You’re pimping me out to your big daddy. I knew this mother-daughter thing would be special.”

  “He can be a perfect gentleman and won’t force anything on you. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Agitated, Dawn stood. “And when Limpet comes Underground?”

  Eva just laughed. “Don’t worry about seeing him again. As the Master’s favorites, we won’t need to be that involved with fighting. Benedikte hasn’t asked me to train with the others.”

  Benedikte. “That’s because you’ve had alternate duties—like working me over.”

  “You’re right. I have been involved with spy work.”

  “Hell, I wonder if I should be really impressed. I mean, you’re quite the mental soldier, and I had no idea.” And here she’d thought starlets were dim.

  Eva paused, then got one more piece of paper. Dawn stared at the rug. Then, when her mother was ready, Dawn read the new secret note.

  Things will turn out okay if we play our cards right.

  It occurred to Dawn that maybe she’d gotten her whole craving for control from DNA—Eva’s.

  Her mother went to the kitchen again and did her thing. Dawn could hear her voice mixing with the stream of water.

  “I know this is probably misguided,” Eva said, “but I also want you to be Underground, where Frank can find you. He’ll definitely come back if you’re . . . there.”

  “You want to me hang around the vamps until then?”

  “I want you to have the time of your life.”

  Th
e concept should’ve disgusted Dawn, but there was something small and dark—a pit in the center of her—that grew at the thought of embracing what Eva had promised: beauty, peace.

  The opposite of what Costin represented.

  Not knowing what else to do, Dawn turned and made for the exit.

  “Dawn.” Eva’s voice stopped her just as she reached the front door.

  Needing to get out, to go back to Matt, because this had been such a mistake to come with Eva, she throttled the knob open and . . .

  Instead of the welcome hush of dusk settling over a front yard, a rock wall greeted her.

  Stunned, Dawn stepped into a hallway, surrounded by stone. She looked up, and a drop of water plunked onto her cheek, let loose from a crag above.

  Underground.

  Eva hadn’t taken her to the gingerbread house Above at all.

  “I told you,” her mother said from behind her, “the Master knows where you are.”

  FIFTEEN

  BELOW, TAKE THREE

  BENEDIKTE stood in front of a full-length mirror in Dawn’s new room, shifting into yet another body.

  He’d tried on three already, from “Matt”’s pugilistic demeanor, to the form of Thomas Delaney—one of the hottest nonvampire movie stars Above—then to the shape of the surfer-boy weather man from Benedikte’s favorite TV station.

  But the Master didn’t feel right in any of them: the weatherman was too tedious, and Benedikte wasn’t understanding Thomas Delaney’s “motivation” for being Underground when he hadn’t yet been approached about it. And the Master needed this information if he was going to pull off a decent performance.

  This brought him to the other rejected body—“Matt.” Dawn wouldn’t expect her “vampire hunter” to be hanging around in the Underground so casually, either, and Benedikte preferred to save that shape for when he truly needed it with her. After all, even though “Matt” hadn’t been able to persuade Dawn to come Underground before Eva had gotten to her, he was the only person Dawn seemed to be at home with right now. This was valuable.