He shifted back into the body he’d worn as a human being—Benedikte. Would Dawn find him pleasing?
Checking himself out in the mirror, he decided to bind his hair back in a queue to sport a clean-shaven face. To top off the illusion, he added an oversized white shirt—what they called “poet’s style” in today’s pretentious catalogs. Leather pants and boots completed the look, and Benedikte was content. Now. To wait for her.
He found himself pacing to the cadence of his nerves. Dawn was Underground, and he couldn’t rest. Not when he’d been anticipating her arrival, working toward it for what seemed like forever. He’d taken so many chances appearing Above in “Matt”’s body. He’d put his very safety on the line to make sure he would be with her someday.
And his desires had all started coming true after he’d received Dawn’s call for help. Something had happened with Limpet, he knew, and he intended to find out what it was soon after Dawn got comfortable in her new home. Whatever had transpired, it might end up working to Benedikte’s advantage.
But, for now, he was thankful Limpet had done something to trigger Dawn’s arrival. After her phone call, which had been easy to access because he was always tuned in to “Matt”’s phone, he’d wasted no time in getting Eva Above: she would be Dawn’s conduit, transitioning her Underground where Benedikte would finally meet her as the Master. He didn’t plan to ever tell her that he’d been masquerading as “Matt,” because he knew Dawn’s ability to trust was a fragile thing and his deception would shatter any relationship he expected to have with her. No, from now on, the Master would let the real, human Servant Matt Lonigan go about his own business Above, right after Benedikte’s version of “Matt” gently broke up with Dawn. In the aftermath of her heartbreak, Benedikte would pick up the pieces and construct her into the shape of his dreams, bettering her.
Luckily Eva had been successful in getting Dawn Below. Then again, he’d known Eva would do her job well, since she wanted to be with her daughter just as much as Benedikte did. He’d just been surprised at the way Eva had accomplished the task.
She’d somehow taken Dawn into her celestial vampire body and transported her daughter. The Master had this power, though he hadn’t used it in centuries; certainly he’d never seen an Elite do this before. But he suspected the reason for it. During Eva’s last blood infusion, he’d gone overboard, overfeeding her. Was this a result of that impetuous moment when he’d only wanted to express all of his affection?
Aside from that minor surprise, Dawn’s move Underground had gone perfectly. With Eva cradling Dawn inside her misty vampire body, Benedikte allowed them inside Matt Lonigan’s home. The human Servant had already given all Underground vampires permission to enter, so it hadn’t been an issue. Then, Benedikte had led his Elite to the supposed “closet” door—the bolted one with the basketball backboard leaning against it. After opening the barrier, they’d traveled the tunnels to the Underground, and Eva had taken her daughter directly to her chambers, which looked exactly like her home Above.
At that point, Benedikte had bowed to Eva’s request to have time alone with her daughter. Dawn would be a tough one to fully transition, Eva had pointed out, and seeing the Master right off the bat would only rile her daughter to the point of rebellion. Knowing this was true, Benedikte had decided to wait in Dawn’s room for the big moment, consumed with looking his best for her.
Pacing in earnest now, he couldn’t stop the anxiety from overruling everything else.
Benedikte . . . ?
He halted at the sound of Eva’s Awareness.
She continued. We’re on our way.
He felt like he was in one of those romantic comedies that aired on pay movie channels, a film like There’s Something About Mary. In particular, the sequence where Ben Stiller, that funny man, was so frazzled when he picked Cameron Diaz up for the prom that he got his privates caught up in his zipper.
But Benedikte wouldn’t be that tragically graceless. He’d lived for centuries. He’d mangled men during battles. He was a vampire, for the day’s sake.
As the door eased open, the Master quickly considered changing back into “Matt.” In that body, he knew how to act.
But it wasn’t smart. No, he could do this. . . .
Eva preceded Dawn into the room, and the Master caught his breath. His favorite, with her blond hair loose about her shoulders, her skin a becoming pink due to that last, mistake-ridden infusion.
But then Dawn walked in, and the Master almost self-destructed.
It was too much seeing them side by side: one golden and untouchable in her innocent fragility, the other dark and tough as she scowled and looked around at the palatial room he’d designed for her.
Yes, his tough Dawn. But Benedikte knew better, thanks to his time as “Matt.” He realized that she had her own brand of vulnerable beauty under all that attitude. It would take some work to reveal it, but the Master was up to the challenge. She would rival her mother in no time, and Benedikte wondered how Eva might react to that—at being so obviously replaced.
The Master waited for Dawn to say something sassy, but it didn’t happen. Instead, she just stood there, inspecting the gym set that had been worked into the walls like usable sculpture.
Pity. He’d noticed back at Matt’s house that a certain light had been extinguished from her eyes. Again, he wondered what Limpet had done to make her flee and how he could take advantage of it.
He took a step forward, every inch of him wired by excitement. “Welcome, Dawn.”
Had she even known he was in the room? When she shot a glare at him, he wasn’t sure.
“You’re the Master?”
She sounded so unimpressed that Benedikte almost shifted bodies without thinking. Didn’t he appeal? How could he—
He stopped and thought about what “Matt” would’ve done to get her on his side. He would’ve been mildly amused and, thus, ruggedly charming. Benedikte could do that, too.
“I see you dressed for the occasion,” he said, and it came out just as wryly as he’d planned. He motioned to her holey jeans, her dirty sleeveless top that gaped to show a black bra underneath. How they dressed these days.
With “Matt,” Dawn might have laughed. She always seemed to enjoy banter, but with Benedikte, she was unresponsive. His chest felt heavy and, as he looked at the holes at the knees of her jeans again, he recalled how he’d tended to her, touched her skin, smelled the blood on it, and battled to contain himself.
By the door, Eva was taking all this in, hugging her arms over her middle.
Dawn gave the Master a negligent look up and down, her eyebrows drawn together. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
The Master masked his surprise. “I’m sure you don’t.”
She turned to Eva, who lifted her shoulders in a more modest shrug.
“Familiarity bodes well,” he said, channeling the smoothness of the vampire he’d always been. There, this was better. She was a human; he was a force of supernature.
Grunting softly, Dawn started walking around the room while running a hand over the rock walls. “This is where I’m supposed to stay? Before Limpet attacks, that is?”
Beautiful—she’d slipped right into where the conversation needed to be.
“The room suits you well.”
She walked down to the sunken bed, just below where he was standing in front of the long mirror, his back to it. With an odd look, she touched the delicate veiling that tumbled from the bed frame, as if she were almost afraid to come into contact with something that was her opposite.
“To think,” she said, “that a couple of nights ago I was sleeping on a couch at a buddy’s place.”
“The Underground isn’t a flophouse.” The Master watched the sheer material caress her fingertips.
She seemed to become aware of his devout attention, then dropped the veiling. A hardness cracked over her.
Matt’s body, he thought. I need it—it’s the only way Dawn will warm up to me. . . .
>
But Benedikte didn’t want to be loved as “Matt.”
“I don’t know what to think,” she said, her voice cryptic as she put her hands on her hips. “All you vamps have this baroque thing going on. It’s kind of fruity.”
He knew her well enough to realize she was getting his goat, as they said.
“Why are you like that?” she concluded.
Now he knew that this was her way of trying to wheedle more-significant-than-it-seems information out of him. They’d gone through that exercise too many times for him to count.
Benedikte paused before answering. Maybe Limpet had staged difficulties with Dawn and had sent her Underground to spy. Well, two could play that game—not that she would ever get the chance to return Above to report to her boss.
Plans formed in his mind: Dawn was a creature who craved endless answers, so Benedikte would give them to her—to a certain extent—if it would win her over.
“Why are we so ‘fruity’?” he repeated. “Possibly because we’ve lived through many gilded ages, and a taste for fine things never dies. We fruity vampires would kill for beauty.”
He just thought she needed a reminder.
At the word “kill,” she looked down, as if recalling something painful. But she still managed to ask, “How old does that make you?”
Near the door, Eva cleared her throat in a very motherlike way of telling her daughter to be polite.
Benedikte merely laughed. “I was born in the fifteenth century.”
“Born. When you say ‘born,’ do you mean as a vampire?”
He nodded, waiting for more.
“Got it.” Dawn peered up, inspecting the mirror poised over the bed. This time she did look impressed.
Was she coming around?
She meandered to the other side of the bed, the veiling partly obscuring her. It set Benedikte’s fantasy machine into motion because the seductive sheerness made her look more feminine. More like Eva.
“How do you know Limpet?” she asked.
Oh, how to word this response?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eva straighten up by the door.
“I suspect I know him through a brotherhood,” he said. “Long ago, we made a vow together. I kept it and, like so many other blood brothers, he did not.”
In fact, Benedikte wondered which one of the brotherhood was betraying him this time. It wasn’t Andre, who’d perished while trying to take over Benedikte’s first Underground. And since they’d all cut off contact from one another—a result of greed and paranoia reaching a peak—the Master had no idea whom he would be facing now.
But he would be ready, along with his small army who would fight to the end for their careers, egos, and home.
Before Dawn could take over this interrogation-cum-conversation, Benedikte spoke. “How much do you know about Jonah Limpet, Dawn?”
Behind the bed veiling, her silhouette froze. The material belled in and out with her breathing.
Would he have to go into her mind to get answers? It was a last resort, a rape of sorts, and it didn’t fit into any romantic scenarios the Master had planned. It demeaned him.
She finally answered. “Why would I help by giving you information?”
Near her spot by the entrance, Eva winced under her breath.
“I mean,” Dawn continued, “do you really think I want to help any of you cretins to stay alive?”
If she’d concocted some sort of fake fight with Limpet just to fool Benedikte, she was acting like a pro. The hatred in her voice sounded too real.
Suddenly, Dawn jerked away from the veiling, almost tearing it from the bed frame. She headed for a shocked Eva.
“Did you want to show me anything else in this place?” Dawn asked her mother. “Or am I confined to this shithole?”
His one—his only—barged out the exit, leaving Eva behind to shake her head in puzzlement at her maker, then follow Dawn into the hall.
Stinging, Benedikte composed himself by straightening the ruffles on his wrists, one at a time.
For a first meeting, it had gone well, he told himself. Yet as he turned around to glance in the mirror again, his body warped back into the only one Dawn would respond to.
“Matt.” A subpar form whose appeal he didn’t comprehend.
But during their next meeting, he would use it, just one more time: he would indulge her and then . . . then . . .
Despondent, the Master shifted into his blank, ghostly, nebulous nobody form, not knowing any answers beyond that.
SIXTEEN
THE SCREENING
WHAT a blowhard, Dawn thought as Eva caught up to her in the rock hallway, their footsteps heavy on the Moorish-patterned tiles. On the walls, electric lights flickered as they passed, casting color that had been leaked of life.
“That was brave of you,” Eva said.
“What, I’m supposed to be afraid of a fop?” Okay, she would admit that the Master had been sort of Gary Oldman-as-Dracula intriguing. But, come on, his shirt wasn’t exactly a testament to ultimate manhood. He had a quality that she remembered from pictures in high school English-lit textbooks—one of those romantic guys who wrote about Greek vases and shit.
And there’d been something about him. . . . Had she seen the Master before?
All the same, Benedikte really hadn’t unnerved her. But that didn’t mean she was just going to write him off. Never trust what you see.
“Dawn,” Eva said, gently grasping her arm and stopping her progress down the chisled hall. In the near distance, there was a sound like wailing, even though there wasn’t a breeze. “The Master didn’t invite you here so he could pop out of corners and make you shriek. He’s not a joke to be taken lightly.”
Dawn shirked off Eva’s touch, and her mother kept her hand in the air. The sharp keening from down the hall grew louder—it sounded like “home”—and disappeared abruptly.
“At any rate,” her mother said, “I appreciate how you didn’t put up a fight when it came to seeing Benedikte.”
“What choice did I have? I was already Underground, thanks to you. Might as well take the whole tour.” Dawn didn’t add that her options for being anyplace else were limited to Matt’s house and . . . nowhere.
A sense of alienation swallowed her, a mental anesthetic that removed her from everything. She couldn’t even feel the soreness of her post-smashup body anymore.
Eva began walking ahead of Dawn, then turned around to see why her daughter wasn’t following. “Are you coming then?”
“Coming . . . ?”
“For a tour.” Eva smiled. “I don’t mean to brag, but this place is going to blow your socks off.”
“Sure it will.” Living in L.A. had desensitized Dawn to so much that wowing her was unlikely. And with what she’d seen just in the Limpet house alone . . .
Anger ratcheted her body up another notch on the tense scale. She didn’t give a crap about the Limpets anymore. Or, at least, she shouldn’t. The fact that she still caught herself thinking about Jonah and Costin and all the rest ticked her off.
Dawn went to Eva, careful to leave a chasm between their bodies as they walked.
“Great.” Her mother sounded like Jac: chirpy and energized by Dawn’s cooperation. “We’ll be coming to the emporium first, where everyone hangs out.”
“Yay. I get to meet and mingle with your kind.”
“You’ve done it Above. What’s the difference?”
Dawn’s hackles rose, but she didn’t want to give Eva the satisfaction of seeing that the notion freaked her out. She changed subjects. “About Benedikte . . .”
Her mother slowed her gait.
“Do you know your master’s history?” Dawn added.
“Not really.” Eva wore a guarded look. “Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“Dawn, if you plan to go back Above to inform Limpet of—”
At the name, Dawn’s body screamed. Next to them, a lightbulb popped, darkening a circle around their
bodies like a deadened halo.
Eva shrank back from the tiny explosion, then gazed wonderingly at her daughter.
“I won’t be going back there,” Dawn bit out. “Don’t ever accuse me of that again.”
“All right.”
“Now . . .” Dawn casually brushed her hands together, trying to seem in control. “What do you know about Benedikte?”
“I . . . I know that he’s old, like he told you. I know that he’s a vampire of great power who was born in violence and has murdered his way through the years. He realizes I don’t like to see that side of him, though.”
“You like to ignore it.” To reimagine the Hollywood story.
Her mother sighed, clearly biding her patience.
Once again the persistent detective, Dawn asked, “And how about my old boss? How much do you know about him?”
“Besides that he’s evil? We know a monster wants to ruin us, and we’ve been instructed to exercise our powers to fight him. I’ve wanted to get you away from . . . your boss . . . ever since you started working there.”
Was Eva still playing her? Was she withholding?
“Dawn, forget about all that.” Her mother came closer. “Roll with Benedikte, and you’ll find out that life can be very easy. It can be everything you’ve always dreamed of down here. Think of what you’d want the most, and it’s yours.”
Absently, Dawn ran a gaze over Eva, almost as if her mother were a wishful reflection in a mirror. Then she caught herself, ending the moment with a blanked expression.
“When you’re ready to give permission,” the actress added, “Benedikte will be there.”
The vampire’s bite. That was what her mother was talking about. They wouldn’t force it on Dawn, though. Supposedly.
Well-worn anger stepped in to ease Dawn’s longing for what Eva was dangling. “I’ll bet the bite is a real rush.”
She was being sarcastic, testing.
Her mother’s eyes began to swirl. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”
“Do you think it’s the type of rush,” Dawn added, unable to resist one more dig, “that Cassie Tomlinson got when she killed women like Klara Monaghan and Jessica Reese—”
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