At the thought of getting on with this, she cowboyed up. She’d fought vamps before; she could do it again. Didn’t matter that Breisi and Eva’s existences were at stake. Didn’t matter that Costin could very well need their help in taking the Master apart limb by limb . . .
Dawn stiffened. The Master. The creature that had set this all in motion. Taking him apart was music to her vengeful side. He’d dismantled her life and taken advantage of her for lesser reasons than redemption—
Struck by her anger, the side-view mirror began to shake. Dawn calmed herself, saving it for when it would count.
After she pulled open the door, she told Frank to keep the blankets tightly around him, then aided him into the shade, careful to avoid any hint of sunlight. Once secure, he tested his luck by sticking a meaty arm out of his coverings. Then, unaffected, he shed his blankets, emerging out of his bulky cocoon with one emphatic shrug.
Immediately, he jogged into one of three dark holes.
Dawn didn’t even have time to ready any weapons besides her loaded saw-bow. Here it went.
From their talk on the way over, Dawn knew Frank intended to connect with Eva through their Awareness while they all snuck around the sentry vampires. Right. And if they could manage that monumental piece of luck, maybe her dad could persuade Eva to lead them to the captive Friends, and then . . . What?
Wreak Underground destruction? Yell “banzai!” as they fight for a higher cause than their own lives?
She only hoped Frank didn’t have it in him to betray her. She tried not to think that he could be part of some elaborate plan that he and Eva had cooked up to ultimately win over their mentally beaten daughter. Stranger things had happened lately, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, even if Costin had told her Frank was still decent.
“You get ahold of Eva yet?” Dawn whispered harshly as she followed her dad into the darkness. He was leading through vampire sight, she knew, but she didn’t have time to put on a lighted headpiece from her goodie bag. Not if she wanted to keep up with Frank the bloodhound. Besides, there’d be electric hall light soon.
“I can’t find her.” Her dad was already a decent ways ahead, yet his whisper carried. “But she’ll come through. You said she’s been waiting for me to get back here, so I’m sure she’s open for me. . . .”
Dawn turned around to give Kiko a look, but it was too murky. Still, she heard him breathing behind her.
Good God, what was she doing by letting him come with her and Frank?
She briefly considered tackling Kiko and leaving him knocked out in the SUV, but that would be unforgivable. Injured or not, he knew a thing or two about vamp fighting. Even under the slight influence, he’d studied, trained, and he knew how to use Breisi’s gadget weaponry. Besides, he would end up coming inside on his own anyway, the brave fool.
They descended into the ever-increasing cool of surrounding rock, where the sound of their breathing overtook even the bash of Dawn’s heartbeat in her ears. When they bumped into Frank, he’d just opened a panel.
The entrance finished grumbling to a gape, shedding minimal light—enough to judge shadows by. All three of them waited, Dawn’s saw-bow raised, and Frank aiming what looked to be a compact flamethrower; it had the silhouette of a long, flare-nozzled handheld gun, so she was pretty sure. She guessed Kiko would be using his own flamethrower instead of a revolver so they could enter more quietly.
When nothing moved in front of them, Dawn started to exhale, but she couldn’t complete it. Her lungs felt too shallow.
Frank gasped, then whispered, “I think I just got something from Eva. . . .”
He moved ahead, and they did, too, running their free hands over the cave walls for insurance.
Soon we’ll come to the hall lights, Dawn thought. Hopefully very soon.
Indeed, in the near distance, the breath of yellow beckoned from around a corner. As they got closer to it, time moved by at a fast crawl.
But, when they arrived, a fork in the tunnel caused hesitation. After exchanging glances with her dad, Dawn gestured to the path on the right. They took it, priming their weapons, pulse throbbing in her head.
Once they all were deep into the passage, she allowed herself to breathe again.
Until the lights went out and red-eyes opened to greet them from the top of the tunnel.
A frenzied cry, then two, three, four—five—cracked open the blackness. Frank’s flamethrower growled, spitting fire up at the descending creatures. Immediately, the ceiling exploded with water, showering down from hidden holes.
Shit, of course vampires would have fire precautions.
“Try the other route!” Frank yelled. His flamethrower lit the dark again, and the lights fluttered back on.
Without hesitating, Kiko and Dawn sprinted away. She looked over her shoulder once to check if her dad was following, but all she saw was Frank lowering into a crouch, then springing in superhuman grace to meet one of the Guards midair.
Damn—Frank. That was her dad going vampy in there. . . .
Running for her life, she got it together, knowing panic wouldn’t do any good. Amidst screeches from the pursuing Guards, she and Kiko entered the other tunnel. It greeted them with suddenly full-blown electric lighting.
“So much for quiet,” Dawn muttered, wondering if now was the time for getting out her whip chain, which would counter those barbed Guard tails. But there wasn’t room to maneuver with it in the tunnel, so she stuck with the heavy stuff.
Kiko got out his revolver, his weapon of choice.
A sopping Frank flew at warp speed around the corner to catch up with them, yelling like a happy wrangler, “Here they come! Day hours did make them slower!”
Uh, yeah, and from what she’d seen it hadn’t been by much. Maybe they were just slower to freakin’ vampire Frank.
She aimed her saw-bow as her dad skidded to a stop next to her. Kiko mimicked Dawn with his revolver. Unlike her cofighter, she wouldn’t be able to waste blades like bullets, so she forced herself to calm, even if her skin was frying itself away from her muscles.
Take the perfect shot, she told herself. Nothing less.
Four nail-on-blackboard cries, all piled one on top of the other, preceded four Guards around the corner. Frank’s flames shot out at them, but they were using their long tails to whip upward in stop-start motion, toward the ceiling, out of the stream of fire.
Upon seeing them through the resulting shower of fire-alarm water, Dawn’s vision went surreal. Movie monsters, her common sense told her. Nightmares with bald heads, pale skin, iron teeth, clawed hands, and deviled machete-slicing tails. From the first second she’d seen them, fooling herself was the only way to cope.
But a doused Kiko was as collected as a trained sniper. He fired, catching an approaching Guard in its heart.
Whhoo-wiiip. Its body—clothes and all—vacuumed inward until nothing remained.
That left three, one of which went after Kiko by flying through the water toward the gunman. All Dawn heard was a shot from her friend’s revolver before she, herself, targeted a Guard on the very left. But when it hesitated, as if not knowing exactly what to do—maybe the Master still didn’t want her dead?—she squeezed the saw-bow trigger.
With a sputter of water-shy sparks, the circled blade spun for her prey, catching it in the neck. But, damn it, she’d only cut half its throat. Blood sprayed into the water as the creature gurgled and fell to the ground, grabbing at the wound, its sharpened tail beating into the mud.
From the opposite side of the tunnel, Frank fired his flamethrower. But when it guttered in midgrowl, he dug his other hand into his bag. During this pause, a Guard spit at Frank, and Dawn yelled, “Dad!” because she knew it might burn even in the water-soaked fight. But . . . oh, hell.
Frank didn’t need to worry, because he’d zipped out of the line of spit and come to cling to the side of a wet wall, crouched and ready to spring on the offending Guard.
Vamp. Her dad was a crappy v�
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Just as Dawn drew a machete from a hip holster and was about to finish off her own half-sawed creature, and just as Kiko’s second foe disappeared from a bullet to the heart, Frank’s Guard suddenly backed against the opposite wall, as if losing its senses, its purpose. Then it let out a word that almost jolted Dawn out of body.
“Frank . . .” the pitiful thing said, sliding down to the mud.
Her dad’s grip slipped on his wall, making him lose his insect-like position. He crouched, hair matted to his head, water streaming down his weathered face. His silver eyes peeked through his drenched strands.
The sitting Guard cocked its head and continued to stare at Frank. “Hooome.”
Frank started to shake his head in denial.
“Dad?” Dawn said, leaving her own Guard behind as she lifted her machete and came closer to the sitting sentry.
Why wasn’t her dad fighting? Maybe the Guard was seducing him back to their side; he was a vamp, she reminded herself, even though she didn’t want to.
“Don’t!” Frank said, lifting a hand. “Don’t do anything—”
The Guard had turned its wet face toward Dawn. “Dawnie?”
The machete almost fell from her grasp.
Then she looked past the red eyes and at its expression. She wouldn’t ever have known, otherwise, but there was something about its voice that told her.
“Hugh,” Frank said. “It’s Hugh Wayne.”
Hugh Wayne.
When Dawn had last seen him, she and Kiko had been interviewing the drunk at the Cat’s Paw—Frank’s favorite bar—about her dad’s disappearance. They’d continued to keep tabs on the place, and on her final visit, when she and Breisi had checked in there, Dawn had noticed Hugh was missing. No one knew where he’d gone, but since he had a tendency to land in jail or go on private benders, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. But he had no family, no real friends outside of the bar, so who had been around to care?
Then something about that first night at the Cat’s Paw hit her, too. “Matt Lonigan” had been there. “Matt,” the Master.
She suspected how Hugh might’ve disappeared. How each and every one of these buffed-out Guards might’ve been recruited . . .
“Hooome,” murmured the Guard . . . Hugh. “Bloood.”
At that word, Dawn gripped her machete, and Kiko, who was just as gobsmacked, raised his revolver. Yeah, they knew this guy, but he was still a vamp. He would kill for their blood, but that wasn’t what was spooking her the most.
Her first instinct had been to terminate him without another thought—that was what made her scared.
Frank inched closer to his old friend, cocking his own head as if in understanding. The vamp habit dug into Dawn.
“Hugh?” he asked.
But, just as he got near, something tore out from behind a corner, flying at Frank. Without even deigning to glance at it, her dad easily raised his hand and ripped at the thing’s throat.
It was a Groupie skidding over the mud, a scimitar in hand. The woman’s silver eyes bulged as she opened her mouth in silent surprise and tested her ripped throat with long, pink-painted fingernails. The chains she wore over her skin got caked with grime, her flowing blond hair growing red where it met her opened neck.
Before anyone could react, Hugh the Guard sprang at the new arrival.
“Blood! Groupie blood, Groupie blood!” He grunted, wrenching back her head to sink his iron fangs into her neck, then drinking deeply.
As the Groupie’s eyes rolled back, her mouth formed one beseeching word that looked like “Master???”
From the corner, Dawn’s almost-dead Guard began to crawl through the mud and toward the Groupie, too. “Groupie blood, Groupie blood.”
Kiko, Dawn, and Frank all connected gazes, the meaning in each of their eyes clear.
Run.
Frank scooped up Kiko, not even considering the insult of what he was doing to the back-injured psychic, and Dawn hefted her saw-bow to her side. They took off, the mud sucking at her boots until they reached an area where the sprinklers were off. She ran faster when the eerie screeches of “hooome” wavered through the tunnels, as if searching, coming closer and closer. . . .
Thank God none of them had been bleeding. Thank God none of their own wounds had set those Guards off.
As the cries came to a peak, Frank motioned for Dawn and Kiko to halt and wait against a wall. They did, and she pushed her machete back into its holster, then grabbed her .45 to aim it instead. Through a hole in the wall, they could see more Guards screeching past in an adjacent tunnel, coming from other sentry points around the Underground on their way to Hugh and the sacrificial Groupie.
Then Frank lifted his chin, as if listening to the air.
He might’ve been connecting with Eva now. Dawn hoped so, as she watched a few Groupies dash toward the growing “hooome!” screams.
“I wonder,” she whispered to Kiko, “if the Guards can keep those Groupies busy long enough for us to get in and out.”
“Don’t count on it,” Kik said, his breathing labored. He wasn’t complaining about being carried around by her muscled dad, so all seemed good.
Frank jerked his head in the “go” signal, and they ran ahead, making their haphazard way toward Eva, then hopefully Breisi, then maybe even . . . ?
How was Costin doing?
As Frank ran ahead with Kiko, Dawn cleared her mind, doing her best to stay even with her fast dad.
But when someone’s arm sprang out of a crevice in the wall to grab her throat, she couldn’t even cry out.
All she could do was watch Frank disappearing down the tunnel with Kiko under his arm while she was dragged into that crevice. Then, as her vision adjusted, she found herself in a small room filled with what looked to be office supplies.
Office supplies? she thought randomly, her throat raw and tender. What the—?
Then her attacker swung her up and pinned her against the wall, holding her high above him with one hand against her chest, making her heave for air as she dropped her weapons.
“Just because the Master likes you,” Paul Aspen said, his scars from the chandelier healed to pink reminders, “it doesn’t mean we can’t settle things between us in a way you won’t forget.”
He reached up and ripped out her blood-moon earring, laughing as she yelled.
WHILE Costin’s team had made their way Underground—a fact unbeknownst to him—he had stepped out of the shadows to reveal himself in the starkly depressing room known as Benedikte’s chambers. Costin had hypnotized his and the Friends’ way past Servants, Groupies, Elites, and Guards to get here, mentally persuading the simple beings that they were not seeing him. Ultimately, finding the Master’s quarters had been all too easy.
Now, as he stood before Benedikte, he saw that his old comrade was not himself. Literally. He was wearing another being’s body: that of a long-haired, brown-tressed male vampire whose face held a barely contained scowl. Yet Costin knew it was his old friend under the surface. He could tell by the window of the eyes.
Casually, he reached into Jonah’s oversized coat, grasping the small, tied velvet bags that the Friends would need to guarantee the privacy he would need with Benedikte. He’d waited until finding the Master before setting the spirits loose, avoiding any alarms they might trigger on their own.
“Go,” he commanded, tossing the bags into the air. The spirits batted them around to push them forward as they left through the open door. Just as carelessly, Costin went to close the barrier, watching Benedikte all the while.
“Shifting shapes,” Costin noted as his comrade merely stared with unfocused eyes. “Your powers grew strong. What other talents have you developed?”
As the Master crawled away from the woman he had been cradling—all while never removing his gaze from Costin—memory returned like a night’s half-moon.
Benedikte, his fierce yet gentle friend.
He had always fought hard for the dragon, even before the blood vow had b
een undertaken, yet he had loved a wife beyond all imagining. When she had delivered their stillborn son, it had taken away a vital element in the man; it had perhaps even made it possible for Benedikte to have embraced vampirism with such relish in the end.
Costin watched his companion dart a glance to the breathing vampire woman in the corner, as if to make sure she was safe. Eva Claremont, Dawn’s mother. Her eyes were closed, as if in slumber. A look of such longing passed over Benedikte’s face that Costin found him to be almost human.
Finally, the Master located his voice. “You entered without incidence. I didn’t invite you inside. . . .”
“I don’t need such a thing. I am not a vampire like you.” Costin shook his head. “Benedikte, I sensed you long ago. You must have wandered aboveground, or perhaps come near an entrance to have shared Awareness with me. You are hard to detect Below.”
“You aren’t . . . a vampire?” his old friend asked with wonder.
Costin clung to those words. They were all he had besides his rented soul and Jonah’s temporary shelter.
At Benedikte’s perplexed glance, Costin relented, sweeping a hand over this shape—Jonah’s—that must have been so unfamiliar to his old friend.
“I am still Costin,” he reminded him.
For a sublime moment, his friend’s eyes sparkled, and in that gleam, Costin saw them laughing together over meals, sweating together over the labor of seeing their land remain pure and untouched by foreign conquerors.
As if slipping into a more comfortable suit, Benedikte’s body flowed from its present state to one more welcoming. His own form. The true Benedikte.
Anxiety invaded Costin. He had bested many masters, but this one . . . ? He was almost a true brother. The bond they had enjoyed remained one of his most treasured human memories.
“My brother,” Benedikte said, his tone a testament to better times. But then he cocked his head, his eyes returning to the dull haze that had greeted Costin previously. “You’re here to challenge me?”
“Yes, Benedikte.”
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