With a small yet air-shattering demolition, the scales of Eva’s decision tipped.
Robbed of her defenses, Dawn kissed Eva’s hand, holding her face there and breathing in the scent she’d always hoped a mother might have.
Eva was going to do it. Or was this just another way to draw them in and then crush them at their weakest?
11:46.
Eva clung to her, but even in their reunion, Dawn could feel a tautness, a torn guilt for betraying her vows.
“They don’t know I have Frank,” Eva said, referring to the Underground. “So if I told them your missing father suddenly barged in here to rescue you, it would sound real. I could say I wasn’t here when it happened, and he overwhelmed Julia—”
“And he got back my weapons.” Was she pushing her luck here? “Isn’t that how it could’ve happened, Mom? Frank supposedly got back my weapons and he wheedled Breisi’s location out of your Servant. But what about Julia—?”
“She’s beholden to me. She’s kept secrets before and she’ll do it again.” Eva looked like she was being dragged toward a stake to be burned. “There’re ways of making her…forget…too. But remember, this doesn’t mean I’m letting you go. Not you or Frank. The Master will believe anything I say, and nothing about our future has changed. In fact…”
As Eva’s speech faded, Dawn could imagine her words.
In fact, what I’m doing for you now binds you to me.
She’d remember. “Where’s Breisi?”
“An abandoned field in the woods over at—”
“You’re taking us there,” Frank said from his spot on the floor. “We’re almost out of time.”
The vampire seemed even more torn now.
“Please,” Dawn said.
That was all it seemed to take. “I won’t be there to help you. I could never get away with that.”
11:47.
“Mom?”
Eva closed her eyes. “You have to know—the killer’s broadcast to the public wasn’t real. It was fed live into
my
TV, but it’s also being taped so it can be sent later to Limpet, after the deed is done. Breisi’s murder was never meant to be aired publicly, it was just a lure to get Jonah Limpet out of hiding.”
More goddamned luring, but so what? Eva had just confirmed that Breisi was still alive.
“We need to move,” Dawn said.
“Wait. You have to be prepared for Guards, even though they…Let’s just say you’re going to come out alive, okay? They’re positioned around the area to make sure the killer has the opportunity to take out Breisi, and then to clean up after her before going back Underground.”
“Just Guards? Why didn’t you guys bring out your higher-level vamps?”
“This isn’t the big stand, Dawn. Limpet isn’t meant to see the broadcast until the murder’s over. The Master wouldn’t dare send the better vampires for this little errand, not unless he knew your protective spirits would be around. But he knows that won’t happen—Breisi’s Friend was already taken care of and Limpet wouldn’t know where to send any others.”
Dawn wished Jonah would’ve had the chance to save Breisi: he’d always told them that he would take over if they found a vampire lair. That made Dawn think he could deal with a bunch of pissed off Guards in a blink.
But she knew there was no way Eva would allow Dawn to call him. She was taking enough of a risk already.
Eva continued. “This is all designed to provoke Jonah into showing himself and attacking the Underground—which he will when he finds Breisi’s body.”
Dawn held out her hands so Eva could take off her chains. Superhuman yanks on the steel links did the trick.
“Why was
your
broadcast live? Why not just tape Breisi’s death for
us
, too?”
Eva looked at a loss, as if she realized how selfish she was going to sound. “I knew I’d have to obey the Master’s whims. He wanted Dawn to see what could happen to a vampire hunter—it’s part of making the Underground a more attractive option than staying with Jonah. But showing Dawn the broadcast wouldn’t give away anything to Jonah, either: the Master doesn’t want Limpet to know that he’s the one behind Breisi’s death—that’s where the Vampire Killer takes the fall—but he knew Dawn wouldn’t be able to tell Jonah anything because
I
have her. I couldn’t get out of going along with this plan of his, so I ended up asking a favor from him instead…. I just wanted get my part over with.” Eva went to Frank, deftly liberating him from his chains, too. “I couldn’t sit here waiting for the murderer to finish. I wanted to move on and forget what was happening with the rest of them. And the Master liked that I want to forge ahead with life, so he agreed.”
Incredible, but could Dawn blame her? All Eva wanted was to get Breisi out of the way, leaving the Madisons free to reunite. The sooner that happened for Eva, the better. Screw the big war, right?
“You’re lucky you’re his favorite,” Dawn said, already at the door. Because if the Master found out what Eva was doing to win back her family’s love, he’d probably go ballistic.
Eva undid the locks.
Frank was right behind them as they started up the stone stairs. “So why not give Jonah a live feed, too, and just get this big confrontation over with?”
“For the Underground to continue prospering in secrecy, the fight has to take place Below, where humans won’t know about it. Besides, the Master’s confident on his home turf. He just hasn’t been sure that Jonah is a foe. All he wants is to bring him into hostile territory away from Above, where he doesn’t have to worry about being caught by mortals.”
As much as Dawn wanted more details…“Where’s our stash?”
With one last indecisive look, Eva complied. The next minute was a blur as she headed for Julia while giving directions about where to find their weapons, including personal effects. They gathered them rapidly.
“Remember, I’m getting those back,” Eva said before they rushed into the night.
While Dawn sprayed herself and Frank with garlic, it didn’t escape her notice that he flinched, and that he seemed stronger out of his silver chains.
He’d tucked a revolver into a hip holster and slung a big leather man-purse over his burly chest. Just as Dawn was tempted to ask what was in it, she saw Eva pause, close her eyes as if in desperate prayer, then whoosh into Danger Form: heart-stoppingly celestial, a silver cloud of insidious beauty.
The vampire wrapped around her family, veiling and lifting them. It felt like a storm cloud had iced around Dawn, suspending her in numbness and differentiating what Eva was from a Friend or anything else in Dawn’s studies. There was a muted humming, unsettling and primal, robbing her of most senses—touch, scent, awareness of time. And, before she could connect one thought to another, Eva had deposited them on the ground.
Her glow revealed that they were at the lip of a forest, in a deserted campsite. A burnt-out fire ring and the skeleton of a lounge chair were the only signs of life.
Eva hovered away from them, sublime and misty, her tendrils weaving in and out of her form as she gave them directions to the hidden camper.
“I’m coming back for you,” she vowed, raising a tendril in the direction of the camper as if to complete one last mysterious task.
Dawn couldn’t stop herself. “Or you could stay and help.”
“I’ve done enough. The killer’s transmission and recording have been interrupted. Go.”
Then Eva cracked like lightning, rising, rushing off again, disappearing into the midnight sky.
Of course she wouldn’t stay. She didn’t want to take a risk that the Underground might hear about her participation. Hell, she’d already been foolhardy in using Danger Form here Above.
“Let’s go.” Frank had pulled out his revolver. It had a tiny light near the muzzle that he didn’t even flick on.
Was it because his sight was already good in the dark?
Dawn took out her own nightlight, a headset that could fit into a jacket pocket. She geared up, readying her own revolver.
Then they darted into the woods, leaves crackling under their boots as her pulse thundered.
The camper was right where Eva said it’d be, its windows burning like night eyes amidst the trees.
Outside the door, Frank held up his revolver, waiting for Dawn to assume position on the other side.
The trees shook, and a
screech
rocked the air. Red-eyes.
Dawn raised her revolver.
With a heave, Frank opened the door and jumped up into the vehicle, Dawn following and aiming around for the killer.
“Breisi!” she heard him say, and she whipped around, targeting, targeting…
Frank had rushed toward his bound girlfriend, past the waiting camera, making a desperate dive for her.
But Dawn was far enough away to get perspective: Breisi’s tied, stomping feet, her widened eyes trained on something in back of Dawn—
When she whirled around, something pierced her jacketed arm, and the world electrified, plunging her to the floor in spasms and making her drop the revolver.
Above her, she could barely make out Cassie Tomlinson, head bare, sharp fangs decorating a razored smile as she held a Taser in one hand and brandished a knife at Dawn with the other.
A
S
Dawn writhed, Cassie turned off the Taser and yelled at Frank. “Drop your gun, sit down, keep your hands up!”
Dawn heaved for breath, nerve endings fried. No energy. It felt like her body had been used as a baseball bat against a metal pole, but twenty times worse. And even looking at Cassie through half-lidded eyes reminded Dawn of a film-school trick shot Hitchcock might’ve used—a solitary figure with the world spinning around her. Vertigo.
“If any of you move,” Cassie said around her fangs, “I’ll filet this girl.”
She bent, positioning the knife blade near Dawn’s throat.
Fighting to focus, Dawn saw enough to know that Cassie, Lee’s sister and the woman they’d interviewed back at the Adventure Motel, was gone. What was left was a horror show.
No more hippie scarf or cornrowed hair. Wig, Dawn thought, seeing the camper lights gleam off the woman’s bald head. Generic jumpsuit, like a maintenance worker’s, covering her body. Latex gloves. Fangs.
At Dawn’s perusal, Cassie’s mouth stretched into a smile, fangs sparkling just like her threatening knife.
A thud on the roof shook the trailer. Then another. Another, another, another.
Guards.
From Dawn’s angle, she could barely see Frank because a table blocked his upper face but, next to him, the bound and duct-taped Breisi was in full view as she stared at Cassie, eyes wider now with something like growing dread. Frank had his hands in the air, his revolver on the floor.
“There’s my protection,” Cassie said. “All I have to do is tell them to come into my family’s RV if there’s trouble. And you guys are.”
“Inviting the Guards in would stop your broadcast,” Frank said, making Dawn wonder if Eva had prepared him for what the hell a Guard even was.
Breisi glanced at Frank. Her heart was in her eyes.
“Don’t invite them in,” Frank repeated.
Dawn could tell he was leveling Cassie with a steady gaze, but, from here, she couldn’t see his eyes directly.
For some reason, she had a bad feeling about this.
“You don’t have to prove anything to Lee,” Frank added.
At those words, Cassie startled, her knife a little less poised now. But that was nothing next to the shock Dawn felt. It was like she’d been Tasered again.
How would Frank know anything about Lee and Cassie?
Training,
she thought.
Jonah gave him training for months.
Or was he mind screwing, like a…?
The notion was too terrifying, too impossible.
Cassie stared back at Frank, as if enthralled. “My brother thinks I’m a nothing. He’s wrong,
the
—”
“
The
Lee is wrong,” Frank finished. When he continued, he wasn’t addressing Cassie; he was talking to Dawn and Breisi and, weirdly, he was using Cassie’s more educated speech cadence.
“That’s what all the kids called Lee.
The
Lee, because he thought he was special. And when he went off to Hollywood to prove it, Cassie was afraid he would succeed. She hated him more than ever because he would become a star and she would never have what it takes to make it.”
God, Frank
was
inside of Cassie’s head.
Shivers traveled under Dawn’s skin, bringing her to, reminding her to detach the Taser probes from her jacket. Carefully. One false move and Cassie might come out of it.
“Almost all of the family was starstruck,” Frank continued. “Cassie had dreams of acting, just like Marg and Lee. But Lane, their older brother, was too levelheaded. He took care of everything after Dad died, so he didn’t have time for movies and idle goals. But if there was one thing they all knew, it was that Lee was going to be famous one day. And that meant he’d lord it over them even more than usual.”
Footsteps pounded the roof. Red-eyes. Emphatic thumps made Dawn imagine their barbed tails, beating time in the night.
Screeeech!
Dawn braced herself for Cassie to snap to attention, but the Vampire Killer didn’t remove her gaze from Frank’s.
He paused. “I don’t know why Lee killed Klara Monaghan. The Tomlinsons just knew that he was heavily involved with something secret, but he wouldn’t tell them what it was. It could’ve been Sasha he was hiding.”
Shit, another dead end. The Underground did a hell of a job covering their tracks.
Dawn saw her revolver near Cassie’s feet, about a yard away. It seemed like a mile. Should she use that or a different weapon to take the killer out? Dawn had gotten her sharp silver necklace back from Eva—could she slip
that
off and plunge it into Cassie’s neck before the girl had a chance to call the Guards?
Deciding that she’d rather be safe than sorry, Dawn began to inch toward the revolver, knowing this was her best chance to silence the human Vampire Killer by shooting Cassie in the throat to damage her vocal cords, then quickly in the heart.
As Dawn crept her hand over the floor, her lighted headset slipped off, already loose from her fall.
“The last straw,” Frank continued, “was when Lee the murderer became more famous than any of them ever anticipated. Every time he was on TV, it was hell, it was all of his bragging coming true. Even from jail he was superior.
The
Lee. And soon after the family arrived in town, they each had a chance to talk with him alone. When it was Cassie’s turn, he looked right at her and reminded her about all those nights”—Frank wrestled in a breath—“all those
nights
. He told her how he’d start them up again after he got out of jail because he was going to get away with
Klara’s
crime, and that meant he’d be able to get away with doing anything—especially with a nobody.
“Cassie lost it. She was a
somebody
, and she wanted to show
the
Lee she was stronger than that, to mess him up just as much as he’d messed up her. Most of all, she wanted to prove she was a person—a special one—just like him and she was worthy of more than being his inferior.
“So, on the sly, she planned everything, watched all the TV shows about murder, read about how to get away with it on the Internet, spent hours with books like
Crime and Punishment
to see what she had to do, how to act. She knew about trace evidence and, since she was smarter than
the
Lee, her first time went off without a hitch. She shaved her head and hid the deception with a wig and a scarf—a new style for a new state, she told her family. For her victims, she picked women because, realistically, they were the only ones she could physically overcome with the help of one thing: surprise. These were symbolic victims—at first they were just used to prove a point to Lee. But that’s before she got to like the blood….”
Dawn held her breath, inches away from the revolver. But when Cassie leaned slightly toward Frank, Dawn paused.
“After finding them in the ValuShoppe parking lot,” Frank continued, “Cassie would follow the women around to find out their schedules. Then she’d ambush them in their homes—all she had to do was pick locks and be careful about being seen. Then she’d slit their throats before they could defend themselves.”
Frank was breathing harder now. “
She
was the real Vampire Killer, not
the
Lee. She was going to take the spotlight away from him by being more successful, racking up more numbers. After Jessica’s murder, it was easy to take any lingering evidence like the dresses and dry cleaning bags from the closet. She burned those things, plus her own clothing, in a homeless person’s bonfire near the motel. Cassie could finally use
her
acting skills, too, by pretending she was one of them and that she just wanted a warm fire.”
He hesitated, then seemed to be overtaken, words rushing out, harder, more jagged. “Cassie wanted to dominate
the
Lee like he dominated her—
thrust
,
thrust
—she hated him, but she loved him, and maybe by imitating his murders she could also keep him safe from conviction, mislead the jury…. Oh, he’ll owe her big if she saves him and
then
who’ll be the superior—?”
Bang
,
bang
on the roof.
Screee-ch!
Dawn stretched toward the revolver again….
“Dear God.” Frank was still enthralling Cassie, but it looked like he was trying to pull away. “What Lee did—”
Closer, closer…
“—to her…Marg would turn her back on them when
the
Lee would creep into the room at night. She knew—she had to know. He’d get into bed and tell Cassie not to make a sound. He was the superior, she was nothing.”
Frank jerked back in his seat, but Dawn already had her weapon. It weighed in her hand as she aimed it.
Groaning awake, Cassie blinked, then saw Dawn. Frank’s connection had been severed with his shock at what he’d seen in her mind.
With a cry, the killer raised her knife, face arranged in a fanged grimace.
“I’m Somebody!” she screamed, the blade coming down.
Dawn rolled away just in time for Cassie to stab the floor. Frank bolted up from his seat.
Shoot her before she can
—
“Get in here!” Cassie screamed in invitation to the Guards as she sprang to her feet.
Bang!
Knife tumbling from her grip, the pseudo-vamp flew backward, hitting a paneled wall and slumping to the floor, her chest smoking from Frank’s bullet.
Then it began.
First it was the roof, moaning as it was torn off like the lid of a can, exposing them all to the night sky.
One pair of red eyes in a pale face peeked in.
Dawn had imagined this so many times before that she should’ve been more afraid. But fear wasn’t what was driving her now. It was so much more—something hella more dangerous.
Erecting a mind block, Dawn stared down a red-eye, adrenaline escalating her heartbeat. Lifting her revolver, she got ready to target the heart with her silver bullets, but anywhere else would at least slow these clowns down. Ready, aim—
Three walls went flying to the elements, whizzing into the night. It left just the cab, with its weak light underscoring the horror.
The Guards descended.
Five of them. Five freakin’ maniacs with pale bald heads, burning eyes, iron fang teeth, and black clothing belled out like death’s wings.
One zoomed toward Dawn, claws outstretched.
Calmly, she squeezed the trigger. The Guard jerked backward, abruptly vacuuming into itself, its clothing falling to the ground and puffing to a quick, disappearing burn.
Four.
Panting, Dawn crawled to a better position, limbs liquid. She noticed Breisi trying to maneuver her arms from behind her back down to her feet, where she leveraged her sneakers against the rope to get the binding off.
Dawn couldn’t help her. She had just enough presence of mind to notice that Frank had taken down another Guard in midflight before the last three crashed to the trailer’s floor, shaking it. They rose in their stop-motion heartbeat rhythm—
ba-ba-boomp
,
ba-ba-boomp
—and leveled their red eyes on the team.
We could be fucked,
she thought, pushing off of the floor.
One of the vamps flashed out its long tail, accidentally catching Dawn’s weapon as it went for Frank’s gun. Her revolver flitted to the ground. The Guard slammed away her dad’s weapon, too, spinning it over to one of its partners.
The other red-eye opened its jaws, catching the revolver between its iron teeth, then crunching the weapon to debris.
So fucked.
For some reason, the three Guards didn’t flick open their machete tails, and Dawn couldn’t say she missed the show of steel-edged blooms. Instead, the red-eyes merely tracked her and Frank with their gazes. The one nearest Dawn tilted its head as if it recognized her. Didn’t they all by now?
Not giving up, she dove for her revolver, grasping it.
A red-eye spit at her hand, and she instinctively flinched from what she knew would burn.
On her belly, she just stared at her abandoned weapon—so close.
Wasting no time, she started to reach for a crucifix in her jacket but a second blob of flying spit changed her mind. It barely missed her, too.
“What’re they doing?” she asked, hoping her dad was aware enough to answer.
While the Guards waved their tails in Frank’s face and hissed, her dad stood with his hands up in surrender again.
“Maybe they’re thinking of all the fun ways they could use our bodies for Play-Doh?” he muttered.
Breisi moaned against her duct tape, wiggling around as if she knew the answer. She probably did, the brain.
“Eva,” Dawn said. “She wouldn’t have brought us if she knew the Guards might kill us. And if we’re captured? No problem. She wants us Underground anyway. Maybe these red-eyes have been instructed not to ever harm the family of Little Miss Master’s Favorite.”
Frank laughed harshly. “I’ll be damned if we get taken.”
Something awful occurred to Dawn. “If we’re protected, then what about…”
She glanced at Breisi. At the same exact time, Frank seemed to realize the danger his girlfriend was in, too.
He reached into his man-purse and pulled out another gun, but this one was longer, the nozzle flared. What the—?
He pulled the trigger. Fire scorched out of it, consuming the Guard nearest to him in one swallow.
Dawn and Breisi both hurled themselves away, taking shelter behind seats and fallen tables as the Guard screeched and flailed, running, going nowhere but the dirt as it dove off the side of the camper.
With a sick sucking sound, it moaned into a charred memory.
As a seat caught on fire, one Guard yelped away from the flames, using its machete tail to slash the conflagration off the camper.
Meanwhile, the third one attacked Frank, and Dawn reached into her pocket, whipped the velvet cover off her throwing stars, grasped one and used the motion of her body and wrist to flick it outward. The holy-water-covered silver blade swooped through the air, embedding itself into the red-eye’s neck.