At the same time, Frank aimed his weapon at the other Guard—the fire scaredy-cat. The ticked-off freak easily cuffed the gun away from her dad, then wrapped its tail around him.
Concentrating, Dawn flicked another blade at her own red-eyed attacker, grunting as it swicked into the Guard’s temple.
Slowly, it reached up to the wound in its neck, then its head. It bared its iron fangs. Shook its head.
Y-ah.
Dawn grasped another star.
But then the Guard went stiff, dropping to its knees and banging face-first to the floor.
Convulsing, its head smacked the ground over and over again until its forehead turned to mash.
One sucking instant later, it was air, a victim of the silver plus the holy-water poison.
That
really
pleased Frank’s Guard. It got feisty, opening up its tail to full extension, the blades coming just inches from Frank’s surprised face as it raised him aloft.
Whick, whick, whick.
Blade after blade, it revealed a bouquet of machetes, screeching, body flickering with its
ba-ba-bomp
movements.
As the creature fixed on Dawn, she grabbed her revolver from the floor, targeting the heart.
In defiance, it lifted up both hands—
throw down, bitch!
—and basically unwrapped, then flicked, Frank out of its tail.
Right away, her dad jumped toward Breisi, then whisked her into his arms, holding her as if she was all that existed for the quickest, longest moment he could probably manage. He put his face against her hair, and she pressed against him.
Then he prepared to jump to the ground with her.
Dawn should’ve known it was too easy.
A hurricane seemed to fly down from the black sky, crying bloody murder.
Eva?
The silver-misted vampire flashed wispy tentacles, a heavenly storm of violence. Without preamble, a million strands seemed to wrap around the last Guard’s neck, lifting him as high as a sacrifice before he could threaten Dawn anymore.
In the face of Eva’s power, the creature opened its mouth, not in fear, but in…loving awe.
Then, with powerful thrusts in every possible direction, Eva tore the lesser vampire apart, its body scattering, meat hitting tree trunks with vulgar splats.
“Mom?” Dawn cried. “Mom!”
She’d come back. Why? Who cared—she was
here
and she was helping them!
The little girl in her danced around, squealing.
But when Eva twirled toward Frank, pushing him from Breisi and tossing her to the dirt outside, Dawn’s little girl died.
“What’re you doing?” she screamed, looking to see that Breisi was okay. She was, already working frantically to unbind herself again.
Eva floated, wisps of sparkling glamour mingling in her silver death-angel form. “We’re going back now,” she said in a shudder-inducing tone.
Dawn opened her mouth to ask if Breisi was coming, too, but by then it was too late.
In all the excitement, nobody had seen what Cassie was up to: they hadn’t noticed that she’d tumbled off the camper during the commotion, that she’d somehow salvaged the camera—which had probably flown off the trailer’s platform during the fight.
Then—chest wound or not—she’d crawled from beneath the camper and over to Breisi, still intent on finishing her finale and becoming a star.
Frank was the first to see what was happening.
“Breisi!”
Eva’s light illuminated it all: the camera’s passive gaze while it sat where Cassie had put it on its bent stand, the knife blade flashing as Cassie darted over to Breisi and pinned the still-bound victim to her back with one arm and a leg.
All Dawn could think to do was yell to the most powerful being in their midst—her mother, the woman who’d been perfect in Dawn’s dreams.
“Mom?!” she screamed.
She was begging, and when Eva’s form shifted, just like a bed of stars colliding into each other, Dawn knew her mother realized it: she knew how much Breisi meant to both Dawn and Frank, and it disturbed her.
I just want my family,
the actress had told Dawn….
Eva loomed, refusing to engage.
On a choke of disbelief, Dawn started to get up, to go to Breisi herself. Frank frantically dug in his satchel for a weapon….
But Cassie’s knife was already slicing down, aimed at Breisi’s throat. The start of the Vampire Killer ritual. After that, she’d use her fake fangs to rip into Breisi’s neck…it all had to be played out for the camera….
Stop!
At Dawn’s mind-blasting rage, the cab of the trailer burst apart, wires sparking and buzzing. At the same time, in a boom of heat and speed, Eva tardily zoomed forward at Cassie, as if to put on a show of caring.
But the Vampire Killer had already lifted a blood-edged blade toward the lens, her fangs shining like white sacrificial knives as she assumed a profane swan-song pose for the camera.
Viciously, Eva stabbed Cassie with her multitude of tendrils, lifting the killer high above, then smashing her to the ground, reducing her to paste.
Vision blurred, Dawn sprinted forward, slicing past her mom to where Breisi lay jerking, bathed in Eva’s light.
There was…
Dawn couldn’t believe there was a wound. Flailing, she pressed her hands to it, tears and shock making it impossible to say anything. In her friend’s…her surrogate’s…eyes, Dawn saw utter confusion.
Where was Jonah?
Breisi seemed to be asking.
Wasn’t he supposed to save me?
Frank stumbled over, frantically trying to help Dawn staunch the bleeding.
“Oh, no…no…I couldn’t get a shot off in…” He burst into sobs, touching his girlfriend’s face. “Don’t die, don’t die….”
Breisi’s eyes got duller.
Jonah?
Even though it wasn’t right to blame him—how could he have been here in time?—Dawn did. She blamed him for this. And Eva…goddamn her, Eva, most of all because she hadn’t stopped it.
Even worse, Dawn hadn’t been able to stop any of it, either.
In the near distance, the wail of a siren pierced her hearing, but she didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know what any of it meant.
The lights in Breisi’s eyes dimmed as she jerked and stared at Dawn. Affection. Sisterhood. So many chances missed.
“Don’t go,” Frank yelled, “God, don’t go! I love you, Breisi—” He turned to Eva. “Save her, Eva! You can heal her!”
The sirens got louder.
Eva’s light was waning, her voice soft. “This injury would take a long time to heal—it’s so deep I don’t know if anyone but the Master could even help with it….”
Sirens…closer…
Frank raised his face, his eyes crazed. “Try!”
On what sounded like the pulse of a sob, Eva swirled her mist around him, maybe to comfort him, maybe to take him back.
Breisi’s irises had been taken over by her black pupils. She choked one more time, then stopped spasming.
Instead of a baffled tint of horror in her eyes, Dawn saw something else. An…answer?
Under the duct tape on her mouth, Breisi smiled, her head falling to the side.
No. Dawn shook her head, throat hot and tight. No, this wasn’t happening—
Sirens…
Then the smell of jasmine.
A blanket of mingled screams swept down from the trees, surrounding Dawn in protection, wrapping her in a womb.
Dawn tried to tell them,
Keep the cops away so Eva can heal Breisi!
but she couldn’t form words.
The sirens blasted, right outside the trees.
With a silvery blast, Eva barged up against the Friends to get to Dawn, but the vampire couldn’t get past their spirit shelter.
Then, wasting no more time, Eva’s form enveloped Breisi’s body, sweeping it into an embrace along with Frank, who pushed at the cloudy walls like a prisoner, mouth open in what Dawn thought was her name.
They zipped away, over the trees.
“Go, go…”
It was the Friends, nudging Dawn away from the blood-soaked dirt where Breisi had just lain.
Hazily, Dawn stumbled away with their help, crashing through the trees just before the sirens wailed to a stop behind them.
Why had Eva taken Breisi? She couldn’t heal her. So
why
?
It was as if the Friends were holding her up, pushing her along as branches slapped her face, forcing her into seclusion and never letting her rest until she got to a main road where she found a convenience store. Before going inside, they pushed her toward a washroom where she barely remembered straightening herself up. Then, numbly, she used the ATM, then a pay phone, which allowed her to get a taxi.
All the while, something was embossing itself in Dawn’s vision, hissing over Eva’s old crime-scene photo.
Breisi’s own death pose, eyes staring up at Dawn and asking how this could have happened.
D
AWN
couldn’t do much. But vague instinct told her that she needed to do
something
before the Friends escorted her back to the Limpet house: she was pretty much a fugitive who’d flown a crime scene. She had to get as much done as possible now in case she was called in for questioning by the cops.
Maybe the Friends felt sorry for her, this deadened girl who was only just now beginning to operate normally as she shakily drove to Beachwood Drive. Or maybe Dawn had more power than she was aware of over the ghosts trailing her car and they had no choice but to follow her wishes.
After the carnage, she’d caught the taxi. Luckily, the driver had cared more about some gossip he’d picked up at the store than his passenger. Had she heard about the strange lights reported around the area by campers? Probably UFOs. There’d also been gunshots—no doubt rednecks who wanted to scare off those aliens—so the cops had gone out to the location, where they’d set up some sort of secret investigation already.
Dawn knew they’d found a real crime scene, too, filled with Cassie’s oatmealed body and a camera that’d recorded everything. Would a vampire video surface somewhere soon?
Then she recalled something about an interrupted transmission by Eva….
Yes, Eva, and all Dawn wanted to do was catch up with Breisi’s
real
killer. Eva. And then there was this Master….
Right. What was she going to do with him? Throw down with this even more powerful vampire?
How?
That’s where plan B came in. After the taxi ride to Jac…Eva’s, where she’d picked up her car, Dawn had used another pay phone to call the man who’d suddenly moved down on her list of those to avoid.
Matt Lonigan.
Sounding very surprised and even relieved that she’d contacted him, he told her he was home if she needed him.
And she did need, but not in the usual way.
As Dawn walked up his drive, most of the Friends surrounded her. A few had already gone straight to Limpet’s.
“Daaaa-aawn?”
one of them asked while she knocked on the door.
“Too late…we were…too late…he didn’t know….”
They’d been telling her that off and on, apologizing, hinting that they’d been out searching for Dawn all over the county. Due to Eva’s impulsive activities, they’d been able to finally lock onto her location but hadn’t arrived in time.
No explanation mattered. All Dawn could see was Breisi choking on her own blood.
Matt answered the door on the second knock. The sight of his bruised everyman looks got to her, but she shut him out. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that emotion was useless, that sex wasn’t going to solve anything.
“How much is your fee to hunt down vampires?” she asked, voice flatlined.
His forehead furrowed, but he opened the door. She stepped through, past him, back turned so she wouldn’t trip over his troubled pale gaze and talk herself back into feeling again.
She came to the front window and stared out of it, her hand rubbing her aching right arm. Outside, the bird-of-paradise plants lurked in the darkness, leaves scratching the panes in small bursts of dying color.
“I thought you’d want to talk about the Vampire Killer, Dawn, but it sounds like you’ve got something else in mind.”
She could feel Matt behind her, probably unsure of how close he should get.
“First, I’ll tell you why I’m
not
here. We’re not going to talk about what happened the other night with Eva Claremont’s dress. We’re never going to mention that again. I just need your help to hunt down some problem vamps.”
She remembered how Frank had read Cassie, how he’d touched his neck. Maybe he’d end up being one of her enemies, too, but right now, Eva was the biggest one. Eva and her master.
She could hear Matt breathe out a deep huff behind her. “I thought you had all the help you needed with Limpet.”
“If what Jonah Limpet offers is help, I’d hate to see the opposite.” After all, he’d put Breisi in the position to die tonight by hoarding information, by even
having
this mission to find an Underground.
Dawn needed to know that she had backup if Jonah wasn’t going to be there to support her own vendetta. That’s where Matt was coming in.
Something flashed by the window—not quite there, but there all the same. A Friend on watch. Were they keeping tabs on how much Dawn said to Matt?
In back of her, he moved forward. “Dawn—”
She spun around, anticipating his touch on her shoulder. Left arm up, she attempted to block him, but instead accidentally caught his skin with her nails. He jerked his hand back, then wonderingly looked at the scratches she’d left.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice gritty, “but this is business. Just…business.”
And that’s all it’d ever be.
His jaw clenched as he glared at the kitchen floor and planted his hands on his hips. The scratch was nothing to him, but she’d set him off by striking.
“I want to hire you to back me up, Matt. How much do you charge?”
“Too much.” He looked at her from beneath a lowered brow. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on and then we’ll talk about what happened with the Vampire Killer?”
“I’m not being a drama queen, if that’s what you’re getting at. My friend just got her throat cut open and—”
It felt like blades were slashing into her on all sides, and Dawn raised her arms to shield her face, to hide from Matt as she sank to her knees.
Breisi.
Dawn could still feel the slickness of blood under her palm, the futile pumping in Breisi’s neck as she fought to stay alive.
“She killed her,” Dawn said, emerging tears warping her voice. “Breisi died, and then the Vampire Killer…”
She trailed off. The real killer was Eva, because she’d only made a token effort to “save” Breisi, but she hadn’t wanted to—and that hesitation had made all the difference. Now, the only person Dawn could take at face value was dead.
“Who killed who…?” Matt got down on his knees, too. “You found the Vampire Killer? I saw what was on TV.”
Something gnawed at Dawn about what he’d just said, but it was beyond her. Instead, she uncovered her face, airing her rage as she struggled for a breath to help her stop crying. Her face was wet, exposed.
“I’m going to cut her in two.” Eva…she was going to kill
Eva
. “And all her vamp buddies. Then I’m going to take care of…”
Jonah.
Horrified, she halted before she could say his name. Why couldn’t she go on? Was all her training making her refuse to tell Matt about her boss? Or was it the soreness around her heart, a deep wound caused by his failure to save Breisi?
Or was it…shaken affection?
The realization shook her. Affection? She was going to make him pay, too. Breisi deserved better than to die because of Jonah’s damned causes.
Matt was leaning forward by now, his gaze wide, as if he was a mercenary staring at glistening gold. “You’re going to do what, Dawn?
What?
”
Chest tight, she allowed herself to breathe. To hesitate and think about what she was doing for once.
She licked her dry lips. “I’m going to find out why this happened.” Why Jonah had
let
it happen.
Yes. That made much more sense. Maybe she shouldn’t be here at all right now.
“You’re going to cut the Vampire Killer in two? Didn’t you already say she’s dead?” Matt was shaking his head, reaching out to her but knowing better not to touch. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Can you explain everything to me? Now,
who
died?”
“Breisi.” The name was a coiled tightness in her throat.
“I’m sorry, Dawn. I’m so sorry.”
He made as if to touch her again, but she jerked back. One sear of his skin against hers and it was over. She’d melt into him and dilute her hate. Dawn didn’t want that because the hate felt too good, too just.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, “just hunt with me.”
His hands looked useless from the way he held them. “I want to help, but I’m still not sure what you’re asking me to do. I need you to tell me everything. I won’t go out there unarmed with a lack of information.”
Her mind locked up. She wanted to argue that he should tell
her
everything, too, but it’d be fruitless. She was the one who needed his aid.
There was a gusting whoosh outside, a chop of wind. Matt fixed a glance on the window.
“The more you reveal,” he said, “the better off we’ll be.”
A prickle of unease stole over her. He sounded too demanding.
“Dawn?” he asked.
At that moment, she knew how stupid she was being. Coming here had been a strike against Jonah, a screw-you caused by the shock of Breisi’s death.
Or was she finally in the right place?
She stood, cuffing at the sticky tears, wanting to erase them. She needed to think some more, needed to get away.
“I’ve got to take care of something first.”
“Don’t go.” He seemed eager, rising to stand beside her. “Just talk to me. Don’t allow Limpet to control you. He’s done enough damage. Trust me.”
Eva’s dress floated past her mind’s eye, flowered poison.
She held up her hands, getting it together. “I’ll come back.”
And she would. God help her, being around him was sending off flares of need under her skin; she didn’t know how long she could keep herself off him in this moment of desperation. She wanted to feel life because death had struck her such a blow. She wanted to know that there was still some good around.
But…no. Not with Matt. He was Eva’s. How many times did she have to remind herself of that?
“I’ll call.” She rushed toward his door.
He reached out for her again, but she yanked her arm away, sending him a hurt glare.
It was enough.
He turned around, his broad back to her as she left.
Shaken, she shut the door behind her and took a deep fill of oxygen. What had she almost done?
As the Friends surrounded her on the walk back to her car, her doubts set in again.
Should she have talked to Matt? Or was Jonah really on the right side? There wasn’t anyone to turn to now….
Dawn got into her car, starting it. She had to ask The Voice, once and for all, what the hell was happening.
And if he wouldn’t answer, that’s when she’d know what to do.
I
NSIDE
Matt Lonigan’s house, the “private investigator” turned away from the window as Dawn’s taillights streamed into the distance, disappearing from view like the extinguishing of red eyes in the night.
Glancing at the back of his hand, he inspected the blood-thick scratches she’d given him during their spat, but even if she’d been angry, he knew she’d be back again. Dawn was caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, and she needed him.
He walked to the bolted door, removing the basketball backboard before unlocking it and opening the entrance. Welcome darkness. The scent of dank comfort. He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him and securing it. While climbing down the stairs, his boot steps echoed against the tunnel walls.
The walk was a long, subterranean stroll. His form tingled, reacting to the nearing proximity of his home, shifting degree by degree. The scratches Dawn had given him healed because he willed them gone. In fact, whenever he was in Matt’s body Above, he could choose to delay any patch-up work, just to seem more human—prone to injury. He could also be seen on film, in mirrors. He could slow vitals on others, too.
Step by step, his shape quivered, the illusion of clothes seeping into his core, his features disappearing into the vaporous blur he preferred most times.
But when he arrived at a holding chamber, he shifted back into the body he’d been doubling Above. On second thought, he wasn’t quite ready for his fun to end yet.
Scratching at the rock, Benedikte—also known as “Matt”—waited for the door to open.
Inside the holding room, the real Matt Lonigan turned away from Tamsin Greene, holding her jeweled fingers in his cupped hand. He was being entertained by the Elite while waiting to switch off with Benedikte and go back Above to do his own Servant work.
“Done already?” Tamsin asked as Matt let go of her.
The Master nodded. “Sounds like there were some snags, but the most important parts were taken care of. Breisi Montoya and the Vampire Killer have been reported dead.”
He gestured for Tamsin to leave, knowing her Underground vows would keep her from spreading news about these activities to the lower vampires.
With one last saucy glance at the human Matt, she pulled her sheer, filmy white peignoir around her and exited.
The Servant saluted his master, never losing any of his affable ease. “You
were
quick this time.”
“I had to get back—all this nonsense about the Guards not returning from their watch duty is causing concern. The Vampire Killer’s camera transmission hasn’t helped to clear up what’s going on, either, since we couldn’t see anything that happened after it cut out.”
Benedikte knew why the broadcast had been sliced short. Earlier, after Dawn had surprised “Matt”—the Master—on the phone, he’d contacted the Underground to see why she was out of Eva’s care. Interestingly enough, a breathless Eva herself had just come Underground and revealed a wild story to Sorin: it seemed that Frank Madison had rescued Dawn, then had gotten wind of the whole plan and taken his hunter daughter with him out to the woods in order to save his coworker Breisi. The fighters had no doubt been the reason for the Vampire Killer’s transmission interruption.
Luckily for the Underground, Frank and Dawn had ended up playing right into the most important parts of the plan.
Across the room, human Matt was putting on his long coat. He was a PI who’d been lured to the Underground nearly a decade ago—one of their most loyal Servants, always cooperating to the fullest. That’s why it’d been so natural for the Master to double him.
“So everything’s in place?” the human asked.
“Seems so. Breisi Montoya, Limpet’s best fighter, is gone. Kiko Daniels, their psychic, has mental powers no decent team would depend on at this point, and he’s physically unable to stand against us. Many of their spirits are neutralized, too, because now that we know how to captivate Limpet’s main resource, his little army is nothing.”