She grabbed his hand, put it in the center of her chest, over the shirt where her heart kicked, as if wanting to get out.
Kiko flinched. “Music…dancing…shock, so much shock because of something…” He shook his head. “I’m not sure what he saw, but it got to him.”
“Go on,” Dawn said.
He squinched his eyes. “He went to call the boss…storage room…something behind him—?”
Crying out, Kiko stumbled away from Dawn.
“And…” He calmed down, regulating his breathing. “There’s nothing after that. It’s like some presence came up behind him with a two-by-four and turned out the lights.”
Dawn sprang to her feet, headed for the door. “I’m going to Bava.”
“We’re going to the coroner’s,” Breisi said. “Our friend in that office won’t be so understanding about rescheduling.”
Kiko beat Dawn to the door, opening it and running outside. “Bava,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s our best chance! You can handle Klara on your own, just try to get a hold of any of Klara’s clothes, even a scrap, so I can read it!” Softer, he muttered, “I ain’t so sure I can read dead people anyway.”
“To Bava then,” Dawn said. “I’m checking out that storage room. Maybe there’s something…a clue? Frank wasn’t there too long ago. Or maybe we can sift through the liars at Bava and find someone who saw what really happened.”
Probably knowing she had no other choice, Breisi rolled her eyes. “Keep in contact. The boss won’t—”
“The boss willdeal.” Dawn took off after Kiko.
He was already inside her car. They’d left his at home since he’d rather be chauffeured around town in his sunglasses with I’m-a-budding-star grandeur. Forget that she was driving a beat-up Corolla, it was all in the entitled attitude.
As they roared off, it felt odd to be without Breisi. Sure, they were used to meeting her at the sites of interviews, but this was different. She wouldn’t be there to baby-sit, and Dawn hated the fact that having Breisi around made her feel a little better about whatever they might encounter.
It was the bladed crossbow, no doubt. God, Dawn really had to get one of those, too.
On the way, Kiko compensated for the lack of antiradar gadgets and opticoms by pumping up Dawn’s lame radio. The sound system conjured thoughts of a symphony in a tuna can.
“I have a jittery feeling,” Kiko said, messing with the radio dial until he hit pay dirt. “Like this is going to be huge. I almost feel like Frank was begging us to go back to Bava, like he’s dropping bread crumbs as clues.”
Swallowing down her anxiety, Dawn gripped the steering wheel as it shuddered. Hitting thirty miles per hour did that to her ride.
While a hot/cool jazzy song tinned out of the radio, Kiko relaxed against the seat, as if meditating. He was nervous. Was it because he’d channeled Frank’s fear and he hadn’t been able to shake it?
The voice from the radio was as smooth as a balmy night, as elegant as Spanish moss and as dark as bayou swamps. The Tamsin Greene, a young legend whose career had blossomed from singing to movies. A superstar.
The music did nothing to calm Dawn, so she floored the gas pedal, eventually screeching onto Vine, where parking was at a premium. They pulled onto Argyle Avenue
, found a place, then hoofed it to Bava.
The quake of musical bass stamped the air as they approached. At this time of night, and on a Friday besides, there was a bouncer sitting on a metal stool outside, collecting a twenty-dollar cover charge and checking IDs in a parody of law-abiding cooperation. The guy was huge, with Muscle Beach written all over his hard body.
Ignoring the line to get in—it consisted of a few guys who looked like shadow versions of Ziggy Stardust—Kiko walked up to the bouncer with a dick-in-the-hand strut. Dawn was impressed.
She took up his back, putting on her mean face. With her well-practiced glare, her obvious eyebrow scar, and her biker boots, she gave good pissy attitude.
Her associate flashed his PI license so quickly that Dawn doubted the bouncer had time to read the info.
“We’d like to check out a back room for a case,” he said.
The bouncer looked at them both, then busted out laughing. “This isn’t midget night.”
“Little person,” Kiko said with great dignity.
“You’re still a short shit. And guess what? We’re closed. Nobody else can go in.” Amused with himself, he gestured for one of the pseudo-Ziggies to come on over.
They all laughed—tee-hee-hee—at how the bouncer was being so politically incorrect.
“Hey…” Kiko began.
Muscles took his time with the Ziggy’s driver’s license. “Dude, if you’re under four-ten and have pubes on your face, you’re not getting in. And what’s that stinkin’ cologne?”
“Listen—”
“Is your brain the size of a pea, too?” The bouncer made a fly swatting motion. “Get out of here, sideshow.”
At the brain comment, Kiko had reddened, started to stammer; it only increased his embarrassment. Dawn remembered back when she’d first met him, how he’d seemed more defensive about his psychic abilities than his stature.
She stepped next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not letting us in then? Even if we paid a cover and waited in this pathetic line?”
Muscles shrugged. “We’re clo—”
Knowing that this guy wasn’t worth even bruising her knuckles for, Dawn cocked back her right elbow and crashed it into his jaw. Down he went, but not without some difficulty.
The bigger man reached out, dragged her with him to the ground. Behind her, she heard Kiko say“Dawn”with the same exasperation as The Voice.
Drawing back her knee, she drove it upward.
A plasticdinktold her that the bully was wearing a cup.
Shit.
Out of nowhere, Kiko dove into view, his hand coming down onto the back of Muscles’ neck. As the bouncer groaned and slumped over Dawn, the psychic performed what she would have called an amazing sleight-of-hand trick, whizzing his gun out of sight before the Ziggies could even comment on it.
Da-amn.
“That was exceptional,” one of the Goths said in a flat voice. Still, it sounded like he’d been won over.
Without further ado, he and his friends barged past Kiko, Dawn, and her steroid luggage, and into the bar.
“Thanks for saving us the cover charge,” one of them said, sticking out his pierced, plaque-ridden tongue and wiggling it at Dawn.
“You know,” she said when they were gone, “he might have just killed all my sexual urges.”
Kiko was wagging his finger at her. “Why’d you do that? This guy is gonna to wake up and hunt us down.” Kiko took a second look. “Actually, he ain’t gonna wake up for a while.”
“Then we’ll be gone. We needed to get in.” She shrugged. “Besides, he ticked me off, talking to you like that.”
As they caught their breath, Kiko grinned. She busied herself with levering this Sephora-fragrance-of-the-month-wearin’ guy off of her so she wouldn’t have to get mushy and grin back.
“I guess you’re about ready then,” Kiko said.
She stood, glanced down at Muscles. “Let’s get it on.”
After Dawn peeked inside to see that the entrance room was empty, they dragged the bouncer over the threshold, finding the darkest corner, then propped him up like he was a drunk. No worry—he blended.
They wove their way through the packed, humid space, heading toward the back. On the way, Dawn inspected the crowd, finding the normal dispassionate glances from the Goth clientele, the usual underage suspects snorting white lines from mirrors in the corners, the bartenders and waitresses working their asses off to serve.
And speaking of serving…Dawn glanced at the bar.
No Brandon Lee/Crow look-alike. Maybe when the human servant had run away the other night, he’d never come back.
Too bad. She scanned some more. Tall gu
ys, short guys, all kinds with black hair like Robby’s who mingled, pierced and sullen. The sight left her prickly, dreading what she might discover here.
In the relative quiet of the back area, a line for the women’s bathroom stretched out the door. Typical. But all the employees seemed to be working the weekend-crowded floor, so Dawn and Kiko took advantage of the freedom and started down the opposite side of the hall. They were checking storage rooms, going past the one where she’d encountered the servant the other night—the one that housed the liquor.
“This is it,” Kiko said when they came to the next room. It was just as big as the other one, but it looked like they stored food in the refrigerators, paper products like napkins on the shelves. “I recognize it from the vision.”
From his zippered cargo pants, he took out a pair of latex gloves, gave them to Dawn, but didn’t cover his own hands. He probably needed them uncovered for readings.
“What’re we looking for?” she asked.
He began searching the shelves. “You look for blood spatters. It’d give us a better hint as to how Frank was abducted—by physical means or mental. Damn, I wish Bava had security cameras. That would make this ten times easier.”
While she went to work on the shelves, she remembered being attacked by the Goth vamp the other night. “Do you think one of those silver-eyes mind screwed Frank? I imaginethatcould feel like a two-by-four.”
She didn’t hear him working anymore.
“Ah, Dawn?” he whispered.
“What? You see something?”
She flared around to find Kiko staring at the door. His face was leeched of color, his mouth in an O.
Slowly, Dawn turned her head, her pulse quickening, beating until it took over the tattoo of faint music from the bar. Her blood lurched.
Robby Pennybaker stood there, his skin flushed with life, his ears glinting with piercings, his eyes like pools of fascinating colors Dawn couldn’t even identify.
“Are you looking for my dad?” he asked.
Twenty-Three
The Child Without
Robby?” Kiko asked.
“No-brainer,” Dawn whispered. Her closed throat made her sound like the tense, quick drag of a record needle when it’s yanked off the vinyl.
At first glance, the boy looked absolutely human, but there was one big difference—his indescribably colored eyes. They were as magnetic as envy. They made her want to get closer to him, touch him, cry just because he was standing there and he was the Robby Pennybaker from the covers of magazines and the heaven of movies. Was Kiko unable to look away, too?
“You’ve been over at my house,” the boy said, tilting his head in curiosity. “You’ve talked to my dad. You know him?”
Not a child, Dawn kept telling herself.
This boy, who was dressed to go outside and play in a striped soccer T-shirt and jeans, would be a thirty-five-year-old man by now. She wasn’t talking to a kid here, even if he still looked twelve.
Robby repeated himself. “So are you looking for my dad?”
“No.” Dawn’s fear gathered itself in anger. “I’m looking for mine.”
Seeming to consider this, Robby entered the room. He moved in such a way that you weren’t aware he was walking at all, you just knew he was coming closer, and you were the luckiest soul in the world to be in his presence.
Though Dawn resisted, her skin fluttered, awakened by his force, his steady gaze.
Vampire. Mind screw. Shut him out!
Behind Robby, the door moaned closed, leaving only a strip of the hallway visible. He sniffed the air, cocked his head at Dawn, Kiko, then wrinkled his nose.
A garlic reaction? Was it working?
He took a step forward.
No.Not working.
“Your dad’s gone, too,” the boy said, his gaze caressing her, making her feel wanted, loved. “Was it because he ran away? My father did.”
Frantically, Dawn summoned a stronger block, forcing inner energy outward. Robby stopped in his tracks, as if held back.
There!
Maybe he wouldn’t be so hard to face after all…not like those red-eyed vamps.
Kiko had casually put his hands in his pockets. “So you’ve been following us, Robby?”
“No.” In spite of his stature, the boy/man seemed larger than life. “When I saw you the first time, it was the night Dad came home and you paid my parents a visit. I’d been waiting near the maze the past couple of nights, looking for my dad, watching my mom. But then the Guards came.” Robby stiffened. “They just happened to get to you before they got to me.”
“Guards.” Dawn clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. She was shivering in her gut, her limbs.
“Those vampires with the iron fangs and the red eyes,” Robby added.
Guards…so they were connected to Robby. How?
“I was running from them,” he continued. “But they always found me at night, and I had to run faster, then hide in a place they couldn’t get into. You haven’t seen any around, have you? They’re trying to take me back, but I don’t want to go. I never want to go back.”
“Go where?” Kiko asked calmly.
Robby cocked his head to the other side, suspicious all of a sudden. “Are you with them? Are you Servants?”
“Nope,” Kiko said. “No bites on this body. Me and Dawn here aren’t associated with vampires, Robby. We’re investigators, and your mom hired us to look for you. She’ll be real happy to see you again.”
“Mom.” It was like Robby was tasting the word, the concept, then discovering he had no emotional link with it.
Dawn was straining under her mind block, but this mom talk was testing it, seeing how much she could stand before her barricades crumbled. “She’s been crying over you, Robby.”
“And my dad? Has he been crying?”
The question was petulant, a preteen sulk.
“Your dad’s very upset, too,” Kiko said.
“I doubt it.”
A zing of heat flashed through the terrible colors of Robby’s eyes. Automatically, Dawn held up a hand, as if it would help her retain the integrity of her block. And it did, for the time being, at least.
“My dad abandoned me,” Robby said. “He might pretend to be upset, but all he wants is to get me captured again.”
“What do you mean?” Dawn asked.
Robby fisted his hands and closed his eyes, wiping out his attempted hold on her. It was like someone had released her mind from a net of chains. Stumbling under the relief, Dawn dug into her jacket pockets, just like Kiko. Crucifix and velvet-wrapped shuriken were waiting for her to come and get them.
“I mean that I want my dad to suffer like I did all these years,” Robby said, voice crackling.
He opened his eyes, but Dawn didn’t gaze into them this time. Hell, no.
“I know he’s out there looking for me,” he added. “I watch him go from place to place, searching, but he’s not going to catch me. I’m not going back to the Underground. Not ever!”
Underground?
The word provoked images of a nest, a lair of vampires. It made the tile beneath Dawn’s feet seem like a thin line between herself and a dark pit. Suddenly, her footing wasn’t so stable.
“Robby, we just want to take you to your mom.” Kiko was walking forward, drawing his hands out of his pockets.
But before he got them all the way out, Robby screamed.
“I said no!”
With the speed of a whirlwind, the boy vampire’s body seemed to spin into itself, white streaks of feathered coldness enclosing him.
Dawn heaved in a breath. Move, damnit, move. She began taking out her weapons.
But the vampire was faster. With a snap of roaring thunder, a screech ripped through the air, and a new Robby emerged out of the compact storm.
All-encompassing, he floated on air, half transparent misty beauty, half seething fallen angel. The glow of his body blinded Dawn, and even as she squinted her eyes against him, i
t was too late. The invitation of his gaze was irresistible, pulling her in again with sweet promises of fulfillment.
Frank. His image wavered, then solidified in front of her. He was healthy, grinning. Then Eva materialized, holding hands with him. They both reached out to their daughter.
Longing tore at Dawn’s chest, biting, ripping.
“We can be together now,” Eva said. “Will you come to me?”
Dawn had wanted to hear this all her life, craved it while watching other children with their moms in the park, resented it at night when she raged against the unfairness of life.
For a wonderful moment, Dawn went to her parents, her heart so full that she thought it might drag her down to her knees.
“Mom?” she asked, reaching out to them, sorrow scratching at the wonder in her voice.
“Dawn!” Kiko broke into her head, his voice like a brick shattering a window, destroying the illusion of the perfect family that never was.
Crying out in grief, she jerked back into herself, grabbing her crucifix and yanking it out of her pocket.
But Kiko beat her to it. He already had his out, pushing it at Robby. The translucent vampire bared his fangs, long and pearly, his awful eyes fixed on the crucifix.
“Come home, Robby,” Kiko said, repeating the phrase over and over, an incantation. But Dawn knew he wasn’t trying to save Robby’s soul. Who knew if that was even possible? Kiko was persuading the vampire to come with them, to The Voice.
To the mysterious unknown.
Dawn joined him, blasting a mind block at the vamp at the same time. “Come home, Robby….”
Rebelling, the vampire reared back his head, crying out in a voice that combined the chill of a graveyard wind with the plea of a lost child in the night.
“Come home, Robby!”
Their voices were growing in strength as they advanced, crucifixes flashing against the luminescence of the vampire.
Another screech. Robby glared at the crucifixes again and then…
He stopped screaming, the sounds echoing like broken icicles falling to the ground.
Robby smiled, white fangs gleaming.
What…? Oh, God.
Immune? Unlike the red-eyes, was he immune to religious imagery?
Night Rising Page 24
