A Drop of Red

by Chris Marie Green

  “Just can’t get used to getting up at this time. Is it just me, or does it get darker way earlier here?”

  She glanced at the single bed where her father, Frank Madison, was sitting and tying the laces of his black combat boots. Like her, he was dressed for action, his bulky muscles covered by a night-blending sweatshirt and jeans, his receded dark hair hidden by a knit cap.

  Not that he needed to warm his head if they ended up going outside. As a vampire, he wouldn’t react so much to mild changes in the weather. Probably he just liked the way the cap muffled his heightened hearing.

  “Just waking up?” she asked. Both Frank and Costin had taken to resting during the day, when their powers were at their weakest. They saved their strength for nighttime, although Frank had to be careful about being vampy in the open even then.

  Her dad nodded. “Word is, something’s going down. You know what that might be, Dawnie?”

  “I’ll bet I don’t know much more than you do.” She entered the barely furnished room, which was dominated by a table covered with the half-formed hunting weapons he and Breisi were devising together. He acted as the spirit’s hands because she couldn’t use them to shape the finer details of her inventions anymore.

  Frank rose from the bed to his full height. “And here I thought you had the boss’s ear.”

  And a lot more than that, Dawn thought. But talking about domestic issues with Dad, vamp or not, squicked both of them out.

  “All I heard,” she said, “was that some lady left a message about a vampire burial place, and Costin’s arranging a meeting with her.”

  “Our first informant.”

  “Or our first contact with an Underground spy.”

  Frank’s hazel eyes went darker. Like her, he’d been in the middle of the last hunt. Eva, his ex-wife and Dawn’s mother, had drawn him into it, turning him into her vampire child. Of course, with the termination of Benedikte, Eva’s own maker, she was human now, but the Master’s death hadn’t directly affected Frank, her own progeny. Nope, he was still a reluctant night creature who fought the type of vamps who’d messed up his life.

  “You think this caller is with an Underground?” Frank asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it past them to send her to us if we’ve made a blip on their radar. The last Underground had an impressive spy network, and they used it aggressively. Even their master did his share of aboveground subterfuge.”

  “Benedikte,” Frank muttered.

  The name said it all: how the Master had shifted into the form of a fellow PI/vampire hunter—a supposed ally—to sneakily try to win Dawn to their side.

  She hadn’t trusted anyone since. Not that she’d ever been awesome at that anyway.

  Frank began to look about as doubtful as she was. “When’re we meeting this informant?”

  “It could be an hour from now, it could be tomorrow. But I’m sure Costin used hypnosis to persuade her to hurry it up.”

  He could even utilize the talents he’d been given as a soul traveler over the phone, which was a positive sign that turning into a vamp hadn’t destroyed his chances to get his soul back. But Dawn didn’t like how he would have to go to an open window or unprotected place to make the call, since headquarters’ walls shielded his powers as well as secured all of them.

  She jerked her chin toward the door. “Want to grab something from the kitchen before we do our thing?”

  In answer, Frank got up from the bed. But he made a detour over to Breisi’s portrait, kissing his fingers and touching her painted cheek. Since she was in sleep mode, she didn’t stir, as the Friends were sometimes prone to do when they awakened. Dawn had seen their shifts in energy before.

  As her dad headed for the door, Dawn reached up to the picture, too, bumping her knuckles against Breisi’s before she followed Frank.

  After going down the rest of the stairs, they came to the ground-level kitchen, which had been gussied up with stainless steel and white tile during the renovation Costin had undertaken once he’d decided this would be their headquarters. He had rituals for each Underground hunt, and one of them included preparing a secure domain so he could hole up before launching a final attack against the Underground once the team had uncovered its location.

  As their ultimate weapon, he was always the one who attacked the lair in the end, and surprise was invaluable. Having a master detect Costin beforehand would ruin that, so he laid low, sequestering himself in the thick of a hunt.

  Frank opened the refrigerator, taking out some roast beef sandwich fixings for Dawn and then a packet of blood for himself. Like Costin, Frank used bags to supplement a main nutrition source whose blood tasted better and provided more pleasure than an anonymous donor’s seemed to.

  As she set to work on her meal, Frank opened the IV bag, then blew out a breath before downing the contents.

  She shook her head as she spread mustard on her whole wheat bread.

  Frank finished drinking, then stared at her. “What?”

  “You. It’s been a year, and you still haven’t found a better way to get your nourishment?”

  “Oh. Maybe I should hit the streets for food. That’d really be the ticket to hiding our presence.” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “Dawn, this is the only way to go for me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying you’re taking advantage of Eva’s donations, but . . .” Dawn dealt a few slices of meat onto her bread. “I guess it bothers me that she traveled over here with us because she thinks your taste for her blood somehow means you’ll come around to her again one day.”

  “She knows I love Breisi. That’s been clear since all the dust settled in L.A.”

  “Yet you still didn’t say no when Eva offered to be your main supplier.”

  “We’re still friends, Dawn. I’m not forcing her to do this.”

  Dawn pushed her sandwich together. “You’re right, I know you are. But every time I see her, I can’t help thinking that she’s . . . confused, I suppose. She’s not doing much else with her life after losing what identity she had with the Underground.”

  Her dad didn’t look at her. “Kiko’s helping Eva there.”

  “What, with getting her a new identity?”

  Kik had been in charge of supplying Eva with a makeover as well as with expertly falsified documents before they’d even left the States. After all, Eva Claremont, legendary actress, was supposed to have been murdered decades ago.

  It’s true that, as a vampire, she’d taken on a new life, a new acting career, but that had been under another name—one she couldn’t keep using because she was too famous as Jacqueline Ashley also.

  Frank retrieved a waste disposal bag from a cupboard, then stuffed the IV bag into it. “I’m not really talking about her new identity. I mean to say that Kiko’s helping Eva develop interests over here.”

  “So that’s why he’s at her place as we speak, taking her blood for your next meal and not teaching her macramé or something.” Dawn appealed to her dad with a look.

  He turned away, hiding his expression. A year ago, she had been naïve enough to think that a vampire couldn’t look guilty—or show any emotion at all, for that matter, even if they did appear pretty human when they wanted to. But her dad’s frown went a long way in reminding her she was wrong.

  “Sorry for bringing it up,” she said, going to the fridge to see if any supplement juice was in stock.

  Frank finished disposing of his trash, then stood behind Dawn, resting a meaty hand on her shoulder as she shut the door, juice bottle in hand.

  “You’ve been trying real hard with Eva,” he said, turning her around to face him. “Everyone sees that.”

  “I couldn’t leave her behind, by herself. Not after what happened.”

  Her dad dropped his hand to his side. He knew there was nothing he could say to persuade Dawn that Eva didn’t resent her. Everyone on the team never failed to tell Dawn that she’d made the right decision by killing Benedikte, but suffering all the consequences
seemed endless.

  “Hey.” Frank lifted her chin with his index finger so she could see how his face had its own wrinkles—age imperfections he’d brought with him into vampirism. “Even though she’s got little crow’s feet under the cosmetics and graying hair under the dye now, Eva loves you. She loves you so much that she went overboard to provide for you with that resurrected career the Underground gave her. She was never into all that Hollywood crap anyway. No big loss to her, because she’s got you now. That’s all she ever wanted.”

  Dawn bit a response back. She wanted you, too, Dad.

  Instead, she said, “I know, but it’s what she doesn’t say that bothers me. With every month that goes by, I think she misses the adoration, the fame, the youth. . . .”

  Frank opened his mouth to add something else, but their discussion was cut off by a voice over an intercom.

  Costin’s dead-of-night tone.

  “I hate to interrupt,” he said, clearly having heard at least the tail end of their conversation, “but our guest will be here momentarily. On the phone, she gave me an estimated time of arrival, which should be minutes away.”

  “Arriving . . . here?” Dawn asked. “At our place?”

  Frank added, “You’d let her in here when it’s pretty suspicious that she’s coming to us with information?”

  “We had a long discussion on the phone.”That was Costin-speak for “I tested her and measured her up as well as I could without her being present.”

  “Now you want to feel her out in person,” Dawn said.

  Costin’s tone remained mild. “Actually, I told her that we have a position open on the team, and she is interested.”

  “What?” Dawn and Frank stereoed.

  “Our guest has been searching for work in this city. Desperately, I might add.” The speaker hummed. “In this new location, with a new Underground, I would like a fresh perspective, and I believe she could be of great benefit to us.”

  “And if she ends up bein’ a stinker?” Frank asked.

  Costin laughed. “Are you implying she is out for harm?”

  “Yeah,” Dawn said.

  “I will definitively know if she is a good match for our purposes when she arrives, but I’ve detected no dark agendas in her.”

  Dawn held up a finger. “It was real chancy to let down your guard to test her.”

  “Better to take that initial risk at a distance.”

  Okay, true enough. And since Costin had a talent for recruiting the kind of true-blue people with high senses of justice—the types who’d fight for good because they couldn’t tolerate the bad—she clammed up for now.

  But she would also remember how Benedikte had blindsided her.

  “So,” Dawn said, “you’re telling us that your discussion with this girl went from her having information to your offering her a job?”

  “I have not officially offered it yet. I look at this as the final phase of an interview.”

  “If I know anything about how I started out with this gig, she’ll be knee deep in para-dung before the night’s out.”

  Conversation done, she picked up her sandwich and took a quick swig of the bottled juice before putting it away again. Then she headed toward the kitchen exit while eating her meal, Frank right behind her.

  They came to a common area that gave Dawn the willies. But what was new? The Los Angeles house had been gothic creepy.

  Yet this one took the cake.

  Dark paneling gave the area an ominous pressure, especially with the wood bas-reliefs of medieval friars decorating the ceiling. A simple, golden chandelier hung down from one figure’s outstretched hand, like he was providing dim illumination over the high-hung mirrors framed by carvings of angels’ faces.

  But the most chilling part of all was something that had traveled here with the team: the portrait of Kalin, the Fire Woman Friend with her flaming cape, which still had a place of honor over the gutted shell of a fireplace.

  Dawn ignored the one spirit who couldn’t stand her and finished her sandwich instead. Still, the redheaded Friend stared out at the room with her usual withering glee.

  Unaffected by any of it, Frank took a seat in a deep leather chair near the doorway, leaning back his head and closing his eyes.

  By the time Dawn finished her food, Costin had come back on the intercom. “Dawn.”

  “Still waiting for our visitor.”

  “Yes. Well, she seems to have been . . . sidetracked. Outside.”

  “I’ll get her.” Dawn started for the door, then backtracked. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I am as sure as I am able to be. Besides, I am well hidden at the moment.”

  His meaning was clear: he was going to talk to this girl via the speaker—just as he had done with Dawn when he’d used her as vampire bait back in L.A.

  Slowly, she glanced up at where his speaker was ensconced in one of the angel carvings. Even though Costin had stayed hidden in all their hotels and rented rooms, he’d truly gone back to being The Voice now—the enigmatic question mark who sheltered himself in secret spaces.

  And, the thing was, he sounded so in his element. . . .

  Going to the doorway, she opened a panel in a wall, grabbed a silver-bladed dagger from a rack, and slid it in a back pocket. She also prepared herself for a visiting creature who might be vulnerable to holy items by strapping on a bracelet that shot holy water from a sack when she flipped her wrist. Totally Spider-Man-licious.

  “Hey, Cujo,” she said to her reclining dad after she’d prepped herself.

  He opened one eye.

  She cracked open the heavy door. “Stay frosty, just in case this lady gives me grief?”

  Frank grunted, then got out of his chair. He’d be watching from the entrance, taking up Dawn’s back without intimidating the caller unless required.

  Ready for a hunt—shit, she hoped this was finally the start of it—Dawn stepped outside.

  The cold air instantly sucked up to her as she descended the few stairs that led to the pavement. Streetlamps gave weak assurance while a train slowly rumbled by on its raised track to the left of the brick structure where the team resided. Music from the vintner next door mumbled in the night as Dawn focused across the street.

  There, in front of the iron gates of the Cross Bones Graveyard, stood a woman packed into a heavy red wool coat and scarf. A breeze toyed with her shoulder-length, ultra-curly black hair while she perused the ribbons, cards, and mementos tied to the cemetery gates.

  They were gifts from locals and visitors who’d dropped by to respect the dead. A group had even been here on Halloween with their candles and sympathy, and Dawn had watched them out the window, her hand on the cold glass.

  Now, she walked closer to the graveyard, which wasn’t actually much more than a cement slab beyond the gates. Still, in the quiet wind, she could hear the ribbons stirring, as if restless.

  Hand on the dagger in her back pocket, she cleared her throat.

  The woman turned around, and right before she smiled, Dawn saw that she had the plushest, deepest-pink lips ever. Blow-job lips, one of the stunt guys on a movie set might’ve called them. And even in the deepening night, the visitor’s dark eyes sparkled—but not with anything preternatural, necessarily.

  Although you never could be sure.

  She also wore a poppy in her hair, right above an ear, but Dawn thought that might be because of the approaching Remembrance Day, which was like Memorial Day in the U.S.

  “Hello,” the informant said in slightly accented English.

  Good God, she talked a little like Costin.

  “Hi.” Dawn kept ahold of that dagger. “Are you the caller?”

  “Yes.” The girl—on closer inspection, she couldn’t have been older than her early twenties—took her gloved hand out of her coat pocket to shake Dawn’s free hand. “I’m Natalia Petri.”

  Dawn greeted her, then took a couple of steps back, keeping her distance as she introduced herself, too.

&nb
sp; The other girl narrowed her eyes, as if inspecting Dawn and finding something . . . off. But then she was back to glancing at the graveyard again.

  “They’re loud here.”

  Was she talking about the music from the vintner’s?

  As a shiver traveled Dawn’s skin, she thought that might not be it at all. . . .

  “This place,” the girl said. “Do you know much about it?”

  “A bit.” Dawn had read the plaque on the gate, and she’d even done research since Costin had been so drawn to the building across from these grounds. “When they built the Jubilee tube line at the end of the twentieth century, they found layers and layers of the dead here. It’s a community grave starting from medieval times, unconsecrated ground filled with prostitutes and then paupers before it was closed in the mid-eighteen hundreds. This whole area was a real piece of work until they tidied it up. You can read about it in any Dickens book. I guess there’s talk of turning the grounds into office buildings or something, but the people around here are up in arms about it.”

  “As they should be.” Natalia sent the train tracks—the representative of progress, Dawn supposed—a harsh glance. “Why hurt the dead even more?”

  “Why indeed.” Dawn reluctantly motioned toward headquarters. “Should we get out of the cold?”

  The woman looked at the graveyard again, and for a moment, Dawn thought maybe she wasn’t going to go anywhere. But then Natalia furrowed her brow, like she was concentrating.

  Listening.

  Dawn waited until Natalia touched a glove to a photocopied picture of a skull tied to the gate, then backed away.

  After walking across the street, which hardly suffered from traffic in Dawn’s experience, they entered the building, escorted by watchdog Frank.

  Natalia’s eyes brightened even more as she surveyed the gloom and doom of the common area. She even flashed dimples as Frank introduced himself and vice versa.

  “You . . .” she started to say to Frank before Costin’s speaker came to life.

  “You made it safely, Ms. Petri,” he said.

  The girl seemed confused at a man’s low voice coming from high in the room, seemingly from one of the angels’ mouths. But she still answered as if she were in a normal conversation. “Yes, Mr. Limpet, thank you.”