A Drop of Red

by Chris Marie Green

  When Dawn came to the supply room and peered inside, she saw that this “Mademoiselle” was a beautiful starlight blonde standing in front of shelves of paper clips and notebooks. She’d been looking in a mirror and touching up the skin around her eyes with powder.

  Dawn almost did a double take, because this Mademoiselle was just as chic as one of the old-time movie stars from Hollywood, and the word “Elite” cometed through her mind.

  She glanced at Natalia to see if the other girl was sensing a vamp. Natalia pleasantly smiled back, showing no indication of hearing anything strange.

  But Benedikte—“Matt”—had also been hard to read.

  Dawn yanked herself out of it. Not every Underground was like the one in L.A. She had to remember that and cut loose enough to see this new one for what it might be.

  The teacher clicked shut her compact, snow cool as the student guide introduced them. Mademoiselle clasped their hands in hers.

  Cool skin, too, Dawn thought as the teacher brushed an absent gaze over the crucifix pendant.

  After Kiko touched the teacher’s hand, he only sat there with a dopey grin. All right. No good vamp readings on that front, either.

  Students began to trickle into the halls, and Mademoiselle excused herself to greet her class, then disappeared into a room a few doors down.

  Astrid said, “She’s one of our best. One of my favorites.”

  She resumed the tour, and Natalia followed while a flood of girls started coming toward them, most in their own tailored clothing, some in sweater-skirt uniforms, all in a passing rush of shampoo scents and pale skin.

  Any one of them could be vamps masquerading as human, Dawn thought. Any . . .

  Then a wash of jasmine circled her, and she saw it.

  A bunch of brown skirts, white shirts, and red ties, just like the uniform in Briana’s picture. They moved up the hallway like one body, their books at their sides while the other students hastened out of their way.

  At their front—a girl with long, lustrous brown hair. At her side—an athletic-looking strawberry blonde with a bob. Right behind—a grinning redhead. And at the back—a student with frizzy hair who kept an intense gaze trained on the leader of the pack.

  Adrenaline spun through Dawn, and she took hold of Kiko’s jacket.

  He saw them, too, and he casually walked away from Dawn, toward the suspects, while Astrid sharply veered away as she and Natalia passed them.

  Their resident vampire-hearer showed no reaction until . . .

  Natalia plastered herself against a wall, staring at the departing group in the same way she’d stared at Frank back when she’d first met him.

  Vampires.

  The girls pivoted toward Mademoiselle’s room, but Kiko managed to bump into the strawberry blonde.

  “Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands and offering a smile.

  All the girls stopped, looked him up and down. Then all except for the frizzy-haired one giggled at the little person before they swept into the classroom.

  Dawn started after them, but Kiko intercepted her.

  “I didn’t get any information about the big show,” he whispered.

  She hadn’t expected him to see any visions about an Underground since he’d never been able to read vamps anyway. But when she kept staring at the classroom, dying to follow the pack into it, he grabbed her wrist.

  He didn’t have to say the rest: We just know they’re vamps, and that’s all. We’re here to find the bigger part of the picture if there is one, and the boss would kill us if we put a possible Underground on guard by making a scene.

  Damn it. Damn it, he was right. They had confirmation that there were day-walking vamps on campus, and chasing after them in public might destroy the surprise Costin required to attack an Underground, inquire about the whereabouts of the dragon, then terminate a master. What they needed to do was continue sleuthing so they could get the most information possible about a lair’s location.

  That’s what a team was for—reconnaissance, not attack—and Dawn knew from what’d happened in Hollywood that she could either make this harder for Costin or easier.

  It took all the willpower she had, but she kept herself in check.

  “Then let’s get on with the rest of it,” Dawn whispered to Kiko as they started to walk.

  Closer.

  Closer to the room the girls had entered.

  Striding by on the way to Astrid and Natalia, they glanced inside, catching sight of the four identically dressed girls sitting sweetly in their seats and gazing at Mademoiselle as the teacher gave the visitors a placid smile, then shut the door.

  NINETEEN

  THE CALM BEFORE THE STORMiNG

  ONCE the team got back to headquarters, Dawn started running up the walls.

  Literally.

  One side of the subterranean room held a rock climbing panel while another boasted a mesh net—both of which improved balance, strength, and agility. But as Dawn got to a three-point stance with a silver-coated stake in hand, she aimed for even more advanced training from a bare wall instead.

  Training—her only way to find peace of mind while the team waited for night to deepen enough for good cover. Pure physical bursts of energy that she needed to tame before they went back to Queenshill to sleuth around.

  She took off toward the wall, and just as it seemed she was going to crash, she planted one foot on it, then used the other to flip herself over and land in fighting position so she could whip around and impale something with that stake.

  But when there was nothing there, she dropped the weapon to her side, pushing back the stray hairs from the sweat on her face.

  She controlled her breathing. Her emotions.

  The team was so close, she thought. But they were also so far from striking down just one more obstacle that kept Costin in the body she’d damned him to.

  Before leaving Queenshill this afternoon, they’d met with both the headmaster and the art department head to finish out the whole touring charade, trying not to attract suspicion as Underground hunters. However, the Friends were still on campus to slyly monitor the four vamp girls, who had gone to their dorms and had been sleeping ever since.

  But the team had a plan to supplement and speed up the Friends’ efforts.

  They would use Frank to, in effect, bloodhound around the premises for any Underground entrances when darkness fully came, when his powers would be at their fullest. Dawn and Kiko would stay to the shadows to back him up, and they’d be sure to keep their distance from the dorms—out of typical vampire scenting range—while the Friends kept watch to make sure the team wasn’t caught.

  Then there was the backup to that plan.

  If, by sunrise, Frank’s endeavors or the Friends’ surveillance didn’t yield anything, they’d get him back on campus by arranging another tour so he could hopefully pass the girls in the hallway and read some minds. But, again, the problem with that was Frank’s powers weren’t as sharp during the daylight and he’d have to cover up his skin to a suspicious extent.

  There were actually more than a few reasons Dawn was on edge regarding both team plans. First was that they were risking her dad’s detection by fellow vamps—but at least he wouldn’t be parading around in front of them tonight.

  Still, when it came down to it, they had to take calculated risks to get anywhere with these Undergrounds.

  And she was more than willing for Costin’s sake.

  As she toweled herself off, she heard him . . . felt him . . . behind her, just as if thinking his name had summoned him.

  She kept her back to him. “You restless, too?”

  She only asked because, when the team had returned, it’d already been dusk, and Costin had already been awake for hours.

  “Always restless,” he said, and his voice reminded Dawn that listening to him was the closest she would ever get to hearing an echo from an abyss.

  She put her stake and towel in the weapons bag she intended to bring with her to Queen
shill. She couldn’t heft the bulk of it around while they were scouting the premises, but she wanted her arsenal close by, even if she left it in their parked vehicle.

  “Dawn, you seem to be spending all your strength down here. Won’t you be tired by the time you leave?”

  “I’ve got more energy than I know what to do with.”

  “Then perhaps you should use it to fine-tune your mind rather than a body that’s already in shape.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder.

  He stood there in his loose trousers and a long, dark robe left open to show the muscled smoothness of his chest, the ridges of his abs. Even though he’d fed from a refrigerated blood bag already, desire kicked at her gut.

  Had he come down here so she could feed him, too?

  Probably not. Earlier, he’d said that he didn’t want to sap Dawn’s strength.

  But she knew that if the team found an Underground hive and she made it back, he’d drink from her before going in for the final attack himself—if his powers even made that possible—absorbing the extra power she always gave him.

  “I see,” she said. “Right before I run out the door, you decide to mosey down here to talk about fine-tuning my brain. Are you going to show me how to stop myself from making bystanders into Pinocchios? Because, seriously, after all the time you’ve spent mind-training me, I don’t think it’s likely. I’m still a bad student.”

  He put his hands behind his back, then walked along the opposite wall, still keeping her in his sights. “Once you get ahold of your talents, you’ll be formidable. I almost wish we had more time before closing in on this Underground. However,” he said, halting in a corner and leaning into it, “it would actually require opening your mind to me again for us to train.”

  Dawn resisted telling him that she would open hers just as soon as he opened his. But that would go nowhere, as usual.

  So she pulled a black sweatshirt over her tank, indicating that she was ready to move on. She wanted to take a brisk shower to revitalize herself and to use the soap Breisi had developed to neutralize body scent.

  Costin hadn’t moved from his watching corner. “Why would you need to come down here and run around, I wonder. Kiko has been resting, and Frank was sitting with Breisi, using her for inspiration.”

  “Agitation is my inspiration,” she said. But then she got serious. “You didn’t see those vamp girls, Costin. I keep remembering how they just strolled down the hall, princesses of the palace. The other students cleared out of the way for them, almost like it was their instinct to be scared. For some reason, common sense tells me I should be shaking in my boots, too. But I’m not. Not like I used to with the first hunt.”

  “You’re more experienced than you were over a year ago.”

  But Dawn wasn’t so sure that was it. Maybe she was just stonier now.

  As he felt around the edges of her mind, she diverted her thoughts, bending down to zip her bag closed. The sound was like a split down the center of the room.

  “So their arrogance bothers you,” he said.

  She was almost relieved that he’d latched on to this thought instead of the other. “The vamps didn’t seem to be on the lookout like they should be aboveground. In fact, they acted like they had good reason to feel protected. Don’t they care if someone like us finds them . . . and so fast?”

  He cocked his head at her. “There is something else bothering you besides their attitude and the speed of our apparent success.”

  “Sure. I’ve never liked Queen Bees. You don’t have to read me to know that.”

  He prodded farther into her mind, liquid warmth and heat-drenched flows. Her belly tightened, but she resisted his lure.

  But then . . .

  Tired. She was tired of blocking and dodging and being alone.

  So she succumbed to his gentle, numbing attack, and it felt so good, except . . . Well, she missed the days when he could escape Jonah’s shell and plunge his full essence into her entire body, consuming her from the inside out and washing her clean each time.

  One day, maybe he’d be able to do that again. After they got the rest of the masters and their dragon. . . .

  He retreated from her mind.

  All right. No use avoiding the deeper issues anymore.

  She clamped down on her craving for him, but the strain made her tense, tighter. Needier.

  “Costin,” she said, gesturing to the chasm between them, “we’ve been across the room from each other ever since Jonah came out and had his chat with me. We both know it.”

  “I’m sharply aware of his visit’s effect. I only wished to clear the air before you left tonight.”

  Ah. Now she knew what was happening. He’d played this same card previously, the last time an Underground attack had been looming.

  She put her hands on her hips and pushed out a breath. “The night you went into Benedikte’s Underground . . . Before you left, you tried to make up for all your missteps with me, just in case you got walloped in the confrontation. And you finally told me most of the secrets you’d been keeping because you thought the hunt was over and it was too late for me to leave you in the lurch by getting angry and deserting the team.”

  “You believe I’m doing the same now? That I’m about to tell you all the hidden, dark secrets Jonah hinted at because I fear you won’t return after tonight? Or that I will never see you again if I should go into this lair, myself, soon afterward?”

  “I’m just calling a spade a spade.”

  “Dawn.”

  He walked toward her, then stopped far enough away to keep his control. But he was near enough for her to see in the simmering gold of his eyes that the primal tang of her sweat from the workout turned him on.

  The yearning for him speared her, too, a thrust of sharp heat every time his ab muscles clenched during a breath.

  His body—Jonah’s body—still functioned on so many human levels, like breathing and pumping blood. Yet as a vampire, there was a sheen to him that made her stare, made her want.

  And it was wrong to want someone who fed on her blood. It was also wrong that she didn’t care about dying tonight so much as what might happen if she left Costin to fight without her.

  Not that he hadn’t done pretty well on his own throughout the centuries, but she was “key” to his endgame.

  Or maybe she just wanted more than anything to believe that Dawn Madison, who’d been so unneeded all her life, had finally changed that.

  From the look on his face, she could tell he wanted to come into her badly, and in spite of herself, she opened her mind, allowing his deluge of colors and affection to push out all her weak, debilitating thoughts.

  After sensing her upheaval, he walked over to her, took her jaw in his cool, cupped palm.

  I do need you, he thought.

  Too intimate, too close to the target. Scarier than any Underground.

  Dawn nudged him out of her, her vision going normal until he reached out with his other hand to bring her back to him.

  Back to the red haze of being linked, back to the swirling patterns of a prophecy in motion.

  Let me be more than your penance, he added. Just this one time, Dawn, before you leave.

  His lips were inches away, so near that she could feel each of his breaths on her mouth. Her skin became a field of nerves, sensitive, electric, and when he rubbed a thumb over her cheek, she grabbed at his robe for balance.

  But just as she started falling, he scooped her up and eased her back to the wall in one fluid motion. Then, against the climbing net, he raised her hands and slowly inserted the strands through her fingers, so she could stand on her own.

  She gripped the mesh, looking into the fires of his gaze, linking to him and seeing how much he hungered for her tonight, even if he’d already taken blood. Seeing how, inside the warrior, there was a seed of doubt that this might be the one Underground that caused him to fail in his mission, that this might be his countdown to Hell.

  He leaned forwar
d to nuzzle her temple, and she could hear him suck in a breath at the sweat on her skin. Then he dragged his mouth down, tasting the salt of her.

  It felt like someone was plunging heat into Dawn, up and down, up and down, as she clung to the net. She was getting wet, plumped, with every kiss on her jaw, then the vulnerable spot below it.

  His arousal was building, too—she could feel it prodding her belly.

  He knew how to get to her, knew how to break her down.

  She let go of the net with one hand to stroke his cock through the thin material of his trousers.

  A tremor wracked him and, just like every other time he started to feed, he waged battle with the vampire. Costin, the monster who had hated what he’d become after his initial blood exchange with the dragon. The creature who’d engaged in a bargain to cleanse his soul before Dawn had forced him to become a monster again.

  He buried his face in her neck and pulled at her sweatshirt, and she sensed another force in him, flexing, heaving to get out.

  Jonah.

  Maybe she could stop this at least.

  “Keep him in,” Dawn whispered. “Stay with me, Costin.”

  The sound of his name energized him and, with a harsh inhale, he raised his head, his eyes a startling silver.

  “Costin . . .” she said, easing into his mind at the same time to strengthen him.

  With a snarl, he took her sweatshirt and tore at it, then ripped at her tank top, her bra, baring her breasts while her nipples hardened in the cool air.

  She worked off the rest of her clothes until there was nothing left but rags around them on the floor. Then he kissed her, hard and hungry, wrapping her braid around his fist and pulling back her head, exposing her neck.

  She clasped the net again, knowing she might need every bit of strength she had for tonight’s reconnaissance. But she would give him blood if he wanted it. Would give him almost anything.

  Almost.

  He lapped at her throat, gnawing, sucking, but his fangs hadn’t come out yet. He was quaking to keep them back as he kept nibbling, and she kept thinking his name, over and over, delving one hand into his hair and jerking his lips to hers.