A Drop of Red

by Chris Marie Green

  No, he wasn’t. “Jonah?” she asked.

  “Don’t mention that name.”

  The team stared at each other as Costin’s breathing wavered, strained . . . then evened out again as if he were taking great pains to control it.

  Jonah. If he was screwing around again, right now of all times, she was going to kill him.

  “Are you there?” Dawn asked Costin when he didn’t say anything else.

  “Don’t concern yourself with me.” His voice didn’t sound much stronger. “Just . . . concentrate on . . . getting back here.”

  A new Friend flew by, stirring Breisi up. They chattered, and the other one rocketed off again.

  “The last of the animals are being driven away from the car,” Breisi said. “But the girls just left the dorms and Greta hasn’t been able to distract them or slow them. They’re bleepin’ fast. . . .”

  Nerves scratching over her bones, Dawn noticed Kiko looking past her. She followed his gaze.

  A streak of white and brown under the moonlight blurred until it materialized into four girls who jogged into normal motion, then slowly walked toward the team from the far end of the football field.

  Everything—even the Friends—went still, and Dawn’s mind switched to pulse-stamped clarity.

  Vampires.

  She should’ve been scared, but she’d waited such a long time for this.

  So cowboy the fuck up, she told herself.

  Kiko hid his revolver as best as he could while holding to the chimney. Dawn slipped her hand into the jacket pocket nearest the chimney and held the UV grenade against her.

  The girls kept coming, cocking their heads as one.

  Okay. If the team ran, the girls would probably chase them, then maybe even invade the team’s minds if they could. Of course, the team had been trained to shield, but what if the young vamps knew a way around that? They’d find all kinds of damning information about Costin.

  But if the team stayed, they might be invaded just as well.

  Unless they could find a way out of this.

  Dawn glanced at Frank, inviting him to enter her mind for a good read as the girls came to within about sixty feet of them.

  If we can’t talk our way out of this, she thought to him, let’s go for it and isolate Della to find out for sure if these are Underground vamps or just normal ones. After you read her mind, you can shout the news to the Friends and they can take it to Costin.

  Frank’s brows arched. She could tell he was wondering again if she had a death wish, because she was pretty much suggesting that they sacrifice themselves.

  But she was willing. She had been for a long time now.

  If it comes down to it, she continued, I’ll try to puppet Della into a corner while you and the Friends take out the dogs and the other three vampires. When I get her alone, you can look into her before she raises any shields.

  Now her dad’s look was asking if she was crazy to expect total mastery over the mental powers she’d never been able to control before.

  She took a deep breath, exhaled. I can do this.

  He paused, then gave the barest of nods and laid his fingers on Kiko’s chimney-clutching hand. It would hopefully transfer the plan to the psychic via a touch reading.

  The girls had come within ten feet of the building, and the one with the long brown hair—Violet—motioned toward the dogs. The pack of them immediately sat on their haunches, lips peeled back to reveal gums and teeth as they growled at the team.

  “Della,” Violet said, her tone so light and crisp that Dawn almost thought they were at some flowered social gathering, “you cornered them with your dogs and forced them to climb the storage building. How rude.”

  The frizzy-haired girl who brought up the back of the group didn’t answer while the rest of her crowd laughed.

  Interesting. The vamps weren’t attacking outright. Maybe they were fore-playing with their next meal? Starting that nightcrawl?

  Violet folded her hands behind her back. “We recognize two of you from school today—the girl and the little one. Your presence here is curious, indeed, especially since you feel . . . odd . . . to us.”

  Were they referring to any vibes from Frank?

  Della targeted a question straight at the team. “Why are you here?”

  Violet darted a glare at her, but Della didn’t acknowledge it.

  Yeah, very interesting.

  Then the leader turned back to them. “Why are you here?” she repeated as if it hadn’t already been asked.

  Frank put on his affable, everyone’s-best-bar-buddy voice. “Because I’m one of you. I’ve been looking for my kind ever since I got into the city.”

  Dawn tried not to react at how he’d just revealed that he was a vampire. This was the way he was going to talk the team out of trouble?

  Well, she’d play along because she didn’t have a better idea, but . . . shit.

  He nodded at Dawn and Kiko. “These humans are my servants. I feed off them, send them on errands that I can’t do during the day. That’s why they were in your school, because I’d felt vibrations in this area and I wanted them to check it out. I was just getting ready to call to you from the trees, to greet you, but it looks like our plan didn’t work so well. I could’ve taken out these pups, myself, but I thought they might be pets, and harming devil dogs is bad manners where I come from.”

  The redhead—Noreen—at Violet’s left shoulder seemed intrigued. “You’re an American vampire?”

  “California,” Frank said, smiling at her, trying to win her over as he’d been doing to women for years.

  When Violet glanced at Noreen, who seemed about ready to ask about Disneyland and the beach, the redhead pursed her lips, refraining.

  They sure act young, Dawn thought. Were they new? And was that why all of them except for Della weren’t very aggressive or paranoid?

  They couldn’t be Underground. Not unless this was some act to draw the team in.

  Violet had come to narrow her eyes at Dawn, as if measuring her up. And it seemed it was for something other than a fight, too. For some reason, she was assessing her even more than she was Kiko or Frank. . . .

  Finally, the girl dragged her gaze away. “We don’t associate with male vampires, really.”

  Della stepped to Violet’s side, and the leader watched her in what seemed to be hostile astonishment.

  “You have guns,” the frizzy-haired one said, pointing at Kiko. “I can smell one.”

  Dawn clasped her grenade at her side.

  The strawberry blonde at Violet’s left shoulder—Polly—added, “Guns are terrible.”

  Kiko tucked his revolver all the way into his jacket, then raised his hands as much as possible while keeping to the chimney. Dawn knew he could draw like a flash if he needed to, and that he had another projectile weapon in a different pocket.

  “We never know how we’re going to be received by various vampires,” he said. “Have to keep defensive tools handy.”

  Violet glanced at the others, and they all giggled at Kiko.

  “Aren’t you just the most precious creature?” the leader said. “I believe I’d like to have a servant such as you.”

  But when Della crossed her arms over her chest, signifying that she wasn’t welcoming them so early, Dawn’s alert system went off.

  She leaned toward Kiko and whispered, “Block your mind just in case they don’t need eye contact to see into it.”

  She didn’t care if they heard, because one glimpse into the team’s heads and the girls would know they were lying for sure.

  Della had caught the comment.

  “We need to return to our quarters and tell,” she said to Violet. “Immediately.”

  Tell who? A master?

  It was as if a bolt struck Dawn, zapping her emotions into chaos until they danced around the edges of her gut.

  What if the team had screwed this up? What if these vampires kept them from saving Costin . . . ?

  “I’ll tell if
there’s going to be any telling,” Violet said, getting in Della’s face. “Do you understand? Stop with this mortifying behavior.”

  Della stood there, fisting her hands while Dawn’s fright and rage gathered, too.

  Then, as if reflecting the darkness in Dawn, the other girl started to change.

  Her body hunching.

  Her hair receding into her skull.

  Her ears and teeth growing to wolfish points.

  Her eyes angling into a cat gaze.

  And with each stage, Dawn kept pace: bristling, shaking, responding to the threat of danger with just as much of her own.

  She could hear Kiko extracting his gun from his pocket as that ball of white anger kept rolling inside her, growing, rumbling, eating away at the dark even while strengthening it.

  Della, who looked like a tailless sphynx cat-wolf by now . . . holy shit . . . turned toward the team, pointed a clawed finger at them, and emitted something between a hiss and a growl.

  The razor-over-steel sound told Dawn it was time to cut their losses, to get the information they’d come for because the team might not have a second chance.

  Maybe it was a desperate decision, but she closed her eyes and brought her dark energy to the surface, picturing Della in its path—the grotesque monster in girls’ clothing.

  The type of thing Costin needed to vanquish to become whole again.

  Push!—

  In Dawn’s mind, she saw the girl flying backward, her mouth open to expose needled teeth, her arms outspread until she crashed to the grass.

  With another mental thrust, Dawn bound the vamp’s hands above her head, just like she’d done to Jonah.

  Hell came down as she concentrated everything into restraining Della for Frank’s mind reading while she kept aware of what was breaking out around her: Frank jumping off of the roof and fluidly hitting the ground in stride while Kiko braced himself against the chimney and pulled out his revolver to shoot off a round that parted the crowd.

  His bullet only caught Violet’s hair as she leaped far to the side, turned to her friends, and laughed in absolute glee. The others clapped, just like they’d been invited to the party of the millennium.

  Kiko took out another weapon from a second pocket—a gun that held silver holy-water-soaked darts—and prepared to shoot double-time.

  Della struggled against Dawn’s puppeting as the other girls fell to all fours, going through rapid changes before Kiko could fire again.

  Dawn saw everything else in her peripheral vision, which barely registered as she focused on pushing, pushing at Della.

  Frank winged a silvered knife at one of the vamps—Dawn couldn’t tell the hideous, scrambling, giggling things apart anymore—but the creature dodged it, and the blade swicked into the grass in back of them.

  Kiko kept firing, and somewhere in the back of Dawn’s head, she wondered when the cops would come, when the humans on campus were going to get curious and investigate. . . .

  A harried voice came through Dawn’s earpiece.

  “Dawn? Kiko? Frank?”

  It was Natalia.

  Dawn’s concentration wobbled every time Della jerked against her hold or bit at the air, yipping in a way that made the hair on Dawn’s arms stand up straight.

  “Natalia?” Dawn whispered, hoping her earpiece would pick up her voice. She couldn’t manage to talk any louder.

  “Dawn!” Natalia’s words shook. “I was monitoring in the computer room, away from the boss’s inside shelter. When all the chaos started at your location, I heard him fighting something, just as he was before. Then I thought I heard the front door. I checked, and it was closed, but the headquarters defense system was disarmed. I reset it, but—”

  Dawn’s focus broke, but when Della took advantage, kicking in an attempt to roll away, Dawn slammed out again to push the girl down.

  She tried not to think about what Natalia had just said, the implications.

  “Natalia,” Dawn said, “say his name. Shout it. It might help. But do it only after you turn off your microphone. Then keep monitoring.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  Natalia signed off just as the dogs started going nuts again. One of the vampires had obviously reactivated their command over them.

  Shit. Shit. All this couldn’t be happening.

  Thank God the Friends regathered to blast against the canines, chopping them away from attacking Frank as he pursued one of the mobile cat-wolf vampires.

  The other two ran toward the house but were blocked by more Friends while Kiko reloaded.

  All the while, the vampires laughed like little maniacs who’d never had so much fun.

  Frank caught up to one of the girls, and she swiped at him, leaving marks on his face. Then she kicked out, sending him hurtling across the yard before she sprang after him.

  The girls were strong and lightning quick, maybe the daughters of a master . . . ?

  Was that why they weren’t running?

  Dawn’s mind-control started to quiver. She had to concentrate better, but she was also trying to work up enough energy to move Della toward Frank, so he could take over and she could deal with the remaining vampires herself.

  But, God, how was Dawn actually going to move the vamp girl? She was already doing everything she could. . . .

  She felt Kiko take the grenade from her hand, yet he was still firing the revolver at the vamps, too, and they’d scattered away from the house to avoid the bullets.

  He’d have to reload soon. . . .

  Dawn’s grip on Della faltered again.

  “Frank!” Kiko yelled before the vamps could take another run at the side of the house. “Take cover!”

  Her dad had engaged with the vampire girl who’d chased him across the grass, and he swung her off of him, tossing her back to her group, her body bowling the other two over, while he took a dive behind a shack by the football field.

  Kiko activated the grenade and chucked it at the three gathered vamp girls. Then he fell behind the chimney as a burst of ultraviolet light washed the air.

  Dawn lost her mental hold as Kiko grabbed her jacket and yanked her behind the chimney, where she scrambled for balance.

  Reality rushed her. Damn it, Della was free—

  As the light diminished, the yelps of the girls and dogs told Dawn that the ultraviolet hadn’t killed them. But, duh—they were day-walkers. What had she expected?

  But when she scuttled out from behind the chimney to seek out Della again, she found that the vamps were rubbing against the grass to counteract their burned skin.

  “Still alive,” she heard Kiko say for the sake of the earpiece as he reloaded. “The grenade just put them off for the time being. These crazies are too fast for even bullets.”

  Dawn saw Della whining on the ground, too, and she mentally suctioned to her. Then, with all the energy she had, she mind-pulled the girl a few feet toward the football field before Della dug her boot heels into the grass.

  The dogs were already recovering, lunging up to all fours before the rest of the vamp girls could. A Friend responded quickly, butting a hound and sending it flying backward, knocking it into one of the vampires as she moaned and rolled on the ground, pressing her paws against her eyes.

  “Shoot them, Kik,” Dawn urged.

  “Getting to it,” he said, still reloading.

  Then her earpiece crackled to life.

  “Need some help?” a familiar voice said. A voice that should still be at headquarters.

  Her hold on Della fractured.

  God no. It couldn’t be. No, no, no.

  She heard Kiko raise his guns, but then . . .

  Then . . .

  Something came flying out of the trees to their right, so fast it was only a line of black.

  It stopped just short of one squirming dog that was battling with a Friend, the streak solidifying, showing a male in a dark coat that settled against his body as he took stock of the activity around him.

  Jonah.

>   Dawn’s control over Della snapped for good, leaving the vampire sprawling on her back and staring at the sky.

  “No way,” Kiko said, lowering his weapons, clearly not wanting to shoot the boss.

  Then everything whirred into spliced motion, one thing, then another—

  Kiko retargeted the other three cat-wolf vamps as they raised their heads, their burning eyes adjusting from the UV flash. . . .

  Frank barreled out from behind the shack and raced to where Della was now struggling to her feet. . . .

  Then Jonah sent Dawn a glare that told her he had something to prove after she’d pushed him down, down into the pit of his body earlier tonight.

  What’re you doing? she thought-yelled to him.

  He didn’t answer, but she already knew.

  What had he said at their dinner a couple nights ago? I don’t agree very often with the way he goes about business and . . . other matters.

  Jonah had taken over for real.

  Idiot. Didn’t he know what he was risking?

  Coiled rage sprang out of Dawn, and she used it to try to puppet Jonah out of the fray.

  With one push, she knocked him back while Kiko aimed at the recovering girls and Frank sprang on Della, holding the vampire to the ground as she wiggled around.

  Dawn sent another punch at Jonah. Wham—

  His shoulder jerked back, but all he did was give her a disappointed look.

  Don’t even try, he thought to her.

  But then a dog sprang at him, and Dawn lost her rhythm in the complete horror at seeing Costin’s body attacked.

  It didn’t matter though, because Jonah reached out with arrogant grace and caught the snapping beast before it clamped to his shoulder. And when another dog came at him, wielding its teeth, Jonah snatched that one, too.

  He looked amazed at his reflexes as he restrained both beasts from ripping into his chest and getting to his heart.

  Dawn took out her throwing blades. She had to kill those things before they got to Costin and tore out his neck to the point where even he couldn’t heal.

  One of the dogs did go for Jonah’s throat, but he bared his own teeth, reared both feral animals back, then banged their heads together in a spray of blood.

  Shell-shocked, Dawn couldn’t move. She was only vaguely aware that the vamp girls were running at the building again while Kiko reloaded what might be the last of his bullets and darts.