Midnight Reign

by Chris Marie Green

  Now, the TV whisked over to another newscast: Lee Tomlinson in handcuffs. The screen focused in on a man following in the shadow of the accused murderer.

  Hello. “There he is again. Milton Crockett. I assume this is leading up to a big reveal, Voi…?” Dawn stopped herself from saying the old nickname she’d given him. But she couldn’t call him Jonah, even if he’d told her to during one of their more…intimate moments.

  The TV blinked off, and Dawn’s belly clutched into itself, anticipating The Voice. She despised her weakness in wanting to hear him so badly.

  “There’s been another murder,” he said, tone melding with the high-quality speakers until it sounded as if he actually might be in the same room. “A cocktail waitress named Jessica Reese.”

  His words, etched with a foreign undertow, scraped over her skin, digging, biting into her with nips of suggestion. Dawn stirred, restless.

  “When you say ‘another murder,’” Kiko asked, “are you referring to a second victim, after Klara Monaghan? Is that why you showed us Lee Tomlinson, the guy who did her?”

  Dawn thought about the reason The Voice had shown them the Marla Pennybaker clip, too.

  Frank. Would the murders somehow lead to her dad and…

  “You think this new killing might have something to do with the Underground?” she asked.

  “And Klara’s murder, too,” Breisi added. “Crockett is a link between Klara and Marla and, by extension, Lee Tomlinson, the Servant, and Robby Pennybaker, the vampire. Boss, are you insinuating that Crockett is a vampire Servant like Lee?”

  “That would certainly be something to go on,” The Voice said.

  Kiko came to sit on the edge of the settee. “So—”

  “What’re the details?” Dawn blurted, unable to wait.

  Breisi glanced over at her, and Dawn knew exactly what she was thinking. Patience.

  Knowing the woman was right, Dawn settled her ass down. But who could blame her for urging answers out of a man who rarely gave them? Could anyone fault her for doubting The Voice when he was so damned cryptic?

  And when he’d betrayed her before?

  A man named Matt Lonigan had told her something similar once: answers. Demand some answers about The Voice.

  Sinking lower into her seat, she put thoughts of Matt, a possible vampire hunter and rival PI, on the back burner, where they still simmered no matter how hard she tried to turn them down.

  The TV now showcased a grisly picture of Klara Monaghan, a glorified extra whom the team suspected had been murdered because she’d given Limpet too much information about Robby. On the screen, the blood leaked from her torn throat.

  Dawn swallowed, going ill at the sight of red plastered over her mind’s eye. Her mother’s own crime-scene photos. Images she couldn’t shake.

  “Dawn,” The Voice said gently.

  “I’m okay.” Liar.

  As Klara’s image hovered over the room, The Voice paused, as if he wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. But he knew Dawn too well to pursue it, so he continued.

  “The new victim’s wounds are similar to Klara’s, but with a few differences. Where Lee Tomlinson left DNA residue from saliva, this time the killer used bleach to wash it away. It isn’t an ill-planned crime based on impulse. This one is methodical. So far, there are no helpful fingerprints at the victim’s apartment, although there are some cloth fibers that might be useful. Teeth imprints could be salvaged, as well.”

  “The scene has been processed already?” Dawn asked.

  “It’s still occurring.”

  The Voice didn’t need to confirm that he’d been talking to a paid source who was at the crime’s location. He had connections everywhere.

  Kiko shook his head. “So it’s too late for us to do a bust-in on the scene, huh?”

  Dawn didn’t even tell him that he couldn’t do bust-ins period. Reminding him of his injuries was overkill, especially since he was worried about other things, like losing his acting agent due to the injury, too. Not auditioning was killing Kiko; she knew that because, during long chats while sitting next to his hospital bed, she’d realized he was a closet overachiever. A GATE student and an honor-roll stud, he’d planned on a law career as a backup to acting, believe it or not.

  The TV went dark again. “The authorities have set a tight perimeter around the scene, but let’s see if Breisi can get one of those secret, late-night coroner appointments so we can view the body. Breisi?”

  “I’m on it just as soon as you tell us more, Boss.”

  The Voice laughed, a sound that scraped through the center of Dawn, stripping her from the inside out. Her tummy seized up, moved by the sparked friction between her legs. She crossed them to dull the hunger he always inflicted.

  Dawn…

  She knew that she was the only one who could hear him, feel him, saying her name.

  Pushing the craving away, she ignored his silent supplication and asked, “Are we assuming this is the work of a copycat murderer?”

  “It could be.” Kiko stood, blue eyes glinting with the thrill of the chase. “Lee Tomlinson’s DNA tells us that he’s Klara’s murderer, but he’s locked up awaiting trial. He’s been contained ever since the law caught up with him.”

  After Klara’s murder, Lee had disappeared. The team had researched him, then tried to track him down for further questioning about the Underground, but to no avail. By then, he’d been found holed up in the very same county, stoned out of his gourd.

  “Unless,” Dawn said, “Lee wasn’t the killer in the first place. Maybe someone planted evidence to frame him?”

  “Or maybe a rogue vampire took up on Jessica where Lee left off on Klara,” Kiko added.

  “We need to lay this out.” Breisi paged through the notes on her clipboard.

  When The Voice spoke, it was easy to picture him with a finger in the air, now that she sort of knew what he looked like. “Before we start, we need perspective. Remember, our objective is to use this murder to discover an Underground.”

  “How could I forget,” Dawn said. “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. And if we just happen to solve a crime while we’re at it, champagne for us.”

  “Dawn—” The Voice began, his tone reflecting a weariness she’d encouraged with her eternal arguments.

  “I know, I know. We’re here to save the world, and that’s all the explanation the team requires.”

  She’d been told the vague, noble justifications for The Voice’s secrecy ad nauseam. Limpet and Associates didn’t exist to find Frank or supply Dawn with the answers she’d been thirsting for. No wonder The Voice generally hired people like Kiko and Breisi: salts of the earth with overdeveloped senses of justice, people who fought for good merely on faith alone.

  “Spock. You just quoted Mr. Spock,” Kiko said, facing Dawn in his enthusiasm. “Cool.”

  Then he continued, turning toward the TV as if it contained The Voice, which…it couldn’t. Right?

  God, who knew anymore?

  “So, technically, we don’t have a client this time? No Marla Pennybakers to deal with?”

  “Correct.” The Voice’s pause seemed to stretch into a smile in the dark. “Just the Underground.”

  He said the last word with a mixture of reverence and vengefulness. She wished she knew why.

  Damn it, if she didn’t need to find Frank, she’d be out of here. But The Voice had her by the fine hairs and he knew it.

  “All right.” Breisi stood and walked beneath the TV. “Are we ready to piece some puzzles together? Maybe something we already know will connect our vampires with this murder.”

  “Ready,” Dawn said.

  “Ready.” Kiko gave a little hop.

  “All right. Let’s start at the beginning and work forward. There’s our objective: this Underground that Robby and his father, Nathan, mentioned. Robby told us that, as a child actor, Nathan had sent him to this place to ‘reinvent’ his image or make a comeback.”

  As the sp
eakers hummed with The Voice’s presence, Dawn’s body fritzed. “The Underground. We know it contains a ‘Dr. Eternity’ Nathan talked about. And, in general, lore tells us that vamps are all about extended life. So maybe Robby would’ve stayed down there until his comeback, even if it was years away? A long life would’ve given him enough time to reemerge and wow a future generation. Then, the public wouldn’t believe he could possibly still be alive or twelve years old anymore, and common sense would lead them to think he’s someone else…?”

  “Or maybe something happens Underground that would’ve made Robby into a bigger star than ever, without the public catching on that he’s still actually Robby?” Kiko turned to Breisi, making sure she was writing everything down. “So we need to fill that hole with an explanation, like plastic surgery.” He chortled. “Vamps getting plastic surgery, that’s…”

  His laughter faded as they all just gazed at each other.

  Dawn’s head began to pound, her breath coming short. Jacqueline Ashley…her resemblance to Eva. But Jac hadn’t been like vampire Robby, with the mind screw and crazy-colored eyes. Yeah, Dawn had been exhausted and wigged out when Jac had shown her the makeover, but…

  No. God, it hadn’t even been the same as when Robby had looked into her eyes. With Jac, Dawn had been too emotional, too messed up because Kiko was hurt and she’d just chopped a vampire’s head off. Jac was only another starlet doing whatever she could to be successful. The Eva/Jac connection was all in Dawn’s head, Breisi had even said so….

  Across the room, Breisi’s eyes had gone wider, like she’d been thinking the same thing. But then she blinked, scanning her clipboard again, making Dawn believe she could be wrong.

  Kiko cleared his throat, and The Voice’s speakers continued their electric wait.

  Finally, Dawn could speak again. “These vamps we met, they were all different, like various races or something, so maybe one of those breeds committed this murder instead of a human Servant like Lee? We know for sure that there’re two Underground varieties—the Guards and Robby’s death angel. They’re tied together since the red-eyes were trying to get Robby back to the Underground. So should we assume that the silver-eyes and Servants are related, too? I mean, Lee Tomlinson knew some information about Robby, remember? And that’s when the silver-eyes showed up, like they needed to shut his mouth. Could the murderer be a silver-eye who already knew Lee?”

  Kiko oohed. “That’s something I’d like to know. Why are there such different subspecies—ones that seem to coexist—running around in such a relatively small area?”

  “Maybe they’ve found a biome that suits their needs,” Breisi said, her speech quickening, as it always did when she got on a tangent. “Maybe they all evolved together and rely on the same environment and each other for survival. The variations can be accounted for through evolution. If humans can differ from continent to continent, race to race, and if we indeed can call a gorilla like Proconsul africanus our ancestor, then I see no reason to discount the possibility that vampires have adjusted to the passing of years, too, maybe even at an accelerated pace. They would have to adapt to anything that threatened to destroy them or that made surviving easier.”

  Dawn was still half catching up to the end of Breisi’s impromptu professor lecture. It wasn’t always easy being on the same wavelength as a girl who’d gone to college on an engineering scholarship. “But the vamps’ powers really vary, Breisi. A lot. You’d think one Underground would hold a specific kind of vamp. The lore we’ve studied shows that, yeah, different types of vampires have been documented in different types of cultures, like that female vamp in Mexico that was reported last year—”

  “The tlahuelpuchi,” Breisi said.

  “Right, or the one that was caught in Greece and destroyed three years ago—”

  Kiko almost jumped out of his skin to beat Breisi. “Lamiai!”

  Dawn sighed, seeing the beginning of yet another competitive event between her coworkers. “T-lah-lah-blah or lam-whatever, thank you, Breisi and Kiko. The point I’m trying to make is could all these vamps really exist together in one Underground without stealing each other’s food?”

  “Maybe they’ve found a way around that,” Breisi said.

  “Are you talking about vamps that don’t feed on blood?” Kiko asked.

  The Voice cleared his throat, sending a jolt through Dawn. He couldn’t just stay quiet so she could focus? Yeesh.

  “Okay, the taskmaster wants us to get back to the objective,” she said, still keeping him at bay. “Maybe talking about the vamps’ characteristics will connect this murder and the Underground.”

  “Excellent,” Breisi said. “Let’s start with our first set of vampires. The Guards. Red-eyes. We’ve seen that they can die from decapitation or a silver bullet to the heart. We don’t know yet if other vamp lore staples like fire or stakes work. But garlic does repel them, and crucifixes. Silver anywhere else in their body might weaken them—”

  Trying to top Breisi, Kiko fired off his own list. “You and Dawn know from experience that Robby’s kind of vampire—if there’s more than one of him—gets slowly poisoned by silver anywhere in his body. You said that he was begging for blood to cleanse the stuff out.”

  “So, silver?” Dawn said. “Bad for these vamps. And that means…What? How does this relate to Jessica Reese?”

  She could almost feel The Voice’s approval. It made her bristle.

  “It doesn’t relate so much,” Kiko said. “But at least I can imagine a Guard tearing out a throat more than I can Robby’s type of vamp. Animal wasn’t his style—he had to ask Dawn’s permission to drink blood, even though he didn’t get it.”

  “Little prick,” she said, recalling how Robby had trespassed into her mind instead. She still had nightmares about it. “But why would Jessica give permission, and then why would a vamp just leave her body out in the open when secrecy seems to be so vital to their existence?”

  Breisi was giving Dawn a measuring gaze, as if she was checking her over for buried Robby wounds. “Good question.”

  Kiko went on. “Back to Robby—he had two forms, right? In human guise, he could pass for any Joe Blow walking the street, except for those eyes. He could mind screw you with them, even worse than those red-eyes do. But when Robby went all death-angel vampy…shee-it.” Kiko started counting his fingers with every checked-off attribute. “Robby looked like a creature of the Rapture and was stronger than Godzilla. Oh, and the change brought on the fangs.”

  “As far as similarities to the Guards go,” Breisi said, “Dawn killed Robby using decapitation, too, but we don’t know if her follow-up silver-bullet shot to the heart was effective. Differences: garlic didn’t work on the Robby type and neither did the crucifix—they only gave Robby pause and didn’t repel him. And he hinted to us that he could tread on holy ground.”

  “Also, he can be seen on film,” Kiko added. “But does this obviously higher-class vamp murder like a rabid wolf?”

  “Hmmm.” Dawn leaned forward, forearms on thighs. “Nathan Pennybaker ordered those Guards around like he’d captivated them, and he wasn’t able to do that with Robby. That gets me to thinking….” Nah, it was a weird idea.

  “What, Dawn?” Breisi asked.

  Okay, her life was all about weird nowadays. Might as well go for it. “Mind suggestion. Could the weaker vampires be open to some other commanding creature that wanted Jessica dead? Could the other party be, like, a puppeteer?”

  “Excellent point,” The Voice finally said. “This would leave us with Guards or silver-eyes as the most likely vampire suspects, excluding Servants.”

  “Silver-eyes,” Kiko said. “Robby called them Groupies. We know they can try to mind screw, too, and that crucifixes, at least, fazed them. We haven’t killed one, so we can only guess what would work best, if it came down to violence. I could see their type turning almost as feral as the Guards.”

  Dawn nodded. “But I’d never forget about the possibility of another Servant, l
ike Lee Tomlinson. A human who gets off on being bitten, one with no obvious powers, could resort to using their own teeth to become a vamp. Remember how Lee dressed like he wanted to be one? Maybe this murderer wants to make himself into the real thing by just copying vamp habits?”

  Kiko looked up at the TV. “You getting any ideas about how we catch the killer, then have them lead us Underground?”

  “Not as of yet,” The Voice said.

  As his tone shuddered through Dawn, they all sat motionless, allowing everything to coalesce. Breisi got out her phone and dialed.

  Okay, Dawn thought. Underground. Was it a literal reference to where the vamps lived? Or could they be housed in some old decrepit hotel, or even in plain sight?

  She didn’t think so, because at one point during Robby’s death night, he had tricked his father into revealing too much to Dawn and Breisi. The vamp had been hoping to trap Nathan into coming Underground with him because there was some penalty for saying too much. That spoke of the importance of secrecy, and Dawn imagined vamps needed that to survive. Living in plain sight might be a clever upset of expectation, but she doubted vamps would be that brave. But, again, who knew?

  And who knew why The Voice demanded the same secrecy?

  As an almost physical invisibility nudged against her, she felt how he was attracted to her questions, how his essence was seething around as if to request entrance.

  I need you to do the work I can’t do, to uncover them so I can do the dirty work, he whispered, breathing into her. A pulse thudded in her belly, flowing lower, hotter. You know I can’t go outside, Dawn, because if I were to expose myself too early, I would never gain the initiative again.

  As he swirled inside of her, churning, escalating her hunger, she thought about all the seeds of mistrust that had been planted by The Voice’s betrayals: his using Frank to lure her to L.A., his refusal to share information. What he wasn’t telling her could even be worse….