Midnight Reign

by Chris Marie Green

  Well, hey, so she might as well give up then, right?

  Ambling toward the fireplace, Frank demonstrated the boundaries of his chains. They were long enough to allow him freedom on this side of the room, but short enough to keep him away from the faraway door.

  Smart move, Eva, Dawn thought. When she or Julia entered, Frank wouldn’t be able to ambush them. But, at the same time, he had a certain amount of movement.

  Dawn stuck her head into the fireplace and peered up, squinting. Indeed, there was only a tiny hole.

  One of the chimneys. A red finger.

  She pulled out, flabbergasted that Kiko had actually seen something. His prediction had been cryptic as hell, but he had some of his mojo back. If Dawn hadn’t been stuffed into a secret room by her mother-cum-vampire and her Amazon lackey, she might even say things were looking up.

  “I used my fork to make that,” Frank said, plopping to the sofa. He kept looking at her and smiling as if he couldn’t believe she was with him. “That hole just popped up last night, so I tried to yell in the chimney, just to see if anyone would notice my voice, like maybe a Friend on patrol. Or even you, Dawnie. I knew Eva would be bringing you home at some point, and I always imagined you coming over and hearing me before she got to you. Some warning system I am.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t repair the hole lickety-split. A Friend could’ve gotten through.”

  “True enough.”

  At the same moment, both of them seemed to realize they were talking about really messed-up things. This wasn’t baseball chatter or an attempted conversation about the electricity bill. This was Friends and vampires.

  Frank gave her one of his funny, screwy looks. It was the type of expression that’d make her laugh when she was younger, the type that had made her love him even when she was angry enough to spit.

  “So, I kind of climbed on the roof to investigate,” she said.

  “You did what? Dawnie—”

  “Don’t lecture me on safety, Frank. I was checking out something Kiko predicted.”

  “Kiko? Well, I’ll be—how is he? And…” Frank’s throat worked and his eyes caught a glimmer. “And…Breisi?”

  Dawn knew who he really wanted to hear about. “Breisi’s fine. She talks about you all the time—misses the crap out of you—but she’s worried. Everyone’s worried.”

  She wouldn’t go into details about the boss. Dawn felt too rushed for that now, and she wouldn’t be telling Frank most of it anyway. Her dad would probably get all protective and pull out a shotgun, then order The Voice to marry Dawn and make her an honest woman or something. Frank was weird in a lot of old-fashioned ways; he didn’t like “Dawn’s men.”

  Not that he knew about a fraction of them.

  He was smiling to himself, probably hearing the name “Breisi” reverberating through his head. With that one little tell, Dawn realized just how much he missed the other woman. How deeply he felt for her.

  “Breisi and I have talked,” Dawn said.

  “Good for you two.”

  He lowered his gaze at her, and she understood right away.

  Quiet. The cameras. No talking about Limpet and Associates allowed.

  “I’m just chatting about your new girlfriend.” Dawn took warped pleasure out of Eva’s probable reaction to Frank moving on without her. “I don’t care if the vamp gets offended.”

  “Dawn.” He’d used the un-nickname, which meant he was pretending he could discipline her. “She’s your mom.”

  She reared back. “You’re sticking up for her?”

  He looked away, and the bottom fell out of her world.

  “Tell me you haven’t forgiven her.”

  “I…” Frank shot another glance to the camera, but Dawn could tell it was only so he wouldn’t have to talk.

  “Goddamnit.” She laughed bitterly. “She’s tooled with your mind. What do they call this…the Stockholm syndrome?”

  “She’s the woman I fell in love with.”

  The woman who’d driven him to drink with her death, the woman who’d haunted him with her senseless “murder.”

  “She must’ve done a number on you to even have you thinking of forgetting everything she put you through.”

  “Yeah, she has.” Frank held up a finger and pointed to his head. “She’s tried to get inside the whole time, ever since that night I thought I saw someone who looked like her and followed them into the Bava nightclub.”

  She remembered what The Voice had told her about Frank’s last contact: he called me from what I now think to be Bava and said that perhaps it was time for you to come out here and fulfill your place, Dawn. Yet before he could continue, the phone went dead, and I didn’t hear from him again.

  “You saw Eva there.” Dawn got to her knees. “She mind screwed, then captured you.”

  “I didn’t gain consciousness for a while. I don’t know where she took me—somewhere cold and dark—but then I fully woke up here, in chains.”

  “Getting you back was her first project. She told me she wants the family together again.”

  “And she’s serious. Hell, is she ever serious.”

  They both glanced up at the cameras.

  “She’s a vampire.” If Eva’s betrayal wasn’t enough to turn him against her, maybe this would be.

  Her dad only nodded, face unreadable.

  “Doesn’t that mean anything?” There he was: simple Frank, good buddy to everyone, doofus supreme. So easy to take advantage of.

  “Hey, I know what’s at stake,” he whispered. “Do you?”

  “Obviously, I know a lot more about it than you do.”

  “She’s going to turn both of us, that’s why she’s revealed herself to you, Dawnie. There’s no going back now. That’s why you’re locked in a room with me. We belong to her.”

  Belong? Damned if she did. Eva had given Dawn up years ago. No late claims on these goods.

  Frank continued. “I realized what was going on from the second I regained consciousness, and I was prepared to make life easier for myself. She didn’t take the time to win me over the way she did with you, but—”

  “That’s ’cos she knew you’d fall for her again. She knew you’d still be a sucker, Frank.”

  “We’ve got history, damn it. A man and wife…”

  Agonized, he bowed his head, turning one cheek away from her. All Dawn wanted to do was remember how badly she’d yearned to find her dad; she wished she could just go to him now and hold him like any other daughter would. But he wasn’t making good choices—as usual. He’d disappointed her, especially with a woman like Breisi waiting for him.

  Then Dawn noticed a faint redness on his neck.

  Her own neck flashed heat, and she held a hand to it, not knowing why.

  Suspicion about Frank crept in slowly. No. He couldn’t have allowed Eva to…

  “Like I was saying.” His voice sounded dredged. “I didn’t do too bad for myself down here. Except for keeping her out of my head, I stopped fighting her. Damn it all, back in the day she just about ruined her career to marry me, Dawnie. And the less I fought, the more chain room she’d parcel out. I even got a TV. She told me just how much she wanted a family again, how much she missed you, too.”

  Dawn wouldn’t dwell on that last part; she was just happy Frank had been mind blocking Eva. “You didn’t want to escape?”

  “More than anything. To you and…” His gaze went soft, but when he glanced at a camera, he hardened up again. “…other people outside. Part of me wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t.”

  “Does that mean the other part of you is on board with this whole wonky family-reunion idea?”

  He gave her a look that said, Aren’t you? Don’t you want what we never had?

  Dawn didn’t react, instead forcing him to continue with her jaded silence.

  “She’s been having me sleep during the day while she works, then she’ll wake me up when the sun goes down. Every night, I’ve screamed at her out of pure frust
ration. Every goddamned night.”

  The lightbulb went on. Kiko had always gotten the best readings from Frank’s T-shirts after dusk. Was it because of this nightly upheaval?

  “Don’t you think I want to throttle me just as much as you do right now?” Frank asked.

  “You have no idea what I want to do.”

  “Same here. You have no idea.” He shifted, and his chains clanked. “The worst thing is, I was afraid all my…friends…would get hurt because I know Eva isn’t alone in this. I have the feeling she’s got something else planned, but I don’t know what. I’ve wondered if she answers to a higher authority.”

  There he was: Frank the PI—the man he’d become while she was away. In spite of everything, it made her kind of proud.

  “Ever hear of an Underground?” Dawn sent a nasty look at the camera again. “The old woman and I touched on the topic.”

  “Can she be saved from it?”

  What?

  “Well, can she?” he repeated.

  She couldn’t fathom this. He wanted to rescue the woman who’d calculated her own murder and left a heartbroken family behind. Seriously?

  “Yeah,” Dawn said. “I can decapitate her. That’d save her real good.”

  Frank went pale. In his eyes, she could see him assessing the stranger she’d become.

  Saying it hadn’t felt right at all; it made her guts tighten. But Eva wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t sweet, nice Jac, either. She was one of them, a Robby Pennybaker, the mini motherfucker who’d violated her and tried to kill her.

  “This Underground…” he began, face flushing slightly.

  “Let your beloved wife tell you about it.” Dawn hurt for Breisi, hurt for what should’ve been justice but wasn’t. “I need answers from you.”

  “Like what?” He sounded so resigned, the loser of round one. Back to the Frank she knew, the pre-Breisi ne’er-do-well.

  “For starters, how did you get involved with all this?”

  As he hesitated, Dawn realized her right arm was throbbing. Great—the old injury letting her know it wasn’t happy. And she was really tired. It was all crashing in on her now.

  “Careful what you say—she’ll hear us,” Frank whispered. “Eva’s hearing is that sharp.”

  Holy…Was she ever going to get answers? What kind of situation would actually allow that to happen?

  “But I’ll tell you what I can,” Frank said, and she saw that he really wanted to help her.

  “Then tell me what the boss would want me to hear.”

  Frank seemed to get it: they were with a PI agency that’d been hired to look into Robby Pennybaker, and that’s it. They’d talk in a private code Eva wouldn’t understand.

  “How did I start?” Frank stared straight ahead. “I guess it was when a local magazine did one of those ‘Remember when…?’ stories about Eva. They had pictures of the three of us, then me and you, then updates on what we both were doing.”

  For Frank, that would’ve been hanging out at the Cat’s Paw and singing about glory days with the other guys. For her own part, Dawn recalled being contacted for an interview, but she never did those. Career success had always been based on her skills; she refused to use her mother’s name to get ahead.

  More important…what was Frank saying here? She recalled that The Voice had found Kiko through a newspaper article that detailed his psychic thwarting of a serial rapist. Had a magazine feature brought Frank to Limpet’s attention in the same way? Why? Because he was the father of Dawn the Prophecy Girl and Jonah would do anything—including hiring Frank—to reel her in?

  “I really needed a job,” Frank added, “even though I wasn’t…trained…for this type of work. When Jonah contacted me, I accepted, few questions asked. It was a gold mine and I didn’t want to turn my back on it: a gig with great pay. It wasn’t until later that I found out there were definite…reasons…Jonah hired me.”

  From Frank’s expression, Dawn knew she’d been right about Frank being the bait for her. “So why did you stay on?”

  “Because I got good at the detecting stuff, and my muscles came in handy. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t being sneered at for being useless. And…Breisi…” He swallowed.

  Dawn did, too, wishing Breisi would bust through that door right now. She was really the only person out there who came through every time, wasn’t she?

  Chest aching, Dawn said, “Jonah took advantage of your need to have a purpose.”

  At Frank’s warning look, she realized they were approaching too-much-information ground, so she shut up.

  Speaking of being careful, wasn’t it odd that she hadn’t felt any hint of an Eva mind screw yet? She wouldn’t have put a trick like that past a vampire. Or maybe a creature of the night needed to be looking into her eyes to get any info.

  Eager to get on with it, her brain paged through a thousand notes, freezing on one that was high on the bothering-Dawn list. “You kept Eva’s crime-scene photo. Why?”

  Frank looked ill at being called on retaining it. “All those times I locked myself away with the bottle, I was keeping myself company with that picture. Thought I should’ve been able to save Eva and beat myself up about why it’d happened. Now I know it was all a part of the vampire act, but back then, her murder was real to me. I felt so guilty whenever I started to throw that picture away, so I never did. It would’ve been like tossing her out, too, and I couldn’t.” He glanced up at Dawn, shame filtering his gaze. “I can’t.”

  She’d spent so long clinging to Eva, too. But it wasn’t right, forgiving her, allowing her back in.

  “You were questioned for her murder,” she said. “You’re not angry about that? She could’ve gotten you jailed or worse.”

  “She told me everything was taken care of—it was guaranteed that I wouldn’t get into trouble with the law. And I was cleared.”

  Underground Servants. Were there any on the police force? Had to be. “So that makes what she did all hunky-dory—”

  “I’m sorry.” Now he was watching her with pity. “I’m sorry for making you this way.”

  Struck so hard, she couldn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” he added, “for making you so hateful and self-destructive. I tried to protect you from becoming her. But I made you hate her, didn’t I? I gave you…” He searched for a phrase.

  “An inferiority complex?” Dawn bit out. “You loved the dead Eva more than you did me. That’s what I thought half the time. But”—she held up a hand—“I’m over that, Frank.”

  Are you? his lingering gaze asked.

  She glared. Yes.

  “You grew up with a lousy drunk for a pop, at any rate.”

  Almost silently, the door clicked open, and Dawn went on alert. Frank remained calm and resigned.

  Julia stood in the entrance, armed with the dart gun. Hopefully it was a dart gun. All the same, it kept Dawn from charging ahead.

  Then Eva glided past the Servant—Dawn had no doubt about what Julia was—and into the room. Her stylish dress rustled to a standstill, so cool and chic. She had a hopeful tenseness to her posture.

  Dawn just stared at her, hard as rock.

  Clearing her throat, Eva made a conciliatory gesture to her daughter. “Breisi keeps calling on your phone.”

  Fishing for more information about what exactly Breisi was to them both, huh? Eva had been listening in.

  “I want to talk to her,” Dawn said. “She might have news about Kiko. I would think you might care about that but…oh, yeah. You’re dead.”

  “Not now, Dawn.” Eva sounded so damned maternal. There was even a flash of worry about Kiko somewhere in there. “You know I can’t give you the phone.”

  “Why? Because I’m your captive?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t look at it that way.”

  Dawn laughed, sending Julia into a grimace so horrendous that she almost turned Dawn all the way to stone.

  “Right.” She shot Frank a glance. Can you believe this woman?
“I’m your ‘guest.’ Thank you for your hospitality. It rocks.”

  Now it was Eva’s turn to give Frank a look. It was an expression between parents who didn’t know how to handle their willful child.

  Then Frank met Dawn’s horrified reaction. His shoulders sank.

  “Don’t you want me to talk to Breisi?” Dawn asked him.

  “Yeah.” He lowered his head. “I do.”

  Eva took a loaded step forward. “Frank?”

  “Don’t get on his case,” Dawn said. “Breisi’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him—and that’s including your heartwarming resurrection.”

  Julia, half of her face now a hardening field of sores from her tussle with the Friend, finally spoke up. “Eva could’ve been a queen Underground. But she just wants you two back.”

  “Imagine that.” Dawn aimed her temper at Julia. “And I want to discover my very own gold mine. I want to rule Texas and make all the beauty queens run around with donkey ears. But most of all, I want to get the hell out of here with my dad. Do you think I’ll get what I want?”

  Julia actually raised the gun at Dawn, but Eva slapped it down.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry,” the Servant quickly said, bending her head.

  Clearly flustered, Eva opened her arms to her daughter. “You’ll see how much I love you. Maybe it’ll take time, but I made the right choice for all of us.”

  “You want to make us all like Robby, your little pervert costar, Eva. Don’t tell me that’s the pinnacle of happiness.”

  “But—”

  “Get. Away.”

  Mouth agape, Eva hesitated, then gathered composure. “Okay. All right, then, I’ll give you a rest. It’s been a strange day.”

  And with that, she left in a flutter of flowing skirts.

  Still looking down, Julia bolted the door behind her while Dawn sat on the floor near Frank.

  “Delusional,” Dawn muttered, hoping her dad would agree.

  But he didn’t say a word. Not a goddamned word.

  TWENTY

  THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER

  BY some miracle, Dawn fell asleep on a couch. She was too exhausted, and when Frank wouldn’t talk to her, a retreat into herself was the only logical way to deal.