Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

His head canted forward, and she could tell he was about to wake up, that he’d only been resting and that the sound of his name was finally nudging him back to consciousness.

  “Morning, sunshine,” she said, coming to stand in front of him.

  His muddled gaze struggled to lock onto her. When it did, he winced so violently that the blanket fell away from his neck, exposing the still-healing wounds there. Based on the intel that Costin had gotten from Claudius since they’d brought the master back here, Dawn knew this creature had earned his injuries from a fight with the lesser vampires in his Underground. But she only knew this because, after things had calmed down around headquarters and Costin had sequestered Claudius for a private questioning session, the boss had scribbled notes so the team would be in the loop. Then he’d settled down to rest without even talking to Dawn face-to face.

  That’s right—notes had been the extent of their communication. He was that angry at her.

  It’d been at sunrise, after she’d found the papers taped to the inside of their bedroom door, that Dawn had snuck down here to the lab, thinking she could take her interrogation skills down a notch and maybe get even more answers out of this master vampire, who had the ability to move about during the day, although his powers were at an ebb now, just like Costin’s.

  As Claudius regally tried to compose himself in front of her, she saw the fear in him. Saw herself in the pitch-black of his pupils, which looked like hellholes she would have to claw her way out of.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” she said.

  It took a minute for the master vamp to process this—she could practically see his thoughts clicking together in his eyes like he was a slow-moving machine that was recovering from a malfunction.

  Dawn dug the nails of her free hand into her palm. She hadn’t intended to mess up Claudius so badly. In her desperation to help Costin, she’d just lost patience.

  But she’d keep control from now on, she thought. Control would get her the answers to the biggest questions of all: Did this particular Underground house the dragon, who they suspected might be the most revered and feared monster of all? Was this the community that Vlad Tepes had chosen to keep himself hidden throughout the years? He’d turned Costin into a vampire centuries ago, along with Costin’s fellow blood brothers, including Claudius. But then Costin had made a mysterious deal with an ethereal, and nearly anonymous, entity to slay the dragon and his direct progeny in order to win back his soul. The vow had made the boss a Soul Traveler who borrowed bodies from willing hosts so that he could slay one Underground at a time with the aid of handpicked teams.

  But during the final attack on the last Underground, much to Dawn’s horror, she’d been the one to turn him back into a vampire, trapping him in the undead body of his host, Jonah, who constantly fought Costin for dominance.

  Now, as Dawn took a step toward Claudius, the master vamp stiffened beneath his blanket. One of the Friends pushed the flannel back up and over his shoulder, as if the spirit wanted to play good to Dawn’s bad.

  “Claudius,” Dawn said. “It’s over. All you can do at this point is make the rest of it easy.”

  The vamp was grimacing. He was trying to shift, thin cat hair bristling out of his skin. But that was as far as Claudius got with changing into his more lethal vamp form.

  Beaten, his body relaxed into his common disguise—that of a woman named Mrs. Jones. It was the identity he’d assumed aboveground to fool everyone.

  The fruitlessness of Claudius’s maneuvers was a little sad. Costin had told them that this master was a physically weaker one, and Dawn almost felt sorry that she was responsible for making him even more of a basket case. Then again, he would’ve slayed any one of them in a heartbeat. So why be so sympathetic about a master vampire?

  As his more delicate female features warped back into stronger male ones—the more prominent nose, chin, mouth—Dawn took her hand off the crucifix in her back pocket, pretty sure she wasn’t going to need it for now.

  But she wouldn’t forget it was there.

  She dragged over a stool from a work counter strewn with nuts and bolts from several projects in progress. Hunting weapons. Then, sitting, she said, “You were with Costin for hours before he retired upstairs. I can see you’re tired.”

  Finally, the vampire spoke, his voice hoarse from the still- healing damage to his throat. “Release me.”

  The command was slightly imperious, the tone of a monarch whose words were threaded through with attempted charm. It was easy to block out right now, not only because of Claudius’s weakened state but because Dawn was prepared to use some fairly decent mind powers of her own; what she’d done to this master vamp last night, banging him back and forth with a psychokinetic verve that had only grown over this past year, testified to what she could do when she was at her best. Or worst.

  The urge to do it again, the impatience to get answers, brutally flexed in her. She calmed herself.

  After taking in a long breath, she felt a sting on her skin, near the jaw, and she scratched at it, almost as if the action gave her hands something to do.

  In the meantime, Claudius seemed to realize that the charm held no sway. His eyes went wide.

  “Come on now,” Dawn said, avoiding any escalation in tension.

  “Work with me. That’s all I’m asking, here. And that also means you won’t call any animals to your aid so they can try to barge into this building and rescue you.” He’d tried to do that last night, but she doubted his strength was up to it now.

  “If I don’t cooperate,” he asked, “will you slice my gut open again?”

  She withstood the attack. Hell, she took full responsibility for what she’d done. And Claudius’s words were nothing compared to the terrified looks the rest of the team had given her after they’d taken the master vamp into custody. His barbs were zero next to the way they’d talked around her afterward, as if they didn’t know what to say to her anymore.

  “Does it need to come down to slicing?” Dawn asked. “According to Costin, you shared more information with him. You gave him a few details about being pushed out of the Underground by those vamp girls, among other little details about the community itself.”

  “I suppose you’d like me to convey the location then.”

  Dawn knew she had a snowball’s chance of sweet-talking that out of him, but what the heck. “It’d save us all a lot of grief, wouldn’t it?”

  The vampire gritted out a laugh. “I had little choice in sharing with Costin. He used our blood brother Awareness to chip his way into my head. Unless you can finesse your troglodyte mind tricks to match his much more civilized ones, I don’t believe you’ll get as far.”

  So Costin had been breaking Claudius down bit by bit. The news was heartening, mostly because Dawn had been doubting Costin’s strength recently. Most of his raw powers had been dulled after he’d been trapped in Jonah’s coarse monster body, and the notion that he had mentally overcome Claudius was good news. If Claudius were a more powerful master, it would’ve been even better news, but she’d take this for what it was worth.

  “So then,” Dawn continued calmly, “why don’t you save your own skin by sharing even more? You don’t really think you’re going to be rescued by your little vamp girls anytime soon. They tossed you out like three-day-old fish, remember?”

  “They will follow Mihas’s orders. I’ve put in calls to him. He’ll respond once he checks his messages.”

  Mihas—the beloved co- master of this Underground. “Hate to break it to you, Claudius, but unless Mihas has the guts to lead an attack in public—and I don’t think he’s dumb enough to expose what he is and risk discovery—you’re up merde creek. Those girls are glad you’re gone.”

  For a second, Claudius’s high-and-mighty expression had Dawn thinking he’d never reveal anything. Costin, with his hypnotic talents as well as the Awareness that blood brothers could have between each other—a thought link that either one could shut down under normal circumstance
s—might be able to dig real deep into Claudius’s psyche if he had all the time in the world. But in spite of what Dawn had just said to the master about his Underground not riding to his rescue, she did fear that she was wrong.

  What if they came battering down headquarter doors tonight, if they were careless enough to chance the public exposure? They’d already done some pretty stupid things that had led Costin to them in the first place.

  For some reason, Claudius was putting all the strength he had left into guarding his Underground when it had betrayed him. Dawn thought it might have something to do with the other master, Mihas, also known as “Wolfie.” He loved Claudius, but only when he was “Claudia,” in womanly form.

  Was Claudius clinging to that, even though he actually wasn’t “Claudia” at all?

  The very idea disturbed Dawn, but she wasn’t sure why it should.

  “They’re not coming,” Dawn gently repeated. She was relieved that she had that kind of tone in her. “At least, not for you.”

  The vampire’s face lost all arrogance. Dawn almost hurt for the creature, but she knew it’d be a mistake.

  “I know this,” she said, “because your Awareness revealed a lot to Costin. Since he was already acquainted with you from back in the day, he’s been able to make an educated guess or two about your place in this Underground. You’re a second master, a lower one. Mihas is your superior. The main Underground is his, not yours. And those girls who fill the community—the ones you both created together? The ones who kicked you out? They adore him. Nothing really belongs to you down there.”

  The vampire opened his mouth as if to retaliate, then shut it, probably knowing nothing he could say would change the truth.

  Dawn continued, realizing that she was using a different kind of attack, and it was working even better than getting physical.

  See, she did have a better part of her that worked just fine.

  Just fine.

  “Costin says Mihas was always a flake,” she said, “and this dates back to centuries ago, when you all fought together for the dragon. But you were always there for Mihas, even after the brothers went off on their own to test their vampire powers on the world. Even after the master commanded you all to form Undergrounds and build armies for the time he’d need them, after awakening from his long sleep. You were always taking care of business down below while Mihas would flit around above, enjoying what his vampiness allowed him to do. You were the constant one, helping him to build an Underground with girl vampire soldiers who would fight for the dragon’s takeover. I guess Mihas was there for you, but only when it suited him.”

  Claudius pressed his lips together, his gaze on the ground. One of the Friends who was binding him shifted, pushing the blanket farther up, as if to cover his vulnerabilities.

  “He thrives on his girls more than he does on you,” Dawn added. “And he’s got his girls right now, without you there to interfere.”

  She was getting to him. She recognized the posture of hopelessness bringing down his shoulders.

  After she waited him out, he spoke.

  “So what I am to do?” he asked. “Turn on him?”

  “If you plan on . . .” She was about to say “surviving,” but she couldn’t. If Costin wanted his soul back, Claudius would have to be terminated. All the blood brothers would. That was the vow Costin had made to that cryptic force that had offered the deal. The Whisper.

  Dawn started again. “There’ll be a whole lot less awful complexity involved if you cooperate,” she said instead.

  “Don’t you mean to say there’ll be a lot less pain?”

  “I told you—I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “But there’s always pain.” The vampire smiled vaguely. “And the thought holds no fear for me. Perhaps I exist for it.”

  Another flare of impatience—and maybe even discomfort—got to Dawn, but she pushed it down before it went anywhere. There was just that sting on her jaw again.

  Before she could think too much about that, Claudius added, “I have taken centuries of pain, and I’ve come to think that I might have even enjoyed it.”

  A masochistic streak, she thought. She’d also seen it last night when Claudius had practically welcomed the cut of a machete against his neck. She’d sensed it in this relationship he had with Mihas.

  And maybe she even recognized it in her own life with Costin and Jonah, as well her attempts to reconcile with Eva, the mom who’d deserted her for a vampire life of her own before she’d been turned back human with the death of the L.A. master.

  Dawn leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. “Don’t you think it’s time for Mihas to feel your pain?”

  Claudius looked her up and down, and Dawn wondered if she was really being as successful with this mode of questioning as she’d thought. Vampires, for all their supposed coldness and lack of emotion, could be the opposite: the condition brought out what was already in them, whether it was love, sorrow, rage, or remoteness. It was an extreme of the mind and of the body. It substituted excess for the absence of a soul.

  “All my existence,” he said, “I’ve been what Mihas has needed. I loved him so completely that I obliterated myself, and it wasn’t worth it. Now, in what I realize might be my last hours, do you believe that I’ll become what you need?”

  Dawn couldn’t find anything to say for a moment. Then she offered all she could.

  “No, I don’t believe that.”

  Then again, that’d been the story of her life. That was why she hadn’t needed anything from anyone, ever.

  The vampire seemed taken aback by Dawn’s honesty. Maybe he even sensed the remorse in her for so many things, including how far she’d gone in striking at him earlier.

  He reclined in his chair, observing her. “Well, now. You’re quite pitiful, aren’t you?”

  She almost laughed. Him thinking she was a sorry thing?

  He continued. “A hunter reduced to hanging her head in front of a victim who won’t give in.”

  “Are you trying to goad me into attacking you again since you have such a yen for agony?”

  “No, no. I could hardly stand another bout of torture.”

  Dawn wanted to say it hadn’t been torture, but she wasn’t sure about that. Wasn’t sure about anything that’d happened last night. All she knew was that she had a mark against her, and it was there on her face for everyone to see. A non-scarlet letter that was bound to spell out what she’d become lately.

  Claudius tilted his head, a vampire trait she’d seen in all of them. “What did it feel like . . . stringing me up and slicing into me with that mental power of yours? I must say, from a purely impartial point of view, it was an impressive show. You would have been quite a soldier in the Underground I helped to cultivate.”

  Great. Complimented on her methods by a master vampire. Dawn was officially awesome.

  “My actions were what I felt was necessary at the time,” she said. “And it helped you to get captured. I can’t say that the end didn’t justify the means.”

  “If you mean to get every last answer from me, I would suspect you haven’t come to any end.”

  Cute. “Then Costin’s going to get what he wants from you.”

  “Maybe so. In time. But perhaps the time will be costly, and it will allow my Underground to mobilize against you. Perhaps my community will come for me, and they will track me here, where they can crush you during the witching hour, when most humans are too asleep to notice.”

  “Eloquent,” Dawn said. “But, again, I suspect you don’t believe in that scenario one bit.”

  The Friends—some of whom could be slightly less ruthless than Dawn, even though their spiritual state of grace didn’t allow them to kill—were getting restless. Dawn could see their invisible pressure pushing against the vampire, as if to impede his breathing. Even though Claudius was undead, the maneuver was working. The dragon’s line of vampires had bodies that functioned like humans in many ways, but during the exchange of
blood and loss of a soul, something had happened to change their composition, their matter, spinning them into beyond human instead of just the norm. She knew this because she was familiar with Costin’s shared body.

  She slid off her stool, her boots hitting the floor with a soft thud. A good cop would ease down with Claudius, begin again. Reset.

  “You could ingratiate yourself with me by giving up a freebie,” she said. “What do you say? You start off small, telling me something like . . . Well, say, why London seems to attract Undergrounds more than the average place. With an answer to that, I’ll be in a much better mood. Maybe I’ll even ask the Friends who’re binding you to let up a bit.”

  Claudius shrugged, like this one answer was some kind of olive branch he didn’t mind shedding. “I wish I had an explanation, but vampires aren’t sages. When we exchange blood and lose our souls, we aren’t given a secret handshake and the guide to solving all the world’s puzzles.”

  Unfortunately, that made sense. Not even Costin was all knowing. In the beginning, Dawn had thought that just because these creatures were older than the hills, they’d have more of a clue than the rest of the general population. But no. Besides, if any of the blood brothers had formulated theories over the years about global warming or the end of days, they probably wouldn’t have shared, seeing as all the dragon’s progeny had drifted apart, growing greedy and paranoid about takeovers, and cutting themselves off from interacting with each other when possible. Mihas and Claudius seemed to be the exception.

  Dawn said, “You can’t even tell me why you and Mihas settled here?”

  Claudius shook his head, and it almost seemed like he wanted to add a feisty little tsking sound, too.

  “I suppose,” Dawn added, “that would veer disturbingly close to talking about the dragon, wouldn’t it. Maybe your big master just wanted to settle here in London, along with you and Mihas. Maybe he had the same plans and whims as the so-called fictional count in Dracula did. He has a real thing for this area, and you guys inherited that from him.”

  “You assume the dragon is with our Underground, and you know what they say about people who assume.”