Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  After trying to read his face—no dice there, because it was as unreadable as ever—she tried for his mind. She was his master, after all. But he was closed off, even though he’d just been feeding off her blood and they were usually connected during the flow of the act.

  Then she thought she saw something like worry pass through his eyes, which were just turning from the silver of his vampire excitement back to his calmer topaz, pacing the retraction of his fangs.

  Even more afraid now, Dawn all but stumbled from the main bedroom and into the marbled bathroom, where she flicked on the light and peered into the mirror.

  As she saw the second beauty mark stamped on her jaw, her pulse crept up to choke her. It wound itself into the fresh bite on her neck, pounding like a creature caught and unable to escape.

  A second mark—a jagged little circle without much of a shape. A small sign on her skin that was just beginning to form into something new and unpredictable.

  It took a few seconds for her to really get it—that this was her she was looking at in the mirror. That this was her skin, her face, not some stranger’s. But then the fear and panic caught up to her, and she headed for the toilet, her stomach roiling.

  As she got to her knees, Costin put his palm on her back. His touch singed into her, even through her shirt. The braid she wore flopped down to smack her bite wound, and Costin pulled the hair back again, pressing his fingers to the injury, seeing to the last of the healing.

  Minutes passed and she didn’t get sick, so she kneeled back from the porcelain god. Costin took a washcloth out of a drawer, wet it, then offered it to her. When she wiped it over her face, it was cold.

  Why wasn’t he saying anything? Didn’t he know that some comment, any comment, would do wonders right about now?

  “No feedback?” Dawn sounded like she was gagging on her words. “Haven’t you ever seen a hunter mutate before your eyes?”

  They’d had discussions about why he’d always switched out his teams with every new Underground hunt. He said it was basically because a few “employees” had learned too much information and used it to pursue their own agendas with the vampires, thus, ignoring his orders, so he’d taken great caution to see that this would never happen again. But Dawn had also found out that he was trying to prevent his hunters from going insane, as the humans he recruited had the habit of doing after too much mind-boggling stress.

  He’d only kept Dawn’s team intact because of what he’d become: something other than a Soul Traveler. A weaker creature next to what he used to be. A desperate leader in need of all the trusted backup he could get so he could hit the ground running with this new Underground.

  He’d probably been right to dismantle his previous teams before they became walking disasters like Dawn. Maybe he was always right about the precautions he took, the moves he made, the secrets he kept.

  “I have never seen the likes of this before,” he finally said. “These marks, coming out on the skin.”

  “During all your years of fighting Undergrounds, you never noticed any of the other vampires-turned-humans react like this after their maker was terminated?”

  “No.”

  So she was something brand spankin’ new. A real trailblazer.

  “However,” he added, “until now, I have never kept in contact with reformed vampires. After being freed from their master and receiving their souls again, they have always tended to react just as the Hollywood crowd did, committing suicide or running away, never to be heard from again. When some are turned human, they even die an accelerated death because of returning to their true age.”

  When Dawn had gotten her soul back after becoming one of “them” for a few minutes, she’d felt something different, just like her mom had. But as far as Dawn could see, Eva hadn’t exhibited any outer changes.

  Dawn got to her feet, her legs still shaking, then met her own gaze in the mirror. She had her mom’s eyes.

  But the thought died right there as she angled her head, looking at the new beauty mark again. It was barely there, but screamingly obvious just the same.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “When I got the first one, it was when I was raging at Claudius. But I thought I felt this spot pop out when . . .” She swallowed, reaching for the spigot, twisting it on, and running some more cold water over her hands, then her face. As she shut the faucet off, the droplets plunked into the sink. “I thought the first one was a mark against me, like a scarlet letter or whatever. But today, I held back with Claudius. I didn’t Hulk out. So how did this new one get here?”

  “I am not certain. However, there are those who believe that our cells react to our thoughts and emotions. Our bodies change when the mind affects them, and perhaps the marks are a more intense result of what is happening inside of you.”

  “Like hives?”

  “Perhaps. It could be a release of even more poisonous energy.”

  While the water kept dripping, Costin walked out of the bathroom and her mind raced.

  She’d held back today. She’d repressed the ugliness, but it’d come out anyway—a situation that echoed the one from over a year ago, when she’d mentally boxed away the memory of seeing Eva’s supposedly dead body in a crime scene photo. Yet, back then, Dawn hadn’t been marked on her face when she’d forced back the hideous emotions. It’d been her mind powers that’d emerged full force instead.

  Was she just operating differently now because of her tarnished soul? Had the darkness inside just been waiting for her to cross over some previously taboo lines to start up with this new fun?

  Costin returned within a minute, urging a bottle of supplement juice on her, along with a bagel. She took a swig of the juice and it slid down her throat to her stomach, which was still churning.

  “I have no solid answers about what is occurring with you,” he said, “but I do have a theory.”

  Great, one of those.

  He gave it to her. “We are seeing that, no matter if you keep your anger back or give freedom to it, it will materialize.”

  The juice lined her mouth with a bitter aftertaste.

  “And,” he added, “perhaps these marks have something to do with how you . . .” He trailed off.

  “Just say it, Costin.”

  He lowered his tone, but it didn’t sting any less. “Perhaps you have come to enjoy your anger, Dawn, and your body is punishing you for it.”

  “Wait, I see where this is going. You’re going to tell me that there’s a difference between fighting against the enemy, doing the job I have to do, and actually liking it. And I’ve started liking it too much.” Costin was an example of a hunter who didn’t cotton to his calling, whereas night by night, it was becoming apparent that she was the opposite.

  Maybe that should’ve frightened her more, but it didn’t.

  Forcing down the bagel and the rest of the juice, she left the bathroom on still-wobbly legs, going to the closet, where there was a weapons locker in back of all the hanging dark clothing that both she and Costin—and Jonah—preferred to wear. She unlocked the cache door behind a rack of coats as he followed her.

  “Or,” he said, “we could look at your changes in this way: sometimes, I think you despise yourself more than you do the enemy. The marks could be a sign of that, as well.”

  “Like self-mutilation? I’m no cutter.” Grabbing a hip holster from the locker, she wrapped it around herself, buckling it. She didn’t add that she thought Costin probably resented her even more than she did herself, what with this whole human master/ vampire progeny relationship that he’d never wanted.

  “When I return from the Underground,” he said, “we need to talk about this at greater length.”

  He was so damned sure he was going to return.

  She should be, too. “So we’ll talk then.”

  “I mean we should talk. And we should include . . . others.”

  The way he said it made her bristle. “Why do I have the feeling you’re suggesting a shrink?”

/>   “I would not rule out professional guidance.”

  Jay-sus. “I don’t do therapy. Never have, never will.”

  “It might have been appropriate, given your relationship with Eva, for one matter. I am sure it led to where you are now.”

  As she grasped a machete to shove into her holster, she tossed a miffed look at him. Had he really just brought up her whole “I love my gorgeous, former-superstar mom/I hate my gorgeous, former-superstar mom” thing? Sure, an Eva complex had shaped her life and wigged her out plenty, but she’d learned to cope in her own way. Dawn had competed with Eva for over two decades before her mom had come back from the dead, compliments of the Hollywood Underground.

  “Yes, Costin. I’ll get right on doing an Internet search for a therapist who specializes in addressing the pansy side of vamp hunters. I’m sure I’ll get a million hits.”

  “Why can’t you understand that I am delicately trying to suggest some anger management?”

  Anger?

  She’d grown up with it. It’d raised her better than Frank ever had, protected her, kept her going.

  She reached into the locker again, this time for a UV grenade. “Are there any other instructions you need to give me before you leave?”

  Costin knew that when she was done with a topic, she was done, so he cleared his throat as she went for a second UV grenade and tucked that one into her holster belt, too. In her back pocket, her cell phone vibrated with what was probably another voice mail from Kiko. Before she’d fed Costin, she’d called the psychic and left her own message for him and Natalia to get back to headquarters. Hopefully, he was telling her they were here.

  Costin said, “I do have a few important items to discuss with you.” But, first, he scanned her weapons and addressed that instead. “Dawn, you know that the Friends have been on high alert since Claudius arrived.”

  “And you know I like to be prepared, even if I’m surrounded by fortified walls. Or are you just thinking that I’m going to be sneaking outside with this stuff and following you Underground, like I did in L.A.?”

  “No, Dawn, I don’t think you will do that, mostly because you are aware of the ammunition I bring with me to an Underground. I have complete faith in the Friends. They have never before let me down and they will not now. They have their own ways of fighting, as with the silver flakes they used in the Hollywood Underground.”

  “You should believe in them, Costin. And I know you’ve faced the dragon before and come out of it in one piece. Thing is, that’s when you could get out of body.”

  He was brooking no argument. “Dawn, you are to wait until sunrise to inform the rest of the team that I am gone. The information detracts from what you will all need to focus on—guarding Claudius throughout the night. Chances are high that the vampire schoolgirls will come for their second master under the cover of darkness. There is no reason for the team to worry about me during this time. I am only telling you because, out of everyone, you would most notice my absence.”

  Sure, Dawn thought, closing the locker door. It had nothing at all to do with him distrusting the team because most of them had interfered with Costin’s ultimate attack in Hollywood.

  “Can you tell me why we don’t just kill Claudius?” she asked. “If we did, it’d cut those schoolgirls’ vamp powers in two—they would only have the ones they inherited from Mihas.”

  “There is more than one reason, but above all, Claudius is our insurance.”

  Insurance? She glanced over her shoulder at Costin, who seemed so damned self-assured, even though he’d just revealed that he might not be. Her heart hurt at the thought of him suffering in any way. Stupid heart.

  “Are you telling me,” she said, “that you suspect Claudius isn’t being entirely truthful with you about the Underground’s location, even though you read it through your Awareness?”

  “Although my misreading him is unlikely, keeping him alive is a wise policy . . . just in case. If he has lied to me and covered it up, it will be on you to extract the true Underground location from him, then carry on from there.”

  He was so nonchalant about his possible death that it took a second for the impact to hit her.

  This might be the night he left her.

  As she wrestled with this, she said, “If it came down to that, I’d want to get your location from Claudius, along with the details of any trap that caught you. That way we’d be prepared to avoid what you couldn’t if we had to make a rescue.”

  “I forbid you to come for me before you take care of the Underground. Is that clear, Dawn?”

  She didn’t argue, even though she knew she’d never leave Costin to any vamp trap.

  He went back to being matter-of-fact. “As I said, we should expect that Claudius will lure the lower vampires here and leave the Underground that much less populated. And if they do come aboveground for him, this means you are aiding me in the fight, Dawn. You would make my job that much easier. This is also the reason you and the team must stay.”

  He might be gone by morning. . . .

  She stood, still a bit dizzy, but not really because of the blood he’d taken. “All right.”

  She had to believe that he knew what he was doing. He was Costin, and he’d survived this long. Besides, there was the tiny fact that she’d learned the hard way in Hollywood that following directions was a good idea.

  “So you’ve chosen the Friends who’ll be with you?” she asked, trying to let him go gracefully.

  He almost seemed relieved, not that his ramrod posture assured her or anything.

  “I have chosen those who work best with me,” he said. “We have pulled most of the Friends off patrol from around the city. A group will remain here, of course, but Breisi will be leading the contingent that goes Underground with me. Although the Friends’ lulling didn’t seem to have any effect on Claudius when they first tried it, while I was conducting an earlier interview with him, they discovered that modulating their voices to a higher frequency was working. We hope to use the element of surprise by retuning the lulling to control the lower vampires while I question Mihas about the dragon and then terminate him. After Mihas is taken care of, I shall send word back to you, and I expect you to do what needs to be done in order to turn the vampire girls fully human.”

  Dawn had no problem with killing Claudius when required. That was what needed to happen if Costin was going to get his soul back. Short of killing herself, she didn’t know what else to do to free him from Jonah’s body. As she was Jonah’s creator, her death would make him human again and hopefully release Costin’s essence, restoring him to the Soul Traveler he’d been before. On occasion, Frank had accused her of having a death wish that would fulfill this option, but she’d rather release Costin from Jonah the long way—through completing Costin’s mission.

  “You can count on me to take care of Claudius,” Dawn said. “Are you going to tell me where you’re going? Just in case?”

  “I will give the location to the Friends who remain here.”

  Dawn tried not to give way to a cutting laugh. But how could she blame him for these precautions—never giving out too much information to a hunter who had a history as a loose cannon—when this was exactly the sort of safeguard that had kept his teams running smoothly in the past?

  She’d just thought she was his “key.”

  “The Friends know all the backup plans,” he said.

  “But what if this Underground has learned how to captivate them, just like in Hollywood, and we corporeal team members find ourselves without spiritual aid?”

  “Without the Friends, I am as good as gone this time.”

  In denial of that, her anger rose, and it placated her with its familiarity. “I still want to come with you. I wouldn’t get out of line—not like the first time.”

  “Dawn.” Apologetic. But he wasn’t going to give an inch. Not the warrior, no matter how special he said she was to him. “Each member has her or his own function on the team, and you very well kno
w why you are important.”

  Functions. She thought about how Breisi, back before she’d died and become a Friend, had known more of Costin’s hidden strategies than any of the team. Then Dawn wondered who had taken Breisi’s place on this hunt.

  “Is one of us going to know where you’re headed, too, Costin? I’m guessing you’ll be wearing a locator, so you can be monitored.”

  He remained silent, showing his commitment to keeping this a secret, even though she had her suspicions about who that team member was.

  But he didn’t need this right now, so she backed off. His plans would work.

  “I just hope Claudius isn’t sending you into some kind of trap,” she said. “That’s why I’m being such a bitch about this.”

  “Dawn.”

  She walked right past him, out of the closet and into the bedroom.

  “I only hope,” he said from behind her, “that this is the Underground that is holding the dragon. What I would give for the end to be near.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to see him smiling—a smile from an exhausted soldier who sensed possible deliverance within his reach.

  Dawn tried not to think about what that meant: what life would be like without him as a purpose, as a companion. If she’d be better or worse off without him.

  Girding herself, she went for the door, opened it, and a burst of jasmine gushed in, as if it’d been eavesdropping outside.

  Costin didn’t react as he moved into the hall, just behind Dawn. “Kalin,” he said, greeting the most annoying Friend in the bunch. She was an older hunter, active around the time of Henry VIII. As a human, she’d had witchlike powers that included summoning fire—a trait she couldn’t carry over into the Friend world.

  Dawn heard the spirit’s voice airily chattering away at Costin while they headed for the stairs.

  “She doesn’t want you to go,” Dawn said, stating the obvious.

  “True,” Costin said. “Like you, Kalin wishes to accompany me and Jonah, but she will be staying here, guarding headquarters.”

  Aw, crap. “I thought you were going to give this idgit some real guff for the trouble she’s been causing.” Dawn gestured at the air. “Her little crush on Jonah has been nothing but a headache for everyone because she takes up his side instead of yours. Is her big punishment to stay here instead of going with you?”