Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  Kalin bumped into Dawn, but Dawn was used to the scrapping.

  “Kalin,” Costin said, and it was the first time she’d heard his tone even approach a bark.

  The spirit let out a high-pitched scream of frustration that rang in Dawn’s ears until she had to put her hands over them. Costin withstood it, as unruffled as always.

  When Kalin was done, Dawn said, “Don’t tell me—she’s trying to get Jonah to come out so he can take her Underground with him.”

  Costin nodded.

  “Yeesh.” Dawn looked where he was looking, thinking it’d be Kalin she was addressing. “Would you get with it? You should know that Jonah’s going to be dominant when the body gets outside. He’ll shelter Costin until it’s time for some heavy-duty hypnosis, then it’s Costin’s game. They’ll keep each other safe.”

  Big words from a woman who doubted them.

  Kalin screeched again.

  “Silence,” Costin said, raising his voice enough so that Dawn could’ve sworn the walls shook a little. “Kalin, you are in charge of defense here. I have trusted you over the years and you have always been one of my strongest. This is no time to disappoint me.”

  Kalin shut right up at that. She was exasperating, but Dawn knew the spirit was loyal to the cause itself. Otherwise, Costin would’ve destroyed her home portrait, if that was how to send a Friend into the afterlife before their vow of service was complete. Costin hadn’t validated Dawn’s theory when she’d asked him about it once, maybe because he thought she would go straight for Kalin’s picture and slash it to bits.

  As the Friend lingered, Costin continued down the hall, his brow furrowed.

  Why? Had Kalin’s attempt to bring out Jonah discomfited Costin? Could it be that he was expecting his host to assert himself at any time now?

  Maybe he shouldn’t trust Jonah, even though the host was behaving right now. He tended to get excited, and if he thought Costin wasn’t handling things properly, he wouldn’t hesitate to take over; he’d grown so strong in his own body that he often assumed control of it.

  Costin seemed to anticipate her pointing all this out, and he turned around just as he stopped in front of a door that led to his own strategy room—a place where he sometimes retreated without her.

  “Soon,” he said, “this will be over.”

  She wanted to remind him that they’d only be going after another Underground—one they’d have to hunt down and learn all over again since all of the communities had specific skill sets and modes of operation.

  Unless Costin vanquished the dragon tonight. If previous master deaths were any indication, the ultimate master’s demise would turn its direct progeny human again, and all Costin would have to do is fulfill his vow to The Whisper by terminating the rest of the much easier to kill humanized brothers.

  “Just one more thing,” she said, hanging on to every second. “What about Kiko’s ‘key’ vision, where I—”

  “Vanquish a key vampire.” Now he looked more troubled. But then he was back to being Costin. “Who is to say that you will not be encountering an important vampire on your own, Dawn?”

  So maybe this wasn’t about trust. Maybe he’d put more of it in her than she’d realized.

  At his vote of confidence, she went to him, grabbed ahold of the front of his shirt. He’d be changing into something more battle-worthy. Something more comfortable to fight in.

  “Then this is it,” she said. “You’re preparing the last details before you leave.”

  “Yes. And, Dawn? If I do not return by tomorrow’s sunset, you must follow my wishes. Find the real Underground without me. Even if I am gone, the world will still need you and the team to help it. But do not make a move outside before dusk tomorrow, no matter what you think you should do. Understood? I might need the time to infiltrate this Underground, and for the team to come rushing in would destroy any progress I might have gained.”

  She shook her head, but he rested a palm against her cheek, peering into her eyes and allowing her in for one precious moment.

  She saw golden days stretching into the future. Hope. Confidence.

  As he pulled out, leaving her with a sizzling ache, she tightened her grasp on him. Her throat closed around her next words.

  “If that’s the way you want it, Godspeed, Costin.”

  She’d said it, even though she didn’t believe in much of anything. At least, that was what she’d always told herself. Then she angled forward, closing her eyes as she rested her forehead against his, putting her mouth to his lips.

  Costin wrapped his arms around her as she kissed him, pulling her closer, harder, like this would be the final time.

  Then he slowly eased back, opened the door behind him, and retreated with one last long gaze.

  Good-bye, she thought. It might’ve been their final time together, and there was still so much to say. To admit.

  But, as the door shut, Dawn didn’t move.

  He would be back.

  She forced herself to head down the stairs to make sure every inch of headquarters was fortified, playing her own role in this nightmare, too.

  SEVEN

  THE SHADOWS KNOW

  DAWN spent the rest of the day and much of the night keeping busy by going over security precautions, overseeing similar assignments for the rest of the team, and meeting with the Friends to make sure they were all on the same page.

  She was busy enough to almost forget that Costin had no doubt already left and was probably Underground.

  But she never did quite forget.

  After she’d submerged herself in checking to see that the outside UV lights were functioning properly, she went to one of the lower-level rear entrances in a rarely used area that everyone only paid cursory attention to. Luckily, she spent a little more time than that, because she noticed one of the safeguards—a laser tracker—had been tripped within the past twenty-four hours.

  At first, she pulled a machete out of her holster as she inspected the cemented, empty area for an intruder. Then, when nothing jumped her, she thought, Why didn’t the alarm alert a Friend?

  Nerves at level “oh my God,” Dawn went down the spartan hall to access a security camera feed to see what the problem might’ve been. All the while, she went over logistics: There was a Friend entrance near the rear door, but the spirits had never tripped the alarm before. And the team was usually real good about resetting anything and everything.

  Maybe Natalia, the new girl on the team, had gone through this entrance and forgotten . . . ?

  Dawn could only hope.

  Nearly at the security camera room, Dawn summoned a Friend and let her know they all should be on even better lookout. Then she entered the room, where feeds from all over the house were gathered. But when she took a look at the footage, there was nothing to show that this back door had been used lately, much less breached.

  Was it an alarm malfunction? Had a Friend, with the spirits’ invisible ins and outs, tripped it without knowing?

  Or had something else without form come into headquarters and hidden itself, and was now waiting to materialize?

  Even though Costin’s interrogation of Claudius hadn’t indicated that these vamps had invisibility powers, Dawn’s stomach clenched. She called for a Friend again, identifying this one as Evangeline, her French accent making it pretty obvious.

  She was just as stymied by the glitch as Dawn was, and she took off to network with her spiritual buddies to see if she could get to the bottom of this.

  Meanwhile, Dawn dialed up Kiko on her cell to see where he and Natalia were. Headquarters was too big to shout to each other in, like the Waltons’ house or something.

  Kiko told her they were in the computer room, a place decorated with the hand of technological necessity, with big plasma computer screens, televisions, virtual reality stations that could play training scenarios, and a bevy of readouts and maps marked up with locations they’d investigated as well as possible spots where the Underground might be located. />
  Dawn stumbled over the word on the way to the room. Underground.

  Costin.

  She hadn’t told the others he’d gone, but that was how he wanted it. This time, she was going to do what was right and let him do his job.

  Taking in a long, achy breath, then expelling it, she walked into the computer room. Kiko and Natalia glanced up from their project du jour. They’d put red tape on the carpet, and even though Dawn didn’t have the first idea what the hell they were doing, she suspected it’d make sense after Kiko motor-mouthed an explanation.

  When he nodded in greeting, she noticed a spaciness to him, and she knew that he’d been lulled by a Friend since he’d gotten back from Eva’s flat. Back in the States, he’d gotten addicted to painkillers after breaking his back during a vamp fight. He’d traded one addiction for another, and Dawn didn’t know what else to do about him.

  But it wasn’t like a Friend could de-lull him now, so Dawn rolled with it, thinking he’d probably still do okay in a vamp attack if there was one. Lulling from a Friend wasn’t half as destructive on the brain and body as pills—he was just more relaxed than usual.

  “We finished our security checklist,” he said, getting to his feet. He wore a grin, along with little-person-sized canvas pants—the multitude of pockets bulging with various weapons—and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a surf logo on the pocket. He didn’t do the sport, but his California blond hair marked him as an eternal Los Angeleno who might drive around with a board on top of his rig, just to pretend he could ride. Hell, he’d spent a lot of years acting! in the Hollywood biz, so why stop in London?

  Next to him, Natalia Petri, who also had psychic powers, took notes on a pad. As an average-sized gal, she towered over Kiko, her curly dark hair pulled back in a barrette, revealing the slight bump on her forehead she’d gotten when she’d passed out during a Ouija board interviewing session. Her healthy figure was decked out in a beige pantsuit and flats she’d brought over with her from the mother country in Romania. What pockets she had were also full of what Dawn guessed were smaller, basic- level weapons like crucifixes, silver knives, and small stakes, since she was still a newbie.

  “Visual aid,” Natalia said, motioning at the red tape. Being the one team member who’d been appalled at Dawn’s technique with Claudius last night, she was obviously still trying hard not to make eye contact. “We have laid out the scene, based on the Shadow Girl visions we had at Eva’s flat. Since we’ve been so successful with visions in the past”—they’d basically guided the team step-by-step toward the Underground—“we’re paying close attention to anything we get.”

  “I’m telling ya,” Kiko said, “when we’ve had enough of this vamp hunting, I’m looking into freelance psychic work. The Pentagon would be asshats not to use me and you, Nat.”

  As Natalia smiled at him, Dawn looked right past the new closeness between the two psychics, who’d started out at each other’s throats when Costin had first hired Natalia.

  Instead, Dawn perused the scene again, putting her questions about the tripped laser alarm on the back burner for a curious second. There were black- marker numbers scribbled over taped arrows and lines.

  “So, let me get this straight,” she said to Natalia. “After you had your vision last night of Shadow Girl attacking me in Eva’s flat, you two tramped over there to see if Kiko could use his psychometric skills to get anything more. This is the bewildering result.”

  Kiko elaborated. “I got a fragmented bunch of images from touching everything around Eva’s place. We’re trying to make sense of it, and having you here to help us is just what the doctor ordered. We’ve got a thousand things to ask you.”

  While Kiko spoke, Natalia glanced at the door, as if she sensed someone entering.

  Dawn turned around, but no one was there—not until her father showed up, walking on those vampire-stealthy feet. Natalia had sensed him early because she had a psychic gift that allowed her to know a vamp was nearby—a sort of auditory perception, almost like she was tuned in to a frequency nobody else could access.

  Frank—an ex-bar bouncer who’d retained his muscles in the afterlife—was garbed in basic black shirt, pants, combat boots, and a knit cap that tended to stifle his heightened hearing, which drove him crazy sometimes. He half sat on the corner of a table, gesturing for them to ignore him and keep talking. Then Frank glanced at Dawn, and she anxiously waited to see if he’d changed his mind about being all good with her after the incident with Claudius.

  Frank had comforted her afterward, but the pathetic part of her who still wanted to please Daddy hung in the balance, even after years of his neglect and the start of this newfound, tentative relationship they had now.

  Did he really think his daughter was okay? Or had he just been acting! like everything was all right?

  Dawn continued the conversation with Kiko. “Before we start with show-and-tell, I need to know this: when you guys went out this morning, did you use the lowest rear entrance?”

  Both Kiko and Natalia shook their heads.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because something tripped the laser tracker back there,” she said. “I need to find out what it was.”

  Natalia scribbled down notes while Kiko asked, “Don’t we have a camera trained on that area?”

  “We do, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the recording. The timer count wasn’t disturbed, either. Evangeline’s checking into it with the other Friends.”

  “Maybe it’s something harmless,” Frank said. “A malfunction that’s only bound to make us paranoid.”

  “Or not,” Kiko said.

  Natalia had lowered her notebook. “Aren’t Friends guarding the property? Watching out for strange occurrences?”

  “Yup.” Dawn almost added that Friends were watching over all of them while Costin was Underground on his own, but she knew she should give him a little more time before she made that dramatic announcement. It wasn’t sunrise yet, when the team was allowed to know and the chances of a schoolgirl attack lowered considerably since no sane vamp would be so obvious in the daylight, especially when their powers were weaker.

  She just wished the sun would come. That Costin would hurry up, too.

  Kiko grinned at Natalia. “I’d bank on any Friend to keep an eye on my back. You shouldn’t be nervous about a breach.”

  “It’s only that the timing is . . . nerve-wracking,” Natalia said. “We bring Claudius here and then there’s a security concern.”

  “Costin didn’t mention any concern about it,” Dawn said. And she was sure he would’ve if it had been a problem.

  But what if the alarm had failed to notify anyone during the flurry of activity before he’d left?

  Frank grumbled. “Costin doesn’t mention much. We all know that.”

  The only time Dawn had seen her dad question the boss was in L.A., when he’d gone on the Underground siege. But Frank had mellowed since then.

  “Anyhow,” she said, “the time stamp on the tracker indicates it was tripped just before sunrise. If someone or something wiggled into headquarters and intended to get to Claudius, I imagine it would’ve already rescued him by now. Or that the Friends would’ve already noticed a presence.”

  “Whatever the sitch, I’m walking around fully armed,” Kiko said, nodding toward a weapons cache near a map on the wall. Then he patted one of the bulging pockets of his pants. “I’ve been packin’ because of Claudius, anyway.”

  Natalia just looked like a deer in the headlights, and when Dawn tried to send her a reassuring glance, she wasn’t sure it worked so well.

  “Has anyone checked on Eva recently?” the new girl asked. “Maybe she tripped the tracker.”

  “She’s been in her room nonstop,” Kiko said.

  “And that camera would’ve caught her sneaking out,” Dawn said, glancing at Frank. He was staring at the ground, his jaw tight. Eva, his former wife, had tried to win him back with her blood before the Claudius situation even happened, a
nd Breisi, his Friend lover, had gotten on his case because he’d almost given in to the temptation of a live feeding. He’d been taking sustenance from Eva’s bagged blood since it did something for him that other blood didn’t, but a live feeding was manna to a vampire.

  “Aw, let’s just say what’s too awkward to say,” Frank muttered. “Eva’s holed up because she’s avoiding me. She’s embarrassed about our own little soap opera.”

  Dawn felt herself blushing. Who wanted to think of their parents acting all hormonal? “I just can’t shake this feeling I’ve had that there’s something up with Eva, and her staying in that bedroom is just the half of it.”

  Frank leaned forward. “And the other half would be . . . ?”

  Jeez. Her dad should’ve picked up on everything else. They’d been married, in love, for God’s sake.

  But maybe that was what love amounted to: a great big nothing. Destructive, bubble-brained antics that ended with a grown woman holed up in her bedroom for nights on end.

  “You haven’t noticed any depression?” Dawn asked her dad.

  “Well . . .”

  “Well? Shit, Frank, I guess I’ll have to get the two of you together for a convo after the Underground is taken care of.” Maybe they could all use the same shrink. “You really haven’t seen Eva dragging around, trying to look happy when it’s obvious that she hasn’t been since L.A.?”

  “Dawn, if this is another tirade because you feel guilty about turning her back human—”

  “It’s not.” Fuck it. And screw it all, because she wanted Frank to be with Breisi, who fulfilled him in ways Eva had never done. Breisi was good for him. But Dawn also wanted to piece together the family she’d never had while growing up.

  Hell, who knew what she wanted.

  While Kiko and Natalia stood by, looking like they were wishing the computers would suck them into their screens, Dawn wrapped up family dirty laundry hour. It all seemed so idiotic when an attack could come at any time and when there’d been a tripped alarm.