Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

  Frank’s voice came over loud and clear. “Dawn, we’ve got a count of twenty-four vamps in an alley close by, plus one right outside next to a human who’s whining for help. He’s saying he got in some accident and he’s putting the pity squeeze on us.”

  “Amateur plan.”

  “Yeah. Some Friends are surrounding the other vamps to try and keep them back if they do come closer.”

  This was one of those times Dawn wished the Friends could kill, but she knew that their souls would be forfeit to the same place Costin was trying to avoid. That’d been the deal with Costin when they’d agreed to come on board to help him after their human deaths.

  “The UV lights outside will also keep vamps at bay,” she said.

  “Did I mention they have thick coats with hoods on?”

  “Okay, we’ve got outside silver darts aimed and ready, too, and maybe those’ll pierce the coats.”

  “Vamps are fast, remember? They can avoid those.”

  “Then they’ll have to deal with us, no matter how many of them there are.” Besides, headquarters was fortified to the nth degree, with booby traps and everything. “Hey, Natalia, you’re in the communications room now, right?”

  The new girl came on, her voice frazzled. “Just as the boss said I should be in this situation, Dawn.”

  “Tap into the anonymous, nontraceable computer call program.” Breisi had installed it ages ago. “Report a drunken riot a few blocks over—but don’t give our own location. We can’t afford to have the law snooping around too close.” Costin was as eager to avoid the public limelight as any vamp. His operations depended on secrecy and ease of movement. “If the vamps are smart, they’ll hear the sirens a long way off and call away their charmed people. Vamps won’t want to be discovered, either, I’ll bet.”

  “Copy,” Natalia said.

  Dawn heard Kiko on the earpiece. His voice still carried that cosmic-ranger floatiness she’d noted earlier from being lulled by a Friend, but he was in ass-kicking mode.

  “I’m in Dawn’s room,” he said, updating his position.

  There was actually a window up there, unlike the blocked ones downstairs. Thanks to Breisi, it was shatterproof, so Dawn wasn’t worried about anything busting it open. But Costin did use it occasionally to receive any psychic vibes from the Underground, and there was a chance other vibrations might come through. If the lower vamps’ charming techniques were anything like Claudius’s, Dawn didn’t want to take a chance.

  “I can see some activity down below,” Kiko added. “Not sure what it is though.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t stand so close to that window, Kik.”

  “Backing away, right now.”

  “Okay. Are any Friends with you?”

  “Nope. They’re all in more important places. That’s why I came up here—so I could keep watch from this position. I’ll scoot downstairs, if needed. But I think I see something . . .”

  “Keep us posted.”

  “Will do.”

  Things seemed ready to go, and the most important element was that Costin wasn’t in-house. That meant the vamps wouldn’t get to him.

  At least not here . . .

  Don’t think about him in that Underground, she thought. You’ve got a job to do yourself.

  But as Dawn reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Claudius waiting there in his chair, a smug smile on his mouth, she wondered if maybe Costin wasn’t as safe as she’d hoped.

  The vampire spoke, calmly, surely, while a Friend bound him. Dawn knew it was only one spirit, because the rest of the headquarters’ guard had been called to defend the building.

  “I told you they would come,” he said in that damaged voice. His throat had stalled in its healing.

  Was it a sign of his continued weakness?

  “They’re not gonna get closer than they are now,” Dawn said.

  “Are you here to kill me, before they arrive down here to take me back?”

  She wouldn’t reveal that Costin had ordered her to keep Claudius alive, just in case.

  God, where was he? In the midst of an Underground fight? Couldn’t he have spared a Friend or even a damned phone call to let them know how it was going? It’d be nice if she had permission to get rid of Claudius, if Costin didn’t need him alive anymore.

  Dawn held her stake in front of her, but the vamp seemed to know it was an empty threat.

  “You’re too afraid that I’ve misled your sweetie with bad directions to the Underground, aren’t you?” Claudius made a pseudo-sad face. “Not a wonderful position to be in.”

  Over Dawn’s earpiece, she heard some shouting, and her gut told her to stay here, no matter what was happening up top.

  When would the bobbies respond to Natalia’s call? Even a hint of sirens should be enough for the vamps to wave off their humans—if they were interested in not getting caught out there.

  “Did you mislead Costin?” Dawn asked.

  Claudius laughed, and it reminded Dawn of a witch who was presenting a riddle. She had the horrific feeling that Claudius hadn’t been so mentally weak after all, that he had been playing Costin.

  Her temper rumbled, and she got closer to the vampire, face-to-face, holding up a finger. “You’re not gonna win this.”

  In a show of astounding bravery, Claudius bared his teeth, his fangs emerging as pinpoints. White needles.

  Before Dawn could draw back, Claudius struck at her, catching the pad of her index finger.

  As the Friend on duty pushed Claudius back, Dawn jerked away, then glanced at her finger, where blood beaded to the surface, stinging.

  But, strangely, it didn’t make her angrier. It sent her into a place beyond rage—white-hot and calm instead of red and explosive.

  Dawn sucked on her finger, erasing the blood. Everything—Claudius, the noise from the earpiece, the anguish of worrying about Costin—it all stopped existing.

  She took her finger out of her mouth and, inspecting it, spoke so quietly that it surprised her. “Did you stop to think that Costin wanted to see if your vampires would come for you? Based on how your girl Violet paid us a visit before she was torn to shreds by some ravens that swooped down from the sky the other morning, he suspected your underlings would have enough brass to come aboveground and take that kind of risk. We’ve been waiting for another chance at more girls.”

  Claudius didn’t look as smug now.

  There. “I’ve never known an Underground to flash around their powers like you guys do. Sometimes you’re careful, but when you’ve got little girls going rogue and making offers to people they think might be hunters, that’s trouble.”

  Now Claudius’s expression was very not-smug.

  “Ah,” Dawn said. “You’re hearing me now? You’re catching on that Violet came to us so she could offer some revenge on one of your other vamps? You don’t have as much control over them as you think. Undergrounds never do, and that’s why you fall with just the slightest push.”

  “We won’t do any such thing.” Claudius was back to smug. “I guarantee that.”

  “Why?”

  As Claudius shrugged, Dawn heard Frank—definitely Frank—yelling over the earpiece. The floor above shook, probably from force being put on the front door, which was so solid she doubted it would fall.

  If it was the door making that noise. . . .

  The anger was inching back up inside Dawn now, because it was never far away. The heat melded with the cool of her composure, just like the two masters who had joined to form this one London Underground.

  The need to attack more forcefully boiled in her. “Why do you guarantee that your Underground won’t fall, Claudius?”

  The vampire laughed, and that was all it took to topple her.

  Vision muddled, Dawn exploded, her mind force banging outward, zipping to the master vampire and shoving itself into the creature’s mouth, then down its throat.

  Claudius gagged, his eyes bulging with shock. The Friend binding him didn’t castigate Dawn
, who wanted to stop herself, but couldn’t. It seemed beyond her control. It felt too . . .

  Necessary.

  “Don’t make me drag it out of you,” Dawn said, and it was almost a plea. “Just tell me what you showed Costin in your mind. Show me what he’s headed for, whether it’s the real Underground or a trap.”

  Claudius hissed around Dawn’s mind-conjured choke.

  All Dawn could imagine now was Costin, heading under the earth, so sure he was going to find Mihas and maybe the dragon, that he was going to beat them with the help of the Friends, just as he’d done so many times in the past. Then she pictured him torn apart by Mihas’s teeth, by any remaining famished girls, as he died because he didn’t have all of his powers.

  Claudius moaned, and Dawn took satisfaction in it. Another spot on her neck pounded, right near Costin’s earlier bite on her left side.

  A new mark?

  She retreated out of Claudius, her limbs shaking now. The vampire dry heaved as Dawn got to a crouch. She couldn’t stand anymore, and the stake fell out of her hand, to the floor, but she didn’t reach for it. She didn’t want Claudius to see her falling apart.

  The Friend pushed at Claudius’s blankets around his skin-mangled neck. She was showing her unification with Dawn, relaying that she was ready to make Claudius distinctly uncomfortable in any way she could. Dawn didn’t know which way she should go—pursuing more of what was in Claudius or retreating from herself.

  The vampire moved his mouth, and Dawn thought he’d come to his senses and was cooperating. But then he started to laugh again, just as screams sounded from the earpiece.

  “Dawn! Get up here!” It was Frank.

  She looked at Claudius, then at the stairs.

  The binding Friend spoke, and Dawn recognized her rough tone.

  “Go up and gather those vamp girls,” Kalin said. “I’ll be ready down ’ere with the safeguard when you get ’em to come to me. Meantime, I’ll keep talkin’ to our guest. You can ’ve at ’im again in a bit.”

  Dawn didn’t have time to do a double take at the spirit who’d always disliked her so much. She didn’t have time to argue that Kalin’s plan was so risky that it scared the shit out of her. But did she have another choice if the vamps had broken in somehow?

  She sprinted up the stairs, Claudius’s laughter growing louder as he said, “Safeguards, you say? Traps? Every good lair has them for intruders, you know. . . .”

  Maybe Kalin would get something out of Claudius before Dawn came back—

  Over the earpiece, Natalia babbled to her.

  “Dawn! Kiko invited one in! I’ve been doing damage control up here, but a Friend told me that, earlier, she thinks he was looking out the window when a girl appeared, catching his gaze through it. She had climbed the wall outside, and the Friend thinks the vampire popped up to look through it and Kiko was too slow to glance away. He was caught by it and he could have possibly heard her if they were both close enough to the window. The vibration of her tone might’ve even traveled through it to get to him. He went to a rear entrance and opened the door without anyone else knowing.”

  Goddamn it, she’d told him to get away from that window. Had the vamp gotten him before he complied with Dawn’s suggestion? Kiko’s Friend-lulled mind hadn’t been where it usually was.

  How had he lost so much of his edge?

  Dawn should’ve known better because, last night, both Kiko and she had been suckers for Claudius’s charm until Natalia had broken the spell. For some reason, the new girl was immune to the vamp ability, and it could’ve had to do with how she heard a vampire’s presence, how her senses worked differently than the rest of theirs.

  “Okay,” Dawn said as she kept running up those stairs. “We’ve got a lot of surprises left for these girls. Natalia, you’re still in the comm room?”

  “Yes—I’m at the controls.”

  Was Natalia the one Costin had trusted with all the deeper information that he wouldn’t share with the others? The new girl, whom he’d seemed to take under his wing, training and keeping apart from the rest of them.

  It ate at her. “Did the cops come yet?”

  “The scanner says yes, and based on cameras and Friend intelligence, the vampires seem to have let the charmed humans go already.”

  Would the humans know what’d hit them?

  Hell, now wasn’t the time to wonder.

  Dawn got to the door and yanked it open to the chaos.

  Girls. Screeches.

  Just below Kalin’s empty home portrait, where the spirit usually rested in the guise of a woman wrapped in a cloak of fire, Frank was wrangling down two female vamps who were in full-on hairless cat-and-wolf mode, with long ears, nose, teeth, and claws. The UV lights outside hadn’t gotten to them because of their thick coats and hoods, but now those hoods had fallen off most of them as the battalion of Friends attacked, pushing the girls toward the exit or toward Frank, who was wielding two machetes in a blur of vampire motion, already decapitating one of the vamp intruders.

  She screamed and withered to nothing, her coat shriveling to air just as quickly, like every part of her had been eaten right up by some acid. Frank got the other girl vamp, too, then turned to another one that the Friends pushed at him. He was a whirring cutting machine.

  Meanwhile, Kiko was by a wall, far under one of the wooden angels that hovered overhead. His eyes were glassy as he beat off some Friends.

  Dawn made her way over to him, mentally punching a red-headed vampire out of the way and into the essence of a Friend. She did it to the next three vamps, too. At the same time, she took out the crucifix from her back pocket.

  Stepping in front of Kiko, she brandished the holy item. The crucifix had stunned Claudius before, and she hoped there’d be a connection.

  As Kiko shied away from it, Dawn lifted her other wrist, squeezing the small bag at her palm and firing a burst of holy water into his face.

  He yelled, convulsed, then spit out the water, glaring at her. Kiko?

  She got ready to give him another dose in case he wasn’t back yet.

  Then he blinked, looked around the room, his expression horrified as he realized what was going on . . . as well as his part in making it happen.

  He’d have to deal later.

  “Now’s the time to get them back for what they did to you,” Dawn said, lowering the crucifix and starting to leave. She hoped Frank was listening to what she was about to say over the earpiece. “Just round these girls up near the lab door for a takedown.”

  “But—” he said, because the idea was too crazy to not say “but.”

  “Friends have got us covered.”

  He nodded, going back to business, grabbing a silver knife out of one of his pockets and heaving it across the room. Dawn didn’t know if it found a target because she was already mentally kicking and punching her way back to the door that guarded Claudius.

  But a vamp was already there, sniffing at the edges. By now, she was the only one whose hood was still over her head.

  Dawn took a slight detour to a secret panel in a wall—an additional weapons cache. She pressed on it while shoving the crucifix back in her pocket. The door spilled open, and she reached inside, taking out a saw-bow, with its blade cocked and ready to fly.

  As she was turning around and lifting it, the vampire girl at the door stopped sniffing, then turned around, too, while Dawn avoided focusing on the eyes.

  They recognized each other right away, and it wasn’t just because the girl hadn’t changed into full vamp form yet or because they’d met when the team had gone to Queenshill.

  Dawn saw a reflection of her own rage in Della’s shadowed face, and for a second, she couldn’t move.

  Just like looking into a fractured mirror . . .

  Then Dawn blocked her thoughts from invasion. Della could be more insurance for us, she thought. Capture her or one of the other vamp girls. They’ll know the real Underground location if you can’t get it out of Claudius.

 
; Intending to stun Della, Dawn began to draw the crucifix out of her pocket, but there was a yank on her braid as something wrapped a hand around it and jerked her upward, toward the stairs.

  Yelling at the pain in her scalp, Dawn dropped the crucifix and grasped the root of her braid with one hand as she was hauled over the stair banister. But she kept ahold of her saw-bow with the other, swinging it.

  As her assailant slammed her toward the stairs, Dawn brought down the saw-bow butt first, but the dark figure dodged out of the way. Then, flash fast, it got Dawn in a headlock, its fingers at the tender Vulcan hold spot near her neck.

  The enemy applied just enough pressure so Dawn dropped the saw-bow. She could see through the banister slats below them to where the Friends and Kiko fought the vamps; by now, Kiko had gotten ahold of machetes, racking up kill numbers, and Frank was closing in on Della by the door with his own furious blades.

  A slithering electronically altered voice spoke in Dawn’s ear. “Miss me?”

  Shadow Girl.

  As Dawn tensed, preparing to attack, the custode applied pressure to her hold, and Dawn went weak, brought back against what felt like body armor beneath the keeper’s chest.

  “Don’t,” Shadow Girl said. “Why don’t we just let Della do her work? I’ll do mine quite happily up here, as well. But I anticipate having to accomplish matters rather quickly.”

  Last time, this thing had wanted to question her, and Dawn suspected the same was in store for her now—and in her own territory, too, right above her own team.

  She thought of accessing her earpiece, telling Natalia where she was, but the new girl wasn’t proficient with weapons yet. She’d be walking into sure trouble. Frank and Kiko were pretty occupied themselves.

  “Fancy place,” the custode said, as if she were looking around, admiring the antique touches. “You and the others run quite an operation. What exactly are you about?”

  Dawn kept her mouth closed, and Shadow Girl used her other hand to cup Dawn’s chin, bringing her head over to one side. Dawn recognized the position: the custode was threatening to break her neck if she didn’t offer anything.

  She gathered her rage, knowing it was her only way out of this.