Deep In the Woods

by Chris Marie Green

Shadow Girl caressed her cheek with a gloved finger. Dawn shivered, taken off guard, remembering the black widow kiss this thing had put on her at Eva’s flat.

  “Don’t even think about battering at me with whatever powers you might have,” the custode whispered. “I’m ready for them this time.”

  Thing was, Dawn hadn’t shown her full hand to Shadow Girl before; she had a lot more to play—and she wasn’t talking about taunting her enemy with information about the other, deader custode the team was keeping in the freezer downstairs. She wasn’t dumb enough to fire this one up with that news.

  “Then ask away,” Dawn said as best as she could with her neck about to be snapped off.

  Meanwhile, the anger simmered higher, faster.

  The custode kept hold of Dawn, like she was loving every second of this. The girl’s touch was almost even . . . sexual.

  Stimulated by the hunt.

  It spoke to Dawn—the infliction of pain that Costin had said she enjoyed too much.

  Shadow Girl took harder hold of Dawn’s jaw. “I believe I asked what sort of operation this was.”

  But then there was a fritzing sound that came from near the keeper’s head, and Dawn heard the murmur of a voice as the custode seemed to listen in.

  An earpiece? Was she getting a message from another of her kind?

  The shadow thing made an electronic, thwarted sound, then muttered, “Bloody hell.” She leaned in closer to Dawn’s ear, her mask brushing skin. “You didn’t happen to send one of your number to us, did you? Perhaps that ‘mean vampire’ the girls talk about who killed the dogs at Queenshill? I haven’t seen him about.”

  Fuck.

  Dawn’s imagination ran rampant: They’d caught Costin. Trap. Sure death.

  Or was the custode talking about something else?

  “Come along then,” the girl said as she removed one of her hands from Dawn to reach for what were probably cuffs.

  Dawn thrust out with her mind, grasping the custode’s arms, puppeting them away and flipping Shadow Girl to the stairs. Simultaneously, she dove away, leaping to a higher level, getting a better view of the keeper’s red eyes and shadow body as it righted itself.

  Not letting up, Dawn mentally flipped her assailant again, and the girl landed on her back with a crash. Dawn used her mind to push the keeper down the stairs as she grabbed the saw-bow, getting to her feet and giving chase.

  Had the shadow thing been talking about Costin? Had they gotten him?

  She wouldn’t let this bitch anywhere near him.

  Feverishly, Dawn pursued her quarry, finding the custode at the bottom, having regained her standing balance.

  Swick, went the saw-bow as Dawn triggered it from only feet away.

  The custode leaped out of the way of the blade as it spun toward her in a shower of sparks. She screamed as it caught her in the shoulder, and Dawn ducked out of the arc of the blood spray.

  The blade ricocheted off the keeper, to the right, into a vamp who was wrestling with a Friend, and buried itself into the schoolgirl’s chest. She screech-howled as Dawn dropped the emptied saw-bow and went for a machete in her holster.

  The custode clutched at her shoulder, then in a moment of surreal cheekiness, seemed to look with great disappointment at Dawn before taking out a gun from her belt and aiming it at a high- flying angel.

  She shot the device and a cable spat out to attach to the angel platform. With a whiz, she flew up, out of Dawn’s reach, and crouched on the platform, disappearing behind the angel’s head.

  Gone—just like last time.

  Dawn itched to chase it, but instead she went to Frank, who was grappling with Della.

  There was a plan to carry out. Kalin’s plan.

  And time was really ticking now if the custode had been called to the Underground because of Costin.

  NINE

  ABOVEGROUND, II

  DELLA knew Mrs. Jones was just beyond the door. She could smell the vampire’s hair—the thick tresses that held a hint of the shampoo the housematron had always used in her masquerade aboveground. She could smell Mrs. Jones’s old blood, too, and it was driving her mad as she swiped at the vampire Frank—the one who had deceived them and attacked them at Queenshill.

  Once again, he had been attempting to peer into her eyes, but she wouldn’t let him. She was sure he was attempting to snatch the location of the Underground from her, and Wolfie was still down there.

  He couldn’t get to Wolfie.

  She’d changed into wolf-cat form and was just grabbing Frank’s neck, her mouth watering, salivating for a bite, even of vampire’s blood, when the woman with the braid came to stand in front of Della, murder in her gaze.

  Della fell back against the stalwart door that blocked her from Mrs. Jones. She scream-hiss-howled, drawing the attention of her classmates.

  Or, at least, what was left of their number.

  They were down to nine, with Noreen and Stacy still fighting with those invisible entities—the jasmine the girls had been smelling round them for a while now. Her mates cocked their heads, broke away, then came running toward Della en masse, making the same terrible sounds as Della had.

  “They’re all together!” an odd, windy voice yelled as a force seemed to shove Frank away from Della while more jasmine corralled the girls.

  Frenzied, their minds on only Mrs. Jones, they all barreled toward the door, crashing against it.

  Then the jasmine swooshed away, the hunters retreating as, out of the blue, the door fell.

  Della didn’t stop to think that the entry had been all too easy. She didn’t think about how the attackers weren’t nearby any longer. She and the others rushed down the stairs in their haste to get to Mrs. Jones, their fangs bared in their hunger for vengeance.

  Too late, Della saw that the walls surrounding them were steel. Too late, fire burst down from the ceiling, crisping at the girls’ coats and exposed skin.

  They flew like lightning out of the flames, back up the stairs, their flesh crisped to near black. When they reached the upper room, they rolled on the floor, dousing the fire from their ruined coats and pained skin.

  After their screams had abated, Della lay there. Little by little, she realized the room was empty. All the hunters had disappeared, and, of course, the girls had uncharmed the humans outside, hoping they would serve as a distraction for the bobbies who had been approaching.

  It was just them now.

  “What do we do?” asked Noreen in her cat-wolf voice. Like all of them, her flesh was blackened, the whites of her eyes standing out of a singed, hairless skull. “How will we get to Mrs. Jones?”

  “There must be another way down there,” Stacy said. She’d been the one who’d tricked the little man into opening the door, and the group looked to her for leadership once more.

  “Fire,” Della said, shell-shocked. “Only a wall of fire keeping us from having everything we ever wanted.”

  The others stared at her as if she’d gone completely off her trolley. And perhaps she had.

  Whimpering, Della moved stiffly to the top of the stairs, her skin and what was left of her clothes smoking. She stood there for the longest time.

  Then she took another step down.

  “Della!” cried Noreen.

  She paid no mind. Della was going to find Mrs. Jones. She would run through the fire, using all the speed she could, and if she were attacked by flame again, so be it.

  Yes, Della thought, she was going to die trying, because if Mrs. Jones ever made it back to Wolfie, there would be no life, anyway.

  When she arrived just before the area where the steel covered the walls, she doffed what was left of one long boot and tossed it ahead, to see if the mechanism was motion activated.

  No response.

  Della inhaled deeply, went up a few stairs, then used all the speed she had to bolt through the steel section.

  When she reached the bottom, tumbling to a halt because she’d been moving so quickly and she couldn’t slow down
, she realized there hadn’t been any fire this time.

  She gained her feet, sniffing the air, crazily trying to locate Mrs. Jones. But the room was rife with jasmine, masking all other smells, including that of her own burned skin.

  Then she saw the empty chair in the empty room, and she sank to her knees, knowing the attackers were much smarter than any one of the schoolgirls, including Stacy.

  And that Mrs. Jones was still alive to tell the tale of what the girls had done to her.

  THE Friends had completely taken over and, now, Dawn, Kiko, and a bound Claudius were being zoomed along in wheeled carts by the spirits as they all traveled a tunnel to a secondary headquarters location. Frank zoomed along on his own, running just ahead of them.

  Their injuries were minor, and none of them had fallen.

  This time.

  However, Claudius hadn’t revealed anything to Kalin while she’d guarded him, so Dawn had a lot of work to do—especially after what Shadow Girl had told her.

  “Eva’s already at wherever we’re going?” Dawn asked Kalin, who was pushing her conveyance. She’d grabbed her saw-bow before evacuating headquarters, because she didn’t know just how well stocked this temporary place was. Jonah’s impressive fortune bought a lot, but she didn’t know how much Costin would’ve invested in backup.

  Behind them, a part of the tunnel sealed shut as a hidden doorway rolled down. The Friends were blocking everything off as fast as they could. The doors would blend with the rest of the tunnel, disguising where everyone had gone.

  “Eva was transferred earlier,” said Kalin. She wasn’t on Claudius-binding duty anymore, having been spelled by a different spirit.

  “And Natalia?” Dawn asked.

  “She’s bein’ led by Evangeline, and they’ll both meet us there.”

  The Friends had been the ones to cue Natalia in on setting off the lab stairway booby trap from the comm room, although the vamps had escaped the fire faster than they’d hoped. But at least it’d allowed the team to flee to this backup.

  A spirit contingent had remained behind to keep guarding the old headquarters, but that hadn’t stopped Frank from almost fighting the Friends so he could remain behind to grab Breisi’s portrait.

  “Don’t tell me Breisi’s gonna have to come home to nothin’,” he’d said as the Friends had settled Kiko and Dawn in their carts.

  “The vamps ’ve no idea what those pictures ’re for,” Kalin said. “Don’t get yer panties in a bunch, Frank. They’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll all be living at old headquarters, even though it’s been compromised?”

  “It’s secured, ’ey? Friends ’re remaining behind to keep watch over our ’omes.”

  From the way Frank grunted, Dawn knew he’d be making a return visit to tear Breisi’s bolted portrait off the wall, and maybe rescue a few others while he was at it.

  Then they’d taken off, only to slow down now, as they reached a temporary headquarters that Dawn was just now finding out about. But it was the Friends’ job to always be prepared.

  It was Kiko’s turn to ask questions as they disembarked. “Where was the boss during all that mess, huh? Usually he’s dealing out instructions.”

  Even though it wasn’t time yet, Dawn knew she needed to share. It was close enough to sunrise, shit was in motion, and she’d need help if she was going to handle Claudius to prepare for their own Underground attack, should Costin have already failed.

  And based on how the girls had been a combination of wolf and cat until the very end, she had the feeling Costin hadn’t gotten anywhere. Mihas still had to be alive.

  She felt stabbed by pessimism, and she tried to staunch the wounds by being practical. If Costin never made it Underground, she’d need more help than ever to wrangle Claudius into telling them if Costin had been set up for a trap and what the team would need to know to avoid it if they went after him.

  Sure, she’d promised him she’d pursue a real Underground location first if he didn’t destroy it by dusk, but it didn’t seem right. In any case, he hadn’t even gotten his allotted amount of time to complete his attack yet, so why was she freaking out now?

  When the next sunset came, then she’d decide what they should do. . . .

  She faced Frank and Kiko, her voice cracking. “The boss is already Underground, guys.”

  The look of betrayal on their faces was so vivid in the blinking strung-up lights of the tunnel that she could’ve probably even seen them without the illumination.

  ACROSS the Thames, just north of the main city and below the earth, Costin was indeed under the ground.

  But it was not where he had planned to be at the beginning of the night.

  He sat in the middle of a silver cage that had sliced down from the ceiling and around him hours ago in this tunnel, when Jonah—who had been sheltering him—had tripped a clever sensor neither he, nor the Friends, had seen. Costin had emerged to take over from there, believing he could find a way out.

  However, in this vampire’s body, he could not touch the squared bars, because the silver would seep through the skin to poison him and Jonah. Covering his hands with Jonah’s long coat had not ensured progress, either, as it was like fumbling about with mittens on, and the bars were so sound even a vampire’s strength could not bend them. And when he had dug at the dirt, thinking to burrow under the cage, he had met silver plating.

  Even the Friends had not been able to dismantle the structure due to having no actual hands, merely essences. They were also trapped here, below, unable to escape, as the entrance had been automatically shut behind them when they had entered.

  A trap. And a good one.

  If only the cell phone or the earpiece worked. Yet they were too far below the surface for either to be of any use.

  Breisi, his best and brightest Friend, sailed around the cage, inspecting it for faults. Although she and the others would be growing weak soon if they could not return to their portraits for recharging, she still had not quit.

  But she would not be Breisi if she had done so.

  Deep within their body, Costin heard Jonah speaking.

  “Getting any Indiana Jones vibes here? He’d know how to outsmart a booby like this.”

  “I am glad you see fit to joke, Jonah. That will surely keep me in a pleasant mood.”

  “Old man, you know that the team’s going to realize what’s going on when they don’t hear from us or the Friends soon.”

  Costin wished he had not listened to Claudius, no matter how certain he had been that his blood brother was telling the truth. He had assumed the other to be so weak that he would offer up any and all valid information, but he had thought wrong. Claudius had been a strategist in his day, and he had never lost the talent.

  But the main reason Costin had fallen into entrapment was because he had been too eager to prove that he was still the powerful Soul Traveler when he knew all too well that he was not. Once he would have been able to slip out of Jonah’s body and out of this cage. But perhaps his blood brother had sensed his diminishment.

  Unwilling to accept this position, Costin wrapped the coat over his hands again and attempted to pull apart the bars. No use.

  Despair came upon him. Once more, he would require aid from another. Not in all his centuries of fighting Undergrounds had he run into such a spell of misfortune.

  Not until he had summoned Dawn into his life.

  Jonah was communicating from his submissive resting spot again. “The team will use the locator to find us after sunset, just like you told them. We’ll wait this out, Costin. We’ll be okay.”

  “They will not come straight here. They are to hunt us only after they find a true Underground. I was adamant about that.”

  It was the way of the quest. Undergrounds first, personal concerns second. If he should fall here, he would need a seasoned team to carry on; he couldn’t risk the death of them all, especially since Dawn was the key.

  Sometimes, Costin wondered if she would be more import
ant in winning back his soul—in securing the safety of them all—than even he was.

  Jonah vibrated up the inside of their body, closer to taking over. “You think Dawn would leave you here to die? Right. Now, who do you think she is, Costin?”

  He saw her as she was last night, rage transforming her into someone he hardly recognized. Saw the marks on her skin that were slowly taking her over.

  As an answer eluded Costin, his gaze landed on the silver bars surrounding him and Jonah, and he felt more trapped than ever.

  TEN

  LONDON BABYLON, THE LION AND THE LAMB PUB

  TO look at them, one would think this was a celebration.

  Della watched her fellow vampires—the recruited girls who hadn’t been in Southwark—frolicking about the Lion and the Lamb as the windows showcased a bruised sky readied for the sun’s climb. The pub’s country simplicity held court to the vampires masquerading as girls, some of whom had tucked flowers from the pots decorating the tables into their hair. The recruits provided stark contrast to the nine Queenshill schoolgirls who had only now trudged into the pub, their healing skin still burned in places that even the ragged strips of their coats and hoods couldn’t hide.

  The owner of this establishment, who had clearly left the pub to them at this hour, had once struck a deal with Wolfie to ask no questions about the female patrons who attracted a young, male tourist clientele. And the vampires had clearly encouraged a great many to stay here earlier in the night; though the pub was technically closed, young human men still played table games such as snooker in one room with the stealth vampire girls while, in dark corners, they snogged with others.

  Or, more to the point, the girls were discreetly feeding upon the prey, here above the ground. In a half attempt at modesty, instead of drinking in the usual way, they were taking blood through their skin, which mewed open into little mouths, just like the cat from whom they had inherited this ability.

  The sight of the girls’ boldness startled Della, as they had always been instructed to take better care than to indulge in casual feeds without the benefit of running in a pack during their nightcrawls, where they would quietly hunt victims, feed in the dark, then bury the remains.