Inside of Dawn, the dragon gave a tiny hop, as if he was overjoyed at the thought of getting near his former keepers.
As the car’s GPS revealed that they were closing in on their destination, Dawn pulled off the deserted road, shutting off their headlights. She jerked her chin toward a long driveway that wound up and over a hill. Black fencing surrounded the property.
“Doesn’t look too imposing,” she said.
Costin turned to her, and her heart stopped in her chest, just as it did whenever that topaz gaze caught hers.
“Let us find out just how imposing.”
He put his hand on top of hers, and she didn’t even mind that, technically, it was Jonah’s hand. All she could feel was the spirit she loved as much as she’d ever been able to love anyone.
But tonight, she felt even more than a tentative emotion. She felt a little explosion around her heart, as if it might break into pieces, but in a good way. In a way that made her stomach flip-flop and her chest feel all gooey and sentimental.
She grasped his hand, entwining her fingers with his, just before Kiko’s voice came back on.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks, Kik,” Dawn whispered.
As he shut down communication, she kept looking at Costin. Her chest squeezed together, and she knew it was her heart again.
“Not to get all mushy,” she said, “but...”
Costin leaned toward her and kissed her for the first time in Jonah’s body, and her pulse seized. Even the dragon froze in her, as if having no idea how to react.
But her stain? It melted a little, just as she did.
After a heart-spinning moment, he pulled away from her.
“I am sorry for that.”
“What, kissing me?”
“In Jonah’s body.”
She hadn’t minded. Actually, she wanted more. Spirit sex was awesome, but every once in a while, she did miss old school petting and making out with a guy.
Not if it’d be with Jonah, though. Good God, never with Jonah.
Costin gazed out the windshield, a smile ghosting his lips. “That was a whim.”
“And you’re not given to whims. I know.”
Her lips tingled as they got out of the car, both of them adjusting the weapons on their belts, in their holsters. They made sure that the button-sized locators that tracked their position were attached to their jackets. She tried not to think about what Jonah might be thinking as Costin controlled his body.
God, he’d probably be smugging it up in there.
They avoided the driveway while stalking the fence line up the hill, which was gnarled by the shadows of bared branches from the trees that dotted the autumn-dry grass.
She wasn’t out of shape—she jogged and still worked out daily—but the high surge of adrenaline in her was making her breathless. Also, there was that bite wound on her shoulder. Only the old healing gel tempered the dull pain of it to a faint sting.
When they got to the top of the hill, they saw a grand hacienda mansion near the bottom. A massive lagoon-like swimming pool shined with the glow of the moon, competing with yellow light that smeared out of the house’s windows.
They had a wide view of the property, but there was no hint of a bonfire. Or even a teenager’s crazy Halloween party.
“Looks like we might’ve missed it,” she whispered to Costin.
He kept looking around, and she, again, remembered keenly that he was once a soldier under Vlad Tepes’ command before he’d become a crusading spirit.
“I will cover the area.” Then, just like that, his body slumped, and she knew that Costin had separated from Jonah.
Immediately, Jonah himself straightened, just as she felt Costin breeze by her, caressing her as he flew down the hill toward the house.
“So we meet again.” When Jonah spoke in his own voice it was in a whisper. And, yup, there was some smugness there. He’d liked that kiss between her and Costin.
What a perv.
“So we’ll just wait for him?” Dawn asked.
“I’d rather—”
It came out of nowhere and, at first, Dawn didn’t know what hit Jonah.
Whatever it was, he jerked, put a hand to his temple, then widened his blue eyes as he pulled that hand away.
Blood decorated his fingers and trickled from his head where a tiny hammer thing was embedded.
She hit the ground, landing on her belly, then lunged for a nearby tree, drawing a knife from her belt.
Fifteen feet away, there was another tree, and she saw something slink behind it.
Jonah was flat on the ground now, one of his hands stretched toward her. His fingers were moving, as if to show her that he was alive.
“Stunned,” he whispered before closing his eyes.
She surveyed the field, her heart beating in her ears. Her enemy was behind the nearest tree, but was there a second Meratoliage, if that’s who they were dealing with?
Breathing in and out, she positioned herself behind her tree, then raised the hand that had the knife in it. She waited.
Waited.
When she saw a shape peek out from behind the other trunk, she chucked the knife, and it whooshed through the air, spinning toward the shadowed attacker, who jumped back behind its own tree.
Had the blade stabbed him or her?
Dawn got out her machete. On her right side, the dragon seemed to be pumping his fist, rooting against her.
Asshole.
The shape behind the other tree didn’t show itself again. Should she get out her revolver, too? And if she used it, was it worth the attention a bullet would draw?
Would bullets even work on a Meratoliage?
They had seemed human enough in London. Superhuman, yes, but still killable.
She’d be taking a huge chance, hoping that the act of killing wouldn’t trigger her buried anger impulses.
Blowing out a breath, she got back down on her stomach, crawling on the ground. When she passed Jonah, she touched his hand.
He weakly ran his finger over hers, and that was good enough.
Dammit, where was Costin?
Inch by agonizing inch, she neared the other tree. Breath by sharp breath, she got ready to kill if she had to, and the dragon seemed eager for her to do it.
Finally, she got to the trunk, coming as close as she dared, raising her machete—
With a burst of energy, she sprang around the tree, finding the other old Meratoliage man—the sideburned one who’d landed on the rock—lying on his back, his stomach wound a big dark mark where his black shirt was torn.
Dawn choked back a gag when she saw what her knife had done to him.
Part of his sideburn on one side of his face was missing, just as if she’d scalped him, and he was bleeding profusely.
But the blinking whites of his eyes showed her that he was still conscious. So did the movement of his hand, which reached for what looked to be another little hammer that he’d been waiting to hurl at her.
She jumped at him, tossing the hammer away before he could get to it, and pinning him to the ground with her legs and hands, putting all her money on the hope that Costin had already found Lilly so she wouldn’t surprise Dawn, too.
“What do you want from us?” Dawn asked him, her tone gritty.
The old man worked his open mouth around words that weren’t coming out. Instead, a choking sound croaked from his throat.
Couldn’t he talk?
She peered into his blank eyes, which were darting back and forth in the moonlight, like milky marbles rolling around.
Inside her, the dragon rolled, too, as if in utter joy at being so close to a source of pain. It was almost as if her passenger was even trying to get to the custode, just as the monster had tried to get to her soul stain a million times before.
That’s when Dawn knew how much this undead thing in front of her was hurting, how miserable it must be while in the throes of death.
As the keeper bled from his stomach, his head,
and as he kept making those terrible animal sounds, Dawn wondered where Lilly was, and if she had brought her partner here to friendly territory so he could die in peace.
But did these creatures think at all? Or did they just obey ritualistic commands?
The thing before her started to cough up blood, and when he fixed his moony gaze on her, she thought that maybe he wasn’t so blank.
Agony. That was all she saw.
She took hold of the knife she had thrown and brought it back over. Then, before she could think too hard, she did what any compassionate human being would do for something in pain.
She slit his throat, cleanly and quickly.
Then she braced herself for the demented rush of angry happiness to consume her soul stain, just as it used to before tonight. She waited for another so-called beauty mark to burn into the left side of her face, along with all the other black marks she wore.
But none of that happened. Even the dragon wasn’t responding gleefully, as she thought he would.
She shut the custode’s eyes, then, like a good hunter, took her machete, aimed for his neck, and made sure this supernatural creature wouldn’t come back to hunt them anymore.
SIX
The Plan
Jonah had refused to go to the ER, so Dawn and Costin had taken him back to the beach house instead.
He’d also insisted that they continue looking for the Meratoliages, even without him.
“I’ll be fine here.” He was reclining in his bed and waving Dawn off as Costin hovered near the ceiling, inspecting him. Natalia sat at his side, playing nurse, already cleaning his head wound and wrapping a bandage around it. “Score one for the Gipper, okay?”
Dawn didn’t know whether she wanted to roll her eyes or laugh at his lame joke. “Part of recovering is resting your mouth, you know.”
“Will do, Cap’n.” He saluted her the best he could before closing his eyes and letting Natalia do her work.
This time Dawn did roll her eyes as she headed for the staircase to the lower floor. Through a window, she could see that the sky was still dark—a few hours until sunup.
Costin’s voice buzzed her ear. “Jonah will be fine, but I am more concerned about you.”
“Me? I’m right as rain.”
He must’ve detected some kind of catch in her tone.
“You only did what you needed to do,” he said.
Things had been too hectic before now to really discuss the death of the sideburned keeper. She wished they were still hectic.
“I’ve done mercy killings before,” she said. “During hunts.”
“Did it affect your stain tonight?”
“Are you asking if there’s a weight in me? Anger that needs more feeding? An impulse to use my psychokinetic powers to rip apart bodies again? No.” Hallelujah. She might’ve even said that her soul stain was gone for good, if she didn’t know better.
At the bottom of the stairs, Kiko was waiting for them. They’d already caught him up on the latest news while they’d driven back here with Jonah: Costin had found that the big hacienda by the pool on the Barker place had been deserted. They’d figured that the Barker family, along with other Meratoliages, might be on the second property near Carlsbad that Kalin had flown off to investigate, but she hadn’t returned to report in yet.
“I was thinking,” Kiko said. “Do you reckon the sideburned custode went to the Barker property to lay down and die? It was probably the nearest Meratoliage safe place.”
Dawn began to walk ahead of the others. Her body felt lighter without the weapons she’d set aside when they’d walked into the house. “I was actually wondering the same thing.”
“It was as if he retired himself,” Costin said, “so I would say your theory is likely.”
Kiko whistled. “That old man still had a lot of gas in him, didn’t he? After getting gutted by a rock, he still made it miles away.”
“They can move like the dickens,” Dawn said, laughing a little, maybe out of respect for the enemy. Or maybe because laughing cushioned the act of killing.
Kiko was staring at her. “Something really did happen to you at midnight.”
“You’re just coming around to that conclusion?”
“It takes some getting used to.”
“Kiko, if something hadn’t truly changed in my composition, you’d probably be talking to the dragon right now.” She was pretty sure the monster’s blood would’ve taken her over, body and soul, after tonight’s kill.
They cut through the family room, with its lion legged coffee table, Gothic wooden book stand, and monastery hardwood bench.
Kiko jumped up and onto one of the French floral upholstery sofas, settling in for a good sit, but Dawn kept on her feet.
“Costin and I need to get back on the road.” She gestured toward the sliding glass door that led to the beach-side deck as Costin waited next to her.
He said, “We should wait for Kalin to return and provide a report about the Carlsbad property.”
He was right, dammit.
Kiko swallowed, and Dawn knew that he was dying to butt in.
“Your poker face still sucks,” she said.
“What can I say? I really don’t like the thought of you going out there again.”
“Costin will be there with me.”
He skimmed her hair, which was banded in a low ponytail. It felt like a supportive gesture, but she knew that someone as careful as Costin was no doubt agreeing with Kiko about letting her go out there with the dragon inside of her.
“You know about Samhain, right, Dawn?” Kik asked.
What a strange question. “Sure. It marks the official end of summer. It’s a Celtic festival. A feast of the dead. And it used to be that groups would dress up as spirits of the dead so they could walk around on this night unmolested by the spirits—they thought they would blend in with them. They’d go from door to door, pretending to be beggars, and if someone who answered the door didn’t give them a generous ‘treat,’ there’d be bad luck on that house. The group might play a trick on them, too, just to emphasize the message that you shouldn’t piss off the ancestors that they represented.” Dawn shrugged. “Costin and Jonah caught me up on all that before we left earlier for the first Barker property.”
“So you know that this is a night when the dead have power over the living.”
Don’t they always? she thought.
“I guess you’re making one of your roundabout points, Kik,” she said. “Do you think the Meratoliages harnessed some dead spirits along with the undead keepers or something? Or do you think they have some kind of army of dead-men-walking surprises waiting for me and the dragon at that bonfire?”
“I’m not ruling anything out. I just wondered if you’re taking this too lightly. Cause of the lack of soul stain and all.”
She took that under consideration, but deep down, she suspected this was just another argument he was using for her to stay inside until sunlight. Actually, it sounded so unlike the old gung-ho Kiko that she couldn’t help commenting on it.
“Once upon a time,” she said, “you would’ve been out the door with me first. I don’t know how many Meratoliages are gathered at that bonfire you saw in your visions, but I’d like to take out every threat I can while it’s possible.”
Before sunrise.
Before there might be terrible consequences once again for her being able to kill.
Kiko stayed quiet, and she turned away from him, toward the sliding glass door. Outside, the sky was still dark, silvered by a veil of moonlight, almost as if there was a layer protecting the last of the night.
As she lingered there, she wished Kalin would get her spirit derriere back ASAP...
She thought she saw something on some rocks to the right.
Teenagers, playing around on the beach during Halloween?
She wandered closer to the door, just to get a better look, and what she saw took her aback for a second.
It seemed that, all this time, Lilly
Meratoliage had been standing on the rocks, staring at the house as if she had been waiting for Dawn to see her. She made for a disturbing sight, too, with her light brown hair blowing in the breeze, her black-clad body tense, her mouth gaped open and her eerie white eyes like two moons themselves.
Dawn put a hand on her revolver holster. “Looks like one of the Meratoliages decided to come to us, and it looks like she doesn’t have those nunchucks this time.”
Kiko rushed off the sofa to see. Costin came up behind her, his essence lightly pressing on her good shoulder.
“What is her plan, I wonder?” he asked.
Dawn made eye contact with Lilly—if eyes are what you’d call those two pale things in the girl’s face. “She obviously knows we’re in here, and either she’s going to attack the house—and I’ll bet she’s done a security check since she’s a keeper and all—or she’s hoping I’ll be rattled enough to come out and confront her.”
“Whatever it is,” Costin whispered, “you know it could be a trap.”
Dawn glanced behind her, as if she could see him. All she could discern, though, was air, thick and disturbing and full of an energy that had the power to drill through her.
When she turned back around, Lilly was gone.
“You gotta be kidding,” she said.
Kiko was already on it, nearly pressed against the window. “She hustled off the rocks to the right.”
Dawn thought about going up to the second floor for a more comprehensive view, but she took one more gander out the glass, getting as close as Kiko was to it.
Just then, Lilly darted in front of her, pasting her body against the glass, imitating Dawn’s shape.
Although she’d startled, Dawn didn’t let herself fully jerk away from the door. She didn’t let herself be scared of this girl, either, even though the dragon’s blood was tapping inside of her, probably because one of its most recent keepers was so damned close.
Or maybe he was ticked off at Lilly for failing to protect him.
Either way, Dawn didn’t move.
“What now?” she whispered. She was still face-to-face with Lilly, eye-to-horrifying-eye. This close, she could see the small red veins in the girl’s eyes from the strain of rolling them back in her head. She could see inside her maw of a mouth as it stayed in that eternally damned scream. She could see the mud that the girl had packed into the stake hole that Dawn had inflicted earlier.
Undead for a Day Page 5
