Lilly was near the front of the car, hanging on as it accelerated onto the road, past a chic little shopping center and a view of the ocean, all a stream of faded color to Dawn as the wind cuffed her.
She ignored the screeching pain in her shoulder from that earlier keeper’s bite and pulled herself over the roof, toward Lilly. All she had to do was get to the box on the girl’s belt, and she would let go of the car. She knew how to roll to the pavement from a hundred different stunts; she’d be okay.
But just as the SUV was picking up speed, it came to a burn-rubber stop at a deserted part of the road.
Unprepared, Dawn spun forward over the roof, holding on to the rack with one hand, trying to swing herself up again.
Somebody was already out of the car.
Two somebodies.
She wanted to yell at them to get back inside, that they were going to get hurt, but then a spine-flicking chill got to her, and she knew she should just hang onto the rack and prepare to swing and kick at whoever had just emerged.
Before her brain had processed that the somebodies were a man and a woman dressed in dark clothing, boasting the same light brown hair color, overbites, and tipped-up noses as Lilly, Dawn felt a nip at her neck.
And it wasn’t the acid reminding her it was there.
She raised one of her hands to feel the sting and discovered a small dart, just before a sleepy dizziness overcame her and she let go of the rack, crashing to the black ground.
NINE
The Homecoming
“Dawn...”
The woman’s voice came on soft waves, lapping against Dawn’s conscience every time her name was repeated.
“Dawn, wake up, dear...”
Everything flooded her at once—Lilly taking Costin in a tiny button box, the chase, the car ride, the dart—
Dawn bolted up, discombobulated, but not enough to mistake her surroundings for anything but what they were. A cage. Bars. A wooden platform about four feet off the grass. A bonfire casting an orange glow through the night as a group of robed and masked people waited around it.
Then, a woman, just outside of the bars.
She was tall, with a slender, high-cheekboned face, carrying herself with a commanding presence. She looked a lot like Lilly used to, except this was the non-revenant, grown-up version, with big pale green eyes and light brown hair that caught the orange of the flames.
The last detail that struck Dawn was that this pseudo-Lilly was wearing a roomy robe and was holding a sleek, featureless silver mask that creeped Dawn the shit out.
In the woman’s other hand, she held a blue sports drink.
She slid it through the bars toward Dawn. Its seal hadn’t been broken open yet, but Dawn wasn’t about to touch it. Not even if her mouth felt as if it was made of cotton and soap.
“Please,” the woman said in a posh British accent. “Drink. We would like you to be comfortable, Dawn.”
Head. Still fuzzy. “Then how about letting me out of here and giving me that box with my boyfriend in it?”
She’d done some rash things tonight—like leaving her locator behind on her jacket at the house—but she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that this group hadn’t divined or researched a lot of details about her, including the fact that she and Costin were together.
“Oh, I’m not taking the piss out of you, Dawn,” the woman said, and the sailor-like word sounded profane coming out of such a fancy mouth. “I’m absolutely serious about your comfort.”
“Your ritual requires it?”
She seemed impressed that Dawn knew what was going on, but she didn’t question it. “Yes, as a matter of fact, our ritual does. Or, at least, your comfort will make the ceremony easier, on us and you.”
“And if I don’t cooperate?”
“It will only hurt that much more.”
Hurt. Didn’t this woman know that hurt was a boyfriend in a box? Hurt was knowing that you couldn’t get to him. Hurt was coming to the conclusion that, no matter how hard you tried, you’d failed him and everyone else in the world because you were an idiot. Hell, without too much effort, she could even feel that they had stripped her of any small blades she’d been carrying. Fun, to be a defenseless moron, besides.
Dawn sat back against the rear of the cage, which was a wall, not bars. “So what’s in store for me...?”
“Amber.” The woman smiled, cool and polished and oh-so cordial. “And if it puts your mind at ease, you should know that Costin will have a home other than a capture box after tonight.”
An enchanted capture box, obviously. “What’re you going to do with him?”
“We’ll merely send him somewhere far away. We can’t have him hindering what the master must do in the future.”
“What—rule the world? That’s what you’re talking about, right, you crazy git?” Yeah, she remembered a few words from her time in London.
Amber seemed civilly amused, but Dawn wondered how hilarious the woman would think she was if there weren’t bars between them and if she wasn’t hung over from whatever they’d shot into her with that dart.
Then Amber’s smile faded. “You might have noticed that this world could use a bit of improvement. The dragon will provide that.”
“I think we’re talking about two different Draculs here.”
“No, Vlad Tepes is still considered a national hero in Romania, a resistance fighter who stood for what is good and right. We Meratoliages hold the same point of view as his countrymen do. He was a strong leader. You don’t think the world needs one of those today to battle off the evils that have always threatened to do us in?”
“If you’re inviting me to talk about politics, you’ve got the wrong girl.” Among other things, Vlad Tepes, AKA the dragon, had set out to defend his people from the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and their religion.
Amber certainly looked the opposite of amused now. She was obviously a die-hard fan.
“So,” Dawn said, “you’re like his dutiful right-hand men and women, and when he gets his crown back, you’re going to be at the top of his thank-you list.”
“I’m sorry you choose to be on the wrong side of history, Dawn.”
“I’m sorry that you think a sadistic guy who apparently took pleasure from impaling is fit to be your leader.” The things coming out of Dawn’s mouth should’ve sounded so abstract, but this was really happening.
Seriously.
Everything she had believed they had conquered was still here.
In front of the enemy, Dawn tried to act as if none of it mattered, although it did. “I have to give you credit. You Mertoliages are efficient.”
“We had the feeling that, if you took shelter, there was only one thing that would lure you out.”
Costin. They’d guessed right. “And now that I’m here, how’re you going to get the dragon out of me?”
Amber adapted that professional tone of voice again, and she reminded Dawn of some of the doctors she’d had over the years.
“We have a pallet by the fire for you. With restraints, of course. But we did our best to make it—”
“Comfortable. Yeah, yeah. Will you be cutting into me?”
“Yes. We do need the dragon’s blood. Every bit of it. And that includes the marks on your skin as well as the blood that collected under it. He’s in the blood, as you know. We also need your life force to last long enough to keep him strong outside of your body until we can feed him our blood and our life forces.”
Dawn pressed her lips together. Well. Little did Amber know that Dawn’s soul stain, which the dragon had always been attracted to because it obviously increased his strength inside of her, was kaput for now. Hah.
Not that it’d matter if she mentioned this tidbit, because they were still going to kill her.
“Okay,” Dawn said, temporarily going along with this. “I’m assuming that after the dragon’s out of my body, you’re going to euthanize me.”
“No. You’ll no doubt die on your own.”
>
“Blunt, but honest.”
“We try our best.” Amber strolled around to the side of the cage, but Dawn didn’t move. She just gritted her jaw and side-stared knifepoints at the woman.
And there was that clinical look again from Amber. She was assessing the right side of Dawn’s face, where the dragon blood marks prettied her up.
“You are very interesting indeed,” she said. “When the blood hit you, what did you feel?”
“Like all my Miss America dreams had come true.”
“How droll. And those black designs on the other side of your face? Tattoos for a vampire hunter?”
“Not quite.”
“I regret the acid wound you now have on your neck, Dawn. That was unfortunate. But I have no doubt that Lilly used the weapon on you because she needed to.”
“Lilly did her job real good. Where is she, by the way? I’d love to thank her. Say good-bye. All that girl bonding stuff.”
“She’s being, as you would say, patched up. You inflicted a few injuries on her.” Amber folded her hands behind her back, totally at ease.
“You’re healing her?” Dawn asked. “Why, when you’ll probably just be putting her back into that hell you call retirement?”
She gave Dawn another respectful glance. “Your psychics were able to read her thoroughly, were they?”
Dawn shrugged. A lot of good the readings had done with where it’d gotten her and Costin. All she could hope was that this bonfire really was on that property near Carlsbad and that Kalin had gotten here first, only to be in one of those spirit capture boxes now. The team would’ve caught on to how Kalin had disappeared and they would have the location identified and they would speed to the rescue soon.
Right?
You’d think that, without the soul stain, she would’ve had more hope in her hope.
She sank back against that wall. “Seriously, Amber. You’d better give Lilly a dog biscuit or a pat on the head after this. She did the job, I’ll give you that.”
Amber sighed, watching the bonfire as it burned. “Lilly. I had such high hopes for her once. She was the first female keeper in generations. The family allows women to be one of two guarding the dragon only when there are no healthy, viable males available.”
Dawn knew all this, but the longer Amber talked, the better.
“I was proud of Lilly,” Amber said. “Do you see all these prats around us? The males?”
“They all look the same in robes and masks.”
“Well, believe me, there’s not an attractive one in the lot. They all go to fat if they’re passed over for keeper duty.”
The disgusted expression on Amber’s face said the rest. And they expect lookers like me to breed without complaint.
“In any case,” she said, “Lilly ended up as the greatest disappointment in our history, but only after generations of male ineptitude.”
“And tonight a woman is spearheading the charge back to Meratoliage glory. Congrats.”
Amber was still inspecting Dawn, as if she were some kind of interesting specimen.
She spoke. “Lilly turned out to be overly ambitious as she tried to correct all the institutionalized blunders that had come before her. The dragon’s subjects—the masters he left in charge of the Undergrounds—had become lazy. The London faction was no different, and probably worse than any other Underground. They had become devoted to their own pleasures and did not serve the dragon well. Lilly evidently attempted to orchestrate change, and it backfired.”
“Bummer,” Dawn said.
“For you, it turned out quite nicely. For us? No. I knew Lilly required retirement as a punishment, but I didn’t enjoy it.”
“So what really is going to happen to her now that she’s the hero who got me and Costin here?”
Dawn was still banking on the hope that the team was on the way, somehow tracking her. She would stall as long as she could, even though she knew that the Meratoliages were going to start ritualizing soon, before the sun came up and the Samhain magic was gone.
“Lilly,” Amber said, “earned retirement, and she must be boxed up again.”
“She doesn’t even get a reward, like seeing her great master rise from me?”
“She’s an object now. A brainless tool. And if we require her next Samhain...?”
Amber left that hanging, and something wrung itself out inside Dawn. It’d been so long since she’d felt, that she barely recognized sympathy.
“Are you sure she doesn’t feel anything?” Dawn didn’t know why she cared, but she did.
“I’m not certain Lilly ever felt.”
“She was human once.”
“And she isn’t quite that now. Why are you so dogged about knowing?”
“Just passing the time until you split me open.”
“I’m afraid time is not in the cards for you.”
Then what’re you waiting for? Dawn wanted to ask. But she thought that might be pushing it.
Yet, evidently, Amber and the Robed Band of Merrymakers were waiting for something, and she wasn’t shy about letting Dawn know what it was.
“We’ll be about this soon,” Amber said. “We’ve had some of our most proficient dark arts women working on a summoning spell, and they’re almost ready.”
Yup, time was ticking.
Amber added, “How much experience do you have with the dark arts, Dawn?”
“Enough to know that I don’t want anything to do with them.”
“So you know this night is very powerful. It’s when the Lord of the Otherworld comes to our plane, gathering the souls of those who died during the year and taking them on a great hunt.”
This was starting to sound like even worse deep crap than before. “What do they hunt?”
“People who have done evil.”
Okay. Dawn would take that as good news. This lord might be collecting some Meratoliages tonight.
“Evil,” Amber said, “is a relative thing, isn’t it?”
Dawn began to be not so happy as she got the gist of the woman’s question.
Amber glanced at the sky, then back at Dawn. “His power should help pull the dragon out of you. Then, you and Costin will be going with him.”
“Because we’re evil and that’s what this lord collects during his hunt?”
“You said it, not I.”
Now Dawn rose up from the floor. “You can’t do that to Costin. First off, he’s not evil. He tried to cleanse the world.”
“So did the master. As I said, it’s all relative.” Amber reached into her robes and brought out the small box that had sucked Costin right into it. “Luckily, from what I gather, it seems that whoever does the summoning tonight is the one who gets to define evil.”
Dawn lunged at the bars, but Amber didn’t give any ground.
“Please calm yourself, Dawn. We don’t want you to be jumpy.”
She rolled up her robe sleeve to check a delicate jeweled watch. “The hour approaches. I really do suggest that you hydrate yourself. Take a drink.”
Dawn thought about opening the beverage bottle and tossing the contents in Amber’s face, but who’d be laughing at the end of tonight? Definitely not Dawn Madison.
Amber sighed, then slid the smooth silver mask over her face, dehumanizing herself with the absence of features—except for eyeholes and that open mouth. Then she pulled the robe’s hood over her hair.
“It was enlightening, Dawn,” said her somewhat muffled voice.
Then she left.
As Dawn sat down again, pulling her legs toward her body, hugging them, she closed her eyes, shutting out the bonfire.
Was it ridiculous to hope that the team was coming?
The only thing she could take comfort in was Costin’s future, because he did have one, no matter what Amber thought. Dawn hadn’t mentioned it, but long ago, he’d made a deal with an entity that not even he could explain, though Dawn suspected the spirit was some sort of celestial guardian who’d called himself The Whisper. Cos
tin had vowed to destroy the dragon and his sub-masters in exchange for a peaceful resting place for his soul in the end. And Costin had technically slain the dragon—it’d just found a way station in Dawn. The Whisper hadn’t taken Costin’s reward from him, though, and the man she loved had come this close to eternal peace.
Except he’d come back because he’d wanted to spend the rest of Dawn’s life with her.
So hah—this so-called mythical lord that the Meratoliages were summoning wouldn’t be able to cancel The Whisper’s rest-in-peace contract with Costin. Titanic beings like The Whisper and a Lord of the Otherworld couldn’t interfere with valid contracts, as Dawn had discovered.
At least Costin would be safe.
But as far as she went...?
The sound of trampled dry grass outside of the cage made Dawn open her eyes, and she found her Best Buddy standing there, peering through the bars.
“Lilly,” Dawn said. “Gosh, I was hoping you’d drop by.”
The girl pressed closer to the bars, her open mouth moving.
“Really. Give it a rest.”
Out of nowhere, the girl reached between the bars, grasping Dawn’s leg, yanking her across the platform.
Dawn’s head spun and she tried to get away, but Lilly had already gripped Dawn’s hair with her other hand, bringing her face to the bars.
Then Lilly planted her lips on Dawn’s, just as she had years ago during one of their fights to toy with her.
But this kiss was different. It wasn’t playful or mocking.
It felt as if Lilly was pulling something out of her.
On Dawn’s right side, the dragon’s blood shifted, clinging to her as if it was holding onto a branch in a strong wind.
Shit—had an undead Lilly gotten some kind of power to magically claim the dragon all on her own? Had a magical retirement warped her that much?
More questions flew around Dawn’s mind as Lilly kept sucking: Was the girl pissed off enough at the family who had retired and betrayed her to take the dragon from them? Was she still trying to redo the Meratoliages’ keeper program, even after her retirement?
Was Lilly attempting to use the dragon so he might give her enough power to escape re-retirement tonight?
Undead for a Day Page 8
