Break of Dawn

by Chris Marie Green

  It was a shame, really, the Master thought. Due to the Underground emergency, Amanda had been forced to halt the momentum of her third career just as it was gaining speed. Her second career had ended when the public started commenting on “Delia Wright” ’s chronic youthfulness, so she’d come back Underground for another chance.

  And she was going to have it, the Master thought as he and Sorin headed for the grand hallway leading to the Elites’ private chambers. She would have it.

  Near the hallway entrance, Sorin stopped to accept the salutes of the lower-level Groupies, who had halted in their flashing hand-to-hand combat exercises to acknowledge the vampire they believed to be their master.

  The Groupies were looking good: ready and nimble. Benedikte made a mental note to ask about the Guards—soldier vampires—and how ready they were to face Jonah Limpet and his team. The lowly creatures had just finished training and Sorin, their keeper, would have them resting now.

  As the Master and his son moved on, Benedikte caught a glimpse of the Servant station, where volunteer, vow-bound humans had come Below to offer blood as meals so the Groupies wouldn’t have to travel Above.

  Everything was in place—now they just needed Mr. Limpet to show himself. And the Master needed Dawn, too.

  The moment the door to the Elites’ palace was closed, Benedikte shifted back into his original form. Benedikte’s body. He wanted to be himself when he saw Eva Claremont. He wanted her to see what she’d rejected when he’d so often tried to win her over in the other, less attractive, featureless form he’d worn during his years of not caring about anything but Eva. Was it any wonder she’d turned him down, though? He’d resembled nothing more than a shadow with a colored outline, anonymous and almost lifeless.

  Since meeting Dawn, that had changed. He was back.

  They arrived at Ms. Claremont’s colossal door.

  Eva, the Master thought, using his Awareness instead of a more common knock.

  A few seconds passed before she answered. Yes, Benedikte?

  He wouldn’t ask permission to enter this time. Instead, he pushed her door open. It revealed quarters that smacked of old Hollywood charm: jazz-age pictures on the first-floor walls, a Greta Garbo-type bed located upstairs. When Eva had been released Above for her comeback as a starlet named “Jacqueline Ashley,” she’d decided to decorate her retro-Tinseltown home just like her Underground chambers.

  They moved to the stairs, climbed them. The soft perfume of Eva beckoned as they approached the guest room where he knew she was located. As always, Benedikte was overtaken with a craving for her. He was transported back to the moment he’d first seen her on the screen: larger than life, daisy beautiful.

  After falling for her, he’d set a Servant, a manager in her employ, the task of winning her over. The man had skillfully introduced the idea of long-lasting beauty and unending fame to Eva and, soon, she’d faced the fear of losing her youth, her career, her paycheck, which sustained an overspending husband and their little baby girl. Eva had panicked. Not knowing how else to preserve what she had, she’d gone along with staging her own legendary murder, making her an instant superstar, eternally loved. But she hadn’t died. No, Dr. Eternity—the Master’s “professional name”—had ushered her Underground at the cost of her soul. In exchange, he gave her a monthly infusion of his blood, which kept all Elites young and coveted.

  But that was not where Eva’s treatment ended. For years, she’d stayed Underground, waiting for her legend to grow. Then, when the world was ready for her comeback, Dr. Eternity performed his final feat of transformation, using surgery to alter Eva’s appearance enough to make the public think she was someone different, all while remaining the same star underneath. It was this star who drew the adoring masses, both on the red carpet and on the silver screen. While they believed she was the “new Eva Claremont,” she was nothing more than the old, made better by a touch of vampire Allure and ambition.

  An unending career that could last eons with enough returns to the Underground . . .

  Sorin’s Awareness shook Benedikte. Master?

  His son stood at the guest room door, waiting to open it, a concerned expression on his face. He’d always thought Eva would be his father’s downfall, but that wasn’t true. Dawn had taken Eva’s place in Benedikte’s affections, so Eva didn’t have the power to hurt him anymore.

  At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

  Resolutely, Benedikte opened the door, then walked inside. Eva appeared from behind a silk dressing screen. A light blue robe flowed around her, the hem kissing the floor. It brought out the glimmer of her long, blond hair, the swirl of colors in her Elite eyes, the high flush on her cheeks that her last infusion had caused. He’d overfed her—an impulsive mistake—and he wondered if she’d become stronger because of it.

  She came to stand by the four-poster bed where something was chained to the posts with enough silver in the bindings to restrain a lower vampire.

  Benedikte fought to avoid what was on the mattress, his vision washing it out.

  But, in the end, it was no use, no denying that Frank Madison, Eva’s husband in life—the man she’d captured Above when he’d tried to save Breisi the hunter—was her guest.

  An unwilling one.

  Benedikte knew that Sorin had his doubts regarding Eva’s story about how she’d gotten ahold of Frank and wrangled him Underground as her captive. Yet the Master hadn’t approached her about the wild claims. Not yet. He would later, but reaching into her mind would anger her and . . .

  The Master didn’t want to think about why he wasn’t forcing answers from his favorite Elite. Maybe it was because, after Jonah Limpet was destroyed, he would have to live with Eva for centuries, and her ire wasn’t an appealing notion.

  But . . . Benedikte cleared his throat, clasped his hands behind his back. He would get to Eva soon.

  Sorin spoke out loud, since he had no Awareness with Eva. She wasn’t his maker, after all. “I see Frank has been misbehaving again.”

  The burly man chained to the bed didn’t stir at the noise. “He’ll come around.” Eva stood protectively at her husband’s side.

  “Why is he slumbering right now?” Sorin asked.

  The actress played with her belled sleeve. “We had a disagreement about Dawn entering the Underground. You know he doesn’t want her here.”

  “Ever the vampire hunter.” Benedikte tilted his head while inspecting this member of Limpet’s team. He had been missing from action lately, supposedly because he had been on a sort of walkabout, staying true to his restless nature, deserting his job only to return to it at a most inopportune time.

  Sorin laughed sarcastically. “Are we to assume, Eva, that you were forced to give your husband a . . . How do they say it? A love tap?”

  Eva stiffened, prompting Sorin to really laugh.

  Call him off, she said to Benedikte through Awareness. You don’t want a miniwar on your hands between siblings, do you?

  The Master sent his son a look of such reproach that Sorin immediately quieted, then raised his chin defiantly, aiming his superiority at Eva. It was odd, because Sorin had always shown tolerance for this one Elite since she really did miss her family—even more than her once-stellar career. His son admired that. But after last night’s questionable events with Eva, Sorin’s attitude had changed.

  “When do you expect Frank to wake up?” the Master asked. “I’d like to chat with him since I haven’t had the honor yet.” Time had been at a premium since Frank had arrived. There’d been meetings, attempts to sort out what was happening, then rest during daylight, even though the Master was a strong enough creature to walk in the sun.

  Eva tentatively stroked the dark hair back from her husband’s forehead, obviously free to do so as he slept. It twisted the Master’s heart—or whatever it was—in his chest. A stab of unbearable hunger accompanied the twinge.

  “I’ll tell you when he’s up and about,” Eva said softly.

  Wil
l you? Sorin asked silently through Awareness to Benedikte, even though he knew Eva wouldn’t be able to hear him. His show was for the Master.

  She will, Benedikte said.

  His son remained quiet, even though he lifted his chin even higher.

  Still wearing his Benedikte body, the Master bowed respectfully to Eva, his hair, which had been long and black when he’d taken his blood vow, spilling over his shoulder. “Then I’ll see you later tonight, Eva. You and Frank.”

  She bit her lower lip, nodding at him. So beautiful. Her every move made him ravenous.

  Wasting no time, Benedikte left her chambers. Someone else was waiting Above for him. Dawn. But there were ways of getting Eva out of his system before then. . . .

  Sorin followed in his tracks as they wound through the tunnels to the Master’s secret room.

  Master? Sorin asked.

  His son sensed his madness. And when Benedikte didn’t answer in his haste, Sorin turned on a deeper level of Awareness they’d been practicing lately.

  The Master felt Sorin in his head, looking out of his own eyes as he nearly stumbled in an attempt to reach for his door lock. Ignoring Sorin’s invasion, Benedikte allowed his son to linger, to see what he saw.

  To feel what he felt.

  He scratched at the buried lock and, at the muted click, pushed the door open and headed for the shelves that held all his collected vials. He went straight for his favorite.

  Unbeknownst to himself, he’d shifted from his Benedikte body to his nebulous, pulsating form—his nobody shape. He fumbled in an attempt to reach for Eva’s vial.

  The soul she’d given him in exchange for long-lasting youth and fame.

  Behind him, Sorin made a strangled sound. The Master barely had the presence of mind to glance at him, to find his son’s eyes glowing, swirling, in attached hunger.

  For no good reason, Benedikte cut off Sorin’s Awareness, but that didn’t change the fever in his son’s gaze.

  “What is it?” the Master asked, voice rough. “Do you want to drink one, too? Maybe your own?”

  “Master—”

  “Then have you finally reached the strength of hunger I’ve experienced for centuries?” Would his progeny finally develop the power to assume other shapes, too—like father, like son? The mere thought of it lingered like a threat that Benedikte didn’t want to acknowledge.

  “Have you crossed a line, Sorin?” he added.

  “No.” The second-in-command sounded horrified. “No, I don’t want it. I don’t . . .”

  As his son sank to the floor and barred his arms over his head, Benedikte couldn’t stand any more. He ripped the cork out of Eva’s vial.

  A slight scream hit his ears before he drank her in.

  Her soul pounded through him, ghostly fists against his ribs and skin, prey begging to get out. But the Master fed off that anguish, fed off her innocence.

  Fed off the love for a family she wanted so desperately to return to until he was convinced that he felt it, too.

  That he was, once again, wonderfully human.

  SIX

  THE NIGHT CALLER

  In a guest room punctuated by iron bird statues and a mural depicting a dark forest cove, Kiko was snoozing while Dawn sat in an overstuffed velvet chair by his bed. She was killing time by channel surfing the TV.

  After the dagger adventure in the weapons room, Breisi and a couple of other anonymous Friends had rushed upstairs, urged on by Dawn’s summons. Even though she had managed an explanation for his weakened state—Kiko was getting sick because of his pill withdrawal, right?—she’d left out the vision itself. She would tell Breisi all about it later.

  Or maybe advertising that she was launching a full-scale investigation into Jonah wasn’t to her advantage right now.

  At any rate, as Kiko had sweated and shaken on the office couch, he’d muttered, “No painkillers. I won’t be . . . a mental gimp. . . .”

  He’d also refused to go to the doctor, insisting that the team needed to stay locked down. Breisi had agreed, so she and the other spirits had seen to Kiko in their own way. It was amazing to hear them putting him at ease: the Friends’ voices had melded together, churning into something like a soft song that faded toward their patient. Actually, the whispers seemed to be funneling into his ear. Something low and soothing, something Dawn couldn’t translate.

  He’d sighed and closed his eyes.

  “What did you all do?” Dawn asked.

  Breisi skimmed by on her way out, leaving the usual trail of jasmine. “No time for details. I’ll come back later. . . .”

  Obviously, Dawn had interrupted some kind of important Friends meeting. Well, lah-dee-dah. Shut out of the club.

  As the rest of the spirits followed Breisi, Dawn again felt isolated from her coworker, as if there were a crevice separating her and the woman she’d just started warming up to recently.

  No time for details . . .

  Now, sitting here in Kiko’s room, where Dawn had transferred him, she felt like maybe there was too much time while all of them waited for Jonah to finish strategizing.

  Or maybe there was too little.

  She mindlessly zapped the remote at the TV, using more force than necessary.

  The dagger vision wouldn’t leave her alone. God, if she had believed she was in over her head before, what was she now? Whoever was in that nightmare was a vampire or . . . something.

  And in spite of her attempt to get Kiko to enlighten her about the reason Jonah was hunting the Underground, the vision had come up short on that, too. Or should the images have given Dawn a clue—a big, fat, huge, hairy clue that she was failing to grasp? Man, she sucked as a detective.

  But as she sat there shooting at the TV, theories began to creep up her spine, settling in her head with the cold prickle of footsteps trailing a person in the dark.

  Jonah had kept that dagger for a good reason. From what she knew of him, he wasn’t the type to collect needless things, whether it was team members or artifacts.

  Was the seer in the vision Jonah himself? Was that the reason he’d kept the antique?

  She jumped in her chair from the creeps, and her feet itched to run right out of the house. But then she told herself to get to the bottom of everything before she made a rash, irreversible decision. If anything, Dawn liked to think she’d learned something from Limpet, whether it was a touch of patience, a smattering of logic, or even . . .

  The memory of brutally killing Robby Pennybaker consumed her.

  Maybe she’d learned too much.

  She calmed herself. Think rationally, Dawn. Don’t be the girl who once flew off the handle and hucked that throwing star at a human homeless woman because of an urge—a thirst—for violence. Think, ya dumb cluck.

  Okay, okay. What if Jonah wasn’t the man in Kiko’s vision? Maybe he was just acquainted with the seer in some way?

  Or maybe the seer was the master of a different Underground. Or maybe he was even the Underground master they were looking for right now.

  Even though the conclusion made her feel slightly better, the first scenario bugged her the most. Jonah, a vampire.

  But how could he be one of them? The Voice had never sucked Dawn’s blood, had never sucked anyone’s blood as far as she knew, and that was what had given birth to the seer in the vision—blood. Wouldn’t he still crave that instead of the sustenance he’d been taking from Dawn?

  Just as she was getting scared again, she aimed the remote at a newscast, then pulled back as she registered what the reporter was saying.

  “—murdered in jail this morning by a guard.”

  Volume, up. Way, way up.

  “The victim, Lee Tomlinson, who was awaiting trial for the murder of struggling actress Klara Monaghan—”

  Dawn shot to her feet.

  “—has been in the spotlight since his arrest. Speculation about Tomlinson’s innocence has been rampant ever since a second Vampire Killer began terrorizing L.A. while Tomlinson was incarcerated.
”

  Neither the public nor the media realized that Cassie, Lee’s sister, had been the second Vampire Killer. For some reason, Jonah had instructed them to remain quiet about that doozie for now. Shocker, but he was no doubt temporarily keeping things under wraps in order to bar normal society from interfering with vamp business: the team wouldn’t be able to work as well if, say, reporters were always around. Besides, the killer was off the streets and wouldn’t be doing any more harm. As far as the regular world knew, the culprit was a copycat psycho, which was pretty much the truth anyway.

  Dawn clutched the remote. Justice for Klara Monaghan wasn’t top priority. The team’s focus couldn’t be anywhere but on the Underground, and it left Dawn feeling crappy.

  She recalled Klara and her surgery-enhanced face, her clearly desperate ambitions of making it in Hollywood. Sad. Awful. Shit.

  Dawn’s attention fixed on the screen as it switched to a taped interview with a ubiquitous legal talking head who made his living on Crime TV shows. His high forehead gleamed in the spotlight.

  “Would Lee Tomlinson have been set free eventually?” he said in a smoker’s rasp. “We won’t know now, thanks to a prison guard who seems to have cultivated an even bigger fame-whore complex than Lee Tomlinson himself. Rumor has it that the murderer, Dexter Tyson Hallicott, was obsessed with Tomlinson, and I guess we have an idea of why now.”

  Lee Tomlinson’s mug shot blipped over the TV, showcasing his Brandon Lee looks, his matinee beauty. His empty stare.

  The newscaster spoke over the image. “Tomlinson was an aspiring actor who moved to Los Angeles before he was arrested for allegedly murdering Miss Monaghan. At one time the celebrated Hollywood lawyer Milton Crockett represented Tomlinson, until handing over the reins to Enrico Harris. The investigation is ongoing, so stay tuned while we bring you more as it’s revealed.”

  And . . . on to the next headline.

  Dawn shut off the TV. Should she bug Jonah with this?