“I want to be like Eva more than anything else,” she said, the words enticing her when they shouldn’t have. “Please.”
A small sound emitted from the other side of the room, where Costin lay.
His inability to go out of Jonah’s body emphasized just how bad off he was. She would bet he was in there, trying to get out and he couldn’t.
But she was going to take care of that.
As she offered her neck to the Master, Dawn turned her face toward Eva. And just as Benedikte reared back and dove for Dawn’s throat, she saw that her mother was indeed awake, woozily pushing away from the wall.
“No, Dawn—!” she whispered weakly.
The Master’s fangs entered her, and Dawn held back a shocked groan, clenching his arms as she instinctively arched. Stabbed, invaded . . .
Memory exploded, and she saw stars, just as she had when someone else—Paul Aspen—had bitten her.
A tear of agony slipped from her eye as Benedikte sucked at her, draining, pulling at her jugular. In Dawn’s blurry vision, she saw Eva crawling toward her, but she mouthed, “No!” and opened her jaw in incomprehensible reaction to the Master’s stimulated drinking.
The only way, she thought, the only way to help Costin . . .
With a joyous breath, Benedikte stopped nursing at her, then tore open his shirt and slit his breastbone with a nail. Blood seeped from his flesh, and he took the back of her head and led her to it.
At first taste, she took to the liquid, clinging to Benedikte. Good. Perfect. More. More. More—
Everything flowed into her: power, glory, love, knowledge. A drugged rush of completion. She heard the roar of crowds showering devotion at her feet, felt the caress of ticker tape falling over her as she paraded by the masses while they hung over barricades just for the chance to see her, maybe even to touch her.
The silver crucifix against her young vampire chest began to warm up, but she didn’t care. She was strong, all-powerful, almost immortal.
She thought she heard weeping from Eva, silence from Costin. Still, she drank and drank, Allure drowning her in its fantasy.
“There, there, my darling,” Benedikte whispered in her ear. “You’re me. You’re my everything.”
She pulled away, looking into his glowing eyes and panting, wanting more. She felt as light as ether, and just as potent.
Shot through with ecstasy, Dawn pressed against the Master, feeling the vampirism taking painful root, feeling her limbs grow strong and healed. Every minute was torture as the new blood thudded into the place of the old, stretching her veins, heating them, making her into someone more exponentially wonderful than anything she could’ve dreamed.
Finally, after forever seemed to have passed, Dawn lifted her head to look at Benedikte. In her emerging heightened vision, she saw how his skin glowed, how the blood traveled beneath it in neon patterns.
More time passed as her body heaved and adapted. Eva continued crying, but she didn’t do anything to stop Dawn.
Her daughter had more than enough time to wonder why.
Then, as she opened her eyes again to take in a room that had grown in color—so vivid it almost made her cringe—she held the Master away from her.
“I’m almost as strong as you?” she asked.
“You’re my pure child, and have taken more blood than any Elite. You’re my best work.”
With true gratefulness, she whispered, “Thank you, Benedikte,” and tore off her crucifix, cocking back her hand, then spearing the sharpened silver into his neck with superstrength. He opened his mouth in surprise.
“Stop. . . .” It was Eva.
Her plea ripped at Dawn, but she forged on, diving away from the Master and toward her bag. With more power than she could almost handle, she whipped out a silver-tipped stake, just as he was curiously touching the crucifix sticking out of his throat. He was clearly shell-shocked at this last betrayal, unable to react at having what he’d wanted taken away from him so quickly.
She flew at him, plunging the stake into just above the Master’s heart, keeping him alive but weakening him. In a burst of unexpected speed, she dove toward the silver stake in Jonah’s hand, too, then returned to pin the Master’s other side.
She felt nothing, only the urgency of needing to keep the Master alive. He had to stay alive, to keep her a vampire.
“Dawn?” he winced, merely staring up at her.
After firing a few silver bullets into his gut, she left the chemistry to do its job. Damn it, please do your job. . . .
Then she barged over to Costin. Jonah’s mouth was open, the achingly beautiful red of his blood seeping out and onto the ground as he tried to say something. But then his eyes rolled back at her, as if in accusation. She was one of them now, but she’d done it for him.
“You can’t leave Jonah’s body, can you?” she said to Costin, stroking his hair back. Jonah was so breathtaking with Costin’s topaz eyes. “You’re too weak and you need to be anchored to his humanity, but he’s dying, Costin, and I won’t let that happen.”
“Dawn . . .” It was the Master. His tone had lost gusto. Silver was infecting him. Like the vampire children he’d borne, he could die of slow poisoning, too, but she couldn’t let that happen yet.
She carried through with what she’d started, doing it because it was the only way she could think of to keep the quest for Costin’s soul going, and he would hate her for it. . . .
She reared her head back, fangs springing from her lateral incisors. Then, with a moan that sounded like a homecoming, she pierced Jonah’s jugular.
Imbibing like a thirsting animal, she got drunk on him, not wanting to stop because this was ecstasy—this was what she’d been looking for every time she’d gone to bed with a man. This was beauty, sublime and everlasting, this was what she should have grown up to be—a woman everyone would’ve thought worthy of being Eva’s, a mirror reflection of her wonderful mother.
A monster—
She forced herself to stop, wrenching her mouth away with a wince. Her heart felt sunken, as if it had tried to bury itself away from what she was feeling, doing.
Go on. . . . She cut her own wrist, imitating what Benedikte had done so she could feed Jonah, initiate the exchange that would turn him, heal him, and free Costin from the body.
She hoped. This had to work.
As her blood dripped to his lips, his eyes widened, and she thought she saw the color go blue—Jonah’s blue, as if the host had briefly taken over in his craving for a life that might be even more exciting than the one he already had.
Just when his gaze went back to topaz, his body seized, and she knew the change had come on him. Jonah’s soul was deserting the body. More importantly, he’d begin healing and, hopefully that would allow Costin to depart Jonah’s working body and resettle in his waiting backup.
Hopefully.
With one last stroke over his temple, she rose, fetching her saw-bow, stepping past Eva, who was still weeping against the wall.
She shut out her mother’s agony, mainly because she was focusing—but she also wondered if Eva was mourning what was about to happen, too.
Dawn stood in front of the Master, who was trying valiantly to change into his own Danger Form, though she shuddered to guess at what that might look like. Almost sadly, she touched her face, feeling the lack of scars on her skin. She hesitated, reveling in the last moments of finally becoming everything she’d always longed for.
No more looking inside from a window. No more enduring the measuring glances that would find her lacking.
Perfection—she had it now.
Behind her Costin was groaning. The sound of grumbling stone from where the door used to be indicated that Frank, Kiko, and the Friends were almost inside.
She imagined how Kiko would react to what she’d done—how Frank would, too. She couldn’t endure their disgust—not along with the censure she expected from Costin for turning him into what he most despised, even if it might only be temporary.<
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Facing the Master, she cocked her head, taking in the devastation on his face as he continued his pathetic attempts to change. Her new, incredible vision took in his pulsating form, every movement fascinating.
“Where is the dragon, Benedikte?” she asked.
He sputtered. “I . . . don’t know. . . . Dawn, believe me, please. I am poisoned. You . . . poisoned me.”
She lifted her saw-bow, using this just in case the Master needed more than silver to the heart. She sighted it on the vampire who had taken Eva away from her.
“Blood . . .” Benedikte opened his hands but couldn’t move otherwise. Blood would chase the poison from his body.
Targeting, she gave him one last chance. “Give me the location, and I’ll give you my blood.”
He groped for an answer, and she knew he didn’t know.
“Please, Dawn,” he begged. “Your blood can cleanse me.”
But this is going to cleanse me, she thought.
She fired the saw-bow, a twist of sparks blocking the moment the blade sliced off his head.
A body-eating pain gnashed at her, flooring her, but out of sheer determination, she overcame it and withdrew her silver-bullet revolver from its holster.
From her hands and knees, she shot Benedikte in the heart, his body indeed heaving into itself, disappearing like any of his children. Just like one of them, after all . . .
Doubling with anguish, she hugged her knees to her chest, wracked by seizures. Her blood churned, a strange alchemy that twisted and tied her body into bent shapes.
Soon, but not nearly soon enough, it was done.
She came to, finding herself feeling heavy and human again, even though there was something different—something that weighed like grime on the inside.
Nevertheless, she breathed in the musty air of Benedikte’s chambers, the atmosphere spiked with the stench of blood. When she rolled over, she found Eva stretched out alongside her, as if her mother had crawled over, devoid of much strength.
Then Dawn looked into the face of the human woman who’d given birth to her.
Crow’s feet graced Eva’s tired eyes, and she had the look of fresh skin that had lost its dew. She was still beautiful in her cosmetically altered appearance—would always be—but she wasn’t the age of indestructible grace anymore.
They stared at each other, as if meeting for the first time. And when Eva began to weep, Dawn held her hand.
“It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “We’re going to be fine.”
But when she heard Costin give a cry of strangled rage, she knew she was wrong.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JUST BEFORE DAWN
Three Months Later
IN a buried cove of pines in the San Bernardino Mountains, Dawn cut the engine on the Limpet Agency’s backup 4Runner. A secluded chalet waited at the rear of the graveled driveway, its windows shuttered against the light day would soon bring.
Mist speckled the windshield as she waited behind the wheel, her breathing shallow.
Costin had finally contacted her via phone last night. He hadn’t said a word, but she’d known it was him. And since he’d opened his mind to her, she could also sense where to track him now, similar to the traditional Awareness the Underground vampires had possessed.
She and Costin had a link—one she couldn’t research because there wasn’t any lore about how a vampire-turned-back-to-human master related to her vampire child.
They hadn’t spoken since the vanquishing of the Underground, but she’d known he would come around some day, and she’d given him the time, given him the space, aching for him every minute of the wait.
Aching to make up for the choice she’d made.
Not long after Frank, Kiko, and the Friends had broken into the Master’s room and everyone had checked up on one another, Costin had disappeared in the confusion. When he hadn’t reappeared, they had taken it upon themselves to wait for him, cleaning up in the meantime. They discovered that all the vials in the Master’s sick collection were already blasted open, the Elite souls easily led back to their human shelters, just as Eva’s had been. And the souls that didn’t have an Elite body to return to? Dawn hated to guess where they’d ended up.
All the same, the silver statue dust had soon worn off of the other surviving Elites, and they had awakened in their restored human states. Unsurprisingly, many of the glamour vamps had reacted badly to their Master’s death and the resulting wrinkles. Some ran off not to be heard from as of yet. One group had undertaken a suicide pact, and the Limpet team hadn’t realized what was going on in time to stop them from carrying it out.
There’d been no trace of Groupies or even Servants—not unless you counted the gore in the halls. And the Guards who were left to giddily wander around with blood ringing their mouths and a gleam in their eyes as they smiled and murmured, “Hooome?” had been taken care of by Frank, who’d made good on his promise to euthanize them. He’d taken special care with Hugh Wayne, his old friend from human days.
For weeks afterward, Dawn had hoped hard for Costin’s return. She’d occupied herself by helping Frank, Kiko, and the Friends to close up Underground loose ends, then seal the entrances like they were locking a case in a vault.
When Costin still hadn’t returned, she’d tried to get back to normal life. It was impossible. Her stunt career was pretty much dead—she accepted that now—and it didn’t seem like she could go back to it anyway. She’d been through the real thing, no special effects, no choreography, so how could she sell the fake when it paled in comparison?
Now, sitting in the 4Runner, Dawn took a steadying breath, trying to get the courage to go inside the chalet where Costin was waiting. She reached for her duffel bag, which she’d packed last night while Kiko had sat on the bed after their boss’s phone call.
“What I still don’t get,” he’d said, “is how you didn’t look anything like my ‘key’ vision when we finally got into the Master’s room that day.”
They’d been debating this for weeks and weeks, and Dawn had come up with the same answers every time. “I recall Costin saying that your visions aren’t always literal. So I wasn’t bathed in the Master’s blood? Things turned out anyway.”
“I don’t know about that.”
His pupils seemed extrabig, and she was keeping her attention on them. He’d been on pills again because he’d overextended himself in the Underground attack and was even now hurting. She’d done everything but camp out in the doctor’s office with Kik, but maybe it was time to force him into rehab—an option he’d been fighting tooth and nail.
Yet . . . he seemed happy, mainly because his “key” vision had otherwise come true in a lot of ways. He’d been validated and was already talking about the “next master hunt” after Costin decided to come out of his seclusion. What an optimist.
Dawn didn’t remind him that, one, Costin might not make a habit of using the same team twice, even if they survived. And, two, she wasn’t positive that the quest’s rules still applied to his new vampire self, though she’d risked so much to bet on that. But she tried to believe that Costin could carry on, mainly because it was obviously Jonah’s body that had lost its soul in the vampiric transition, yet Costin remained because he was unable to get out since Jonah was animated although technically dead.
She wanted to feel bad about what she’d done to Jonah, too, and she would if she didn’t suspect that he might be pleased with this exciting turn of events.
“Something occurred to me a little earlier,” Kiko had said as Dawn hauled the duffel from the bed on her way downstairs. “I think you’re gonna get the dragon, not Costin. That’s what my ‘key’ vision really meant.”
She almost tripped while entering the darkened hallway. “Bite your tongue, Kik.”
“That’s why Costin is getting in touch with you again, because you’re still ‘key.’ ” Kiko stayed at her side as they descended the stairs. “I’ll bet he wants to get the band back together.”
As th
ey entered the foyer, Dawn dropped her bag at her feet, her gaze skimming the portrait where Kalin was resting, just as most of the other Friends, save Breisi, had been doing in Costin’s absence. In spite of Kiko’s read on the situation, Dawn had been hoping their boss had summoned her for very different reasons than resuming business. Disappointment made the edges of her heart furl back like burnt paper.
“Kik, you remember that Costin and I didn’t part on the best of terms. Killing the Master brought back my humanity since I was his child, but it didn’t do that for Costin, who is my child and wouldn’t be directly affected by the termination.” That sounded weird. But it also drove home her responsibilities—the crusade she’d undertaken since that day.
“What’re you gonna do to cheer him up then?” Kiko chuffed. “Get killed so Jonah’s body goes human again? That would probably release Costin and make everything hunky-dory.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but neither of them ended up laughing. It only emphasized that Dawn had to find a way to save Costin from being the monster he’d detested for centuries, the enemy he’d fought to vanquish.
Worse yet, in trying to save him, she might’ve locked him into Jonah—the host he’d been planning to replace with a new one who had obviously been put on the back burner.
But she would take care of everything, whether Costin had to wait decades for her to die off or if that happened while she pursued another master—and the dragon—for him.
Yet she would need his help to do this because she wasn’t equipped with the powers he had possessed. She only hoped Costin was still equipped with them, but shouldn’t he be? All that had changed was that Jonah was a vampire now. His body was still in good working order for Costin’s needs.
And maybe that meant Costin could continue the quest since being in a vamp body wasn’t exactly like being trapped in a dead-dead body. Jonah was undead. Would Costin’s operating base really matter that much as long as it could walk and breathe and fight?
She thought of how, long ago, The Whisper had forced Costin from his original vampire body, but that had only been out of a need to smuggle Costin out of the jail, right? Could Costin even undertake a holy mission in a cursed body? Was that allowed by the powers that had given him this quest?
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