Break of Dawn (12 page)

She barely got out her last question. “Are you one of the masters?”

Another awful smile. “I should have been.”

The sinister insinuation seeped into her until every last hope she’d been clinging to rotted away. He was just like the Master she hated. Just like a cold killing machine.

“Then goddamn you, whoever you are,” she said.

“Too late.” Costin stopped short of her, the dagger offered. It lay like a sleeping creature nestled in his hand.

Just like the Master. She wanted to use the weapon on him so badly, but her confusion held her back. None of this made sense. His change in temper, his story, his holding out the dagger right now. He said he had feasted on blood, but why hadn’t he taken it lately?

No sense, no sense . . .

Jasmine stifled her, pressing in like the sides of a coffin. She struggled for pure air, but couldn’t get it.

A stray thought parted the waves of nausea. Help. Who could help her? One person. One PI vampire hunter who’d told her he could take care of everything.

The dagger winked as Costin shoved it closer. He kept watching her, the scars on his face livid. In his smile, she saw the hint of a Robby Pennybaker, of Eva herself, of a master somewhere Underground who had planned Breisi’s death.

Monsters.

Anger and terror exploded inside of her at the same time, and she lunged through the jasmine to grab at the dagger. But with heart-stopping speed, the stranger gracefully removed the weapon from her reach.

“Thank you, Dawn, for making this easier,” he said, his lips twisting at her betrayal. “Now get out of my sight.”

He’d set her up. The helplessness built in Dawn’s soured stomach, pushing up through her chest until it burst out of her head with a force she’d never been able to control.

Until now.

Zoom
—she aimed her mind power at him, hitting him and thrusting him backward. He stumbled, then recovered his balance.

For a naked second, she saw something like surprised admiration in his gaze before it went cold again.

“It is going to end this way, then?” he asked, tucking the dagger into the back of his pants. When his hand emerged, it was fisted.

“You don’t scare me,” she said.

“No?”

He wandered closer, his eyes like magnetic forces. Suddenly, she couldn’t move. Hypnosis.

Her mind snowed as he stalked her, circling and maneuvering behind her, then pressing into her back. But she was in such chaos that her body didn’t know how to react, not even when she felt the tug of his fingers at her jeans waistband.

“What would it take to scare you off?” he whispered, slipping a finger past the denim so that it brushed the small of her back.

Her body, then her head, split into pieces.

Blood thirst . . . Jonah . . . good guys and bad . . .

Who was who?

It was only when he backed off and came around to the front of her that she could focus again.

Fight him off,
her instincts shouted.
Don’t let him near you.

She used her own mind to pound away at the hold he had on her.
Out, get out!

Shoop
—his mind sucked out of hers and she brought her fists up through the perfumed air, bending her knees in a fighting stance. She felt something pulling at her, as if the Friends were keeping her from their leader.

So instead of attacking him physically, Dawn summoned her mind energy again, lashing out.

It was as if he’d been slapped. His head whipped around and, when he faced her again, his hair stuck to his cheek.

He stood strong, ready to take whatever she had to give.

She let loose, pushing, pushing, forcing him back step by step until he was at the couch.

“Save your strength,” he ground out. “Stop and leave
now
.”

Like she was going to follow that advice, especially from . . . What? Who?

Anger renewed by bewilderment, she struck out again, this time with a mental punch so forceful that he spun to the wall.

As he smacked it, the portraits shuddered, and Dawn’s breathing almost stopped.

Slowly, he turned to her again, his mouth red with blood. He licked his lips, as if tasting it. She thought she heard . . .

A slight groan? Or was it the sound of a nearby Friend?

“Last warning,” he said quietly. “Go before this continues in a direction no one wishes to see.”

There’d been a sting of pain in his words, and that made her even more crazed. Anger took the form of heat, and it flared inside her. This time, when she pushed with her mind, the stranger reacted.

Jonah’s body slumped to the ground, as if deserted and, before she knew it, Costin’s essence was behind her—smelling of that strange, exotic mint while wrenching her arm up between her shoulder blades until agony consumed her.

“No more,” he said, fogging into her mind.

Suddenly, stopping seemed like the best idea ever.

She tried to force the hypnosis out. Damn it, he’d gotten to her again.

But then, as if unable to hold his position or maybe even reconsidering it, he retreated from her head. Her arm ached while the pressure of his essence disappeared from behind her.

The cold wind of him arced away, toward the other side of the room. Toward the real Jonah. There, the body jerked. Then Costin aimed a glare at her, secure in his host again.

Revealing an expression so terrifying that she couldn’t move.

There really was no going back now. She couldn’t be in the same house as this Costin. Yet there was someplace she
could
go.

Without thinking further, she darted toward the still-sleeping Kiko, but hit something that felt like a brick wall just in front of the couch he was lying on. The impact was enough to knock the breath out of her and throw her to the floor.

She got up again, only to hear a lone voice say,
“Dawn, don’t! Please!”

Breisi. And she was pleading.

Jarred by that—Breisi never begged—Dawn scrambled in the other direction. Taking Kiko with her wasn’t going to happen.
Matt
. She needed Matt Lonigan on her side now, because there wasn’t anyone else.

She ran, stumbling down the hall, tripping over the rug, and aiming herself toward the stairs. She slid down them more than stepped, then had enough presence of mind to grab her jacket from the clawlike coat tree near the door in the foyer. Her keys were inside, along with a few small weapons. More of the same would be in her car.

As she barged outside, triggering the UV lights and shielding her eyes from the descending sun, she was in such a frenzy that she didn’t stop to spray on any garlic that might act as a repellant to lower vamps. No, she just fumbled with her keys and prayed her car would start.

The engine whined, and with every cycle her nerves got closer to the surface of her skin. Come on, come on, she thought, her eyes starting to blur with heat, her chest clamping into itself.

Finally, it
vroom
ed, and she skidded into the street, driving into the afternoon sun like a maniac, just trying to get away.

Away from Jonah, Costin, jasmine, monsters—

Dawn flailed to get her phone out of a jeans pocket, then almost dropped the cell.

Blood, thick, red, fangs, Costin.

Cursing herself into steadiness, she dialed Matt’s number and then, when he answered, basically yelled that she was on her way and to have the door open when she got there. Maybe he said, “Done,” or maybe he didn’t—Dawn wasn’t sure. All she knew was that by the time she hung up and tossed the phone away, she couldn’t see very well, her eyes flooding, hot, leaking. She tried to wipe the tears with an arm, but they still came.

Jonah. Costin. What had just gone on?

She rounded a corner, heading downhill, swiping at her eyes. Costin, Costin, Costin . . .

She didn’t know how long she drove, where she was as she floored the gas. She didn’t know anything.

But when she turned a corner, nearing Matt’s house, she heaved in a breath, pulling back on the wheel and digging for the brakes when she saw something on the road.

A woman dressed in a long flowing dress, standing as if she’d been waiting for Dawn to arrive.

Tires screamed on the pavement, the windshield view going topsy-turvy, showing the quickly approaching woman holding out her arms in supplication. Her blond hair blew in the breeze as she tilted her head.

Eva?

Something broke inside Dawn.

She jammed down on the gas pedal and targeted yet another betrayer.

Her mother.

TWELVE

BROKEN

SHOULD we awaken Kiko?” Costin asked as he stood at the window overlooking the late-afternoon-shrouded street. He had parted the curtains to stare outside, where Dawn had driven in her rush to get away from him.

Gone. She was finally gone.

Next to him, Breisi floated, heavy with sorrow.
“Let’s let him sleep. He’ll get up soon enough, and he’ll have a lot of questions. Put it off for a while.”

“There is always a price, is there not?” Costin pressed his—no,
Jonah’s
—head against the windowpanes. Blood from when Dawn had slammed him into the wall still ghosted his mouth. While Jonah admitted to enjoying the taste because of his romantic longing for the adventurous life he thought Costin could provide, Costin himself shunned it.

“You put the modified locator on her?”
Breisi asked.

Costin thought of the moment he had gotten close enough to press the tracking device on the back of a denim belt loop. “Yes.”

“Then we won’t have long to wait.”

“If she ever arrives at the Underground.”

“Boss, you know that this master would stop at nothing to get her there, and if your suspicions are right, she’s unknowingly been in contact with him. And she
needed
to be driven to him. Otherwise she never would have left this house while you were still in it. And you know Dawn needed to make that choice herself, because if she was hypnotized, she would fight the mind control off eventually. She didn’t know who to go to, but she knows now. It was a gamble to depend on scaring her away, but we needed to find the location. Frank is there.”

He knew how much that meant to Breisi. It was her only solace these days. “Then it’s up to Dawn now.”

“Sacrifices,”
she reminded him.
“You told me from day one that this life would be full of them.”

Costin’s shoulders slumped. “I did.”

A jasmine weight pressed on his back. Breisi’s comforting touch.
“I know it took you a long time to finally get the cojones to carry this off. It took one final feeding for you to have the strength to let her go. Now we have to take care of the rest and worry about the aftermath later.”
Breisi paused.
“When Dawn came on board with the team, she said she would do anything to get Frank back, Boss. You’re only taking her at her word.”

He forced himself to straighten his posture, to be a soldier. This was a war, and he’d done what was necessary.

“I only hope,”
Breisi said,
“that Dawn doesn’t become the enemy.”

Costin went cold, even though Dawn didn’t know enough about his true powers to reveal critical information to an Underground. Let them know he was Costin. Let them wonder.

“God forbid she does,” he said softly.

He then allowed the curtain to fall closed before anyone could say they saw a monster framed in the window of this haunted house.

THIRTEEN

THE WELCOMING

DAWN’S
car picked up speed in its path toward the woman in the middle of the road. Her foot crushed the gas pedal, gunning it for all it was worth.

Eva got closer, her blond hair blowing, her hands outstretched with her palms up. She wasn’t moving an inch, as if she were expecting her daughter to hit the brakes.

Dead,
Dawn thought.
I wish you were dead—

The car’s tinny engine roared, unstoppable as the vampire loomed.

At the last second, her mother dropped her hands, stricken, finally understanding that Dawn wasn’t going to slow down.

As the car’s fender reached Eva’s knees, Dawn cried out, impulsively wrenching the steering wheel to the right and closing her eyes at the expected impact.

Screee
—

Resistance, as if someone were pushing against the car. It lost speed....

But Dawn was still going fast enough to thunder to a crunching stop.

A flash, a chop to the knees, a yank so sudden that when it was over, she could only sit there, hearing a sound like a hissing, primal breath. She saw a streetlight pole squished against the seething hood.

Got to get Eva,
she thought, not feeling anything at all.
Got to try again.

She attempted to start the engine, but it only offered a droning whine. Again. She kept trying and trying, not grasping that her car was done.

Then she looked down at her knees, which had started to burn. Her jeans had been torn open there, her flesh bloodied. The dashboard . . . Had her knees banged into it? And her seat belt had strained into her chest, hurting it, too. Her Corolla was too old to have air bags and, slowly, it entered her mind that she should’ve been really injured at the speed she’d been going.

Unless . . .

Dazed, Dawn turned to her window, where Eva waited by the back of a nearby RV blocking the view of a house. Strong, quick . . . Had her mother slowed the car down before it’d crashed?

Dawn didn’t like knowing how weak she was against these vamps, didn’t like being beaten by Eva yet again.

Always second place, she thought, fumbling with her seat belt and getting her head together enough to grab her cell phone and a couple of weapons from the passenger area’s floorboards.

Always left in the dust.

Ignoring her slight wounds, she stuck her cell in her jacket pocket and busted open her door, barging out with a machete in each hand. Then, not even bothering with a hello, she stumbled toward her mother, who was lingering in back of the RV like she was hiding.

Eva made a put-upon face, then darted to the side as Dawn lunged and sliced a machete where her mother had just been.

“You don’t want to kill me,” the glamour goddess said.

“Wrong.” Dawn spun around to find her target again. It took her a second to steady herself.

“You need to sit.” Somehow, Eva made hand-to-weapon fighting sound maternal.

Dawn sliced downward with the right-hand machete, just as if she could hack at her emotions. Missing, she immediately raised her left arm for leverage, then swung down with it while reverse chopping the right blade back up at Eva.

The vampire easily dodged, then, quick as you please, exploded into her Danger Form, where she rose in a dazzling mist. Within a millisecond, she had swooped into an almost hidden tree at the side of a house with a For Sale sign in the yard. She wove herself into its leaves, her essence pearled, angelic, and decorated with tendrils waving out and in, like silk ribbons in a wind. Dawn couldn’t look away.

She lowered her machetes to her sides because, inside Eva’s cloudy form, she saw images of what she’d always wanted: a mother who was reaching out to embrace her.

“I don’t know what happened inside the Limpet house to make you drive that way.” Eva’s voice held all the silverware chime and soulful simmer of dinner being made in a homey kitchen. “But I’m here for you, even if they’re not.”

Dawn wanted to nod, to go to her mom and imbibe what Eva offered. But a mental twitch kept her from giving in.

When that twitch turned into a nudge, then into full-blown repulsion, Dawn shook her head. Shook Eva right out of it.

“I suppose you were there for me the other night, too,” Dawn said, “when you lied about saving Breisi. You were never going to carry through with it.”

In the tree, Eva twirled back into solid form. When she was done, she was left sitting in the branches, grabbing an overhead limb, and leaning her temple against an arm in summer-soft repose. “Will you listen to my explanations now, D—?”

Zoom quick, she jerked her gaze away from her daughter to something behind Dawn’s back. When Dawn looked, too, she realized that a family across the street was squinting out the window of their quaint house. She got closer to the tree trunk, using it to shelter herself. They’d heard Dawn’s crash, no doubt, and were scoping things out.

So that was why Eva had hidden in this out-of-the-way tree, to remain incognito.

Again, Dawn cleared her head with a good shake, inconspicuously tucking her machetes close to her sides, then taking a better look around. Her vision was a dull sepia that she tried to blink away. But she couldn’t. The neighborhood, with its palm trees and white-planked serenity was familiar.

She’d made it to Matt’s block, near his cottage.

Dawn peered back up into the tree branches, only to find her mother gone.

Goose bumps lifted her skin, and she backed away. From somewhere, she heard people coming out of their houses.

Taking care to hide her weapons, Dawn crept in the direction of Matt’s, minding her balance but dismissing her aches. Maybe she could call a tow truck when she got to him, yet she had no time for going back to the car and taking care of normal-person business now. But, damn it, she didn’t want a random, well-meaning stranger going through her weapon stash.

She could care about that later.

When she got to Matt’s, with those bird-of-paradise plants blocking his windows, she saw him standing in the open doorway, craning his neck to see what was going on down the street. He spied her, then started asking a question.

She sprinted forward, panic welling in her chest and chills eating her spine.

“Dawn, what’s—?”

She stumbled over the threshold, then kicked the door shut. He’d kept it open for her, just as she’d asked. Without a word, she numbly set her machetes on the hardwood floor, took off her jacket, and dropped it.

“I need my car towed,” she mumbled.

Now that her adrenaline had clamped off, she felt like she was moving in a vacuum. Colors had drained themselves out of a room that Matt kept so carefully male: the stark entertainment equipment bleeding wires, the blank walls, the bolted closet door with the basketball backboard canting against it. None of it really registered.

“Was that you making a scene out there?” Matt asked. “I was downstairs, finishing up something before you got here. . . .”

His words dissipated when he noticed her knee-gaped jeans, the wounds. He swallowed, nostrils flaring, then grit his jaw.

“Does Limpet have anything to do with this?”

Angry. That had to be why he was reacting this way. Everyone seemed angry these days.

In her cotton-thick shock, Dawn didn’t know what to tell him. Where should she start? How far should she go?

“Dawn.” He took her hands in his and, faintly, she recognized the scratches she’d given him the other night, baked into the back of his hand in violent reminder.

He guided her toward the couch, and it was all she could do to maneuver her body correctly. But then she took a jittery breath, pulling away from him.

“I’ve got to . . .” She stumbled back to the front window where, between the thwarted colors of the bird-of-paradises, she could see the street. Eva might still be out there. Dawn needed to get Eva. “Did you see her?” she asked.

“See who?” Matt stood next to her.

“My mother.”

He paused. “Isn’t your mom . . . ?”

“Dead?” Yes, she was. Dead to Dawn.

She could sense Matt’s piqued interest. Once more, he began to lead her away from the window, but she wouldn’t let him. She needed to watch for Eva. For any of them. Vampires. Every single one of them was the enemy.

A swipe of Jonah’s—
Costin’s
—face clawed over her mind’s eye, but she shut it out.

“Hey,” Matt said softly. “First, let’s take care of your knees. Then we’ll talk about getting you some . . . medical help.”

“No.” She hadn’t crashed that hard, thanks to Eva.

Matt kept on. “Then we’ll get a tow and . . . I guess we’ll go from there.”

She glanced at him. Even the usual startling blue of his eyes seemed less vibrant to her now.

“For Pete’s sake.” Taking charge, he lifted her, set her on the long dining table in front of the window. “Happy now?”

She could still scan the street, so she “mmm-hmm”ed. The next thing she knew, Matt had left, then returned with some big bandages, Mecurochrome, liquid soap, and a wet bunch of paper towels. Gently, he tended to her stinging knees, keeping his head down. As he dabbed at the blood with the towels and soap, she thought his hands might’ve been shaking, but she wasn’t sure.

After he cleansed the wounds, he swiped the Mecurochrome over one and she jumped.

“That brought you back a little.” He smiled slightly.

“Biting off my tongue usually does that.”

Glancing at the bottle, he made a face. “This might be pretty old, but it was the only thing I could find in the medicine cabinet.”

“Let’s put some of that on one of your open sores, and we’ll see how high you can sing.”

He laughed, then cut himself short. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not talking about Mecurochrome, Dawn.” His gaze was steady. “You know it’s not beyond my experience to believe that you saw Eva Claremont outside. What’s going on?”

Okay. She could start there. But how much should she tell him?

Why not everything?

A red light leeched of its vibrancy beat against her eyes, and she intuitively felt that she should keep Costin to herself. Or maybe not. She had no idea what to do. But Matt deserved to know the basics. He’d earned it with his patience and support.

“Dawn?” he said, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. He looked so sincere. “Whatever it is? It’s okay to be angry about it.”

He grinned, winning her over. Matt understood, even if he had no concept of what she’d gone through today. He was the only one on her side.
At
her side.

“Much to my pleasure,” she said, throat raw, “I’ve discovered that Mommie Dearest is a vampire.” A near-hysterical laugh quaked in her chest. “How’s that?”

His hands paused as he bandaged one knee. His touch lingered, as if he was memorizing how her skin melded over bone, or how the bruised angles of her were pieced together. Or maybe he was just witnessing her becoming unhinged.

As his finger brushed her flesh, he shuddered.

“No surprise about Eva?” Dawn was positive that she’d never fully confided in him about what her mother had done.

He made an abrupt move away from her knee. “Sure, of course I am.” His forehead furrowed. “I suspected it. . . .”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

He touched her ankle. “Why worry you? I was just getting started on looking into it.”

Okay. She could buy this . . . except for that one fleeting moment when he should’ve shown more of a reaction. Or maybe she was on such hyperdrive right now that she thought everything should be going
kaboom
around her.

“What do you know about these vamps?” she asked.

“Just a little about Robby Pennybaker.” When she widened her eyes, he shrugged. “You weren’t the only one following leads, remember?”

She didn’t say anything, just tried to figure him out.

“Besides,” he added, “I suspect that, next to you, I know nothing.” He left that hanging, tending to her other knee.

Dawn allowed herself to relax at his care. At least, she tried. But something vengeful stirred in her as she thought of how Jonah slash Costin would feel if he saw her with Matt now.

See,
she thought,
I don’t need you, whoever you are.

“My mother,” she said, “decided that long-lasting youth and beauty were way more important than seeing me graduate from grade school or giving me advice on how to wear lipstick. She’s part of this . . . network, you could say, of movie-star vampires. They’re fooling us all.”

Matt had finished bandaging, but he hadn’t stood back up. Instead, he was running a hand over her calf. “A community. How do you think they stay hidden?”

She attempted to lose herself in his touch. Failing, succeeding, going back and forth.
Damn you, Costin.

“They live somewhere underground,” she whispered. “That’s where they hide.”

He didn’t say anything, just rubbed her leg. Was he even listening?

“Matt?” she asked.

His eyes were a million miles away, seeming to fog with need for her. But he blinked, ending the illusion.

“Do you want to track down your mother?” he asked. “Is that why you’re posting watch out my window?”

Reminded, she fixed her gaze there. An oncoming sunset buttered the street, then burned it into an acrid stain.

“I’m . . .” Dawn leaned forward, fortifying herself. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

Matt’s hand traveled up her leg, and instead of getting turned on, her veins seized into themselves, hardening her, making her beat with a longing for payback.

Costin.

“Why don’t we try to go underground?” Matt said. “You and me.”

She forgot how to breathe.

“I know it’s a big thing to suggest,” he added, “but we can find your mom there and deal with her however you want.”

On his knees, he seemed so devout, so worthy. But she’d been screwed over before, oh so very recently. She looked back at the window, and he apparently read her reluctance.

“I’m the best partner you’ll ever have.” He stood, taking her hands in his. “Or . . . maybe you need persuading. Shoot, if my own mom were here, she’d tell you what a stand-up guy I am.”