Break of Dawn (17 page)

“There she is!” He held his arms out to Dawn. “Eva, where’ve you been hiding our spectacular newbie?”

As one of his muscle-honed arms slipped around Dawn’s shoulders, she got a hot flash. Jesse Shane, action star, had been a buried preteen fantasy of hers, and here he was, in the flesh.

He pulled her to his famous chest and her stomach flip-flopped. Jesse Shane.

You hear that, Costin?

Eva greeted the vamp group while a male Groupie petted her blond hair. She seemed perfectly at home with the attention.

“Dawn and I were just about to—”

“Come to the emporium,” Jesse finished, already sweeping Dawn away. “We’ve finished training for the night, and it’s time to . . . er . . . meditate on our future success.” He squeezed Dawn to him. “Isn’t that right?”

Holy crap, she might faint. Jesse Shane, probably the only star who’d ever risen above her low expectations of the breed. A reluctant crush that she’d kind of forgotten about until now, in his tongue-lolling presence.

She bungled an answer—sounded like a yes to her—and forgot about Eva as Jesse brought her into the domed emporium. The erotic temperature of it soaked into her skin, making it buzz.

Just watch me live, Costin. . . .

Jesse led her to a steaming pool and stepped out of his silk pants. Several female Groupies clung to him, rubbing against his sleek thighs. One even reached out to caress his, well, quite impressive package, if Dawn said so herself. It seemed natural for them to be so carnal, but Dawn wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Not here, not now.

Jesse and his perfect, broad-shouldered body slid into the water, and Dawn had to remind herself that she hated actors.

As four Groupies joined him, splashing one another and giggling, he motioned to Dawn.

“You allergic to water?” he asked.

She tried to seem as confident as ever, because, really, this was no biggie. Skinny-dipping and flashing her skin around guys was par for the course. So why was she hesitating?

She looked around for Eva, but didn’t find her.

“Dawn Madison . . .” Jesse said playfully. He finger-sprayed some water at her, and the women around him laughed. “If you can’t beat us, join us.”

He didn’t seem to mind her face—the wound from Robby Pennybaker on her check or the stunt-earned scar flicking her eyebrow. He didn’t care that she wasn’t the second coming of any beauty queen.

In fact, he was looking at her like she transcended a title, like she fit right in with all these beautiful creatures.

Join them. It was the first thing that made sense in a while. What was she holding on to anyway?

And when she saw how the vampires were watching her, with lust and acceptance and even anticipation, she undid her hair, shaking it out and freeing herself.

EIGHTEEN

THE BITING TRUTH

LOOK
at me, Costin,
Dawn thought as she grabbed the bottom of her shirt and yanked upward. I can be just like I was before I met you.

Jesse and the Groupies were egging her on when Dawn felt someone tugging down her shirt from behind, then hoisting her away from the pool.

“Hey—” she started.

But Eva finished. She looked fit to be tied. “Not the time for this, Dawn.”

Jesse and his Groupies
ooo
ed in anticipation of a tussle.

Her mother turned on them. “Did you think about what the Master might do if he saw you encouraging her?”

The
ooo
ing stopped. The splashing of the waterfall into the far end of the pool substituted for an answer.

Dawn took up the slack. “Am I not supposed to be having ‘the time of my life’ down here, Eva? Unless I’m wrong, I think you suggested it.”

“I meant with the Master.”

“Ah, sublime monogamy.” She put on a saccharine smile. “I didn’t expect you to be the only prude down here.”

As her mother pulled her away from the vampires, Dawn looked at Jesse Shane one last time. He smiled his blockbuster smile, making her want to stay and be a part of what he offered.

But Eva pulled her daughter into the hallway for the second time that night, and Dawn couldn’t help feeling like she was being dragged to her room for a good talking-to.
Again.

“Think,” Eva said. “Would the Master be happy that you’re cavorting with someone else when you rejected
him
earlier?”

“
I’d
be happy. Seriously—you’re protecting my virtue?” She laughed shortly. “How Kiko of you.”

Her mother seemed to notice the wistful change in Dawn’s tone. Eva stopped, then tilted her head in the way all vamps seemed to do when they were trying to figure you out.

“Kiko,” she repeated softly.

It held a note of remorse. While disguised as Jac, Eva had developed some affection for the psychic—at least, she’d acted like it. Dawn chose to believe it was true because, as Kik himself would’ve said, how could it not be?

The vamp let go of Dawn’s hand and moved on, changing the subject. “Besides the Master, I have an ulterior motive for getting you out of the emporium, something that won’t take long. We’ll see Benedikte right afterward.”

“Please elaborate. Because that was Jesse Shane in there. Jesse. Shane.”

“I thought you might be more interested in trying to contact Frank.”

Ears perked. “What do you mean . . . ?” Dawn caught up to her mother, keeping pace. “How?”

“I’ve been hoping to make an attempt down here, maybe at an old quarry entrance near the surface to try my Awareness with him. Now that we’re prepared for . . . the nameless agency you used to work for . . . it’s no danger to use vampire communication Above. It was a concern before because it could be detected. We all had to be careful.”

Dawn appreciated that Eva wasn’t referring to Costin out loud. It was a small but important sign of simpatico.

“But,” her mother continued, “I suppose Jesse
is
waiting.”

“We’re talking about my dad, Eva.” Hell, she hated actors anyway, and it was simple to remember it now that she was out of Jesse Shane’s sexual force field.

At her mother’s smile, Dawn picked up speed. They had come to a fork in the tunnels, and Eva led her to the right, where electric lights stared and the floor turned to dirt.

A question poked at Dawn, something she’d been wondering for a while now. “Eva, how strong is Frank as a vampire?”

Her mother lost a step, then continued. “I don’t have a definitive answer because . . . Well, there’s a lot to consider. First,
I’m
strong. During my last blood-taking from the Master, I overindulged, and it boosted me. And”—she lowered her voice, although what she would say out loud probably wouldn’t get her in trouble if it were overheard—“I already told you what happened last time I fed Frank. Here’s the thing: in our community, blood loses its power with the introduction of every new generation, so that’s why we have strong vampires like the Elites and weaker ones, like the Groupies.”

“Right . . .”

“What I’m saying is that Frank is no doubt stronger than any of our Groupies. He might be a cross between that and an Elite, so I’m not sure what to expect out of him. Elites aren’t interested in making children, really, so Frank’s an anomaly.”

“And . . . how about this brotherhood I keep hearing about? The one the Master was in.” Introducing . . . the detective. It’d appeared in Dawn’s mental doorway uninvited, eager to take up the Costin/Jonah case again. “Are all the brothers equal?”

“I have no idea.”

They kept walking, the sound of footsteps popping against rock. As a breeze whistled through the tunnel, Eva slowed down, gravitating toward a wall. She ran her hand over a slightly discolored patch, and a rumble from ahead shivered the air.

While her mother concentrated on her task, Dawn stole a glance at the actress’s perfect profile, her forever-young skin.

“What do you think your life would be like if you looked your age?” she whispered.

The vamp’s hand flew up, as if wanting to touch her face, then did a slow free fall. “I try not to think about that.”

“You’d be . . . what—forty-seven?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh, right.” Dawn wanted to hear that her mother really didn’t care so much about the youth and beauty part of being a vamp. She wanted to know that the devastation she’d seen on Eva’s face in the screening room had been only a reflection from the film, not reality.

“Dawn, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Too bad, because I know you’ve considered every angle of being a vampire. I know you’ve analyzed what would happen to you if your master died when Limpet visits.”

Eva turned, her blond hair blowing from the tunnel’s wind. “We don’t talk about that, Dawn. You shouldn’t, either.”

“Would it be so bad if you went human again?”

Her mother got a look that made the skin prickle.

“So it’s that bad of a thing to be human,” Dawn said.

“No, it’s that good of a thing to be long-lived.” Bit by bit, Eva collected her poise: first in her posture, then in her expression. “I know you understand what I’m saying. It’s in the way you gazed at Jesse. Except, you don’t want to desire what we have, so you try to hate us.”

The urge to lash out was overwhelming, but Dawn resisted. “You’re full of yourself.”

“I’m being honest. If you’d think rationally, you’d realize that you could be just like me.”

A wave of yearning hit Dawn, so powerful that it felt like her body was winding through itself, traveling paths she didn’t want to explore.

Or did she want to? What would it be like to mirror Eva Claremont, to have everything she had?

The possibility knotted Dawn up. She’d tried to tell herself so many times that she liked being her everyday average self, that she didn’t want anything to do with her mother. But what if . . . ?

In a last-ditch effort to hold on to her sanity, Dawn struck back, sudden tears edging her words. “It was never about giving your family a better life in the long run. You’re down here because of what
you
need, and that’s why you’ll always serve your master, first and foremost.”

Eva reared back and slapped her daughter.

Dawn bashed against the wall, smacking her head and seeing stardust. As a moan escaped her, Eva darted over, holding a hand to her daughter’s head. The pain subsided like a wave drawing back from a shore, leaving froth behind.

She nudged her mother away. Eva had done some vamp healing, but Dawn could hardly be grateful for it, seeing as the other woman had caused the damage in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said, one hand fluttering up to her chest. “I’m so—”

Someone cleared his throat.

Both Dawn and Eva straightened up at the sight of a severely handsome vampire. He had straight brown hair that came to just below his wide shoulders and wore all black, including a voluminous coat that undulated in the slight wind.

“More problems, Eva?” he asked in a refined voice. An accent—stronger than Costin’s or the Master’s—made his tone crisp and officious.

“This doesn’t concern you, Sorin,” Eva volleyed back.

His mouth formed something like a smile, but it didn’t exactly encourage any sparkly thoughts from Dawn.

“I beg to differ,” he said, “because the Master has been attempting to contact you, and he sent me to search you out. Your mind is closed to him . . . again.”

Even Dawn could interpret this as a bad turn of events, especially after Eva had confided that she’d been keeping the Master in the dark about so many things.

With a defiant glare at Sorin, Eva walked a couple of steps away from Dawn, quiet, clearly getting into that Awareness groove with her master.

This left the male vampire to give Dawn the once-over. She did the same right back. He remained expressionless.

Their standoff was interrupted by Eva saying, “Oh, Benedikte.”

When Dawn glanced at her, she found her mother wearing an expression a person might adapt if they disapproved of something a friend was doing but didn’t have the power to stop them.

But in the next moment, she was moving in the direction of the Underground. “Let’s go,” she said to Dawn. “Benedikte says he has something you’ll be interested to see.”

Even though Dawn was still smarting from Eva’s well-deserved slap, she decided to get far away from Sorin, too.

The male vampire’s voice rang from behind them. “Eva?”

They both turned to see him running his hand over the control panel. A grumble of rock sliding closed made Sorin’s glare even eerier. She’d neglected to shut the entrance.

“Thank you,” Eva said coolly. “I suppose I’ll have to try to find Frank by connecting with him another time.”

“I suppose you will.”

This
had
to be the guy whom Eva suspected of bugging her chambers. He was a mean-looking lug.

As they left, Dawn noticed that Eva was walking a little too casually to fool anyone.

When they were well away, her mother whispered, “Sorin is the second-in-command. Don’t be intimidated. And Dawn?”

Her daughter continued going right past her, but Eva cut her off at the pass.

“The Master wants you alone this time,” her mother whispered, “so if he doesn’t behave, just call my name. I mean it.”

Whoa. So suddenly Eva didn’t think Benedikte would be such a good boy? What was up with this? What had the Master told her during their latest Awareness connection?

As they both headed back, Dawn thrust her mother’s strange offer to the back of her mind.

Where she stored all the junk she didn’t want to sort through.

After a subdued Eva left her daughter at the door to Dawn’s fugly chambers, Dawn knocked, thinking she would just get this meeting over with. Afterward, she could go back to the tunnel exit to see if she could figure out how to open that wall panel herself. Not that she would probably manage to do it without getting caught by Eva or scary Sorin. But how could her mother have shown her an exit without expecting Dawn to take advantage?

Just another thing to mull over. Maybe Eva was being as cocky as she’d been with storing the machetes in the open.

She opened the door by touching the wall where Eva had done the same earlier. Then she walked in.

A trickling from the fountain in the corner hinted at a peace she wasn’t feeling while she took a few more steps. The peacock feathers decorating the walls and sticking out of glass vases trembled in a breeze from an overhead fan.

“Hey, Bene?” she yelled.

Something . . . someone stirred from behind the veiling that draped her sunken bed.

And out stepped the last person she expected to see. Her heart seized.

Matt Lonigan, dressed in his new denims and his untucked khaki shirt, kicked at a bedpost with his boot. He shrugged, as if resigned and somewhat amused by his situation.

“Here I am. You get what you ask for, I suppose.”

Astonished, she couldn’t move. She thought she saw profound disappointment heft a weight onto his shoulders when she didn’t run right into his arms.

He thunked down to the bed, where he came to rest his forearms on his knees. “After Eva took you, I went outside and . . . There they were. I don’t remember much after that.”

Dawn blew out a breath, coming to her senses. Matt was the only person she could depend on, so his presence should’ve uplifted her. But it didn’t because, now,
he
could be in real danger down here.

Speaking of which, where was the possessive Benedikte? Was he leaving her and Matt alone as a weird peace offering?

Or was he watching to see if she took some kind of unexplained bait?

First things first. She went to Matt’s side, her bandaged knees sinking into the silken mattress. “You okay?”

Now he was all aglow. “Yeah, they didn’t touch a hair on my head. I have no idea what’s going on, though.”

Tentatively, she reached out to finger a brown bunch of strands. “If they’d hurt you—”

Without warning, he captured her hand in both of his, pressing it to his forehead and closing his eyes. “Dawn,” he whispered.

His intensity stunned her, shooting her through with a slow warmth. Matt—the only person around here who really cared. Her pulse started hammering, pelting away at her veins as if to smooth out all the hard feelings she harbored for the rest of the world.

“How’ve they been treating you?” His lips brushed against the sensitive underside of her arm.

You getting this, Costin? You see how I can still feel?

“Aside from hanging around with a psychotic mother and being gaped at by her freak master?” Dawn laid her free hand over Matt’s arm out of instinct. “I’m fine.”

His head had shot up, blue eyes wide and full of . . . anguish? What had she said to cause that?

But just as quickly as the emotion had come, it was gone.

“I’ve had better nights,” she added, still scanning him, “but considering everything . . .” She shook her head. “Okay, aside from meeting Jesse Shane, I can’t say it’s been great.”