Broken (6 page)

“So, as you see, I’ve got my work ahead of me,” she finished, leaning back in the chair, propping her ankle just above her knee. “There’s much to do besides sitting here and watching these screens.”

“For instance . . . ?”

“I’d like to take up where my patrol in Southwark left off the other night. After I encountered that woman in the flat . . .”

Nigel keenly observed her.

She met his curiosity with her own head-on gaze.

“This woman,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I would think she’s taken precedence over all else, Lilly.”

“Rubbish.” As she faced the screens again, she felt a flush come over her skin. But the monitors’ glare would hide it. “That woman was in the flat for a reason. I’d like to investigate who lives there, discover a link. Perhaps it would lead us to where we might find the entire group.”

“Haven’t we been over this before?” He sounded more confused than argumentative.

Clearly, the tuner mind wipe hadn’t erased his stance on the troublemakers, who had aroused enough suspicion with their appearance on the Queenshill campus to keep Lilly very interested. Nigel hadn’t believed them to be such a problem, whereas she felt they could very well be.

“I had a thought,” she said. “What if Charles was killed while he was on the path of this group? What if he went to Billiter Street after realizing the burial ground had drawn their attention? Then, what if he tried to lure one of them for questioning?”

“He
was
headed for Billiter during his patrol . . .”

Plus, she mentally added, the cameras
were
clouded in that area on that night. It was a stunning detail, one that Lilly thought to be a signature of the attackers.

Neither of them said anything more until a bit later, when something on the recorded Highgate Cemetery footage indeed caught Lilly’s attention.

One of the panels . . . clouding.

Just as so many other views had been clouded, from Billiter Street, where Charles may have died, to the Queenshill campus, where that group had confronted the girl vampires, to Southwark, where Lilly had tangled with the mind-powered woman. . . .

“They were at the cemetery,” Lilly said, rising from the chair. Her heart was pounding now. Hours and hours of observing old tape, and it had finally paid off. “Look. They’ve been to Highgate, and that’s too near the Underground for my comfort.”

Nigel punched a command into the keyboard, bringing up a larger view of the clouded panel. Then he pushed away from the console.

She didn’t know if he was angry because she had been correct in her assumptions about the group and he had been wrong, or if he was adrenalized because these interlopers had wandered too close to where the main Underground waited, accessible through tunnels branching out from the village of Highgate.

Then Nigel sat down in the seat she had vacated, tacitly conveying that he was giving her control.

Bless that mind wipe.

“Go to Southwark,” he said. “I’ll keep watch here.”

“Try to access information about whoever lets that flat above the Bull and Cock Pub, as well, Nigel. Contact me when you have something.”

Without even taking the time to gloat, she snatched her mask and goggles from their hanging spot near the door, then accessed the button to open it. As it swooshed aside, Lilly walked, then ran, toward one of the Underground’s exits, her wrong-sided heart pounding.

She was going to find them.

What she didn’t acknowledge, however, was that she was even more excited about finding that woman again.

DELLA
stood by the wall, half hiding behind a sheer lilac curtain draped from the rock ceiling. Next to her, Noreen and Polly hung back, as well, all of them dressed in a uniform that signified their circle of friendship: white shirts, slim red ties, long skirts with boots.

And all of them were keeping their distance from Wolfie and the other Queenshill schoolgirls on the bed.

The three were the only classmates remaining from what had started as a group of seven handpicked vampires who composed the newest Underground class. Little had they known that Mrs. Jones—or Claudia or “the cat” as they had called her—had chosen the lot of them for her own benefit, picking them off one by one every six months to stock her youth-infusing blood rituals.

And Claudia had been feeding off her charges for years. She hated the girls because of how her vampire lover felt about his darlings, and her rituals must have been all the sweeter for that reason alone. As far as the survivors knew, Wolfie hadn’t even known about the atrocities.

At least, that was what they were hoping, though Della often wondered. . . .

Polly, with her strawberry blond bob and athletic, loose-limbed stance, tapped in to a mind-link so she might communicate with her two classmates.
How far away do you think the cat is now?
She had been asking the same question ever since the girls had attacked Claudia last night.

Noreen was slyly peeking through the fluffy red hair that covered part of her sprite-featured face, watching Wolfie on the bed, too, but not as obviously as Polly.
Certainly Mrs. Jones is gone for good,
she mind-said.
Far and away from here. We chased her out properly
.

True enough. The Queenshill girls had grouped together after Della had endured dreams about vampires that had come upon her like living nightmares. She had no idea of their origin—perhaps her subconscious had woven together subtle clues about Mrs. Jones and the way she constantly, intensely watched them—but the dreams had led Della to the truth about the cat. And after Della had told the other Queenshill girls about those warped tales, they had ambushed their housematron, forcing themselves into Mrs. Jones’s head to see if Della’s strange visions held any validity.

They had. And, worse, the girls had seen proof that the old vampire had been murdering their classmates.

Accordingly, Mrs. Jones had suffered at the hands of the betrayed crowd. Out of control, they had clawed at her skin, chased her down the tunnels, driven her out. Afterward, they had been at loose ends, realizing their folly as well as what Wolfie was sure to do to them now. They also wondered what Mrs. Jones would visit upon them if she should ever return.

Like Noreen, Della hid behind her own hair, as well as the lilac curtain. The mousy veil of frizz had allowed her to fade into the background so many times, and she needed that security now, as Wolfie occasionally lifted his head to call to them from the bed. Calls that they were hesitating to obey.

She didn’t wish to look at the vampire girls worshipping every inch of Wolfie’s skin, but she kept doing it. They had exhausted him to sleep at dawn, cuddling with him until dusk had returned to awaken them. There were girls holding his hands, kissing his palms. Girls at his feet, stroking his legs. Girls combing their fingers through his brown rock-star hair. Girls running their tongues over his thighs, stomach, and chest.

Stacy, the eldest, who had decades over Della, even as she remained an eternal platinum blond sixteen-year-old, had taken charge of the rest of Wolfie, nestling between his legs to love him there.

Blood rushed through Della, spearing her deep in the belly. Fortunately, the love play would keep him from accessing their thoughts with a master-progeny mind-link; they couldn’t afford for him to see what they had truly done to Mrs. Jones.

But she feared that, soon, she, Noreen, and Polly would have to give in to his desires. They were the newest of the Queenshill vampires, freshly brought over from the cat’s yearly crop; those who survived her graduated to Wolfie’s main Underground, joining the girls whom the Queenshill darlings had recruited on the streets—girls who would not be missed in society and had found a genuine home down here. Della, Polly, and Noreen were the only ones from whom he had not enjoyed the gush of virgin blood.

Through a set of alarming circumstances, they had been brought to the main Underground early. A motley group had wandered onto the Queenshill campus several nights ago, a vampire having been among their number. “Frank” was seeking some of his own kind as company and had found the schoolgirls. Yet, Della had been suspicious of the group’s story, and the meeting had got out of order, ending in a melee. When a far more dangerous and mean vampire had shown up to help the intruders—and when one of the intruders had proven to possess strong mental powers that had almost captivated Della—the schoolgirls had fled back to their dorm house. As a precaution, they had been taken off campus, then transferred early to the main Underground.

Even now, Della didn’t know how their absence from their “normal lives” at school was being explained. Mrs. Jones, who had masqueraded as a school employee, had been working on explanations that were surely holding. It might be days before the administration thought something amiss and contacted their parents. Not that their mums and dads had ever cared about much when it came to girls like Della, Noreen, and Polly, who had been all but dumped at school and forgotten.

Memory tweaked at Della—the pull of life as it had been before those intruders had shown themselves on campus. School days spent walking under the sun, as their line of vampires could do in modest doses. The mentorship of Mademoiselle, the French teacher. The pull of Melinda, a classmate whom Della had admired beyond any other.

Then Della remembered how, one night, Violet, their former group leader, had coerced Della into feeding from Melinda. Della’s stomach tied into knots of guilt.

Just as she crossed her arms over her stomach to press against the tight feeling, to obliterate the remorse and the confusing stimulation, she recalled, also, what she had eventually done to Violet, the bully.

A black cloud formed over Della’s vision. Ravens, summoned and spurred on by Della’s rage.

Polly and Noreen seemed to sense Della’s disquiet, and they glanced at her, their gazes cautious, as if seeing firsthand the carnage Della had wrought on Violet.

Wolfie called to them. “So far away in that corner. You’ve saved yourselves long enough. Come here, my dears.”

Noreen’s and Polly’s gazes changed from wariness of Della to something else altogether. Though Wolfie had often stopped in Mrs. Jones’s sub-Underground to visit and play innocently with them, Mrs. Jones had made certain they had remained untouched—all the tastier for her blood rituals, Della imagined.

Wolfie had propped himself up on his elbows, the other girls continuing to lavish him with their experienced hands.

Noreen accessed Polly and Della with the classmate mind- link.
He wants something new
. She had been his most recent favorite before all the trouble had come upon the Underground, and she knew he would probably rip into her first.

They had all looked forward to the night when it would happen, but now that it was here . . .

Della pushed aside the sheer curtain. Every time Wolfie was near, she knew how much he wanted to have at them. There had been a power in withholding, too. She had intuitively realized this last night, when the older girls had taken the lead.

Polly inched closer to Della.
What now?

Della stepped away from the fringes, smiling at Wolfie, though she wasn’t feeling the same on the inside.
You two know that we are the ultimate distraction for him,
she mind-said to her classmates.
The longer he doesn’t know about what really happened with Mrs. Jones, the better
.

But . . .
Noreen started.

Hush, Noreen,
Polly thought. Back in the sub-Underground, she had acted so knowledgeable, yet her pounding vital signs showed that she was just as afraid as Della and Noreen. Just as excited, as well, because as Della was learning, power was a rush.

Polly continued.
Are you still such a little girl that you can’t handle this?

Noreen shook her head, raising her chin a notch, her red hair falling away from her face. She was shaking, but she stepped away from the curtain, coming just behind Della and Polly.

“There,” Wolfie said, his smile growing, his fangs lengthening. Rivulets of blood ran down his pale chest, girls licking at the red. “Come, now.”

Stacy, her platinum hair cascading over Wolfie’s skin, looked up at Della from where she was rubbing her cheek against his stomach. Della didn’t glance lower though. Aside from what she had glimpsed of the boys kept captive in the Underground, she had never seen a grown male’s parts in real life. Only in movies and magazines.

The older female vampire grinned at Della, her fangs glinting just past her lips. Their connected gazes allowed them to share thoughts since they weren’t immediate classmates.

You’re what we need to keep him going,
the other girl thought.
He won’t be thinking about Mrs. Jones for a while with you three to take our place in bed
.

Still, Della and her classmates hadn’t come any nearer. Wolfie must have taken this for coy virtue. All of them had been chosen for the Underground due to their purity, among other reasons, though Violet and Polly had experimented the most before being turned. Yet they had
all
waited for the right one, and Wolfie had been it: The protector who had rescued them from boring, despairing human life. The one who understood them completely.

This was one reason that deciding to become a vampire had been so easy.

He shifted halfway into his wolf form, snout and ears lengthening, his grin growing even more. It was the form he had always used during playtime with them—their lovable, constant Wolfie.

“Come here,” he whispered in a growl that was, for the first time, losing its carefree lightness.

Della’s body responded, starting its own shift into the wolf-feline form she had inherited from the exchange with both Wolfie and Mrs. Jones, the cat. Children vampires such as Della didn’t possess all the abilities and strengths their creators held since blood power weakened from generation to generation, but they were still dangerous with their teeth, their hunger, which had only grown and grown with each hunt.