The Path of Razors (15 page)

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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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She worried about the color of his flesh—he needed to feed soon. Still, it was easy to ignore that when the rest of him was so diverting. Even though his skin tone was pale, its texture was be guilingly smooth, like the pearled marble they’d used to refurbish this bathroom from something old and crumbled into a place with golden handles and etched glass over the shower stall.
He’d been refurbished, too, Dawn thought. Before going vampire, there’d been self-inflicted, crisscrossed scars over his face, thanks to Jonah. But when she’d exchanged blood with them, Jonah’s soul had departed, leaving only his personality.
Then a preternatural healing had taken over, building their body into a room—a shelter—for Costin that came awfully near to perfection. But perfection or not, his body, his room, was a prison—not just for him but for Jonah, too.
Thing was, though, that Jonah loved this vampire body. He wanted to claim it while Costin only wanted out.
Over the sink, he steadied his breathing.
“You okay?” Dawn asked after a moment.
He glanced up, facing his image in the mirror. The Hollywood line of vampires could cast reflections, and sometimes Dawn didn’t know if it was a blessing or curse that he could look at a form that wasn’t really his own.
There was that feral burn in his topaz eyes. Hunger.
It was feeding time, a need that Costin only gave in to because he had to; otherwise, it repelled him and, boy, didn’t that make Dawn feel great, even though she knew it wasn’t really about her. Actually, he thrived on her blood, and that’s why he nipped it time after time while supplementing his diet with the bags.
That’s what she told herself, anyway—that his disdain for feeding had absolutely nothing to do with her technically being his master and his having to submit.
“I’d ask what I can do to help,” she said, “but we’ve been over this before.”
Costin’s voice came out as an abrasion. “He’s the one in charge recently. Jonah. I’m only still speaking with you because he hasn’t taken over just yet. But he’s there, waiting.”
And, last night, she’d been the one who’d made a deal with Jonah: work with him as a teammate and he’d stop causing Costin—and the team—such trouble.
Jonah was only keeping his part of the bargain by giving fair warning that he was en route, and if she wanted to help destroy all the Underground masters efficiently, she’d have to maintain her end, too.
Even Costin knew it was the only way, although he raged against being put in an even more submissive position.
Pushing down a twinge of betrayal, Dawn undid the rest of her shirt buttons. “Let’s feed before your hunger gets out of control and it’s a big bloody mess we’re dealing with.”
He was still a relatively new vampire, requiring nightly blood, and if he went without or got too excited about something, she had to restrain him. Add Jonah to the equation, and it’d only be worse.
But a shiver of yearning in the pit of her belly told her that, deep down, she enjoyed the challenge of taming them both. That it did something for her that regular sex never had.
Costin straightened from the sink, jamming a hand through his hair, grabbing at it. Yet then he let go, as if Jonah had backed off for now.
“Talk to me.” The Voice, a rasp. A dignified plea. “Keep me here, Dawn.”
She should say his name—it would help him to stay, she knew—but she’d made a promise to Jonah, and it was a vow that would help the team. Help their mission.
The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.
That’s what Costin had told her so often in justification for using her, dangling her as a lure for the Master back in L.A.
But she couldn’t turn her back on Costin so easily.
“Queenshill,” she said. “We were going to talk about Queenshill.”
There. She wasn’t outright defying Jonah by calling Costin’s name to keep him here.
Costin nodded, knowing the thin line she was walking. Seeming to accept it a little more with every passing second.
“You think if I were to go to below the ground there,” he said, his tone defying a tremor beneath it, “it would truly benefit us?”
She grasped one of his hands, his skin so pale and cool. His breath caught, but she thought that might have to do with the scent of her healing gel, which he had a slight aversion to.
The aroma of her need probably got to him more.
“My gut,” she said, “tells me you should go down there. If there’s a master around, you wouldn’t be able to easily detect him aboveground because the soil separates you from where he lives ... or lived.”
He ran a thumb over hers, skin whispering against skin.
“Last night,” he said, “Jonah was able to use this body to fight well.”
He was on the edge of ushering his host to dominance. She could tell.
Costin added, “He fought bravely. Thoroughly. Perhaps I would be able to do the same, even if I cannot unleash my full powers outside of this body as I used to.”
“I know you would do well out there, Costin. And the team would be there to back you up. Plus the Friends ... None of us would ever let you fail.”
It was pure truth. She herself would do anything. Just look at what she’d done back in L.A., making him into this creature only so she could save him....
In a bid to forget, she rubbed her free hand against her neck, priming herself for the bite, even though her skin there and over her arms was still tender from the healing cuts.
He watched her, a shattered longing in his gaze, and she could see that his moments with her were ticking down, beat by beat.
Get him fed,
she thought.
Before Jonah comes ...
“I only wonder,” he said, “what would happen if I should come to stand before a fellow brother and—”
She stopped her priming, taking his face in her hands.
“We don’t know how you’re going to match up to a blood brother. You can’t do what you used to do, Costin, but we have to find out what’s in store at some point.”
As her hands fell away from him, he caught one, raised it to his chest, where she felt his heart beating.
When Jonah had lost his soul in the exchange, it had left this body still functioning but with heightened senses and powers. These vampires couldn’t procreate except via a blood exchange, so that made them seem even less human sometimes.
But Dawn had started to believe that being an Underground-related vampire was more about mutating into a form beyond humanity—they were spiritually dead rather than physically. Breisi even had the idea that the presence of the dragon’s blood, carried generation through generation, was an altering agent when it was introduced into a human body that had lost its own blood and soul after a draining bite. The death of a maker only opened that body to the soul again, allowing the spirit to consume the body, changing it back to its pure state.
But ... theories.
Who could say for sure, except for the devil or even something like The Whisper himself?
Dawn spread her fingers over the tattoo of Costin’s heart, and she could’ve sworn that it jumped, either out of barely checked fear about whether Costin would ever reclaim his soul, or at her touch.
Probably the fear, she thought. Or maybe just lust.
That was all.
“Every one of us has something at stake, don’t we?” she said. “You more than the team. But ...” She’d wanted to ask him about this for some time, and she knew Jonah would hold back on appearing because he’d enjoy the confrontation between her and Costin.
“But what?” Costin’s voice soothed her, gave her a sense that he was inside as well as out, softly abrading her, making her bleed both ways.
“But,” she added, “you’ve never really told me why you haven’t used the same team twice. You always said it was because of secrecy.”
A tight smile whisked over his lips. He knew where she was headed.
“Natalia said something the other day,” Dawn continued, emboldened, “about former teams going insane because of what they have to face on this job, and maybe you retire them before insanity happens. Except you didn’t have that option with us because you don’t know what to expect from yourself now. You need seasoned backup.” She’d tightened her fingers over his chest, almost like she was subconsciously trying to dig out of him more than he ever gave. “Is that true?”
“Yes.” Zero hesitation. Zero baiting or secrets.
But just as she was getting happy about that, he added, “And no.”
She told herself not to be frustrated, to just work through this. “I don’t understand.”
He twined his fingers through hers, providing a barrier between her and his heart. “Yes, I have retired teams before they slipped into a state that I would never want them to be in. And I have been watching to see how you and Kiko have been holding up under this extended tour. He is not doing as well as you, Dawn.”
Something within her—the dark spot—stirred, and she knew it was probably the only reason she hadn’t gone over the mental edge by now.
Because she was too much a part of what lurked around a corner at midnight.
With a descending curtain of realization, she thought,
I’m never going back to the way I was before. This is home. This is it.
She should’ve been stunned, but she wasn’t. There was only ...
Acceptance.
And now that it was fully revealed, her load lightened a bit. This was what she was. This was where she was going from now on.
Costin tightened his fingers in hers. “Understand that I would do most anything to have different hunters in place. I have told you before that there is danger for a team in knowing too much about what dwells under the ground. With experience, members begin to believe that they know better than I how to handle matters.”
“If you’re referring to me, I’m ‘key,’ ” she said. “I
should
know a thing or two.”
“I have also told you that you are like no other, and this is what drew me to you. So yes. You would be correct. As key’ you would have to know more.”
He bent forward to rest his forehead against hers, his flesh cool where hers was hot.
“Yet, tell me,” he said. “If I had not required such help from you ... If I had not turned into this creature ... this
vampire
... and you did not feel so responsible for it, would you have wanted to leave the team by now?”
If she’d allowed him inside her head lately, he would’ve already known. But these issues had reared up too recently, the truths defining themselves maybe because she’d had the time to think on her own while being so blocked off from him.
And the thing was ... she didn’t know if she had an answer.
If they’d defeated the Hollywood Underground unscathed, would she have wanted to leave Costin to pursue life as she’d known it before? Would it have even been possible with her being “key”?
Or would she have stayed with him out of love or ...
God, she wasn’t sure what was between them besides a force field of guilt.
As if to disprove that—because
couldn’t
she love?—Dawn nestled against him, her face to his neck.
His cool, hardly human neck.
Like a trail of sultry, mixed-color smoke, he curled his way into her consciousness, and she allowed him in, relieved that he was finally there.
What will come of you once I am saved?
he asked.
She held to him tighter.
Don’t know, so don’t ask.
He tried again, coming deeper into her, saturating her until she needed to grasp his shirt to stay standing.
He thought,
Back in L.A., you were open to Matt Lonigan.
She blocked him, hating that putting up a shield was such an automatic response. But she did answer.
That’s before I found out who he really was—Benedikte, a guy only pretending to appreciate me for myself. But he really wanted Eva. He was trying to make me into my mother.
Hurt spilled from Dawn into Costin, and he held her closer. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to even think about what Matt had done to her, much less to tell Costin about it.
She went on.
I was ready to let down my guard with him for the first time ever, with any man. And I started to ... but look what happened.
We happened,
Costin thought, and his words felt like glimmers of hope cutting through her.
But then there was something else—a gathering wave of gray pushing at her and grabbing her at the same time.
Jonah.
She pulled out of Costin, feeling as if she’d been stripped, exposed, even though Jonah knew everything Costin did.
“Dawn—” Costin sounded like a man who’d lost even more than his soul, but she knew his anguish was only temporary. His soul meant a hell of a lot more than she ever would.

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