Authors: Chris Marie Green

The Path of Razors (28 page)

BOOK: The Path of Razors

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“Looks like we might have ourselves a good lead,” Dawn said.

As she congratulated the two on their work, Natalia beamed and Kiko shrugged, as if taking his due as he checked over his projectile weapons and blades. Jonah just peered out the darkened window, a faint smile lighting his mouth—a cool customer who didn’t seem that affected by what they had to do now.

Go under the ground to those vampire rooms.

Dawn had to give it to him. He was brave. Maddening but brave.

While Kiko stayed in the vehicle—where Dawn noticed one last look exchanged between the psychics—she checked that their new pulsers were working, then trooped with Natalia to the stone fence that separated Queenshill’s land from the road. They were taking a different way onto the campus than usual, pretending like she and Natalia had left the assembly early and were strolling the property with their umbrellas overhead. After they arrived at the dorm and gave the all clear, Jonah would speed over to meet them, then they’d see to the abandoned underground rooms.

Dawn helped Natalia over the fence, and they began walking, keeping radio silence for now.

Luckily, the Friends who were already on campus had come up with an idea to take the place of camera clouding. They’d discovered that, with at least two of them, they could exert enough pressure against the stubborn cameras to adjust their positions, and they were hoping to push the devices off-kilter so the resulting pictures wouldn’t show Dawn and Natalia at all.

Problem was, this technique took away Friend power: two or more had to do the job of one.

Soon enough, Dawn and Natalia came to a path, and they took it toward the dorms, which waited under a sky that was shedding sprinkles. Kalin was somewhere behind them, hardly as buddy-buddy as Breisi usually was, but things got less awkward when Greta the Friend greeted them.

With every step, Dawn’s excitement grew, the pulser thudding at her chest like a counterheartbeat.

Once, a few months after the team had brought down the Hollywood Underground, Costin had told her that there was more than one way to destroy a vampire community.

Chaos.

Introduce a hint of suspicion and trouble to an Underground, and there was normally a domino effect, he’d said. With chaos, any vampire who had problems with a master would have an opening to confront him at a sign of weakness. Take away another constant—like the illusion of safety—and change could take out a community hour by hour.

Dawn had seen the theory in motion in L.A., where the vampires had begun collapsing under the weight of their own machinations and paranoia. Chaos had definitely helped the team at first ... until Dawn had introduced her own brand of it into the equation.

Or maybe it’d all gone wrong when Costin had stayed too long out of body during the ultimate attack and had to pay for it when Dawn had to save him.

But what could she have done differently? she wondered. They’d been successful in wiping out the community, yet how could she have avoided the sacrifices she’d forced?

Natalia laid a hand on Dawn’s arm, her fingers wrapping around it as they neared the dorms.

Dawn looked down to find the new girl pale, her breathing fast.

As a newbie, Dawn had been this freaked out, so without really thinking much, she rested a hand on Natalia’s shoulder.

“No sweat,” Dawn said. “You’ve been in the field before. You did fine then and you’ll do great now.”

Natalia’s nod was brusque, and Dawn guided her team member along until they came to the door, which was propped open with a dictionary like last time.

Actually, everything seemed kind of rote as Dawn brought Natalia up the same stairway and down the same hall while the Friends manipulated cameras and distracted any girls who weren’t over at the theater on the main campus.

As she’d done before, Dawn put on her gloves, picked the lock, then urged Greta and Kalin ahead of her and Natalia. She opened the door enough for her to enter and pull the psychic inside, too.

Since they didn’t dare disable any sound from the cameras this time, they worked quietly and efficiently. Within a minute, Dawn had on her headlight and mobile camera, and had a small machete in her hand as she opened the wardrobe leading to the hidden spring door.

She opened that, too, switching her headlight on full power. She’d already told Natalia about the darkness and the height issue on the stairway, so she hoped the new girl was prepared.

But Natalia was surprisingly unafraid of heights as they descended those steps into the pit of blackness, where the coldness wormed its way into every exposed pore.

Since no cameras had been found in these tunnels, Dawn felt all right about talking.

“You doin’ okay?” she asked Natalia.

“I don’t feel anything yet,” she said, referring to her vamp radar. She ran her gloved hand over the tunnel walls, her own headlight making squiggly patterns over the rock.

Dawn accessed the earpiece—a new one since the old had been crushed last night. “Jonah, you can come on down now.”

The air around her got heavy with jasmine, which seemed to quiver.

Kalin, getting excited about Jonah’s big appearance.

“Hey,” Dawn said to the spirit. “Focus, would you?”

The Friend swept by Dawn, knocking her a bit.

Could anyone be more useless?
Dawn thought. Sure, Breisi had told Kalin everything she needed to know as far as directions belowground went, but Dawn didn’t have half as much faith in Fire Woman as she did in her old faithful. Maybe, if Kalin had retained the fire-throwing powers she’d possessed as a human hunter, things would’ve been different, but as far as Dawn was concerned, the older Friend was a menace waiting to happen.

Soon, Jonah came below, halting in his speedy run to appear in a blink before Dawn and Natalia.

“Now I feel something,” the new girl said.

She was zeroing in on Jonah, but if other vamps were near, chances were Natalia’s tuning fork perception would increase in volume—or however she felt the creatures’ presence—depending on how many were around.

That’s how the team thought she worked, anyway. They were learning on the job.

Jonah was glancing around, and instead of a grin, he was frowning.

“What?” Dawn asked.

It looked like he was about to give her the patron saint of dis missive answers:
nothing.
But he seemed to decide against it.

“It’s the boss,” he said, avoiding Costin’s name. They’d learned enough to know that saying it in the open wasn’t smart because you never knew who might recognize the moniker. “He’s doubting the wisdom of being here.”

Dawn wished Jonah hadn’t said anything. She didn’t want to be afraid for Costin in any way.

“If something goes wrong,” she said, “you’ll get him right back inside of that body. But this is going to go like clockwork. He’ll see.”

Jonah seemed pleased that she’d just extended a vote of confidence in him.

Deciding not to explain that it’d been for Costin’s benefit, not Jonah‘s, she followed Kalin’s quivery lead until they got to the thorn tunnel.

Her pulser beat at her chest, jousting with her own rhythms.

“Here’s where the good times start,” Dawn said, buttoning her thick jacket. Even though her cuts had healed significantly, thanks to the gel, she’d still made sure she and Natalia had worn a stretchy, wetsuit-type neoprene layer under their regular clothes to protect their skin.

But as Dawn’s headlight shone on the roots, she noticed that the points were strangely ...

Clean.

She reached out to touch one, then drew her hand back. “Huh. It’s like ...”

Descriptions escaped her.

Natalia peered inside, too, multiplying the force of light. “Like what?”

“Like they’re really spotless. Wiped down, even more than I tried to do when I left the first time.”

Jonah crouched down to get a look. “Maybe these are movie monster roots. They eat whatever gets on them.”

Dawn held back a retort. If Kiko had said it, it would’ve been funny.

Damn if Jonah’s theory wasn’t a bad one, though. Not with the crap she’d seen in life recently.

She took off her wig because she knew she’d lose it anyway, stored it in her bag, then entered. Natalia followed suit before she ventured into the thicket, and Jonah rounded them off.

At the end of the short journey, their outerwear was worse off—jagged and torn—but they’d avoided cuts.

That brought them to the Orlando Bloom room, and as they stood outside the orange and red beads that were swaying with the push of Kalin’s entrance, Dawn turned to Natalia.

“Anything?”

The new girl shook her head, her headlight whipping back and forth as she denied any blips on her vamp-dar.

Dawn looked to Jonah and said, “We’ll wait for Kalin to make a sweep then ...”

Then they’d let Costin loose.

Her heartbeat seemed to hammer at the pulser. What if something did happen to their ultimate weapon?

What if Costin . . . ?

Don’t even consider it,
she told herself.

Jonah didn’t make her finish what she’d been saying about their plans, but Kalin burst past the beads before Dawn might’ve gotten another word out, anyway.

“Clear,”
the Friend said.

Now Dawn’s pulse was knocking around like something in a straitjacket running into padded walls.

“Ready to let out the boss?” she asked Jonah.

His tilted grin returned. “Don’t miss me too much, Dawn.”

“Oh, don’t you fret about that.”

Kalin had gone eerily still, and it wasn’t beyond Dawn’s notice.

He didn’t waste any time—he was that confident of the switch and the ability to reassume his place after this was over.

Dawn’s headlight caught the change from blue eyes to topaz, from a casual posture and grin to a straight back and stoic pride.

Her skin heated, her chest caving in on itself.

Costin.

As his gaze adjusted to her, she took his hand because it was okay to touch him now that Jonah was gone. His cool flesh balanced the sear of hers.

A moment stretched—an instant where she had no idea what to say or how to define what she felt at having him back.

Natalia strangled it. “Hurry?” she said softly, as if chancing to remind them that this wasn’t the time or place.

And she was right.

“Any vibes?” Dawn asked Costin, still holding his hand.

He gripped it, as if getting used to her again.

But then he let go.

She tried not to make it a big deal. He needed to concentrate.

As he surveyed the area, Dawn noticed that Kalin had backed off, as if waiting for Jonah to return before she got excited again. It was odd because, once, she and Costin had been close.

Very close.

He sauntered toward the beads but didn’t go beyond them.

“Something,” he said. “Something barely here. A remnant of energy that is disappearing even now. But that happens shortly after they leave. One has been here recently—not more than two days past, though, or else I would not feel it.”

A master.

Dawn almost collapsed in relief. This place
did
have something to do with an Underground. Costin’s vibes had just validated it.

Even Kalin was whizzing around in celebration, and Natalia was smiling above at the Friend.

“Let’s get to that blade room then,” Dawn said. “Maybe the vibes will be stronger if it’s any closer to the big show or if a master has been there any more recently.”

So they rushed forward, following Kalin, until they arrived at the entrance, where they’d previously done their best to clean up any trace evidence of their presence from the rubble, though they couldn’t hide how they’d smashed through the wall.

Costin stayed outside the room again. Actually, he didn’t even come within ten yards of it as Natalia and Kalin entered to look around.

“Don’t you want to see it?” Dawn asked.

“No.” His voice sounded raw.

“Why. . . ?”

“Because I can feel it from here. Whatever was down here is gone now.”

“But—”

He touched her cheek, and she shivered at the contact, at the sorrowful cast to his gaze.

Then, before she even knew what was happening, he reared his head back.

When he righted it, his eyes were blue.

“Jonah!” Dawn shoved him. “Bring him back!”

He didn’t even stumble under her push.

“Bring him
back!”
she repeated.