The Path of Razors (6 page)

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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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Well, they knew that she wouldn’t go off and die, so why linger and get all schmaltzy about it?
Deep breath and ...
She opened the door, stepped through, then quickly closed it behind her as the near-sunrise air pawed at her cheeks. She took a deep breath of it as her pulse thudded in her temples, in the veins of her neck.
Across the wanly lit street, Violet leaped up to balance on the Cross Bones Graveyard gates, clearly not afraid of being caught on one of the many closed-circuit TV surveillance cameras that covered London. Nope, she just vamp-crouched on that gate as if she was expecting more hunters to come out.
Her eyes glowed a little in the dimness, outdoing the purple blush of the sky.
Dawn flashed a silvered throwing blade at the girl, warning her, showing her she was armed yet alone as she stayed on the stoop near the door. Simultaneously, she peered around for signs of other creatures ... or maybe even one of those red-eyed shadow figures that had been tracking them at the vamp burial site.
In the end, they came to stare at each other—Violet, Dawn. Dawn, Violet.
She shielded her thoughts, just in case this girl tried to read her.
Otherwise, nothing happened except for a stir of the cards and letters tied to the gates. The mementos flapped in a sudden huff of breeze, probably the result of a patrolling Friend.
Violet sniffed the air, tilted her head, as if trying to understand what the jasmine meant. But then she smiled, as if she’d made a connection between the scent and the hunters. Then she canted her head to the other side, sniffed again, and the smile disappeared. She stiffened, holding to the top of the gates.
“I smell your and your little person’s scent on someone else who’s come outside,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What’re you talking about?”
The girl made one of those clucking, eye-rolling expressions that Dawn herself had perfected in middle school. “Someone else just stepped outside. Whoever it is, send them back. You’re the one I want to see.”
Aw, shit.
It had to be Frank, whose untreated change of clothing from last night had picked up scents from headquarters. He’d probably snuck through a belowground back exit, still intent on ambushing Violet.
“Stop it, you guys,” Dawn said to her team in general. “Get back in the house.”
A crackle from her earpiece, then her dad’s resigned voice. “Had to give it a try.”
Stubborn ass.
“All right,” Frank said an instant later. “I’m in the cradle.”
At the same time, Violet relaxed, then dropped from the gate to the ground to land in another crouch, her long brown hair raining to her back.
Dawn cocked her blade but didn’t throw it.
Violet straightened to a stand, hardly seeming to give a crap that Dawn had her in a line of fire.
“Found you,” she said instead, and the gamesmanship she’d exhibited last night in their skirmish was blatant in her tone now. When the girls had first engaged the hunting team, who’d been nosing around Queenshill for clues to an Underground, the curious vampires had been playful like this, as if the team were catnip and didn’t pose much danger at all.
This told Dawn that the girls were either not Underground vampires or just way too cocky if they were.
But then the tables had turned, and the change in matters had caused the girls’ flippancy to disappear.
“You bring your buddies?” Dawn asked.
“No.” Violet’s tone got ugly. “I’m alone. I had a slight ... falling-out ... with the others. I’m on my way out of London, really, but I thought I might see you before I scuttled off.”
“Bullshit.”
The other girl raised her voice and tremors skated over Dawn’s skin.
“You can have faith that matters will change if our superior decides that things are steady enough to take the chance on leaving the temporary hiding spot where she’s sheltering the others. I doubt she would risk another public face-off—we enjoy our freedom, but we’re not daft—yet there’s always a chance she could switch to offense and hunt you down just as effectively as I did. Fear can provide a lovely trail.”
That amazing sense of smell, Dawn thought. Half-wolf, half-cat vamps.
“Calm about that, aren’t you?” Violet added, looking like she wanted to put a little more scare into Dawn. “Don’t be. You can rest assured that you’re being searched for in other ways, even if most of us won’t come out of hiding.”
Dawn still tried not to seem rattled.
But Violet wasn’t done.
“I’m quite fast, myself, and when I returned to Queenshill with the intention of tracking your aroma, it didn’t take me long to be directed here. As long as I know what I’m hunting, I’m very, very good. We all can be.”
She glanced around, as if keeping an eye out for the other girls, and it occurred to Dawn that Violet might be ...
... nervous.
When Dawn narrowed her eyes, the schoolgirl added, “You can either listen to what I have to offer or not. Your choice, but we don’t have long before I need to be on my way.”
Dawn kept her throwing blade primed, secure in the notion that she was fast on the draw and so was Costin. Based on how the girls had reacted to the UV grenades, the lights outside headquarters had the power to give these vamps a screaming sunburn if necessary.
Best of all, it looked like Kiko might’ve been right when he’d said that the Queenshill vampires didn’t like one another, that they might come apart at the seams after last night’s brouhaha.
Or, again, this could just be a beautiful setup, and the rest of them would spring on her just when she let her guard down a notch more....
“Forgive me if I’m suspicious,” Dawn said, “but why would you be telling me all this?”
The schoolgirl smiled, and it sent ice gouging up Dawn’s spine.
“Because,” Violet said, “I want everything to be taken away from them, too.”
She leaned back against the Cross Bones gates, and Dawn wondered if the girl had any idea of who was buried there in the un-consecrated ground—of how many other female bodies were in a mass grave under the concrete behind those gates because they’d been too wicked for a proper send-off.
An early-morning train rumbled by on the raised tracks to Dawn’s left, emitting a clacking growl of warning, cautioning that Violet’s comment was too good to be true.
After the train passed, it left everything else around them in the same sleepy post-witching-hour gloom.
As Dawn’s earpiece crackled, assuring her that she wasn’t alone in this, a Friend whizzed past.
Once more, Violet sniffed the air, casual as could be. “That perfume.”
Dawn wasn’t about to get into slumber-party mode and start revealing secrets, too. “My favorite essence—eau de impatient.”
The vampire girl laughed, just like this was some kind of warped bonding moment.
“So you think you can talk me and my buddies into taking everything away from your friends,” Dawn said, testing. “Just so you know, that isn’t why we showed up at your place last night.”
Violet crossed her arms over her white shirt and slim red tie. “I can’t persuade you to aid in providing a parting gift to my classmates? A ‘do unto others as they’ve done unto me’?”
Oh, too perfect, Dawn thought. She didn’t dare believe it.
But ... she sort of did. And maybe that’s why Violet had chosen her to talk to. Because, with some kind of vampire power, she could sense Dawn might be a perfect target.
Whatever the reason, she’d be a fool not to at least listen for a second. “Okay, I’ve got to know what you’re going on about, so keep on talking.”
Violet scanned the sky, then shrugged. “For over a year now, I’ve been a part of a small, select vampire class at Queenshill. Seven girls, all of us told that we were ‘special.’ And what a bunch of bollocks that was.”
“Because whoever recruited you betrayed you?”
There—an opening for Violet to talk about the Underground without Dawn having to say it out loud and give her own game away.
But the girl was still back on the “special” part. “I’m not the only one to have been disappointed. A few of us left, you know. One of us even ran away.”
Briana Williamson? Dawn wondered. Through investigation, the team had come upon her history, and it had played its role in leading them to Queenshill in the first place.
“I’m running off, as well,” Violet said. “There are other vampires for me to be with. Better ones.”
Good God, was this girl insinuating that she wanted to join up with the Limpets, who counted Frank among their number?
Soooo not going there. But how could Dawn get Violet to tell her if she was a member of an Underground without actually saying “Underground”? If Violet had anything to do with one, the word could set off alarms for the vampires, especially if Violet was taking part in one of these types of vamps’ favorite pastimes: Spying. Messing with people.
But the team used stealth, too. It was the best way to launch a final attack on an Underground, even though Dawn would cast a hearty vote for going into any lair and slaying every suspicious vampire imaginable. But her dad and Costin kind of put the kibosh on that; their mere existence proved that there were good ones out there, and wiping them out didn’t sit well with what conscience she had left.
Since Frank had asked Della about Briana last night when he’d been trying to get into the girl’s mind, Dawn decided to use this tactic to question Violet, too.
“Why did Briana run away?” she asked. “Did Queenshill disappoint
her
?”
The schoolgirl tilted her head at Dawn, her voice snapping. “Why does Briana matter?”
Careful. Use those mind blocks. “Just wondering if you’re off to join her.”
“Hardly.” Violet traced a long finger over the gate. But then she caught herself, glanced around again, then talked fast, as if she wanted to get going. “Listen. Before I leave, I only wanted to warn you. You must watch out for one Queenshill girl above all others. Della.”
Oooo, venom.
I want everything to be taken away from them, too,
Violet had said. But Dawn would bet her life that this vamp had only meant Della.
“You don’t like her much,” Dawn said. “Do you?”
Violet chuffed, but then went back to tracing the gate. Her words had a tremor to them now—a little girl lost, and Dawn almost felt for her.
Almost.
“She took it all away,” Violet said. “All of it.”
“So everything’s her fault,” Dawn said, trying to return to the subject of the Underground, knowing her coworkers were taking in every detail over their earpieces. “
She’s
the one who kicked you out.”
A lowered glance from Violet. A vengeful one.
Dawn knew the girl was only going to tell her what she wanted to, and this might not help their cause at all.
Damn it, could Dawn distract her enough for Frank to get out here to surprise Violet and then read her mind, so they could get everything possible out of her?
But then how could Dawn get him out here without scaring her off?
“Do you really want to know?” Violet asked, shards of light in her eyes.
The malevolence of the question should’ve warned Dawn, but her adrenaline pulsed, and her need to save Costin moved her mouth, causing her answer to spill out.
“Yes,” she said, and for that one instant, she stopped shielding.
In the next heartbeat, Violet sped close enough so that Dawn could discern some faint pinkish scars on her face. Then the girl’s eyes went electric, her gaze seeming to blast against Dawn, shattering into her with a crash of color and image, just like the time when another vampire, Robby Pennybaker from Hollywood, had come into her head.
But Dawn had given permission this time, and she froze under the visual assault, the connection telling her why Violet had chosen to talk to her one-on-one instead of any of the others on the team.
She’d sensed a perfect target, all right—but it’d been because of the darkness that’d been growing in Dawn ever since the night she’d become a Hollywood vampire and then gone human again after killing her master.
It was because of the black hole in her, yawning open and sucking in all the hate Violet was feeling, too....
The vamp schoolgirl shared punches of image and sensation: a small cavelike room with fairy lights strewn over the ceiling, a lava lamp, a poster of Orlando Bloom over a zebra-covered settee, girls—the vampires from last night—rolling over the ground and wrestling with one another like pups....
One word laced through the image, long-drawn-out, sorrowful:
home.
Dawn shrank under the yearning of it, Violet’s pain in losing it.
Then there was a luxurious flat with leather furniture and swinging crystal chandeliers and, oh God, Kate Lansing, the young human the team had been investigating, and she was running up some stairs, trying to get away from the pack of laughing vampires....

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