Vampire Babylon - Break Of Dawn Part 6

Still wearing his Benedikte body, the Master bowed respectfully to Eva, his hair, which had been long and black when he'd taken his blood vow, spilling over his shoulder. "Then I'll see you later tonight, Eva. You and Frank." She bit her lower lip, nodding at him. So beautiful. Her every move made him ravenous.

Wasting no time, Benedikte left her chambers. Someone else was waiting Above for him. Dawn. But there were ways of getting Eva out of his system before then. . . .

Sorin followed in his tracks as they wound through the tunnels to the Master's secret room.

Master? Sorin asked.

His son sensed his madness. And when Benedikte didn't answer in his haste, Sorin turned on a deeper level of Awareness they'd been practicing lately.

The Master felt Sorin in his head, looking out of his own eyes as he nearly stumbled in an attempt to reach for his door lock.

Ignoring Sorin's invasion, Benedikte allowed his son to linger, to see what he saw.

To feel what he felt.

He scratched at the buried lock and, at the muted click, pushed the door open and headed for the shelves that held all his collected vials. He went straight for his favorite.

Unbeknownst to himself, he'd s.h.i.+fted from his Benedikte body to his nebulous, pulsating form-his n.o.body shape. He fumbled in an attempt to reach for Eva's vial.

The soul she'd given him in exchange for long-lasting youth and fame.

Behind him, Sorin made a strangled sound. The Master barely had the presence of mind to glance at him, to find his son's eyes glowing, swirling, in attached hunger.

For no good reason, Benedikte cut off Sorin's Awareness, but that didn't change the fever in his son's gaze.

"What is it?" the Master asked, voice rough. "Do you want to drink one, too? Maybe your own?"

"Master-"

"Then have you finally reached the strength of hunger I've experienced for centuries?" Would his progeny finally develop the power to a.s.sume other shapes, too-like father, like son? The mere thought of it lingered like a threat that Benedikte didn't want to acknowledge.

"Have you crossed a line, Sorin?" he added.

"No." The second-in-command sounded horrified. "No, I don't want it. I don't . . ."

As his son sank to the floor and barred his arms over his head, Benedikte couldn't stand any more. He ripped the cork out of Eva's vial.

A slight scream hit his ears before he drank her in.

Her soul pounded through him, ghostly fists against his ribs and skin, prey begging to get out. But the Master fed off that anguish, fed off her innocence.

Fed off the love for a family she wanted so desperately to return to until he was convinced that he felt it, too.

That he was, once again, wonderfully human.

SIXTHE NIGHT CALLER.

In a guest room punctuated by iron bird statues and a mural depicting a dark forest cove, Kiko was snoozing while Dawn sat in an overstuffed velvet chair by his bed. She was killing time by channel surfing the TV.

After the dagger adventure in the weapons room, Breisi and a couple of other anonymous Friends had rushed upstairs, urged on by Dawn's summons. Even though she had managed an explanation for his weakened state-Kiko was getting sick because of his pill withdrawal, right?-she'd left out the vision itself. She would tell Breisi all about it later.

Or maybe advertising that she was launching a full-scale investigation into Jonah wasn't to her advantage right now.

At any rate, as Kiko had sweated and shaken on the office couch, he'd muttered, "No painkillers. I won't be . . . a mental gimp. . .

He'd also refused to go to the doctor, insisting that the team needed to stay locked down. Breisi had agreed, so she and the other spirits had seen to Kiko in their own way. It was amazing to hear them putting him at ease: the Friends' voices had melded together, churning into something like a soft song that faded toward their patient. Actually, the whispers seemed to be funneling into his ear. Something low and soothing, something Dawn couldn't translate.

He'd sighed and closed his eyes.

"What did you all do?" Dawn asked.

Breisi skimmed by on her way out, leaving the usual trail of jasmine. "No time for details. I'll come back later. . . ."

Obviously, Dawn had interrupted some kind of important Friends meeting. Well, lah-dee-dah. Shut out of the club.

As the rest of the spirits followed Breisi, Dawn again felt isolated from her coworker, as if there were a crevice separating her and the woman she'd just started warming up to recently.

No time for details . . .

Now, sitting here in Kiko's room, where Dawn had transferred him, she felt like maybe there was too much time while all of them waited for Jonah to finish strategizing.

Or maybe there was too little.

She mindlessly zapped the remote at the TV, using more force than necessary.

The dagger vision wouldn't leave her alone. G.o.d, if she had believed she was in over her head before, what was she now?

Whoever was in that nightmare was a vampire or . . . something.

And in spite of her attempt to get Kiko to enlighten her about the reason Jonah was hunting the Underground, the vision had come up short on that, too. Or should the images have given Dawn a clue-a big, fat, huge, hairy clue that she was failing to grasp? Man, she sucked as a detective.

But as she sat there shooting at the TV, theories began to creep up her spine, settling in her head with the cold p.r.i.c.kle of footsteps trailing a person in the dark.

Jonah had kept that dagger for a good reason. From what she knew of him, he wasn't the type to collect needless things, whether it was team members or artifacts.

Was the seer in the vision Jonah himself? Was that the reason he'd kept the antique?

She jumped in her chair from the creeps, and her feet itched to run right out of the house. But then she told herself to get to the bottom of everything before she made a rash, irreversible decision. If anything, Dawn liked to think she'd learned something from Limpet, whether it was a touch of patience, a smattering of logic, or even . . .

The memory of brutally killing Robby Pennybaker consumed her.

Maybe she'd learned too much.

She calmed herself. Think rationally, Dawn. Don't be the girl who once flew off the handle and hucked that throwing star at a human homeless woman because of an urge-a thirst-for violence. Think, ya dumb cluck.

Okay, okay. What if Jonah wasn't the man in Kiko's vision? Maybe he was just acquainted with the seer in some way?

Or maybe the seer was the master of a different Underground. Or maybe he was even the Underground master they were looking for right now.

Even though the conclusion made her feel slightly better, the first scenario bugged her the most. Jonah, a vampire.

But how could he be one of them? The Voice had never sucked Dawn's blood, had never sucked anyone's blood as far as she knew, and that was what had given birth to the seer in the vision-blood. Wouldn't he still crave that instead of the sustenance he'd been taking from Dawn?

Just as she was getting scared again, she aimed the remote at a newscast, then pulled back as she registered what the reporter was saying.

"-murdered in jail this morning by a guard."

Volume, up. Way, way up.

"The victim, Lee Tomlinson, who was awaiting trial for the murder of struggling actress Klara Monaghan-"

Dawn shot to her feet.

"-has been in the spotlight since his arrest. Speculation about Tomlinson's innocence has been rampant ever since a second Vampire Killer began terrorizing L.A. while Tomlinson was incarcerated."

Neither the public nor the media realized that Ca.s.sie, Lee's sister, had been the second Vampire Killer. For some reason, Jonah had instructed them to remain quiet about that doozie for now. Shocker, but he was no doubt temporarily keeping things under wraps in order to bar normal society from interfering with vamp business: the team wouldn't be able to work as well if, say, reporters were always around. Besides, the killer was off the streets and wouldn't be doing any more harm. As far as the regular world knew, the culprit was a copycat psycho, which was pretty much the truth anyway.

Dawn clutched the remote. Justice for Klara Monaghan wasn't top priority. The team's focus couldn't be anywhere but on the Underground, and it left Dawn feeling c.r.a.ppy.

She recalled Klara and her surgery-enhanced face, her clearly desperate ambitions of making it in Hollywood. Sad. Awful. s.h.i.+t.

Dawn's attention fixed on the screen as it switched to a taped interview with a ubiquitous legal talking head who made his living on Crime TV shows. His high forehead gleamed in the spotlight.

"Would Lee Tomlinson have been set free eventually?" he said in a smoker's rasp. "We won't know now, thanks to a prison guard who seems to have cultivated an even bigger fame-wh.o.r.e complex than Lee Tomlinson himself. Rumor has it that the murderer, Dexter Tyson Hallicott, was obsessed with Tomlinson, and I guess we have an idea of why now."

Lee Tomlinson's mug shot blipped over the TV, showcasing his Brandon Lee looks, his matinee beauty. His empty stare.

The newscaster spoke over the image. "Tomlinson was an aspiring actor who moved to Los Angeles before he was arrested for allegedly murdering Miss Monaghan. At one time the celebrated Hollywood lawyer Milton Crockett represented Tomlinson, until handing over the reins to Enrico Harris. The investigation is ongoing, so stay tuned while we bring you more as it's revealed."

And . . . on to the next headline.

Dawn shut off the TV. Should she bug Jonah with this?

Images of the seer burying his face in flesh and blood nauseated her, weakening her knees to the point that she had to sit down again.

No. There were way bigger issues than the Vampire Killer murders they'd already left behind. Besides, her boss probably knew about the newsflash since he was always one step ahead of the team. Still . . .

She glanced at Kiko, who was sleeping away. When he woke up, would he have any more answers about Jonah or the dagger?

d.a.m.n it, she couldn't just sit here waiting to find out.

Moving to the bed, she bent down, brus.h.i.+ng a hand over his cooled forehead, then headed for the exit.

In the shaded hallway, she encountered the scent of jasmine lingering near a picture that usually contained a woman soldier dressed in silver armor, her curly red hair flying away from her body in a paint-textured wind. Now, it was empty, except for a desolate background filled with craggy mountains.

A Friend who had just awakened out of her portrait. Good.

Quickly, Dawn told the spirit everything about Lee Tomlinson's murder, hoping she would do whatever it was Friends usually did with the info. Then the perfumed cloud drifted away, leaving Dawn alone.

She walked to the computer room to do another time-killing search about Jonah Limpet, but her encrypted cell phone rang. When she checked her screen, she knew she had to answer.

Her last option was on the line.

But what could she say to Matt Lonigan here in the Limpet house, where she would probably be monitored?

Ah, screw it. What did she have to hide from Jonah? He knew how much she wanted to get Eva, and if he wasn't up to joining Dawn in a search, he had to expect she would turn to other resources.

She answered, telling herself to keep it cool because she still wasn't sure where she stood with Matt after last night, when she'd actually drawn blood from him at one point, striking out in frustration when he'd tried to comfort her. The only thing she'd wanted to hear was that he would team up with her to find Eva, and he hadn't come through.

"You heard about Lee Tomlinson?" she said in greeting.

"It's all over the news."

"Yeah, say . . ." She ran a hand over the top of a computer. "Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner."

"You've probably had a lot on your plate." Calm, rational, so levelheaded she didn't know what to make of him. "How about we meet to talk about this?"

The last thing she should do was go out of the house. True, Eva/Jac and her fellow Elites could walk around under the sun, but nightfall was different. It seemed to be the time when vamps didn't give much of a doink about hiding anymore.

Yeah, PM strolling wasn't such a great idea, even if Dawn could wear Breisi's locators, which would track her if she went missing. It was something they should've done before Breisi had been kidnapped. Stupid lack of foresight.

"You'll have to excuse me for not being all that excited about dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight," she said, knowing he would appreciate the Batman allusion. He was . . . a big fan. "I'm on Severe Alert Level when it comes to vamps, Matt. You should be, too."

Then again, hadn't Eva hinted that the Underground vampires wouldn't hurt Dawn or Frank?

Better to err on the side of caution and . . . Good Lord. Caution. If anyone heard her spouting stuff like that, they wouldn't know who she was.

Matt laughed, c.o.c.ky. "There's nothing to worry about out here. I can prove it. Why don't you go on over to a window that faces the street?"

Frowning, she nevertheless did exactly that. The Limpet house was a fortress that kept Jonah secure, so she was safe inside, too, especially since the team had found that their type of vamps needed to be invited into private dwellings. But this wasn't even a guarantee with these freaks since they had different vampire levels and, hence, different strengths and powers.

She found a good viewing spot past the stairway, near a front window that opened onto a small balcony. Pulling aside the heavy velvet curtain, she looked past the gothic iron window bars, knowing she probably resembled a ghost peering out of a wooo-eee- ooo mansion, what with the facade's crumbling stucco face and sleepy-eyed splendor.

It didn't take her long to find Matt across the street where the only backdrop was a canyon. Under the brandy-hued streetlamp, he looked lethal: his long coat gunslinger mysterious, his posture wary and coiled.

Her breath came faster at the sight of him, the danger of him. In spite of how nice he'd seemed at first, he'd shown her a real different side a few nights ago when they'd been hot and heavy with each other. Just when she thought they were finally getting somewhere in the hubba-hubba department, he'd brought out the sort of dress Eva would've worn, then hinted that he wanted Dawn to put it on. The act had created such a doubt-ridden distance between her and Matt that she hadn't wanted to see him ever again.

But that had changed after Breisi's murder and Eva's part in it.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing out there?" she asked.

He held out his free arm in supplication, using his other hand to keep the phone to his ear. "I'm waiting for you."

"Not going to happen."

"What if I told you I brought flowers? And they're not daisies, either."