Hours Later
EVEN
while priming a lethal weapon, Dawn Madison struggled to keep her eyes open.
Made sense, because she hadn’t gotten any sleep after what’d happened last night. And when the sun had risen and things around the Limpet house had calmed down, burning daylight by grabbing a snooze had seemed a colossal waste of time because there was so much to take care of.
Besides, there was the little matter of her being filled with rage, terror, impatience—all of which pretty much put the kibosh on lying back against a soft pillow to let her mind and body chill. Hell, wasn’t there even an old saying that went, “There’s no rest for the wicked”?
Problem was, Dawn couldn’t help wondering who “wicked” applied to, now that she didn’t know who . . . or what . . . to trust.
And that included herself.
Currently, she was putting all her strength into winding a crank. In turn, it coiled a wire that was attached to a bladed disk in a modified crossbow. Nearby, the hum of a massive fridge competed with the clang of an old-fashioned clock on a nightstand in a sublevel lab. The timepiece was striking the twilight hour, every beat a countdown to what waited for Dawn and the rest of her team outside these walls.
Vampires. The past resurrected, when it should’ve just stayed buried.
Her muscles—honed from a life of athletic habit, stunt work, and hunting—strained as she stabilized the crank. Then, attempting to be as smooth as death’s whisper, she hefted the saw-bow upward, propping it against her shoulder, aiming. Pulling the trigger.
In a shower of sparks, the weapon spit out the circled blade.
Swick!
across the room, where it bit into one of the wooden poles Dawn had propped against the far lab wall.
Lowering the bow, she inspected her target. Damn, too low of a hit to count as a decapitation. How’d Breisi been so good at using this thing on the vamps?
Dawn stalked toward the poles, intent on retrieving the blade and getting it right, even though every inch of her was screaming with discomfort. Last night’s battle royale with their enemies was twanging every muscle and joint.
But the scent of jasmine interrupted Dawn, enveloping her. A voice sounded in her ear—or maybe it was in her head. Either way she hadn’t gotten used to it yet.
“Just picture your target, and you’ll be fine.”
It was Breisi in her new spirit form, coaching Dawn about her old saw-bow—a favorite weapon back when she’d been alive and hunting by Dawn’s side.
“I’m trying, Breez.”
Overcome by the jasmine, by everything that went with the scent of the new Breisi, Dawn leaned the bladed crossbow against the nearby stone wall, slumping her own frame against its coolness, too. Absently, she locked eyes on her friend’s worktable in the middle of the room, a table that mostly held Breisi’s lab equipment and projects. Then she scanned left, past the collection of computers, taking in her coworker’s bed and the nightstand with a shattered-glass picture of young Breisi and her grandma.
Dawn’s suddenly blurry gaze returned to the table, where the remnants of a different bladed crossbow lay deserted, half-finished, a metal carcass. Before dying last night, Breisi had been building this second weapon for Dawn but, with the turn of events, Breisi had ended up giving her protégée her old saw-bow instead only a few hours ago. She couldn’t manipulate it in the spirit world.
“Dawn . . . ?”
the Friend whispered, her tone troubled now.
Dawn felt Breisi—her good friend
Breisi
—hush over her skin, then rest on her shoulder like a comforting hand. Mental agony lanced her at the touch. Last night Dawn had seen Breisi choking on her own blood.
Murdered.
Yet—
A sense of joy twisted into the strands of her pain. Dawn swallowed, trying to contain it.
Yet here Breisi was again, one of the guardian Friend spirits who helped the Limpet and Associates team in their quest to find the vampire Underground that haunted Los Angeles.
“I’ll get back to practicing with the bow soon,” Dawn said, reclining her head against the wall and regulating her breathing. It was the only way she could control her emotions right now. But at least she was able to force a grin, mainly for Breisi’s sake. “You watch—I’ll be better than you ever were with that snaggle-toothed contraption. Vamps are gonna shiver in their boots when they know I’m coming.”
Her bravado sounded empty in the face of reality, because soon, there really would be a fight. Jonah Limpet, the boss of this operation, had promised that much, and based on last night, the dogs of war had been unleashed. It was only a matter of who would be attacking whom, and when.
In simpatico, Breisi’s essence sank against the wall next to Dawn. She had no words of wisdom this time.
Why? Hadn’t Dawn’s book-smart Friend learned the ropes of the spirit world yet? Or did it take a lot longer to acquire all the answers Breisi’s new state of being required?
The question beat against Dawn’s temples. New state of being. Dead.
Murdered.
Breisi . . .
As tight emotion welled in Dawn’s chest, traveling upward until it choked her, Breisi’s voice soothed.
“
Lo siento. . . .
I’m so sorry this had to happen, Dawn.”
“What, it’s not your fault you went and died.” She’d tried so hard to be more open to what she was feeling, but it was too hard. Hurt too much. “If Cassie Tomlinson were still alive, I’d kill her myself.”
Last night’s horrors had been waiting for this kind of invocation. They attacked Dawn again with slashing memories of the Vampire Killer. Limpet and Associates had sought the culprit because Jonah had believed that the serial killer might lead to the Underground. So the team had investigated, never knowing that one of their interviewees, the sister of an already-jailed suspect, was their quarry. When they’d discovered the murderer’s identity, it was too late, because Cassie Tomlinson had already captured Breisi, taking her to a remote camper in the woods, intending to publicly broadcast the murder and make herself a celebrity in the process. To make matters worse, Cassie had been in cahoots with the Underground, working with their red-eyed Guards.
Before Dawn and her father, Frank, had stormed the killer’s hideaway to get Breisi back, someone had tipped them off about the unholy alliance. The same informant had also detailed how the murders fit into the Master’s plans, goddamn him.
And that someone had been Eva Claremont, Dawn’s vampire mother.
But all the helpful information in the world wasn’t enough to endear Eva to her daughter now. Not by a long shot. Even if it was possible that the Underground vamps had witnessed Eva going turncoat when she’d helped her daughter and husband rescue Breisi, even if Eva had chosen family over the interests of her Underground, there was no room for forgiveness.
Because not only had Eva most likely turned Dawn’s father into a vampire himself.
She’d also allowed Breisi to die.
That was right—Cassie Tomlinson wasn’t the only one responsible for the death. When Eva had refused to stop Cassie from killing Breisi, she’d made herself a murderer, too. She’d sacrificed Breisi—the woman Frank Madison had fallen for during the years Eva was Underground—for a second chance to win her husband back. Then she’d captured Frank and stolen him away from Dawn again.
Anger seethed through Dawn. Still, in spite of herself, she wondered if her hell-spawn of a mother had already been punished by her own kind—the Master.
The big vampire responsible for everything.
She calmed down, because the reminder of the Underground leader pointed to even bigger issues: what would the Underground do now? What was their next move?
Actually, what was
Dawn’s
next step?
She wasn’t sure how to hunt down her mother and father, how to bring this Master to justice. She had no idea who her real allies were and weren’t. She wasn’t even sure she could turn to Jonah, her own boss, for aid, because he’d done his own share of hurting Dawn in the past.
Maybe there was no next step.
A clang and a clutter sounded at the top of the stairs.
At first, Dawn’s body electrified, anticipating Jonah. Before last night, she’d called him The Voice, because that was just about the only thing she’d known of him. He’d always given instructions via speakers, staying out of sight. He was a shut-in, never facing his team . . . until Dawn had called him out for all his hidden agendas and manipulations.
Even now, hours after he’d finally revealed himself to her, she still couldn’t measure her response. She hated how her body reacted around him—blood vibrating through every limb in sharp awareness. They’d known each other in a carnal sense many times, with his essence entering her, fulfilling her, but it wasn’t until last night that she’d looked into his tortured gaze, seen the angry wounds slashing over his face. . . .
As footsteps descended the staircase, Dawn held her breath, in spite of all the distrust she still felt for her boss.
But when Kiko Daniels, little-person vamp hunter extraordinaire, popped into sight, she sank back against the wall. In relief? Or . . . ? God help her if it was disappointment at not seeing Jonah. She was one pant away from being the guy’s sex slave.
“Hey, Kik.” She went to him, intending to help with the massive picture frame he was struggling to carry.
He nodded back to her, watching his step as he hit the floor. Since going upstairs earlier, he’d put on his back brace under a dark T-shirt. He had to wear the gear every so often, seeing as a vampire had once thrown Kik against a wall. But his injuries were healing on schedule, and everything was improving except for the pills the Limpet team’s psychic had been downing. He’d claimed he was going off of the medication, but Dawn had her reservations.
As she reached for the frame, he maneuvered it away, frowning. Oh, yeah. The chip on his shoulder. Offering to help him nowadays was like brandishing a castration knife, so Dawn backed off.
But he recovered pretty quickly, offering a tired smile that told her how much he was hoping she wouldn’t comment about his ’tude. And, damn it, it just about broke her heart. He was good at making people forget he was in his late twenties while working the little-boy-charm angle; the trick caught their interviewees off guard, persuading them to believe Kiko was harmless. Even Dawn was susceptible every once in a while.
Breisi’s exotic scent grew stronger as she whisked past Dawn to her other coworker. His smile widened in greeting, then he moved toward the bed, expending a lot of effort to cock the picture away from Dawn’s gaze.
“All the rest of the Friends are napping,” he said. “Breisi probably needs more rest than they do, even if they’re working overtime out there.”
It was true that Friends had been exhausting themselves while helping the team; they were trying to cover for their missing numbers. Friends had been disappearing at an alarming rate, and Dawn had discovered why: Elite vampires were captivating the spirits.
“So,” Kiko continued, “it’s bedtime. Right, Breez?”
A soft sound of acknowledgment brushed the air.
Dawn couldn’t stop herself. “And the boss? Where’s he?”
“He’s still holed up, planning strategy, trying to ‘logic out’ the vamps’ location.”
A tremor edged Kiko’s small voice, probably because he knew this was it—the calm before the storm, the fading of the lights before the projector flickered on and the action began. The Voice had always told them that once a vamp lair was discovered, the team needed to leave it alone because it was his domain from there on out.
He
would be the one to crush the Underground, not the team. Too dangerous, he always said. Too unnecessary.
It was just another sign of Jonah’s maddening secrecy. But Dawn just wanted to know how the hell he was going to attack an entire community of bloodsuckers all on his own.
Or did he have something other than vanquishing in mind?
Her betrayed instincts soured once again, making it easy to conjure up scenarios of The Voice using his team to usurp this Underground. She hoped she was wrong.
Kiko added, “The info you got from Eva is what he seemed to need before starting to figure the rest out.”
“My mom’s a savior all right.”
Obviously Kiko didn’t say anything because he knew Dawn would just jump down his throat.
Her beautiful actress mama had supposedly died when Dawn was just a month old: Eva had been murdered, martyred, held up in the Tinseltown heavens as a legend. But over a month ago, when Dawn had been called back to town to find her missing father, Frank, Eva had insinuated herself into Dawn’s life as sweet, innocent “Jacqueline Ashley,” an emerging starlet. When Jac had revealed herself to be Eva, a product of the vampire Underground, Dawn also discovered that the bitch had abducted Frank in a warped effort to get the family back together.
Touching.
But Dawn hadn’t so much gone for it. And now, after Eva’s refusal to save Breisi’s mortal life . . . no way.
Kiko had reached Breisi’s bed and was staring at the picture, face arranged in silent devastation.
She knew, even before he propped the frame on the mattress to lean it against the wall, what his painting would show.
The background featured this very lab, with its stoic walls and sky blue ceiling. But there was nothing else in the frame. Not yet.
“I’ll hang it later,” Kiko said. “It’s not like I won’t have enough time during this lockdown.”
“How did it get painted so quick? Don’t these take . . . well, longer than we’ve had?”
Kiko scratched at the soul patch he was growing; he’d shaved it off for a recent assignment and wanted it back. “The boss did it. Don’t ask how.”
“He probably, like, mind printed it onto the canvas or something.” It was kind of a joke, but the fact that it rang true just went to show how bizzaro things were.
“However he did it, it’s perfect.” Kiko blinked. “He said he wanted to welcome her home as quickly as possible.”
Dawn heard a laugh. A jasmine breeze flowed around the room, as if Breisi were running around in excitement at the thought of finally being able to rest. Then the scent burst toward the frame, and the portrait began filling with a familiar shape.
