Break of Dawn (7 page)

“You still there?” Matt asked.

Without answering, she peeked out the curtains again, just to satisfy the sadist in her that he was still hanging around.

He was ambling past a parked Camaro. Almost absently, he slowed his pace, canting toward the window and pausing.

Was he checking himself out?

She closed the curtains, not wanting to watch. Some of the actors she’d worked with, narcissists, never passed up the chance to admire themselves in a mirror or anything that reflected their glory back at them.

But she was overreacting. Years of hating the entitled golden boys and girls of Hollyweird had given her way too much attitude and it colored every second of her days. People were allowed to look at themselves every once in a while, right?

“I’m still here,” she finally said. “But not for long.”

“Why? Is your boss spying on you?” He said it with an edge to his tone.

“What’s it to you?” Just for good measure, in case Jonah
was
listening, she added, “I’m not on his leash. I’m not on anyone’s.”

Matt went silent, and it made her bristle.

“I’ll be in contact,” she added. “Count on it.”

Just as soon as she got over her Hamlet act and decided how best to go about her business without getting her or Frank killed.

A long pause arched her nerves until she quivered, fear stringing her together as she turned from the window to face the darkened hall and its empty portraits. Back to work.

Back to Jonah.

“I’ll be waiting for you then,” Matt said.

Dawn thanked him, then hung up. But his last words dug into her.

She couldn’t help wondering if, based on the obsession Matt had once confessed to having for her, maybe he’d already been waiting long enough.

SEVEN

THE BREISI VIEW

No
one in the Limpet house ended up remarking on her phone call with Matt. No one probably cared because, even hours later, Jonah was still sequestered, Kiko was still zonked out, and the Friends were still going about their weird, private business.

In the meantime, the walls seemed to squeeze in on Dawn as she waited for something to happen.

The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked, tocked. The house moaned under the night wind huffing against the windows. She wondered what was going on outside, got itchy because she was locked down in useless anticipation of a battle she supposedly wouldn’t be a part of. Supposedly.

As she plopped down in front of a computer to return to her interrupted search on Jonah, Dawn kept thinking of Kiko’s “key” vision: her skin bathed with vampire blood.

She shook it off, tapping at the keyboard. Oh my
God
, each page was taking forever to load. She wanted to scream.

But even more, she wanted the mental images to stop.

The dagger. Matt asking her to come outside with him to hunt Eva. “Key.” Frank, somewhere out there.

Anger made her head go fuzzy and, absently, she tugged on the bottom of her sleeveless tank top, which had once belonged to Frank. For the past month or so, it’d become a habit; Kiko had discovered by accident that the material was a psychic link to her missing father, but it’d been useless the past twenty-four hours. Had the connection been broken?

Dawn didn’t want to think about why, because it could mean her dad had ended up dead himself after Eva had taken him away from a dying Breisi. And she couldn’t handle any ideas like that now.

Instead, she whipped out her phone. If she couldn’t go outside to find Frank and Eva, maybe she could do the second-best thing: hunt her mom down through the airwaves.

While Dawn accessed “Jac” in her address book, she held back a grimace. Jacqueline Ashley was a figment of Hollywood’s imagination, and Dawn had actually bought into it. Idiot her.

Voice mail answered.

“Hi!” said “Jac”’s sunshine voice. “Sorry I’m missing your call, but I’m afraid that’s going to be happening for a while. I’m taking a communication hiatus due to some family problems.”

Dawn almost retched.
Family problems. How about family freakin’ nuclear disaster?

The message continued. “Please call four two four, five five five, three eight five eight to get ahold of my personal assistant’s cell, and she’ll take care of what you need until I can get back to you. Thanks!”

Dawn sure as sugar wasn’t going to get ahold of any P.A. The assistant was only going to be a Servant for the Underground anyway. Hell, why had she even called? Just because she wanted to hear Eva’s voice again?

To the little girl who craved a mommy’s missing love, the sardonic thought rang too truthful for comfort, so Dawn hung up, pushed away from the useless computer, and headed someplace where she wouldn’t be alone with herself. She needed action to keep her company. Thinking was only driving her crazy.

She hotfooted it downstairs to the foyer, intending to continue into the lab to see if the Friends needed her help in any way. Or maybe if she could even question their asses just like she’d done with Kiko . . . Yeah, good luck with that.

When she tried to tug open the heavy lab door, she found that she was locked out. What?

“Breisi,” Dawn called. “Come on now. Where are you?”

Silence.
Hell’s bells.
She turned around and sent a disgusted back kick to the wood, then put her hands on her hips. Now what was she supposed to do?

At the end of her rope, she called louder. “Breisi! Get your toilette-stinkin’ self over here!”

She’d only meant to let off some steam, so when a thrust of jasmine brushed past her, she jumped back.

“What is it?”
Breisi’s ghost voice sounded rather put out.

Dawn gave the air a sidelong look. Hey—Breisi had come flying at the snap of a command. Interesting. Dawn would have to file that away for when she needed immediate attention.

“I couldn’t get past the lab door,” she said. “Am I locked out now? What’re you and your pals doing down there?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“Ooooh, no. Do
not
give me that.” Dawn spread out her hands. She came in peace. “What can I do? I’m like a damned pinball bumping against the walls.”

“Rest.”
Breisi’s jasmine began to shift, as if she were leaving now.

“Don’t you go anywhere.”

Her Friend’s essence stilled.

Dawn lifted an eyebrow. O-kay. Things had been upgraded to “
very
interesting.”

To test an emerging theory—and also because she was being a bored tool—she said, “Breisi, circle around me two times.”

Right away, the jasmine zoomed, zoomed around Dawn.

Yow. But, now that Dawn really thought about it, things made lots of sense: how the Friends followed orders, as if compelled. She just hadn’t realized until now that Jonah wasn’t the only one who could give directions to them. Dawn, herself, had never tried.

“Do you have to do everything I tell you to?” she asked.

If spirits could give a reluctant grunt, that was how Dawn would’ve described Breisi’s response.

“Cool,” Dawn said. “Imagine the possibilities for amusement here.”

“See, this is the reason you weren’t told you could command Friends
—
not unless the boss became desperate.”

“You mean, we were only supposed to discover this nugget of information if Jonah got blown to smithereens or something?
Then
we could take his place?”

Breisi launched into some Spanish that Dawn couldn’t translate, but she thought it might involve bleeping and cussing. Still, even before her Friend broke into an English lecture about abusing powers, Dawn got a few ideas. This opportunity was being handed to her on a silver platter.

Jonah
had
been smart to withhold the information.

Raising her hand to stop Breisi’s diatribe, Dawn felt a tremble in her stomach. Nerves.

But . . . hell for leather. This was
it
.

“Tell me the honest truth about the dagger Kiko showed you in the weapons room,” she said.

Breisi’s essence seemed to settle down.
“I did not see his entire vision.”

Kiko had told Dawn as much, and what Breisi was saying had to be the truth, since she was being commanded to be forthright. Dawn pushed on anyway. “Did you or Kiko know who the seer in the dagger vision was? The truth, now.”

“We had no idea.”

She’d answered in the past tense, as the question had been framed, but Dawn was too busy feeling relieved to note it right away. She’d always believed that her coworkers knew everything about Jonah and had just been keeping the details from her. A big conspiracy theory with her as the dim bulb. Clearly, Dawn had been wrong. Then again, they were only talking about the dagger vision here, not the bigger picture.

She took a deep breath. Here it went. “Tell me what you do know, Breisi. About anything that has to do with our boss.”

The air around Dawn quivered, as if her Friend was fighting the command.

“Breisi!”

The jasmine began to swirl, agitated. There was a low moan, pained, as if her Friend were being sawed apart.

Breisi, gurgling on blood, throat slashed, eyes wide in the face of oncoming death . . .

“No,” Dawn said quickly, unable to stand the thought of her companion in more anguish. “Don’t answer that.”

Perfumed air calmed in a sigh, and Dawn’s heartbeat smoothed out. She hadn’t meant to hurt Breisi again.

Finally, her Friend said,
“I’m sorry. That’s one order I can’t obey.”

“Telling me about Jonah? Why?”

“His rules. A security measure. But, as you can tell, resisting takes a lot out of us
—
more than we regularly expend.”

“Figures. He’ll take any opportunity to screw all of us in some way or another.”

With a mock growl, Dawn paced away, coming to the grand fireplace. Her gaze rested on the empty Fire Woman portrait as she gathered her wits.

Then . . . eureka.

Once, Jonah had taken her with him into an empty painting during an intimate session. A beach picture, relaxing, sensually soothing, with the water lapping at her skin as he’d entered her.

Two thoughts crashed together in her head: going inside the portrait. Commanding Breisi.

“Can you take me inside a picture that’s not your own?” she asked her Friend while nodding toward the Fire painting.

Breisi didn’t respond. Dawn took that as a yes.

Her pulse picked up speed again. Another piece of Jonah’s puzzle. A clue as to which side she should be on in this war.

And, after this, she could enter every picture. . . .

Without thinking of the consequences, Dawn ordered, “Put me in this painting, Breez.”

Clearly
this
wasn’t deemed off-limits by Jonah, because before Dawn could change her mind, Breisi surrounded her in an exotic cloud, lifting her until she was a mass of weightless nothing.

The color red melted into Dawn’s vision as she entered the portrait. Heat blazed through every limb, swallowing her as if it were a cloak wrapping around her body. Even her hair felt on fire, prickling her scalp and eating away at her addled brain.

She spun in a column of flame, tossed around, flailing as she tried to grab on to something. The choking smell of sulfur took the place of Breisi’s jasmine.

Then, just like that, the air cleared, and Dawn found herself whole and still, just like she was part of an audience facing a movie screen.

Except she was a part of the scene. And . . . not a part of it.

She was one of three shadowed figures sitting on horses that were clopping along a dirty, night-soaked street dimly lit by moonlight and candle-fueled lanterns. The stench of waste permeated the air as they passed a drunk man garbed in clothes that reminded Dawn of some chunky king like . . . Henry VIII maybe? The guy was wearing a flat-brimmed hat with a sagging feather and something she thought was called a doublet, and also breeches coupled with filthy stockings hugging his calves. Weaving, he tripped, then fell on his face into a puddle of mud. He crawled out, heading into a bar—or whatever they called them in those days—on the riders’ right side, where sodden voices were raised in song.

Her companions, who were wearing matching long, gray capes with hoods just like her, reined in their horses just short of the doorway. The animals snorted, shying away from the drunken revelry inside. Dawn noticed one of her group was riding sidesaddle, though she wasn’t.

Then her body spoke, her female tone tinted with lower-class abrasion. “ ’E’s inside, is ’e, Rose?”

The response came in the guise of another woman’s voice, this one far more cultured, with an inflection from some other European country, but Dawn didn’t know which. “Yes, I sense him mingling among humanity. He takes great joy from their songs. Yet . . .” Her soft voice trailed into oblivion.

The third shape was male, judging by the breadth of shoulders under his cape. He didn’t say a word, merely hefting a wooden stake out from under his clothing.

The woman called Rose raised a hand to halt him as her horse stirred. “More than just a master is present, Will.”

Dawn’s seer hopped off her horse, eager, her cape flowing around a pair of breeches and high riding boots as she hit the ground. No skirt in sight here.

“In we go,” she said.

“No.” Rose controlled her nervous mount. “We have been told time and again to leave a lair be.”

Dawn’s seer laughed as the moon hid itself behind a passing cloud, then reappeared.

“It is law with him,” Rose added.

Even in the cloudiness of this vision, Dawn knew who “him” was. Jonah. He’d used other teams in the past, and she was in the midst of one now.

Her seer’s laughter had ended abruptly. “Don’t you lord it over me, Rose. Don’t you tell
me
what it is ’e wants.” For emphasis, she slid off her hood. Moonlight in the window revealed the blurred reflection of short crimson-blond hair that would meld with the color of flame.

Fire Woman.

The male of the group just shook his head, as if he’d seen this dynamic between Fire and Rose too many times to count.

Hell, Jonah had been busy back then with at least one of these women, hadn’t he? He’d fed off other team members.

Jealousy impaled Dawn, forcing her backward as if to take her out of the vision. Desperately, she tamped down her emotions, and the pressure to leave stopped.

As the bawdy tune inside lit into celebratory yells, Rose kept her composure, turning her horse around to face away from the establishment.

“He would ask us to return to him before any trouble strikes. He will be the one to enter. Will?”

The cape-shrouded male of the group said nothing, just watched the windows with the concentration of a mercenary.

“There’ll be no retreatin’ for me.” The Fire Woman’s horse pawed the ground as she glared at Rose.

“Kalin . . .” Rose began.

Shock clutched Dawn.

And that was when everything went into fast motion.

From the cacophony of the door, a woman barged out, flying, her voluminous skirts spread like wings as she opened her mouth, flashing fangs. She went straight for the man, Will, who just had enough time to raise his stake before she tore into his neck, sucking madly at him, her graying, upswept hair coming undone in her frenzy.

He screamed, spiking his weapon into her chest. In a shower of ash, she dissipated, and he slumped over his horse’s neck. His nerve-addled mount took off, leaving Rose and Kalin alone. But not for long.

Another vamp—a male—burst out of a window in a wide silk coat of many slashed colors. While Kalin ducked the tumbling glass shards, Rose drew her own stake out of her cape. Her hood slumped down, showcasing a lacy cap-covered head and a face Dawn didn’t recognize from any portraits.

Then, out of nowhere, a stream of fire zinged from Dawn’s seer toward the attacking vampire before it could harm Rose; the streak caused the creature to burst into flame, then ash.