Undead for a Day (8 page)

Dawn grabbed Natalia, cutting her connection. The woman was breathing heavily, clinging to Dawn’s shirt as they both watched Kiko settle into a calmer posture, his mouth still open from that scream.

He looked like Lilly with that open mouth.

“He is fine,” Costin said from his position behind the keeper. “He will finish this.”

She helped Natalia to a chair, sitting her down. Her face was paler than when she’d laid hands on Lilly.

Dawn was about to ask what Natalia had seen while riding Kiko’s skin, but then Kiko raised up both of his hands, disconnecting from the Meratoliage, taking a calm step backward before he closed his mouth all the way.

“Kiko?” Natalia asked.

The most persistent psychic in the world was reaching out again, toward Lilly’s pale-skinned neck.

Dawn rested a hand on Natalia’s shoulder, keeping her sitting down as Kiko resumed the interview.

“Where is your family holding that bonfire tonight?” he asked, and by his smooth tone of voice, you’d think he was casually asking a waitress where the john was in a restaurant.

A jagged pause split the room as they waited for him to divine an answer from Lilly.

He shook his head, closing his eyes, continuing the interview. “And how many family members are there?”

The Meratoliage never moved. She just kept silent-screaming with that horrifyingly open mouth, and Dawn kept trying not to compare it with her dad’s face on that terrible night in London when her mom had nearly sucked the life out of him.

Then, another Kiko question. “What is your family planning to do to Dawn?”

As if this last thought burned him, he hauled in air through his teeth, then disconnected from Lilly again, holding his fingers as if they’d been blistered.

“Holy shit storm,” he whispered, and Natalia finally stood, going over to him, cupping his face and looking into his eyes.

Jonah was the first to ask, “How is he?”

Natalia’s tone was ice-cold. “Do any of you truly care?”

Okay. Dawn was going to let that comment go. This was a highly emotional moment, and she’d had a few of those over the years herself.

Kiko gently took Natalia’s hands in his, smiling up at her. He blew out a breath, and it was only when he walked to the sofa and plopped down on it that Dawn realized his short legs must’ve been shaking.

All the while, Lilly kept sitting in that chair like a grotesque doll that someone had brought home from the most fucked-up carnival ever.

“Well, that was intense.” Kiko pushed some blond hair away from his forehead with a trembling hand. “You know how Natalia and I told you about the coma-feeling we got off of that other keeper’s blood and chain? It was worse with this one. Natalia and I will never need to wonder what it’s like to be buried alive.”

Dawn couldn’t even imagine. Thank God she wasn’t a psychic.

Kiko went on. “First, there was fire...the explosion from the London Underground when it was destroyed. Lilly here got burned, and I could feel it all over my skin.”

It was obvious that Natalia had felt this much, too, when she’d been joined with Kiko for the reading. Dawn could just about see the trauma in her faraway gaze.

“Tell them about the tuner.” Natalia looked at the rest of them. “Lilly started to talk to us in her mind, and she told us about a special instrument the Meratoliages use.”

“That’s right,” Kiko said. “The device fits over a person’s head, and from what I can tell, this tuner’s part magic, part technology, part psychic tool. Every keeper carries one unless they’re retired. It’s what gives them all the history of the family, plus it enhances the skills a
custode
needed to guard the dragon. A tuner actually activates a keeper and—”

“
De
activates them,” Natalia finished.

Dawn gestured toward Lilly. “So this is what happens to a keeper who’s deactivated?”

Kiko nodded. “And you know what else? It seems like they can only bring a keeper out of retirement on Samhain.”

Trying to fit the information together, Dawn said, “Samhain is when the dead rise and walk the earth, right? So is retirement another word for a keeper’s death?”

Natalia’s accent was thick. “It is worse than death.”

Oh.

Dawn looked at Lilly again, and a thud of pity got to her.

“You know what it’s like to be afraid of the dark?” Kiko asked. “That’s what it feels like to be retired. You’re shoved into a small mental space, and you can’t move. You can hardly even think.”

Natalia’s voice was barely audible when she added, “For me, it felt as if I was a child in the dead of night, lying in bed, feeling for the first time what it must be like to fall into a void.”

Dawn knew about voids. But tonight she also knew what it was like to leave one behind.

Costin spoke. “You questioned Lilly about the Meratoliages’ location.”

Kiko leaned his head back against the sofa, as if glad to leave behind the part about retirement. Natalia was clearly still in the throes of it, though. Even from the start, when she’d signed on to work with them in London, Dawn had known she was more sensitive than most people. Even more than Kiko.

“That part wasn’t so clear to me,” he said. “I’m still not so sure where the Meratoliages are having that bonfire.”

Damn. “Do we know how many family members are at the bonfire?”

“Twenty,” Kiko said. “Ten men, ten women.”

Ouch. “Can we assume from what we already know about keepers that the men could’ve been put aside as active
custodes
because of the family heart defect? Can we guess that they’re not going to be strong fighters?”

“Not necessarily,” Kiko said. “I know those men are weaponed up. Same with the women, even though they’re only the family ‘breeders’.”

Dawn glanced at Lilly, who was as still as a pet rock. They already knew that this girl with the misshapen mouth and grotesque eyes had been out of the ordinary for a keeper. The few records they had found on the Meratoliages’ estate had documented lines and lines of male
custodes
with only the occasional female chosen for duty.

Jonah chimed in. “Aren’t the women good at the dark arts in that family? I say they’re the ones to worry about.”

Kiko had his eyes closed, as if he was sifting through what Lilly had given him. “There’s a Meratoliage at the bonfire who’s the most valuable of them all. She’s leading this ritual. Her name is...Amber. Yeah, Amber.”

Interesting, how Lilly was just giving up all this information out of the kindness of her dislocated heart. “You also asked how the family was planning to get the dragon out of me. Any answers there?”

At this, the dragon’s blood slammed against Dawn’s right side. She started at the force of the malcontent.

Everyone glanced at her, and she held up a hand. “It’s okay. Since there’s no soul stain to feed on tonight, someone’s just a little eager at the thought of escaping me.”

Lilly emitted one of those zombie-moans again, but all eyes went to Kiko, waiting for him to answer Dawn’s question about how the Meratoliages were going to pull the dragon out of her.

“You really want to hear this?” Kiko asked.

“No. But I always manage to live through the bad news, anyway.”

“Yeah, you sure do.” He gave her a look that only war buddies could understand, but then something like concern took its place. “The Mertoliages are gonna do what any good surgeon would to extract something out of a body, Dawn.”

It didn’t need any more elaboration than that.

*

After everyone had gone their own ways—Jonah back to his bed for more rest, Kiko to the computers, Costin still watching Lilly in her chair—Dawn had sought some privacy in her room, with its sedate white walls and sheer aqua blue curtains. She wanted to figure out the wisest course of action now that they knew what the Meratoliages had in mind.

If they went into their enemy’s territory, all guns blazing, there was a chance that the team could wipe away part of the Meratoliage family tonight—most importantly, the one named Amber.

Their leader.

In short, Dawn thought of it this way: If you had the opportunity to take out someone who was about to unleash great evil in the world—like Hitler, say, or a megalomaniac like the dragon—would you do it at any cost? And would you do it before you knew they were probably going to flee as soon as Samhain was over?

The answer was a huge duh. But the problem was that Dawn, herself, was carrying that evil within her, and if she went to the people who wanted it more than anything, she’d be putting a dangerous entity right in front of the Meratoliages and daring them to take it. And even if she would’ve bet donuts to dollars in the past that she and the team could best twenty enemies—some of them even practiced in the dark arts—she wasn’t so sure about that now, with her side lacking the spirit Friends, plus their hunting skills being so rusty.

Maybe it
would
be smart to just stay here, sheltered, with cameras acting as a lookout until sunup. But next Samhain, would she and her loved ones have to go through all this again?

Would she always be hiding?

Dawn was still thinking it over when Natalia knocked on her open door, then wandered inside.

Her plaid skirt was wrinkled, as if she’d been clenching at it, and her already-wild curls were escaping the band in her hair, one by one.

“May I talk to you?” she asked.

Dawn could pretty much guess what this was about, but she nodded, anyway, motioning for Natalia to take a seat on the bed.

She didn’t. Obviously, she was too anxious to relax.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” she said.

“You want me to persuade Kik to stay out of the thick of this if we confront the Meratoliages.”

Natalia smiled wanly. “Maybe you’re the one who’s psychic.”

Dawn leaned back against the wall, her gaze trained on a painting that depicted a serene wash of water running down the canvas. It was supposed to calm her soul stain, but it’d never quite done the trick. “If I was psychic, I’d know whether to run or stay.”

“It’s not an easy decision. But I hope the one I’m asking you to make is...”

“Easier?” Dawn crossed her arm over her chest, absently resting her hand on her shoulder—the one that’d been bitten earlier in the night. Maybe she just needed to feel a little pain to remind her of the exponential amount that could be in store for anyone who came with her if she confronted the Meratoliages.

Natalia seemed to think that Dawn was being stubborn, and her tone tightened. “I cannot compete with this, Dawn. It’s almost as if Kiko has a first love, and she’s not me.”

Dawn’s hand fell from her shoulder. “What’re you saying?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. Please understand that. But long before I came into Kiko’s life, he was infatuated with hunting. And you’re a part of that for him. I know you need help tonight, but if you could encourage him to stay in the background as much as he can...”

“You don’t want him to endanger himself. I get it.”

Natalia only nodded.

So this was it. The true end of the line for Kiko.

“I won’t involve him,” Dawn said, feeling as if something had already been taken from her.

She didn’t have a soul stain right now, but she had a heart that was getting rawer by the second.

After Natalia thanked her and left, Dawn rested her head against the wall, glancing out the window, feeling the
tick-tock
of the seconds running by toward the sunrise.

Well, there it was. Another part of her past gone. The thing was, she wasn’t sure what life would be like without the guy who’d become one of her best friends.

Her fellow slayer, not by her side anymore.

She knew she wasn’t alone when Costin sidled up to her, caressing her hair with his invisible force.

She didn’t want to think about the sadness or even feel it when she probably had just this one night to escape from all that.

But the imprint of sadness was there, anyway.

“If you’re here, who’s with Lilly?” she asked.

“Jonah has a revolver pointed at her for insurance. He is feeling much better and cannot seem to stay in bed.”

“Stubborn donkey.”

Costin nuzzled her neck, and she felt her defenses lower.

“You’ve decided?” he asked.

Stay here for good and play it safe? Or take the ultimate initiative?

“I keep going back and forth on this,” she said.

“You need a calmer mind, yes?”

“I need a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get them.”

He chuckled, an airy pressure against her neck that sent a spiral of yearning through her.

“Perhaps I can help in at least one area....” he said.

When Costin eased into her, she sucked in a sharp breath, turning around and grasping for the wall.

This was the first time in a long time she’d felt him without the soul stain interfering, and it was as if she was experiencing a new rush of electric shock, of knee-melting, aching need.

He stroked her from the inside out, and she was barely aware of the dragon pasting itself against her side, as if all it wanted to do was hide from Costin.

But that wasn’t the reason he was in her right now—to subdue the evil blood marks as he did every morning. No, he was caressing her, wave upon wave of sensation, making her ready and oh-so willing.

She slid down the wall, her fingers grasping, finding nothing to hold on to as pressure built inside her, stoked and heated by every move Costin made.

Swirls and whirls that painted her with rough strokes, smooth strokes, both. He was like sunlight, beaming through her, burning her, singeing and cleansing and rising, rising, until—

At the booming explosion that rocked every cell to bits, she fell to all fours, taking as much oxygen into her as she could because she was starved for it. Dizzy and high with it.

Laughing as if she would always feel this way.

“Pity,” he said, still inside her, his voice an echo that buzzed in all the right places. “If only we had more time to calm you.”

It really was a pity that this might be the last time she could experience Costin like this before Samhain ended and the stain might come back.