A Drop of Red (12 page)

She wanted to ask about the night-vision boy who’d tracked them at the dumping ground, but first things first. “Sounds like the Scotland Yard cops didn’t give you any help.”

“Since this burial site was within what they call ‘the City,’ I contacted an old acquaintance in the City of London police. I have an . . . understanding . . . with Detective Inspector Norton. He’s discreet, passionate, and very open to alternative explanations for unexplainable crimes. However, he is protective about open cases and will not share details.”

“Can a Friend be assigned to look over his shoulder?”

“Done. However, our lot is not made easier by the fact that the press has already gotten ahold of the Billiter story. The police do not have many details, but if our Underground vampires are indeed responsible for this burial ground, then we can expect them to be less careless from now on.”

“Do you think they could’ve been warned by that boy who was hanging around Billiter even before the press came into it?”

“That is a distinct possibility, as well.”

Goody. “So are the cops going to give us any help?”

“We shall see. A Friend told me that Norton personally went to the burial site an hour or two ago.
He
already seems committed to the victims.” Costin sat on the mattress. “Yet even though he may be open to strange explanations for a crime, the rest of his department might not be so inclined.”

“So the dumping ground is a crime scene now,” she said. “Do you think we can try to send Natalia back there, just to see if she hears anything else?”

“We can. I will also see if Norton will at least chat with the city coroner. If Natalia could be near the bodies again, she might discern any last whispers there, as well. However, as I said, Norton will most likely prefer to keep us out of an investigation.”

“I can understand why. He probably doesn’t want to come off like the department whack job. But maybe his keeping us out of it is for the best. More secretive that way, and we can continue doing our own thing.”

In spite of the topic, Dawn’s blood seemed thick in her veins. If she scooted over a couple of inches, Costin would be close enough to touch.

“Are you going to
persuade
the cops or the coroner to cooperate?” Dawn asked.

“That’s chancy. They have to answer to many more people than a private citizen such as Natalia does.”

“Right.” Dawn was losing steam, but she wanted to know more. “What else is up?”

“After you returned, and while you were calming Natalia, I assigned Kiko the task of researching our list of Kates. He is priori-tizing based upon the information Natalia was able to hear and from what we were able to see of Kate’s corpse. We will arrange interviews with any acquaintances and possible family based on his recommendations.”

The heater kicked on, and Dawn huddled under the quilt. “He’ll do a decent job?”

“Kiko is suddenly very motivated.”

She laughed. “Anyone ever tell you how sly you are?”

“You never fail.”

His compelling gaze lured her, but she wouldn’t rest until her questions had been smoothed under the weight of answers.

“And the boy?” she asked.

Costin’s chin went up a defensive notch, and Dawn sensed that he was about to block her out.

“Don’t you dare,” she said.

He held up a hand. “Instinct.”

She tried not to take it personally, because he’d lived hundreds of years waging his own private war.

“Costin.” She reached out from under the quilt, but didn’t touch him.

He waited one more second, then finally said, “After you brought the boy here, Breisi joined me in the lab.”

On the ride back over, they’d wrapped the kid in a tarp since he actually hadn’t been all the way dead—he’d still had a faint pulse, and Dawn had thought Costin and Frank might be able to do something if they both tried to vamp-heal him. Frank, who’d walked to headquarters on foot instead of being tempted by all that blood, hadn’t been powerful enough to help the boy at the site, and even the usual healing goo had been useless for the kid’s extensive injuries.

He’d died minutes into the ride, but instead of returning him, they’d decided to “question” him through other means.

“What did you find?” she asked. “Why did Frank think the kid wasn’t quite a vampire or even human?”

A glow lit Costin’s eyes. “His blood. Breisi and I found an unidentifiable element in it beyond any of our experiences, and Breisi is well versed in science. And his heart . . .”

Costin met her gaze, his own flaring with so much more than basic hunger. It was the craving to win this war.

“His heart,” he said, “was oriented on the right side of his body.”

It took a few seconds for her to absorb this. “Are you sure? I mean, how? Why?”

“Breisi tells me that there is a condition—dextrocardia—in which the heart may be flipped. But then again, there is the matter of his blood. We cannot identify that abnormality yet.

“And then there is this: we had brought Kiko into the lab to see if he could perhaps get a reading from the boy’s clothing. Even though Kiko did not sense anything we did not already know, he had an interesting observation. One of his comic book connections.”

“A . . . comic book connection.” Detecting at its best.

“He maintains that in a graphic novel entitled
JLA: Earth-2
, a plane crashed. It was filled with deceased passengers whose hearts were in the same location as this boy’s. In the course of the story, we find that these people were from an antimatter planet—a parallel Earth where everything is the same, yet different from what we know.”

Dawn stared at Costin. “So this kid is part of the DC Comics multiverse?”

“Dawn.” He sighed and lay back on the bed.

Even from a few feet away, she pulsed with his proximity.

“I’m just wondering what sort of conclusions we can draw from that,” she said. “Are these alien vamps? Because that’s a whole other ball of wax.”

“Unless a blood brother exchanged with an extraterrestrial, it’s unlikely. We were all quite human when we started.”

“You never know.” She pulled the covers up higher. “At least Kiko’s mind is churning. Maybe there’ll be some kind of beneficial vision that comes out of it next.”

“I only hope.”

He folded his hands behind his head, and Dawn stopped herself from touching him—his chest, up and under his arms.

God.

She got it together. “I’m assuming you’ll have Natalia try to listen to the boy’s corpse after she wakes up?”

“We will try.”

“And how about the box the kid was holding? Did Breisi and Frank tool around with that?”

“Frank easily found that it was a flash grenade the boy might have used to blind you and the others as he escaped.”

“So it wasn’t some kind of Friend capture box? They were freaked out that it might be.”

“They recall being contained by the Elites.”

Once bitten, twice shy,
Dawn thought. She knew the story.

“Was it ultraviolet?” she asked.

“No. Aside from the boy being at the burial ground, there was nothing to indicate he was a vampire fighter . . . or even a protector.”

Things weren’t ever straightforward in this biz. “Where is he now? I can’t imagine you turning him over to the authorities with all that exploratory stuff you must’ve done on him.”

Costin kept his gaze on the bed’s canopy. “We have put him to temporary rest in the lab’s refrigerator/freezer. Even so, I am hoping his fingerprints will be of use, though they did not register in our database. I’ve sent them to a contact in Interpol who has helped me in the past.”

“Should I ask if you also sent a sample of the kid’s blood for possible ID?”

“I refrained from that. I would like to see what the prints reveal first.”

Good move,
Dawn thought. If the boy’s blood was that strange, there’d be questions to deal with, secrecy to risk.

“Then we gear another search to a missing boy with sandy hair, green eyes, and terrible judgment,” she said.

“The sooner we find his identity, the better. Among other matters, I would like to offer him a proper resting place.” Costin still didn’t look at Dawn as
he
started firing off questions now. “So tell me—how is Natalia?”

Dawn bristled. He sensed it and frowned, so she assumed the usual who-gives-a-fig demeanor.

“Aside from seeing her first disembodied head tonight?” she asked. “Natalia’s fine. She took a while to come down from her wig out. When we got back, I had to sit there in the extra bedroom with her while she tried to sleep, but then a Friend came in and lulled her. That did the trick.”

“Her family in Slough knows she is somewhere safe?”

“Yeah, I called them.” The light bled over his profile: the straight nose, the full lips.
Control, Dawn, control.
“Natalia agreed to go home today to pick up clothes and necessities. We’ll see if she comes back here.”

“She will.”

“You’re pretty cocky.” Dawn leaned on her elbow. “I know you’ve seen into her psyche and all, but what if she surprises you by deserting? What happens to the information we gave her?”

“Dawn, she is going to stay. None of my hunters have ever chosen to leave.”

“But how many of them really knew what was going on?”

“A few.” Costin finally faced her, removing one of his hands from behind his head to catch a strand of her hair between his fingers. He tested it, just like he was feeling the texture for the first time. “In the past, I have dispensed information merely on a need-to-know basis. I felt it necessary to withhold information so you would stay on board with me. But there is no need with Natalia. She is here for those voices because their pain disturbs her more profoundly than you will ever know. All her life she has wondered if there was a way to save them, and now there is. Have faith in that.”

She hesitated, then nodded, even while noting that his hand emanated coolness where there should’ve been warmth. In Hollywood, Benedikte, when he’d been disguised as Matt, had had the ability to give off the perception of normal skin. But Costin wasn’t as strong as a master, wasn’t as powerful.

He brushed his fingertips over her jaw, and she shivered, her skin tingling.

She almost asked him the next question mind-to-mind, but didn’t want to open herself up. “Costin?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t help thinking that maybe she’s your new . . . whatever.”

“Who, Natalia?” He dropped his hand to the mattress.

Dawn wasn’t going to throw around accusations; she only wanted to be clear. “Just give me the facts, without me having to dig. What are your intentions toward this girl?”

Costin wiped his hands down and up his face, planting his fingers in his hair, and if Dawn didn’t know better, she would’ve said it was a very human male gesture of frustration.

“I forget,” he said, “that you are unlike any other hunter I have had before. And exponentially more maddening.”

“Good to know that I stand apart from the rest of the harem.”

That’s one thing he’d always been honest about—his relations with the Friends. He was, like, hundreds of years old, so Dawn didn’t begrudge him the need for intimacy over the centuries—and his former need to root to humanity for sustenance.

“Is Natalia going to be ‘one of those’ Friends?” she asked, referring to some of the favorites he’d pleasured before Dawn had shown up last year.

“Jealousy does not become you.”

“Ex . . .
cuse
me?”

She sat up, and Costin groaned.

“All I’m asking,” she said, “is for a little clarification. I’m your blood pump, you know? That entitles me to what you call ‘jealousy, ’ I think.”

Oh, man, total verbal vomit. Good going.

“For a woman who says she does not care,” he said, “you are certainly adamant
about
caring.”

“I can be adamant about a lot of things.”

Now Costin was sitting up. “I have told you—you are unlike any other. Why can’t you bring yourself to believe that?”

Because . . .

Hell, because it was way more comfortable to pick a fight than to put herself out there again. Giving him blood was fine because she could always regenerate it. Giving him her life was good because she had earned the need to sacrifice that, too.

But giving him everything else?

She slipped out of bed. “You know, I’m not all that tired yet, and there’s a ton to do. You rest, and I’ll be back in time for your wake-up nip.”

Knowing from experience not to rile her, Costin leaned his forearms against his bent legs. “If that is what you require.”

“I’m just doing this because the hunt’s on.” She headed toward the closet. “Besides, I need an hour or two later for personal reasons, and I want to get as much done as I can now.”

“Why is that?”

She stripped her gown over her head, her words muffled. “I’ve got dinner with Eva at her place.”

A fissure rumbled the atmosphere apart, and when Dawn looked at him, she could see why.

Costin’s eyes were burning as he took in her naked body.

Even though it was cruel, she stood there and let him look. But the power of his desire made her cells collide and explode, made her sex go wet and swollen.

“Dawn,” he whispered, his voice raw.

She snapped out of it, despising that she didn’t know how to handle intimacy any way but this way. That she couldn’t stand the thought of knowing that he needed her so badly.

She went into the closet and put on some jeans and a baggy sweater, covering herself, removing temptation.

Still, his longing thudded at her, and she stayed removed until his palpable hunger faded with the coming of sunrise.

By the time she came out, rest had overtaken Costin. Undead to the world, he lay back against his pillow, his eyes shut, his mind a blank wall she couldn’t bypass, no matter how hard she might’ve wanted to try.