A Drop of Red (15 page)

“Dawn?” Natalia asked, her voice still low. “I have been wondering. . . . There seem to be different types of vampires in our . . . travel literature. Good ones and bad. I thought they were all bad, except in movies and romance books.”

Yeah, Dawn had thought so, too.

So how did a person explain the difference? Especially when that person didn’t really even understand the distinction herself, what with having a fanged father who was way better than he’d ever been when she’d known him as a human, and a sort-of boy-friend who was a vamp bent on saving the world.

And
especially
not when she’d felt so good being one of the bad guys for a short while, too.

Dawn wished the gates would just open. But . . . no luck.

“My best explanation,” she said, knowing she’d have to answer sometime, “would be that maybe it’s in how a creature reacts to what’s taken them over. Like ‘the Force,’ you know? It could be that some vamps use it for the dark side and others use it to redeem what needs redeeming.” Sounded pretty persuasive.

“But,” Natalia responded, “it’s said that vampires have no souls. How can the loss of one result in any good?”

Besides Costin and Frank, Dawn thought of how Eva had risked everything back in L.A., defying the Master so that she might save her daughter.

Dawn tamped down a swell of emotion. No need for it now.

“I read”—no, she
knew
—“that vampires are left with a conscience. A personality, really. They still have memories and longings, and I guess each creature deals differently. Some leave the past behind and dive into a whole new party existence, like they’ve gotten a chance to do everything they couldn’t do before, and there’s nothing to stop them now. Some just wish they could go back to what they used to have.”

Natalia took that in, looking like she half believed the explanations and half didn’t. It reminded Dawn of something the girl had asked the night before last as she’d fallen asleep.

“All these years and Costin has never written a book or gone on the telly to reveal the truth about vampires. Why?”

The answer had been easy.

“Because even though the world likes their scary stories, they’d never believe it,” Dawn had said. “Most of us really don’t want to acknowledge that there might be anything so close by as bad as what we’ve imagined, so we need our fantasies to keep it underground.”

If they’d only stayed there.

She also hadn’t added that Costin wasn’t crazy about the notion of having the public—and hence unsympathetic authorities—in his business, either. He’d be persecuted like any vampire, no matter whose side he was on.

By the gates, Dawn heard Kiko say a “Yessss,” under his breath as the elderly man came out of the small house. Number One Psychic shifted from one foot to the other, then calmed down when the gatekeeper gave him a curious look as he opened the gate and retreated back to his pinkish dwelling.

“Breisi?” Dawn asked. But it was really more of a command for the nearby Friends to return to them so they could get a move on.

After a few seconds, a burst of jasmine whooshed by.

“All clear,”
Breisi said in her spirit voice as her pals hung back.

Natalia exhaled and glanced around as they all went to the little window in the gatehouse and paid a few pounds each for the entrance fee. The man gave them an I’m-watching-you look before they sauntered away.

Kiko had a bounce to his own walk as they scanned the ornate headstones and mausoleums flanked by rhododendron bushes, tulip and oak trees. There were also simple markers, wooden crosses where flowers like lilies and yellow roses kept vigil.

Then there were the marble angels that sadly looked down upon them as the rain started to fall. One of them had a broken finger, and it seemed to point right at Dawn.

She pulled up her hood while Natalia opened her umbrella.

“Feel that?” Kiko asked, turning around like a compass needle searching for a place to point. “My grave’s close. Breisi, do you wanna take us there first?”

But their Friend had already flown in a straight line up the black-top, where crowded, cracked gravestones tottered on slight hills. Ivy crept up the markers’ sides, just like the vines were clawing out of the ground to keep the stones there.

Raindrops popped on Dawn’s hood. Otherwise, there was nothing. No activity.

Just a sense of waiting . . .

She shivered as she felt a tingle at the back of her neck, like long nails only an inch away from touching her.

Turning around, she only saw the graves, trees, and the pink house in front of the gates, then the old chapel.

“Breisi?” Kiko said as Dawn faced them again, her hand touching the silver throwing blades in one of her pockets.

Their Friend’s voice wound through the rain.
“We’re all feeling a pull to Natalia’s grave. Let’s go there first.”

As the new girl followed Breisi’s voice, Kiko looked like he was going to order their Friends to see to
his
vision.

But then he clenched his jaw, too proud to force them.

“Kik?” Dawn said.

He shrugged. “They feel a pull. But
I
do, too.”

Before anyone could respond, he took the path to the right, speed walking, then halted and glanced back at Dawn as if he’d expected her to be right behind him.

Natalia had stopped and was watching Dawn, too, a hopeful lift to her brows.

A niggle in the back of Dawn’s mind testified that she should put her money on the new psychic, that maybe when they got to Natalia’s headstone, she might have another vision that would lead to a break in the hunt.

But when Kiko got that same beat-down expression he wore whenever he disappointed her by taking those pills, she didn’t know what to do.

“Are you coming?” Kiko asked, his tone indicating that he knew how little faith she had in his ability these days.

And . . . game over.

Dawn addressed Breisi as she moved toward Kiko. “I’ll keep an eye on this one.”

Natalia lowered her gaze, drowning in that big coat of hers while Breisi circled around Dawn and the other spirits divided themselves between the two psychics.

“We should stay together,”
Breisi said in a warped version of the voice she always used to adopt when leading a hunt as a human. She’d been totally kick-ass then, too.

“We’re in public,” Dawn said. “If our ‘clients’ survived this long, they did it through some secrecy. We’ll be okay.”

Breisi sighed, but she didn’t argue while she flew to Natalia again, her voice fading as she said,
“Follow your Friends by taking the path on the right, then going a hundred and fifty feet. The grave will be on the left side.”

“Thanks, Breez.”

Dawn raised her hand to say bye to Natalia, but the girl was already following her own spirits, her hands stuffed into her pockets.

But why would Natalia give a hoot about Dawn’s support? Didn’t she know it wasn’t worth a three-dollar bill?

When she got to Kiko, he broke into a smile, and her chest squeezed into itself, just like it was trying to wring every last drop out of her damn heart.

“Knew you’d pick me,” he said, then spun around and dashed down the path.

Rolling her eyes, she nonetheless backed him up, flanked by Friends and recalling Breisi’s instructions as well as the details of Kiko’s vision: on the left, a boxed garden with a burning glass lantern. . . .

They passed slabs laid out like flat, marbled resting beds.

Newer dates. Older dates. Graves with Asian symbols. Crosses. More angels.

“Kiko,” she asked when they’d gone the required length, “maybe we already passed it.”

“Nope.”

He sounded utterly confident, and when he came to a halt several yards in front of Dawn, the goofy grin on his face told her that she’d made the right choice by being with him.

When she caught up, she rested a hand on his shoulder.

They stood there like that for some seconds, the movement of Friends swirling around them while they looked at a cross surrounded by blood-hued leaves. Someone obviously cared enough to visit often, because it really did seem like a small well-tended garden. Red roses and ferns guarded the foot of the grave, where a flame danced in a protective glass box that held a mirror in the back of it, reflecting their faces back at them if they bent low enough.

The rain had grayed to a drizzle, moistening Dawn’s face as she slipped off her hood.

“I wonder if a family member comes every day,” she said.

“Maybe a son or a daughter.” Kiko motioned toward the gravestone dates. The deceased had been in her early forties, but the Friends hadn’t been able to see that clearly last night with the lantern tucked beneath the shadow of foliage.

Dawn had already reached into her jacket pocket, ignoring the throwing blades and silver crucifix to pluck out a small PDA that included a recording option. Accessing it, she dictated her impressions, then the information on the gravestone, including the name: Colleen Abberline.

When she was done, she said, “Maybe an interview with Colleen’s family and friends will give us some clue as to why you saw her grave in a vision.”

“Or maybe the flame, the garden . . . Could these be symbols that are trying to tell me something else?”

Kiko had bent down to the grave, touching everything while Dawn was recording. But when he ran his fingertips over some fallen rose petals near the lantern, his spine stiffened.

Adrenaline shot through her.
He’s got something.

After a minute, he stood, laughing, fully energized.

“You got a clear reading?” she asked.

His smile was so wide it stretched his face. “H-yeah. I saw a guy’s face in the mirror of that lantern box.” Kiko pointed toward the constant flame. “This flower was touched by a young male in his twenties with dark hair and greenish eyes. He looked like the tall, thin type.”

“How tall?”

“I’m not sure, ’cos I just have that mirror to go by. It was near dusk, and he was kneeling in front of the grave and setting the flowers down, so I didn’t have anything to scale him against. Maybe he comes here to take care of Colleen.”

Two words had lodged in Dawn’s brain: tall. Thin.

Descriptions of what had once been witnessed beyond the gates of this cemetery in the dead of night.

But the Highgate Vampire was supposed to be
abnormally
tall with red eyes, and Kiko’s vision didn’t necessarily indicate either. . . .

She shook her head. Her imagination was wonky. Still, she couldn’t forget those hollow vibrations Natalia kept noticing around here.

Was
there something more than just an urban legend at work?

Her mouth was dry as she asked, “Kiko, do you think there’s any reason you might’ve tuned in to this grave in particular?”

And the tall, thin guy who visited it?

“I don’t know yet,” Kiko said, “but you can bet we’re gonna find him and have us a nice talk. Before that though, what do you say we track down Natalia and the wrong grave?”

He took up a cock-of-the-walk stride and whistled down the path, away from the flickering lantern and the garden grave.

As the Friends followed him, Dawn bent down to pick up a rose petal. Another tingle slid down her spine, and she glanced behind her, toward the north.

Nothing.

Hardly trusting in that, she stood and walked after Kiko, taking out a throwing blade and daring any Highgate lurkers to come out and play.

TEN

LONDON BABYLON

WHEN
darkness arrived, the girls awakened from their binge resting, then gathered in Violet’s room to wait until they sensed sleep from the rest of the students in the house.

“Last night wasn’t fair at all,” Noreen said as she sat on the floor and leaned back against the frilly bed.

Vi and Polly were up on the mattress, lying on their stomachs with their ankles crossed and lifted. Across from the bed, Blanche was slowly spinning in an office chair, just as distant from the conversation as Della, who reclined at the base of the accompanying desk.

“Most certainly unfair,” Polly said. “Banning us from leaving the grounds for the weekend until all this media blather dies down was brutal enough. And
then
having us drink rodent blood instead of allowing us to go out for a true feeding? Such bad form.”

“Infighting is bad form, as well,” Violet said, glaring at Blanche.

The black-haired girl seemed to care less about listening to their self-appointed leader, so Violet went a step further and used a communal mind link.

Am I correct, Blanche?
she said with such force that Della’s skull buzzed.
We’ll not do anything more to deserve such punishment again?

The other girl stopped circling in her chair. “I agree,” she said out loud, so carelessly that Della admired her for it.

Yet she hid her approval well.

Blanche began to spin again, and Violet sat up, lazily tracing her manicured fingernails over the flowered duvet and watching Blanche as if she were to be her next meal.

“No need to despair.” Noreen sprang up to a stand. “We do have the run of the house tonight, y’know.”

“I fancy the idea of avoiding more rats,” Polly said. “When was the last time we sampled the wares round
here
?”

“Months ago when we were last punished,” Violet added, still staring at Blanche. “But mind this: as we did back then, we would have to be careful to keep ourselves to a short, sweet drink and nothing more tonight.”

Della leaned her head against the desk. A drink would suffice to keep them nicely nourished, but it wouldn’t fill the appetites to which Wolfie had introduced them. Not entirely.

Blanche used the desk’s edge to stop her chair from spinning altogether. She seemed exceedingly serious when she turned back toward the others.