A Drop of Red (33 page)

Not even the sustaining blood it took twice weekly from the human schoolgirls could keep it from withering into this dry thing. But that blood was merely for survival, and the cat-vampire required so much more.

Touching its sapless skin, it bemoaned how these modern times, with the pollution and cancerous technology poisoning the air, took more of a toll than in centuries past, thus accelerating the need for rituals. Even constant healing could not battle the aging, and although the cat-vampire used much energy to appear as a young woman during the assumption of this “human” identity, the true destruction of its freshness—so hard earned, so nearly impossible to keep—saddened it. When it had first exchanged blood to become this vampire at twenty-eight years of age, it had been long past the budding beauty these Queenshill students possessed. Even so, the cat-vampire had enthralled many an admirer with its elegant pulchritude.

That is, before that pulchritude inevitably wilted.

Its fingers dragged down a face ravaged by day-to-day existence, by lack of the elixir it had begun to require twice a year.

But as it faced the slumbering Blanche again, blood sighed through its veins.

Skin dewed with youth and smoothness. Body lithe and graceful.

Just what the cat-vampire needed to claim Mihas’s attentions again.

“Wolfie”—what a name Mihas loved to be called,
“Wolfie”
—often delighted in repeating how the cat could never be genuinely young again. He had even accused it of hating these girls because they would be at their freshest for years to come, on the perpetual verge of womanhood, while the cat had been far from it for centuries. Mihas occasionally even mocked the cat-vampire because of how the Underground—his own personal paradise—contained a near army of the cat’s biggest rivals for his affection.

Rivals who would not degenerate until centuries had passed . . .

On the other side of the room, Blanche stirred in her sleep, just as Briana and Sharon had once done, as well as others before them.

The cat slipped into a satin robe and then went to her. “Wake up, darling,” it said while caressing Blanche’s temple.

It would not tell the girl about “Wolfie”’s visit to her careless, absentee parents in Paris. It would not relay the news about their subsequent deaths. All the girls—and the rest of society—would continue believing that Blanche’s mum and dad were still traveling the globe, yet with Blanche accompanying them now. They would never even know how their precious Wolfie had posed as her father and seen to the details of removing her from Queenshill.

It would do no good to have parents sniffing around, ambivalent or not, so the Underground did what must be done.

Blanche blinked out of sleep once, twice, smiling when she saw the cat. Her back remained turned on the implements that cast such demented shadows over the far wall.

The cat-vampire helped Blanche to sit, then reached for an empty rounded glass from a nearby table. Slashing its wrist with a long nail, it let blood into the vessel.

Blanche hungrily watched the flow. “Have my parents arrived yet?”

“Not yet,” the cat said in a tone that it had adjusted era by era so as not to stand out as an ancient creature. Soft conversation always made the elixir-girls simpler to handle, easing them into the ritual. “They should be along soon. You just drink up, because it might be a night or two before you find a way to take blood without your parents knowing.”

The cat healed its wrist while handing the warm glass to Blanche, who took it in her palms like round, ripe fruit.

Still sleepy, Blanche closed her eyes as she drank, her long lashes sweeping over her pale cheeks, her red lips a splash of color against her raven-dark hair.

The cat envied the girl once again, almost tasting her purity upon its tongue because the elixir was so close.

Blanche drank until the glass was empty, her eyelids growing heavy because the creature had charmed its blood so it might put the girl into a deeper sleep than the one before.

A sleep of no pain.

As Blanche drifted off, sweetly dreaming of the reunion with her parents, the cat-vampire rescued the glass from the girl’s falling hands and caught her as she dipped backward.

“Thank you,” it whispered, easing the girl to the cushions once again. “I do greatly appreciate all that you’re about to give me.”

It stood, placing the glass on the table and allowing enough time for the blood to infiltrate Blanche’s. Then it moved to the hanging blades, a forest of scythes and surgical tools.

It selected the shiniest of them all. A scalpel.

As the creature’s pulse pumped, it walked to the bathtub, then tested the ankle harnesses dangling above the porcelain. It also made certain that the icebox behind the tub was at a decent temperature so it might hold all the treats that went along with the blood.

A pure heart, a clean liver, fresh lungs . . . Sweets it would eat at its leisure throughout the night that would restore vitality and youth.

Saliva flooded the cat’s mouth as it imagined the delicacies, as it laid the scalpel near the tub and stripped the robe off its body.

Then it went to Blanche, scooping her into its arms.

It brought her to the bathtub, where it peeled the uniform from the girl then shackled her ankles so she hung over the receptacle like something delicious to be plucked off a tree.

Only then did the creature step into the tub, its skin throbbing as it allowed its pores to open like tiny mouths mewling and ready to suck in the blood and beauty.

While lovingly pressing its mouth to the girl’s fragrant, warm neck—careful, so careful, not to kill her until it had dined on what it needed while the girl’s body fruitlessly self-healed until the cat sliced off her head—it saw the dried-up reflection of itself in the looking glass across the room.

But when it tore out the girl’s throat and allowed the freshness to rain down, its mirror image went as red as a poppy blooming in the new sunshine.

TWENTY - ONE

THE EMERGENCE

AS
Dawn drove Kiko and Frank—the reconnaissance team—to Queenshill, she got her head into the zone.

In the zone, she didn’t have to think about Costin. She didn’t have to dwell on any worst-case scenarios—only what she needed to do to track these vampires, to determine if they were part of an Underground, and to pack them away if they were.

Then she could move on to the next freakish bloodsucking community.

Kiko and Frank didn’t talk, either, maybe because they knew Dawn wasn’t up for a chat. Or maybe they were in their own zones.

She steered onto the tiny lane leading to the school. The weather had cleared, and the moon stared down, glowing over the burnished green landscape on the one night it would’ve been nice to have full darkness. Then again, the illumination would help Dawn and Kiko see without the use of their headlights, so she wouldn’t complain.

She pulled the SUV off the road a quarter mile from campus, hiding their vehicle among a nook of foliage. Then, knowing from the Friends that the property was gated at night and Queenshill had surveillance cameras that the spirits could cloud, the trio packed light weapons while getting an update from the Friends about the location of the Queen Bee girls.

Afterward, Dawn relayed the content to Costin since he was back at headquarters and too far away for a Friend to efficiently communicate with, or to fly down there and give him the scoop herself. It was even too far to communicate using his and Dawn’s shared Awareness.

“Those Queen Bees haven’t moved from the dorms since they finished activities for the day and met with house tutors to do schoolwork,” she said. “Sounds like our subjects decided to relax in the dorm’s common room after that and, interestingly enough, when they entered, the human students left, just like they couldn’t handle being in the same space. Right now, the girls are actually napping in front of the TV.”

His voice vibrated Dawn’s earpiece. “That common room is on the far side of the dorm, facing away from where you are now.” He was obviously using the map the team had drawn up for him so he could follow their progress. “The Friends will have time to warn you if the girls change position. You will need to stay alert once you draw close to those dorms.”

“Gotcha.” It’d be bad enough to be caught by anyone, but they were being extra careful because, if the vamp girls just happened to recognize them from the school tour today, there’d be some major ’splaining to do.

“Good luck,” said Natalia over the earpiece. She was also on the line back at headquarters because, without much physical training, she might have to be watched by the team, and that wouldn’t work at all.

It’d been different with Dawn when she’d joined up last year. Because of stunt work, she’d been trained to use a revolver, to dodge and run and jump. Sure, her professional battles had been staged, but she’d been in fighting shape. Besides, she’d been “key” to the investigation, so she’d undergone trial by fire.

They all thanked Natalia for her positive wishes, then walked toward the wall that divided the lane from the campus’s football field.

“Luck?” Kiko asked. “We don’t need no stinkin’ luck.”

Dawn motioned for him to start climbing the wall while, in the near distance, dogs barked, sawing at the nerves she’d already calmed.

But she told herself to get in the zone again.

Frosty. Ready.

Knowing the Friends were already looking out for them, the team jogged, keeping their bodies low along the tree line as they aimed for a three-story stone house on the outskirts of the main campus.

As Frank went inside, Dawn and Kiko covered him: her with silver throwing blades plus an ultraviolet flash grenade that Breisi and Frank had built, and Kiko with a revolver loaded with silver bullets dipped in holy water. Since they were trying to move around quickly tonight without being noticed, they’d left bigger attack toys, like the saw-bow, in their vehicle.

The spirits had told them that this building was abandoned, but the team was still vigilant while Frank poked around, using every one of his increased vampire senses to ferret out any sign of an Underground entrance where the Friends couldn’t.

Not finding anything on the lower floor of the building, which looked like it was used to store old school furniture, he moved to a higher one.

But all too soon, Dawn’s earpiece came alive with her dad’s gruff voice. “It’s clean here. I’m ready to move on.”

So Frank continued his bloodhound act around the football field, sweeping from one end to the other. But he didn’t find much besides goal posts and a few cigarette butts near a bunch of trees.

Next.

They headed toward the campus’s main buildings, with those chimera silhouettes etched against the night. Jasmine floated around the team on the surprisingly mild air while the Friends moved around, distracting an old security guard and keeping watch.

Again, Frank found nothing.

Nothing near the chapel, either, even though Dawn hadn’t ruled out the site for possible vamp activity. The community could very well be immune to holy symbols, just like the higher Hollywood creatures had been.

The team rested against the chapel’s wall, eyeing the cluster of dorms in the near distance.

“What’s the word?” Dawn asked the Friends, who kept coming and going.

Mary-Margaret, a spirit with a Georgia-peach accent, filled them in.
“The girls are still knocked out in front of the common room TV. But the frizzy-haired girl named Della is stirring every so often.”

The team inspected the particular dorm that the Friends had fingered as the home of those four Queen Bees. Dawn pointed to a gathering of trees about eight hundred feet from the house, and Frank gestured that he wanted to go there next.

Since the vamp girls were secure and the trees were a good distance away, they all moved to the new location, where Frank immediately started combing through the leaves while closely scanning and sniffing.

As dogs still barked off yonder, Dawn and Kiko hunkered down by the tree trunks, fixing their eyes on the dorm windows. Some of them were black, but some were lit up, creating a light-dark jigsaw in the night.

The girls were inside that puzzle, Dawn thought. And, damn it, she wished the team could’ve thought of a nonconfrontational way to arrange for her dad to look into a few of those vamps’ eyes for a mind search tonight instead of puttering around with this slow Frank-hound stuff.

But again . . . what if these vamps were capable of recognizing a related creature like Frank? Would they welcome him or attack?

And would the discovery of him put the girls and their possible Underground on alert?

Dawn’s skin prickled just before a Friend whished by. Her voice was too excited for Dawn to identify her.

“Vampire!”
she said.
“Della has come back to her room for a book, and she’s on this side of the dorm now!”

Light filled one of the windows and, on a held breath, Dawn retreated back into the trees next to Kiko, putting away her weapons and taking out her small surveillance binoculars. She zoomed in while the Friend took the message to Frank.

He went statue still, too.

They all seemed to freeze their pulses as they watched the dorm, hoping the light would go dark. . . .

But then Della with the frizzy hair appeared in her window, glancing around, wrinkling her nose and bending to the bottom of the frame.

Where it was cracked about an inch.

She sniffed at the opening, then bolted up and scanned outside.

A current of terror zapped around Dawn’s chest. This Della’s sense of smell couldn’t be
that
good, not at over eight hundred feet, right? Dawn and Kiko had even washed with Breisi’s neutralizing soap.

The girl opened the window the rest of the way and leaned forward, sniffing some more, then homing in on the trees.