A Drop of Red (9 page)

But her father was scanning the rooftops, just like he was doing his own reconnaissance. He had distracted creases lining his forehead.

“Is there something . . . ?” Dawn asked.

He hesitated, then went back to leaning on his shovel handle. “Nah.”

A whoosh of jasmine swept around them, and they all stood a little straighter.

It was Breisi; Dawn could tell from the way her Friend gently brushed against her braid in greeting.

“All clear,”
her wispy voice said.

As she flew by Frank, he lifted his hand, like he was sifting through the spirit while she flowed past him on her way back to sentry duty.

For a second, Dawn took in the glow of him: an inner light that had nothing to do with vampire stuff. Right now, he was just a creature who’d found the one soul who could possibly replace the loss of his own.

Dawn grasped the chain link, then hefted herself up and up, scampering over the hard netting and tossing her shovel over the top. The tool landed with a
thunk
on the other side.

Balancing for only a moment, she swiveled over the fence, airborne until she landed in a crouch, then stood.

Much to her chagrin, she grunted as her thigh wound reminded her it was there.

Frank followed Dawn over, but he was way more graceful, even with his muscled bulk.

Kiko flanked Natalia on the other side, staying put. He kept one hand in his jacket pocket, where he’d stuffed a small silver stake. Just in case.

When Dawn and Frank chose their spots and dug into the dirt, Natalia hitched in a breath.

They stopped.

“Something wrong?” Kiko asked.

“You . . . didn’t sense it?” Natalia held her hand over her chest.

“No . . .”

Dawn came to the rescue of Kiko’s professional pride. “Sense what exactly?”

The new girl fisted her coat. “Maybe it was a groan. Or two of them . . . three . . . maybe more?”

“Did they change their minds about us being here?” Kiko asked. “Are they trying to tell us to leave?”

“I don’t think so.” Natalia looked down, listening. Then she made a defeated sound. “I wish Mr. Limpet could be here. Perhaps he would recognize what they’re trying to communicate better than I.”

Kiko coughed, reminding her that it wasn’t a good idea to talk about Costin in the open. On the way over, they’d told Natalia why the boss had remained behind, how he’d be their ultimate weapon once the vampires were targeted.

Natalia should’ve known better.

Or was she just too nervous to remember?

Thinking about other, darker explanations for the girl’s lapse, Dawn went back to digging. As for Frank, he was glancing at the rooftops again.

“That’s the second time you’ve taken a gander there,” she said.

“Okay, there’s something, but I’m not sure what.” He met Dawn’s gaze, his eyes light green as Dawn’s headset caught them. “Maybe that’s what the dead are groaning about?”

Warning fluttered down Dawn’s spine as she halted in mid-dig, looking behind her at the rooftops, too.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kiko put his other hand inside his jacket, where his shoulder holster would be. He was the only team member who was packing an illegally obtained revolver with silver bullets. If he was caught with it here in England, where not even the cops routinely carried guns, Costin and his connections would have a fine time clearing him. It’d been enough to secure the team visas, for God’s sake.

But Kik thought his notoriously great aim was worth the gamble.

Frank exhaled. “It’s gone now.”

“Whatever it was,” Dawn said, “the Friends are bound to find it.”

“Maybe we should leave,” Natalia said.

Dawn hoped Costin was getting all this through the earpieces. She only wore one herself because she couldn’t access their Awareness out here: too distant, too risky. But the earpiece robbed her of any sensory connection with him, and she wished she knew what he thought of Natalia now.

“You hear that, Dawn?” Kiko asked, shooting her a conspiring glance. “The newbie wants to leave.”

“
Shouldn’t
we leave?” Natalia repeated.

Kiko chuffed. “Not unless
you
just want to heel it out of here because you know something we don’t.”

“I’m . . .” She took a step back from him. “What do you mean?”

“Bad guys.” Kiko pointed at the rooftops. “You didn’t happen to bring any here with you, did you?”

“Oh, Kik,” Dawn said.

“You were thinking it, too. I’m just saying it out loud.”

Natalia turned to the fence again, blinding Dawn with her headlight. But before that, just for a split second, Dawn had sworn she’d seen a hint of mortification on her face.

When the other girl spoke, her shaking words only proved Dawn’s suspicion. “One of the voices I heard this morning . . . She was like me. Like any of us. A girl who was going about life until it ended so suddenly.”

Like any of us?

Dawn gripped her shovel handle, because she wasn’t like Natalia or this other victim at all.

“I only wanted to see that she found peace,” Natalia continued, “along with any others here.”

Surprisingly, Kiko seemed to lay off as he said, “To do that, we’ll have to stay. Can you handle it?”

Natalia’s bobbing headset light indicated her answer, and Frank grumbled under his breath, then started to dig, destroying the embarrassing pause that followed. After offering Natalia a look that said she was sorry about this situation, Dawn followed her dad’s example.

But she was sorry about a whole lot more, too, like how she still couldn’t believe in Costin’s newest recruit. Like how they’d brought Natalia here with them in the first place.

They dug, Frank shoveling dirt in normal time, because he only used his powers in the open when absolutely necessary, and Dawn keeping up pace. Then, after what seemed like minutes later, the new team member sucked in another sharp breath.

And that was even before Frank stopped digging, falling to his knees and dropping his shovel as he inspected what he’d found under the dirt.

Dawn tossed her shovel away, too, and darted to his side.

Breathless, she aimed her headlight on the face of a pale corpse, its mouth twisted in a frozen scream. Holy shit.

“What do you have?” Kiko asked.

“Female,” Dawn said.
Oxygen in, oxygen out. Come on.
“Very late teens, maybe? The body’s real fresh, but there’s dried blood caked around her mouth. And, crap . . . her neck.”

“What about it?” Kiko asked.

Dawn looked closer, her stomach lurching.

“The rest of her body’s not covered by the dirt. We’ve only got a head here.”

A rattle of the fence made her and Frank look over to find Kiko hovering over a collapsed Natalia, who was mumbling.

“What’s going on?” Dawn asked.

“She’s talking.” Kiko bent his head closer to the other psychic, then relayed what she was whispering. “Her name’s Kate, and she’s a local English girl. She should’ve known better than to go off with the others. . . . She should’ve stayed a good girl and listened to all the lessons her parents tried to teach her when she was younger. Somewhere, she forgot most of those lessons. God forgive her. . . .”

Frank flinched, and Dawn grabbed his arm, but shamefully, it was more of out of excitement than extended comfort.

Her mind whirred with the beginning of the hunt. Costin would be back at headquarters right now, already initiating a data search for missing persons named “Kate” or any variation thereof. He would also try to hit up an identified paranormal-friendly detective in London to wrangle up the names of known runaways, people who weren’t closely cared for.

By now, Natalia had gone speechless, her head lolling forward as she began to weep. Kiko reached out, as if he were about to touch her shoulder.

But then he seemed to remember she was his competition, and he turned to Dawn instead. “Sounds like that’s all we’re going to get from her.”

Dawn stood. “It might be enough for a lead.”

Kiko got to his feet, too, shoving his hands in his pockets as Frank took up his shovel, lifting more dirt from the ground.

“Hey,” Dawn said to Kik, thinking she should try to make him feel valuable. Tough love was hard. Besides, it’d go a long way in stoking his motivation. “Want to come in here? I know you’ve never gotten touch readings from corpses, but if the rest of the body’s around, maybe there’s clothing on it, and you can get something from that. Or the dirt, itself.”

Frank had halted his labor again. “I’m thinking you won’t get any clothing here.”

Dawn turned to find him pointing to a hole he’d made. His finger was shaking, reminding her of how he got when he saw something like a shaving cut on Kiko’s face before they got any healing goo on it.

“Disembodied, bare limbs and a couple of skulls,” Frank said. “Some still have flesh on them—I can smell it. But most are stripped to the bone, like something was
real
hungry.”

For the second time that night, Dawn’s stomach dipped. “Have you ever heard of a . . .
client
”—she didn’t want to say “vampire” out loud—“eating flesh like that?”

Dawn’s earpiece came to life, and Costin’s voice followed.

“Not any client I’ve seen before. But we cannot assume this was the result of a ravenous creature. Perhaps there is a ritual involved.”

A moan sounded from the other side of the fence. Natalia.

She’d gotten to her knees by now, hunched over. Kiko even had his hand on her back.

“Shit,” Dawn said under her breath, reaching into her jacket for her cell phone.

As Frank backed away and tried to get himself together, she took pictures of Kate’s head, then the limbs, which she would forward to Costin ASAP. At the same time, she accessed her earpiece to communicate directly with him.

“Frank’s tempted to fall off the wagon,” she said. “Also? Our new girl’s coming apart.”

“She is only human.”

At his brusque answer, Dawn went back to taking her photos. Even though she and Costin were technically connected on many levels, they didn’t understand each other at all. He had no idea how he’d just pierced her, reminding her that, unlike Natalia, Dawn had gone beyond being repulsed by a dead body.

Meanwhile, Frank had taken out a kerchief and covered his lower face while using his own phone to take pictures. Flashes cut each night-dark moment into strobed blocks.

A whiff of familiar jasmine interrupted Dawn just as she was about to take a closer picture of Kate’s head.

Breisi.

“Hey,” Dawn said, “aren’t you supposed to be guarding—?”

The spirit moved around her so fast that the motion whipped Dawn’s face to the right.

Where something red gleamed from a rooftop.

Something like eyes.

Dawn’s mind slashed to an image from the past. Red eyes.

Guards—soldiers from the Hollywood Underground. Machete tails, iron fangs, spit that burned.

The first vampire she’d ever fought.

Adrenaline surging, Dawn didn’t think. She reacted, dropping her phone as she took a running leap at the fence.

“Dawn!” Frank yelled, just before she heard him tell Kiko to stow his gun away.

But she’d already scaled the chain link and dropped to the other side, her body filled with rushing ice, her breath stabbing her lungs.

She sprinted ahead, following the eyes as they began to streak toward the right.

Jasmine surrounded her. Friends.

But they were pushing her back, not forward.

“What’re you doing?” Dawn swung her fists at them, keeping the red eyes in sight while they zipped over the rooftops, moving from one building to the other.

Farther away from her.

Farther.

As Dawn struggled to get free, the spirits pressed against her, binding her arms to her sides. But Breisi’s thready voice circled Dawn’s head, as if her friend was trying to make the others back off.

Another Friend’s voice—a thick Brazilian accent—trumped Breisi’s.

“Capture . . . That
thing
had a capture box. An Elite vial!”

“If you’re afraid that the intruder might know how to capture you like the Elites in L.A. did,” Dawn said, levering her weight away from them as they held her, “don’t. If that
thing
wanted you, it would have you by now.”

“It’s running away,”
another Friend said in Japanese-accented English.
“The boss would want you to leave it, Dawn. . . .”

“Too dangerous,”
said another.

“Release me!” Dawn shouted, knowing they’d have to obey as long as the command didn’t fly in the face of one of Costin’s directives or result in his harm.

The pressure immediately lifted off, and she ran full steam ahead. But jasmine still pushed her, and she knew Breisi was helping, propelling her and protecting her while leaving the others to guard the site.

Pumping her arms for more speed, Dawn delved into the maze of streets around the construction area. Something—ivy?—from a flowered window box slapped her face as her headlight paved the way. A garbage bag nearly tripped her as she barged past the end of the chain-link fence.

Damn it—she couldn’t see the eyes anymore; she’d been running blindly, hoping to catch up.

She slowed to a walk, panting, getting her bearings, the cold catching up to scratch her cheeks. A pain poked at her thigh.

But unwilling to give up, she speed walked ahead, toward a building that boasted pipes on its facade, almost as if it’d been turned wrong side out to show off its innards.

“Where’d you go?” she whispered to herself. “How could you have just disappeared?”