From the opposite side of the tunnel, Frank fired his flamethrower. But when it guttered in midgrowl, he dug his other hand into his bag. During this pause, a Guard spit at Frank, and Dawn yelled, “Dad!” because she knew it might burn even in the water-soaked fight. But . . . oh, hell.
Frank didn’t need to worry, because he’d zipped out of the line of spit and come to cling to the side of a wet wall, crouched and ready to spring on the offending Guard.
Vamp. Her dad was a crappy v—
Just as Dawn drew a machete from a hip holster and was about to finish off her own half-sawed creature, and just as Kiko’s second foe disappeared from a bullet to the heart, Frank’s Guard suddenly backed against the opposite wall, as if losing its senses, its purpose. Then it let out a word that almost jolted Dawn out of body.
“Frank . . .” the pitiful thing said, sliding down to the mud.
Her dad’s grip slipped on his wall, making him lose his insect-like position. He crouched, hair matted to his head, water streaming down his weathered face. His silver eyes peeked through his drenched strands.
The sitting Guard cocked its head and continued to stare at Frank. “Hooome.”
Frank started to shake his head in denial.
“Dad?” Dawn said, leaving her own Guard behind as she lifted her machete and came closer to the sitting sentry.
Why wasn’t her dad fighting? Maybe the Guard was seducing him back to their side; he
was
a vamp, she reminded herself, even though she didn’t want to.
“Don’t!” Frank said, lifting a hand. “Don’t do anything—”
The Guard had turned its wet face toward Dawn. “Dawnie?”
The machete almost fell from her grasp.
Then she looked past the red eyes and at its expression. She wouldn’t ever have known, otherwise, but there was something about its voice that told her.
“Hugh,” Frank said. “It’s Hugh Wayne.”
Hugh Wayne.
When Dawn had last seen him, she and Kiko had been interviewing the drunk at the Cat’s Paw—Frank’s favorite bar—about her dad’s disappearance. They’d continued to keep tabs on the place, and on her final visit, when she and Breisi had checked in there, Dawn had noticed Hugh was missing. No one knew where he’d gone, but since he had a tendency to land in jail or go on private benders, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. But he had no family, no real friends outside of the bar, so who had been around to care?
Then something about that first night at the Cat’s Paw hit her, too. “Matt Lonigan” had been there. “Matt,” the Master.
She suspected how Hugh might’ve disappeared. How each and every one of these buffed-out Guards might’ve been recruited . . .
“Hooome,” murmured the Guard . . . Hugh. “Bloood.”
At that word, Dawn gripped her machete, and Kiko, who was just as gobsmacked, raised his revolver. Yeah, they knew this guy, but he was still a vamp. He would kill for their blood, but that wasn’t what was spooking her the most.
Her first instinct had been to terminate him without another thought—that was what made her scared.
Frank inched closer to his old friend, cocking his own head as if in understanding. The vamp habit dug into Dawn.
“Hugh?” he asked.
But, just as he got near, something tore out from behind a corner, flying at Frank. Without even deigning to glance at it, her dad easily raised his hand and ripped at the thing’s throat.
It was a Groupie skidding over the mud, a scimitar in hand. The woman’s silver eyes bulged as she opened her mouth in silent surprise and tested her ripped throat with long, pink-painted fingernails. The chains she wore over her skin got caked with grime, her flowing blond hair growing red where it met her opened neck.
Before anyone could react, Hugh the Guard sprang at the new arrival.
“Blood! Groupie blood, Groupie blood!” He grunted, wrenching back her head to sink his iron fangs into her neck, then drinking deeply.
As the Groupie’s eyes rolled back, her mouth formed one beseeching word that looked like “Master???”
From the corner, Dawn’s almost-dead Guard began to crawl through the mud and toward the Groupie, too. “Groupie blood, Groupie blood.”
Kiko, Dawn, and Frank all connected gazes, the meaning in each of their eyes clear.
Run.
Frank scooped up Kiko, not even considering the insult of what he was doing to the back-injured psychic, and Dawn hefted her saw-bow to her side. They took off, the mud sucking at her boots until they reached an area where the sprinklers were off. She ran faster when the eerie screeches of “hooome” wavered through the tunnels, as if searching, coming closer and closer. . . .
Thank God none of them had been bleeding. Thank God none of their own wounds had set those Guards off.
As the cries came to a peak, Frank motioned for Dawn and Kiko to halt and wait against a wall. They did, and she pushed her machete back into its holster, then grabbed her .45 to aim it instead. Through a hole in the wall, they could see more Guards screeching past in an adjacent tunnel, coming from other sentry points around the Underground on their way to Hugh and the sacrificial Groupie.
Then Frank lifted his chin, as if listening to the air.
He might’ve been connecting with Eva now. Dawn hoped so, as she watched a few Groupies dash toward the growing “hooome!” screams.
“I wonder,” she whispered to Kiko, “if the Guards can keep those Groupies busy long enough for us to get in and out.”
“Don’t count on it,” Kik said, his breathing labored. He wasn’t complaining about being carried around by her muscled dad, so all seemed good.
Frank jerked his head in the “go” signal, and they ran ahead, making their haphazard way toward Eva, then hopefully Breisi, then maybe even . . . ?
How
was
Costin doing?
As Frank ran ahead with Kiko, Dawn cleared her mind, doing her best to stay even with her fast dad.
But when someone’s arm sprang out of a crevice in the wall to grab her throat, she couldn’t even cry out.
All she could do was watch Frank disappearing down the tunnel with Kiko under his arm while she was dragged into that crevice. Then, as her vision adjusted, she found herself in a small room filled with what looked to be office supplies.
Office supplies? she thought randomly, her throat raw and tender. What the—?
Then her attacker swung her up and pinned her against the wall, holding her high above him with one hand against her chest, making her heave for air as she dropped her weapons.
“Just because the Master likes you,” Paul Aspen said, his scars from the chandelier healed to pink reminders, “it doesn’t mean we can’t settle things between us in a way you won’t forget.”
He reached up and ripped out her blood-moon earring, laughing as she yelled.
WHILE Costin’s team had made their way Underground—a fact unbeknownst to him—he had stepped out of the shadows to reveal himself in the starkly depressing room known as Benedikte’s chambers. Costin had hypnotized his and the Friends’ way past Servants, Groupies, Elites, and Guards to get here, mentally persuading the simple beings that they were not seeing him. Ultimately, finding the Master’s quarters had been all too easy.
Now, as he stood before Benedikte, he saw that his old comrade was not himself. Literally. He was wearing another being’s body: that of a long-haired, brown-tressed male vampire whose face held a barely contained scowl. Yet Costin knew it was his old friend under the surface. He could tell by the window of the eyes.
Casually, he reached into Jonah’s oversized coat, grasping the small, tied velvet bags that the Friends would need to guarantee the privacy
he
would need with Benedikte. He’d waited until finding the Master before setting the spirits loose, avoiding any alarms they might trigger on their own.
“Go,” he commanded, tossing the bags into the air. The spirits batted them around to push them forward as they left through the open door. Just as carelessly, Costin went to close the barrier, watching Benedikte all the while.
“Shifting shapes,” Costin noted as his comrade merely stared with unfocused eyes. “Your powers grew strong. What other talents have you developed?”
As the Master crawled away from the woman he had been cradling—all while never removing his gaze from Costin—memory returned like a night’s half-moon.
Benedikte, his fierce yet gentle friend.
He had always fought hard for the dragon, even before the blood vow had been undertaken, yet he had loved a wife beyond all imagining. When she had delivered their stillborn son, it had taken away a vital element in the man; it had perhaps even made it possible for Benedikte to have embraced vampirism with such relish in the end.
Costin watched his companion dart a glance to the breathing vampire woman in the corner, as if to make sure she was safe. Eva Claremont, Dawn’s mother. Her eyes were closed, as if in slumber. A look of such longing passed over Benedikte’s face that Costin found him to be almost human.
Finally, the Master located his voice. “You entered without incidence. I didn’t invite you inside. . . .”
“I don’t need such a thing. I am not a vampire like you.” Costin shook his head. “Benedikte, I sensed you long ago. You must have wandered aboveground, or perhaps come near an entrance to have shared Awareness with me. You are hard to detect Below.”
“You aren’t . . . a vampire?” his old friend asked with wonder.
Costin clung to those words. They were all he had besides his rented soul and Jonah’s temporary shelter.
At Benedikte’s perplexed glance, Costin relented, sweeping a hand over this shape—Jonah’s—that must have been so unfamiliar to his old friend.
“I am still Costin,” he reminded him.
For a sublime moment, his friend’s eyes sparkled, and in that gleam, Costin saw them laughing together over meals, sweating together over the labor of seeing their land remain pure and untouched by foreign conquerors.
As if slipping into a more comfortable suit, Benedikte’s body flowed from its present state to one more welcoming.
His
own form. The true Benedikte.
Anxiety invaded Costin. He had bested many masters, but this one . . . ? He was almost a true brother. The bond they had enjoyed remained one of his most treasured human memories.
“My brother,” Benedikte said, his tone a testament to better times. But then he cocked his head, his eyes returning to the dull haze that had greeted Costin previously. “You’re here to challenge me?”
“Yes, Benedikte.”
His old friend smiled tentatively. “Did your Underground fail? Is that why you want mine? I wouldn’t turn you out, Costin. You know I wouldn’t. Or . . .” He frowned. “No—you were vanquished centuries ago. After the vow, after we crossed the Danube and . . .”
“I did not expire.” Costin fought to contain composure. “Not in the conventional way.”
Benedikte was clearly frustrated because he did not understand. He had almost regressed to being a child, this man turned poor beast.
Truthfully, Costin did not understand everything, either. But there was one question he needed to ask, one more emotional detail before he would do what he must.
“Did you ever hear me calling to you, Benedikte?” From the prison. From his own hell.
The Master shook his head. “No. Never.” For a moment, the odd light that consumed his gaze clarified. “Had I known you were still among us, I would have answered.”
Costin had only wanted to know. “Yes, I believe that.” Then he nodded. “But now there is business to attend to.”
“Business?” Benedikte pushed the wild hair back from his face and broke into a shaky laugh.
Costin was not certain it was because he found the challenge amusing or if it was because of the many things that must have further scarred his friend during years of pathetic existence.
“When my first Underground was attacked—by Andre, of all vampires,” the Master added, “it was a less-civilized moment than this.”
Costin knew of the warring between brothers. At times, it made his job easier, if that was how one wished to describe it. Then again, it also caused difficulties when more than one master banded together to strengthen their societies.
“This can be painless, Benedikte,” he said gently. He just wanted this to be over. “Can you tell me where our father is buried?”
The blood in Jonah’s body began to thrum in anticipation. Though The Whisper had once clarified that the dragon was expected to rise in the late 2000s, Costin knew time was precious.
But Benedikte was not biting—just like the rest of them.
“Why are you here?” he asked instead.
When Costin did not answer, his old friend began laughing—out of control, unhinged while he turned his body toward Eva Claremont again.
“I wouldn’t have expected this from you,” Benedikte said. “All those rumors about our brothers turning on one another, and I never thought you could ever be one of them, dead
or
alive.”
Little did Benedikte know just how far Costin had turned.
But his friend was not done talking. He had rested his back against a wall, his gaze still trained on the woman.
A quiet alarm began to beat in red and blue urgency over the Master’s desk, but the vampire didn’t mark it. Costin, however, did. Had someone else breached the Underground?
Dawn. Perhaps she had blocked his final mind blast. He had been depending on its effectiveness, but he should have anticipated her strength.
“I still don’t understand,” Benedikte said softly, oblivious. “After the world said our father was ‘dead,’ it should’ve been so easy. Instead of pursuing his throne from beyond the grave, he decided to quietly enjoy his powers, just like the rest of us. He lay low and allowed his enemies to concentrate on other wars before he formulated the plan of plans to return.”
Costin had heard the tale before from other masters, although he had been forced to construct it from piecemeal parts. After his so-called “death,” the dragon had enjoyed many gluttonous pursuits. They had never been enough, though, so he had decided to use the element of surprise to regain his properties . . . and then some. Yet just as the maker had been readying those plans, a book had been published in the late 1800s, a work of “fiction” that had brought his legend to light, and it became impossible for him to maneuver undetected.
