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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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“Do you know what’s in store for
you,
little girl?”
The
custode
lightly tweaked Della’s baby-fat cheek.
Then, quiet as a black spider, the keeper backed away from the bed, lowering the night goggles in preparation to depart.
Sliding out the window, the caretaker kept in mind that Mrs. Jones—or Claudia, as Mihas called her—had stationed her vampire self on the rooftop. Yet the keepers went through a lot of trouble to render themselves scentless, soundless.
The
custode
flicked on the night-vision goggles then, catching the air, grabbed the stone of a balcony on the way down, repeating the graceful process by swinging on more balconies, lower and lower, until reaching the ground.
Time to go back to tracking the attackers who had breached the Queenshill School for Girls last night.
The
custode
grinned before blending with the less dangerous, more natural shadows outside.
Time to get back to the relatively safer stuff.
TWO
LONDON BABYLON, INSIDE THE TEMPORARY HAVEN
DELLA
started out of her binge rest to find the curtains stirring in a breeze from the opened window, and before her next disconcerted breath, she sprang off the bed to the restless drapery, which she shoved aside.
Someone had just been in the room. But who?
What?
Yet when she peered out the window, nothing was there. Nothing at all. Not even a smell to be detected by her sharpened senses.
Only a timid, chill breeze peeling away the layers of a mid-November morning. Only the slumberous city street below the business hotel in Islington where the girls’ superior, Mrs. Jones, had taken them a few hours ago for safekeeping after the attack on Queenshill by those ...
Della wasn’t so certain what they had been. Another vampire family headed by a preternatural named Frank?
Or something much worse, as Della feared?
As she let the curtain drop back into place, her skin prickled. She was only allowing her imagination to get the best of her, but she couldn’t help recalling one of last night’s attackers—a much meaner, leaner vampire who’d joined his violent chums in the middle of the Queenshill melee. The school had always kept the girls hidden and secure, until last night, when her and her classmates’ secret lifestyle had been challenged by those attackers, who had been minus the mean vampire at first. But when he had joined them, he had ripped apart the dogs Della had called to defend against the trespassers who had crept onto the school grounds for inexplicable reasons.
Her blood curdled as she remembered barely escaping the bad vampire and his clear thirst for destruction.
As a precaution, Mrs. Jones—or “Claudia,” as Wolfie, the master, had affectionately called her last night—had gathered the girls and relocated them here, in this hotel. She had also said that she would watch for any trouble from the hotel’s rooftop, guarding for signs of Frank and his band, should the group decide to pursue them beyond school grounds.
However, Mrs. Jones hadn’t seemed to believe that this scenario would come to fruition; she was even confident that Wolfie’s main Underground at Highgate, which housed his larger community of young female vampires, would stay secure. Naturally, Wolfie had stayed away from the Underground for the time being, just as Della and her friends had been removed from the site of the attack itself—the girls’ sub-Underground at Queenshill, where Della and her small class had been training to become a part of Wolfie’s community after promotion.
There was just something arrogant about Mrs. Jones’s faith, and it was an arrogance Della didn’t quite trust.
Still, she took a bit of comfort from their housematron’s insistence that last night’s odd intruders be identified as soon as possible by the contractors who worked for the Underground—even though the girls had to stay away from their beloved sub-Underground until all trouble was rectified.
Della wandered back to the bed, but didn’t have it in her to rest again.
Too anxious.
A niggle kept at her, but she tried not to dwell on how the girls had been so naughty last night in engaging—
encouraging
—those intruders on school grounds because it had amused the leader of Della’s pack, Violet.
Yet how could Della not think about it when, at any moment, their housematron might mete out punishment for their lack of common sense?
With a contained tremble, Della lowered herself into a chair by the curtains.
But then something like a whisper, buried in her head, struck at her.
Do you know what’s in store for you, little girl?
Shivers crackled over her skin as she wondered where the words had come from....
Glancing at the other three girls who were still deep at rest on the two beds, Della tried to swallow past the sudden choke in her throat.
She sniffed, inspected the rest of the darkened room with her keen eyesight.
No one.
Nothing.
Perhaps it was merely her instincts trying to warn her, as they had been doing all along, and they had only now been sharpened to a level she couldn’t ignore. Before last night—before she had taken a stand against the rest of the girls who had always treated her as the lowest of the low—Delia had left her instincts to rot.
But no longer, she thought. No more—
Out of nowhere, a vision attacked: A violent stain of red on a cottage wall. A strike of bloodied white ribbon trailing to the floor and resting on the fair hair of a young girl ...
Do you know what’s in store for you, little girl?
This time, Della didn’t merely shiver—she shuddered, just as if a thousand freezing blades were knifing her nerves.
Even the sound of gliding footsteps coming down the hallway didn’t shake her out of the vision, so she stayed in the chair and squeezed her hands against her temples, as if that would help to expel the jarring pictures.
By the time the housematron unlocked the door, Della had tamed her thoughts, but even so, she cleared her mind, her expression, lest Mrs. Jones think something amiss.
Do you know what’s in store ... ?
Della swallowed as Mrs. Jones breezed into the room.
The elder vampire was in humanlike form, and although she had taken care to dress in the clothing she usually wore in her guise as a Queenshill campus dorm overseer, there was something different. A new confidence that Della had only pinpointed because of last night, when she had seen Mrs. Jones looking like a queen, her skin glowing with a breathtaking freshness that she normally didn’t possess while masquerading as a human aboveground.
The change was enthralling, and even now, Della could not keep her eyes off the elder vampire, even if she was hiding that excruciating beauty under her aboveground disguise.
When Mrs. Jones came to the foot of the beds, her presence seemed to rouse the three other vampire girls.
Polly and Noreen rubbed their eyes and sat up. Violet, who still carried the almost-healed scars from last night’s personal confrontation with Della after they’d escaped the attackers, only stared at the ceiling.
She was bitter about having been challenged and bested, and Della held back a satisfied smile.
However, guilt immediately set upon her, and she checked herself.
“Up and about already, Della?” Mrs. Jones asked in a husky voice that always seemed to be scraped by a cold.
Della thought it might be wise to offer something close to an honest answer. It might explain any remnants of fear.
“I heard a noise outside,” she said. “So I opened the window and checked.”
Mrs. Jones raised a brow. “From my rooftop view, the streets were all but empty, and I didn’t catch any alarming scents so close to your room—not at this hour.”
Della didn’t say a word. She had been trained better.
Mrs. Jones swept out a hand, dismissing Della’s report. “Perhaps it was a caretaker who came by to monitor you with one of their modern, fancy machines. I believe they have items that can even catch sight of you through a slit in the window curtain. Who knows? They do take care to cover their presence as much as possible, even when it comes to giving off a scent.”
A
custode?
Once, Della had seen the consultants during a trip to the main Underground, in a forbidden area where she had accidentally found herself among such darkness. Oppression.
Yet she hadn’t felt any of that here in the hotel at all.
Mrs. Jones glided to a vanity mirror, glancing this way and that, then smiled as she ran her hand over a high cheekbone.
“The
custode
was no doubt in the midst of tracking last night’s intruders,” she said. “Before your Wolfie left to hide himself in one of his flats around the city for the time being, he suggested that perhaps all of us might attempt to hunt the attackers with our own predatory senses. But I reminded him that it might be best to play it safe at the moment. After all, Frank the vampire and his group did best you girls once, and I’d rather you and Wolfie were tucked in neat and tidy until the
custodes
can find the scoundrels and enlighten us as to their purposes. Besides, our contracted associates have their own means of effective searching, so it’s hardly worth worrying about their success.”
Della knew that the mysterious
custodes
worked on their own, wandering the fringes of the Underground and taking care of any troubles that arose outside, and when she imagined that one of them might’ve been so close, every hair on her arms stood on end.
From the far bed, Polly spoke. Next to her, Violet remained staring at the ceiling.
“What do you mean by
‘custode,’
Mrs. Jones?”
The older vampire smoothed her brown hair back into its bun, then turned away from the mirror. “Perhaps Della would be kind enough to give you the details she learned last night. I’m off to see to Mihas ...
Wolfie”
—she amended almost sharply—“and there, I’ll tie up the loose ends that your absences at Queenshill will cause.”
Noreen the Curious sleepily asked, “How will you go about explaining that, Mrs. Jones?”
The housematron gave the redhead a smile, although Della noticed it was laced with something she thought to be poisonous.
“As far as the school knows, you four have left campus on a scholarly trip.”
“Shall we call our parents to tell them where we’ll be?” Noreen added.
Polly made a disparaging sound. “Not likely they’ll care.”
Noreen’s sagging shoulders confirmed that. None of their parents cared, and that had led to the decision to become part of the Underground, where they belonged and were appreciated by Wolfie.
Mrs. Jones’s smile turned into one of sympathy for Noreen. “I’ll contact your parents about your ‘field trip’ and take care of every other detail. I’ve whipped up a story about a most beneficial jaunt to study the cathedral in Durham. You’ve all decided to work there with me on an in-depth study for a few days, for the yearly project Queenshill requires of its students.”
“And when shall
we
see Wolfie again?” Noreen asked.
Mrs. Jones raised her chin, her gaze flaring, and it made Della recall how she had stumbled upon their housematron and Wolfie kissing last night.
“As soon as these motley attackers are seen to,” Mrs. Jones said, her voice tight, “life as we know it shall resume.”
Motley was putting it mildly. Besides the vampires, there had been human servants, including a hard female who had got Della in some manner of a mental hold.
“Mrs. Jones,” Della ventured. “It seems as if our territories are rather unguarded. What if the intruders are affiliated with bad vampires ... ?”
They had all been taught not to talk of Undergrounds or other blood brothers—who had a rumored tendency to overtake other communities—in the open.
Mrs. Jones sighed, clearly spent by Della’s continued fretting.
“I’m eager to return home, myself,” the housematron said. “Wolfie’s place”—she meant the main Underground at Highgate—“is being watched by a
custode
even as we speak.”
Clearly finished with the conversation, Mrs. Jones began heading toward the door. “While I unsnarl matters, perhaps you ladies will study your French? Mademoiselle would be terribly upset with me if I didn’t see to your tutoring on our ‘trip.’ ”
Polly rolled off her mattress, her bobbed strawberry blond hair askew from her rest. She went to her overnight bag and sifted through it. “Books here and accounted for. I’m only hoping that Noreen didn’t pack that awful perfume, too.”
“Perfume?” Noreen asked.
“That jasmine stink.”
“I don’t wear perfume, much less a fragrance more suited to my grandmum.”

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