The Path of Razors (38 page)

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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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The vampiress had plucked its victim from the dark streets outside, famished after hiding in the woods near Highgate and taking an exorbitant amount of energy to self-heal its legs and neck to the point where its head wasn’t lolling to its shoulder. There were still shreds of skin and a peek of tendons, but Claudia had at least been able to travel on afterward, moving at a visible blur—much more slowly than it would have preferred had it been perfectly healthy.
Although the victim’s blood had given Claudia strength, the creature still yearned for more as it visually devoured the young woman’s skin, its own flesh tingling while the small mouths chewed open.
The victim’s eyes bulged at the sight—all she could do instead of screeching.
“It’s moments such as these that define a life,” Claudia said in its husky voice. It had long ago altered its speech to reflect that of a woman‘s, and the charade had fooled so many ... even itself. “Choices we make, directions we follow. But I did the right thing tonight. I don’t regret a bit of it.”
The captive, with mascara running from her eyes to create ghoulish tears, nodded slowly. Claudia thought how its victim’s eyes would carry wrinkles within a decade, but now, the skin was flawless.
Just as Mihas liked it.
Mihas ... By now he would be Underground again with those traitorous schoolgirls. Somehow, they had discovered Claudia’s beauty regimen. How? It didn’t know, but it was going to find out after returning. And it wished to come back in grand form, looking its enthralling best so Mihas would agree to terminate those little monsters. Claudia and her companion would be able to cultivate many more in the future, so these defective rebels would hardly be missed.
The creature reached toward the woman in the scum-lined tub who cringed away from Claudia’s touch. But the vampiress slid her fingertips over the woman’s cheek nonetheless.
“They wanted to know if he”—Mihas—“was privy to the blood harvests,” it said, thinking of how silky human skin was. Naturally warm. “But I didn’t tell those girls. And because of that, he will know that I love him truly, forever. He’ll realize that I did everything to protect him, and I always will.”
It had been protecting him from the beginning: from the time when they had exchanged with the dragon through all their travels, even as Mihas had secretly loved other males, other females—anything that had tempted him.
But, mostly, he had loved his girls.
They had got him into such trouble, too, from the village mobs that had hunted him to the courtiers who had heard tales of a wolf on the prowl in the woods and forced Mihas to flee from polite society. Yet Claudia, in either womanly guise or that of a subservient male, had always been there to heal, to catch him each time he fell from grace.
And he had fallen so many times, especially when he had decided to take up with Thomas Gatenby, who had provided them with their present fortunes before he had taken ill—a condition that Claudia had advised her companion to hurry along. The man had been smitten with Mihas and his charms, and Mihas had seduced him into giving over every last bit of his riches, even at the risk of attracting attention from gossip-prone London.
Even at the risk of alienating Claudia.
Shortly thereafter, the dragon had commanded the blood brothers to create Underground communities to breed and train soldiers, and although settling had taken a while, Claudia had managed to persuade Mihas into some restraint years afterward. It had even stayed under the ground, the two of them joining to create what was sure to be the most formidable army of them all; it had seen to the formation of their society while Mihas had gone on more of his erotic journeys above. And when he returned from his wanderings, Claudia would always make certain to be beautiful for him.
This time when they reunited, though, would that be enough?
As the vampiress’s fingers sprouted claws that scratched against the victim’s cheek, Claudia wondered how long it could continue like this ... how many new tricks it would have to invent to keep Mihas.
The woman in the tub was shaking, closing her eyes, sweating such fear that Claudia took its hand away, but not before skimming the healed bite marks on her neck where it had taken blood from her earlier.
“I wonder,” it said, trying to make its voice soothing before it fully charmed the woman’s mind to a deep, sleepy peace before a bath, “what those girls have told him. They’re far more clever than anyone suspects, aren’t they?”
The victim’s eyes darted back and forth, searching for an answer in Claudia’s gaze.
The vampiress tilted her head at that, for the victim presently reminded it of Della—that sweet, earnest student who had at first seemed quite harmless but was actually as vicious as they came.
Yet Della was its child, after all, only taking after the vampire parents that had borne her. And Claudia had chosen to create progeny because of the dragon’s mandate. Go forth and give him a well-trained army.
There had been another reason, as well, because Claudia had believed that sharing children with Mihas would create a bond that might never be broken. It thought this connection might hold him beyond beauty and the passion it always temporarily created.
When Claudia had seen their first batch of children, it had been gratified, because when the girls turned into their vampire form, they were so very ugly: cat-wolves that looked older with wrinkled and hairless skin.
This was Claudia’s petty revenge, and when it realized that Mihas didn’t always like to see the girls in this form, or even when a few years had passed and they lost the immediate freshness of their true youth, Claudia had experienced something like relief.
No more the “blossoms” flowering into womanhood, entering a time that Claudia had left far behind in its own mortal life. There was an empowering element to that. And when it became a housematron at Queenshill to make the harvesting of beauty treatments all the easier, it had taken satisfaction in banning Mihas from taking the blood of Claudia’s girls, too.
Everything had been going so well, it thought. Until tonight.
The creature stroked its victim’s cheek again, and the woman choked on a silent cry.
Claudia sighed, then turned away to dig through the female’s purse, where she found a mobile.
“He must be wondering where I am,” the vampiress said, the echo of its voice against the dirty tile sounding hollow as it rang Mihas.
But he didn’t answer.
Of course he wouldn‘t, Claudia thought while redialing to connect with his answering service instead. If he were Underground, his mobile would lack reception. Same with their Awareness, which was also useless now because of the distance between them.
It tried not to think of the alternative: Mihas cavorting with his girls. Mihas listening to their lies about what had happened with Claudia tonight. Mihas under their eager mouths.
Keeping its voice steady, Claudia spoke on the mobile, telling his answering service all about the attack. But with every word, it kept seeing him kissing the girls, his teeth scratching their lips for a taste of blood....
What if it came down to a choice between them and Claudia? it wondered.
Like so many times before, it despaired of ever truly being loved by him.
So why keep trying to call? Why dial his mobile number again, just to see if he might pick up this time? Why not contact a custode to facilitate Claudia’s entrance back into the Underground instead?
A gush of jasmine halted Claudia from dialing anymore, and the vampiress stood, waving away the scent. The smell had been round since the escape from Highgate.
“What are you?” it growled.
Suddenly, the scent was gone, yet Claudia didn’t relax. Instead, it turned to the victim, and this time in the woman’s young face, it saw Della, Stacy, and the accompanying schoolgirls who had attacked.
Yet then it saw the
others
from the past, as well: the classmates Claudia had used for blood over the years.
The mouths on its skin were really working now, yowling without sound, and the vampiress flicked its claws to a longer sharpness as it assessed the woman in the tub.
Beautiful. Claudia had to be as beautiful as possible for its return Underground.
“There is so much I’ve tolerated from him,” it said to the victim. “It’s been the only way to hold on. Not even spells or potions or anything else I’ve tried over the centuries worked.”
The question of when toleration became masochism poked at Claudia’s mind, but it had asked itself this so many times before that the meaning had become vague, like the wind or the night.
Yet now?
Now it genuinely wondered how much more it could take from Mihas, especially as it kept picturing him with the girls.
But how could it care so much when it had allowed the behavior for centuries? Claudia had enabled him, even if it had thought it had found a form that controlled Mihas to a certain extent, that had enriched itself in a shape that had supposedly been so much weaker than any male.
It caught a glimpse of its own reflection in a grimy mirror to the side, and it cocked its head, realizing that it didn’t even know who it was outside of Mihas.
All these years of being with him, and here Claudia was, in a fetid bathroom, naked and cast out while wondering if he would even care.
Claudia’s body rolled and twisted, and before it even knew what was happening, it had changed back into the true shape that had been pulling at it for so long.
Claudius.
Whole now, he looked closer in the mirror.
How long had it been? Years? Nearly a century, ever since going Underground?
The woman in the tub was kicking now, as if to get as far away from the vampire as possible.
A hurt laugh escaped Claudius. “At least Mihas was never
horrified
by this body.”
He ran a claw over its stronger features: the aquiline nose, the broader cheekbones. Then his throat burned around his next words.
“The wandering masters used to tell him that we vampires either lose emotion or gain it to a level that would drive any human mad. I’ve loved him for so long that I don’t know any other way to exist but this, yet ...” Claudius got to his knees again. “He’s never going to feel about me as I feel about him, is he?”
The woman began to weep, making no sound.
“It’s taken me this long, but he’s never going to accept what I am,” Claudius added, leaning over to her. “He’s never going to see that I’m not an ‘it.’ ”
The victim stared at him, and although his first instinct was to revert back to “it,” he stayed in his real form, feeling stronger for some reason.
What would Mihas do if Claudius returned to him this way? They lived in a far more open-minded culture now. Couldn’t Mihas adjust to that as he had adjusted to every other societal convention in order to, one day, bring change to the world?
Claudius didn’t know, because his mistake had always been in changing for Mihas.
He hesitated in pulling the woman out of the tub so he might hang her and become gorgeous once again for the one he so loved.
What if he refused to be “it,” anymore?
He was so occupied in the asking that he never heard the footsteps coming up the stairwell. He didn’t even hear the door to the apartment creaking open, nor the one to the bathroom.
Yet he did feel the biting line of a long blade as it nestled against the back of his neck.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE TROUBLE WITH BROTHERS
DAWN
had both hands on the hilt of her machete as she fit its blade to the back of the naked vampire’s neck, which was rough with bloodied wounds and the stringiness of tendons from the side to the front. Even his legs were scribbled with crusting gore.
There’d been a fight with this one, she thought, and the team was going to find out why.
Jonah was backing her up; so was an armed Kiko, even though his first priority was to guard Natalia at the door. All of them had no doubt this was a bloodsucker because the new girl had indisputably IDed this vampire after the Friends had manipulated the cameras around the area and guided them up here, into this empty apartment building. Natalia might not be able to differentiate between various vampire levels, so the team was on major guard if this vamp was more powerful than one of the schoolgirls from Queenshill.
Dawn didn’t look away from her target as she talked to Kalin, who hovered back by Jonah. “Thought you said this one was female.”
They’d even seen her outside, when she’d turned back into a full woman before attacking her victim, and the Friends had identified her.
Mrs. Jones, Dawn thought. Right in front of them.
“It shifts,”
Kalin said simply.
A regiment of Friends crowded just outside the room, too, waiting, and Breisi was even on her way here from Southwark, leaving an even bigger contingent of spirits there to guard headquarters along with Frank. She wasn’t about to miss something that could lead to their endgame.

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