Vampire Babylon - Break Of Dawn Part 12

Kiko set up for his try, but he'd slowed down the enthusiasm now, going serious on her.

"So . . . about Kalin's picture," he said.

Aha. This had been no random football challenge. Dawn should've known that in a house full of detectives, basic interrogation was as common as having to wait for a vapid older sister to get out of the bathroom.

"What about Kalin?" she asked.

Kiko's eyes gleamed, as if he were just as curious as she was and couldn't help admitting it now. "What did you see?"

"Wait-let me just . . . You didn't know who Kalin was before, right?" She wanted to set a few things straight.

"No. Jeez, no. All this Friend stuff was never much of an issue before everything started heating up with the vamps. Sure, before you got back to L.A. and joined us, I generally knew of our spirits and the portraits and that they were gonna come into play at some point. But Friends didn't start interacting with us much until Robby Pennybaker came around."

That's right, Dawn thought. Kiko was a male, so Jonah wouldn't have approached him about the choice to become a Friend or to rest in peace, as he'd done with Breisi sometime before she'd died.

"You didn't know you could order the Friends around?" Dawn asked.

"I wish." His face fell.

"Breisi knew, though?"

"Yeah. Something tells me she did. I'm sure she knew a lot more than I ever did."

Wow. Did this mean Jonah had taken only Breisi into his confidences and not Kiko? And had the psychic just been acting like he knew more than he did in reality? Poor Kik.

Satisfied that her coworker was telling the truth, she went ahead and gave him the rundown about almost everything, revealing the vision with Kalin, Rose, and Will, then talking about how many female Friends tended to stick around the agency afterward.

She didn't really go into why they lingered. She didn't want to hash out all the "feeding" issues between Jonah and Kalin . . . and between Jonah and herself.

After they finished, they went back to football, but Kiko's heart obviously wasn't in it. Just as she was about to comment on that, a breeze whipped between them.

Air-conditioning? Dawn crossed her arms over her chest again. The minty scent she always detected in this office had gotten stronger, or maybe she was just noticing it for the first time today. And that meant something besides air-conditioning might be in the room.

Finally, Kiko said something that he'd clearly been mulling over. "Now I think I understand why all the portraits are of girls. Boy, the boss is a stallion."

Now it was Dawn's turn to roll her eyes. He'd figured out the feeding part all on his own.

"Then basically," he continued, "the woman over the downstairs fireplace, Kalin, was one of the first of us? And then came . . ." He motioned toward the Elizabethan painting, then repeated the gesture portrait by portrait. "Her, then her, then her. And-"

When he came to the field of fire, he stopped. Dawn's heartbeat seemed to do the same.

Because the painting wasn't empty anymore.

Nope-the anonymous cape-veiled shape was back, the subject's long, dark hair covering any sign of a face.

"Hmm," Kiko said, returning to the football game.

Dawn hadn't set her fingers up yet, but it didn't matter. The paper triangle went wide.

She didn't get up to grab it. "What, 'hmm'?"

As Kiko focused on a spot behind her, he seemed to be thinking of the right way to word whatever he had to say. Then his eyes went wide. Very, very wide.

She heard a sliding-wood sound from the bookcase at the rear. Footsteps moving across the rug to the other side of the big room.

Someone sitting down.

Fingers of frost played her spine.

Not really wanting to look, Dawn did anyway, turning around and knowing who she would find but not believing it.

There he was-Jonah, sitting on a far couch just as normally as can be. Because of the distance, she couldn't see much of him as far as details went, but the cuts on his face would've distracted her anyway. He must've come through a panel in the bookcase- one he'd probably used before, on that day he'd instructed Kalin to bind Dawn.

Dressed in an untucked white silk shirt and black pants, he was splayed in his seat, just as if Dawn had fully worn him out during their last encounter. Odd for the usually soldier-straight Jonah. He drummed his fingertips on the velvet as he rested his head on the back of the couch and fixed his gaze on her.

She shifted in her chair.

Clearly ill at ease with this weird situation, Kiko tried to break the ice. "Hey, Boss. You hanging out with us now?"

"Just taking my daily breather, Kiko."

Dawn frowned. He didn't sound like The Voice. No, his tone wasn't as low, and there wasn't an accent. In fact, he was back to speaking the same way he had on that day Kalin had bound her for Jonah's strange attempt at foreplay.

Not The Voice she was used to at all.

Finally, Dawn found her voice. "I thought that's what you were doing in your cell-taking the breather of all breathers." She could detect a faint smile from him.

"Boss?" Kiko asked.

Jonah slumped even lower, now tapping his hands on the seat in a bored rhythm, his dark hair clinging to the velvet behind him.

"Your third degree makes me think I can't even rest in my own house. You like my seat at the desk, Kiko?"

Jonah had said it with a sense of dry humor, but . . .

"Sorry." Kiko rose out of the chair, more formal than ever. "I didn't realize-"

"n.o.body realizes. n.o.body. Realizes."

Kiko looked at Dawn, probably to see how she was going to handle this. h.e.l.l. Like she knew?

After hefting out a sigh, Jonah latched his gaze on the ceiling. "The conversation you two were just having . . ."

Oh, oh. Was she about to get lambasted for telling Kiko about what'd happened in Kalin's picture? Was she supposed to have kept that a secret? Dawn girded herself for a whooping.

But it never came.

"I'd be frustrated, too," Jonah added.

Dawn's eyes almost popped out.

"In fact," their boss said, sitting up and leaning his elbows on his knees, "I'd be going crazy with not knowing anything about how we operate."

Totally thrown off her game, Dawn stood, p.r.i.c.kling with such uncertainty that the thought of not being ready to defend herself was just wrong.

"Don't go anywhere." His gaze was on her again, and there was something plaintive about it.

She stayed. For now. Just to see where this was all going, in spite of her own better judgment.

Jonah sneaked a look at the clock on a Chippendale table next to him, then glanced at her again. She'd automatically focused on his scars, and she lowered her eyes, caught.

"You can't really look at me without wondering what happened," he said.

She wanted to tell him that she'd accepted his face, actually finding his scars intriguing, not ugly. She'd never been much for perfect, anyway; a girl like her-one who'd always suffered by comparison to Eva-didn't aim for pretty boys. Also, she had a couple of wounds on her own face.

But, yeah, he was right. She wondered what the story was behind his injuries. "I a.s.sumed you got hurt from one of your show- downs, Jonah."

He touched his face, laughing shortly. "Oh, it was a confrontation of heroic proportions." Then, in the oddest of all that was odd, he flushed, as if shame had settled over him.

At this point, Kiko had taken a spot beside her. His warmth felt rea.s.suring. But when she glanced down at him, she saw that he'd started to sweat.Before she could call a Friend to help him avert a cold-turkey moment, Jonah had spoken again.

"What if you could see how I got these scars? With help from Kiko, of course."

Holy . . . What? Secretive Jonah inviting her to investigate? To get a straight answer? Something was very wrong. . . .

"Don't you want this, Dawn?" he asked.

She nodded way too many times. "h.e.l.l, yeah."

"Then come over here."

She actually began to tremble. Answers. Taking a step forward, she couldn't resist.

But Kiko grabbed her hand and, in his restraining touch, she guessed what he might be thinking. This is too good to be true.

Still, she couldn't pa.s.s this up. "Please, Kik."

When he turned his gaze up at her, she saw the caution, blue as a hazy twilight room, in his eyes. He had to be thinking of what had happened with the dagger vision and what could be in store with this one. It wasn't safe.

My G.o.d, his loyalty wasn't the reason he stuck by Jonah. Not entirely.

"Dawn," their boss said, and his voice held none of the vibrations she was used to getting when he said her name.

But it didn't matter.

Ignoring Kiko's clear feelings, she used all her strength to pull him to her greatest desire-Jonah and answers.

"Hurry," their boss said, checking the clock again.

And she did, grabbing Kiko's sweaty hand. Eyes wild, he tugged back, but she wouldn't let him go. She was stronger, so she forced his touch toward Jonah.

"We really shouldn't. . . ." Kik said.

"Please," she said.

Their boss reached out, seizing the psychic's retracted fingers, forcing them to touch the scars on his face. Dawn's hand rode the back of his.

Too late, she saw that Jonah's eyes weren't topaz, but blue- An explosion came out of nowhere, blasting her into a memory.

She stared from Jonah's eyes at his image in the mirror of a sumptuous marble bathroom, his dark hair disheveled as he anch.o.r.ed his hands on each side of a sink.

His face was clear and beautiful in the light, but his eyes were blue with something like depressed terror.

"You were gone longer than normal," he whispered.

But there was no response from whomever he was talking to.

Out of gloomy desperation, he yelled, "I didn't think you were coming back!" A breeze ruffled his hair, and Jonah's blue eyes focused on whatever was behind him in the mirror. An unknown companion.

When the guest spoke, the room seemed to quake from a dangerous undertone. An old-world-accented darkness.

"You know I always return, Jonah. I must."

"But I get afraid that you won't."

"Calm down, please. Do not a.s.sume-"

Jonah slapped the porcelain. "You're looking for someone else, aren't you? You aren't happy with me anymore."

"Please, Jonah. Let me in and you will not be this upset."

The young man smiled shakily and leaned toward the mirror. "Why? Do you think I might strand you outside? Are you afraid of that?"

"Let's not play these games. . . ."

"You think you have all the power, don't you?" Jonah reached for something on the side of the sink. "You think you've got all the control here. Well, what if I . . . ?"

A stab of silver flashed in the mirror as Jonah held up a straight razor.

"No!" yelled The Voice.

Faster than a pulse of light, the young man brought down the blade, yet he hadn't been aiming for his throat. The weapon slashed across his cheek. Pain blinded him, but he slashed again, full of rage, full of vengeful panic.

"Stop trying to get into my head to keep me from doing this," Jonah said. "This is my body."

He angled forward, forcefully nudged by the essence from behind, but he kept going, undeterred. Slash. Slash. Slash.

"Jonah . . ." It was The Voice, his tone steeped in sorrow.