Vampire Babylon - Break Of Dawn Part 15

Eva?

Something broke inside Dawn.

She jammed down on the gas pedal and targeted yet another betrayer.

Her mother.

TWELVE.

BROKEN.

SHOULD we awaken Kiko?" Costin asked as he stood at the window overlooking the late-afternoon-shrouded street. He had parted the curtains to stare outside, where Dawn had driven in her rush to get away from him.

Gone. She was finally gone.

Next to him, Breisi floated, heavy with sorrow. "Let's let him sleep. He'll get up soon enough, and he'll have a lot of questions. Put it off for a while."

"There is always a price, is there not?" Costin pressed his-no, Jonah's-head against the windowpanes. Blood from when Dawn had slammed him into the wall still ghosted his mouth. While Jonah admitted to enjoying the taste because of his romantic longing for the adventurous life he thought Costin could provide, Costin himself shunned it.

"You put the modified locator on her?" Breisi asked.

Costin thought of the moment he had gotten close enough to press the tracking device on the back of a denim belt loop. "Yes."

"Then we won't have long to wait."

"If she ever arrives at the Underground."

"Boss, you know that this master would stop at nothing to get her there, and if your suspicions are right, she's unknowingly been in contact with him. And she needed to be driven to him. Otherwise she never would have left this house while you were still in it. And you know Dawn needed to make that choice herself, because if she was hypnotized, she would fight the mind control off eventually. She didn't know who to go to, but she knows now. It was a gamble to depend on scaring her away, but we needed to find the location. Frank is there." He knew how much that meant to Breisi. It was her only solace these days. "Then it's up to Dawn now."

"Sacrifices," she reminded him. "You told me from day one that this life would be full of them."

Costin's shoulders slumped. "I did."

A jasmine weight pressed on his back. Breisi's comforting touch. "I know it took you a long time to finally get the cojones to carry this off. It took one final feeding for you to have the strength to let her go. Now we have to take care of the rest and worry about the aftermath later." Breisi paused. "When Dawn came on board with the team, she said she would do anything to get Frank back, Boss. You're only taking her at her word."

He forced himself to straighten his posture, to be a soldier. This was a war, and he'd done what was necessary.

"I only hope," Breisi said, "that Dawn doesn't become the enemy."

Costin went cold, even though Dawn didn't know enough about his true powers to reveal critical information to an Underground.

Let them know he was Costin. Let them wonder.

"G.o.d forbid she does," he said softly.

He then allowed the curtain to fall closed before anyone could say they saw a monster framed in the window of this haunted house.

THIRTEEN.

THE WELCOMING.

DAWN'S car picked up speed in its path toward the woman in the middle of the road. Her foot crushed the gas pedal, gunning it for all it was worth.

Eva got closer, her blond hair blowing, her hands outstretched with her palms up. She wasn't moving an inch, as if she were expecting her daughter to hit the brakes.

Dead, Dawn thought. I wish you were dead- The car's tinny engine roared, unstoppable as the vampire loomed.

At the last second, her mother dropped her hands, stricken, finally understanding that Dawn wasn't going to slow down.

As the car's fender reached Eva's knees, Dawn cried out, impulsively wrenching the steering wheel to the right and closing her eyes at the expected impact.

Screee- Resistance, as if someone were pushing against the car. It lost speed....

But Dawn was still going fast enough to thunder to a crunching stop.

A flash, a chop to the knees, a yank so sudden that when it was over, she could only sit there, hearing a sound like a hissing, primal breath. She saw a streetlight pole squished against the seething hood.

Got to get Eva, she thought, not feeling anything at all. Got to try again.

She attempted to start the engine, but it only offered a droning whine. Again. She kept trying and trying, not grasping that her car was done.Then she looked down at her knees, which had started to burn. Her jeans had been torn open there, her flesh bloodied. The dashboard . . . Had her knees banged into it? And her seat belt had strained into her chest, hurting it, too. Her Corolla was too old to have air bags and, slowly, it entered her mind that she should've been really injured at the speed she'd been going.

Unless . . .

Dazed, Dawn turned to her window, where Eva waited by the back of a nearby RV blocking the view of a house. Strong, quick . .

. Had her mother slowed the car down before it'd crashed?

Dawn didn't like knowing how weak she was against these vamps, didn't like being beaten by Eva yet again.

Always second place, she thought, fumbling with her seat belt and getting her head together enough to grab her cell phone and a couple of weapons from the pa.s.senger area's floorboards.

Always left in the dust.

Ignoring her slight wounds, she stuck her cell in her jacket pocket and busted open her door, barging out with a machete in each hand. Then, not even bothering with a h.e.l.lo, she stumbled toward her mother, who was lingering in back of the RV like she was hiding.

Eva made a put-upon face, then darted to the side as Dawn lunged and sliced a machete where her mother had just been.

"You don't want to kill me," the glamour G.o.ddess said.

"Wrong." Dawn spun around to find her target again. It took her a second to steady herself.

"You need to sit." Somehow, Eva made hand-to-weapon fighting sound maternal.

Dawn sliced downward with the right-hand machete, just as if she could hack at her emotions. Missing, she immediately raised her left arm for leverage, then swung down with it while reverse chopping the right blade back up at Eva.

The vampire easily dodged, then, quick as you please, exploded into her Danger Form, where she rose in a dazzling mist. Within a millisecond, she had swooped into an almost hidden tree at the side of a house with a For Sale sign in the yard. She wove herself into its leaves, her essence pearled, angelic, and decorated with tendrils waving out and in, like silk ribbons in a wind. Dawn couldn't look away.

She lowered her machetes to her sides because, inside Eva's cloudy form, she saw images of what she'd always wanted: a mother who was reaching out to embrace her.

"I don't know what happened inside the Limpet house to make you drive that way." Eva's voice held all the silverware chime and soulful simmer of dinner being made in a homey kitchen. "But I'm here for you, even if they're not."

Dawn wanted to nod, to go to her mom and imbibe what Eva offered. But a mental twitch kept her from giving in.

When that twitch turned into a nudge, then into full-blown repulsion, Dawn shook her head. Shook Eva right out of it.

"I suppose you were there for me the other night, too," Dawn said, "when you lied about saving Breisi. You were never going to carry through with it."

In the tree, Eva twirled back into solid form. When she was done, she was left sitting in the branches, grabbing an overhead limb, and leaning her temple against an arm in summer-soft repose. "Will you listen to my explanations now, D-?"

Zoom quick, she jerked her gaze away from her daughter to something behind Dawn's back. When Dawn looked, too, she realized that a family across the street was squinting out the window of their quaint house. She got closer to the tree trunk, using it to shelter herself. They'd heard Dawn's crash, no doubt, and were scoping things out. So that was why Eva had hidden in this out-of-the-way tree, to remain incognito.

Again, Dawn cleared her head with a good shake, inconspicuously tucking her machetes close to her sides, then taking a better look around. Her vision was a dull sepia that she tried to blink away. But she couldn't. The neighborhood, with its palm trees and white-planked serenity was familiar.

She'd made it to Matt's block, near his cottage.

Dawn peered back up into the tree branches, only to find her mother gone.

Goose b.u.mps lifted her skin, and she backed away. From somewhere, she heard people coming out of their houses.

Taking care to hide her weapons, Dawn crept in the direction of Matt's, minding her balance but dismissing her aches. Maybe she could call a tow truck when she got to him, yet she had no time for going back to the car and taking care of normal-person business now. But, d.a.m.n it, she didn't want a random, well-meaning stranger going through her weapon stash.

She could care about that later.

When she got to Matt's, with those bird-of-paradise plants blocking his windows, she saw him standing in the open doorway, craning his neck to see what was going on down the street. He spied her, then started asking a question.

She sprinted forward, panic welling in her chest and chills eating her spine.

"Dawn, what's-?"

She stumbled over the threshold, then kicked the door shut. He'd kept it open for her, just as she'd asked. Without a word, she numbly set her machetes on the hardwood floor, took off her jacket, and dropped it.

"I need my car towed," she mumbled.

Now that her adrenaline had clamped off, she felt like she was moving in a vacuum. Colors had drained themselves out of a room that Matt kept so carefully male: the stark entertainment equipment bleeding wires, the blank walls, the bolted closet door with the basketball backboard canting against it. None of it really registered.

"Was that you making a scene out there?" Matt asked. "I was downstairs, finishing up something before you got here. . . ."

His words dissipated when he noticed her knee-gaped jeans, the wounds. He swallowed, nostrils flaring, then grit his jaw.

"Does Limpet have anything to do with this?"

Angry. That had to be why he was reacting this way. Everyone seemed angry these days.

In her cotton-thick shock, Dawn didn't know what to tell him. Where should she start? How far should she go?

"Dawn." He took her hands in his and, faintly, she recognized the scratches she'd given him the other night, baked into the back of his hand in violent reminder.

He guided her toward the couch, and it was all she could do to maneuver her body correctly. But then she took a jittery breath, pulling away from him.

"I've got to . . ." She stumbled back to the front window where, between the thwarted colors of the bird-of-paradises, she could see the street. Eva might still be out there. Dawn needed to get Eva. "Did you see her?" she asked.

"See who?" Matt stood next to her. "My mother."

He paused. "Isn't your mom . . . ?"

"Dead?" Yes, she was. Dead to Dawn.

She could sense Matt's piqued interest. Once more, he began to lead her away from the window, but she wouldn't let him. She needed to watch for Eva. For any of them. Vampires. Every single one of them was the enemy.

A swipe of Jonah's-Costin's-face clawed over her mind's eye, but she shut it out.

"Hey," Matt said softly. "First, let's take care of your knees. Then we'll talk about getting you some . . . medical help."

"No." She hadn't crashed that hard, thanks to Eva.

Matt kept on. "Then we'll get a tow and . . . I guess we'll go from there."

She glanced at him. Even the usual startling blue of his eyes seemed less vibrant to her now.

"For Pete's sake." Taking charge, he lifted her, set her on the long dining table in front of the window. "Happy now?"

She could still scan the street, so she "mmm-hmm"ed. The next thing she knew, Matt had left, then returned with some big bandages, Mecurochrome, liquid soap, and a wet bunch of paper towels. Gently, he tended to her stinging knees, keeping his head down. As he dabbed at the blood with the towels and soap, she thought his hands might've been shaking, but she wasn't sure.

After he cleansed the wounds, he swiped the Mecurochrome over one and she jumped.

"That brought you back a little." He smiled slightly.

"Biting off my tongue usually does that."

Glancing at the bottle, he made a face. "This might be pretty old, but it was the only thing I could find in the medicine cabinet."

"Let's put some of that on one of your open sores, and we'll see how high you can sing."

He laughed, then cut himself short. "I'm being serious."

"So am I."