Vampire Babylon - Midnight Reign Part 13

"We're trying," Kiko said. "But the leads are slow."

"Really. Then we'll see if I can't help. What do you want to know? I'm an open book. A regular exhibitionist, like anyone else around here."

As if to prove his point, he rose, sliding off his robe in the same fluid movement. Dawn caught a glimpse of smooth skin and hard body before she inexplicably looked away again. She came to lock gazes with Kiko, who'd angled his glance away, too, wide- eyed. She wasn't terribly surprised, him basically being a puritan and all. But her? Had this afternoon's bout with The Voice made her think twice about...well, being too hard-bitten about s.e.x?

When Breisi said something else, it sounded as if she was still facing their interviewee. What do you know?

"How long were you with Lee, Sasha?"

Dawn heard him moving around, probably putting on clothes. "A few months. Then we broke up, he tried to flee, and the authorities hauled him back for murder."

"You had no contact with him during all this?"

"None. Before I knew about what he'd done with Klara Monaghan, I just a.s.sumed he'd taken up with another fling. Lee wasn't a relationship kind of man, not with males or females."

"He was bi?"

Sasha stopped moving, and Dawn looked up to find him fully clothed in jeans and an Eddie Bauerlike shirt.

"Lee didn't label himself," he said. "I don't do much of that, either. This queen stuff? I have a lot of fun doing it, but it doesn't make me something I'm not. Lee and I felt the same way-we are what we are. That's what attracted us."

"What did his mom think?" Dawn asked. When Sasha turned his gaze on her, she felt a rogue shiver travel over her arms. Maybe what unsettled her was in his eyes, the intensity of the light green or gray or...some combination of color.

"I don't know about his mom," Sasha said, "but the sister I talked to didn't like the idea of Lee being with another man."

Dawn would put money on the notion that the sister-Marg or Ca.s.sie?-had told Mama Tomlinson about a lov-ah but hadn't mentioned he was male. Could it be that revealing this tidbit would've put the Lee-adoring Coral over the edge and the siblings were avoiding that?

"I'm starting to think there was a lot Lee's family didn't know about him," Dawn said, searching Sasha's face for any sign of her double meaning.

Kiko jumped on the Underground reference, having turned back around to the conversation. He reached out to Sasha, touching his bare arm as if to get his attention. "Before you and Lee broke up, did you notice anything different about him? Was he secretive? Did he go places and refuse to talk about where he'd been or did you catch him in any lies?"

Underground bait.

"Yes, I did notice some things." Sasha sent a deliberate glance to Kiko's lingering hand, then grinned at the smaller man. "He'd get moody when I'd ask him what he did the night before. And we had arguments about marks on his body. Bites that I hadn't given him."

At Sasha's cheeky expression, Kiko removed his hand, then loosely backed away, hands up, as if silently saying, Hey, that wasn't me making a pa.s.s. Not gay. Sooooo not gay. But I respect you for your choices, dude.

Dawn could've been wildly entertained by the Sasha/Kiko show, but she was trying to see if her coworker had gotten a reading.

Also, she was wondering about that bite part.

"You were into biting, too?" she asked.

"Still am. Care to trade some?"

The feminine side of her preened. Yeah, screw you, Eva. See how men can like me as much as they like you? But her common sense was overriding everything else.

"Bites aren't my thing," Dawn said. "Where do you think Lee got his?"

As Sasha paused, Dawn noticed her partners trading a glance. From the way Breisi glowered, it was easy to guess that Kiko hadn't gotten much off of his Sasha reading. d.a.m.n.

"Biting was just playtime for me." Their interviewee rested his hands on his hips, coming off like the most masculine thing on the block. "But for Lee...? He got more and more into the fetish. Obviously, he went to other sources besides little ol' me. I'm sure there're a thousand places in town you can check into, businesses or pleasure palaces that would've accommodated him."

Almost in desperation, Kiko watched Sasha's hand, no doubt planning how to touch him again.

"But," the ex-lover added, yanking his cap lower, "what do I care? Lee wasn't the love of my life. h.e.l.l, when he hit the big time, like he always bragged about, I was going to leech off of his grand career anyway until it was time to move on. He took what he wanted from me, and I've done the same with him."

Sasha tossed another charming grin to Dawn, making her wonder if he was full of s.h.i.t or just the world's most honest individual.

Something told her he wasn't kidding and wasn't remotely ashamed of it.

Once again, his eyes burned into her. Automatically, she reverted to training, jamming him out with a mind block. But after a second, she realized she'd gone overboard. G.o.d, she was on edge. All this waiting for something to attack them since Robby died was eating at her.

"Sasha-" she began.

"My real name's Dave. Dave Nisro."

He seemed to catch something over her shoulder, and his smile grew wider, revealing a set of beautiful white teeth as he spread out his arms and ambled away from his dressing station.

Dawn followed him, discovering a young man walking toward Sasha/Dave to be enveloped in his embrace. The other male was somewhat familiar to her: slender, pale, his long auburn hair teased out to...

Oh, c.r.a.p. Sasha's friend resembled Klara Monaghan.

Jaw tight, Breisi guided the team toward the back exit of the dressing room while Sasha nuzzled the new arrival. As the three of them pa.s.sed, they thanked him, knowing they were anything but done.

"Give me a call if you need anything else," he said, eyes still only on the Klara doppelganger.

Kiko was the last one headed for the door. "Count on it."

The exit led to a back alley, where a Dumpster provided stale-trash cologne and a lone streetlight shone p.i.s.s yellow.

Weirded out, Dawn stuck her hand in a pocket, fingers digging past some velvet to touch the rea.s.suring, sharp tips of her silver, holy-water-tipped throwing stars: shuriken.

"That was disturbing," Breisi said.

"Which part?" Kiko wrinkled his nose at the Dumpster. "Where the male Klara clone sauntered in or where Sasha kept crossing gender lines to hit on Dawn? It was all..."

"Something to go on." Dawn couldn't hold back a smile because it was a lead, a reason to think Sasha was more invested in Klara or Lee than was obvious. "And I keep wondering-is Sasha vampire material or just a leech?"

"Guys, we gotta come back," Kiko said, hopped up. "I had a reading from him-mainly images of Lee, and I don't want to linger on those, thank you-but nothing about the Underground. I can get more, I know I can!"

Breisi motioned toward the alley's mouth and they all moved toward it. "Maybe he isn't vampire-related at all, Kik."

"Maybe he is and I need to dig deeper." His voice cracked on the last word as they pa.s.sed the Dumpster.

Dawn felt terrible for him. "Hey, Kiko, don't..."

A shudder ripped through her, a warning that flinted against all the time she'd spent thinking that a vamp attack was just waiting around the corner for them- She turned to find red eyes staring back at her, a dark shape huddled beside the Dumpster. Without pause, she extracted a throwing star, fired it at the looming threat.

"Dawn!" Breisi yelled.

But it was too late-she was already buzzing, glad to get back into action, to finally do something that would bring her that much closer to Frank.The dark shape yelped, jumped away, red eyes dropping to the ground. Dawn's pulse imploded as she used this distraction to reach for her revolver.

But before she could fire, Breisi was yelling at her to stop again.

Vision blurred by memory, by the running red blood of Eva's crime-scene photos and Robby's mind rape, Dawn barely held back. Then...

No. G.o.d, no.

Her eyes focused to reveal a bare-armed homeless woman with blood on her arm from where the blade had glanced off. She was quaking in her ragged clothes-not shrinking in Nosferatu, blood-poisoned injury. She was pinned in terror like a moth that only wanted escape-not clawing at Dawn with gnarled fingers.

As Dawn's stomach turned, the woman's rickety-toothed mouth gaped in a scream, her brown eyes holding nothing but horror.

Horror at seeing Dawn, who had suddenly, easily turned back into the hunter who'd savagely beheaded a little-boy vampire.

On the ground, a stuffed animal tilted on its side, toy eyes glowing red. Bile crept up the back of Dawn's throat.

"It's one of them!" Kiko yelled.

When Dawn turned around, she found Breisi restraining the small man from joining in with his usual monster-hunting verve.

"No, it's..." She choked on disgust. "It's not."

She faced the homeless woman again, recoiling at her terrified gape while putting her revolver back in its holster. "She's human."

"How can you be sure?!"

"Kiko." Breisi's tone was forceful. "The holy water and silver are having no effect-"

"She could be one of those higher-level vamps! Let go of me, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" Kiko grunted, trying to free himself.

Dawn couldn't feel anything-she was too afraid to. "I thought I saw...felt..." What? What the h.e.l.l had she felt besides hatred and vengeance?

For one second, while the adrenaline coursed through her, she'd felt like she had a purpose. She'd felt defined.

Tentatively approaching the woman, Dawn reached out to her. "I'm sorry. So sorry, here...let me-"

With an ear-stabbing screech, the woman sprang up, swiped at Dawn with her jagged fingernails and sprang away. She sprinted down the alley, erased by the darkness.

Dawn's gaze settled on the woman's meager belongings: an army bag with torn pants sticking out, a plastic tarp, a ratty, stuffed pink bunny rabbit with dead pink-not even red-eyes. The last item had a bloodstain on it, fresh, livid.

"We need to find her," Dawn said, the words barely forming. "We should get her some medical aid-"

She took off running to the end of the alley. Have to find her, Dawn thought. Have to make sure she's okay...

But when she arrived at the exit, she zipped her gaze back, forth, everywhere.

The woman was gone. Hiding? Where?Footsteps slammed the pavement behind her, and without really feeling anything, Dawn recognized that a hand had landed on her shoulder, jerking her back into the alley.

It was Breisi, frantic, p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l. "Don't ever run off by yourself. What if she was bait for an ambush, or-"

"We've got to find her," Dawn repeated.

"No."

When Dawn looked at Breisi, she found her coworker angrier than she'd ever imagined. In back of her, Kiko finally arrived, slow to travel.

"Dawn, you know what's at stake," Breisi half whispered, but her soft tone was lethal. "We cannot tell a medical worker that you stabbed a woman with a martial arts weapon."

"But you can give her some help," Dawn insisted. "You've done it for me and Kik, with your gel...."

Looking torn, Breisi glanced around. She was only being careful, Dawn knew, only a.n.a.lyzing the risk of a trap. Gradually, Dawn forced herself to admit the necessity of pausing; she'd already done enough damage by reacting too quickly. Was she going to make it worse by leaving her team?

Kiko kept right on going past both Dawn and Breisi, clearly intent on finding the woman himself.

"Kik-" Dawn grabbed at his jacket, holding him back from the unknown.

He resisted, and Breisi stepped back in, holding his jacket, too, keeping him with them, just as Dawn was.

"You're not to engage in anything, Kiko Daniels," Breisi said. "We've been clear about that."

He held up a finger, first to Breisi, then to Dawn, accusing them both with a heartbreakingly enraged grimace.

"You need my help," he said, voice trembling. "You can't stop me from giving it."

Feeling dead again, Dawn shook her head. "You're right. We do need you. But you're not..."

How could she say it without mortifying him?

He finished for her. "I'm not up to it right now. You've told me. I'm a gimp, physically and mentally. But that's just because you're coddling me. If you'd let me loose, I could get us back on track...." He trailed off, probably because he, also, knew that he was lying to himself.

Without another word, he turned his back on them.

Slowly, Breisi put an arm around his shoulders, then guided him away, casting one last baleful glance at Dawn, who slowly followed, taking up their backs.

But before she turned the corner, she looked behind her, seeing the faint glow of the stuffed bunny's eyes by the Dumpster.

The pink lights sputtered out.

ELEVEN.

THE HAVEN I N the clenched silence of the SUV, Dawn sat on the edge of her front seat, vainly inspecting the pa.s.sing storefronts and sidewalks. "Can't you slow down?"