Vampire Babylon - Midnight Reign Part 36

The details of him finally completed the blanks from the few pictures she'd unearthed. Dark hair that had grown out slightly, curling like soft down. Tall, lanky but filled out through the shoulders and chest. Dressed in an outdated silk coat over a white shirt and trousers. But his face-G.o.d, his face stunned her the most.

It wasn't his topaz eyes, almost almond-shaped, reddened from Breisi's death. It wasn't even his etched cheekbones and full lips.

It was the scars, long razored crisscrossing welts, angry and tragic.

A broken saint, was all she could think. A young man in his early thirties who'd already seen too much to endure.

He rendered her even more speechless when he held out a lone daisy, an offering of peace or...maybe something else she didn't have the strength to handle.

She didn't take the flower. Couldn't.

Jarred by her rejection, he withdrew it, looking around the room as if lost. He set the daisy on a table near him, his skin going red.

"Help me," he said simply, jaw clenching, as if he were barring himself from further agony. "I don't want to beg, but you're the only way we're going to beat them." The enemy: her mom, the other vamps.

She didn't know who was what anymore.

"I never did get the chance to..." Jonah used his hands to help him formulate whatever it was he needed to say. "Last night, at the party..."

He wanted to check her over.

She didn't move as he came forward, hand outstretched as if to gentle her. It was only now that she saw beyond the scars.

His eyes burned with a compelling force she couldn't resist. It was as if this was where he lived-in his gaze-and that's where she should join him.

He looked into her, just a momentary flare. But then, whether it was required or not, he laid a palm to her forehead-a cool hand battered with rough, male skin. She allowed her eyes to close. Allowed her body to stop resisting, just this once.

His touch was voltage to her system, her belly tightening and heating. And when he pulled away, all her worst instincts wanted to haul him right back to her, not necessarily for the physical satisfaction, but because he understood the pain.

He might've been the only one who did.

Jonah looked at the ground, fisting his hands. And when he raised his scarred face again, his brutally forceful gaze, Dawn didn't like what she saw.

Shattered ire.

"You've been mind wiped," he said, voice ragged.

Dawn touched her neck.

"I'm going to gut every last one of them." His face had grown so red that his scars stood out like white blades. His neck veins mimicked the scars, pulsing as he turned around, addressing the room-or the world. "I will find out which one you are, you demon b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I'll-"

The room shook, the walls exhaling bits of dust.

"Jonah!"

He turned back around and the rumbling stopped. But his eyes still held the wrath of vengeance. "I don't think they exchanged with you. No blood exchange, no turning."

"I'm...not one of them." Thank G.o.d, sweet Jesus.

"They were trying to get information out of you. I imagine you mind blocked them, Dawn."

"What about Frank? I saw his neck and-"

Another voice sounded near the staircase. "He's gotta be a vamp."

Kiko.

She turned around. His blond hair was wild, his eyes blurry, but he had a strange smile on his face.

Thinking he'd gone too far over the line of devastation, she held her arms out, getting to her knees as he came to her. They held each other-what was left of the team.

"Trust him," Kiko whispered in her ear, voice thick. "Trust me. I've got it together now. No more meds-I don't care how much it hurts. We're going to get these guys. We're going to slay every last one of them."

Even above everything else, she worried about what he was saying. Did he think he could just cold turkey himself off those pills?

"You'll even go after Jac...Eva?" she whispered back to him.

"Especially her." Kiko hugged Dawn even tighter. "I should've known. That's how it is out here. Never trust what you see."

Laying her cheek against Kiko's head, Dawn glanced at Jonah, who was standing off to the side, arms empty, watching his team from a near distance that was a canyon all the same.

Could she trust what she was seeing? Or should she go back to her only other choice: Matt?

As Jonah looked at her, she thought she saw something deep and anguish ridden in his gaze-an emotion she didn't dare define.

Because that might be a trick of the eye, too.

Dawn framed Kiko's face with her hands, trying to show him she was strong enough to go on. But he was grinning again.

And when the room filled with jasmine, Dawn knew why.

An invisible force b.u.mped against her fist, and she gaped. At another gentle nudge, Dawn's chest welled up with thick joy.

She should've known...Why hadn't she...?

"You should have kept faith," the wisp of a familiar voice said from a dimension away.

"Breisi?" Dawn asked on a sharp sob that sc.r.a.ped her throat.

The newest Friend wrapped around her team.

Dawn laughed, cried, turned to Jonah, but he was already retreating into the darkness, the shadows dimming him until just the glow of his topaz eyes remained, then disappeared.

Swallowing away the lump in her throat, Dawn went back to her friend and her Friend, eyes wide open with burning, ecstatic tears.

And she was d.a.m.n well going to keep those eyes open from now on.

Seeing everything for what it really was.