Broken (16 page)

Her mother’s breathing changed rhythm, and Dawn waited for her to wake up. But what would she say?

“Mom?”

Eva’s breathing evened out. Pretending to still be asleep.
Acting!

Not a surprise since her mother had been the best actress ever, setting up her supposed human murder to cover her vampiness and her existence in the L.A. Underground.

Dawn’s hands hung at her sides. She said something anyway, even if she was only talking to the air. “I just wanted to see if you were okay after all the excitement. And I’m . . . Well, you’ve been in a bed for a long time. I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

And . . . silence.

But she had the feeling that Eva was hearing every word.

“Mom, I know what’s going on. After the debacle with Frank, you feel like there’s no hope. Nothing for you. But I want you to know that there is . . . something. I’m here.” She’d always been here, wishing for Eva.

She thought she heard her mom’s breathing stop for a second, but then it started up again.

“All right.” Dawn started to leave. “I also wanted you to know that Frank’s not as angry as you think he is about ‘the incident.’ I’m not angry, either. I even . . .” Dawn pulled at the side of her jeans. “I just want you to come back, Mom.”

Now, even if her mother had said anything, Dawn didn’t want to hear it. She was too used to not having Eva around, and she was sure her mom was just going to tell her to bug off, anyway.

So she shut the door behind her, going back into the main room, choosing a random bunk distant from where Kiko and Natalia were working.

She couldn’t sleep, so she kept one ear tuned for Claudius to stir and one tuned for the hopeful return of Costin.

Time seemed to thunk by as neither one happened.

EVA
had turned onto her back, and long after Dawn departed, she stared at the ceiling, her blanket tucked around her neck. It was quiet—almost too quiet—and she was waiting to get out of bed until she knew what the team was doing.

So she listened. Listened closely.

With a clarity she was still getting used to, she heard Frank moving around in the room next to hers and, even though he didn’t have his light on, she was able to see the outline of the adjoining door through the darkness, as if Frank was emanating preternatural energy. Strange to be able to sense that. She also caught Kiko and Natalia talking in low tones just above the grind of the temporary headquarters generator—something normal hearing wouldn’t have sorted out from all the other sounds.

But Eva wasn’t very “normal” anymore. She wasn’t . . . the same. She wasn’t even aware now of the heavy sensation she’d carried in her soul ever since she’d turned from a vampire back into a human—an inner weight that constantly reminded her of how she’d been
inhuman
, how she’d sinned against nature by trading herself in for the promise of long- lasting fame and glory. Dawn had confessed that she’d felt the same soul stain inside of her, too, and Eva had heard through the doors when no one thought she was listening that her daughter had started changing, maybe because of what they’d carried over with them during the transition.

Eva had always wondered if every vampire-turned-human was cursed to change, and it seemed that, like Dawn, she was finally doing it . . . but only after Frank’s last rejection.

And after meeting the man at the wine bar.

She smiled, enjoying the sharpness of the sounds and sight. She’d missed these sensations from her time in the Hollywood Underground. Recently, as “Mia Scott,” a private citizen who’d been remade under the care of plastic surgery and relocation, she’d been so bored. Deadened to life.

But not now.

Pushing down her blanket, she sat up. She’d been bedridden, her hair matted and tossed, but her body felt clean. Everyone thought she’d been sick, and they’d left her alone as she’d gotten better . . . and better. But she wasn’t physically ill. Maybe stoned was a better word. In fact, when those little girls had attacked headquarters earlier, Eva had hardly even needed a Friend to protect her while she’d been ushered to these temporary quarters, because she felt strong.

Stronger than ever.

She hadn’t told anyone that, though. She’d just come here to her new room, waiting until everyone went to sleep.

Waiting until the time was right to feed herself again.

She closed her eyes, hungry. She knew what would fill her though, and she was ready to get up and do what she’d wanted to do so badly for a long time now—longer than she’d been in London, mooning around Frank and wishing he would realize how much she still loved him and how good they could be together. Longer than she and Dawn had tried to mend their relationship since settling here when Costin had gotten a strong bead on this Underground.

She had the means to get what she wanted now.

Taking off the bandage she’d put on her hand to hide the marks where she’d drawn blood for Frank, she thought of how she’d run far away that night, humiliated, out of headquarters. She’d run and run until she’d ended up at a wine bar, where she’d met a man who hadn’t told her his name. A man who’d offered her a finely made handkerchief to dry her tears. And when she had looked up at him, she’d seen understanding in his slightly tilted light brown eyes.

Handsome, with black hair slicked back and coming just to the line of his jaw, an alluring smile. Much too tempting for a lonely woman who’d just been rejected.

Now, she looked over her healed hand, and she wasn’t surprised that there were no scars. Not after what the man from the wine bar had given to her.

Memory surged: The man taking her downstairs to a silent cove under the wine bar, where bottles were stored. The man whispering to her, making her an offer. Her accepting it.

It had all happened so fast, before Dawn had gotten there. A prick of Eva’s skin, a bit of her blood, a pact she had gladly entered into . . .

Carefully smoothing out her nightgown, she paused at a faint smudge of dirt that had been hidden by the draping of material.

Thinking that she would need to change soon—but not now, not yet—Eva walked to the adjoining door, as drawn to Frank as she’d ever been. And maybe even more now, as her appetite for him pulsed.

Last time she had gone to him, she’d failed, but this time, he wouldn’t be able to resist, and unlike before, Eva didn’t second-guess what she was doing.

She opened the door, not knocking this time, and she saw another door besides, on his side. Her hunger pierced her. Then she noticed an alarm system rigged to sense movement.

Please. With Frank’s vampire abilities, he’d know she was coming, anyway.

Or would he . . . ?

Eva touched a wire that led to a box on the alarm. She wasn’t well versed in the team’s systems, but she knew that she could fool this one into ignoring her, just as she’d done to the Friends as well as the laser tracker and security camera back at primary headquarters when she’d sneaked outside the night before last. Manipulating them had come as a surprise to her, but she’d done it naturally, as if there was a voice whispering instructions in her head. She’d only followed its direction, just as she was following her hunger now.

She opened the second door, finding Frank, a glowing figure in her eyes, in the darkness. He wasn’t resting, like he should’ve been. Instead, he held a mini flamethrower, inspecting it.

He was already cocking his head at her entrance, his sensitive vampire hearing having picked up her approach.

“I guess we need to check these alarms,” he said, already dismissing her. She’d caused him a lot of grief because Breisi hadn’t blamed him for giving in to the lure of her blood as much as she had for him taking pity on Eva afterward.

“Hello, Frank,” she said, making her voice different—a call over the waves of normal sound.

He stopped fussing with the weapon and ran a gaze over her.

She was glad she was wearing the nightgown—an intimate garment, long and white. Maybe it reminded him of their honeymoon, before she’d tried to secure a future for her family by going Underground, deserting him and Dawn, who’d been just a baby. But Eva had thought she’d been doing the right thing until she’d learned otherwise.

When Frank’s voice came out choked, she knew that she had more power than ever—even over him, a vampire.

“If Breisi comes back from patrolling outside to find you in here,” he said, clearly fighting what he’d heard in her voice, “there’ll be trouble.”

“You have no idea what sort of trouble.” Eva wasn’t sure why she’d said it, but she was certain she could live up to the threat. She felt that good. That . . . renewed.

Her comment made him wary, and he resisted some more. “I’ve got to go back to headquarters, get Breisi’s portrait, maybe even a few others. The Friends won’t have any place to refuel without those paintings, and they can’t risk rooting to them in a place that’s been compromised by those vamps.”

Just being near him, her body was humming, wanting, needing. And it needed more than it had gotten earlier, before she’d returned to the old headquarters, creeping back into her bed after feeding outside.

But it wasn’t blood that sustained her.

“Baby,” she said, urging him, using the endearment from long ago. “Just come to me.”

He tilted his head again, then rose, dropping the flamethrower to the bed and walking toward her.

Joy shot through her. She had him.

She lifted her hand, her fingertips brushing his cheek. A raw, electric current seemed to zap through her, nourishing her, taking from
him
, and he jolted, his eyes widening.

His skin was cold, inhuman, but he still had a heart that beat. He was still a male, with male memories and urges that hadn’t been stolen by vampirism, and
that
was what she yearned for.

The adoration.

Even a hint of it made her go hot, her pulse digging into her. Her own memories rose to the surface—her and Frank kissing, them loving each other so fiercely that she had almost given up stardom and worship from millions just to live happily ever after with him.

Until the Underground recruited her.

She touched his cheek again, her fingertips lingering on his jaw as his skin—even a vampire’s—shriveled a bit.

“Relax, Frank,” she said. “Then you can go get that portrait. And I can see to it that you don’t remember what happened here, between us. Not until you’re ready to accept it.” She had altered the memory patterns of that boy in the college sweatshirt, and she was going to give it a try with Frank, too.

When she trailed down his throat, whisking over the center of it, she knew that she’d stolen his power to move. But she wouldn’t have to take as much from him as she’d taken from her earlier victim. The college boy had been her first, and she’d been unable to stop herself from pulling out too much sustenance. Frank’s vampire power was stronger—what he gave her would be a hundred times more potent and wonderful.

It was only up to her to make sure he wouldn’t remember afterward, when he was healing, as a vampire surely would heal, because unlike the human college boy, Frank wouldn’t die from this feeding. Besides, she would give him her blood in exchange, nursing him, bringing them together again.

Eva’s throat closed with emotion. Her husband. The man she’d never stopped being married to in her heart. And she’d been given this ability to join with him again.

Silently, she thanked the man from the wine bar who’d chosen her, then slid her other hand beneath Frank’s shirt, touching his cool skin and hearing him moan with the beginning of what she knew would be unbearable ecstasy for both of them.

When Dawn first heard the word, she was in a daze—not really asleep, but not so much awake, either.

She sat up in her bed as Kiko said it again. “Meratoliage!”

He scrambled off his bunk and toward Dawn’s while still holding her clothing. Natalia followed.

“I got it,” Kiko said, banging into Dawn’s mattress and shoving her shirt at her. “I hit some blood from that
custode
, and BINGO—trance time! ‘Meratoliage.’ ”

“What does that even mean?” Dawn’s heart was working double time; Kiko’s excitement was contagious.

“I don’t know!” he said optimistically.

He kneeled on the floor, closed his eyes, touched Dawn’s black shirt again. She didn’t want to think that he was desperately trying to overcome his screw-up status, but Kiko had tried to compensate for the effect his pills had pushed on him before. Now it was about the lulling, not meds, but the mea culpa was the same.

Natalia kneeled by Kiko. As he concentrated, she put her hand on his shoulder, closing her eyes, too, as if to ride his mind.

Dawn looked away, almost like they were kissing or something, and her gaze landed on Claudius, who still reclined on his bunk, staring straight ahead. He was in “pause” mode, too seemingly weakened or permanently damaged by being worn down after Dawn’s initial treatment of him.

But why did his eyes look a little wider? Did he seem . . . scared?

Trying not to disturb the psychics, Dawn rolled off of her bunk, sauntering over to him, her blood pounding now, mostly in her temples.

“You see that?” she said. “We’re going to find what we need to with or without you.”

No blinking. Just staring.

Dawn bent lower, the scent of the Friend who was binding Claudius especially strong. In the background, the sound of the air turning on was like a dragon breathing, and it made her feel like they were all in the concrete belly of a beast.

“I know what you’re up to,” she said. “You’re taking your revenge out on everyone before you die. You don’t want to go down alone, so you’re getting great pleasure in working over Costin, your blood brother. Or maybe you really did send him to the Underground to destroy Mihas, who betrayed you.”