Broken (19 page)

Or they could even request that Mihas question their visitor from a distance with his greater powers.

But doing this before the
custode
s attempted to pull information from him themselves would be daft, for what if this vampire did represent a blood brother and, via proxy, he was able to engage Mihas in an Awareness battle, debilitating the only functional master remaining in the Underground? Lilly had heard of stranger things. Or what if this particular vampire’s master was attempting a slow takeover of the community, as they had been known to do while the ages wore by and greed got the better of them?

What if this was even another brother in disguise and he was here because of what this Underground had to offer besides girl vampires?

Lilly didn’t often overreact, but this disturbed her. Without a word to the captive, she turned on her heel and left him to stew about what might happen to him next. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.

The jasmine followed her.

How to dodge it?

Meandering along, Lilly headed for one of the unobtrusive catches in the floor—the type that had tripped the silver cage in which the captive now resided.

She stepped on the slight indentation in the ground, and a trapdoor opened beneath her. Quickly, she curled into a ball lest the slice of the closing door cut the top of her head as it shut above her, and she landed on a cushion, rolling to her feet again while holding a hand over her swaddled wound.

Then she waited, trying to detect jasmine.

Satisfied that none had leaked in with her—the trap had surprised it, opening and closing before the entity could react—she continued on her way to the Underground, staying mindful of the smells around her. But there was only the dank, deadened stench of the tunnel as she followed it past a ramp that led to the Underground rooms, then to the level where the
custode
area was located.

She shut more doors behind her, sealing off entries. Gradually, the air grew thicker with vibration because she was close to the core of the community, the center that held the heart of any and all Undergrounds.

She went to that particular room, unmasked herself as she entered and shut the fortified door behind her. Then, although it wasn’t yet time for Relaquory—the nightly exchange of energies—she approached the altar, her head down.

It was the second time she’d been here tonight, and she again welcomed the electricity buzzing through her as she kneeled by the coffinlike box. She raised her face only enough to catch a glimpse of the native soil, the nose and mouth peering from the dirt.

Lilly used her curved blade to cut herself, as she did during a ritual, drawing two drops of blood so it landed on the soil then sucked into it with what seemed to be a yanking heartbeat.

She laid a hand on the dirt, the vibrations sawing into her as she inhaled, blissful, then scooped up the soil and stood.

“Thank you,” she whispered while backing out of the room, making certain the door was secured.

In her quarters, she redressed her wound, removing the old soil and packing the new over the injury, then wrapping it. She tidied up before going to Nigel in the monitor room.

He was at the console, watching more of the recorded Highgate Cemetery footage, which showed Dawn and her comrades as they wandered among the graves. The other screens were alive with real-time, red-highlighted vampire activity, most of it aboveground in the Lion and the Lamb Pub, where Mihas was accompanied by a crowd of crisped schoolgirls.

Della?
Lilly thought.

“Mihas has been in fine form,” Nigel said in greeting. He was rewinding footage, so these were recordings pulled up from the vampire alert system. They hadn’t reviewed anything beyond what it had isolated. “Look here.”

He played a snippet of Mihas speaking to the nine burned Queenshill survivors. There was a new fire in the master as his charges reported to him about how the attack in Southwark had concluded—with the escape of the hunters.

But since the hunters’ leader might just be a captive of the Underground now, Lilly wasn’t so agitated. Not with the soil healing her wound, with the pulse of the greatest master of all lending strength to her own heartbeat.

Lilly trained her gaze back on the screen, where the schoolgirls looked the worse for wear as they faced Mihas. She held back a smile. Unbeknownst to Nigel, she had been responsible for this new, feistier Mihas. Hadn’t she known that Claudia’s absence would remind him of who he was and his purpose?

Now the schoolgirl soldiers only needed to kill Claudia for him to reach the next step toward becoming the blood brother they needed him to be; Lilly had heard in Della’s mind earlier that this was what they planned.

Then, and only then, would the girls be tuned in to compliance for Mihas’s sake.

When the recording finished, Nigel said, “That was the good news. Unfortunately, as you heard from the girls, they lost several of their number while attempting to extract Claudia from her captors.”

“Aren’t soldiers always expendable?” Lilly asked, knowing a
custode
could be just as disposable, even if they were chosen by a higher source, activated by genetic imprint and the vision/tales that called to them. But she had taken her vows and was comfortable with her life’s work. Actually, she would wager that she was the most devoted Meratoliage to come along in eons.

“True enough—the girls can be replaced and trained.” Nigel pushed back the wheeled chair, stretching his arms above his head. “And they did their duty tonight, exposing those hunters and sending them running. The vampirelets will catch up, no doubt, after they’ve had enough rest to heal from the fire trap that toasted them.”

“I’d like to join them in tracking.”

“Don’t
you
get all the fun.”

There was a tweak in his tone. After being tuned, he’d been so agreeable that she’d all but forgotten how contrary he could be.

Keeping to business, she relayed details of the intruder in the tunnel, whom he still had been monitoring from this room via cameras. When she revealed her plans for tuning the captive, when or if his invisible bodyguards did wear down, Nigel said, “I’d prefer to go to him now. I’d like to take a read on him and these ghosts for myself.”

Lilly began to protest, but he added, “So blasted territorial about everything, aren’t you?”

“I’m only doing my job.”

He relaxed in his chair, his arms resting on his head. “You may stop proving yourself now. It’s getting wearisome, Lilly.”

She raised her chin. Proving herself? As the only female
custode
—an “aberration,” as Nigel had once called her—she had to do more to keep pace. But then, she always had, even while growing up with an older brother who constantly degraded her.

As if he hadn’t insulted her, Nigel continued with their strategy session, revealing that he’d been partaking in computer research about the flat in Southwark where Lilly had encountered Dawn the first time. A “Mia Scott” was renting it and, so far, she proved to have no ties to Dawn.

“I’m not certain we need this information right now,” Lilly said. There was still a drilling tension in the room, and it wasn’t due to the oppression in this area of the Underground. It was between her and Nigel. “We can already confirm the Southwark group as hunters. And there’s no doubt we’ll know more once we fully entertain our caged guest.”

Nigel was staring at her, and his sprawling, intimate posture unsettled Lilly.

She jerked a thumb, indicating he should leave the chair to her. “My turn for monitoring. You take your shots at the visitor, as you wanted.”

“Is there such a hurry?”

Fuck him. “Go, Nigel. You’d do well to remember that I’m a
custode
, and not anything less. If you desecrate that, there’ll be retirement for you.”

He lowered his arms, knowing this to be true. Treating her as anything other than a keeper would carry severe consequences.

As he donned his mask and left, Lilly breathed easier, but her pulse was still like a tiny, trapped thing in her veins.

For the first time since she’d arrived, he’d acted as if she was still what she’d been designated to be. A female Meratoliage. A breeder.

Then the anger came. Nigel should know better. Not that she had known her fate before she’d been activated, but it was clear to her now that she’d been fortunate to have been born the way she was. Sterile. Altogether useless in the eyes of the Meratoliage line until she had been called to service because no other male relatives had been of age.

Unlike
custode
s, who had the capacity for heightened physical abilities once activated, breeders normally developed a talent for witchery, and they facilitated the family’s needs. However, their black-art talents obviously weren’t divine enough to have discovered Lilly’s recent activities. This was no doubt because she’d asked during Relaquory for the dragon to shield her orchestrations, and she believed he had heard her. Even in his resting state, he must have known that she was doing it all for him.

Perhaps he had always known that she would come to his rescue one day, and he had willed her destiny. Lilly’s null breeding status had been discovered after a trip to a doctor, whom Lilly now knew to have been a cousin versed in the black arts. Nigel had left the estate afterward, then Charles. At that point, the family elders had turned to secondary resources for childbearing, such as cousins whose composition would require much more interference than a breeding couple in the strongest bloodline—her immediate family’s—would have required.

Yes, her inability to breed had once marked her as a failure, even before she’d needed to prove herself here. But, as the monitors flickered with action in front of Lilly now, she threw herself into
this
blessed calling, grateful she was able to give her life to the Underground, as a keeper.

Never again would she be anything less.

SOMETIMES
vamp hunting could be a bitch.

Then again, sometimes you got a break, and at Menlo Hall, everything was going like such clockwork that Dawn thought there
had
to be a catch.

But so far, so great, as Dawn smoothed down her newly procured maid uniform that she was about to use to bust into a manor house.

She and a couple of Friends, including Kalin, were in a spacious closet in the newish servant’s quarters on the grounds, where an unfortunate dishwater blond girl who actually owned this uniform was curled on the floor in her slip, lulled to sleep by the spirits.

It hadn’t taken all that long for the assigned Friends to speed down to Kent and comb the area along the River Darent for an estate that matched the description from Kiko and Natalia’s vision. Ninety acres of lawn, gardens, and pastures surrounded the Elizabethan manor, which looked to Dawn like a brick structure out of Barbara Cartland territory or whatever. Not that she’d ever read much.

Anyway, after the Friends had inspected the house, observing employees who were using security codes to get in and out as well as pinpointing this one maid in particular who’d been cleaning the library/study, they’d come back to temporary HQ, ready to roll while one spirit stayed at the Hall to keep investigating.

When Dawn had arrived there with the Friends, she’d been in a disguise that involved padding and a whole lot of bulky skirt and sweater, plus the long, dirty blond wig she had on now. Then, it’d just been a matter of the spirits facilitating the snatch-and-grab of the designated maid.

After taking off the first costume, including the pulser, then getting into this one, Dawn adjusted the sassy little cap on her head. The rest of the gray uniform, including a plain white full apron, was unremarkable—perfect for fading into the woodwork. However, Dawn wouldn’t get too cocky about fitting in.

“I just hope someone doesn’t stop me in the halls,” she whispered to the Friends while still in the closet, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry. “My face won’t be familiar to anyone and that might raise a stink.”

Greta, who’d been on duty at Queenshill before being reassigned here, floated around her.
“We told you—we’ll scout in advance, keep others away, clear your path. You worry about using your hands to do the jobs we can’t do.”

Dawn further readied herself, taking care to make sure her crucifix pendant was in plain sight. Before leaving temp headquarters, she’d armed herself with smaller weapons like throwing blades and knives so that she’d be able to move quickly, but there wasn’t much room in the dress pockets under the apron for many of them. In fact, she was going to have to leave behind her silver-bullet-loaded illegal revolver in this closet with her own clothing and the real maid.

“Now,” Dawn said, “before I go . . . You guys are sure this is the place we need to be?” Damn, she sounded like a worrywart. But they couldn’t afford to blow this.

“Yeah.”
Kalin’s words were as rushed as a clock pushing the seconds.
“All descriptions match—even the black-art books in the study. Let’s speed away.”

“Just making sure, because Kik and Nat said ‘Meratoliage,’ and this is ‘Menlo’ Hall. We don’t have time to be putzing around the wrong location.”

Trudy, a third Friend, was already hovering near the door, waiting for Dawn to open it.
“Sweetie,”
she said in her truck-stop waitress tone,
“we can only guess that ‘Meratoliage’ is an old family name from way back. Like, you know how Maria Shriver doesn’t really run around with ‘Kennedy’ attached to her? ‘Menlo’ isn’t even their last name. It belongs to this Hall.”

“Gotcha.”

With one last glance at the sleeping maid, Dawn went for the door. If this field trip didn’t produce anything, she was going to hit the bottom of desperation. Claudius needed to worry if she came back empty-handed.

Dawn opened the door to a slit, allowing Trudy out first. The spirit was back in a lick, summoning her and Kalin. Greta was going to stay behind with the maid, and there’d be yet another Friend somewhere around the Hall itself, coordinating the bigger picture.