Broken (27 page)

Whatever had happened, there she was, with the man.

He whispered. “I knew you would be ready now. Are you, Eva?”

Ready . . . for what?

His gaze had heated, and she’d understood. She didn’t know what he was, but she knew that she needed what he had. She could see it all in his eyes—a completion she hadn’t possessed since her vampire days, but . . .

Not
a vampire, she kept thinking. Not in the way she thought of them, at least.

Then he’d changed. Or maybe it hadn’t been so much his appearance as the allure she’d noticed. All she’d seen when he suddenly pricked her palm with a hooked thimble he’d slipped on at some point was a fire in his eyes. True fire. And when he wounded himself, drawing a drop of blood from his own palm, he’d asked her one last question.

“
Do
you want it all back?”

Did she want everything she’d lost?

He’d pulled her in with his gaze, setting her in the midst of her glory days, when she’d received breathless letters from people who said that her movies had spoken to them, perfumed pages from young girls who confessed that they wanted to be just like her. When she’d been pursued by the silver screen’s most desirable men and she’d rejected them because she’d been so in love with Frank.

When she’d owned the world and she hadn’t even known it.

She looked at the globe of blood on his palm, and it held those everythings.

“You can really give it back to me?” she asked.

“Yes, I can make you feel loved, a thousand times over.”

He hadn’t said it outright, but she knew this meant he could get Frank to love her again, and her eyes went blurry with tears. She didn’t ask what the cost would be. She was fairly sure she already knew.

So she held her bloodied hand out to him, just as she’d offered it to Frank earlier that night.

“Yes,” she said.

This man had smiled, his mouth sensuous and tempting, with a glint of white teeth. Something flashed in his eyes again, red and irresistible as he touched his wounded skin to hers, melding the blood.

A spike of lust, happiness, orgasmic fulfillment drove through Eva, and she fought for breath, crumbling to the stone floor. It was like he’d reached into her and yanked her inside out, pain and pleasure fused and simmering as the soul she’d regained back in L.A. left her once again.

But this time its departure felt more like Eva was giving birth to a new life. A quiet, terrifyingly easy birth.

“You belong now,” the man whispered as she reveled in the chaos of her high. “And you’ll come to me soon.”

And, minutes later, when she came down from it, he was gone.

Even now, she had no idea what the man in the wine bar had made her—she was only finding out hour by hour.

Feeding by feeding.

Called by that hunger, she left her room to wander the hall, and she found Frank in the office studded with computers and communication equipment. Earlier, she’d heard him muttering to himself, encouraging his body to get better and fast, because he wanted to go to the team—to Dawn and Breisi. Eva wouldn’t be surprised if he was planning to join them after he could stand up without swaying.

He was holding an earpiece and what she knew was a locator unit as he sat in a chair, leaning his elbows on his thighs, as if still regaining strength from the encounter the two of them had enjoyed earlier.

She’d fed him some of her blood, and he’d healed, just not as quickly as she’d expected. She had taken too much from him, and it startled her to realize she was that powerful. With a touch, she had even made Frank forget that they’d been together and that he had taken her own blood to help him recover.

Next time, though, she’d have to give him more of herself, because obviously, it hadn’t been enough.

But, as she’d thought, she hadn’t needed to bury him like the college boy she’d put into a grave in a nearby construction lot.

Eva felt herself frowning, as if she were sad about the young man’s death. But was she really?

Frank slowly looked over his shoulder at her, his forehead creased, almost as if he didn’t recognize her. Or maybe his mind was trying to work around what they were to each other now.

He put down the locator and the earpiece. “You should get back to bed. A lot’s going down and I need to be on standby.”

But
she
needed
him
.

She walked closer, her nightgown brushing her legs, creating a waving friction against her—inside her—that she’d never experienced as a human or a vampire. She almost felt like she could float like a ghost, even though she was still solid. Yet, as she went to him, she also felt pulled away, as if something was reeling her in from outside headquarters.

She had a feeling it was the mysterious man, asking her to find him now that she had evolved. And she would go, just as soon as she consumed more. Just as soon as she felt satisfied.

“Frank,” she whispered, reaching out to run her hand through his brown hair, which had started to recede when he was human.

“I’m busy.”

He shrugged away, turning back to the locator, and she lifted her hand, stung. But then she rested her fingers on his neck, a tingle sending waves of bliss through her.

He gripped her wrist, removing her from him.

“I
need
you, Frank,” she said, the hunger for his adoration—for taking it from him since he wouldn’t give her any—rising and consuming her.

“What
are
you?” he asked, stopping her.

She shrank away from him. He didn’t know? He’d loved her and he had no idea?

“I’m not sure there’s a name,” she said, holding a hand over her heart to still it. It was beating, just like any woman’s.

Then Frank snapped his head toward the doorway and, at the same time, Eva scented the jasmine with her higher alertness.

She smiled. “Ah. Breisi.”

“Breez,” Frank said to his girlfriend as she blew into the room, “just get to your picture at old headquarters, okay? There’s nothin’ happening here.”

“Eva . . .”
Breisi said in her wispy voice. It sounded weak, but it grated in a drawn-out threat.

“You’re about to collapse,” Frank said as the girlfriend circled him, surrounding him with her essence.

Eva held up her arms, but not in surrender.

No more surrendering.

She caught a flash of herself in a mirror that had been positioned in a corner so the room occupant could see behind them. White and flowy . . . light hair that had matted into near coils from all the bed rest . . .

Eva thought about what she’d done to that laser tracker back at the old headquarters—how she’d manipulated it and the security camera with only a touch. Thought of how she could make anyone shrivel.

Try it on the spirit,
said the instructive whisper in her head. But it was her own voice she heard.

She reached out to Breisi, pulling at the spirit’s essence with a touch of her fingers.

There was a scream, and the jasmine retreated, as if Breisi had been shocked.

Eva went for her another time, connecting with the Friend’s essence again, and an electric bolt traveled up her skin. It didn’t go under it though—not like Frank’s or the college boy’s.

It wasn’t the same at all, and Eva didn’t like it.

Even so, when Breisi flew away, Eva attacked once more, enough to expel her enemy from the room as Frank grabbed Eva from behind. Without even turning around, she gripped him by the neck and lifted him off the ground as his energy zapped up through her arm and down into her core, making her want him all the more.

Then, using her foot to back- slam the door after Breisi flew into the hallway, Eva lifted her husband even higher, realizing only now just how strong she was.

Frightened by the level of it, she dropped him, and he slouched to the ground.

He peered up at her, one hand raised as if to ward her off.

She backed away, but it wasn’t enough to get her out of range of that mirror, where she saw all of her: a white-gowned Medusa bride with feral hair, her gaze famished.

The woman he left behind,
she thought.
Me.

But then the hunger overcame her, and she rushed Frank, sealing her mouth to his and drawing as much of him in as she could.

DAWN
and Costin had unlinked hands far back in the tunnels, when they’d needed to get a grip on their weapons. She was holding her mini flamethrower in her right hand, then one of two regular grenades she’d brought in her left. He had a silver dagger and a revolver handy, even though silver bullets might not work against a
custode
who wore the kind of body armor Dawn had detected back in Southwark, when she’d come against Lilly.

Most important of all, Dawn’s best weapon—her psychokinesis—was on amped-up standby after the fight she had just recovered from.

As she illuminated the tunnel with her headlight, Costin kept his surgical mask on so any remainder of blood wouldn’t distract him. He tracked the dragon with his Awareness, and the closer they got, the more he trembled. The Friends also sensed the discord in the air as they wove in and out, darting around while they scouted ahead and behind. Hell, even Dawn felt the swampiness of bad vibrations.

“He’s somewhere nearby,” Costin said in a near whisper under that mask. His usually low, composed voice was muddled and unsteady. “I think his power even permeates the rock nearest him.”

“When we get to him, you should probably close yourself back into Jonah,” she whispered. It was all so quiet except for the “mmming” of her body. “Just until you’re ready to strike out.”

“If my Awareness is even enough to affect him,” he said. “Remember, I encountered him once, long, long ago, and I was no match.”

“But you trained through the years. You said you even holed up for a while so your own powers would grow.”

Neither of them mentioned that, because of being encased in Jonah’s vamp body, those powers weren’t exactly at a high. But, then again, they’d just conquered Mihas along with the Friends’ help, and they had to believe that, united, the team would be able to throw down with the dragon, too.

Because if not them, then who?

The Whisper?

Right. Like the enigma who’d made Costin into a Soul Traveler would come out of hiding to beat the dragon himself. If he’d been able to take on this mission, he wouldn’t have sworn in Costin to do it for him. It was definitely up to them to come up with the goods.

God, if Dawn survived this, she was going to find whoever or whatever The Whisper was.

One day.

They moved rapidly down the tunnel, curving here, there, led by Costin’s intuition and the light on her head. But it was the smell that told them they’d arrived, even before Mary-Margaret zipped over with a hushed report.

“Mint!”
she said in her wind-tunnel Southern drawl.
“Those
custode
s are trying to use mint to keep me and the girls away!”

Dawn guessed Mary-Margaret sounded offended because mint was supposed to ward off evil spirits. But the Friends weren’t evil. Not to Dawn, anyway.

Or did “evil” depend on a point of view?

Before she could ask Mary-Margaret if the smell was doing anything to the Friends, some of the invisible hunters sped ahead, prompting Dawn and Costin to pump up their pace, too.

Lian, another Friend, said,
“They’re just around the corner!”

The air got heavier, pressing in. They rounded the bend with their weapons up.

In the flash of Dawn’s headlight stood two
custode
s. Black masked and red-eyed, the taller of the two shadow figures was spreading salt in the air, calmly aiming it at the Friends and chanting in some unintelligible language with that baleful, electronically altered voice. Both keepers were surrounded by a bunch of mint sprigs and a semicircle of salt on the ground in front of a wall.

Was it protecting the entrance that led to the dragon?

Surely there’s more than this,
Dawn thought, just before the smaller
custode
—Lilly?—sliced two swords that looked to be made of iron through the air at the prodding Friends.

Iron—another ghost repellent.

Dawn heard a squeal from a spirit and wondered if the element had warded her off or if she was just enjoying herself, being a dare-devil hunter and all. But then Dawn noticed that
something
had to be keeping the Friends at bay, because aside from whizzing around the area, they weren’t being very aggressive.

Was it the mint? The salt, the iron . . . or the chanting?

Black arts, Dawn thought, focusing on the taller
custode
who was uttering the mantra. She was pretty sure that malevolent incantations would ward off even the best intentioned of spirits.

She recalled what she’d read in that book at Menlo Hall.
Initially black-art bred from the best of military men and witches . . .

Well, magic or not, she was pretty sure she could shut the keeper up.

Holstering her mini flamethrower, Dawn activated one of Breisi and Frank’s modified, non-UV grenades, yelling a coded warning to her team, just in case the impact affected the structure of the tunnel itself.

“DANCE!” she cried as she hucked it at the
custode
s.

The force of the retreating Friends bolted against Dawn as Costin rammed against her, too, throwing them both away and back around the corner just before the explosive boomed.

As rock shifted then thudded to the ground, Dawn turned to Costin while they both lay there. In the glare of her headlight, she saw that his eyes had silvered and he’d pulled the mask away from his face, exposing fangs.

He was excited, probably because of the dragon vibrations, the prospect of finally coming to the end of his mission.