Broken (37 page)

“She met a demon?” Dawn didn’t care so much about The Whisper’s issues now. And maybe he’d planned it that way.

“That name will do for your purposes.” Whisper Kiko held her hand tighter. “But you must know that I cannot directly interfere with the contract she made. There is no undoing matters so they might return to the way they were. It is all I can do to balance via indirect persuasion.”

The ridiculous side of Dawn shouted,
Then balance her! And balance my dad back to the way he was, too!

But she knew that there was always a price. You couldn’t right the world without one. Costin had paid his own admission into wherever he was going.

“So you just don’t get your hands dirty,” Dawn said. Maybe, in a way, The Whisper had to preserve his state of grace, like the Friends. Maybe that was the only way he could exist as what he was.

“I can tell,” he said, as if misdirecting her further—and maybe he was an expert at doing it to anyone who got too close to really knowing what he was—“that you are worried about your father, who is only suffering due to Eva’s new contract.” He lowered his gray gaze at her. “Keep in mind that there are always offers to be made, as I made with Costin.”

Jonah interrupted. “No, Dawn. Don’t.”

Whisper Kiko was staring at her, as if expecting her to pursue the idea. And what if she did? Was there something Dawn could do to save Frank?

She considered The Whisper and if he was coming from a good place. He’d given Costin the chance to right his wrongs, so he couldn’t be all bad. He’d wanted to tip the scales back to evenness for the world. . . .

Jonah sounded off again. “Frank’s fine with who he is—he’s got Breisi with him, and that’s all he wants. She’s enough to lighten his soul stain, so don’t you dare think that anything you could do would change him for the better, Dawn.”

His emotion was bared on his face: Jonah was telling the truth. He was looking out for her, reminding her of the price.

And he was right. It was just hard for her to accept it when Frank seemed like a mockery of who he used to be.

She shook her head, and she could tell The Whisper knew a reluctant refusal when he saw one. And he also seemed content that he had gotten her off of questioning him about what he was and on to more urgent things.

“Then what about Costin?” Dawn asked. “Is he lingering in that resort of yours because he has to come back and take care of the remaining blood brothers?”

“No need.” Whisper Kiko shrugged. “When the remaining master vampires turned human again, they were nothing more than string and dust, barely held together, primed for disintegration. I was not certain this would be the case, but centuries of wear on a body that no longer had extraordinary powers did its duty. Consequently, when Costin found himself rejoined with his soul for good, he held back from claiming his final reward. You see, he has been watching you, Dawn, just as I have been after the dragon’s death.”

The comment clanged in her head, the side of her chest, where the burn of the dragon’s blood waited.

Now, Kiko’s prophecy took on its full meaning: She was “key,” all right. The dragon’s key to moving on, even past his bodily termination.

The burn of the blood, above and below, throbbed, as if it’d been resurrected by Dawn’s realization. The room seemed to tip and tumble.

“It seems,” The Whisper said, “due to the strength that Costin always saw in you, the dragon has had difficulty in getting to your soul, where he would settle and grow in the darkness it absorbed, even during the short time you were a vampire. But the duration of your vampirism did not have as much to do with the force of your soul stain as your emotion. Specifically, in your case, anger. That is what has fed your darkness.”

She already figured that. “I didn’t give the dragon permission to come into me.”

“The dark marks on the other side of your body seem to have been invitation enough—signs that you were open to the darkness. And, surely enough, you did absorb the blood.”

Natalia and Jonah looked just as stunned as Dawn, and it almost seemed like they expected her to turn into the dragon right here and now. But Dawn was still Dawn, except she had this . . . thing . . . in her. A prophecy come true, but in a way she’d never expected.

“Costin could not have predicted,” The Whisper said, “that his soul would still be telling him that his work is not done here.”

“But it is—he did technically kill the dragon.”

“And he did fulfill his contract. You are correct.”

Dawn still wasn’t getting it. Her mind was stuck on one point. “Is he going to come back and slay me then?”

It wasn’t a joke. If he did return, would Dawn just spread her arms and allow herself to be terminated?

“Think, Dawn. Does Costin
need
to slay you?” The Whisper asked.

Cryptic as ever.

“Why can’t
you
just get the dragon out of me?” she asked.

“I could not end its contract the first time, and I cannot do so now. It is not my purview.”

She was getting sick of that word.

“I see,” she said. “Costin’s done, and you’re looking for another person to step in and fight the dragon for round two.”

“Not precisely. Dawn, you can expel it yourself, without any deals.”

What?

Should she get a knife and start cutting?

“Dawn,” The Whisper said, “once you accept that this is a choice for you, you will see that all is not lost.”

Okay then—she could control this like she’d controlled the postvampire darkness in her? Yeah, that’d work out.

He added, “Costin took what I gave him and used it properly. He
could
have become as terrible as the dragon, yet he did not.”

A quiver wracked Dawn—one that trembled up from the bottom of her and threatened to do the worst thing she could think of. Make her cry. Sob at the unfairness of this. She’d never asked for power, and even with what she’d already been given with the psychokinesis that’d grown and grown in her, she wasn’t sure she could ever use it in the right way.

All she knew was that, with Costin around, she’d had a conscience. He’d
been
her conscience. And without him here, she might fall into some kind of void.

She asked, “Why isn’t Costin here to tell me this himself?”

“Yes,” Jonah said. “Bring him back. I offer my body again—he can have it.”

The Whisper seemed to pity Jonah. “You must understand that Costin is so near his peace. He has been caught between that and making certain Dawn is secured. Yet she has kept the monster at bay, and the dragon has been as good as buried. As Dawn mentioned, Costin
did
slay it, after all, and he technically completed his contract with me. He is deserving of his reward, and for you to call on him now is to distance him further from fulfillment. His soul cries to go to that light you humans speak of so fondly, and it would pain him to be pulled away from it.”

Jonah said, “Don’t you think it’s paining him now to see what’s happening to Dawn?”

“Jonah,” she said, harshly chiding him, even as she was thinking that if she could manage the dragon and find a way to banish it in the end, all on her own, she’d do it. She wouldn’t pull Costin out, even if she wanted him to come back. She’d kept him alive once and learned that it’d been partly out of selfishness. Twice was unthinkable. This was eternity they were talking about and, no matter how much it killed her, she wouldn’t deny him that.

Right?

“I can do this on my own,” Dawn said. She sounded so tough, but she was disintegrating inside. “Costin can’t be called back.”

But could she do this? Without him?

“Very well,” The Whisper said.

“I just won’t kill anymore,” she said fervently. “I won’t
want
to do it, and I’ll stop with the mind puppeting. That’ll mean the dragon won’t be attracted to any darkness. I can keep him out of my soul stain for as long as it takes.”

But, even now, she could feel that dragon burn regrouping in her. What would happen if, one day, she strayed from her determination and it got where it wanted to go?

She realized there was a better way to make sure the dragon never came out—a way that would make Costin go to that light and keep them all safe at the same time.

With all the guts she had in her, she turned to Natalia. No other person at this table would put their emotions aside, suck it up, and do what needed to be done.

“Get a machete and a flamethrower,” she said, her voice so far removed that she didn’t even recognize it as hers. But it was.

It had to be her who initiated the only option left.

Jonah was half out of his seat, still holding hands with the new girl and Kiko, refusing to break the chain. “Natalia, if you do, you won’t ever be able to hold a weapon again.”

Natalia glared at him. “Oh, so you can fight the dragon if it should come out, can you?”

They’d taught her well. She was a real hunter.

“Costin
can
take care of this,” Jonah said, appealing straight to Dawn. “He wouldn’t even have to slay you. He has his ways—The Whisper gave him the means to deal with it.” Jonah shot Whisper Kiko a jaded look. “In his own indirect way.”

Dawn spoke to Natalia again. “I’m asking you.” Then she swallowed, the lump in her throat growing. “Hunter to hunter.”

Natalia didn’t do anything; she only looked into Dawn’s eyes, as if not knowing which way to go.

But Dawn knew what the new girl had to be seeing in her: the night Dawn had worked over Claudius. The dark marks she’d gotten every time she’d stepped over the line.

Natalia rose from her chair, but before she could break the hand chain that would result in chasing The Whisper from Kiko, Jonah did what none of them had any right to do.

“Costin, come back! We need you here, now!”

A formal summons from one of the team—exactly what The Whisper had come to warn them about.

The Whisper sighed, unable to do anything more.

Dawn’s first instinct was to attack Jonah, but even thinking about it caused the dragon’s blood to rear up inside her, like this was the opportunity it’d been waiting for. Terror forced her to stay in her chair as she gripped Kiko’s limp hand, unwilling to give herself over to the blood.

Do it,
half of her urged, anyway.

But Natalia took over where Dawn couldn’t.

She sprang at Jonah, unlinking the hand chain that held them all together, liberating The Whisper as Kiko slumped out of his chair and to the floor.

On her way to Jonah, the new girl upset the table, then crashed against him as he caught her and got her into a headlock. She swung at Jonah with her arms, and he kept restraining her.

“Stop it!” Dawn was out of her chair now, inserting her good arm between them.

“I know you’ll hate me for this,” Jonah said, his voice rough with his efforts. “But Costin’s business isn’t done. Not with
any
of us. If he was still down here, he would’ve insisted on being summoned, even if he ‘technically’ slayed the dragon. That wouldn’t have been good enough for him.”

“
I
could’ve kept the dragon away,” Dawn said, still controlling that anger. The bad blood stomped inside her, like it was trying to kick down a door.

She had to keep it behind the barrier.

“It wouldn’t have turned out well, Dawn,” Jonah said, “and you know it.”

“You did it because you can’t live without him.” She tried to push him away from Natalia. “You can’t stand the thought of him being whole up there without you.”

“Can
you
?”

Dawn ground her teeth together. But it wasn’t because of physical pain.

She finally got him off of Natalia, but instead of facing the new girl, Jonah turned to Dawn.

“
Can
you?” he repeated.

“Yes, I can stand it,” Dawn said, her tone level. The dragon’s blood slunk back to its place, as if waiting for another time that it knew would come, because anger always did with Dawn, even if she’d avoided it this once. “I can be happy with knowing he was finally released from the tragedy that’s been his life for centuries. I
wanted
that for him—peace and quiet.”

It was the first time she meant it, and it felt right. Not good, but right.

During the impasse, Natalia had gone over to Kiko and was catching him up on Costin and The Whisper. But now it didn’t seem like he remembered much of it, based on his confused questions.

Then the new girl shook up the room. “If Costin was summoned, where is he?”

Dawn forgot Jonah, looking around instead, trying to see if Costin was sweeping the room with his invisible, yanked-out-of-limbo essence.

Then she remembered the portrait in their bedroom. The field of fire where Costin used to rest when he’d give Jonah out-of-body free time back in L.A.

She ran toward the stairs the best she could, forgetting her bad leg and grunting at the aftershocks in her broken arm.

THE
rest of the team came with her up the stairs.

Please be there,
she thought. She didn’t know where the hell else Costin would’ve gone if he hadn’t resumed Jonah’s body yet.

She busted into her room, heading straight for the portrait, which had been only fire when she’d last seen it.

But that was then.

Now, there was a figure, and it was positioned differently than it’d been when the painting had been filled with his essence in L.A.

For the first time, she could see his true face.

Dawn got to her knees, touching the texture of the portrait. His long, wavy hair streamed down his back and away from him, exposing the pensive, downturned tips on a wide mouth. The slant of cheekbones under tanned skin. The topaz of eyes that held all the hopeful sorrow of a man who’d sacrificed everything—including his nearly completed journey to a final rest.