Broken (8 page)

“Like hives?”

“Perhaps. It could be a release of even more poisonous energy.”

While the water kept dripping, Costin walked out of the bathroom and her mind raced.

She’d held back today. She’d repressed the ugliness, but it’d come out anyway—a situation that echoed the one from over a year ago, when she’d mentally boxed away the memory of seeing Eva’s supposedly dead body in a crime scene photo. Yet, back then, Dawn hadn’t been marked on her face when she’d forced back the hideous emotions. It’d been her mind powers that’d emerged full force instead.

Was she just operating differently now because of her tarnished soul? Had the darkness inside just been waiting for her to cross over some previously taboo lines to start up with this new fun?

Costin returned within a minute, urging a bottle of supplement juice on her, along with a bagel. She took a swig of the juice and it slid down her throat to her stomach, which was still churning.

“I have no solid answers about what is occurring with you,” he said, “but I do have a theory.”

Great, one of those.

He gave it to her. “We are seeing that, no matter if you keep your anger back or give freedom to it, it will materialize.”

The juice lined her mouth with a bitter aftertaste.

“And,” he added, “perhaps these marks have something to do with how you . . .” He trailed off.

“Just say it, Costin.”

He lowered his tone, but it didn’t sting any less. “Perhaps you have come to enjoy your anger, Dawn, and your body is punishing you for it.”

“Wait, I see where this is going. You’re going to tell me that there’s a difference between fighting against the enemy, doing the job I have to do, and actually liking it. And I’ve started liking it too much.” Costin was an example of a hunter who didn’t cotton to his calling, whereas night by night, it was becoming apparent that she was the opposite.

Maybe that should’ve frightened her more, but it didn’t.

Forcing down the bagel and the rest of the juice, she left the bathroom on still-wobbly legs, going to the closet, where there was a weapons locker in back of all the hanging dark clothing that both she and Costin—and Jonah—preferred to wear. She unlocked the cache door behind a rack of coats as he followed her.

“Or,” he said, “we could look at your changes in this way: sometimes, I think you despise yourself more than you do the enemy. The marks could be a sign of that, as well.”

“Like self-mutilation? I’m no cutter.” Grabbing a hip holster from the locker, she wrapped it around herself, buckling it. She didn’t add that she thought Costin probably resented her even more than she did herself, what with this whole human master/ vampire progeny relationship that he’d never wanted.

“When I return from the Underground,” he said, “we need to talk about this at greater length.”

He was so damned sure he
was
going to return.

She should be, too. “So we’ll talk then.”

“I mean we should
talk
. And we should include . . . others.”

The way he said it made her bristle. “Why do I have the feeling you’re suggesting a shrink?”

“I would not rule out professional guidance.”

Jay-sus. “I don’t do therapy. Never have, never will.”

“It might have been appropriate, given your relationship with Eva, for one matter. I am sure it led to where you are now.”

As she grasped a machete to shove into her holster, she tossed a miffed look at him. Had he really just brought up her whole “I love my gorgeous, former-superstar mom/I hate my gorgeous, former-superstar mom” thing? Sure, an Eva complex had shaped her life and wigged her out plenty, but she’d learned to cope in her own way. Dawn had competed with Eva for over two decades before her mom had come back from the dead, compliments of the Hollywood Underground.

“Yes, Costin. I’ll get right on doing an Internet search for a therapist who specializes in addressing the pansy side of vamp hunters. I’m sure I’ll get a million hits.”

“Why can’t you understand that I am delicately trying to suggest some anger management?”

Anger?

She’d grown up with it. It’d raised her better than Frank ever had, protected her, kept her going.

She reached into the locker again, this time for a UV grenade. “Are there any other instructions you need to give me before you leave?”

Costin knew that when she was done with a topic, she was done, so he cleared his throat as she went for a second UV grenade and tucked that one into her holster belt, too. In her back pocket, her cell phone vibrated with what was probably another voice mail from Kiko. Before she’d fed Costin, she’d called the psychic and left her own message for him and Natalia to get back to headquarters. Hopefully, he was telling her they were here.

Costin said, “I do have a few important items to discuss with you.” But, first, he scanned her weapons and addressed that instead. “Dawn, you know that the Friends have been on high alert since Claudius arrived.”

“And you know I like to be prepared, even if I’m surrounded by fortified walls. Or are you just thinking that I’m going to be sneaking outside with this stuff and following you Underground, like I did in L.A.?”

“No, Dawn, I don’t think you will do that, mostly because you are aware of the ammunition I bring with me to an Underground. I have complete faith in the Friends. They have never before let me down and they will not now. They have their own ways of fighting, as with the silver flakes they used in the Hollywood Underground.”

“You should believe in them, Costin. And I know you’ve faced the dragon before and come out of it in one piece. Thing is, that’s when you could get out of body.”

He was brooking no argument. “Dawn, you are to wait until sunrise to inform the rest of the team that I am gone. The information detracts from what you will all need to focus on—guarding Claudius throughout the night. Chances are high that the vampire schoolgirls will come for their second master under the cover of darkness. There is no reason for the team to worry about me during this time. I am only telling you because, out of everyone, you would most notice my absence.”

Sure,
Dawn thought, closing the locker door. It had nothing at all to do with him distrusting the team because most of them had interfered with Costin’s ultimate attack in Hollywood.

“Can you tell me why we don’t just kill Claudius?” she asked. “If we did, it’d cut those schoolgirls’ vamp powers in two—they would only have the ones they inherited from Mihas.”

“There is more than one reason, but above all, Claudius is our insurance.”

Insurance? She glanced over her shoulder at Costin, who seemed so damned self-assured, even though he’d just revealed that he might not be. Her heart hurt at the thought of him suffering in any way. Stupid heart.

“Are you telling me,” she said, “that you suspect Claudius isn’t being entirely truthful with you about the Underground’s location, even though you read it through your Awareness?”

“Although my misreading him is unlikely, keeping him alive is a wise policy . . . just in case. If he has lied to me and covered it up, it will be on you to extract the true Underground location from him, then carry on from there.”

He was so nonchalant about his possible death that it took a second for the impact to hit her.

This might be the night he left her.

As she wrestled with this, she said, “If it came down to that, I’d want to get
your
location from Claudius, along with the details of any trap that caught you. That way we’d be prepared to avoid what you couldn’t if we had to make a rescue.”

“I forbid you to come for me before you take care of the Underground. Is that clear, Dawn?”

She didn’t argue, even though she knew she’d never leave Costin to any vamp trap.

He went back to being matter-of-fact. “As I said, we should expect that Claudius will lure the lower vampires here and leave the Underground that much less populated. And if they do come aboveground for him, this means you are aiding me in the fight, Dawn. You would make my job that much easier. This is also the reason you and the team must stay.”

She stood, still a bit dizzy, but not really because of the blood he’d taken. “All right.”

She had to believe that he knew what he was doing. He was Costin, and he’d survived this long. Besides, there was the tiny fact that she’d learned the hard way in Hollywood that following directions was a good idea.

“So you’ve chosen the Friends who’ll be with you?” she asked, trying to let him go gracefully.

He almost seemed relieved, not that his ramrod posture assured her or anything.

“I have chosen those who work best with me,” he said. “We have pulled most of the Friends off patrol from around the city. A group will remain here, of course, but Breisi will be leading the contingent that goes Underground with me. Although the Friends’ lulling didn’t seem to have any effect on Claudius when they first tried it, while I was conducting an earlier interview with him, they discovered that modulating their voices to a higher frequency was working. We hope to use the element of surprise by retuning the lulling to control the lower vampires while I question Mihas about the dragon and then terminate him. After Mihas is taken care of, I shall send word back to you, and I expect you to do what needs to be done in order to turn the vampire girls fully human.”

Dawn had no problem with killing Claudius when required. That was what needed to happen if Costin was going to get his soul back. Short of killing herself, she didn’t know what else to do to free him from Jonah’s body. As she was Jonah’s creator, her death would make him human again and hopefully release Costin’s essence, restoring him to the Soul Traveler he’d been before. On occasion, Frank had accused her of having a death wish that would fulfill this option, but she’d rather release Costin from Jonah the long way—through completing Costin’s mission.

“You can count on me to take care of Claudius,” Dawn said. “Are you going to tell me where you’re going? Just in case?”

“I will give the location to the Friends who remain here.”

Dawn tried not to give way to a cutting laugh. But how could she blame him for these precautions—never giving out too much information to a hunter who had a history as a loose cannon—when this was exactly the sort of safeguard that had kept his teams running smoothly in the past?

She’d just thought she was his “key.”

“The Friends know all the backup plans,” he said.

“But what if this Underground has learned how to captivate them, just like in Hollywood, and we corporeal team members find ourselves without spiritual aid?”

“Without the Friends, I am as good as gone this time.”

In denial of that, her anger rose, and it placated her with its familiarity. “I still want to come with you. I wouldn’t get out of line—not like the first time.”

“Dawn.” Apologetic. But he wasn’t going to give an inch. Not the warrior, no matter how special he said she was to him. “Each member has her or his own function on the team, and you very well know why
you
are important.”

Functions. She thought about how Breisi, back before she’d died and become a Friend, had known more of Costin’s hidden strategies than any of the team. Then Dawn wondered who had taken Breisi’s place on this hunt.

“Is one of us going to know where you’re headed, too, Costin? I’m guessing you’ll be wearing a locator, so you can be monitored.”

He remained silent, showing his commitment to keeping this a secret, even though she had her suspicions about who that team member was.

But he didn’t need this right now, so she backed off. His plans
would
work.

“I just hope Claudius isn’t sending you into some kind of trap,” she said. “That’s why I’m being such a bitch about this.”

“Dawn.”

She walked right past him, out of the closet and into the bedroom.

“
I
only hope,” he said from behind her, “that this is the Underground that is holding the dragon. What I would give for the end to be near.”

She glanced over her shoulder to see him smiling—a smile from an exhausted soldier who sensed possible deliverance within his reach.

Dawn tried not to think about what that meant: what life would be like without him as a purpose, as a companion. If she’d be better or worse off without him.

Girding herself, she went for the door, opened it, and a burst of jasmine gushed in, as if it’d been eavesdropping outside.

Costin didn’t react as he moved into the hall, just behind Dawn. “Kalin,” he said, greeting the most annoying Friend in the bunch. She was an older hunter, active around the time of Henry VIII. As a human, she’d had witchlike powers that included summoning fire—a trait she couldn’t carry over into the Friend world.

Dawn heard the spirit’s voice airily chattering away at Costin while they headed for the stairs.

“She doesn’t want you to go,” Dawn said, stating the obvious.

“True,” Costin said. “Like you, Kalin wishes to accompany me and Jonah, but she will be staying here, guarding headquarters.”

Aw, crap. “I thought you were going to give this idgit some real guff for the trouble she’s been causing.” Dawn gestured at the air. “Her little crush on Jonah has been nothing but a headache for everyone because she takes up his side instead of yours. Is her big punishment to stay here instead of going with you?”

Kalin bumped into Dawn, but Dawn was used to the scrapping.

“Kalin,” Costin said, and it was the first time she’d heard his tone even approach a bark.

The spirit let out a high-pitched scream of frustration that rang in Dawn’s ears until she had to put her hands over them. Costin withstood it, as unruffled as always.

When Kalin was done, Dawn said, “Don’t tell me—she’s trying to get Jonah to come out so
he
can take her Underground with him.”