Costin?
Had he been the one who’d torn off Nigel’s head?
From the shame and sadness in his gaze, she knew the answer was yes. The vampire hunger—or probably the hunger for freedom—had finally claimed him, and he’d taken what she’d just said to heart, too.
Good men don’t take pleasure in death like he did
.
The both of them, just as bad as Vlad.
They looked to the box—the unassuming, utilitarian coffin that had to be holding the sleeping dragon. Obviously, the creature wasn’t about to wake up before his two-hundred-year rest was done. That was why he’d needed bodyguards.
“What should we do with her?” Dawn asked Costin, indicating Lilly.
“We cannot leave her alive.”
Lilly thrashed at the Friends again, and something spindly and black fell from her belt, clinking to the floor—a weapon?
Costin began to walk toward the coffin. “Let’s finish this.”
With the help of Kalin and the other Friend, Dawn made her way toward him, groaning with the effort. She was about to fall apart, she could’ve sworn it, and she didn’t just mean her body.
“We’ll get you there,”
said Mary-Margaret, coming from behind to help push Dawn forward.
As she looked at the coffin, it seemed like such a long journey that Dawn couldn’t help but think that it’d never end, not even now, when they were just feet away.
She didn’t want to imagine what would happen afterward, either, in real life with Costin.
Her earpiece crackled to static, and Kiko’s rushed voice came on.
“Dawn—damn it . . . The girls already woke up. They’re human, but they’re . . .” He battled for breath, as if he was running or fighting. “They’re freaking out and going for the exits, crying and shit. We’re going after them—will do our best to make sure they don’t lead anyone back down here before you’re done!”
“Okay, Kik.”
Maybe it was a positive thing that Kiko and Natalia wouldn’t be here in the Underground from this point on. Maybe the dragon would hit Dawn and Costin hard, and she didn’t want the others anywhere near that.
Costin had heard the transmission, and he rested his hand in the small of her back while leading her the rest of the way to the coffin. As they passed Lilly, he stepped on whatever had fallen from her belt, and the
custode
moaned, as if she’d been a part of the item that had been ground into the floor.
“No,” Lilly said, like this was her own dark chant—something that might keep Dawn and Costin away from the dragon. “No . . . no . . .”
When they came to the foot of the altar, where the vibrations were so strong that Dawn felt like she was caught in a live wire, Costin stopped, lowering his gaze, concentrating.
His Awareness,
Dawn thought.
He’s bringing it out for what could be the final time. . . .
Without warning, the coffin exploded, sending wood and soil everywhere. A drill-on-teeth cry grated while green eyes came alive, peering through the debris as it fell.
The Friends seemed to heave a massive breath, and they retreated, taking Lilly with them, but Costin held steady, glaring through the shrapnel as it clattered around him and Dawn, some of the wood smacking them as she raised her good arm to ward it off.
Awake . . . This close to the coffin, Costin’s Awareness had woken up the dragon. . . .
She realized that Costin was already connecting to the eyes of whatever had come out of that coffin, attacking as best as he could, but from the way he started rocking back and forth, Dawn knew he was already at a disadvantage.
As the last of the debris clapped to the ground, she saw through the parting dust the vague shape of a stocky, naked long-haired man changing into something . . . else.
Then, as the air fully cleared, she saw just what he was.
Rising, swaying, stretching out from its deep sleep, a creature hovered, and it shuddered Dawn’s flesh, like scales were rippling over every inch of
her
, just as the dragon literally grew scales, itself, in a red, iridescent wave.
She should’ve lashed out with every remaining bit of her mind powers, but she was too enthralled with what the creature was becoming.
Its consciousness expanded in its gaze as the vampire locked onto Costin, completing its change, revealing a hulking dragon’s— or more accurately,
serpent’s
—head sitting on top of a slithery body with arms that extended into stiletto-like claws. With its long tongue wiggling past thick fangs, it looked like it was testing the air, still coming to the waking realization of where it was and when it was.
Dawn couldn’t move. Scared . . . never been this fucking scared in all her life . . .
The dragon paused, then snaked its tongue toward Costin, as if the loosed Awareness irritated it.
The Friend who was slinging Dawn’s arm disengaged from the injury just in time to push Costin out of the way of that tongue, and the motion woke Dawn right the hell up.
It was going after him.
Key,
she thought. I’m
key
.
I’m supposed to do something
.
The darkness in her surged into every fiber of her body like never before, almost like the anger wanted to get to the dragon and join it. Almost like she was waking up with the monster.
Costin’s swaying had become surreal, his body rooted to one place as it circled, like how one of those punching bags with sand on the bottom moves after it’s been pushed.
Do something before it really wakes up. . . .
Just like earlier, when Dawn had distanced herself from her body while fighting Lilly, she withdrew from herself. Then, with a drugged kind of wonder, she watched as Dawn Madison let loose with all the power she had, her body flinching with the burst of her projected rancor. She saw the force of her fury impaling itself into the dragon’s flesh, tearing it open, exposing its innards.
Behind Dawn, Lilly screeched.
Dawn barely heard it. Instead, she was locked to how the dragon’s blood and vital organs spilled out. Then it was as if teeth had fixed on the creature’s heart and was ripping that out, too. Blood spurted, covering one side of Dawn’s body, but not Costin’s, as her mind held the dragon’s heart in midair.
The organ rotated there, as if she wanted the dragon to see it as the creature wavered, sleepily realizing that it had been gutted.
Then, chunks began to fall out of the hovering heart, and Dawn realized that she was mentally dismantling it.
The dragon bellowed, looking down at himself, then back up at her.
Then he smiled with those dragon teeth before collapsing.
At the thud of his body, Dawn jammed back into herself, gasping at the memory of that smile. Costin grabbed one of Lilly’s deserted swords plus the flamethrower, then leaped forward to chop away at his creator’s head then burn him to a crisp, all with such quickness that it happened in what seemed to be a strike of crimson lightning.
When the first lick from the flamethrower consumed the dragon, Dawn stumbled backward from the fire—sheets and sheets of fire as the dragon burned.
Armageddon,
she thought. And it was here in her tiny corner of the world.
As the Friends pushed her farther backward, Dawn felt the blood weighing on her skin, almost like in Kiko’s prophecy. She was covered in a vampire’s red, but only on one side, opposite her beauty marks. She was victorious. And she was . . .
Dawn tripped as the Friends pushed her harder to leave. She felt like the dragon’s blood was acidly tunneling into her, far worse than any beauty mark, eating its way inside, down to her very bones.
The dragon’s body exploded, and the entire room became a roll of thunder and orange, and as Costin grabbed her arm so they could both escape, he fell down.
Just like that, losing all power, convulsing there at her feet, his eyes blue as he leveled a horrified look at her.
Jonah was back?
And what the hell was wrong with him?
The Friends pushed against both him and Dawn, urging them to flee, and with Dawn’s good arm, she picked up Jonah to help him as a rumble of fire bit at their heels and the spirits jarred them to a higher speed.
Flame breathed through the tunnels, chasing them out of the Underground while destroying it at the same time. Then, as Dawn and Jonah pushed toward some exit, the fire became a living/dead thing, spitting out Dawn and Jonah and the Friends as they tumbled over the outside grass, the flames waggling out of the exit like tongues, then sucking back in.
Then . . .
It was quiet.
So quiet.
Dawn collapsed onto her back on the heath grass under the moon, gasping for breath, her body a length of stabbing rips and breaks, her skin and everything underneath it prickling with its own fire on the side of her body where the dragon’s blood had covered her. She saw Jonah as immovable as the new night, eyes closed, but she didn’t find Lilly.
Kalin’s voice came from the spot where she was still pressing down on Dawn’s leg.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.” Then she remembered the dragon. “I think I’m okay. Everything’s good, right? Isn’t it?”
Kalin just held to Dawn, and she was real quiet, too, just like the cold air around them.
But Dawn was getting used to others judging her in the aftermath of every fight because of the lines she’d crossed. It amazed her that Kalin would be one of them, even if this was a line Dawn herself didn’t understand.
She’d made a mess of the dragon. Of course, the creature hadn’t been fully awake, but she’d really done a number on him. Bloodlust had made it possible.
And, at the end, he’d smiled, just as if he’d appreciated her enthusiastic kill.
Shoving the final image of him aside, Dawn shut off her headlight, groaning at her injuries, dragging herself toward the place where Jonah lay prone on the grass.
Mary-Margaret made like a sling on Dawn’s arm again and said,
“Lilly’s gone. When the fire exploded, we lost control of her, and she either got caught by the flames or found a way out. From all reports, she knew every trapdoor.”
Another Friend skidded over.
“It looks done down there. We’ll go back in soon to make sure, but we got it, y’all. We cleaned them out! Yee-haw!”
As the stupefaction started to wear off of Dawn, her skin really acted up on the side of her face where the dragon’s blood had splashed. In its throbbing singe under her skin, she felt the bite of the dragon’s smile as it’d died. No matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to forget it.
The immediacy of seeing that Costin was okay overcame her. When she got to him, he opened his eyes.
Even in the moonlight, she could see they weren’t quite the same Jonah electric blue as before.
“Jonah?” she asked.
He glanced at her, and the blankness in his gaze hit her hard.
He was looking at the burning side of her face, and she put her hand there.
“Blood.” His tone seemed . . . changed. “You’re covered with his blood.”
He was talking about Kiko’s prophecy, and he was getting even more confused as he sat up, testing his limbs with shaking hands.
The Friends gathered around, watching.
“What’s wrong?” Dawn asked. “Jonah . . .”
His devastated expression made Dawn grasp his arm, and his body tone didn’t feel as hard as usual. A jolt of adrenaline rocked her, and she touched his face. It wasn’t as cool.
A thought wormed into her mind: Vampire blood weakens from generation to generation, and the dragon’s blood had been more powerful than any master vampire’s or progeny’s. Its death would inflict more damage than when Benedikte or Claudius or Mihas had died, wouldn’t it? Its termination could turn all of its line human again. . . .
Had Costin known this and he just hadn’t wanted to get her hopes up if he was wrong? Had she been so bent on saving him that she hadn’t thought beyond the obvious to
this
?
“My body,” Jonah said.
He’d only been a vampire for about a year, so he would’ve looked the same.
But if he wasn’t vamp, wouldn’t that mean his body had stopped being undead? Wouldn’t that mean . . . ?
“Costin,” she said.
“What about Costin?”
“He’s not here.” Jonah touched his chest, his voice choked. “He’s gone.”
TWENTY-TWO
ONCE A KEEPER
LILLY
slowly opened her eyes to find that she was in a bed, tucked under stiff white sheets, the walls round her just as sterile, too. She stared at the ceiling, not knowing where she was or how she’d got here until the particles of her mind sifted and settled into grains of memory.
Fire. Screams
.
Many screams, many of them her own.
When she tried to sit up, she found she couldn’t, due to bandages swathing flesh that felt raw under the gauze. Bandages that made her feel as trapped as a mummy. Even her face was encapsulated except for her eyes, nose, and mouth.
Her mind took a minute to catch up to a heart that’d begun to hack out a painful rhythm. Now she saw blades, blazing green eyes, a tuner crushed under a boot, Nigel’s headless form falling to the ground . . .
Then it was all washed out by a wipe of fire.
Mortification welled in Lilly’s chest as it all clamored back to her—the Underground, destroyed, burning her just before she’d used a trapdoor to escape. And the dragon . . .
A flow of dread crushed her to the mattress. The hunters—Dawn and the mean vampire—had slain the dragon, who was supposed to be so safe under Lilly’s watch.
Biting back a furious, helpless sob, Lilly wrestled the image of Dawn taking down the master after he’d been awakened from his sleep by the mean vampire. The creature had to have been a blood brother, but he hadn’t fit the descriptions of the others on file, and he hadn’t been detected by any Meratoliage through their black-art crystal gazing.