Vampire Babylon - Midnight Reign Part 1

Midnight Reign.

Vampire Babylon.

Chris Marie Green.

ONE.

STARRING.

W HEN Jessica Reese came home from her job at a Hollywood bar that night, someone was waiting in the bedroom closet.

Someone hiding amidst hanging party dresses and dry-cleaning wrappers that ghosted back and forth with every slight, controlled breath. Someone who sat patiently with a container of bleach and a long knife that would be used to slash the victim's throat and quiet her before that Someone could tear the woman's neck apart in leisurely delight.

Someone was going to become a star tonight.

The sheer plastic hangings leeched air out of the tiny closet, making the wait a humid, trembling vigil.

Patient, patient, wait, just wait.

From the kitchen, a set of keys jangled onto a countertop, a pair of high-heeled shoes hammered on the wooden floor.

Someone fought to breathe, running a tongue over the sharp points of fangs. Blood pumped like gun blasts, the resulting hunger pulsing like open wounds. Just keep remembering why you're here. Remember how the Lee Tomlinson made himself a star through shock value, ripping out that other woman's throat? You can do it, too. Every night, entertainment channels and newscasts spotlighted stock footage of the Lee Tomlinson, the "Vampire Killer," the accused murderer wearing a ten-yard stare, handcuffs, and a harmless smile as he was led into the courtroom for arraignment.

While breathlessly speculating about the upcoming trial, the press relished the charges: Lee had torn a woman's throat out with his bare teeth, then become a fugitive who hadn't even made it out of the county, thanks to a stop at a seedy motel. There, after getting his head together with the aid of some marijuana, he was found: a stoned and peaceful martyr who hadn't even questioned the "anonymous tip" regarding his whereabouts. He hadn't even fought the cops when they'd hauled him out of the room. They said he'd gone willingly, with that same smile on his lips, that same perpetual look of lost innocence in his gaze.

He already had a growing entourage of adoring women wearing the same clothing, makeup, and cotton-candy hairstyle that his victim-what's her name-had sported in the one headshot they always showed on the news. The fans camped outside of the bar where their idol used to work, holding signs proclaiming his hotness, his innocence.

A celebrity. That's what the Lee Tomlinson had turned out to be. A hopeful, Brandon Leelook-alike actor who had never been anything more than a face in a mouthwash commercial...

...Until the cops had uncovered witnesses who'd placed Lee near the scene of the crime, then harvested the DNA evidence that led to the arrest of the "Vampire Killer."

But the press's nickname for Lee would become a joke tonight, right after they saw what a set of serious fangs could really do.

Footsteps exploded closer to the bedroom. Closer.

Someone s.h.i.+vered. If great care hadn't already been taken to shave every body part, the hair would be standing on end over each inch of skin, a body electric with skin-buzzing currents.

Tap, tap, tap went the victim's last footsteps.

The sound grew muted as she walked onto the bedroom carpet.

Someone started to ache, aroused by the woman's proximity.

Stay calm. If the Lee Tomlinson can carry this off, anyone can. Now it's your time to s.h.i.+ne.

The fact that murdering someone using the Lee's same patterns didn't register much. Killing this woman might cause reasonable doubt in a courtroom for him.

Instead, jealousy, even anger, twisted every heartbeat. Confusion and need pumped through each tangled vein like tainted blood.

You're smarter than the cops, so you won't get caught like he did. You're smarter than the Lee Tomlinson, too. You can beat him at his own game.

The thought of sinking fangs into flesh warped into a fantasy, one in which each violent bite was a thrust into Lee, a furious victory.

Through the slit of the sliding closet door, the victim came into view, ambling into the brandied darkness on three-inch heels. The steady drip of the adjoining bathroom's leaking faucet kept time with Someone's strangled breathing as the light from a dying streetlamp outside suffused the room.

The victim was on the midnight side of thirty, shrouded with August sweat and a dark red dress. She bent to work off the thin straps of her heels, her hair frizzed from humidity, her bodice gaping to reveal most of her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

s.e.x. I can smell the s.e.x she wants so badly right on her skin. How will it taste?

Someone's belly went tight, body tensing with the yearning to join with a counterpart.

Lee. Someone craved to become him, to fuse with him again in this subst.i.tute act of connecting. An act of beautiful violence. An act of hating and wors.h.i.+pping a fallen hero.

Unaware of what was in the closet, the victim sauntered to the bathroom, slipping the tiny straps of her dress down her shoulders on the way.

The bathroom light swicked on, slicing over the floor.

It's time. It's my turn to s.h.i.+ne now.

Carefully, Someone grabbed the knife, then opened the closet door and crept to the bathroom, fangs gleaming in the mirror during the impulsive emergence of a smile.

And when Jessica Reese looked in that mirror to see Someone behind her, it was already too late for her to scream.

TWO.

THE PLAYERS.

E VEN with her eyes closed, Dawn Madison was aware of a vague, lurking danger.

Dressed in basic street wear-a sleeveless white T, black jeans, leather bracelets-she crouched, waiting for the next attack, senses alive. She caught the scent of old wood, paint, and must that lingered in the corners of the room. She heard a reporter's voice barking from the TV speakers her opponents had turned on in order to mask their movements. Her skin p.r.i.c.kled as an air- conditioned breeze hushed over her.

But there was something else out there...stalking....

A pop from her right split the air, and a projectile whizzed toward her. With the well-trained moves of an athlete, she banked to the left, using her shoulder to cus.h.i.+on herself while rolling to her knees. Another object came at her from the opposite direction.

She dropped backward, grunting, her spine hitting the floor, her bent legs splaying to give her leeway. Immediately rolling to her stomach, then pus.h.i.+ng up to her feet, she landed in another crouch, her hands at the ready.

"Not bad for the dead of night," yelled a tinny male voice that echoed off the windowless walls.

Heart pattering, Dawn exhaled, regulating her stress while keeping her eyes shut. She maintained her position, ready to withstand anything. "You guys take forever to reload. Can't you go any faster?"

She heard Kiko Daniels make an okay-you-asked-for-it sound as he inserted another beanbag into his gun.

Dawn tuned her ears in to what was happening with her second opponent. Breisi Montoya. Kiko wasn't very mobile with the back brace he was wearing, but his team member had been all over the room trying to whoop Dawn's a.s.s during this agility session. The other woman's bare feet cus.h.i.+oned her stealthy attacks, aiding her in smacking Dawn with three d.a.m.ned bruises already.

The drone of the TV battled Dawn's concentration as she tried to detect Breisi's whereabouts. To the right? Left?

Temples throbbing, she stayed cool. She'd have no other choice if this simulation were real; although the three of them hadn't faced any vampires for over a month, the monsters were still out there. In fact, The Voice kept telling them it was just a matter of time before the vamps reemerged from their "Underground"-or whatever it was the team had gotten wind of.

Dawn blew out a breath, picturing herself outside at night, the moon shrouded behind the tips of pine trees. This training session was supposed to simulate the threat of one vamp variety they'd uncovered. The subspecies was bald, pale, clawed, with iron fangs and attacks that came as fast as those beanbags, especially when they used whip-quick tails with bladed ends.

Red-eyes, the team had called them.

But, Underground, she knew the group was named something else. Guards. Robby Pennybaker had revealed this and more before he'd turned into yet another form of vamp, a creature way more powerful than a Guard or one of the basic silver-eyed Goths the team had also encountered. Terrible to look upon and deadly to fight, Robby had thrown diminutive Kiko across a room and into a wall, breaking his back. The creature had also mentally violated Dawn's mind until she thought she would break, too.

And that's just one of the reasons Dawn had killed him.

Now, she was preparing to function without ever having to look any of those creatures in the eye-she'd never get mind screwed by a vamp again. Wouldn't ever allow them inside so they could see her weaknesses, especially her desperation to find her dad, who'd gone missing over a month ago....

She heard a pop from across the room, straight ahead. Responding by pure instinct, she launched herself sideways, forcing her mind to act as a weapon.

Push...out!

But the trick didn't work this time, not like it had when she'd fought Robby. She'd accidentally belted the vampire with some kind of mental shove, and she didn't know how to re-create it, even if she'd surprised herself by doing it a couple of times during this last month of training.

That made it an undependable tactical option.

Whap! The beanbag punched Dawn's hip as she hit the floor. s.h.i.+t. And ouch. Time for a new plan.

Before Kiko could get off a shot and Breisi could reload, Dawn opened her eyes and unwound a chain from around her waist. A nine-section whip chain, to be precise.

Holding the handle with her right thumb and forefinger, she coiled the steel-linked bars in her left hand. In a flash, she transferred the bundled chains to her right while securing her grip on the handle. Then, with a push, she sprung the whip outward.

Without pause, she was already cycling the weapon by her side, using a right elbow hook spin to create a blurred bubble around her body. The bars and links moved that fast.

Sure enough, Kiko's beanbag glanced off the steel arc.

"Dawn," Breisi yelled from the left. Her tone was laced with a heavier Spanish accent than usual, so she was clearly p.i.s.sed. "I guess this means we're done."

"Aw, no, I wanna see this," Kiko said. "She's been practicing hard."

Just to be an ornery hot dog, Dawn spun the whip once overhead, winding up, then launched into a b.u.t.terfly kick, circling the links beneath her body while jumping. She landed on her feet, grinning at Breisi and slowing the whip down. At the apex of its spin, she allowed it to fall gently back into her hand. There, the weapon rested like a happy snake that had struck out to get the best of Breisi and her d.a.m.ned beanbags.

"I thought I'd give my new toy a first run," Dawn said. She felt good about it, too, even though her right arm ached a little from the injuries she'd sustained during the throw down with Robby Pennybaker.

Breisi leaned against a mirrored wall, hand on one hip, beanbag gun at ease in the other. With her Louise Brooksblack hair, broad yet delicate features, and Mickey Mouse T-s.h.i.+rt-Dawn had just weaned the woman off those dorky teddy bear prints-you'd think she'd come off as some Latina cutie. But upon a closer look, she was more like an Aztec warrior ready to tear Dawn's chest open. A more minute inspection also revealed the tiny signs of age that had ended her ingenue acting career.

Not that a thirty-one-year-old should be worried about being ancient. At least, not in the real world. But this was Hollywood, where logic feared to tread.

As Dawn faced Breisi, she could see her own image in the wall mirror. Not exactly an L.A. poster girl herself, with her extremely average face, complete with a lovely scar riding an eyebrow, courtesy of a stunt gag. But that was nothing compared to the scar on her cheek from the fight with Robby. She also had a sleekly muscled antiwaif body and a low-maintenance, low-riding ponytail that banded her brown hair together.

A special delivery full of att.i.tude. She'd been maintaining the package for twenty-four years, ever since she could first say, "Screw off." Ever since she realized that she would never live up to the gorgeous promises her mother, the famous Eva Claremont, had woven.

Mom. The name tasted bitter.

Breisi spoke, voice flat. "Those are some clever moves, but I thought you'd left the stunt work by the wayside. Flashy show-off routines aren't going to keep you alive with vamps."

Dawn negligently inspected the dull practice dart on the end of her whip chain. It'd be the real thing if she used it outside. "Sharp, silver, and tipped with holy water. And I can use it to attack a Guard or maybe even one of those Goth Groupies. Blessed articles have an effect on both vamps, and we know silver slowly poisons at least some of them. If I could ward off spit with the chain's speed and slice the dart into a red-eye's tail or an exposed place-"

"It is just like one of those Guard's tails, ain't it?" Kiko said, making his way over.

A pretty blond guy in his late twenties with a soul patch under his lower lip, he was a struggling actor of a certain stature, a "little person" who was proportioned just right-only smaller. Right now, he couldn't audition because he was recovering from Robby's beat down. With a still-healing back, he also couldn't run, couldn't lift heavy objects, and sure as h.e.l.l couldn't fight by Breisi and Dawn's side if it came right down to it. But his brain was still running on all cylinders. His psychometric, telepathic, and precognitive senses would always be valuable, not that Kiko was happy about missing out on any expected calls to action. During this past month, during all the days of dried-up leads to her dad's whereabouts and information about the Underground, Kiko had been in physical therapy, biting back the pain Dawn knew he wasn't showing.

He reached for the whip chain, wanting to inspect it, and she made a big deal of pausing, then running a challenging gaze over him.

Afterward she grinned, handing it over, as if he'd pa.s.sed muster. She hoped he felt like that, anyway.

"Those Guard tails kept nagging at me," she said. "I wanted to level the playing field with my own version of a barbed whip. Now, I know it's nowhere near as powerful as theirs, but what else am I going to do? Become a mutant monkey and grow my own freakin' tail?"

"Not a far trip for a primate like you."

Kiko scanned the dart. It was the first time Dawn had brought out the martial arts weapon around her team, even though they knew she'd been practicing off property.

"You can attack with this and protect yourself?" he asked.

"When the red-eyes spit at you, it will go right through that steel," Breisi said, referring to the Guards' lovely habit of expectorating burning-hot fluids.

"Your lab tests showed that the stuff isn't composed of acid, right?" Dawn asked. "Remember how their spit just charred the silver arm bracelet I used to wear, and that was it? Maybe steel will go unaffected, too." She knew Breisi wouldn't refute her own scientific findings just to make Dawn put the whip chain away. Nope, not Miss Lab Rat, U.S.A., their appointed gadget wizard, the Bondian Q of their team. Which made Kiko their psychic Aragorn. Which made Dawn...what?

Memory washed over her: lifting a machete, hacking off Robby's head. Putting a silver bullet through his heart, just to be sure.

Dawn was what her father, Frank Madison, had once been to this team. Muscle. And maybe even something else...

Before she'd joined up with Limpet and a.s.sociates, a vision had come to Kiko. He'd seen her, Dawn Madison, covered in the blood of a vampire.

"It was the end of our struggles," he'd told her. "I felt that everything would be fine after that."

Supposedly, she was "key" to beating these vamps. That's what Kiko and The Voice kept telling her anyway. Their reclusive, as- yet-unseen boss had even used his employee, Frank, as bait to get Dawn the Prophecy Girl involved with all this craziness. She'd rushed to L.A. to help find her father, of course, but they hadn't met with success. Yet, according to the boss, whose agenda had more to do with the Underground than with Frank, the team was closer to both her dad and the vamps now more than ever.

She rubbed her arms, suddenly going cold...and way too warm. The Voice. The man who communicated with them only through speakers. The only ent.i.ty the formerly overs.e.xed Dawn had allowed inside of her lately in a strange l.u.s.t affair.

When she held her hand out to Kiko for the whip chain, the psychic grudgingly gave it back.

"Don't even think about it, Kik," Breisi said.