Vampire Babylon - Night Rising Part 25

Breisi looked up, her face scrubbed with red streaks. "Resting, I imagine." Dawn sprang into motion, das.h.i.+ng for Breisi's dungeon door. She heard Kiko behind her, chasing her down.

"It's locked," Breisi said lifelessly. "Kiko, just let her go. Let her try to find him."

Heat covered Dawn's sight, anger turning her vision into bleeding colors that melded together in unstable waves. She had no control over where she was going now-something deep and wounded had taken her over, forcing her to mercilessly shake the iron handle on Breisi's door. Unsuccessful, she pushed away from it, went to another door, then another. All locked.

Hardly fazed, she barged up the stairs, down the hall to The Voice's office.

"Come out!" she yelled at the threshold. "Or do you know how much I want to kill you right now?"

The words rippled down the hall, through the house, against the ceilings, bouncing off the walls and banging back at her. From the two portraits that were still populated, the ladies watched Dawn, their eyes following her as she entered the office.

As her head closed in on itself, she thought she heard a soft"Shhhh"in her ear.

She brushed the sound away, stalked near his desk, circled, then stood in front of the TV.

"You come out and talk to me, G.o.dd.a.m.n you. Get out here!"

"Hush..."The request brushed over Dawn's arms, silk over flesh. She smelled jasmine.

The tinkle of a chandelier-the one that had drawn her into the boudoir the other night-called to her. A lullaby of gentle crystal.

"Stop playing me," she said.

"Everything will be alright."Now it sounded like a mult.i.tude of souls woven together, whispers in a vortex."Hu-uu-sh..."

Although she wanted to keep her rage in the open, Dawn could feel it receding into a tiny, destructive ball of packed hatred, small enough to fit into one of those boxes she supposedly had in her soul. As the soft voices tried to soothe her, to douse that ball with cool words, Dawn fought to keep her enflamed emotions on the surface, like living armor.

But she couldn't. She was too weak, successful only in pus.h.i.+ng the quelled wrath to the center of her stomach, where it glowed, revolved. Waited to explode full-force again.

Out of nowhere, gentle, invisible fingers began drifting over her arms, pulling her out of the office, stroking her hair, her neck.

"Shhh,"the voices said again.

Dis...o...b..bulated, Dawn struggled against going anywhere, but it was as if she was moving at the command of another force, being led out of the door and into the hall.

With one look back at the office, she saw that the painting of the Elizabethan woman was empty.

How...?

"Shhh..."

She was brought to a dusky room at the far end. Candles flickered inside long, gem-cut tubes of gla.s.s, the light casting wicked shapes on the beige walls. A writing desk stood open, a pen resting over stationery marked with large, elegant writing. Next to it, a bookcase opened away from the wall at an angle, like a door left ajar; it allowed a slat of darkness, a steady stream of crisp wind that made the candle flames dance. In the opposite corner hung a mirror, sheer black material shrouding everything but a peek of reflection. The invisible hands-more than one pair-continued to explore her shoulders, her neck, her back, their touch like a twilight breeze."No." Dawn shoved at the air around her, angry that the sensations were making her skin tingle.

She thought she heard a faint giggle.

"Leave us," said a dredged voice from the dark slat near the bookcase.

It sounded real, unfiltered by a speaker, immediate.

The maddening laughter stopped at the command. A flow of jasmine perfume whooshed past Dawn and out the door. It shut, shaking the walls to a slight vibration.

Dawn took a step toward the slat. "Is that you, a.s.shole?"

"Stay back, Dawn."

She stopped, fought her way forward, but she couldn't seem to advance any more.

Yelling, she finally gave up, reduced to a panting wreck. Her buried ire grew, burning through the serenity that the invisible hands had tried so hard to cover her with.

"I won't blindly obey directions," she said. "Not anymore,boss. Not since I found out what you set Frank up for." She faced the darkness, hoping he was right there, feeling every lash of her disappointment. "How could you do this to him?"

"Dawn..."

And it started again. She could feel his presence, the calming entry, The Voice, slipping into her body through the pores of her skin. Part of her welcomed it, craved it because it would make her forget that much easier. But another part of her battled him out with all the force she could muster.

"Stop," she whispered.

Her resistance built, heaved against him, stronger, stronger...

"Dawn, I need you to listen-"

With a last-ditch explosion, she cried out, clawed at him with her hands, swiping through cold air.

She heard a grunt, felt him pull back.

"Don't touch me. Don't..."

Her body finally seized up, tears wrenching out of her in a violent squeeze of terror, helplessness, sorrow. She sank to her knees at the force of them.

I've lost it, she told herself. d.a.m.nit. I've lost,period.

She could feel The Voice hovering near, in his dark opening by the bookcase. She wanted to rip into him, tear him open, make him feel as vulnerable as she did right now.

"Not only did you lie to me," she said through clenched teeth, "you lied to Frank. Kiko said..."

"I already know what Kiko said." He sounded beaten. "I wish you had allowed him to explain further."

"Explain? Can't I hear even a syllable of truth fromyou?" Stop crying, you wuss.

And Dawn did, though she was so worked up that she couldn't even moderate her breathing. Her lungs stung with the unnatural efforts of holding back, holding together.

"I've never lied to you," he said. "There's been some omission, but no lies."

"Same thing."

"No." A long pause cut the room in two, putting them on opposite sides of a chasm. "It's not the same. I want to keep you safe, but there's so much more at stake. Matters that are worth the sin of omission. Matters that will have an effect on this world much longer than the span of your lifetime."

"So it's all for the greater good, huh?" Bitter. G.o.d, so bitter. "You're such a hero, Voice."

The nickname struck an odd chord, like a grandfather clock whose chimes had warped and accidentally announced a secure hour at midnight.

"I'm known by a lot of names, Dawn, but that's not one of them. Please, call me...Jonah."

Cold air from the dark slat seeped into the room, surrounding her, coaxing her to understand his reasoning.

"Why don't you just come all the way out?" she asked.

"As lovely as that sounds, it's not wise. Would you like to hear about Frank?"

"What do you think?"

A caress of air dragged over her cheek, an invisible hand stroking her in compa.s.sion. Dawn jerked away from it, wanting so badly to accept it, too.

The Voice...Jonah...continued, sounding wounded by her rebuff. "You certainly have Frank's pa.s.sion and conviction."

"I have his temper, too." She glared at the darkness. "What are you exactly? Who are you?"

In the resulting pause, she thought she heard a s.h.i.+ft behind the bookcase, like a body-his?-had settled itself in for a long talk, crouched in readiness in case it had to flee.

Or maybe it was her overactive imagination. And why not? It had served her pretty well lately.

"What am I?" he repeated. "That would be up to interpretation. But I know what your father is. He's a good man, Dawn, and I regret that he went missing."

Smooth, she thought. He was just as adept as she was at manipulating a conversation.

"I didn't plan for him to disappear," he added. "You must understand that. But I did track him down and hire him a few months ago, with an eye to convincing you to join him in Los Angeles again. He even knew about Kiko's vision-"

"The one where I'm 'key'?" She put sarcastic emphasis on the last word.

He withstood her abuse. "Yes. I place great stock in Kiko's emerging prescience. He has a developing talent I haven't seen since..." He sighed, resigned again. "I'd be a fool to ignore his visions. When he mentioned you by name and advised me that he felt you'd be reluctant, I wasted no time in contacting Frank. It was a devious way to get to you, yes, but he jumped at the salary, and had no problem acting as our 'hired muscle.' When we trained him for PI work, he didn't hesitate there, either. Then we approached him with his biggest purpose." "Getting me here? So I could be some dreamt-up savior? I think you've got the wrong woman."

"No, I don't. We believed that he could persuade you to return, to work with us, but Frank didn't want you involved with the paranormal."

"Probably for good G.o.dd.a.m.ned reason,Jonah."

"As I said, our work is more important than any individual. But what you don't know is that Frank began coming around. As he got deeper into the investigation, he saw how important it was to 'save the world,' for lack of a better description."

Dawn was already shaking her head. "My dad. A crusader. Right, tell me another one."

The Voice's silence was more powerful than any comeback.

"So while he was detecting,Jonah, did he find out anything useful? Or were you just keeping him busy until your key came?"

"Dawn, Frank turned out to be very valuable to us. He was. .h.i.tting a lot of walls in his work, but he did discover...something. He called me from what I now think to be Bava and said that perhaps itwastime for you to come out here and fulfill your place. Yet before he could continue, the phone went dead, and I didn't hear from him again."

She still didn't understand the part about him changing his mind about her working with Limpet. It wasn't like Frank to go against his beliefs. He was as stubborn as she was.

"Are you lying to me about his turnabout?" Dawn asked.

"No." The cold breeze angled again, even as his voice was still anch.o.r.ed from behind the bookcase. "If you hadn't been called now to come to Los Angeles because of his disappearance, you would have been called soon anyway-by Frank. He had come around, I'm certain of that. His disappearance was a tragic surprise-and it wasn't designed to get you here."

"I still don't see how he would've agreed to recruit me."

Pause. "Before he disappeared, I asked him what he would do to make the world a safer place for you. Do you know what he answered, Dawn?"

She knew, because she'd said the same thing to Jonah that first night. Anything-she would do anything. But, back then, Dawn hadn't known just what that meant, how far it would go.

"Frank," Jonah added, "started to realize what 'anything' entailed. I believe you're at the same point."

Her armor wouldn't allow her to believe him-not yet. Especially with Matt Lonigan's words embedded in her brain.

Demand some answers.

Answers about what? Did the PI know that Frank had been hired by Limpet so they could get her back to L.A.?

"Does Matt Lonigan know about all this?"

The air seemed to quiver at the mention of the name.

"I'm not certainwhatLonigan knows. Not certain at all."

She shuddered. What if Lonigan had been referring to other secrets that Jonah was playing close to his chest? What else wasn't The Voice telling her?She thought about the reason Lonigan might have been at Klara's murder scene.

Summoning all her courage, she unsteadily got to her feet, asked one of the questions that was bothering her the most. "Do you think Frank had anything to do with Klara's murder?"

"I don't believe so."

She exhaled, profoundly relieved, but not entirely. Also, she wasn't surehowto react to the simple truth from The Voice. It'd taken so long to get to this point that she wasn't sure Jonah was really on the up and up. Nevertheless, she rode this opportunity.

"Do you think Frank somehow became a...a..."

"A vampire?"

She managed a nod.

"If he is, he wouldn't have done it without regret."

No. Please, that couldn't have happened....

"We have no proof of his change, Dawn, it's merely a possibility to consider."

Her defenses down, he flowed right back against her, the cool air pressed against her arm like a face buried there and asking forgiveness. She didn't have the strength to be angry anymore. She had to save her rage for more important fights, fights she knew were inevitable.

"Kiko said Frank's in pain."

"And pain could very well be a sign of humanity."

Pure relief had her slumping backward, turning toward the half-covered mirror, but a pair of invisible arms caught her. More powerless anguish wracked her, threatening new tears.