Part 35 (1/2)

Too bad vampires didn't have to ask to feed on memories, too, G.o.dd.a.m.n him.

The outrage returned-shame at having her mind bared and entered. Her revolver trembled as she kept aiming it at Nathan.

On the other side of the gla.s.s, Robby began to laugh.

With a start, the dad backed away, shaking his head to clear it. ”d.a.m.n you, Robby! You know what they'll do to me if I give out that kind of information!”

”They”? The Underground?

The vampire kept laughing, making it easy for Dawn to guess what had just happened. Robby had mind screwed Nathan, purposely setting his dad up for the consequences from ”they.”

Would Nathan be forced to stay in this Underground, allowing Robby to hold on to his dad forever this time?

There was a definite power game going on here. Revenge?

But, hey, as long as they were fighting each other, Dawn and Breisi might just get more information about the Underground-and maybe Frank-in the fallout. Then they would worry about getting Robby alone to Jonah for follow up.

It was just a matter of figuring out how to do that-what, with those red eyes still bobbing in the darkness behind Robby like flares on an ocean of night. Simple, huh?

Nathan straightened his designer s.h.i.+rt, averted his face from Robby again. ”It's time to take you back, you ingrate.”

He raised his hand to the Guards.

”Stop!” It was Marla, shooting out of her corner, jacket pooled behind her on the marble. She got in Nathan's face. ”He said he doesn't want to go.”

Finally. Dawn backed up a few steps, raised her revolver higher at him in agreement. Breisi was on it, too.

”She's got the idea,” the other PI said. ”We'll be taking Robby with us to give him peace.”

”Yes, he needs peace, like she said,” Marla added. ”Please, Nathan.”

Yet, even in the face of his dire situation, her husband laid a hand on Marla's shoulder, then pushed her away. She fell backward, sprawling on the floor in her silk pantsuit.

”First,” he said, ”if I lost Robby, I'd also lose the millions of dollars I've invested in this program. Second, there're a lot of...caveats...that aren't going to let you have him.”

He gestured to the Guards.

Giving them permission to move on Robby.

With a burst of adrenaline, Dawn pointed her gun at the window, targeting the flicker-frizz of one creature. Breisi joined her, firing, too-the pane bursting into shards. But the pale creatures easily zagged out of the bullets' paths, their bodies beating forward as Robby charged away.

Yet the smaller vampire didn't succeed in escaping tonight-the three Guards were too close. While two flicked out their tails, coiling them around Robby and dragging him into the porch-dimmed darkness, the other stood back, its tail waving.

Then it did something Dawn had only barely noticed during the first fight with them.

Its tail barb zinged open into a bloom of long, machete-like blades. It ran one of them near Robby's throat in a slow, slas.h.i.+ng motion. Then, instantly, the blades swallowed back into a lone metal gathering of tips. It was daring Robby to change, Dawn thought. To go into big-time vamp form with that misty body and all-powerful eyes before the Guard could decapitate him.

A challenge from one undead creature to another.

Dawn didn't understand why they just didn't zoom off with him. Were the Guards waiting for Nathan so they could take him to exact those consequences Robby had mentioned? Were they going to use the boy vampire as a lure?

Or h.e.l.l. Were the Guards after some PIs, too?

On the fringes of that thought, everything seemed to slow down, compressing all the action into one pinched second: looped time, eternally torturous.

”Mom!” the vamp screamed. His voice contained a dragged-out knowledge that he had no more father, that Marla and the PIs were his only hope now.

In the meantime, Dawn squeezed off another bullet.

Marla opened her mouth. ”Robby, come in, come to Mommy!”

Then everything fell to pieces: Before the Guards' tails could snap open into blades, Robby sipped into mist and streamed out of the Guards' clutches, slamming through the window frame and into the house, his mouth yawing in a ferocious roar as he took feathery form and poised his fangs above a screeching Nathan. In a very human moment, Breisi stumbled back at the awful sight of the vampire, while Marla scuttled behind a chair. Dawn's bullet missed one Guard as all three rushed the window and halted, unable to enter. Breisi saw their hesitation, too, and while she covered Robby with her gun, Dawn raised the b.u.t.t of her own revolver to hit Nathan over the head before he could invite the red-eyes in.

As he collapsed, she brought her weapon back up in a flowing arc, aiming at Robby out of pure instinctual fear and realizing only too late how futile a silver bullet might be.

Scraa-eeeee-tttccchhh!

Sensing the threat of Dawn's gun, Robby redirected his fury, raging over her now with the force of an animal clawing into the belly of felled prey.

Violated, attacked- She bared her teeth at him and tensed, ready to shoot.”Dawn, no!” Breisi yelled.

Robby, in her head, pawing though stinging images of Eva...

In a moment of clarity, she realized that she wasn't facing a child here. Robby wasn't even a poor monster that someone else had created. No, this thing above her was something that snuck into houses at night to kill, over and over again, unless it was stopped- Dawn fired.

The silver thunked into his arm, embedding itself like a jewel in the midst of white cotton. The vampire's roar came to an abrupt stop. As Dawn avoided his eyes, he hesitated, then dropped to the floor, his body spinning back into human form.

He panted, going into the fetal position. ”You didn't have to do that.”

Yes, I did, she thought. For Kiko. Forme.

Even through a filter of terror, Dawn heard sobs in back of her. Marla had come from behind the chair and...d.a.m.n it, Nathan was holding his head where Dawn had hit him.

Unfortunately, she hadn't cracked him hard enough to knock him out, but a fine trail of blood was wiggling down his face as he stared at his son, his mouth and eyes saucered.

Maybe Nathan had just seen thetrueface of his child for the first time. He'd created this thing, and it horrified him. Good.

She heard the Guards hissing near the window, but they weren't standing in front of it. They were hiding, making themselves sneaky, tough targets.

”Blood,” Robby said plaintively from his spot on the floor. ”I need blood to wash the silver out.”

While Breisi covered the Guards, she shouted at Dawn. ”The silver is working slowly. We need to allow the boss access to him in this weakened state before the elements consume his body and destroy him.”

”Daddy?” Robby crawled to Nathan, fixating on the trickle of blood. ”Will you feed me?”