She didn’t want that. Didn’t want him.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, an edge to her tone. “About a year ago, you started collecting your lambs for the slaughter here in L.A. for this facade?”
“Every one of my fighters is precious to me.” His voice had dragged itself back to a growl. “I had a hunch about all the strange movie-star murders—and I felt the presence of a master—so that’s when I began recruiting.”
“Why a new team? Do they all die before your next mission?”
“I ask every one of them what they are willing to do for a bigger cause, Dawn. They all have the same answer: anything. You said the same, too, when it came to helping us find Frank. I have to depend upon a literal interpretation of ‘anything’ or I have nothing.”
It was a roundabout answer, goading her to ask, “Just how many times have you done this before?”
When he didn’t answer, Dawn asked, “Am I on the right side? Why did you let this happen to Breisi, why?”
“The terrible part is that I did not let anything happen tonight. It was beyond my control. Far beyond my control.”
If he hadn’t sounded so troubled about that, Dawn would’ve attacked the dark. But there was something much more frightening at work here: maybe The Voice wasn’t all-powerful. Maybe he was in over his head just as much as everyone else.
“Then why do you want to hunt this Underground?” she asked. “Why don’t you just back off and stop?”
“Because I cannot.”
She knew that was all she was going to get. But then, as if he wanted to make up for it, he offered something else.
“A while ago, I lost an entire team because one of them used knowledge they shouldn’t have ever possessed. She knew too much. The team divided because of it, and we lost our quarry, so I learned my lesson and applied it this time to avoid a repeated disaster of that magnitude.” He let out a breath. “Whether the world Above knows it or not, we are at war. And war is not merely physical combat—it’s built on lying, torture, and mental games. It’s the utilization of anything that works, and I will do whatever it takes to win. You would, too.”
Maybe he thought he’d earned her trust with that nibblet. But he hadn’t. It’d take a lot more.
Something on a steel table caught her eye. On weak legs, she managed to rise, to go to it.
When she touched the object, she couldn’t hold back anymore.
It was a bladed crossbow, only half-formed like a creature caught in the middle of death and existence.
“She was making it for you,” The Voice said. “Breisi knew how much you admired her own weapon.”
On a ragged sob, Dawn hunched over the table, depending on it to keep her standing. She pushed at the crossbow but it was attached to the table, immovable. “Damn you to hell, Jonah.”
“Well said,” he whispered.
She darted a glare toward the location of his voice. Darkness. “Can’t you just give me a sign of faith, just one? Can’t you make Breisi’s death meaningful in the least?”
“Nothing can do that.”
Giving up, she rested her head in her arms, rubbing her tears off on her jacket. She was done. No more.
“Dawn?”
She heard a stirring behind her, then another sigh, this one a surrender of sorts.
Then she felt the shocking tingle of someone at her back.
Almost not wanting to, she raised her head, chills digging down her spine, skin more alive than ever. Slowly, she turned her head to find him right behind her.
Jonah.
Words vibrated in her throat but wouldn’t come.
The details of him finally completed the blanks from the few pictures she’d unearthed. Dark hair that had grown out slightly, curling like soft down. Tall, lanky but filled out through the shoulders and chest. Dressed in an outdated silk coat over a white shirt and trousers. But his face—God, his face stunned her the most.
It wasn’t his topaz eyes, almost almond-shaped, reddened from Breisi’s death. It wasn’t even his etched cheekbones and full lips.
It was the scars, long razored crisscrossing welts, angry and tragic.
A broken saint, was all she could think. A young man in his early thirties who’d already seen too much to endure.
He rendered her even more speechless when he held out a lone daisy, an offering of peace or…maybe something else she didn’t have the strength to handle.
She didn’t take the flower. Couldn’t.
Jarred by her rejection, he withdrew it, looking around the room as if lost. He set the daisy on a table near him, his skin going red.
“Help me,” he said simply, jaw clenching, as if he were barring himself from further agony. “I don’t want to beg, but you’re the only way we’re going to beat them.”
The enemy: her mom, the other vamps.
She didn’t know who was what anymore.
“I never did get the chance to…” Jonah used his hands to help him formulate whatever it was he needed to say. “Last night, at the party…”