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vampire step as he came forward, close enough so she could see the injuries on his face that had almost healed from last night’s showdown with Claudius.
    Dawn never knew quite how to act around Jonah, especially nowadays. Where Costin could scorn her for a lack of control in fighting, Jonah seemed to understand that she was only human.
    Or at least as human as she could be with these weird psychokinetic powers that’d woken up during the Hollywood Underground hunt.
    “Where’s Costin?” she asked. “He was in charge the last time I knew.”
    “And I’m in charge now.”
    Jonah halted near Dawn’s side, his clothes smelling wash clean. A ridiculous flutter painted the lining of her belly, but that shouldn’t be happening around Jonah. Just Costin, her lover. The only one she allowed to take her blood.
    “He didn’t have a problem with me assuming control,” Jonah added. “I wanted to get things moving, and I kept jarring him out of our rest. But Costin needed a mental nap after all the Awareness digging he was doing with Claudius. Still, he’ll be back soon enough, even if daylight hours won’t see us at our best.”
    It occurred to Dawn that Costin and Jonah had started to work together as much as they could. But what else could Costin do when Dawn had pretty much made her own deal with Jonah to facilitate his occasional emergence? Jonah had gotten so strong that he was able to push Costin down into their body for as long as he wanted, and Dawn had seen no other choice if she wanted to keep their ultimate attack weapon against the Undergrounds functioning. Of course, since Costin was bound to Jonah’s vampire body now, he didn’t have a fraction of the powers he’d possessed when he’d been a free Soul Traveler, so none of them even knew how effective he’d be when it did come time to infiltrate this Underground and destroy the master vamps.
    Even so, they had to keep faith that Jonah and Costin combined would be enough to vanquish all the Undergrounds they had left . . . as well as the dragon.
    God, she thought. How was Costin going to deal with the dragon if he was so limited?
    Cocking his head, Jonah was considering Claudius, and Dawn stared at her partner in return, finally comprehending the reason the master vamp had been thrown back in his chair when Jonah had entered the lab.
    He’d connected with Claudius’s gaze, even from across the room, and he’d used his vampire powers to enter the weakened master’s unprotected mind, reading his thoughts while Dawn had been asking about the shadow things. Claudius had been either too off guard since he wasn’t worried about Dawn breaking into his thoughts, or too lacking in strength to resist.
    “What did you get from his head?” Dawn asked Jonah.
    Jonah continued watching Claudius as the other vampire squirmed in his seat. Dawn wondered if, when Costin had been questioning the master earlier, Jonah had emerged and raised some hell. Jonah was just as bad as Dawn in the control department, if not worse.
    “Custode,” Jonah said, his grin widening with this success. “While you were talking about the shadow things, Claudius, here, thought of a custode , which means ‘keeper,’ if I’m not wrong. But a keeper of what?”
    Dawn could hardly contain herself. The dragon. They had to be “keeping” the dragon, right? Or were the shadow things only guards of the community itself?
    “And,” Jonah added, “Mr. Claudius is really regretting that he didn’t summon a custode before we got ahold of him last night.”
    The team had found Claudius in an abandoned building, threatening to take the blood of a female victim, probably so he could speed along his healing. He’d been a bit too busy when they’d arrived to make a phone call. Too bad.
    In his chair, Claudius was shutting his eyes, keeping Jonah out. If Costin had been dominant, his blood brother Awareness and hypnotic skills would be even more powerful than Jonah’s vampire abilities.
    She