The Path of Razors Read Online Free Page A

Jonah’s vampire body. But she could even trump that fact because, after the Queenshill trip last night, when Jonah had hijacked his and Costin’s body and taken it out of secure headquarters so he could prove to the team that he could also fight, she’d made a deal with him: the team would allow Jonah to aid in their missions, and in turn, he would let Costin out on occasion.
    A trade-off so that they could effectively continue to track and then wipe out the Undergrounds.
    A devil’s bargain.
    But she was used to making deals that involved a catch. Hell, she’d been the genius who’d turned Jonah and Costin into a vampire in the first place. It’d been the only option that would allow Costin to continue destroying the blood brothers.
    It’d been the only way to save him.
    While she wordlessly ran her fingers over his knuckles, she avoided Costin’s intense gaze. God, but she could still feel it on her, so she watched while the bones under his skin subtly undulated, his injuries mending.
    She only wished Costin’s powers could also heal all those deep-down inner wounds he would always carry.
    A stream of jasmine floated by, and she lifted her face to the scent, thankful for a distraction. Breisi, her favorite Friend spirit. One of many deceased vampire hunters who’d chosen to stay on and fight with Costin until the end.
    “Broken?” Breisi asked while circling around Dawn and her boss.
    Costin’s answer strung the atmosphere together even tighter. “Not for too long.”
    “Bully for vampire healing.” By now, Dawn’s inner swell of anger and remorse had receded to a burn in her throat. Good thing, too, because tears were a waste. “It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for you to heal all the way.”
    “Yes, interesting.” Costin eased his hand out of her palm, but it left streaks of blood behind. His breathing quickened, as if the aroma got to him. “It never grows old, being this ever-changing experiment.”
    Dawn tried not to take offense to that. No matter how much he tried to hide it, she knew Costin—a crusader who’d despised the monsters he hunted—couldn’t reconcile himself to his vampiric state, much less her dominance over him. Ever since she’d exchanged blood with Costin in L.A. to keep him from expiring, she’d technically become his master. Of course, she’d had to kill her own maker to end his Underground, and that had turned her into a human again, but Costin didn’t exactly have the option to do the same with his master.
    Not unless he wanted to terminate Dawn in order to bring a semblance of humanity back to his own host’s body.
    Dawn started as Breisi flew to the back of the room, where her boyfriend, Frank, was sitting on a high stool. Pink marks slashed over his thick neck, the only healing evidence that he’d been badly wounded last night during the struggle with the schoolgirl vampires.
    On their own stools, Kiko and Natalia sat to the left of Dawn’s vampire father. They were both wearing those tired, half-victorious, hyperwary expressions that served as tonight’s post-vamp-fighting costumes.
    And then ...
    Then came Eva, Dawn’s mom. She’d stayed here at headquarters because, after last night’s escalation in activity, no one wanted her to go even a block away to the flat she rented above a pub here in Southwark, so she was their temporary guest. She looked as put together as ever with her blond hair and daisy beauty, which had gone quickly from an early-twenties vampire glow to a hint of her actual middle-aged wrinkles after she’d been changed back into a human in L.A.
    She was still a head turner.
    But when she sat a few subtle yet very obvious inches to Frank’s right, her skin seemed paler than ever, just as Dawn’s had become. Their pallidness was because of the blood they donated to Frank and Costin, respectively. That, plus the bags that Costin secretively procured from a contact in a blood bank, kept the vampires on the team fed. As for