Free A Drop of Red by Chris Marie Green

glory days when his visions had been on the ball.
    Dawn drained the rest of her glass and turned to Natalia. “I’d make a guess that you’re familiar with the history of Vlad Tepes and how he inspired Bram Stoker.”
    Swallowing really hard now, Natalia nodded.
    A few moments passed, and Kiko seemed to be loving every one of them.
    “Am I to understand,” the second psychic said, her voice thin, “that Mr. Limpet is one of those masters?”
    “Sort of.” Frank stood away from the fireplace. “But he’s not using us to take over his blood brothers’ Undergrounds. He’s fighting them.”
    “Tell her the rest, Dawn,” Kiko said, as if she were the only one who could.
    And maybe she was, even if Costin was showing signs of going all secretive Voice on her again. . . .
    Although Natalia looked like she half didn’t want to hear it, Dawn complied. Last year, she wished she’d known everything.
    “Our boss regretted exchanging blood with the dragon,” she said. “He even began seeing himself as a monster. But then some higher being—Mr. Limpet doesn’t even know exactly what it was—made him an offer.”
    “The being in question was like magic,” Kiko said.
    “Whatever he was, he told the boss he could rent back his soul and someday bring it to peace if he agreed to kill the dragon before its rising. But Mr. Limpet would also have to terminate every last master, too.”
    “And there’s a catch,” Kiko added. “One of the masters is hiding the dragon while he sleeps and gathers his power. We could find him at any time, and we when do . . .”
    He paused, stretching out the horrific possibilities.
    Natalia cleared her throat, then asked, “What if Mr. Limpet isn’t successful in killing all these masters and the dragon?”
    The room went still, wind moaning through old creaks and crevices that hadn’t been shored up.
    “His soul becomes damned for good,” Dawn said softly.
    As the reality sank in, Natalia grew pensive, disturbed.
    Kiko pursued. “You think that’s a bummer? Well, the boss abandoned his vampire body and became this ‘soul traveler’ who borrowed pure human bodies so he could carry on this fight throughout the centuries. And that’s caused some issues.”
    Both Kiko and Frank peered at Dawn again.
    “I suppose I’d be a big part of those issues,” she said.
    The guys averted their eyes as Dawn sighed, then gave Natalia the basics about Jonah, the willing host whose vampire body was trapping Costin.
    “Since the boss and Jonah have a symbiotic relationship,” she said, “they feed off of each other. During the big throw down with the Hollywood master, the boss came out of his host’s body so he could use all his powers, pure and undiluted. Thing is, he would gradually lose energy when he left his host, and the fight battered him, so he had to go back to Jonah and anchor inside of him to revitalize. He wouldn’t have survived outside at that point.”
    Kiko added, “The boss used to feed off human energy, but now it’s all about blood.”
    “So he couldn’t come out of Jonah’s body until he was healed?” Natalia asked.
    Dawn nodded. “Jonah was severely wounded, too. He was dying and the boss couldn’t get out—he was trapped by his need to root on what was left of Jonah’s humanity. If Jonah had died, it would’ve been just like a cave-in of dead matter, and the boss would’ve never been able to escape. I think he might’ve even perished there from lack of sustenance.”
    She stilled her pulse, trying not to show how upset she was getting. “So, as a vampire, I exchanged with Jonah, thinking that would set the boss free. But even though I reanimated Jonah, his body altered in the process. I only made him undead . I didn’t actually realize it at the time, but his matter still ended up trapping the boss’s soul.”
    “So he can’t leave now,” Natalia said.
    “Right. But his powers make him dominant . . . most of the time. He’s done everything to escape