“All right. Let’s start at the beginning and work forward. There’s our objective: this Underground that Robby and his father, Nathan, mentioned. Robby told us that, as a child actor, Nathan had sent him to this place to ‘reinvent’ his image or make a comeback.”
As the speakers hummed with The Voice’s presence, Dawn’s body fritzed. “The Underground. We know it contains a ‘Dr. Eternity’ Nathan talked about. And, in general, lore tells us that vamps are all about extended life. So maybe Robby would’ve stayed down there until his comeback, even if it was years away? A long life would’ve given him enough time to reemerge and wow a future generation. Then, the public wouldn’t believe he could possibly still be alive or twelve years old anymore, and common sense would lead them to think he’s someone else…?”
“Or maybe something happens Underground that would’ve made Robby into a bigger star than ever, without the public catching on that he’s still actually Robby?” Kiko turned to Breisi, making sure she was writing everything down. “So we need to fill that hole with an explanation, like plastic surgery.” He chortled. “Vamps getting plastic surgery, that’s…”
His laughter faded as they all just gazed at each other.
Dawn’s head began to pound, her breath coming short. Jacqueline Ashley…her resemblance to Eva. But Jac hadn’t been like vampire Robby, with the mind screw and crazy-colored eyes. Yeah, Dawn had been exhausted and wigged out when Jac had shown her the makeover, but…
No. God, it hadn’t even been the same as when Robby had looked into her eyes. With Jac, Dawn had been too emotional, too messed up because Kiko was hurt and she’d just chopped a vampire’s head off. Jac was only another starlet doing whatever she could to be successful. The Eva/Jac connection was all in Dawn’s head, Breisi had even said so….
Across the room, Breisi’s eyes had gone wider, like she’d been thinking the same thing. But then she blinked, scanning her clipboard again, making Dawn believe she could be wrong.
Kiko cleared his throat, and The Voice’s speakers continued their electric wait.
Finally, Dawn could speak again. “These vamps we met, they were all different, like various races or something, so maybe one of those breeds committed this murder instead of a human Servant like Lee? We know for sure that there’re two Underground varieties—the Guards and Robby’s death angel. They’re tied together since the red-eyes were trying to get Robby back to the Underground. So should we assume that the silver-eyes and Servants are related, too? I mean, Lee Tomlinson knew some information about Robby, remember? And that’s when the silver-eyes showed up, like they needed to shut his mouth. Could the murderer be a silver-eye who already knew Lee?”
Kiko oohed. “That’s something I’d like to know. Why are there such different subspecies—ones that seem to coexist—running around in such a relatively small area?”
“Maybe they’ve found a biome that suits their needs,” Breisi said, her speech quickening, as it always did when she got on a tangent. “Maybe they all evolved together and rely on the same environment and each other for survival. The variations can be accounted for through evolution. If humans can differ from continent to continent, race to race, and if we indeed can call a gorilla like Proconsul africanus our ancestor, then I see no reason to discount the possibility that vampires have adjusted to the passing of years, too, maybe even at an accelerated pace. They would have to adapt to anything that threatened to destroy them or that made surviving easier.”
Dawn was still half catching up to the end of Breisi’s impromptu professor lecture. It wasn’t always easy being on the same wavelength as a girl who’d gone to college on an engineering scholarship. “But the vamps’ powers really vary, Breisi. A lot. You’d think one Underground would hold a specific kind of vamp. The lore we’ve studied shows that, yeah, different types of vampires have been documented in different types of cultures, like that female vamp in Mexico that was reported last year—”
“The tlahuelpuchi,” Breisi said.
“Right, or the one that was caught in Greece and destroyed three years ago—”
Kiko almost jumped out of his skin to beat Breisi. “Lamiai!”
Dawn sighed, seeing the beginning of yet another competitive event between her coworkers. “T-lah-lah-blah or lam-whatever, thank you, Breisi and Kiko. The point I’m trying to make is could all these vamps really exist together in one Underground without stealing each other’s food?”
“Maybe they’ve found a way around that,” Breisi said.
“Are you talking about vamps that don’t feed on blood?” Kiko asked.
The Voice cleared his throat, sending a jolt through Dawn. He couldn’t just stay quiet so she could focus? Yeesh.