Dangerous Creatures (Book 3, Pure Series) (28 page)

              "I know about the Hunter," I said. "And that's why I'm here. That's why Anton and the others are here. They brought me here to protect me."

              Cormac moved toward me swiftly. "But, Katie, don't you see? Those miserable creatures out there can do nothing against one as mighty as the Hunter. You are protected in this house by the grace of your dear, departed mother. But as good and noble as she was—as hard as she tried to make this house safe for you—she only managed to make it safe from what you would call supernatural foes."

              I glanced involuntarily at the curtained window behind me. Then I looked back at Cormac. "What are you saying?"

              "When the Hunter gets through the pathetic line of defense those creatures have put up—and he will get through—it will be a simple matter for him to get through to you."

              "You believe my mother's charm won't work on the Hunter?"

              "Your mother's charm will work on him," Cormac replied. "Her skill was strong. But it will not work on ordinary mortals. A vampire cannot enter the house, but the same is not true for ordinary human beings. All the Hunter has to do is gather up a gang of common thugs and have them batter down the door. Then all they have to do is drag you out."

              I felt a chill run through me. "You really think the Hunter can get past Anton and the others?"

              "I know he can." Cormac took my hand, and his fingers were warm and strong. "Why do you think I sent you those dreams? I've been trying to warn you all along. I sent you my dragonfly, and in the realms of sleep it led you to the tomb of the Hunter. You have seen images of the unholy things that have happened there."

              "The Hunter's tomb?" I said.

              "Yes, of course. That was his fell voice you heard whispering. You are in terrible danger—mortal danger. There is another horror lurking in that tomb."

              Cormac glanced over his shoulder again, and then his bright eyes looked into mine imploringly. "Come with me, Katie. I asked you this once before, and you refused. I am here to give you another chance. Come with me now. Leave this earth, this realm of death. Come with me to a place where your beauty will shine forever."

              "You want me to leave this world—and never return?" I said.

              "Yes," Cormac replied. "Come with me. Stay with me forever. You will want for nothing. Why do you think I have done all of this? I sent you the dreams of the Hunter in his tomb. I sent you the vision of the Hunter in your house—"

              "My house," I said. "That was real? Did he hurt my grandmother?"

              Cormac continued as if he hadn't heard me. "I even sent you a pure white spirit in the guise of a horse. That spirit saved your life last year when you were pursued across the Wasteland. Don't you remember that? I have done all of this for you. I am even defying my father's laws by speaking to you at this moment. Haven't I proven myself to you?"

              I backed away from him. "Cormac, I can't go with you."

              "Is it William that stops you?" Cormac asked, taking my hand again. As on the last occasion on which I had met him, he pronounced William's name as if it caused him pain. "Don't hold out hope for him. William is lost to you now. He is worse than before. He cannot be saved."

              "What happened to him?" I asked sharply. "Where is he?"

              Cormac glanced over his shoulder once again and then looked at me beseechingly. "I don't have much time. You must decide now. I won't be able to come again."

              "I've already decided," I said, "I can't go with you."

              Cormac's eyes filled with anguish. "Then I fear you have sealed your fate. Find the Star of Morning—it's the only thing left to you."

              "You mean the sword?" I said.

              "I must leave you now," Cormac said. "You have chosen the path of misery over the path of beauty. Look to the lights in your mirror. You can see us there if you need us. It's my parting gift to you."

              Cormac vanished suddenly, and my hand was left holding empty air. The glow that had suffused the room vanished, too, and I was plunged suddenly into darkness.

              There was one bright, golden spot of light, little more than a pinprick, that still shone out of my mirror, and I turned quickly toward it. I watched the tiny point of light, willing it to stay, and I felt a sudden, wild desire for the golden glow to return in all its splendor. I wanted to follow the light, to see where it led—to see the shining land that lay on the other side of it.

              But as I watched the light in the mirror, it suddenly went out.

              The darkness around me became absolute.

Chapter 20.

After Cormac disappeared, I stood for a long time in the darkness, looking toward the mirror. I knew I'd made the right decision by staying, but the whole experience had left me shaken.

              Eventually, I began to feel cold, and I went back to bed and pulled my covers around me tightly.

              After a little while, I fell asleep.

              Sometime later, I started awake, and I sat up quickly. My room was still dark, and this time there was no mysterious man sitting on the edge of the bed.

              I looked around the room, trying to figure out what had jarred me from my sleep, and then I heard a low, muffled cry from somewhere not far away. The cry faded away, and for a moment there was silence. Then I heard the cry again.

              Someone outside was screaming.

              I got out of bed and hurried to the window. I was just about to pull back the curtains and look outside when I remembered Anton's warning—I wasn't supposed to look outside for any reason.

              But I hesitated by the window, and soon I heard another sound—a series of short, sharp taps on the glass, all in a cluster, as if someone had thrown a handful of stones at the window.

              A moment later, there was a very clear scream from outside—which was quickly followed by another. Soon other screams joined in.

              I had a terrible feeling that the Hunter had arrived.

              Stones rained on the window once more, and I hesitated in an agony of indecision. Anton had told me that he would communicate with me only by phone. But if the Hunter were outside, maybe that wasn't possible—maybe Anton needed to contact me another way. And surely, if the Hunter were trying to trick me, he would do something more sophisticated—throwing stones at a window seemed like an unlikely trick for a legendary vampire to use.

              Suddenly, a shrill siren sounded in the house, and I hurried to my bedroom door and opened it. I stood for a moment in the dark hallway, trying to figure out where the piercing sound was coming from—and then I realized that what I was hearing was a fire alarm.

              I rushed back into my room and threw open the window.

              My bedroom window looked out over the back of the house, so I didn't have much light to see by. But I could hear more screams on the night air, and after a moment, a small shadow detached itself from the greater darkness and turned a pale face up to me. Even in the dim light, I recognized the small, slim figure. It wasn't Anton who had been throwing stones at my window—it was the ghost girl.

              "What are you doing here?" I hissed as loudly as I dared.

              "I've come to get you out of there," the girl called up to me. "Your only chance is to jump. You jump, and I'll catch you."

              "Jump from the window?" I said. "Are you crazy?"

              "The Hunter will get through the last of the vampire defenders soon," the girl said. "And he's got some thugs with him who've set the house on fire. You'll be forced to come out very soon. Then the Hunter will have you."

              "The last of the vampire defenders?" I said. "What about—"

              "Just stop talking!" the girl shouted. "Get out here now!"

              I ducked back into the room and quickly pulled on some street clothes—I couldn't really go running out into the night the way I was.

              The girl's voice rose shrilly over the sound of the fire alarm.

              "What are you doing?"

              A moment later, I pushed the window open as far as I could and climbed out onto the ledge.

              I perched on the narrow strip of wood uncertainly and stared down at the ghost girl. "Are you sure about this?"

              There was another scream from somewhere in the darkness, and the ghost girl glanced toward it.

              "Just jump!" she called frantically.

              I pushed myself off the window ledge.

              The figure of the ghost girl blurred and rushed toward me. She leaped into the air and caught me before I had even fallen halfway, and the two of us landed softly on the ground. Then, before I could catch my breath, the ghost girl was flying off into the night at terrifying speed. I wrapped my arms around her neck and hung on.

              "What's going on back at the house?" I cried, as the wind whipped past my face.

              "There's nothing you can do to help them," the girl said. "You're no match for the Hunter, and neither am I."

              Though the landscape was a blur around me, I could just make out that we were moving into the center of Krov.

              "Besides," the girl called back to me, "you want to see him again, don't you?"

              I caught my breath. "Do you mean William?"

              "Of course I mean William."

              "Where is he?" I asked frantically. "Is he okay?"

              "I'll take you to him. But first we have to get clear of the Hunter. I'm going to leave a trail that will confuse him."

              I could just see by moonlight that we had passed through the center of Krov, and we were now streaking along a vast expanse of blighted, barren land.

              The ruined, gray landscape we now traversed was known locally as the Wasteland, and it was bounded on one side by the Mstislav mansion and on the other side by an old abandoned monastery. Once, long ago, the Wasteland had been the site of a thriving village. But as I had learned last year, the great Mstislav family and the monastery had failed centuries ago in their duty to protect the people of the village, and the people had all perished.

              The bodies of those villagers now lay in vast tunnels that stretched underneath the entire length of the Wasteland.

              Though I didn't know how the villagers had died, I knew their deaths had not been natural. Krov was a hotspot for mystical, otherworldly things, and the Pure Woods, which sat just beyond the Wasteland and the monastery, was home to many supernatural creatures of both the dark and light persuasions. And the woods were more than just a home for supernatural creatures—there was power in the place itself.

              It was in the Pure Woods that I had discovered the clear fire—a sphere of pure energy that my mother, and later I, had used to battle Gleb Mstislav. It was a site both sacred and transcendent.

              And the Pure Woods was not the only place that hid supernatural secrets. The Wasteland, in addition to the vast catacombs that stretched beneath it, had another secret that it protected. The surface, though stark and apparently lifeless, was actually the site of a thriving vampire village that was invisible to human eyes—there was a barrier around it that made it impossible to see from the outside, and the barrier also worked to ward off any creatures that didn't have vampire blood.

              The village was known as Zamochit—and last year I had stumbled into it entirely by accident. Not long afterward, some of its denizens had converged on me in a decidedly unfriendly fashion.

              Zamochit Village was not a place I ever wanted to visit again.

              Luckily, the ghost girl continued to move past the Wasteland, and before long, we were streaking past the ghostly white trees of the Pure Woods.

              Even though it was nearly the end of April, all the trees in the woods were bare—the Pure Woods was a petrified forest, and its lifeless branches would never bear flowers or leaves again.

              In moments, the ghost girl and I had moved beyond the Pure Woods, and we were entering territory that I had never seen before.

              We flew past roads, fields, trees, houses. Without warning, we ducked into a lush forest with a healthy growth of normal, unpetrified trees, and I shut my eyes as branches and tree trunks came flying at my face.

              But the ghost girl got us through unscathed, and before long, we broke through the line of trees and came out into a wide clearing.

              I heard a splash then, and we came to an abrupt stop. I looked around. The ghost girl was standing in the middle of a surging stream, and I was clinging to her back, my feet dangling just above the water.

              "Why have we stopped?" I asked. "Is anything wrong?"

              "We've stopped," the ghost girl said, "because we've almost finished what we're doing."

              I glanced at the steam that rushed around the ghost girl's legs. "What are we doing?"

              "It's an old trick to throw a hunter off your trail," the girl replied. "It's usually used on hunting dogs, but my hope is that it'll work on the Hunter, too. Our trail will lead into this stream, and then he won't be able to pick it up again on the other side—ostensibly because we were wet and our scent rinsed off in the stream. With any luck the Hunter will believe we kept going in the same direction. He'll think we're trying to get back to Moscow and the airport."

              "That sounds like a good plan to me," I said. "Are you sure there isn't a closer airport than the one in Moscow?"

              "Actually there is," the girl said. "Then, with any luck, he'll think we're headed to that one. It's the best I can do. My name's Sachiko, by the way."

              "I'm Katie," I said.

              "I know," Sachiko replied.

              "So if we're trying to throw the Hunter off our trail here," I said. "Does that mean we're actually going in a different direction?"

              "Yes."

              Without another word, Sachiko calmly tipped me off her back into the rushing stream. The water was shockingly cold, and I gasped for breath as I fell in all the way up to my neck.

              "Sorry about that." Sachiko held out a small, ice-cold hand and hauled me to my feet. "I know you haven't actually touched the ground since we left the house, but I think we should take every possible precaution. We should both rinse off here and try to disguise our scent as much as possible. Ideally, we should do something about my tracks, too, but we don't have time for everything."

              Sachiko began to splash herself liberally with water, and despite the cold of the stream, I followed her example.

              Sachiko seemed to notice the grimace on my face. "The water's probably terribly cold for you," she said. "Sorry about that, too. I think it's runoff from a mountain somewhere."

              Once we were sufficiently drenched to suit her, Sachiko held up a hand for silence, and we both stood still as she listened.

              "There's no sound of pursuit yet," she said. "But the Hunter will be able to track us eventually. We should follow the stream for a while before we get out onto dry land again. We don't want him to spot that we reemerged from the stream on the same side."

              Sachiko began to wade through the swirling water, and I followed her.

              "So where are we actually going?" I asked.

              "To Zamochit Village."

              I stopped. "Zamochit Village? You're not serious."

              Sachiko glanced back at me. "Of course I'm serious. And keep moving. Every minute counts."

              I started to walk again. "Why Zamochit?"

              "Because I have a safe house there and a friend who can help us." Sachiko's voice grew sharp. "Keep up."

              I hurried along until I was walking beside her.

              Eventually, Sachiko decided that we'd travelled down the stream long enough, and the two of us clambered up on the bank. I was shaking and my teeth were chattering involuntarily from the cold, but Sachiko gave me no time to rest. Before I knew it, my arms were around her neck again, and the two of us were streaking across the night, headed back the same way we had originally come.

              Far too soon, we reached the blighted plain of the Wasteland, and Sachiko came to a stop.

              I looked around and shivered, and this time, the shivering had nothing to do with how cold I was. Although I couldn't see it, I knew Zamochit was uncomfortably close.

              Sachiko stood for a long time staring out over the vast gray field around us. We were both still damp, but our fast flight through the night had done quite a bit to wring the water from our hair and clothes. As Sachiko stood in her damp jeans and jacket, she looked even more like an ordinary high school student—anyone who happened to see her standing on this lonely spot might think she had come backpacking to Russia and had simply gotten lost.

              "It really wasn't you, was it?" I said.

              Sachiko glanced back at me. "What wasn't me?"

              "You're the face of the ghost girl," I said. "You're the one everyone sees. But you're not responsible for the disappearances. You said that, and Anton said it, too."

              "I'm no more responsible for those disappearances than you are," Sachiko said.