Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (26 page)

“It's more than that,” Vicky put in, her voice cold and contemptuous. “We were going to ask him about those teenage girls getting kidnapped. Now we can't. So it's going to keep happening, and it's all going to be your fault.”

And they were right. Even Nyala was right. How did Rashel know that Quinn hadn't killed Nyala's sister?

“You're a vampire lover,” Vicky was saying. “I could tell from the beginning. I don't know, maybe you're one of those damned Daybreakers who wants us all to get along, but you're not on
our
side.”

A couple of the Lancers started to protest at this, but Nyala's voice cut through them. “She's on
their
side?” She stared from Vicky to Rashel, her body rigid. “You just wait. Just wait until I tell people that Rashel is the Cat and that she's really on the Night World side.
You just wait
.”

She's hysterical, Rashel realized. Even Vicky was looking surprised at this, as if she were uneasy at what she'd started.

“Nyala, listen—” Rashel began.

But Nyala seemed to have reached some peak of fury at which nothing from outside could touch her. “I'll tell everybody in Boston! You'll see!” She whirled around and plunged toward the stairway as if she were going to start doing it right now.

Rashel stared after her. Then she said to Vicky, “You'd better send a couple of the guys to catch up to her. She's not safe alone in this neighborhood.”

Vicky gave her a look that was half angry and half shaken. “Yeah. Okay. Everybody but Steve go after her. You guys take her home.”

They left, not without a few backward glances at Rashel.

“We'll drive you back,” Vicky said. Her voice wasn't warm, but it wasn't as hostile as it had been.

“I'll walk to my own car,” Rashel said flatly.

“Fine.” Vicky hesitated, then blurted, “She probably won't do what she said. She's just upset.”

Rashel said nothing. Nyala had sounded—and looked—as if she meant to do
exactly
what she said. And if she did…

Well, it would be an interesting question as to who would kill Rashel first, the vampires or the vampire hunters.

Wednesday morning dawned with gray skies and icy rain. Rashel trudged from class to class at Wassaguscus High, lost in thought. At home, her latest foster family left her alone—they were used to her going her own way. She sat in her small bedroom in the townhouse with the lights dimmed, thinking.

She still couldn't understand what had happened to her, but with every hour the memory of it was fading steadily. It was too
strange
to fit into the reality of life, and it became more and more like a dream. One of those dreams in which you do things you would never ordinarily do, and are ashamed of when you wake up in the morning.

All that warmth and closeness—she'd felt that for a
vampire
? She'd been excited by a parasite's touch? She'd wanted to comfort a leech?

And not just any leech, either. The infamous Quinn. The
legendary human hater. How could she have let him go? How many people would suffer because of her lapse in sanity?

Who knows, she decided finally, maybe it
had
been some kind of mind control. She certainly couldn't make any sense of it otherwise.

By Thursday, one thing at least was clear in her mind. Vicky had been right about the consequences of what she'd done. Rashel hadn't thought about that at the time, but now she had to face it. She had to make it right.

She had to find the kidnapped girls on her own—if girls
were
getting kidnapped. There was nothing about missing teenagers in the
Globe
. But if it was happening, Rashel had to find out about it and stop it… if she could.

Okay. So she'd go back to Mission Hill tonight and start investigating. Check the warehouse area again—this time, her way.

There was one other thing that was clear to her, that became obvious as she got her priorities straight. Something she had to do, not for Nyala, or for Vicky, or for the Lancers, but just for herself. For her own honor, and for everybody who lived in the world of sunlight.

The next time she saw Quinn, she had to kill him.

Rashel moved along the deserted street, keeping to the shadows, moving silently. Not easy when the ground was wet and strewn with broken glass. There were no sidewalks, no grass,
no plant life of any kind except the dead weeds in the abandoned lots. Just soggy trash and shattered bottles.

A grim place. It fit Rashel's mood as she made her way stealthily toward the abandoned project building where Vicky had brought them Tuesday night.

From its front door, she surveyed the rest of the street. Lots of warehouses. Several of them were protected with high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. All of them had barred windows—or no windows—and metal freight doors.

The security precautions didn't bother Rashel. She knew how to cut chain-link and pick locks. What bothered her was that she didn't know where to start.

The Night People could be using any of the warehouses. Even knowing where Steve and Vicky had fought Quinn didn't help, because
he
had jumped
them
. He'd obviously seen them lying in ambush and deliberately gone after them. Which meant his real destination could have been any of the buildings on this street—or none of them.

All right. Patience was indicated here. She'd just have to start at one end…

Rashel lost her thought and leaped back into the shadows before she consciously realized why she was doing it. Her ears had picked up a sound—a low rumbling coming from somewhere across the street.

She flattened herself against the brick wall behind her, then kept her body absolutely immobile. Her eyes darted from
building to building and she held her breath to hear better.

There. It was coming from inside
that
warehouse, the one down at the far end of the street. And she could identify it now—the sound of an engine.

As she watched, the freight door in the front of the warehouse went sliding up. Headlights pierced the night from behind it. A truck was pulling out onto the street.

Not a very big truck. A U-Haul. It cleared the doors and stopped. A figure was pulling the sliding metal door down. Now it was making its way to the cab of the U-Haul, climbing in.

Rashel strained her eyes, trying to make out any signs of vampirism in the figure's movements. She thought she could detect a certain telltale fluidity to the walk, but it was too far away to be sure. And there was nothing else to give her a clue about what was going on.

It could be a human, she thought. Some warehouse owner going home after a night of balancing books.

But her instinct told her differently. The hair at the back of her neck was standing on end.

And then, as the truck began to cruise off, something happened that settled her doubts and sent her flying down the street.

The back doors of the U-Haul opened just a bit, and a girl fell out. She was slender, and a streetlight caught her blond hair. She landed on the rubble-strewn road and lay there for an instant as if dazed. Then she jumped up, looked around wildly, and started running in Rashel's direction.

By the time Rashel intercepted the girl, the truck was already braking to turn around. Someone was shouting, “She's out! We lost one!”

“This way!” Rashel said, reaching toward the girl with one hand and gesturing with the other.

Up close, she could see that the girl was small, with disheveled blond hair falling over her forehead. Her chest was heaving. Instead of looking grateful, she seemed terrified by Rashel's arrival. She stared at Rashel a moment, then she tried to dart away.

Rashel snagged her in midlunge. “I'm your friend! Come on! We've got to go
between
streets, where the truck can't follow us.”

The truck was finishing its turn. Headlights swept toward them. Rashel looped an arm around the girl's waist and took off at a dead run.

The blond girl was carried along. She whimpered but she ran, too.

Rashel was heading for the area between two of the warehouses. She knew that if there really were vampires in that truck, her only chance was to get herself and the blond girl to her car. The vampires could run much faster than any human.

She'd picked these two warehouses because the chain-link fence behind them wasn't too high and had no barbed wire at the top. As they reached it, Rashel gave the girl a little shove. “Climb!”

“I can't!” The girl was trembling and gasping. Rashel looked her over and realized that it was probably the literal truth. The girl didn't look as if she'd ever climbed anything in her life. She was wearing what seemed to be party clothes and high heels.

Rashel saw the truck's headlights in the street and heard the engine slowing.

“You have to!” she said. “Unless you want to go back with
them
.” She interlocked her fingers, making a step with her hands. “Here! Put your foot here and then just try to grab on when I bounce you up.”

The girl looked too scared not to try. She put her foot in Rashel's hand—just as the headlights switched off.

It was what Rashel had expected. The darkness was an advantage to the vampires; they could see much better in it than humans. They were going to follow on foot.

Rashel took a breath, then heaved upward explosively as
she exhaled. The blond girl went sailing toward the top of the fence with a shriek.

A bare instant later, Rashel launched herself at the top of the fence, grabbed it, and swung her legs over. She dropped to the ground almost noiselessly and held her arms up to the blond girl.

“Let go! I'll catch you.”

The girl, who was clambering awkwardly over the top, looked over her shoulder. “I can't—”

“Do it!”

The girl dropped. Rashel broke her fall, set her on her feet, and grabbed her arm above the elbow. “Come on!”

As they ran, Rashel scanned the buildings around them. She needed a corner, someplace where she could get the girl behind her and safe. She could defend a corner—if there weren't more than two or three vampires.

“How many of them are there?” she asked the girl.

“Huh?” The girl was gasping.

“How—many—are—there?”

“I don't know, and I can't run anymore!” The girl staggered to a halt and bent double, hands on her knees, trying to get her breath back. “My legs… are just like jelly.”

It was no use, Rashel realized in dismay. She couldn't expect this bit of blond fluff to outsprint a vampire. But if they stopped here in the open, they were dead. She cast a desperate look around.

Then she saw it. A Bostonian tradition—an abandoned car. In this city, if you got tired of your car you just junked it on the nearest embankment. Rashel blessed the unknown benefactor who'd left this one. Now, if only they could get in….

“This way!” She didn't wait for the girl to protest, but grabbed her and dragged her. “Come on, you can do it! Make it to that car and you don't have to run anymore.”

The words seemed to inspire the girl into a last effort. They reached the car and Rashel saw that one of the back windows was broken out cleanly.

“In!”

The girl was small-boned and went through the window easily. Rashel dove after her. Then she shoved her down into the leg space in front of the seat and hissed, “Don't make a sound.”

She lay tensely, listening. She barely had time to breathe twice before she heard footsteps.

Soft footsteps, stealthy as a prowling tiger's. Vampire footsteps. Rashel held her breath and waited.

Closer, closer… Rashel could feel the other girl shaking. She watched the dark ceiling of the car and tried to plan a defense if they were caught.

The footsteps were right outside now. She heard the grate of glass not ten feet from the car door.

Just please don't let them have a werewolf with them, she thought. Vampires might see and hear better than humans, but
a werewolf could sniff its prey out. It couldn't possibly miss the smell of humans in the car.

Outside, the footsteps paused, and Rashel's heart sank. Eyes open, she silently put her hand on her sword.

And then she heard the footsteps moving quickly—away. She listened as they faded, keeping utterly still. Then she kept still some more, while she counted to two hundred.

Then, very carefully, she sat up and looked around.

No sight or sound of vampires.

“Can I
please
get up now?” came a small whimpering voice from the floor.

“If you keep quiet,” Rashel whispered. “They still may be somewhere nearby. We're going to have to get to my car without them catching us.”

“Anything, as long as I don't have to
run
,” the girl said plaintively, emerging from the floor more disheveled than ever. “Have you ever tried to run in four-inch heels?”

“I never wear heels,” Rashel murmured, scanning up and down the street. “Okay, I'll get out first, then you come through.”

She slid out the window feet-first. The girl stuck her head through. “Don't you ever use
doors
?”

“Sh. Come on,” Rashel whispered. She led the way through the dark streets, moving from shadow to shadow. At least the girl could walk softly, she thought. And she had a sense of humor even in danger. That was rare.

Rashel drew a breath of relief when they reached the narrow twisting alley where her Saturn was parked. They weren't safe yet, though. She wanted to get the blond girl out of Mission Hill.

“Where do you live?” she said, as she started the engine. When there was no answer, she turned. The girl was staring at her with open uneasiness.

“Uh, how come you're dressed like that? And who are you, anyway? I mean, I'm glad you saved me—but I don't understand
anything
.”