Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (56 page)

Lupe looked surprised. “From
her
—Maya,” she said, as if it should be obvious.

Hannah had a sinking feeling. I should have known, she thought. But all she said was, “So you think I'm still in danger from her.”

Lupe's eyebrows shot up. She said mildly, “Well, sure. She's going to try to kill you. And she's awfully good at killing.”

Especially me, Hannah thought. But she was too tired to be much afraid. Trusting to Lupe and Nilsson and the rest of Thierry's household, she fell asleep that night as soon as her head touched the pillow.

She woke up to see sunshine. It was reflecting off the bedroom walls, which were painted a softly burnished gold. Weird but beautiful, Hannah thought, looking dreamily around at ebony
furniture and decorative tribal masks. Then she remembered where she was and jumped out of bed.

She found clean clothes—her size—lying on an elaborately carved chest. She had just finished pulling them on when Lupe knocked on the door.

“Lupe, have they—”

Lupe shook her silvery-brown head. “They haven't found him yet.”

Hannah sighed, then smiled, trying not to look too disappointed.

Lupe made a sympathetic face. “I know. While you wait, though, you might like to meet some people.” She grinned. “They're sort of special people, and it's a secret that they're even here. But I talked to them last night, and they all decided that it would be okay. They all want to meet you.”

Hannah was curious. “Special people? Are they humans or… uh…?”

Lupe grinned even more widely. “They're both. That's why they're special.” As she talked, she was leading Hannah downstairs and through miles of hallway. “They did something for me,” she said, not smiling now, but serious. “They saved my life and my mom's life. See, I'm not a purebred werewolf. My dad was human.”

Hannah looked at her, startled.

“Yeah. And that's against the laws of the Night World. You can't fall in love with a human, much less marry them.
The other werewolves came one night and killed my dad. They would have killed my mom and me, too, but Thierry got us out of the city and hid us. That's why I'd do anything for him. I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him… and Circle Daybreak.”

She had paused by the door of a room located toward the back of the house. Now, she opened the door, gave Hannah a funny little nod and a wink, and said, “You go meet them. I think you'll like each other. You're their type.”

Hannah wasn't sure what this meant. She felt shy as she stepped over the threshold and looked around the room.

It was a den, smaller than the front living room, and more cozy, with furniture in warm ochers and burnt siennas. A breakfast buffet was set out on a long sideboard made of golden pine. It smelled good, but Hannah didn't have time to look at it. As soon as she came in the room, every head turned and she found a dozen people staring at her.

Young people. All around her age. Normal-type teenagers, except that a surprising number of them were extremely goodlooking.

Behind her, the door closed firmly. Hannah felt more and more as if she'd just walked out onstage and forgotten her lines.

Then one of the girls sitting on an ottoman jumped up and ran to her. “You're Hana, aren't you?” she said warmly.

“Hannah. Yes.”

“I can't believe I'm really meeting you! This is so exciting. Thierry's told us all about you.” She put a gentle hand on Hannah's arm. “Hannah, this is Circle Daybreak. And my name is Thea Harman.”

She was almost as tall as Hannah was, and the yellow hair spilling over her shoulders was a few shades darker than Hannah's. Her eyes were brown and soft and somehow wise.

“Hi, Thea.” Somehow Hannah felt instinctively at ease with this girl. “Lupe was telling me about Circle Daybreak, but I didn't exactly understand.”

“It started as a sort of witch organization,” Thea said. “A witch circle. But it's not just for witches. It's for humans and vampires and werewolves and shapeshifters… and, well, anybody who wants to help Night People and humans get along. Come and meet the others and we'll try to explain.”

A few minutes later, Hannah was sitting on a couch with a plate of eggs Benedict, being introduced.

“This is James and Poppy,” Thea said. “James is a Redfern on his mother's side—which makes him a descendant of Maya's.” She glanced at James with gentle mischief.

“I didn't pick my parents. Believe me, I didn't,” James said to Hannah. He had light brown hair and thoughtful gray eyes. When he smiled it was impossible not to smile back.

“Nobody would have picked your parents, Jamie,” Poppy said, elbowing him. She was very small, but there was a kind of impish wisdom in her face. Her head was a tangle of copper
curls and her eyes were as green as emeralds. Hannah found her elfin beauty just a little scary… just a little inhuman.

“They're both vampires,” Thea said, answering Hannah's unspoken question.

“I didn't used to be,” Poppy said. “James changed me because I was dying.”

“What's a soulmate for?” James said, and Poppy poked him again and then grinned at him. They were obviously in love.

“You're—soulmates?” Hannah spoke softly, wistfully.

It was Thea who answered. “That's the thing, you see—something is causing Night People to find human soulmates. We witches think that it's some Power that's waking up again, making it happen. Some Power that's been asleep for a long time—maybe since the time when Thierry was born.”

Now Hannah understood why Lupe had said she was Circle Daybreak's type of people. She was part of this.

“But—that's wonderful,” she said, speaking slowly and trying to gather her thoughts. “I mean…” She couldn't exactly explain
why
it was so wonderful, but she had a sense of some immense turning point being reached in the world, of some cycle that was about to end.

Thea was smiling at her. “I know what you mean. We think so, too.” She turned and held out a hand to a very tall boy with a sweet face, sandy hair, and hazel eyes. “And this is
my
soulmate, Eric. He's human.”

“Just barely,” a boy from the other side of the room said. Eric ignored him and smiled at Hannah.

“And this is Gillian and David,” Thea said, moving around the circle. “Gillian's a distant cousin of mine, a witch, and David's human. Soulmates, again.”

Gillian was tiny, with white-blond hair that fit her head like a silky cap and deep violet eyes. David had dark hair, brown eyes, and a lean tanned face. They both smiled at Hannah.

Thea was moving on. “And next comes Rashel and Quinn. Rashel is human—she used to be a vampire hunter.”

“I still am. But now I just hunt
bad
vampires,” Rashel said coolly. Hannah had an instinctive feeling of respect for her. She was tall and seemed to have perfect control of her body. Her hair was black and her eyes were a fierce and blazing green.

“And Quinn's a vampire,” Thea said.

Quinn was the boy who'd made the barely-human remark. He was very good-looking, with clean features that were strongly chiseled but almost delicate. His hair was as black as Rashel's, and his eyes were black, too. He flashed Hannah a smile that, while beautiful, was slightly unnerving.

“Quinn's the only one here who can compete with you as far as the past goes,” Thea added. “He was made into a vampire back in the sixteen hundreds, by Hunter Redfern.”

Quinn flashed another smile. “Did you have a life in colonial America? Maybe we've met.”

Hannah smiled in return, but she was also studying him with interest. He didn't look older than eighteen.

“Is that why everybody here looks so young?” she asked. “All the staff, I mean—Nilsson and the other guys in suits. Are they all vampires?”

Thea nodded. “All made vampires. Lamia, like James, can grow up if they want. But once you make a human into a vampire they stop aging—and you can't make somebody over nineteen into a vampire. Their bodies can't make the change. They just burn out.”

Hannah felt an odd chill, almost of premonition. But before she could say anything, a new voice interrupted.

“Speaking of the lamia, isn't anybody going to introduce
me
?”

Thea turned toward the window. “Sorry, Ash—but if you're going to sleep over there, you can't blame us for forgetting you.” She looked at Hannah. “This is another Redfern, a cousin of James's. His name is Ash.”

Ash was gorgeous, lanky and elegant, with ash-blond hair. But what startled Hannah as he got up and unhurriedly walked to meet her was his eyes.

They were like Maya's eyes, shifting color from moment to moment. The resemblance was so striking that it was a moment before Hannah could take his hand.

He's got Maya's genes, Hannah thought. He smiled at her, then sprawled on the love seat.

“We're not all of Circle Daybreak, of course,” Thea said. “In fact, we're some of the newest members. And we're from all over the country—North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, everywhere. But Thierry called us together specially, to talk about the soulmate principle and the old Powers awakening.”

“That was last week, before he found out about you,” copper-haired Poppy said. “And before he ran off. But we've been talking without him, trying to figure out what to do next.”

Hannah said, “Whatever it is, I'd like to help you.”

They all looked pleased. But Thea said, “You should think about it first. We're dangerous people to know.”

“We're on everybody's hit list,” Rashel, the black-haired vampire hunter, said dryly.

“We've got the whole Night World against us,” Ash said, rolling his ever-changing eyes.

“Against
us.
You just said ‘us.'” James turned on his cousin triumphantly, as if he'd just won a point in an argument. “You admit you're a part of us.”

Ash looked at the ceiling. “I don't have any choice.”

“But
you
do, Hannah,” Thea interrupted. She smiled at Hannah, but her soft brown eyes were serious. “You don't have to be in any more danger than you are now.”

“I think—” Hannah began. But before she could finish, there was an explosion of noise from somewhere outside.

“Stay here,” Rashel said sharply, but Hannah ran with the rest of them toward the front of the house. She could hear a ferocious snarling and barking outside—a very familiar sort of sound.

Nilsson and the other CIA guys were running around. They looked grim and efficient, moving fast but not frantically. Hannah realized that they knew how to do this sort of thing.

She didn't see Lupe.

The snarling outside got louder, building to a volley of short barks. There was a yelp—and then a scrambling noise. After a moment of silence there came a sound that lifted the hair on Hannah's forearms—a wild and eerie and beautiful sound. A wolf howling. Two other wolf voices joined the first, chording, rising and falling, interweaving with each other. Hannah found herself gasping, her entire skin shivering. Then there was one long sustained note and it was over.

“Wow,” the tiny blond called Gillian whispered.

Hannah rubbed her bare arms hard.

The front door opened. Hannah felt herself looking toward the ground, but nothing four-legged came in. Instead it was Lupe and two guys, all disheveled, flushed, and grinning.

“It was just some scouts,” Lupe said. “We ran them off.”

“Scouts from Maya?” Hannah said, feeling a tightness in her stomach. It really was true, then. Maya was trying to storm the house to get to her.

Lupe nodded. “It'll be okay,” she said almost gently. “But I think all of you better stay inside today. You can watch movies or play games in the game room.”

Hannah spent the day talking with the Circle Daybreak members. The more she found out about them, the more she liked them. Only one thing made her uncomfortable. They all seemed to defer to her—as if, somehow, they expected her to be wiser or better because of her former lifetimes. It was embarrassing, because she knew she wasn't.

She tried to keep her mind off Thierry… and Maya.

But it wasn't easy. That night she found herself walking restlessly through the house. She wound up in a little anteroom on the second floor that looked down on the enormous living room.

“Can't relax?”

The lazy murmur came from behind her. Hannah turned to see Ash, his lanky elegant body propped against a wall. His eyes looked silver in the dimly lit room.

“Not really,” Hannah admitted. “I just wish they'd find Thierry. I've got a bad feeling about it.”

They stood for a moment in silence. Then Ash said, “Yeah, it's hard to be without your soulmate. Once you've found them, I mean.”

Hannah looked at him, intrigued. The way he said that…

She spoke hesitantly. “This morning Thea said you were all here because you had human soulmates.”

He looked across the room at French doors that led to a balcony. “Yes?”

“And—well…” Maybe she's
dead,
Hannah thought suddenly. Maybe I shouldn't ask.

“And you want to know where mine is,” Ash said.

“I didn't mean to pry.”

“No. It's okay.” Ash looked out at the darkness beyond the French doors again. “She's waiting—I hope. I've got some things to put right before I see her.”

He didn't seem scary anymore, no matter how his eyes changed. He seemed—vulnerable.

“I'm sure she
is
waiting,” Hannah said. “And I'll bet she'll be glad to see you when you've put things right.” She added quietly, “I know I'll be glad to see Thierry.”

He glanced at her, startled, then smiled. He had a very nice smile. “That's true, you've been in her shoes, haven't you? And Thierry's certainly tried to make up for his past. I mean, he's
been doing good works for centuries. So maybe there's hope for me after all.”