Night World - The Chosen Part 8

"But it's too dangerous," she said. "Even if I let you go to the club with me, I could never let you get chosen."

"Why not? You already said I must be resistant to their mind-control thingy , right?" Daphne's blue eyes were sparking with energy and her cheeks were flushed. "So that makes me perfect for the job. I can do it. I know I can h elp you."

Rashel stood helplessly. Take this fluffy bunny of a girl to a vampire encla ve? Let her get sold as a slave to bloodsucking monsters? Ask her to fight r uthless snakes like Quinn? "I like to work alone," she said in a hard voice.

Daphne folded her arms over her chest, refusing to be intimidated. "Well, m aybe it's time you tried something different. Look, I've never met anyone li ke you. You're so independent, so adventurous, so--amazing. But even you can 't do everything by yourself. I know I'm not a vampire hunter, but I'd like to be your friend. Maybe you should try trusting a friend this time."

Her eyes met Rashel's, and at that moment she didn't look like a fluffy bunn y, but like a small, confident, and intelligent young woman.

"Besides, it was me who got kidnapped," Daphne said, shrugging. "Don't you think I should get to pay them back a little?"Rashel caught herself almost grinning. She couldn't help liking this girl, or feeling a glow of warmth at her praise. But still . . . She drew in a carefu l breath and watched Daphne closely. "And you're not scared?"

"Of course I'm scared. I'd be stupid not to be. But I'm not so scared I can't go .".

It was the right answer. Rashel looked around the cluttered lacy room and n odded slowly. At last she said, "Okay, you're in. Tomorrow's Sat.u.r.day. We'l l do it tomorrow night."

CHAPTER 9.

How long since he'd identified with humans?

That had all stopped the day he stopped being human himself. Not at the mom ent he'd stopped being human, though. At first all his anger had been for H unter Redfern. . . .

Waking up from the dead was an experience you don't forget. For Quinn, it h appened in the Redfern cabin on a husk mattress in front of the fire.

He opened his eyes to see three beautiful girls leaning over him. Garnet, wi th her wine-colored hair s.h.i.+ning in the ruby light, Lily with her black hair and her eyes like topaz, and Dove, his own Dove, brown-haired and gentle, w ith anxious love in her face.

That was when Hunter informed him that he'd been dead for three days.

"I told your father you'd gone to Plymouth; don't tell him otherwise. And don't try to move yet; you're too weak. We'll bring in something soon and you can feed." He stood behind his daughters, his arms around them, all of them looking down at Quinn. "Be happy. You're one of us now."

But all Quinn felt was horror-and pain. When he put his thumbs to his teeth, he found the source of the pain. His canine teeth were as long as a wildcat's and they throbbed at the slightest touch.

He was a monster. An unholy creature who needed blood to survive. Hunter R edfern had been telling the truth about his family, and he'd changed Quinn into one of them.

Insane with fury, Quinn jumped up and tried to get his hands around Hunter's throat.

And Hunter just laughed, fending off the attack easily. The next thing Quinn knew, he was running down the blazed trail in the forest, heading for his f ather's house. Staggering and stumbling down the trail, rather. He was almos t too weak to walk.

Then suddenly Dove was beside him. Little Dove who looked as if she couldn 't outrun a flower. She steadied him, held him up, and tried to convince h im to go back.

But Quinn could only think of one thing: getting to his father. His father w as a minister; his father would know what to do. His father would help.And Dove, at last, agreed to go with him.

Later Quinn would realize that of course he should have known better.

They reached Quinn's home. At that point, if Quinn was afraid of anything, i t was that his father wouldn't believe this wild story of bloodthirst and de ath. But one look at Quinn's new teeth convinced his father of everything.

He could recognize a devil when he saw one, he said.

And he knew his duty. Like every Puritan's, it was to cast out sin and evil w herever he found it.

With that, his father picked up a brand from the fire-a good piece of seaso ned pine-and then grabbed Dove by the hair.

It was around this time that the screaming started, the screaming Quinn woul d be able to hear forever after if he listened. Dove was too gentle to put u p much of a fight. And Quinn himself was too weak to save her.

He tried. He threw himself on top of Dove to s.h.i.+eld her from the stake. He w ould always have the scar on his side to prove it. But the wood that nicked him pierced Dove to the heart. She died looking up at him, the light in her brown eyes going out.

Then everything was confusion, with his father chasing him, crying, brand is.h.i.+ng the b.l.o.o.d.y stake pulled from Dove's body. It ended when Hunter Red -fern appeared at the door with Lily and Garnet. They took Quinn and Dove home with them, while Quinn's father went running to the neighbors for h elp. He wanted help burning the Redfern cabin down.

That was when Hunter said it, the thing that severed Quinn's ties with his old world. He looked down at his dead daughter and said, "She was too gentl e to live in a world full of humans. Do you think you can do any better?"

And Quinn, dazed and starving, so frightened and full of horror that he c ouldn't talk, decided then that he would. Humans were the enemy. No matte r what he did, they would never accept him. He had become something they could only hate-so he might as well become it thoroughly.

"You see, you don't have a family anymore," Hunter mused. "Unless it's the Redferns."

Since then, Quinn had thought of himself only as a vampire.

He shook his head, feeling clearer than he had for days.

The girl had disturbed him. The girl in the cellar, the girl whose face he ha d never seen. For two days after that night, all he could think of was someho w finding her.

What had happened between them . . . well, he still didn't understand tha t. If she had been a witch, he'd have thought she bewitched him. But she was human. And she'd made him doubt everything he knew about humans.

She'd awakened feelings that had been sleeping since Dove died in his arms.

But now . . . now he thought it was just as well he hadn't been able to find her. Because the cellar girl wasn't just human, she was a vampire hunter. Lik e his father. His father, who, wild-eyed and sobbing, had driven the stake th rough Dove's heart.

As always, Quinn felt himself losing his grip on sanity as he remembered it.

What a pity that he'd have to kill the cellar girl the next time he saw her.

But there was no help for it. Vampire hunters were worse than the ordinary human vermin, who were just stupid. Vampire hunters were the sin and the evil that had to be cast out. The Night World was the only world.

And I haven't been to the dub in a week, Quinn thought, showing his teeth. He laughed out loud, a strange and brittle sound. Well, I guess I'd better go t onight.

It's all part of the great dance, you see, he thought to the cellar girl, wh o of course couldn't hear him. The dance of life and death. The dance that's going on right this minute all over the world, in African savannas and Arct ic snowfields and the bushes in Boston Common.

Killing and eating. Hunting and dying. A spider snags a bluebottle fly; a pol ar bear grabs a seal. A coyote springs on a rabbit. It's the way the world ha s always been.

Humans were part of it, too, except that they let slaughterhouses do the kil ling for them and received their prey in the form of McDonald's hamburgers.

There was an order to things. The dance required that someone be the hunter and someone else be the hunted. With all those y oung girls longing to offer themselves to the darkness, it would be cruel o f Quinn not to provide a darkness to oblige them.

They were all only playing their parts.

Quinn headed for the club, laughing in a way that scared even him.

The club was only a few streets away from the warehouse, Rashel noted. Mad e sense. Everything about this operation had the stamp of efficiency, and she sensed Quinn's hand in that.

I wonder what he's getting paid to provide the girls for sale? she thought. S he'd heard that Quinn liked money.

"Remember, once we get inside, you don't know me," she said to Daphne. "It'

s safer for both of us that way. They might suspect something if they knew that first you escaped and now you're turning up with a stranger."

"Got it." Daphne looked excited and a little scared. Under her coat, she was wearing a slinky black top and a brief skirt, and her black-stockinged legs twinkled as she ran toward the club door.

Under Rashel's coat, hidden in the lining, was a knife. Like her sword, it w as made of lignum vitae, the hardest wood on earth. The sheath had several i nteresting secret compartments.

It was the knife of a ninja, and Sensei, who had taught Rashel the martial arts, wouldn't have approved at all. He wouldn't have approved of Rashel made it in, too, her story must have pa.s.sed inspection. That was a relief.

Inside, the place looked like h.e.l.l. Not a shambles. It literally looked like h.e.l.l. Hades. The Underworld. The lights turned it into a place of infernal fire and twisting purple shadows. The music was weird and dissonant and soun ded to Rashel as if it were being played backward.

She caught sc.r.a.ps of conversation as she walked across the floor.

"... going out Dumpster diving later ..." "... no money. So I gotta jack some body ..." "... told Mummy I'd be at the key-dub meeting..." You get a real cr oss section here, she thought dryly.

Everybody had one thing in common, though; they were young. Kids. The old est looked about eighteen. The youngest-well, there were a few girls Rash el would put at twelve. She had an impulse to go back and insert somethin g wooden into Ivan.

A slow fire that had started in her chest when she first heard about the Crypt was burning hotter and hotter with everything she saw here. This entire place is a snare, a gigantic Venus' flytrap, she thought as she took off her coat a nd added it to a pile on the floor.

But if she wanted to shut it down, she had to stay cool, stick to her plan.

Standing by a cast-iron column, she scanned the room for vampires.

And there, standing with a little group that in-duded Daphne, was Quinn.

It gave Rashel an odd shock to see him, and she wanted to look away. She c ouldn't. He was laughing, and somehow that caught hold of her like a fishh ook. For a moment the morbid lighting of the room seemed rainbow-colored i n the radiance shed by that laughter.

Appalled, Rashel realized that her face had flushed and her heart was beating fast.

I hate him, she thought, and this was true. She did hate him for what he wa s doing to her. He made her feel unmoored and adrift. Confused. Helpless.

She understood why those girls were cl.u.s.tered around him, longing to fling t hemselves into his darkness like a bunch of virgin sacrifices jumping into a volcano. I mean, what else do you do with a guy like that? she thought.

Kill him. It would be the only solution even if he weren't a vampire, she d ecided with sudden insane cheer. Because prolonged contact with that smile was obviously going to annihilate her.

Rashel blinked rapidly, getting a grip on herself. All right. Concentrate on that, on the job to be done. She was going to have to kill him, but not now; right now she had to get herself chosen.

Walking carefully on her heels, she went over to join Quinn's group.

He didn't see her at first. He was facing Daphne and a couple of other girls, laughing frequently- too frequently. He looked wild and a little feverish to Rashel. A sort of devilish Mad Hatter at an insane tea party.". . . and I just felt so totally awful that I didn't get to meet you," Daphne was saying, "and I just wish I knew what happened, because it was just so serio usly weird ..."

She was telling her story, Rashel realized. At least none of the people liste ning seemed openly suspicious.

"I haven't seen you here before," came a voice behind her.

It belonged to a striking girl with dark hair, very pale skin, and eyes like a mber or topaz . . . or a hawk's. Rashel froze, every muscle tensing, trying to keep her face expressionless.

Another vampire.

She was sure of it. The camellia-petal skin, the light in the eyes . . . this must be the girl vampire who'd brought Daphne food in the warehouse.

"No, this is my first time," Rashel said, making her voice light and eager.

"My name's Sh.e.l.ly." It was close enough to her own name that she would turn automatically if anyone said it.

"I'm Lily." The girl said it without warmth, and those hawklike eyes continue d to bore straight into Rashel's.

Rashel had to struggle to stay on her feet.

It's Lily Redfern, she thought, working desperately to keep an idiot smile plastered on her face. I know it is. How many Lily's can there be who'd be working with Quinn?

I've got a Redfern right here in front of me. I've got Hunter Redfern's daught er here.

For an instant she was tempted to simply make a dash for her knife. Killing a celebrity like Lily seemed almost worth giving up the enclave.

But on the other hand, Hunter Redfern was a moderate sort of vampire, with a lot of influence on the Night World Council. He helped keep other vampi res in line. Striking at him through his daughter would just make him mad, and then he might start listening to the Councilors who wanted to slaught er humans in droves.

And Rashel would lose any hope of getting at the heart of the slave trade, w here the real sc.u.m were.

I hate politics, Rashel thought. But she was already beaming at Lily, prattli ng for all she was worth. "It was my friend Marnie who told me about this pla ce, and I'm really glad I came because it's even better than I thought, and I 've got this poem I wrote-"

"Really. Well, I'm dying not to hear it," Lily said. Her hawklike eyes had lost interest. Her face was filled with open contempt-she'd dismissed Rashe l as a hopeless fawning idiot. She walked away without glancing back.

Two tests pa.s.sed. One to go.

"That's what I like about Lily. She's just so absolutely cold," a girl beside Rashel said. She had wavy bronze hair and bee-stung lips. "Hi, I'm Juanita," she added.

And she's serious, Rashel thought as she introduced herself. Quinn's group ha d noticed her at last, and they all seemed to agree with Juanita. They were f ascinated by Lily's cold personality, her lack of feeling. They saw it as str ength.

Yeah, because feeling hurts. Maybe I should wors.h.i.+p her, too, Rashel thoug ht. She was finding too many things in common with these girls.

"Lily the ice princess," another girl murmured. "It's like she's not even really from earth at all. It's like she's from another planet."

"Hold that thought," a new voice said, a crisp, laughing, slightly insane voi ce. The effect it had on Rashel was remarkable. It made her back stiffen and sent tingles up her palms. It closed her throat.

Okay, test number three, she thought, drawing on every ounce of discipline sh e'd learned in the martial arts. Don't lose zans.h.i.+n. Stay loose, stay frosty, and go with it. You can do this.

She turned to meet Quinn's eyes.