Chapter One
She survived, as it turned out, because her principal had decided to hold a routine fire drill that day.
Some of the students had been slow getting outside and to their assigned positions. The principal had yelled impersonally at everyone over the mobile loudspeaker and told them that they shouldn't be so apathetic, that someday the fire alarm might sound and it would be real. Everyone, teachers and students alike, had stared indifferently at him. Overhead, gray clouds had roiled ominously, though it hadn't actually started to rain yet. It had been cold, too. No one wanted to be outside, and everyone wondered why the principal had been so crazy as to hold a fire drill in November.
"Probably someone on the school board complained," Anne overheard her English teacher, Ms. Sanders, saying to the Spanish teacher. "We haven't done enough drills this year."
The Spanish teacher rolled her eyes and said something that Anne couldn't understand but which sounded very uncomplimentary. Ms. Sanders cleared her throat.
"Everyone back inside now," she directed. Her cheeks were very pink. From the cold, no doubt.
They filed back toward the school doors numbly. There were too many people to fit through the eight doors quickly, and so Anne stood waiting in line, stamping her feet a little to stay warm. She was wearing a light sweater, but it wasn't enough. The temperature had to be near freezing, she thought.
No one looked at her in particular as they waited to get back inside. This didn't disturb Anne. She was used to not standing out in a crowd. She'd decided long ago that she was fated to be very ordinary-looking in life. Her hair was medium-brown and medium-long. Her eyes were also a very ordinary brown. She was on the slender side, but not remarkably so.
Since she'd decided that she was going to be ordinary-looking, she picked perfectly ordinary clothes. She wore jeans and athletic shoes as often as possible. She'd decided that since her body wasn't going to make her stand out in a crowd, she wasn't going to try to compensate with gorgeous clothes. Besides, her mother didn't have the money for anything special. And her father was dead.
So she simply clutched her thin sweater more closely around her and waited impatiently for the crush to thin and for her turn to enter.
The poofing sound from inside the building didn't sound ominous, at first. In fact, she wasn't quite sure that she'd heard anything definite at all. She cocked her head to try to make the noise out better. Most of the other students and teachers around her were doing the same thing.
Then she was hearing shouts and screams, and people started to push backwards. The line she was standing in fell completely out of order. She was jostled against students she didn't know. Someone pushed her hard. She stumbled and almost lost her footing. She was being borne backward and to one side.
Above the building, a column of black smoke was rising lazily into the sky. A crackling noise could barely be heard over the shouts of the other students. The teachers were yelling at everyone to get back, get back to the fire drill positions.
Anne fought her way through the chaos as best she could to join her English class on the grass. A few of her classmates were already there, watching the smoke rise wide-eyed and clutching one another. All the boredom and indifference of the previous few minutes had completely disappeared.
"It's a bomb," she heard Richard say. Richard was smart enough to be in the running to become valedictorian. He sounded stunned. "It's got to be a bomb."
They were standing far enough away from the school to have a good view. The black smoke rose, not steadily but in a column with bigger and smaller puffs. Anne couldn't see what room it was coming from, but she thought it was actually in the wing where her English class was being held. She shuddered, frightened at the thought of what might have happened if they hadn't been having a drill.
"Do you think the principal knew?"
"No, he wouldn't have let us go back inside if it wasn't just a drill."
"Maybe some kid just set off a smoke bomb," someone offered hopefully.
"That's too big to be a smoke bomb."
The column of black smoke was much higher now. Anne could hear the wail of sirens in the distance.
"Maybe it was a big smoke bomb?" Anne could hear the fear in the girl's voice. The disbelief.
One of the other teachers, someone whom Anne didn't know, was yelling at them all to move further back, to make room for the approaching fire trucks. Anne shuffled away with the others. It occurred to her, as it was probably occurring to everyone else, that the fire drill hadn't really been a complete preparation for disaster. At least half her English class was still missing, plus Ms. Sanders herself. They were all supposed to stay together, and Ms. Sanders was supposed to count them and then send one student with the total number to the principal, who was supposed to tally all the numbers and send someone inside to get out any stragglers. . . .
She wouldn't have wanted to go inside to find any stragglers.
A bomb. Not just a bomb threat, which they had all the time before tests because someone hadn't studied and wanted the test to be postponed.
Who would have put a real bomb in the school? What if they'd all been inside when it happened?
She was shivering, now, with deep sick tremors that seemed to come from deep inside her. She followed the other students blindly away from the burning school building and wished she had a cell phone so that she could call her mother and let her know that she was all right. Oh, God, maybe some students weren't all right. . . .
The fire trucks were pulling up. She watched the suited figures run around, attaching hoses and yelling at confused students to get back and away, and she felt as if she'd stepped into a nightmare that couldn't possibly be happening.
A phone was lifted in the darkness. A long string of buttons was pressed.
"Did it work?"
"No. She's still alive."
A soft curse. More irritation than anger underlay the words. Then: "Another bomb would look suspicious, I assume."
"Probably."
"Something more specific, then." A pause. "I'll send you a problem-fixer."
"You'll need to choose one who looks young enough to fit into an American high school. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen at the most."
"I am aware of the age of high school students. Even American ones."
"Sorry." The caller sounded abashed.
"One week."
"Should I—" the caller started to ask.
But only a dial tone, echoing mechanically across the miles, answered him.
He wondered if he could get away with killing the family sitting behind him.
A transatlantic flight was never enjoyable, in his opinion. In fact, he disliked flying quite intensely. The plane's dips and bumps through the air reminded him painfully that he was not in control of his environment. That, in fact, if one of those human vermin had failed to service the plane correctly, or one of the more insane political ones happened to be having a suicidal moment, they might become an expanding fireball in the sky.
And if that happened, his long vampiric life would almost certainly come to an abrupt and unexpected end.
He attempted to stretch his legs out, winced when they hit the back of the seat in front of him, and shifted to put his weight on one hip instead. He was flying in coach, not first class, as he was traveling on Night World business. A nuisance to be in the crowded, packed quarters of the third-class section, but necessary.
Thou Shalt Not Draw Attention to Thyself was a standard Night World axiom. It was also an axiom for assassins, so he had two good reasons to follow it.
He shifted to the other hip, winced at the shrill cry of the three-year-old behind him that rose over even the unending whine of the engines, and wondered if he could get away with killing the child. All humans might be vermin, but human toddlers were particularly unlikeable, in his opinion, having no saving graces whatsoever.
Unfortunately, human women were irrational on the subject, and human men only slightly better. And a jetliner traveling at approximately 500 miles per hour about five miles above the Atlantic Ocean was not suited to a hasty exit.
The inflight movie was the typical garbage created by the vermin, of course, and the music piped through the headset was the same. He had a book—a thriller about assassins, completely unrealistic and all the more charming for its naivete—but he didn't feel like reading it. He was heading west, and therefore it was a daytime flight; he felt like napping, and there was no reason not to, really. So he shut his eyes and allowed his mind to drift past the memories of his last assassination.
She'd been a Daybreaker witch in Rome. A fine city in many ways, though it had regrettably started to expand and sprawl in all directions when that war in the 1940s had ended. Cities should have stayed behind their medieval walls, in his opinion. Limited space would keep down the population: discourage breeding, encourage violent conflict. Disease would spread more easily. If the Night World were lucky, a plague might even break out.
He'd tracked the Daybreaker witch over several days, watching her routine as she went to and from school, as she hung out with her friends. She kept away from the other Night World people in the area, probably hoping that they'd mistake her for human. Witches could get away with that sometimes, since there were a number of lost witches in the world; vampires and shifters, of course, had a harder time disguising their natures.
She was on a mission to convert humans to the Daybreak philosophy, he'd decided, although it didn't really matter what she was doing. He'd been instructed to kill her by dawn on Monday, and that's what he would do.
She went out with her friends on Sunday evening. He waited patiently from a safe vantage point until she told them goodnight and set out for home.
She was a modern girl and a witch; she didn't think she needed to be afraid of the shadows. She was walking happily under the brilliant stars (somewhat obscured by the vast city's light pollution) in the park over Nero's long-vanished Domus Aurea when he stepped up silently behind her, put a hand over her mouth, and hit her with a hard telepathic blow.
Because she was a witch, her own powers protected her, and she didn't fall unconscious right away. She sagged in his arms and gasped slightly, but he had his hand over her mouth to stifle the faint sound. In an instant, he had lifted her neatly and carried her through the park's shadows to the shelter of an arch set into a brick wall. He thought the wall had probably been built by the ancient Romans—it looked old enough—but he wasn't an expert and didn't really care. The shadows fell deeply there, and he waited patiently until midnight had long passed and the traffic on the street below was irregular and light. Whenever he felt her mind begin to stir and reach toward wakefulness, he pushed her firmly back down into unconsciousness.
When he judged it sufficiently quiet outside, he lifted her and carried her through the park to a remote area frequented mostly by drug dealers. He neatly evaded the few who still remained, set his victim down, and used his vampiric strength to shove a rather large rock to one side.
An opening gaped in the earth. He picked up the Daybreaker, slung her ungently over his shoulder, and carefully edged his way down the ladder. He pulled the rock back into place as he descended; it actually had a handhold carved underneath it, where it couldn't be seen by stray vermin.
He woke her up a few minutes later. Her eyes blinked in the single candle's light, and he doubted her night vision was keen enough to see the walls around her, even with her pupils fully dilated. He let her rise and search for an exit that did not exist, except up the ladder by which they'd come. Moving unsteadily, she looked at the decayed mosaics and frescoes that still decorated the room where Nero had held dinner parties almost two millennia ago. The standard paintings on the plaster walls of fowl and fruit alternated with some frescoes that were more lively, and he felt rather than saw the blood rise to her cheeks.
She did not comment on the brownish stains obscuring some of the frescoes. Well, in two millennia, the walls and floor had gained many stains, and the recent brownish ones did not stand out.
She'd been aware of his presence, but she hadn't spoken to him or acknowledged his presence in any way. Perhaps she didn't like vampires. Perhaps her witch powers somehow let her know that he had been sent by Circle Midnight. He let her continue her futile hunt for a way out of the room for some time before he spoke.
"Who have you told about the Night World?"
She turned to face him. Her pupils were fully opened to capture all of the candle's light, and her eyes seemed dark pools in her suntanned face.
"No one."
"You've been here to try to find converts for Daybreak," he said patiently. "Who have you found? Who have you told?"
He didn't care if she'd talked to other Nightworlders, but he'd been given instructions to find out if she'd spoken to any humans.
"No one. You came too soon. I didn't have any time to find anyone."
"You were out with friends tonight," he pointed out.
"Just friends. Not anyone special. I haven't told anyone about the Night World."
He stood and came closer, allowing his walk to take on that peculiar, boneless glide of the predator that stalks its prey. He saw her recognize the implication. A Nightworlder would, naturally. Even a Daybreaker.
He watched her swallow. The ripple ran along her smooth throat, and he smiled.
"There are rules," he told her with false gentleness as he approached. "You know that, don't you?"
She swallowed again before she spoke. "Stupid rules. . . ."
"Yes, but rules are rules." He might have been a saddened father, explaining the harsh truths of life to a child. He was considerably older than her father. "We have to obey them. All of us do."
"Circle Daybreak doesn't believe. . . ."
"Circle Daybreak," he interrupted, not quite as gently as before, "must obey the rules of the Night World the same way that the other circles do. The Night World Council stands above all the circles and governs them all equally. It hands out justice fairly to each. You wouldn't want the Council to let some circles have privileges that the others don't, do you?"
"No, but that's not the point. . . ."
"It is the point." He'd reached her now, was standing so close to her that he could feel the heat of her skin rising to touch his own. Witches were so vermin-like. "Justice demands that all the circles obey the same rules. And one of the rules is that the vermin must never know about the Night World."
"They're not vermin. They're humans. People."
"Humans," he accepted her choice of word with only mild distaste, "if you prefer to call them what they call themselves. The humans must never know about the Night World."
"But that's the whole point of Circle Daybreak, that Nightworlders and humans can live together in peace and harmony."
"Then Circle Daybreak needs to find a new point to organize around," he told her, "because Circle Daybreak is not above Night World law. The Council has decreed that vermin—humans, if you insist on that word—not know about our existence. And that is the law, and you have broken it."
Silence. The candle flickered. On the frescoed wall, the painted eyes of a dead pheasant seemed to gleam with the reflected light.
"I haven't broken it," she said finally. "I haven't told anyone about the Night World."
"I hope you're telling me the truth," he said.
"Why? Because you'll kill me if I'm lying to you?"
"No," he said. He disliked the next part of what he had to say, but he said it anyway. "I've been ordered to kill you anyway. But I also have been ordered to kill anyone you've spoken to, and anyone they may have spoken to in turn, and too much killing could tie me up here in Rome for longer than I'd like to stay."
She looked at him, incredulous.
"You're joking?"
"No."
"But . . . all Circle Daybreak wants is peace and harmony! That's all I've been trying to do. We don't threaten you, you idiot. What we're trying to do is good for everyone, even for you people in Circle Midnight, if you were smart enough to see it."
"Not my decision to make," he told her equably.
"But of course it's your decision. It's everyone's decision. Everyone has to make that decision for themselves."
"That's where you're wrong again," he told her pleasantly. "Some of us respect the law. And obey it."
"It's a stupid law."
He shrugged. "Not my decision to make. It's what it is. That's all."
She stared at him, her dark eyes into his lighter ones, before hers slipped away and danced around the room frantically, trying to spy some means of escape.
He reached out and touched her gently on the shoulder. She started like a frightened deer.
"Sh," he told her. "Don't be afraid."
"Of course I'm afraid, you idiot. You're threatening to kill me."
"Not for a while yet," he told her.
He saw her misunderstand, relax slightly. "What do you mean?"
"You have to tell me first who you've told about the Night World," he told her gently. Implacably.
"No one. I've already told you that."
"But I can't be sure you're not lying. You have every reason to, you know. You don't want me to kill anyone else. Humans, for example, who you think are innocent."
She tried to back away from him, shaking her head. He let her take one step backward, but he kept his grip on her shoulder and allowed her to go no further.
"I've told you I didn't tell anyone. It's the truth. I swear it."
"But you've already broken your promises to the Night World," he said reasonably, "so how can I take your promise as good now?"
"I never made a promise to the Night World."
"You did implicitly, when you became part of it."
"I was born part of it!"
"Then you did, implicitly, when you were born."
"That's nonsense."
He shrugged. "It's the way that the Council has chosen to see things. Not my decision."
"Will you stop saying that!"
"All right," he said easily, taking a step forward so that he made up the distance that she'd put between them only a minute ago.
"I wanted to find my soulmate," she said faintly. "Everyone has a soulmate, you know. Nightworlders are beginning to find their human soulmates. I thought that if I spent more time among humans, I'd find him."
"Isn't the story that everyone has a soulmate somewhere in the world? But only one?"
"Yes. . . ."
"Well, it's a rather big world, isn't it?" he pointed out. "You can hardly hope to search it all. Not even a vampire could do that, not in his entire life."
"Well." She drooped. "I hoped that I could find him here. So I came—"
Her hands came up, suddenly, between them then, a ball of orange fire glowing through her fingers, and she threw the ball at him with all her might—
--and the ball bounced off harmlessly, fizzled, and disappeared.
His lips twitched before he could repress the smile. He was there to kill her, after all, and not to hurt her feelings.
"Daybreakers are terribly stupid," he did allow himself to comment. "There are plenty of witches in Circle Midnight, you know. You didn't think they'd send me to kill you without arming me with protection spells first."
She tried to pull away and run then, but he held her fast.
"I thought you said you weren't going to kill me right now," she said, gasping, when he'd made it very clear that she couldn't escape his grasp.
"I'm not," he told her, a little sadly.
"Well, what are you going to do, then?"
"Ask you a few questions. About whom you've told about the Night World."
"I've already told you!"
"Well," he said, feeling his soul empty and dry as the arid desert, "after I've asked several more times, and you've answered several more times, I'll kill you then. I'll let you die."
Incredulity was in her voice. "Let me—"
He blew out the candle, as the only mercy he could grant her. He'd never found that letting them see in advance what you were going to do really made all that much difference. The pain was persuasive enough in itself.
He left the underground palace just before dawn. The ancient dining room had acquired a few more red stains on its walls. They'd have dried to brown by the time he returned, or another of his fellow assassins did. He'd opened the hidden door in the wall, carried the corpse into the adjoining room that they used as a disposal place, and left it on the pile of bones and decaying corpses there.
One less Daybreaker, one less headache for the Council. Her friends in Daybreak would probably mourn her, but her loss was a good thing, on the whole—it would help convince the others not to break the law themselves. Fewer assassinations, in the long run. Which, in turn, meant more living Nightworlders, and a greater bulwark against the constantly breeding vermin.
Killing a few people could save so many more, in the long run. People who hated and feared assassins never understood that part of their trade. How they protected the Night World, even though it meant doing its dirty work. How they kept pogroms and genocide at bay by strictly enforcing the most important of all the Night World laws: absolute secrecy.
He rather thought that the Mafia, with their law of omerta, would understand.