Chapter Five
"I don't know why you still think I should practice sword-fighting with Mary," Anne complained. "I'm obviously not going to turn into Buffy any time soon."
"Maybe not, but learning as much as you can is still a good idea."
Anne didn't quite roll her eyes.
After spending nearly two days with Amaranth, she thought she was beginning to understand the Daybreaker witch. Amaranth was a good person. She was loyal and willing to fight for what she believed was right. She'd warned Anne about the danger she faced from the Night World and had done her best to help Anne learn to defend herself. Anne didn't quite understand why Amaranth had been so generous to her, especially when the Night World council would kill Amaranth, too, for having broken the secrecy rule and having told Anne about the Night World. Even though the Night World council seemed to believe that Anne already knew from her father about the Night World, they'd still kill Amaranth, on general principles.
But although Anne admired Amaranth for some things, she felt uncomfortable about others.
For one thing, Amaranth seemed convinced that Anne had more talent at fighting than Anne believed she did. Anne couldn't imagine what gave Amaranth so much faith in her ability to use a sword, unless it was simply the fact that she was her father's daughter. Either that, or Amaranth had been watching way too many Buffy reruns. Anne found the wooden sword incredibly heavy and tiring just to lift, let alone to use. And it was so long that she practically tripped on it whenever she lowered the tip.
When Anne remembered that Amaranth had said that the Night World would believe that she'd inherit her father's fighting skills because witches inherited witch powers from their parents and lamia inherited lamia ability from their parents and shifters inherited their form from their parents, she wondered if Amaranth believed that Anne had to be a talented vampire slayer because her father had been one. And that bothered Anne. It seemed to her that being a vampire slayer was more like a profession than a natural talent. And you might inherit talents from your parents—just maybe—but you certainly didn't inherit your profession.
Anne didn't want to offend Amaranth, but she wondered whether the Daybreaker had actually set aside all her former Night World prejudices. Even if Amaranth believed she had, was it really true?
That was one thing. And another was that Amaranth didn't seem to understand, not really, what it was like for an ordinary human girl to feel that a Night World assassin was after her. That the Night World council had ordered her death.
Oh, Amaranth was sympathetic, and she was indignant. And just being a Daybreaker was practically the same as being under a death sentence from the Night World council, these days. But Amaranth wasn't afraid, not really, not the way that Anne was afraid.
Anne felt helpless. She felt as if there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that she could do to defend herself. If the assassin showed up, she could throw her textbooks at him. She could run, for all the good that would probably do.
She didn't have a gun, and Amaranth hadn't offered to use her witch powers to get Anne one. She couldn't use the sword. She didn't have a bow and arrow, or a knife, or almost anything else that could be used as a weapon.
She could scream for help if she saw the assassin, and maybe someone would come to help her. Then again, maybe the assassin would also kill anyone who tried to interfere.
She could tell everyone about the Night World, try to convince them that she was under an unfair death sentence. But Amaranth had warned her that Circle Daybreak didn't believe that it was time yet to go public. And Amaranth had also warned her that the Night World had members everywhere, and that if she tried to seek help, she might just be asking someone who was part of the Night World and who would be bound to kill her, as a vermin who knew too much.
Amaranth was confident in her own abilities to protect herself, and those of the other members of her Circle. Anne didn't know: maybe Amaranth was right. Or maybe she was overconfident.
But Anne didn't have any witch powers to use in her own defense. She knew Amaranth and Mary would defend her, but she didn't know if they'd be enough. Two people wasn't a lot, not against a Night World assassin. And they usually weren't with her at the same time, anyway. If the assassin struck quickly, she'd only have one of them there to help her.
One Daybreaker, and her own talents for fighting. And she didn't think that she had any talent for fighting.
But Amaranth brushed all this aside. Her eyes sparkled as she talked about how she and Mary would defend Anne. She seemed to be taking the whole thing as a personal challenge, one that she was sure she'd win.
Anne just wasn't so sure.
But for the time being, everything seemed to be going smoothly. She and Amaranth did their homework. They ate dinner with Anne's mother, who didn't seem very surprised that Amaranth was going to spend the night with them. Amaranth asked if she could be left alone while she made a few mysterious phone calls to her "contacts." When she returned, she looked disappointed, and she told Anne privately that no one knew any more than before. No one had seen a new Nightworlder around. The FBI were still investigating the bomb, but they hadn't found any clues, and they seemed to be ready to give up.
They settled down in Anne's bedroom for the night. Anne stayed awake long after Amaranth's slow breathing showed that the Daybreaker was asleep. Every time she was about to drift off, she saw the smoke rising in big black puffs from the school, or heard Amaranth's cheerful explanation that she'd been marked for death. It was after midnight before she fell asleep, and then she had bad dreams.
When she woke up to the loud radio of her alarm clock, she was almost as disoriented as when she'd woken up at Mary's. She slapped off the alarm and looked at Amaranth, who was stirring sleepily in her sleeping bag.
"Do you want the bathroom first?" Anne asked politely. Amaranth was her bodyguard as well as her guest.
"You can go ahead," Amaranth said. She yawned and turned over, clearly not eager to get up.
Anne wasn't any too eager to get up either. With half-shut eyes, she grabbed for her bathrobe, pushed one arm into one sleeve, and headed for the bathroom while still fumbling to get the other arm in the other sleeve.
As she pushed the bathroom door open, she had just half a second to register something out of place, some flicker of motion in the mirror where no motion should be. Then a hard hand grasped her from behind. A cloth—one of the hand towels?--was pressed to her mouth.
She tried to pull away, but her arm was caught in her bathrobe sleeve, and she couldn't get it free. She kicked out blindly and connected with something, but the only effect her kick had was to hurt her bare foot.
Muzzily, she knew she ought to scream, but her adrenaline rush was fading with frightening rapidity. Everything was slowing down, becoming dark. . . .
The vampire calling himself Samuel Gregory lifted his unconscious prey, slung her over his shoulder, and moved unhurriedly down the hall. He let himself out the front door and walked to his small rental car, which was parked at the curb in front of the house. The sky was turning light in the east, but it was not yet dawn, and the neighbors were not yet leaving for work. There was no need to hurry. Samuel Gregory carefully placed his bundle in the passenger seat of his rental car, climbed in the driver's side, and drove sedately away.
Anne woke up slowly. It was Saturday, and she could sleep late. That was why her alarm hadn't gone off. But she was a little cold, probably because she'd kicked off the covers at some point in the night, and her muscles were still stiff and aching, the way they'd done ever since Mary had tried to train her. . . .
She came fully awake with a start. She wasn't in bed. She was lying on a floor, hard and uncarpeted. Concrete. She sat up and looked around her. Her heart began to pound, and she had to fight not to hyperventilate. Where was she? What had happened?
Slowly, she recognized the unfamiliar shapes around her. She was in the school's science lab. She recognized the lab benches, the stools, the cupboards where the dangerous chemicals were kept locked up. A map of the internal organs of a frog was hanging in front of the blackboard.
She'd been kidnapped. She remembered now: the hands grabbing her, holding her immobile. The towel over her mouth, and her arms caught in her bathrobe. Stupid. Stupid, not to realize that she was still alone in the bathroom, that any assassin would have expected her to be alone and would have taken advantage of her lapse.
Her arm was still not properly in the bathrobe. She shoved it in place now and belted the robe around her. Being dressed made her feel slightly safer. That was probably stupid, but it was true.
She couldn't imagine why anyone would have kidnapped her and then left her in her science classroom. Unless there was another bomb set to go off?
She jumped to her feet and ran to the door. But it was locked. She pulled vainly at the doorknob, then turned around to try the windows.
Immediately behind her, no more than a few inches away, stood a boy. She bumped into him before she could stop herself. He caught her arms, not hard but firmly.
She screamed. She couldn't help herself. It wasn't a very loud scream, but it was definitely a panicked reaction to the boy's presence. How had he gotten there? She hadn't seen him a minute before. It was true the lights in the room were off, but she still should have seen him. When he'd seen her start to stir, he should have said something. But he hadn't. . . .
She pulled herself backward as far as she could. He let her flatten herself against the door. The doorknob jutted into her back. She tried it again, frantically. It was still locked, of course.
"Who are you?" she got out.
His lips twitched, as if he found her choice of questions funny. Maybe he did. Anne didn't care. As far as she was concerned, it was a perfectly good way to start what she was increasingly certain was going to be a very bad relationship.
"You can call me Samuel Gregory." Something about the sharpness of his vowels and the way that his voice didn't soften at the end of each word sounded vaguely foreign.
"Are you—are you the person who kidnapped me?"
"Yes."
She couldn't believe he'd said it, so calmly, without any trace of apology in his voice. For an instant, she wanted to scream again. Or to faint. Or to wake up, because it would be great if this were all a dream. . . .
And suddenly, she wasn't as afraid any more. It was as if remembering all the real nightmares she'd had over the last few days made this waking nightmare easier to bear. It was here, now, and she didn't have to be afraid of it any more.
She lifted her head higher and studied the boy in front of her.
He had a slight twist to his lips, as if he felt that there was something mildly amusing about giving her the opportunity to collect herself and look at him. His hair was very dark, and his skin was pale. He seemed to be wearing dark clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt, nothing special, although it was a little cold for t-shirts. His eyes were dark, too, although she couldn't make out whether they were brown or black. The sun had risen while she'd been unconscious, but the light filtering through the windows was still weak.
He wasn't much taller than she was. All things considered, she didn't think she'd have looked at him twice if she'd passed him on the street.
"You're the assassin. The Night World assassin."
Something flickered across his face then that she couldn't identify. Pity? Resignation? Anticipation? She had no idea what Night World assassins felt. Or even if they felt at all.
He was there to kill her.
"So you know about the Night World," he said.
She thought belatedly that she should have pretended ignorance. Maybe he'd have let her go if she'd just seemed confused and had insisted she didn't know who he was or why he'd try to kidnap her.
Then again, maybe he wouldn't have. And she couldn't have fought back without admitting that she knew he'd been sent to kill her.
"Yes," she said, trying to sound braver than she actually felt. "I know."
"Who told you?"
The question sounded casual, but she was on her guard now.
"My father."
If she could convince him that Amaranth hadn't been involved, at least he wouldn't kill anyone else. She didn't see how she could escape him, but at least she could prevent him from hurting Amaranth and Mary, and the other Daybreakers, whoever they were.
An eyebrow lifted. "Really?"
"Yes." She tried to sound defiant and self-confident, but she had a bad feeling he wasn't fooled.
He stepped back, hooked an ankle around the leg of a stool without taking his eyes off her, drew the stool forward, and perched atop it. There was absolutely no haste to his actions, but something about the graceful way he moved made her shiver. She revised her former opinion that she wouldn't have looked at him twice if she'd passed him on the street.
"Are you really a vampire?" she asked.
He looked amused again. "Yes."
Well, now she'd met a witch, and a shifter, and a vampire. All the major factions of the Night World, according to Amaranth. Wonderful; she could die with her knowledge complete.
"So your father told you about the Night World," he said comfortably, when she didn't seem inclined to say anything else.
"Yes. My father was Hunter Farmer," Anne explained, deciding that she might as well go for broke and tell him everything. "But I'm sure you know that."
"Oh, yes." His dark eyes studied her. "There's a problem, though."
"What?"
"Your father died years ago. About the time you were born, in fact. So how could he have told you so much about the Night World?"
Anne's heart, which had been coming close to a normal rhythm, lurched again.
"He left a diary," she said, trying to sound casual. "He told me everything in it."
"Ah."
She had a sinking feeling that he didn't believe her. Well, it actually hadn't been the smartest thing to say. She didn't know any guys who kept diaries. She should have said that he'd left a letter for his unborn daughter. That probably would have sounded better.
"And where is this diary?"
"I burned it," Anne said promptly.
Samuel Gregory laughed.
For a few seconds, Anne couldn't believe it. She had been knocked unconscious and kidnapped by a Night World assassin. He'd brought her to her school, of all places—why had he done that?—and locked them both in her science classroom. He was planning to kill her because she was the daughter of a dead slayer, even though he apparently didn't know or care whether she'd ever killed anyone herself. She couldn't imagine how she could escape. And now he was laughing?
He didn't laugh for very long, but as his lips straightened, she could see them still twitching at the corners, and she realized that he'd found her answer genuinely funny. He wasn't just trying to humiliate her.
Somehow that made it much worse, and much more humiliating.
"So I can't find the diary."
"That's right."
"It isn't even worth my time to look for it."
"That's right."
"Your father's legacy to you. One of the few things he left you. You burned it."
"For security reasons," Anne said with dignity. The government always said that, so she figured she could say it as well.
"For security reasons," he agreed gravely. His lips twitched again, just at one corner.
"You can kill me," she told him. "I know you're going to. But that's all you can do. I learned everything I know about the Night World from my father, and you can't prove anything else."
She expected that he'd be angry, that he'd tell her she was wrong. But he just looked at her, and again she had the sense that an expression that she couldn't quite grasp slid rapidly over his features and disappeared.
She could see him better now, she realized. The light was growing stronger.
"So there," she finished. It was a childish thing to say, but she was running out of defiant words. In spite of her best efforts to be brave, she could feel her knees beginning to tremble beneath her. She hoped her bathrobe hid the shaking, but she couldn't drop her eyes to look.
"Anne," he said gently. She hadn't heard him say her name before, and it sounded unnatural, somehow, on his lips.
"I don't need to prove anything."
She could feel some of the tension going out of her. He wasn't a monster, then. Just someone who disagreed with Circle Daybreak, but who did so honestly, who was willing to fight within civilized rules. Amaranth had dropped dark hints about how terrible the members of Circle Midnight could be, but this boy wasn't terrible. He'd kill her, yes, but he'd accept her word about how she'd learned about the Night World. No one else had to die.
It hadn't occurred to her that Samuel Gregory's words might have more than one meaning. She stood a little straighter and took a step away from the door. Toward him.
"So," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "Are you going to kill me here? Right now?"
She couldn't read the look in his dark eyes, but she could see their color now. A very dark brown. Not true black.
"I need to ask you a few more questions first," he said.
"I don't have anything to tell you. I burned everything. There's nothing left but what's in my head. If you kill me, you'll have destroyed everything that my father left behind."
She could hardly believe what she was saying. That she was practically asking him to kill her. But it would be worth it, she was vaguely certain, if she could save Amaranth and Mary. And, good god, her mother, what if this vampire assassin decided to kill her mother because he thought she might know something too. . . .
"It's not that easy."
"It isn't?" She was almost touching him now. "I thought it was easy for vampires to kill. And you're an assassin. Don't tell me you haven't killed anyone before?"
In spite of herself, her heart leapt at the thought that he might never have killed before, that he might be reluctant to kill her now. That she might escape, in spite of everything.
He was shaking his head, and her momentary hope plummeted. She thought she was going to be sick. If he didn't do something soon, she'd faint, or vomit, or scream. She could feel her pajamas clinging to her with sweat.
"I have done this before. And that's why I know a lie when I hear it."
She couldn't speak. She stared at him mutely, and he went on.
"Your father didn't leave you a diary. You just found out who your father was. You didn't even know that until a few days ago. Someone else told you about the Night World. I need to know who that person is."
"So you can kill them, too?" she challenged him.
"Yes."
She couldn't believe what she was hearing. This wasn't happening. This simply wasn't happening.
"I won't tell you anything."
He smiled, a quick twist of his lips that had no mirth to it at all. "Yes. You will."
She jerked away from him then, but his hand shot out swifter than she could move. He caught her wrist—
--and then she was overcome with the sense of his presence all about her. The science classroom around her seemed to fade away.
It lasted for only an instant, and then he'd dropped her wrist as if he'd inadvertently touched red-hot iron. She blinked, orienting herself.
He was standing an arm's length from her, his dark brown eyes wide. This time, she could read the expression on his face. It was one of absolute horror and disgust, as if he were looking at a mutilated corpse, or a nest of maggots.
She wondered what was behind her to have caused that expression, but she didn't dare turn around. Her head was still spinning dizzily, and she stood still, trembling, and waited for whatever he was going to do next. She didn't think she could stand up much longer, still less run away.
"Soulmate," he spat at her, and the same loathing was in his voice.
"Soulmate?" Amaranth had told her about soulmates, she remembered that, but she couldn't grasp the memory.
"Damn you," he said, with absolute conviction.
Then he turned and darted away, so quickly that she could barely see him, to the windows at the back of the classroom. With that same eerie grace, he was suddenly on the sill, crouching like a cat, pulling one window sharply. It opened. In an instant, he slithered through the narrow opening and was gone.
Anne was left standing alone, wrapped in her bathrobe and shivering, in her high school's science classroom.