Chapter Twelve

But, as it turned out, Samuel Gregory arrived before evening.

Anne had gone to school that morning, mostly because she wasn't sure what else to do. The doctors had told her that her mother wasn't in danger from the gunshot wound. Ms. Jamison had been put in a private room, and although it was against hospital rules, the nurses had let Anne sleep there that night on a big chair that folded out.

Anne hadn't slept much, even though her mother was better and thought they were safe. She didn't believe that even a ruthless Night World assassin would try to come for them in a hospital. Some places had to be off limits for killing, didn't they? And even if her soulmate wouldn't respect the hospital as a no-kill ground, it would be difficult even for him to kill in a hospital and get away with it. There were nurses everywhere.

So many nurses, in fact, that Anne had trouble sleeping despite the stress and exhaustion of the day. She'd never realized how noisy a hospital was. But there were constant beeps, both from the machines around her mother and machines in the hallway, and she could hear the nurses talking softly to one another. The noise never became overwhelmingly loud, but it never stopped, either.

She finally fell soundly asleep around 4 am. She might have slept until noon, except a nurse came into the room and started to speak to her mother about breakfast. Anne's eyes flew open.

"Mom?"

"Good morning, darling." Ms. Jamison's face turned toward Anne was pale and drawn, but she smiled. Anne was both frightened to see how fragile her mother looked and relieved to see that her mother was awake and rational. People died in the hospital after they went into comas, right? Not when they were awake and talking to you.

"How are you feeling?" she asked instantly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the nurse smiling as she occupied herself with checking Ms. Jamison's IV drip.

"Not too bad, actually. Still foggy, though."

"The doctor's prescribed pain-killing medication for you," the nurse interjected cheerfully.

Another miniscule part of Anne relaxed at the nurse's tone. Surely the nurse wouldn't sound so cheerful and unworried if her mother really had been in danger?

"You'll be late for school, darling," Ms. Jamison said, squinting at the large clock on the wall.

"But—" Anne hadn't even thought of going to school.

"Yes, we need to take care of your mother, give her a sponge bath, and do other things she probably won't want you to see," the nurse said, just as cheerfully as before. "Visiting hours are this afternoon."

And, after a few minutes, Anne had allowed herself to be persuaded to go to school. Where she'd promptly fallen asleep during her homeroom period. After she'd fallen asleep for the second time in her next class, her teacher had sent her to the guidance counselor, who'd set up a cot for her in an empty office and told her to sleep. Everyone knew about her mother's shooting, of course. Exhausted, Anne fell asleep to the monotonous humming of the copier running in the next room.

She didn't sleep long or well. The guidance counselor woke her for lunch. Anne was groggily putting her shoes back on when the door opened. She glanced up and froze.

Samuel Gregory was closing the door carefully behind him.

"What are you doing here?" were the first words that burst from her mouth.

"I wanted to see you before tonight."

A tiny hope was born in Anne that the nightmare was over and that her soulmate was finally going to start acting the way that everyone said soulmates were supposed to. That he'd tell her he realized he couldn't live without her, that he loved her.

She squelched the hope firmly. He'd shot her mother. Even if he'd somehow fallen in love with her the day before—which she thought was highly unlikely—she wasn't going to fall in love with him. He was an assassin, and he killed people. She didn't think she had any illusions any more about what sort of person he'd made himself into.

"I could yell for help."

"Everyone's gone for lunch. And the noise in your cafeteria is deafening. Does everyone shout over the table?"

"It's the only way to hear anyone."

"A perfect illustration of Cold War escalation theory," he commented. Anne had no idea what he was talking about.

"Are you here to kill me? I thought you were giving me two days to get out of town."

He looked at her somberly, and she felt something jolt and twist inside her.

He didn't look six hundred years old. Whatever that ought to look like on a living person's face. In most ways, he looked exactly her age. His face was smooth and unlined, his dark hair cut in a way that was stylish without having any particularly noticeable characteristics. He wasn't the sort of gorgeous guy that you stopped on the street to watch and dreamed about later that night, but he was good-looking in an unobtrusive way.

But there was something about his eyes, the expression on his face, that didn't look young or carefree. Not that he looked like a worried, stressed adult, either. Whatever he was, it wasn't anything she'd ever seen before. And despite her best resolve, part of her wanted to go and explore it. To learn what six hundred years felt like.

She couldn't. Her mother was in the hospital, recovering from the gunshot wound that this guy had given her. Presumably as a warning to Anne as to what he'd do later if Anne didn't flee. And Anne had seen the loathing on his face when they'd discovered their soulmate connection.

"I'm not here to kill you," he answered finally.

"Then what?"

"To give you one last chance. A last warning, before evening comes and I do my worst to you."

"You can warn me all you like, but I'm not leaving." Anne thought of Neil's promise to get her a gun. Would he manage to do it in time?

"Why are you being so stubborn?" he flashed at her suddenly. Anger was in his voice, and she realized that she'd never heard him angry before. Cold, determined, hostile, contemptuous—but never angry.

In some ways, it was the warmest emotion she'd ever gotten from him.

"I'm not helpless," she told him. "Whatever girls were like in the past—it's not true any more. I'm strong, and I can defend myself."

"This is all about gender?" For an instant, he sounded incredulous. "You're going to stay here, like an idiot duck in a hunter's gunsights, just because you want to make some point about gender?"

He'd said the wrong word, though. Anne felt her own anger spark.

"Speaking of guns, why did you shoot my mother?"

He just looked at her.

"Was it to hurt me in some way?" Anne persisted, when he didn't answer. "Was it to send me a message? She doesn't know anything about the Night World! Or did you think that my father might have told her something years ago before I was born?"

"I didn't shoot your mother."

"Liar."

She would not have thought that a vampire's pale face could grow more pale, but it seemed to do so then. Even his features appeared to become thinner, more sharp.

"I am not a liar," he said, very carefully. "I don't lie. I am an assassin, and my word is my bond. It has to be that way, because nothing else is my bond. Nothing. The only thing that anyone can ever trust about me is that I'm telling them the truth."

"And the truth is that your name is Samuel Gregory. And that you're a nice human guy who's just staying in town for a while. Or did you tell the people at the hotel that you're a vampire assassin for the Night World council? Did you really tell them the truth about yourself?"

"They were vermin," he said shortly.

"So you're not really a liar when you lie to vermin?" Anne pressed.

She knew she was being reckless. Taunting an assassin sent to kill her was like sticking her arm through the bars of a hungry lion's cage at the zoo. But her mother was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a gunshot wound, and she didn't care. Even though, through the soulmate bond, she could distantly feel the fury that he was trying to keep from her.

"Secrecy is part of the Night World law," he told her. "I obey the law, as I am bound to do."

"How convenient."

He hissed at her, an oddly inhuman sound, and Anne froze. On second thought, maybe sticking her arm through the bars of the lion's cage hadn't been the best idea after all.

But he seemed to be trying to recover himself, too. Through her frozen terror, she noticed him taking a deep breath, moving his shoulders slightly to release stored tension. She took a deep breath of her own.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but you see, I don't know whether you're lying to me or not. After all, you think I'm vermin too, don't you?"

He didn't answer at once. "You're human," he finally said.

"Right. And you think that's vermin. Not really a person. Even though you were human once yourself."

He remained silent, looking at her.

"So you could lie to me, by your rules. Just the way that you can kill me without thinking twice about it. Because I'm human."

"I'm not here to kill you because you're human. I'm here to kill you because you violated Night World law."

"Why does it matter if I violated Night World law if I'm human? Nightworlders kill humans all the time and don't think they're committing murder because humans are vermin." Anne put all the sarcasm she could into the last word. "So if Nightworlders think they don't have to obey human law, why do they think that humans ought to obey their law?"

It seemed like a good argument to Anne, and she waited triumphantly for Samuel to agree with her, or to sneer and disagree, which seemed more likely. But he said nothing and simply gazed at her, pale and drawn.

"Well?" she prodded him, when he didn't answer.

He took in a deep breath and let it out. "I did not shoot your mother."

"I don't believe you," Anne said instantly. "All that speech you made me before about how easy it was to shoot people—that was a warning, wasn't it? I was just too stupid to see it."

"No. I did not shoot your mother. In fact, I haven't shot anyone since I came here."

"Would you swear it to me while we have our soulmate connection open?" Anne demanded. "So that I can look into your mind and see whether you're telling me the truth?"

"No." His response was very definite and very quick.

"Are you afraid I'll see you're lying?"

"No."

"Then what are you afraid of?"

He looked away for an instant. When he turned back to her, his gaze had hardened, as if he'd reached some decision that he knew she wouldn't like.

"You hate me, don't you?"

"You haven't given me any reason not to."

But he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "You think I'm a liar, and a coward, and a murderer."

"You're an assassin! You've said so yourself!"

"But not a murderer, because I kill in accordance with the law. Night World law. Which I obey," he went on, not giving her another chance to object to the idea that Night World law could apply to humans. "I serve the law, and whether you understand and believe that or not doesn't really matter. But the point is that we're now in a very unusual situation, one where I haven't known for a long time what to do. On the one hand, I need to kill you—"

"Thanks so much."

"—and, to be more specific, before I let you die, I need to torture you into giving me the names of everyone you know who violated Night World law by giving you information about it. The law of secrecy must be preserved."

"Torture me? Before you let me die? Let me?" Anne heard her voice rising with incredulity.

"But on the other hand, torturing you would be difficult when you're my soulmate. I might feel some of the pain you felt, no matter how hard I tried to shield myself, and that would make me less able to control and guide the torture appropriately. I need the information to carry out my mission successfully, so it's important that I get it. And your death might also temporarily shock me into failing to use my full abilities to hunt down and kill the Daybreakers who told you about the Night World and violated its law of secrecy."

"I'm so sorry." Anne hoped she didn't sound sorry at all.

"In short, it seems I need some other method to get the truth from you about who you've spoken to. Who the local Daybreakers are."

"I won't tell you. No matter what."

"You've already given away at least some of them," he told her gently. "Through the soulmate connection, the last time we touched. You can see parts of your soulmate's memories, you know."

And she'd reached out to him herself, trying to persuade him to give up the idea of hunting her. Anne felt sick. She'd given away Mary and Amaranth and Neil without even knowing it.

Or . . . maybe not? He said he'd seen some of her memories. He wasn't sure that he'd discovered all of the Daybreakers. Mary and Neil had told her about how Samuel had suddenly appeared to them two evenings before. But Amaranth hadn't seen Samuel Gregory. Perhaps he didn't yet know about Amaranth?

"I won't tell you anything more than you know already."

"But you will," he said. "Through the soulmate connection. All I have to do is touch you, and I'll know. You can't help it."

Anne took an involuntary step backward.

Something flared in his eyes. "Are you trying to run away from me?" he asked, very softly.

Anne shook her head mutely.

"You should know," he said, taking one smooth step forward, "that there's another way to form connections. For vampires, at least."

Anne said nothing. She'd already given too much away, without even realizing it until too late.

"A blood connection," he told her, "also tends to make it easier to read minds. Sometimes, anyway. I admit it doesn't always work."

He was close enough to touch her now. Anne started to take a step backward, but he caught her shoulders and held her. This near, she could feel the soulmate connection hum between them. She willed it away, imagining a huge brick wall between them.

It didn't quite work.

"My guess would be that the two together—soulmate connection and blood connection—should open your mind to me as far as possible. And then I'll have what I need from you, without any torture that would hurt both of us."

"No—" Anne got out, breathlessly.

But his lips had already drawn back from suddenly elongated white teeth.

Faster than she could react, she felt one of his hands leave her shoulder. It grasped her chin and pulled it up and to one side. The touch of skin to skin made her imagined brick wall collapse, and she felt the soulmate connection, strong and undeniable, arc and link them together.

Then those teeth darted for her throat. As she tried to jerk away, she felt their sting. He'd bitten her.