Chapter Fourteen
Anne had intended to hunt Samuel Gregory down and shoot him before he could kill her. She quickly found the problem with her plan.
She had no idea where he was.
She didn't know what hotel he was staying at. She didn't know if the hotel was in the town, or if it was in a city a hundred miles away. A hundred miles, after all, was only a couple of hours' drive.
She didn't even know if he was staying in a hotel at all. Maybe some members of Circle Midnight had allowed him to stay with them. Maybe he was staying in one of the infamous black flower clubs. Maybe he'd brainwashed some humans into letting him stay in their house.
For all she knew, Samuel Gregory had a tent out in the woods and was camping there. Or he'd found a cave. Or he'd built himself a treehouse.
She doubted the treehouse, actually. She couldn't picture Samuel Gregory sitting in a tree. But she had no clue where he was, or how to find him.
"What should I do?" she asked Amaranth at lunch. "How do you track someone down who doesn't want to be found?"
"Well . . . you could use a spell. I guess."
"Can you do a spell like that?"
"If you have something of his, I could."
"Like what?"
"Hair, nail clippings. . . ."
"Ick," Anne said succinctly. "No. I don't have anything like that. Is there any other way?"
Amaranth frowned, twirling a pencil between her fingers. "I don't know. Maybe. I'll think about it." She stared down at her hands.
"Hurry," Anne said. "Before he kills someone else."
Anne thought she'd sounded mature and self-assured. But Amaranth's face, when she raised it, was troubled and uncertain.
"Anne . . . are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes! Of course! Don't you agree that it's the only thing to do? You did before."
"Yes . . . I guess." Amaranth didn't sound happy. "I just . . . . It's such a big step to take."
"He deserves to die," Anne said. She had never been so convinced of anything in the world as she was convinced of that now.
"Probably he does. But . . . he's your soulmate."
"He still killed that witch in Rome," Anne reminded Amaranth.
"Yes." The doubt faded from Amaranth's face.
"I need whatever help you can give me," Anne told Amaranth. "Spells, advice, information, whatever. I'm going to stop this monster from hurting anyone else. He's never going to do again what he did to my mother. And what he tried to do to me. In the hospital, you said you could give me a spell that would help me stop him."
"I'm working on it. It's not easy getting some of the ingredients. And it takes time to mix everything and let it combine properly."
"Hurry," Anne repeated, grimly. "I need to track him down as soon as possible."
But, as it turned out, she didn't have to solve the problem of how to track Samuel Gregory down. He came to her instead.
She was in her bedroom, packing her backpack with clothes to wear to school the next day. While her mother was in the hospital, she was sleeping at Mary's house. Mary had offered to come keep Anne company while she packed, but Anne had declined.
"I warned you to leave," the voice came from behind her.
Anne started. She hadn't heard any doors open. But in retrospect, she assumed that Samuel Gregory, assassin extraordinaire, was capable of moving with perfect silence.
Angry at herself for betraying her surprise, she turned slowly.
He stood there watching her, no expression on his own face. For the first time, it came to her that the predatory way that he held himself was not only threatening, but that it was oddly beautiful as well. She might hate and despise him, but if he'd been different inside, or if she hadn't recognized him for what he was, she might have found him attractive.
She pushed the thought aside. He'd shown her what he truly was, and there was nothing attractive about it.
"You warned me," she agreed. "But I decided to stay and fight."
"You lost our last fight."
"I'm still here. Alive and well. In spite of everything you've been able to do."
His lips quirked. "You think that what I've done is all that I can do?"
She was sick of his laughing at her. Why did he always look down on her? Why couldn't he accept her as another person, even if not his equal in every way?
"You're not going to hurt anyone again, ever," she told him.
The half-smile on his lips disappeared. She hoped, for an instant, that it was because he had taken her seriously for once. But no, his eyes had gone unfocused and distant.
"Would that that were true," he said.
She jammed her hands into the pockets of the jacket she'd been wearing all day and took a step toward him. His eyes came back into focus instantly, alert and cool.
"I mean it," she warned him.
"Well, I meant it too," he said lightly.
Another step. He didn't move, but she could feel alertness humming through his body. He'd expected her to run or to beg for mercy, she was sure. He hadn't expected her to walk toward him, as if she was unafraid.
She could feel her heart pounding in terror, as it seemed to do so often when she was around him. But inside her mind she could feel, hard and sharp as a cut diamond, her determination to fight back.
He was almost close enough to touch now. She hesitated. Should she get closer, or not?
He solved her dilemma by taking the last step between them. Reaching out, his fingers threaded themselves through her hair. He tilted her head back, not roughly but firmly, and his other hand lifted to pull her collar away from her throat.
She couldn't stop her involuntary reaction to pull away. "Let me go!"
"I need all the information you have on Circle Daybreak."
"I'm not going to give it to you!"
"You already did. Most of it, anyway. But I need to make sure I have all of it. If you relax, it won't hurt."
"Is that all you can think about? Not whether you're doing what's right or wrong? Just whether it's going to hurt or not?"
He was so close to her that she felt his breath across her cheek as he spoke. "What I'm going to do has already been determined by my oath. All I'm free to do is to make it as painless as possible."
His cool fingers were underneath her collar, now, pushing the cloth away.
"No!" She saw his head dip lower, felt that breath touch the hollow between her jaw and her shoulder. Yanking the gun from her pocket, she fired.
She'd expected him to be flung backward by the force of the shot. That always happened in the movies. But he only jerked slightly from the impact.
He stopped moving toward her throat, though, and started to raise his head.
Anne didn't know what to do. She had to finish what she'd started; she couldn't let him live now. He'd certainly kill her now, if she didn't kill him first. She pulled the trigger again and again, aiming blindly at his body. Her ears hurt from the noise, and she could smell an odd scent of smoke and other things that she couldn't identify. Her hand hurt from trying to hold the weight of the gun in the right direction. She hadn't expected the gun to recoil, either.
When she pulled the trigger again, the gun merely clicked.
Holding the gun in front of her, she tried desperately to shoot Samuel Gregory again. Surely she hadn't run out of bullets already?
But the chamber clicked emptily again and again. She'd emptied the entire chamber into Samuel's body, and he was still standing in front of her. If bloody, and looking somewhat shaky.
In desperation, she threw the gun itself at him and turned, hoping that she could escape through a window before he could collect his strength enough to come after her.
He caught her hair, then her arm, before she'd gone more than a step. She turned and hit at him, fighting to free herself. She felt blood across her fingers, and she would have vomited if she had had time for it. Instead, she pushed and hit and kicked at him as hard as she could.
He was still stronger. With six bullets in him, he was still stronger than she was. She couldn't get away.
She managed to knock him off balance, though, and they both went to the floor. She hit her elbow on her oak dresser as they fell, and she cried out involuntarily in pain. His head hit the corner of the dresser a moment later, and he hissed in a response that seemed as involuntary as her cry. She could see the flash of those white, curved teeth.
Then his hand was in her hair again, yanking her head backward with much less care than he'd shown before, and his teeth struck her throat fast and hard. It hurt. She screamed again and then lay still, paralyzed with pain and something that held her immobile in spite of her desperate desire to struggle away.
There was blood in her mouth again. She could taste it. His hair, falling into her face as he bent over her, was covered with blood. She couldn't turn her head away to avoid it.
But worse than the blood, worse than anything, was the feel of his angry mind as he ransacked her memories. Through the exchange of blood, through the soulmate connection, his presence surrounded and overwhelmed her. There was nothing in her world that was not him. She wanted to hate him, but there was hardly anything left of her that was separate enough to feel hatred. It was as if nearly her entire self had been drawn into him, his rage and his hunger and pain, and the tiny part that was still recognizably Anne was a candle's weak flicker next to his bonfire.
Amaranth said that having a soulmate meant finding a person who'd share his soul with you, Anne thought through her daze. Not that it meant losing your soul to another person.
Some part of her resisted, though. She hadn't felt this the last time he'd bitten her, didn't know where the newborn flicker of strength was coming from. But with a last desperate burst of will, she used it to hang onto consciousness and life.
Then, when she'd almost given up, the pain ended. The soulmate connection faded and shrank away. She blinked and realized, groggily, that Samuel Gregory's face was hovering above her own. He was looking down at her own blood-smeared face, and a precious few inches of distance separated them.
Panting, she stared up at him.
The blood was still matting his hair and running down his face. Wood, Anne realized dizzily. The dresser was made of oak. Samuel Gregory was a vampire, and he could be hurt by wood.
He didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere else, though. His clothes had small bloodstains and holes where the bullets had penetrated, but the stains weren't getting any bigger.
She'd failed, Anne realized. In spite of everything, she'd failed in her attempt to defend her mother and herself.
He didn't seem interested in attacking her again, though. His eyes roved over her face, half-distant again, as if he were making a set of private calculations.
"So you've formally joined Circle Daybreak."
Anne didn't know what to say, so she stayed silent.
The moment stretched.
Finally he smiled, just a quick twist of the lips. "Have you ever thought what it would be like to die?" Moving in a leisurely fashion, he reached for her jaw, clearly intending to expose her throat again.
No, Anne thought. Using that unexpected bit of resilience that had sustained her before, she snapped at his approaching hand. She missed the hand itself but caught the inside of his wrist, and she dug her teeth into his flesh with all the ferocity that she could manage. Some new part of her, to her own surprise, sang with glee.
He hissed but didn't try to pull away. Perhaps he'd been caught by the same paralysis that she'd felt before.
The blood gushed from his wrist, and she decided she must have breached an artery, or a vein. Well, good.
He was struggling now, but weakly. Perhaps the shock of being shot six times had finally caught up with him; perhaps the blow to his head had been worse than she'd thought at first. She didn't care; she was simply grateful to be winning their fight, for once.
The blood flowed into her mouth, and she swallowed so as not to choke. He kept trying to pull his arm away from her, but every flex of his muscles seemed merely to prevent the wound from closing. Instead of succeeding in getting away, he merely bled more. A fierce triumph swelled through her.
She would have been glad to tear at his wrist until he died of blood loss, but with what seemed a supreme effort, he finally managed to pull away from her. Climbing to his feet, he backed away toward the door.
She licked her lips and tensed, calculating whether she could spring for him and bring him down again. Her own previous dizziness and weakness seemed to have disappeared. She felt strong, vibrant.
"Don't try," he warned her.
Ignoring him, Anne sat up slowly.
"I'll be back later," he promised her. Then he moved backward so quickly that she couldn't quite follow the motion. Her bedroom door slammed between them even as she sprang forward.
It took her only a second to grab the knob and yank the door open again. But by that time, the house was empty.
Daybreaker. She was a Daybreaker. A formally inducted member of Circle Daybreak.
Well, that changed everything, didn't it?
Meanwhile, Farro was having an interesting time.
In accordance with his instructions from the Night World council, he'd agreed to meet with the witch who'd originally alerted the council to the presence of Hunter Farmer's daughter. Ivy Greer, high school student and Circle Midnight member, was currently looking meaningfully at him across their small bar table in the tiny Black Iris club.
"I assure you that the Night World council is doing everything appropriate to take care of the problem," he told her.
"But it isn't being taken care of," Ivy Greer pointed out. "Or, at least, it hasn't been taken care of yet. Samuel Gregory won't do anything. He says he'll take care of things, but he could have killed her long before this."
"He's following the council's orders, which may involve more than you know about. It's not for non-members of the council to question its orders."
"I'm not questioning its orders," Ivy protested. "I'm just saying that Samuel Gregory isn't a good hit man. He's had plenty of chances to take her out, and he hasn't."
Briefly, Farro wondered if he should take offense at the slang-like "hit man." They were assassins. But he decided against it. The Night World council had sent him here to assure this witch that it was still in control of the situation. He wasn't her English teacher, and it wasn't his job to teach her the proper use of her own language.
"Samuel follows the Night World council's orders," he repeated. "Which may involve many more tasks than merely killing Anne Jamison. Although the council wishes to thank you for bringing this situation to its attention, it believes it is fully capable of carrying matters forward without your further assistance."
Farro knew he wasn't terribly good with diplomatic language, so he was rather pleased at how he'd managed to say "shut up and get lost."
Ivy didn't seem to be getting the point, though. Rather than nodding, thanking him for the drink he'd bought her, and retreating shamefacedly, she glared at him.
"The only thing that anyone's managed to do so far about 'this situation' is to shoot Anne Jamison's mother. And I did that. Not Samuel Gregory. If he told you he did, he's lying."
Farro blinked. Samuel had mentioned the incident, but he'd said he hadn't been responsible.
"Why did you shoot Ms. Jamison?"
"Someone had to do something!"
"Such as shooting the target's mother? Why not just shoot the target?"
"She's always been with Amaranth or Mary," Ivy muttered. "And they're Nightworlders. I couldn't shoot them."
In the centuries since he'd become a vampire, Farro had learned to think of humans as vermin, but he was always slightly jolted when hearing Nightworlders casually refer to killing humans. It wasn't as if they were mindless animals, after all. He'd learned not to wince when Nightworlders used humans for food, or for spells—he'd used them for food countless times himself—but he still disliked the idea that Nightworlders could legitimately kill humans in any way they pleased.
He was an assassin, after all. Killing was his business. It wasn't the business of random members of Circle Midnight. They weren't professionals.
"Still, why shoot the target's mother? It could only have the effect of alarming the target and causing her to be more on her guard. The only thing you've done is make Samuel's job more difficult."
"So what? He's supposed to be a great assassin, isn't he? And she's just a vermin. Any Nightworlder ought to be able to take care of her."
Farro collected his fraying patience. "The council sent Samuel to take care of the situation. That meant that you were supposed to stay out of it while he carried out the council's orders. Instead, you shot a person close to the target and alerted the target to her danger. This is after you set a bomb in your school, which was an incredibly stupid and wasteful way of taking out a single person. It also was highly visible and attracted the attention of the news media across the entire country. The Night World is supposed to be a secret, don't you know? You couldn't have been more conspicuous if you were a member of Circle Daybreak."
Hearing his own words, he frowned inwards. Ivy had contacted the Night World council about her discovery of Anne's existence, as had been proper. No one had said she'd violated any Night World rules. And yet, when he thought about it, Ivy seemed to be scattering clues about the Night World's presence right and left. Bombs, shootings—even the most dimwitted humans must be aware that something unusual was going on. The humans' police would be thinking that someone was attempting murder, and they'd be looking hard for their suspect.
The Night World was good at suppressing clues about its existence that came to light. But if it had believed it could suppress them all, there wouldn't have been any need for the rule of secrecy. In Farro's opinion, Ivy was putting entirely too much faith in the council's ability to clean up her security breaches.
"Someone had to do something!" Ivy insisted. "There's nothing wrong with killing vermin. Especially not when it's to protect ourselves. We need to defend ourselves from them. And Anne's a slayer's daughter; who knows what she might have inherited from him? And her mother might know about Hunter Farmer too. Their house could be a hotbed of slayer activity!"
Farro sighed. He supposed it was possible, but he doubted it. Neither Anne nor her mother had shown any signs of being slayers before now.
"You reported to the council that Anne had just discovered she was Hunter Farmer's daughter," he observed. "That doesn't sound as if she'd been a slayer before. Or that her mother was."
"You never know," Ivy said stubbornly. "And it wasn't worth the risk. They're both better dead."
"Maybe, but that's for the Night World council to decide, and for Samuel to carry out." Farro returned to the central point. "Not you."
"What kind of protection is the council giving us?" Now Ivy sounded angry. "We're risking our lives here, living among people who are related to one of the most famous slayers of all time. We ask the council for help, and it sends a hit man who doesn't do anything. There are traitor Daybreakers around here too, but nobody has ever done anything about them either. Then I do something to save us all, and you sit there and give me a lecture about how I should have just sat back and let you guys handle everything!"
Farro looked impassively at her flushed face.
"Ms. Greer. It's not for you to question the Night World council's orders. Just to obey them. You may not like those orders. You may think that they are stupid. But unless you plan to rebel and join the Daybreakers yourself, you have to obey the council. The council is the Night World's government, and good little citizens obey their government."
"Maybe I'm not a good little citizen," Ivy muttered. "Maybe I'm a person who can think for herself."
Vampire hearing could easily pick up a witch's rebellious mutter across a small bar table. "I believe that's what the Daybreakers say. That they just think for themselves."
"I'm not a traitor. It's Samuel Gregory who's the traitor. He's the one who's not doing anything."
"For the last time—"
"Oh, come off it, why don't you?" Ivy flashed. "If the council thinks that Samuel Gregory is doing everything right, then why did they send you here?"
In the ensuing pause, she pushed on triumphantly, "You know he's not carrying out the council's orders. Maybe he's even disobeying them. When he first came here, he wasn't interested in anything I had to tell him about Anne Jamison. He didn't want my help in taking care of her. Maybe that was because he was a Daybreaker himself. Maybe he's been fooling the council all this time, and he's really a spy in their midst. Or something like that."
"I think," Farro said coldly, "that you ought to drop the subject. And never question Samuel's loyalty again."
"Why not? What's he going to do—stand around and stare at me for the rest of my life?" Ivy laughed mirthlessly. "He never does anything. I'm the only one who's done anything around here. The Night World council should make me one of its assassins instead of him."
The roll of Farro's eyes was involuntary, but it had disastrous results.
"You don't take me seriously, do you?" Ivy's anger was becoming poisonous. "You don't think I can do anything because I'm female? Or because I'm a witch and not a vampire?"
"I take you seriously."
"But when I'm the only one who actually does something, you get angry at me and tell me to stop. Shut up, fall into line, let the great Samuel Gregory take care of things, when he obviously isn't taking care of them at all. Are you a Daybreaker, too? Both of you together? I should call the council and tell them what a mess you two are making. How the two of you together can't manage to kill one stupid vermin."
When she paused to draw breath, Farro kept his response mild. "Let me order you another drink."
"I don't need another drink. I need someone to do something. Or to appreciate what I've done, instead of blaming me for it!"
Farro glanced toward the bartender and gestured.
"Do you really think that I'll just shut up and be a good little witch if you buy me another drink?"
"No. But have the drink anyway." Farro kept his tone even.
The bartender approached.
"I've warned you," Ivy said. She stood and grabbed her coat. The bartender stepped out of the way hastily as Ivy pushed her arms into the coat's sleeves without taking her eyes from Farro.
Farro watched her as she stomped across the room to the door. It was doubtless intended to be a grand exit. He'd seen better, though.
"Never mind," he told the bartender, smiling apologetically. The bartender shrugged and retreated.
Farro paid for their drinks, left a large tip, and exited.
He'd known that Ivy hadn't gone far. She stood out to his vampire senses, almost-but-not-quite human. She was waiting outside, probably for the friend or taxi she'd called to pick her up. Seeing him come out the club's doors, she ostentatiously ignored him. Night had fallen while they'd been inside, and Farro felt the welcome chill of the late November air on his face.
"Ivy," he said, walking up to her.
She continued to ignore him.
"Look," he said, touching her bare wrist lightly with his gloved fingers. "I'm sorry for what I said before."
He could see her debate within herself whether to continue ignoring him. The opportunity he'd given her, however, was too tempting.
"I accept your apology," she finally said. She sounded as if she thought she was giving him much more than he deserved. "But I still think—"
Her voice drifted off, and she swayed.
"You think you should come with me," Farro said gently.
"Yes. . . ."
He wrapped his gloved fingers more firmly around her skin, allowing the potion soaked into the leather to seep more thoroughly into her system, and led her away.
He stopped only when they were in the underbrush and away from the glaring streetlights. It was no coincidence, of course, that there was underbrush growing near the club. Vampires usually ensured that there were private places near the black flower clubs. Most vampires preferred to feed in private.
He heard an approaching car and paused to see whether Ivy had called a taxi or a friend. A taxi. Well, that was best. The driver would look around briefly and then assume that his fare had found another ride. A friend might have been more persistent. But Farro thought he could safely ignore the taxi driver.
He stayed quite a long time in the underbrush, long after the taxi driver had driven away in disgust.
When he finally left, he was carrying a black plastic garbage bag. He supported it from underneath, as if it were heavy enough that the plastic might otherwise break. When he reached the car, the bag went into the trunk. Farro drove back to his hotel, where he consulted a map and a phone book. He then returned to the car and drove out of town. When he reached the landfill he'd been looking for, he parked, took the garbage bag from the car's trunk, and placed it in the landfill. He was careful to set it down gently and not merely toss it in, as that might have caused the bag to break. He did not want the bag's contents to be visible when the landfill workers arrived in the morning.
As he drove back to the hotel, he felt mild regret. Killing Nightworlders tended to have more consequences than killing vermin. He might have to explain his actions to the Night World council.
Still. In her own way, she'd violated the rules. And she'd been stupid enough to threaten both Samuel and himself.
Enforcing rules was what the Night World assassins were all about.