Gah! Sorry, sorry! I meant to get this posted before the end of May but that didn't work too well.
Thank you to all the reviewers, y'all are great! And thank you for being patient with me.
I don't own anything about the Night World.
Delos stared at the blond across the room holding up her hands, waiting expectantly. Sighing, he turned the thick book sideways and tossed it Frisbee- style toward her. The sharp flapping of the book's pages was the only noise throughout the room as the occupants watched with mild interest to see if the book would actually meet its mark. David yelped, ducking before the book could hit him upside the head. It came close enough, though, and he felt the thin pages sweep across his black hair. For once Gillian was thankful for her short stature and tried not to giggle at the doubled over boy who scowled.
"Watch it!"
Startled, Hannah closed her eyes and drew her hands up higher to protect her face if she could not catch the airborne volume. But the assault never came; she never felt the book's heavy weight touch her. Opening one gray eye she peeked through her hands.
The book floated there just a few inches away, held aloft by a pale hand. Hannah blinked lowering her hands tracing the hand back up the arm and finally met the sad dark eyes of the owner. The grief so deep in his eyes made her breath hitch. She had been sitting beside him for over two hours, how had she not noticed those eyes?
But then, his eyes closed, Hannah could breathe again, and he smiled slightly, "Here you are, Hannah." Thierry set the book into her still open hands.
The very tips of his fingers brushed against her hand and the feeling of being hit by lightning ruined the careful moment. Hannah grabbed the armrests in a small attempt to calm her shaking. Everything tingled as the horrible sensation continued on its current. But her head hurt the most. One name, so far off and so long forgotten blasted through her mind.
Hana.
"Hannah! Hannah!"
Someone was calling out to her shaking her by the shoulders but she could register who. Blood, wild eyes, someone crying above her, her own life slipping away, and the feeling of forgiveness stormed in her mind's eye. It felt so real but so far off. But just as fast as the pictures had come they left, and Hannah shook her head trying to remember what had just occurred. She reached out for the long forgotten memory but no matter how far she reached, it seemed to slip through her fingers.
"Wake up, Hannah!"
Clear gray eyes focused in on her surroundings once again. Too many faces to count stared down her. And for one frightening moment, Hannah forgot where she was. None of the faces gawking at her were familiar but a pair of dark eyes caught her attention and she sighed in relief.
Regaining her bearings and realizing she had ended up on the floor during…whatever it was that had happened to her, she rose.
"Are you okay, Hannah?" Poppy asked warily watching as the other girl tried to stand.
"I," Hannah winced holding the back of her head, "I think so, except for a killer headache."
"What happened?" Galen asked.
"I don't know. Thierry gave me book and then," she scrunched up her nose, "I don't remember."
"See, those books are just away to torcher us." Morgead huffed.
"I can assure you whatever happened it wasn't caused by the book." Thierry answered,
The circle of humans and Night People that had gathered around spread out returning to their seats seeing that Hannah was alright.
"Do you still want to read?" Thierry asked her uneasily as they sat back down.
"Yeah, my head still hurts, but I think I can manage a chapter." She replied trying to calm him some.
He mumbled a reply but it was too low for her to hear.
"Alright," Cracking open the book she located chapter six, "Here we go."
"Yay, back to us." Quinn muttered sourly and Rashel agreed in the same tone.
What she felt was a shivering jolt that began in her palm and ran up her arm like electricity. It left tingling in its wake. But the real shock was in her head.
Ah, so they are soulmates, Thierry thought. He'd had his suspicions since Galen and Keller had mentioned that two people would be involved in each story but someone from the Night World having a human soulmate was practically unheard of. True, he had his own human soulmate, but… he looked around the room, amazed. The room was mostly composed of humans, how many of the Night People in this room had soulmate who wasn't from the Night World?
No denying it now, Quinn thought. There was the proof written in black and white.
Her mind exploded. That was the only way she could describe it. A noiseless, heatless explosion that shattered her completely. All at once, Rashel couldn't support her own weight anymore.
"What did you do to me?" Rashel asked Quinn, slightly shocked.
That had happened once before, when they first began reading The Chosen, when Quinn had accidently touched her.
The only response she received from him was the slow shaking of his head.
She could feel Quinn's arms supporting her.
"Not one word." Quinn hissed. It was bad enough reading the girls' minds and hearing most of them think 'aw' it would have been another if they said it out loud.
She had no sense of the room around her. She was floating in a white light and the only solid thing to hang on to was Quinn.
"Don't go into the light." Ash said in mock concern earning an eye roll.
It was something like the terror she'd felt before…but it wasn't just terror. Impossibly, what she felt was more like wild elation
She realized Quinn was holding her so tightly that it hurt. But even stronger than the sensation of his arms was the sense she had of his mind. A direct conduit seemed to have opened between them. She could feel his astonishment, his shock, his wonder. And she knew he could feel hers.
The invasion of her mind, invading his own, feeling what he felt, knowing what he could feel, it was all the same. Everything it had been before and it still scared Rashel.
"No," Ash's eyes narrowed. "It couldn't be."
Morgead shook his head, "I don't believe it, that story is just superstition."
"And supposedly so are witches, vampires, shapeshifters, and werewolves but…" Thea motioned her arms around the room to finish her sentence. Clearly haveing come to the same decision as the vampires and just as unsure.
"What are you talking about?" Maggie asked.
"They are speaking of an old story passed down in the Night World." Delos answered a little eager to be the one informing Maggie of something she did not know of this time.
"What about it?" Rashel eying Quinn skeptically, who was making a point of not turning to look at her.
"Why don't you finish reading?" Thierry suggested ignoring the sharp look Rashel sent his way.
It's telepathy, some distant part of herself said, trying desperately to get control again. It's some new vampire trick.
"Trick, she says," Morgead muttered.
But she knew it wasn't a trick. Quinn was as astounded as she was-she could feel that. Maybe he was even worse off. He was breathing rapidly and shallowly and a fine trembling seemed to have taken over his body.
Rashel held on to him, thinking crazy things. She wanted to comfort him. She could sense, probably better the he himself, how frighteningly vulnerable he was under that frozen exterior.
This is crazy! Rashel mentally yelled. H-he's a leech, a parasite, why would I-
Like me, I suppose, Rashel thought giddily.
suppose that's true. Rashel bit her lip, the knot in her heart loosened, only slightly.
And then she suddenly realized that he was feeling her vulnerability just as she had felt his. Fear welled up in her so sharply she panicked.
She tried to find a way to shut him out, to resist the way she resist the way she resisted mind control-but she knew it was useless. He had gotten past her guard already. He was inside.
Rashel's breathing began coming in short painful breaths keeping all her attention on Hannah's reading, heart tightening once again coming back with full force. Quinn had gotten inside. Inside her mind. What would he do now that he had that advantage over her?
"It's all right," Quinn said, and she realized that he had stopped trembling.
Taking one deep breath to get a hold of herself, Rashel released it in what seemed to be relief. So far Quinn had stopped trying to hurt her.
His voice was almost dispassionate, and at the same time madly gentle.
"Is that possible?" Jade asked. Mark answered her with a shrug.
Rashel had the feeling that he'd decided that since he couldn't fight this thing, he might as well be as insane as possible.
"Insanity seems to be your specialty." Rashel quipped dryly. More than happy to return to harmless barter than the scared mess she had been not seconds before.
"I've had many years of practice."
Strangest of all, she found his words reassuring.
"It seems you're not too bad at it yourself." Quinn returned in the same tone she had previously taken.
"You're a bad influence."
And there was the fire under the ice that seemed to incase him. She could feel that now, and she had the dizzy sense that she was the first one to uncover it.
Quinn raised an eyebrow to voice his mild shock. No one, not even the strongest of telepaths, had discovered that part of him. The part that hadn't frozen over long ago refusing all the emotions that would cause Quinn to feel anything…but the cold.
They had fallen to the floor somehow, and they were sitting just at the edge of the light. Quinn was holding her by the shoulders, precisely, and Rashel was astonished at her own response to his clinical grip. It topped her breath, held her absolutely motionless.
The, just as precisely, every movement deliberate, Quinn found the end of her scarf and began to unwind it.
Rashel's eyes narrowed in confusion. Quinn wanted to see her face? To know who she was?
He was still filled with that mad gentleness, that lunatic calm.
Sounds like a good description to me. Rashel thought sardonically.
And she wasn't stopping him. He was going to expose her face, and she wasn't doing a thing about it.
She wanted him to. In spite of her terror, she wanted him to see her face, to know who she was. She wanted to be face to face with him in that strange light that had enveloped both their minds. It didn't seem to matter what happened afterward.
I've lost it. The vampire hunter mentally threw up her arms in exasperation. Whatever is happening has made me go insane.
She said, "John."
She called him by his name. No one had called him by his given name in a long time. Quinn ground his teeth, damned Principle, what was it doing to them?
He unwound another length of the scarf, preoccupied and intent as if her were making some archeological discovery. "You didn't tell me your name." It was a statement. He wasn't pushing her.
She might as well write it out on a death warrant and hand it to him. Quinn could reveal himself to humans-but then Quinn could disappear completely if he wanted, hole up in some hidden vampire enclave where no human could search him out. Rashel couldn't. He knew she was a vampire hunter. If he knew her name and her face, he'd have every power to destroy her.
And the scariest thing of all was that she didn't care.
He was down to the last turn of the scarf. In a moment her face would be exposed to the air…and to vampire eyes that could see in this darkness.
I'm Rashel, Rashel thought. She couldn't quite get the words to her lips. She took a deep breath.
And at the same instant a light blazed into her eyes.
"Well," Quinn smiled insanely at Rashel. "It's good I got your name now, instead of waiting until then."
"So you say," she crossed her arms eying him through half-lidded eyes.
Not the ghostly light that had been in her mind. Real light, the beams from several high-power flashlights, harsh and horribly bright. They cut the through the dark cellar and threw Rashel and Quinn into stark illumination.
"Busted,"Morgead stated indifferently.
Rashel gasped. One hand instinctively flew to her scarf to keep it over her face. She felt like she had been caught naked.
And she was horrified to realize that she hadn't heard anyone come into the cellar. She had been completely absorbed, oblivious to her surroundings. What had happened to all of her training? What was wrong with her?
I wish I knew, Rashel thought.
She couldn't see anything beyond the light. Her first thought was that it was Quinn's vampire friends come to save him. He seemed to think it might be, too; at least he was standing shoulder to shoulder with her, even trying to push her back a little.
"Aw, Quinny cares," Ash teased.
Quinn remained impassive. Hopefully it was just those fools from before. If it were some of his friends, he didn't know if he would be able to protect Rashel from all of them.
With an odd pang, Rashel realized she could only guess what they were thinking. The connection between them had been cleanly severed.
Yeah, Rashel's shoulders slumped. I know how you feel.
Then a voice came from beyond the terrible brightness, a sharp voice filled with outrage. "How did he get loose? And what were you two doing?"
"She's back." Delos ground out, clearly displeased.
Maggie bit her tongue to keep from laughing.
Vicky. I'm going insane, Rashel thought. I completely forgot about her and the others coming back. No, I forgot about their existence.
But there were more than three flashlights on the stairs.
"The Big E sent us some backup," Vicky was saying, and Rashel felt a surge of fear. She counted five flashlights, and in the edges of her vision she caught the figures of a couple sturdy looking guys. Lancers.
Rashel tried desperate to gather her wits.
She knew what had to be done, at least. She nudged him with her shoulder and whispered, "Get out of here. There should be another stairway on the other side of the room. When you run for it, I'll get in their way." She pitched her voice so low that only vampire ears could hear it. The good thing about having her face veiled was that nobody could read her lips.
"Why are you letting me go?" Quinn asked. He wanted-more like needed-to know her reason.
Rashel looked down and answered quietly, "I don't know."
But Quinn wasn't going. He looked as if he'd just been awakened with a bucketful of ice water. Shacked, angry, and still a little dazed. He stood where he was, staring into all the flashlights like an animal at bay.
The lights were advancing. Rashel could make out Vicky's figure now at the front. There was going to be a fight, and people were going to get killed.
Steve's voice said, "What did he do to you?"
"What's she been doing with him, that's the question," Vicky snapped back. The she said clearly, "Remember, everybody, we want him alive."
Rashel gave Quinn a harder shove. "Go." When he just glared, she hissed, "Don't you realize what they want to do to you?"
Quinn turned so that the advancing party couldn't see his face, He snarled, "They aren't exactly overjoyed with you either."
"I can take care of myself." Rashel was shaking with frustration. "Just leave. Go!"
Quinn looked as angry with her as he was with the hunters. He didn't want her help, she realized. He wasn't used to taking anything from anyone, and to be forced to do it made him furious.
More than you know. Quinn growled.
But there wasn't any other choice. And Quinn finally seemed to recognize that. With one last glare at her, he broke and headed for the darkness at the other side of the cellar.
The flashlights swung in confusion. Rashel, glad to be able to move, sprang between the vampire hunters and the stairway.
And then there was a lot of fumbling and crashing, with people running into each other and swearing and yelling. Rashel enjoyed the chance to work off her frustration. She got in everyone's way long enough for a very fast vampire to disappear.
"Strangely, I want to see that." Rowan said.
"I would," Delos grunted.
Many agreeing noises answered these statements.
After which it was just her and the vampire hunters. Five flashlights turned on her and seven amazed and angry people staring.
Rashel got up and brushed herself off. Time to face the consequences. She stood, head high, looking at all of them.
"What happened?" Steve said. "Did he hypnotize you?"
"I thought you could resist telepathy?" Mark said.
"I can," Rashel furrowed her brow in concentration. "I think he's trying to give me an excuse." And it was seriously weird talking about herself like she was someone else.
Good old Steve. Rashel felt a rush of warmth toward him. But she couldn't use the one he was offering her. She said, "I don't know what happened."
And that was true. She couldn't even begin to explain herself what had gone on between her and the vampire. She'd never heard of anything like it.
"I think you let him get away on purpose," Vicky said. Rashel couldn't see Vicky's pale blue eyes, but she sensed that they were as hard as marbles. "I think you planned it from the beginning-that's why you told us to go up the street."
Delos muttered under his breath and Maggie was trying to understand why he seemed to dislike Vicky so much. True, sometimes the girl's statements toward Rashel got on Maggie's nerves she didn't hate her like Delos seemed to.
"Is that true?" One of the flashlights swung down and suddenly Nyala was in front of Rashel, her body tense, her voice almost pleading. Her eyes were fixed on Rashel's, begging to say it wasn't so. "Did you do it on purpose?"
All at once Rashel felt very tired. Nyala was fragile and unstable, and in her own mind she'd made Rashel into a hero. Now that image was being shattered.
For Nyala's sake, Rashel almost wished she could lie. But that would be worse in the end. She said expressionlessly, "Yes. I did it on purpose."
Nyala recoiled as if Rashel had slapped her.
I don't blame you, Rashel thought. I think it's crazy too.
The truth was that the farther away she got from Quinn's presence, the less she could understand what she'd done. It was beginning to seem like a dream, and not a very clear dream at that.
"But why?" One of the Lancer boys at the back asked. The Lancers knew Rashel, knew her reputation. They didn't want to think the worst of her. Like Nyala, they desperately wanted an excuse.
"I don't know why," Rashel said, looking away. "But he wasn't controlling my mind."
Nyala exploded.
"I hate you," she burst out.
Quinn bared his teeth slightly, "She doesn't even know you."
He didn't look at her but Rashel was still shocked to hear the annoyance in his voice.
She was trembling with fury, spitting sentences at Rashel like poison darts. "That vampire could have been the one who killed my sister. Or he could have known who did it. I was going to ask him that, but now I'll never get the chance. Because of you. You let him go. We had him and you let him go!"
"It's more than that," Vicky put in, her voice cold and contemptuous. "We were going to ask him about those teenage girls getting kidnapped. Now we can't. So it's going to keep happening, and it's all going to be your fault."
Quinn was shaking, grabbing onto the couch to keep from destroying the book. All feelings of confusion-like why he would feel this way- vanished from his thoughts as fury took its place.
And they were right. Even Nyala was right. How did Rashel know that Quinn didn't kill Nyala's sister?
"You're a vampire lover," Vicky was saying. "I could tell from the beginning. I don't know, maybe you're one of those damned Daybrakers
Thea choked, "Did she say Daybreakers?"
Hannah nodded, "Yes, why?"
"Who are they, Thea?" Eric looked down at her.
Thea shook her head, "Circle Daybreak, was once a group of witches who wanted the Night World and humans to get along, but it died out about one hundred years ago."
"Apparently, someone started it back up, and word about it is getting out." Ash noted.
Thierry hummed in response.
"Well, I'm not a Daybreaker and I'm not a vampire lover." Rashel said harshly.
Quinn just glanced at her shrewdly.
who wants us all to get along, but you're not on our side."
A couple of the Lancers started to protest at this, but Nyala's voice cut through them. "She's on their side?" She stared from Vicky to Rashel, her body rigid, "You just wait. Just wait until I tell people that Rashel is the Cat and that she's on the Night World side. You just wait."
Mary-Lynette tilted her head, "Wouldn't that put all of Boston in danger. You said that any human who knows about the Night World is to be put to death; wouldn't that be like killing a whole city?"
Ash glanced at her surprised by the way Mary-Lynette had stated that so calmly yet her life was in just as much danger.
She's hysterical, Rashel realized. Even Vicky was looking surprised at this, as if she were uneasy at what she'd started.
"Nyala, listen-" Rashel began.
But Nyala seemed to have reached some peak of fury at which nothing from outside could touch her. "I'll tell everybody in Boston! You'll see!" She whirled around and plunged toward the stairway as if she were going to start doing it right now.
Rashel stared after her. Then she said to Vicky, "You'd better send a couple of guys to catch up to her. She's not safe alone in this neighborhood.
"I don;t think she's safe just by herself," Jez looked down sadly, "The schock of the Night World has become too much for her, and after this, she's unstable."
Vicky gave her a look that was half angry and half shaken. "Yeah. Okay. Everybody but Steve go after her. You guys take her home."
They left, not without a few backward glanced at Rashel.
"We'll drive you back," Vicky said, her voice wasn't warm but it wasn't as hostile as it had been.
"I'll walk to my own car," Rashel said flatly.
"Fine." Vicky hesitated, then blurted, "She probably won't do what she said. She's just upset."
Rashel said nothing. Nyala had sounded- and looked- as if she meant to do exactly what she said. And if she did…
"It would be bad," Mark guessed.
Well, it would be interesting question as to who would kill Rashel first, the vampires or the vampire hunters.
"That's one way to put it," Quinn commented on Rashel's wry humor.
"But true," Rashel said.
Quinn just hummed with a small smile.
Wednesday morning dawned with gray skies and icy rain. Rashel trudged from class to class at Wassaguscus High, lost in thought. At home, her foster family left her alone- they were used to her going her own way. She sat in her small bedroom in the townhouse with the lights dimmed thinking.
She still couldn't understand what had happened to her, but with every hour the memory of it was fading steadily. It was too strange to fit into the reality of life, and it became more and more like a dream. One of those dreams in which you do things you would never ordinarily do, and are ashamed of when you wake up in the mornings.
All that warmth and closeness- she'd felt that for a vampire? She'd been excited by a parasite's touch? She'd wanted to comfort a leech?
Rashel noticed Quinn's minor wince and felt slightly guilty.
And not just any leech, either. The infamous Quinn. The legendary human hater. How could she have let him go? How many people would suffer because of her lapse in sanity?
Who knows, she decided finally, maybe it had been some kind of mind control. She certainly couldn't make any sense of it otherwise.
By Thursday, one thing at least was clear in her mind. Vicky had been right about the consequences of what she'd done. Rashel hadn't thought about that at the time, but now she had to face it. She had to make it right.
She had to fine the kidnapped girls on her own-if girls were getting kidnapped. There was nothing about missing teenagers in the Globe. But if it was happening, Rashel had to find out about it and stop it…if she could.
Okay. So she'd go back to Mission Hill tonight and start investigating. Check the warehouse area again-this time, her way.
There was one other thing that was clear to her, that became obvious as she got her priorities straight. Something she had to do, not for Nyala, or for Vicky, or for the Lancers, but for herself. For her own honor, and for everybody who lived in the world of sunlight.
Next time she saw Quinn, she had to kill him.
Rashel opened her mouth to speak, "I-" But Quinn wasn't looking and didn't even appear to be listening to her, concentrating with more intensity than needed on the wall across the room, so Rashel clammed up.
Rashel moved along the deserted street, keeping to the shadows, moving silently. Not easy when the ground was wet and strewn with broken glass. There were no sidewalks, no grass, no plant life of any kind except dead weeds in the abandoned lots. Just soggy trash and shattered bottles.
A grim place. It fit Rashel's mood as she made her way stealthily toward the abandoned project building where Vicky had brought them Tuesday night.
From its front door, she surveyed the rest of the street. Lots of warehouses. Several of them were protected with high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. All of them had barred windows-or no windows-and metal freight doors.
The security precautions didn't bother Rashel. She knew how to cut chain-link and pick locks. What bothered her was that she didn't know where to start.
The Night People could be using any of the warehouses. Even knowing where Steve and Vicky had fought Quinn didn't help, because he jumped them. He'd obviously seen them lying in ambush and deliberately gone after them. Which meant his real destination could have been any of the buildings on this street-or none of them.
All right. Patience was indicated here. She'd just have to start at one end…
Rashel lost her thought and leaped back into the shadows before she consciously realized why she was doing it. Her ears had picked up a sound-a low rumbling coming from somewhere across the street.
A growl rummbled low in Keller's throat and she grinned toothily. Rashel only kept poving that she wasn't all human.
She flattened herself against the brick wall behind her, then kept her body absolutely immobile. Her eyes darted from building to building and she held her breath to hear better.
There. It was coming from inside that warehouse, the one down at the far end of the street. And she could identify it now-the sound of an engine.
As she watched, the freight door in the front of the warehouse went sliding up. Headlights pierced the night from behind it. A truck was pulling out onto the street.
Not a very big truck. A U-Haul. It cleared the doors and stopped. A figure was pulling the sliding metal door down. Now it was making its way to the cab of the U-Haul, climbing in.
Rashel strained her eyes, trying to make out any signs of vampirism in the figures movements. She thought she could detect a certain telltale fluidity to the walk, but it was too far away to be sure. And there was nothing else to give her a clue about what was going on.
It could be human, she thought. Some warehouse owner going home after a night of balancing books.
But her instinct told her differently. The hair at the back of her neck was standing on end.
And then, as the truck began to cruise off, something happened that settled her doubts and sent her flying down the street.
The back doors of the U-Haul opened just a bit, and a girl fell out. She was slender, and a streetlight caught her blond hair. She landed on the rubble-strewn road and lay there for an instant as of dazed. The she jumped up, looked around wildly and start running in Rashel's direction.
Quinn slapped his forehead, Idiots!
"Another cliff hanger," Poppy groand.
"Here, Hannah, I'll read," Theirry held out his hand, and carefully-making sure not to touch him, Hannah gave it to him.
I dislike this chapter more than the last one, it just seems choppy, I'll do better next time.
Please review!