Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (39 page)

But now Quinn was taking his arm away, pushing her along the road. “Come on! We've got to get to the wharf before they do.”

In a flash, Rashel understood. She got a new grip on Timmy and turned to run toward the hiking path. Her knees were shaking, but she found she could make them move.

They lurched down the path in the wild grass, Quinn supporting Nyala, she carrying Timmy. Rashel didn't know how many vampires had made it out of the burning house—she hadn't seen any—but she knew that any who did would head for the dock.

Where she and Anne-lise had disabled the boats.

But as the wharf came into view, Rashel saw something that hadn't been there when she left it. There was a yacht in the harbor, swinging at anchor.

“It's Hunter's,” Quinn said. “Hurry!”

They were flying down the hill, staggering onto the wharf. Rashel saw no sign of the werewolf she'd tied up earlier, but she saw something else new. An inflatable red dinghy was tied to the pier.

“Quick! You get in first.”

Rashel put Timmy down and got in. Quinn lifted Timmy into her arms, then put Nyala in. Nyala was staring around her now, laughing in spurts, then stopping to breathe hard. Rashel put her free arm around her as Quinn climbed in the dinghy.

Every second, Rashel was expecting to see Hunter Redfern appear, blackened and smoldering, with his arms outstretched like some vengeful demon.

And then the tiny motor was purring and they were moving away from the wharf. They were leaving it behind. They were on the ocean, the cool dark ocean, freeing themselves from land and danger.

Rashel watched as the yacht got bigger and bigger. They were close to it now. They were there.

“Come on. We can climb up the swimming ladder. Come on,
fast,
” Quinn said. He was reaching for her, his face unfamiliar in a mask of soot, his eyes intense. Absolutely focused, absolutely determined.

Thank God he knows what to do on a boat. I wouldn't. She let Quinn help her up the ladder, then helped Timmy and Nyala. Nyala had stopped laughing entirely now. She was simply gasping, looking bewildered.

“What happened? What—?” She stared toward the cliffs where orange flame was shooting into the sky. “I did that. Did I do that?”

Quinn had pulled up the anchor. He was heading for the cockpit. Timmy was crying.

Kneeling on the deck, Rashel held Nyala. Nyala's eyelashes were burned to crisp curls. There was white ash on the ends. Her mouth was trembling and her body shook as if she were having convulsions.

“I had to do it,” she got out in a thick voice. “You know I had to, Rashel.”

Timmy sobbed on. A motor roared to life. All at once they were moving swiftly and the island with its burning torch was falling behind.

“I had to,” Nyala said in a choked voice. “I had to. I had to.”

Rashel leaned to rest her head on Nyala's hair. Wind was whipping around her as they raced away. She held the tiny vampire in one arm and the trembling human girl in the other. And she watched the fire get smaller and smaller until it looked like a star on the ocean.

Hunter's yacht was bigger than the powerboat Quinn had brought to the island. There was a salon down in the cabin and two separate staterooms. Right now, Timmy was in one of them. Nyala was in another. Quinn had put them both to sleep.

Quinn and Rashel were in the cockpit.

“Do you think any of the vampires got out?” Rashel said softly.

“I don't know. Probably.” His voice was as quiet as hers.

He was filthy, covered with sand and soot, burned here and there, and wildly disheveled. He had never looked more beautiful to Rashel.

“You saved Nyala,” she whispered. “And I know you did it for me.”

He looked at her and some of the tense focus went out of his eyes. The hardness in his face softened.

Rashel took his hand.

She didn't know how to say the rest of what she meant. That she knew he had changed, that he was changing every minute. She could almost
feel
the new parts of his mind opening and growing—or rather, the old parts, the parts he'd deliberately left behind when he stopped being human.

“Thank you, John Quinn,” she whispered.

He laughed. It wasn't a savage laugh, or a bitter laugh, or even the charming Mad Hatter laugh. It was just a real laugh. Tired and shaky, but happy.

“What else could I do?”

Then he reached for her and they were holding each other. They might look like two refugees from a disaster movie, but all Rashel felt was the singing joy of their closeness. It was such comfort to be able to hold on to Quinn, and such wonder to feel him holding her back.

A feeling of peace stole over her.

There were still problems ahead. She knew that. Her mind was already clicking through them, forming a dim checklist of things to worry about when she regained the ability to worry.

Hunter and the other vampires. They might still be alive. They might come looking for revenge. But even if they did… Rashel had spent her whole life fighting the Night World alone. Now she had Quinn beside her, and together they could take on anything.

Daphne and the girls. Rashel felt sure they were safe; she
trusted Anne-lise and Keiko. But once they got home, they'd be traumatized. They would need help. And someone would need to figure out what they should tell the rest of the world.

Not that anyone would believe it was real vampires who had kidnapped them if they said so, Rashel thought. The police would pass it off as a cult or something. Still, the girls know the truth. They may be fresh recruits for the fight….

Against what? How could she be a vampire hunter now? How could she try to destroy the Night World?

Where could a reformed vampire and a burned-out vampire hunter go when they fell in love?

The answer, of course, was obvious. Rashel knew even as she formed the question, and she laughed silently into Quinn's shoulder.

Circle Daybreak. They'd become damned Daybreakers.

Granted, they weren't the type to dance in circles with flowers in their hair, singing about love and harmony and all that. But if Circle Daybreak was going to make any headway, it needed something besides love and harmony.

It needed a fighting arm. Somebody to deal with the vampires who were hopelessly evil and bent on destruction. Somebody to save people like Nyala's sister. Somebody to protect kids like Timmy.

Come to think of it, Circle Daybreak was where Nyala and Timmy belonged, too. Right now they need peace and healing, and people who would understand what they'd
been through. I don't know, Rashel thought, maybe witches can help.

She hoped so. She thought Nyala would be all right—there was a kind of inner strength to the girl that kept her fighting. She wasn't so sure about Timmy. Trapped in a four-year-old body, his mind twisted by whatever lies Hunter had told him… what kind of normal life could he ever have?

But he was alive, and there was a chance. And maybe there were parts of his mind that were bright and warm and aching to grow.

Elliot and Vicky and the other vampire hunters. Rashel would have to talk to them, try to explain what she'd learned. She didn't know if they'd listen. But she would have to try.

“All anybody can do is try,” she said softly.

Quinn stirred. He leaned back to look into her face. “You're right,” he said, and she realized that he'd been thinking about the same things.

Our minds work alike, she thought. She had found her partner, her equal, the one to work and live and love with her. Her soulmate.

“I love you, John Quinn,” she said.

And then they were kissing each other and she was finding in him a tenderness that even she hadn't suspected. But it made sense. After all, the opposite of absolute ruthlessness is absolute tenderness—and when you ripped the one away, you were left with the other.

I wonder what else I'll find out about him? she thought, dizzy with discovery. Whatever it is, it's sure to be interesting.

“I love you, Rashel Jordan,” he said against her lips.

Not Rashel the Cat. The Cat was dead, and all the old anger and the hate had burned away. It was Rashel Jordan who was starting a new future.

She kissed Quinn again and felt the beauty and the mystery of his thoughts. “Hold me tighter,” she whispered. “I'm a little cold.”

“You are? I feel so warm. It's spring tomorrow, you know.”

And then they both were quiet, lost in each other. The boat sped on through the sparkling ocean and into the promise of the moonlit night.

For Marion Foster Divola

The werewolves broke in while Hannah Snow was in the psychologist's office.

She was there for the obvious reason. “I think I'm going insane,” she said quietly as soon as she sat down.

“And what makes you think that?” The psychologist's voice was neutral, soothing.

Hannah swallowed.

Okay, she thought. Lay it on the line. Skip the paranoid feeling of being followed and the ultra-paranoid feeling that someone was trying to kill her, ignore the dreams that woke her up screaming. Go straight to the
really
weird stuff.

“I write notes,” she said flatly.

“Notes.” The therapist nodded, tapping a pencil against his lips. Then as the silence stretched out: “Uh, and that bothers you?”

“Yes.” She added in a jagged rush, “Everything used to
be so perfect. I mean, I had my whole life under control. I'm a senior at Sacajawea High. I have nice friends; I have good grades. I even have a scholarship from Utah State for next year. And now it's all falling apart… because of me. Because I'm going
crazy.
”

“Because you write notes?” the psychologist said, puzzled. “Um, poison pen letters, compulsive memo taking…?”

“Notes like these.” Hannah leaned forward in her chair and dropped a handful of crumpled scraps of paper on his desk. Then she looked away miserably as he read them.

He seemed like a nice guy—and surprisingly young for a shrink, she thought. His name was Paul Winfield—“Call me Paul,” he'd said—and he had red hair and analytical blue eyes. He looked as if he might have both a sense of humor and a temper.

And he likes me, Hannah thought. She'd seen the flicker of appreciation in his eyes when he'd opened the front door and found her standing silhouetted against the flaming Montana sunset.

And then she'd seen that appreciation change to utter blankness, startled neutrality, when she stepped inside and her face was revealed.

It didn't matter. People usually gave Hannah two looks, one for the long, straight fair hair and the clear gray eyes… and one for the birthmark.

It slanted diagonally beneath her left cheekbone, pale strawberry color, as if someone had dipped a finger in blusher
and then drawn it gently across Hannah's face. It was permanent—the doctors had removed it twice with lasers, and it had come back both times.

Hannah was used to the stares it got her.

Paul cleared his throat suddenly, startling her. She looked back at him.

“‘Dead before seventeen,'” he read out loud, thumbing through the scraps of paper. “‘Remember the Three Rivers—DO NOT throw this note away.' ‘The cycle
can
be broken.' ‘It's almost May—you know what happens then.'” He picked up the last scrap. “And this one just says, ‘He's coming.'”

He smoothed the papers and looked at Hannah. “What do they mean?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

“I didn't write them,” Hannah said through her teeth.

Paul blinked and tapped his pencil faster. “But you said you
did
write them—”

“It's my handwriting. I admit that,” Hannah said. Now that she had gotten started, the words came out in gasping bursts, unstoppable. “And I find them in places where nobody else could put them… in my sock drawer, inside my pillowcase. This morning I woke up and I was holding that last one in my fist. But
I still don't write them.
”

Paul waved his pencil triumphantly. “I see. You don't
remember
writing them.”

“I don't remember because I didn't
do
it. I would never write things like that. They're all nonsense.”

“Well.”
Tap. Tap.
“I guess that depends. ‘It's almost May'—what happens in May?”

“May first is my birthday.”

“That's, what, a week from now? A week and a day. And you'll be…?”

Hannah let out her breath. “Seventeen.”

She saw the psychologist pick up one of the scraps—she didn't need to ask which one.

Dead before seventeen, she thought.

“You're young to be graduating,” Paul said.

“Yeah. My mom taught me at home when I was a kid, and they put me in first grade instead of kindergarten.”

Paul nodded, and she thought she could see him thinking
overachiever.

“Have you ever”—he paused delicately—“had any thoughts about suicide?”

“
No.
Never. I would never do anything like that.”

“Hmm…” Paul frowned, staring at the notes. There was a long silence and Hannah looked around the room.

It was decorated like a psychologist's office, even though it was just part of a house. Out here in central Montana, with miles between ranches, towns were few and far between. So were psychologists—which was why Hannah was here. Paul Winfield was the only one available.

There were diplomas on the walls; books and impersonal knickknacks were in the bookcase. A carved wooden elephant. A semi-dead plant. A silver-framed photograph. There was even an official-looking couch. And am I going to lie on that? Hannah thought. I don't
think
so.

Paper rustled as Paul pushed a note aside. Then he said gently, “Do you feel that someone else is trying to hurt you?”