not Chinese. And he's Jewish. I mean, just about the only thing we have in common is being Daybreakers. My parents want me to marry some nice Buddhist, Chinese boy and have
little Chinese children and name them after my parents or something like that. Can you imagine how dead I would be if I brought home Nick? One sight of his red hair, and my
parents would lock me up and ship me off to Ottawa or something."
Beth didn't reply. She didn't know what to say. What could she say when she thought that Nick liked her? She was planning on shooting him down, yes, but she didn't want him to
pick of Kotori as his rebound girl or something. That would hurt Kotori's feelings if she ever found out, and… Beth rubbed her head, teasing the roots of her still damp hair. With a
heavy sigh, she decided she had to tell Kotori.
"Shh." Kotori quieted her and returned to her essay. "Someone's coming down the hallway."
Surprised when Nicolas opened the door instead of the principal, he held it open for them and winked. "I had a talk with your principal. He's now completely sure of your innocence
in starting the fight in the cafeteria today."
"Nicolas Rappaport, did you use your telepathy to manipulate our principal?" Kotori demanded, rising from her seat with her hands on her hips.
He laughed. "Maybe."
"Daybreak would be ashamed of you!"
Nick was still smiling, his smirk looking quite becoming on his face. It wasn't prideful or smug, but full of wicked, boyish laughter. "Kotori," he said fondly, "even Daybreak has
learned that sometimes you need to crack a few eggs. Besides, Daybreak will never hear about this, because you two were never in detention."
He shut the door behind them and escorted them out of the school to the car waiting for them in the parking lot. Although it was still early in the afternoon, the sun was already
starting to decline. "What was the fight about, anyway?"
Kotori went red and failed to answer, so Beth took up the stand. She understood her friend's silence and failed to mention Michael's threats. "Some asshole vampire was ragging on
us for being shifters. He said that the people we're trying to catch deserved to run free because they are taking care of the shifters, killing us off one by one like the animals that
we were meant to be."
Their boss stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the two teenagers. His green eyes were wide in shock, but the teens could feel the anger and the hatred rolling off of him from his
core. "Someone actually said that to you?" They both nodded, the halfhuman looking furious that she had once again been made fun off for her heritage, and the birdshifter
looking furious and ashamed that she had not been able to silence her foe in a more permanent manner. Nick seemed to agree with Kotori. "You'll have to tell me more about this
boy in the car. If I ever meet him, I think I might bring him to have a little chat with Alicia. We'll see how much his song changes when she rips off his arms."
Nick dropped Kotori off first. Armed with a milk crate full of files and resources to sort through, she trooped inside her house, praying her mother wouldn't yell at her for being late.
Bethany's house, in contrast, was dark and quiet. It unsettled Beth. Eliza worked nights and afternoons, yes, but she was certain that Eliza started on the graveyard shift the
following week. At the very least some of the lights should have been on.
"Do you think Kotori likes me?"
The vampire's question turned her thoughts away from the dark windows as she turned in her seat to stare at him in surprise. "What?"
"Kotori. I thought that maybe she might have told you if she had a crush on me or something since she's your best friend." His cheeks were pink. It looked silly clashed against his
red hair. "I feel so completely and utterly unprofessional and immature asking you this way, but I've tried figure out a billion different ways of asking and I don't like any of them."
"Well, I… I mean, we're best friends but…" Beth stumbled over words, flustered. She didn't know what to say. She knew the answer, but did she tell Nick yes or lie? Instead she
settled on interrogation. When faced with a question you don't want to answer, she had learned the best counter was another question. "Why do you even want to know? She's not
going to get in trouble from Daybreak or something if she has developed a crush on you, is she?"
Laughing, he unbuckled his seatbelt to face her completely, leaning his head against the foggy car window. "Of course she isn't. It's none of Daybreak's damn business who I like or
who she likes, so long as it doesn't clash or make the team fall apart or anything. And that's what worries me, Beth. I'm afraid that if I come right out and tell her that I like her
that she'll shoot me down."
Beth pursed her lips. "Why would she do that? It's not like you've given her a reason not to like her."
He squirmed uncomfortably. Normally in control or laughing with an ability to find the humorous silver lining which Beth envied, squirming didn't suit him. He avoided her gaze,
staring at the gear shift between them. He didn't look entire sure he hadn't given Kotori a reason not to like him. "What about just the age difference? I was still older than Kotori
when her parents were born."
She held up her hands. "Don't look at me to explain that one to you, Nick. Sure, when you actually think about it, it is a little creepy. But that's what happens when you date a
vampire. Maybe Kotori will be one of the people who can get over the age gap. Then again, maybe she isn't. Maybe she's an old soul. Maybe she's willing to become a vampire to be
with you. Maybe you two won't work out. Maybe she'll date you and then break your heart, or maybe you'll break hers and then I'm going to have to chase you down to the ends of
the earth in recompense. I don't know. Kotori is my best friend, but that doesn't mean I can predict the future."
At first he looked disappointed, but by the end Nicolas had perked up a little. "You're right, Beth. I'm sorry that I put you in this position. I'm over four decades old and I'm still
nervous about talking with girls I like."
"Is that why you always greet me first?" she asked, finally making sense of his attitude.
Nicolas nodded. "Yes. You're my friend, and I feel relaxed around you. I don't have to be nervous." He leaned over in the car and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, rubbing his
knuckles into her hair and tousling it up. "You're like the little sister of the group, Beth. We all have to take care of you and watch out for you because you're the shortest, and the
youngest and…"
Instantly, when he saw the shadows of pain and misery casting over her face, he stopped. Her face was smooth and pale, still tanned warmly, but all the life had flooded out of it.
Her green eyes were dead in her becoming, human face. She had misinterpreted his words, and yet, when he reflected back on what he had said, underneath it all he had spoken
them because of the same conclusion she had reached.
"You all have to look after me because I'm human. Because I'm the only one incapable of properly defending myself."
"No," he sighed, "no, Beth…"
"Yes." She was soft spoken and stern all at the same time. Nick's arm slipped from around her shoulders. He felt uneasy touching her. "Don't lie to me, Nicolas. I have a bit of
speed. I have a lot of strength, more than a girl my size should have. I have better senses, but that's it. I can't change my shape. My body tells me to fight out of instinct, but it
never wants to move the way it wants to. It's never able to move the way the instincts tell it to."
"Look," he sapped impatiently, "you're a valuable member of this team! So what if you can't shapeshift? You're still one the most important members we have! You're learning how
to fight all over again, we're training you how to f
ight in this body. Who cares if you don't have telepathy or if you aren't as fast as Kotori or as strong as Alicia? They aren't
you know what I think that you have more than they do?"
Her eyes were wet with tears. Nicolas wondered if other boys knew how pretty she looked when she cried. Her skin was too dark to go all splotchy, but the tip of her slim nose did
turn the slightest shade of pink, and her eyes darkened to the color of evergreens, glowing deeply with her tears. He swore that if other boys found out and tried to make her cry,
he'd break their legs. "What do you think, Nic?" she asked.
"I think that you're braver than the rest of the team put together."
"You do?"
"Yes, I do. Let's see Alicia walk into a gang of vampires and know that she couldn't change her shape. Let's see me take on a fully grown vampire knowing that he weighed more,
was stronger, and faster. Let's see Kotori do that. Let's see Roger take someone on knowing that he'd used up all of his arcane power for the day. None of us ever have, and none
of us might ever, but you face it all the time, and you do it all without batting an eyelash. I think we could be a more effective group if we all learned to be as brave as you are."
He pretended not to notice how her scent changed. She felt guilty about something. He didn't want to ruin the moment by prying. Beth was coming around to her senses and he
didn't want to lose her. "Come on. I bet that you've got homework you want to get done, and I have lots of extracurricular work for you to do." He gestured to the back seat floor.
"Kotori only got one crate. Because it was your idea, you get two of them. I'll grab one and you'll grab the other."
Each armed with a crate of court cases, they marched to the house. Beth struggled at the door for a moment, pulling her keys from her fall coat pocket to open the door while
juggling the milk crate and her backpack. The door sung open and she lumbered inside, heading straight for the kitchen. There were no lights on, casting everything in shades of
grey and pastels.
"Mom! Are you home?"
"Beth?"
She turned to see Nick standing at the base of the stairs, the crate still in his hands. His eyes reflected silver in the quickly fading light and his eyeteeth had extent, brushing his
bottom lip. When he was a vampire was the only time that Nick didn't remind Beth of a child trapped in a young man's body. When the façade slipped to reveal the vampire
underneath, she was reminded that Nick had the same animal instincts she did.
"I smell blood."
Her hands began shaking with worry. Beth set down the crate where she stood, rushing to the bottom of the stairs. Nick was right. There was blood. It was faint, but it was there.
Trust the vampire to have sensed blood. They were better than a shark sometimes. "Mom!?"
The attack happened so fast that Beth had trouble registering what had happened. There was a sudden movement from behind Nick. There had been nothing there a moment ago
and then a large man had appeared, clubbing Nick down with several blows to the back of his head. Beth whirled when she heard the strike and was about to leap down the stairs to
defend Nick, but stopped when a hand grabbed her neck and shoved her into the wall. She coughed and struggled to breath from the grip around her throat, struggling harder when
she looked up to an alltoo familiar face.
"I don't believe we've been introduced," the vampire said. "The name is Mackenzie. Your name is Beth." He held up her diary. "I've learned quite a lot about you, Bethany. You can
either come peacefully, or you can fight."
She tried to kick him. The wall pulled away and he threw her down the stairs. She felt each step she hit, the impact bruising her body. Everything was dizzy. Her head hurt. She had
landed on top of something soft and warm at the bottom of the stairs. She could smell blood, and it was familiar. She could smell Nick's blood. Just how hard had they been striking
him? Everything was fading to black, but the hearing was the last to go.
"Stupid Daybreakers," Mac sneered. "They always put up a fight at the wrong time. We have the girl. Let's go, Etienne."
"What about the witch and the vampire? The vampire's pretty useless, but can't we at least take the witch? Zhi Niao hasn't been eating as much as I'd like. Me bringing her back a
kill I'd be forcing her to eat."
"I don't think so, Etienne. We only came for the girl. Let's get her in the car."
Bethany felt arms wrapped around her, and then there was nothing.
When she woke up, it was still dark. She could see nothing, which caused her to think that she was underground or something. Her eyes were like a cat's: wherever there was light
Beth could see. Her eyes retracted the light so that it magnified, but there was no light. She sniffed. It smelled damp. Her skin was still cold. She wasn't wearing her jacket and
scarf anymore. Her body was sore. She could feel that her bruises hadn't mended yet. Beth was just glad that her bones hadn't been broken.
She was gagged. It made it a little hard to swallow. Her lips were dry and cracked. She struggled, feeling the extent of her bondage. She was tied to a chair, her legs tied to the
chair legs and her arms tied behind the back. She struggled against them. If they thought that she was human, then maybe they had been lax with the knots and she could strain
the ropes to breaking point.
She stopped immediately when she heard something metal clank in the darkness. Twisting her shoulders to bring her wrists together, she cursed vibrantly in her mind. They weren't
ropes. Ropes bound her torso to the chair and her arms to her torso, but they had included handcuffs. Even if she could untangle herself from the chair, she was still bound by the
handcuffs, and she knew immediately what they had been coated with. Silver.
Like werewolves of legend, silver would hurt or kill shapeshifters. A silver bullet to the chest would kill Beth, and a silver bullet to a limb would eventually heal, but it would be
incredibly painful while doing so. It was poisonous to shifters, the same way that wood was poisonous to vampires. Beth was human enough to sustain prolonged contact with silver —maybe a three or four hours at most—but then it would start to itch and burn. If they intended to leave her in the basement for a day or too, eventually it would start to blister.
The contact wouldn't kill her, but it would be torture.
She began to struggle out of the chair again. Maybe she could still escape if she wasn't tied down. She just wanted the handcuffs off. She let out a muffled scream when her
struggling tipped the chair over. There was a loud crack. Beth wondered if maybe her arm was broken from the chair landing on it. Maybe she was in shock…
"I think you should go check on her, Mac," said a feminine voice. The ceiling above Beth creaked as people walked around.
"Yeah, I'm going."
The floorboards creaked again. The sound was drawing closer. Bethany poured everything she had into a last, final ditch effort to free herself from her bonds. Her shoulder trapped
under the chair was screaming in agony, and her pain proved fruitless. A door opened above her, blinding sensitive eyes temporarily, and then closed. The footsteps walked down
the stairs. Her nose wiggled erratically as she tried to fight through the smell of the dampness to get their scent and determine who it was. She already knew though.
Mackenzie, her brother. He turned on a light behind her, and the light revealed that she was indeed in a basement. There were boxes stacked around her. She was amused to see
that some of them were marked 'Christmas decorations', but at the same time it was disturbing. Was this really his house, or had he simply taken it over from some nice, sweet
human family?
Strong hands gripped the chair and set her back up. They gently probed her should
er, making her grumble, and then his voice said, "It doesn't seem to be broken, just deeply
bruised. You're going to have one hell of a mark there tomorrow morning."
His fingers lifted the hem of her sleeve to see if there was a bruise forming there already. Beth was terrified. She had thought she hadn't had a problem with vampires, but this was
proving her very wrong. She didn't know if he was going to bite her, or even just toy with her and make her think he was. Nick's words ran through her mind and she held her chin
higher, wanting to be brave for him even when he wasn't around. She was brave. She had her mother's brave genes coursing through the fiber of her being, the blood of people who
continued to be brave despite adversity!
"I'm going to take your gag off right now so we can talk. If you want to scream, I'm going to have to put it back on, okay?" She nodded hurriedly, desperate to get the foultasting
gag out of her mouth. His hands gently lifted her hair away to undo the knot. As it slipped free, he walked around and squatted in front of her.
The light cast half of his face into shadows, but it gave Beth a chance to study him earnestly. He was a nice looking boy. His skin was the same shade of hers, his face shape
square while hers was more heartshaped. He was young, too. She knew that he was young, only a few years older than she was, but she hadn't expected him to look
Beth looked at Nick, she could see under his skin to the wise and learned part underneath him. Mackenzie lacked that part because he was still fresh. He didn't seem as coldhearted
as she thought a killer should be.
"We're going to kill you," he said simply. Beth stiffened. "Nothing you can say or do can save you from that fate. We thought, however, the group of us, that the people we kill at
least have a right to know what it is they're dying for. I can't tell you how many times I sat here like this breaking the rules of the Night World and telling them all about our past.
Some of them would then start to scream about how it wasn't true, and we'd have to prove it to them. We don't have to do that with you. You know about the Night World. You
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