by L. J. Smith
How many lives together have we missed? How many times have I had to say, Maybe in the next life? How did we ever manage to come apart?
It was as if her question went searching through both their minds, soaring and diving, looking for an answer on its own. And Thierry didn’t put up any resistance. She knew that he couldn’t; he was as caught up as she was in what was happening between them, as overwhelmed.
There was nothing to stop her from finding the answer.
This revelation didn’t come all in one blinding illumination. Instead it came in small flashes, each almost too brief to understand.
Flash. Thierry’s face above her. Not the gentle face she had seen by the porch. A savage face with an animal light in the eyes. A snarling mouth . . . and teeth red with blood.
No . . .
Flash. Pain. Teeth that tore her throat. The feel of her blood spilling warm over her neck. Darkness coming.
Oh, God, no . . .
Flash. A different face. A woman with black hair and eyes full of concern. “Don’t you know? He’s evil. How many times does he have to kill you before you realize that?”
No, no, no, no . . .
But saying no didn’t change anything.
It was the truth. She was seeing her own memories—seeing things that had really happened. She knew that.
He’d killed her.
Hannah, no—
It was a cry of anguish. Hannah wrenched herself away. She could see the shock in Thierry’s eyes, she could feel him shaking.
“You really did it,” she whispered.
“Hannah—”
“That’s why you woke me up from the hypnosis! You didn’t want me to remember! You knew I’d find out the truth!” Hannah was beside herself with grief and anger. If she hadn’t trusted him, if everything hadn’t been so perfect, she wouldn’t have felt so betrayed. As it was, it was the greatest betrayal of her life—of all her lives.
It had all been a lie—everything she’d just been feeling. The togetherness, the love, the joy . . . all false.
“Hannah, that wasn’t the reason. . . .”
“You’re evil! You’re a killer!” She told me, Hannah thought. The woman with black hair; she told me the truth. Why didn’t I remember her? Why didn’t I listen this time?
She could remember other things now, other things the woman had said. “He’s unbelievably cunning . . . he’ll try to trick you. He’ll try to use mind control . . .”
Mind control. Influencing her. He’d admitted that.
And what she’d been feeling tonight was some sort of trick. He’d managed to play on her emotions . . . God, he’d even gotten her to offer him her blood. She’d let him bite her, drink from her like some parasite. . . .
“I hate you,” she whispered.
She saw how that hurt him; he flinched and looked away, stricken. Then he gripped her shoulders again, his voice soft. “Hannah, I wanted to explain to you. Please. You don’t understand everything . . .”
“Yes, I do! I do! I remember everything! And I understand what you really are.” Her voice was as quiet as his, but much more intense. She shrugged her shoulders and shifted backward to get away from him. She didn’t want to feel his hands on her.
He looked jolted. Unbelieving. “You remember . . . everything?”
“Everything.” Hannah was proud and cold now. “So you can just go away, because whatever you’ve got planned won’t work. Whatever—tricks—you were going to use . . .” She shook her head. “Just go.”
For just a second, a strange expression crossed Thierry’s face. An expression so tragic and lonely that Hannah’s throat closed.
But she couldn’t let herself soften. She couldn’t give him a chance to trick her again.
“Just stay away from me,” she said. With all the confusion and turmoil inside her, that was the only thing she could keep clear in her mind. “I never want to see you again.”
He had gotten control of himself. He looked shell-shocked but his eyes were steady. “I’ve never wanted to hurt you,” he said quietly. “And all I want to do now is protect you. But if that’s what you want, I’ll go away.”
How could he claim he’d never wanted to hurt her? Didn’t killing her count? “That is what I want. And I don’t need your protection.”
“You have it anyway,” he said.
And then he moved, faster than she could ever hope to move, almost faster than thought. In an instant, he was close to her. His fingers touched her left cheek, light as a moth’s wings. And then he was taking her hand, slipping something on her finger.
“Wear this,” he said, no louder than a breath. “It has spells to protect you. And even without the spells, there aren’t many Night People who’ll harm you if they see it.”
Hannah opened her mouth to say she wasn’t afraid of any Night People except him, but he was still speaking. “Try not to go out alone, especially at night.”
And then he was gone.
Like that. He was off her porch and out somewhere in the darkness, not even a shadow, just gone. If she hadn’t had a fleeting impression of movement toward the prairie, she would have thought he had the ability to become invisible at a moment’s notice.
And her heart was pounding, hurting, filling her throat so she couldn’t breathe.
Why had he touched her cheek? Most people didn’t touch the birthmark; they treated it like a bruise that might still hurt. But his fingers hadn’t avoided it. The caress had been gentle, almost sad, but not frightened.
And why was she still standing here, staring into the darkness as if she expected him to reappear?
Go inside, idiot.
Hannah turned and fumbled with the back door, pulling at the knob as if she’d never opened it before. She shut the door and locked it, and again she found herself as clumsy as if she’d never worked a lock or seen this one in her life.
She was beyond screaming or crying, in a state of shock that was almost dreamlike. The house was too bright. The clock on the kitchen wall was too loud. She had the distracted feeling that it wasn’t either night or daytime.
It was like coming out of a theater and being surprised to find that it’s still light outside. She felt that this couldn’t be the same house she’d left an hour ago. She wasn’t the same person who had left. Everything around her seemed like some carefully staged movie set that was supposed to be real, but wasn’t, and only she could tell the difference.
I feel like a stranger here, she thought, putting one hand to her neck where she could just detect two little puncture marks. Oh, God, how am I ever going to know what’s real again?
But I should be happy; I should be grateful. I probably just saved my own life out there. I was alone with a vicious, evil, murderous monster, and . . .
Somehow the thought died away. She couldn’t be happy and she didn’t want to think about how evil Thierry was. She felt hollow and aching.
It wasn’t until she stumbled into her own bedroom that she remembered to look down at her right hand.
On the fourth finger was a ring. It was made of gold and either white gold or silver. It was shaped like a rose, with the stem twining around the finger and back on itself in an intricate knot. The blossom was inset with tiny stones—black transparent stones. Black diamonds? Hannah wondered.
It was beautiful. The craftsmanship was exquisite. Every delicate leaf and tiny thorn was perfect. But a black flower?
It’s a symbol of the Night World, her mind told her. A symbol of people who’ve been made into vampires.
It was the cool wind voice back again. At least she understood what it was saying this time—the last time, when it had given her advice about silver and wolves, she had been completely confused.
Thierry wanted her to wear the ring; he claimed it would protect her. But knowing him, it was probably another trick. If it had any spells on it, they were probably spells to help him control her mind.
It took nearly an hour to get the ring off. Hannah used soap and
butter and Vaseline, pulling and twisting until her finger was red, aching, and swollen. She used a dental pick from her fossil-collecting kit to try to pry the coils of the stem apart. Nothing worked, until at last the pick slipped and blood welled up from a shallow cut. When the blood touched the ring it seemed to loosen, and Hannah quickly wrenched it off.
Then she stood panting. The struggle with the little band of metal had left her exhausted and unable to focus on anything else. She threw the ring in her bedroom wastebasket and stumbled toward bed.
I’m tired . . . I’m so tired. I’ll think about everything tomorrow, try to sort out my life. But for now . . . please just let me sleep.
She could feel her body vibrating with adrenaline after she lay in bed, and she was afraid that sleep wouldn’t come. But tense as she was, her mind was too foggy to stay awake. She turned over once and let go of consciousness. Hannah Snow fell asleep.
• • •
Hana of the Three Rivers opened her eyes.
Cold and desolate, Hana stood by the rushing river and felt the wind blow through her. So alone.
That was when Arno burst out of the bushes on the riverbank.
There were several hunters with him and they all had spears. They charged after the stranger at full speed. Hana screamed a warning, but she knew he didn’t have a chance.
She could hear a few minutes of chaos far away in the dark. And then she saw the stranger being driven back, surrounded by Arno’s hunters.
“Arno—don’t hurt him! Please!” Hana was speaking desperately, trying to block the men’s way back. “Don’t you see? He could have hurt me and he didn’t. He isn’t a demon! He can’t help being the way he is!”
Arno shouldered her aside. “Don’t think you’re going to get away without being punished, either.”
Hana followed them up to the cave, her stomach churning with fear.
By the time everyone who’d been awakened by Arno’s hunters understood what was happening, the sky outside had turned gray. It was almost dawn.
“You said we should wait and see if the Earth Goddess would tell you something about the demon while you slept,” Arno said to Old Mother. “Has she?”
Old Mother glanced at Hana sorrowfully, then back at Arno. She shook her head. Then she started to speak, but Arno was already talking loudly.
“Then let’s kill him and get it over with. Take him outside.”
“No!” Hana screamed. It didn’t do any good. She was caught and held back in strong hands. The stranger gave her one look as he was driven outside in a circle of spears.
That was when the real horror began.
Because of something that Hana had never imagined, something she was sure even the shamans had never heard of.
The stranger was a creature that wouldn’t die.
Arno was the first to jab with his spear. The whitish-gray flint spearhead went into the stranger’s side, drawing blood. Hana saw it; she had run out of the cave, still trying to find a way to stop this.
She also saw the blood stop flowing as the wound in the boy’s side closed.
There were gasps from all around her. Arno, looking as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, jabbed again. And watched, mouth falling open, as the second wound bled and then closed. He kept trying. Only the wounds where a spear was driven into the wooden shaft stayed open.
One of the women whispered, “He is a demon.”
Everyone was frightened. But nobody moved away from the stranger. He was too dangerous to let go. And there were lots of them, and only one of him.
Hana saw something happening in the faces of her clan. Something new and horrible. Fear of the unknown was changing them, making them cruel. They were turning from basically good people, people who would never torture an animal by prolonging its death, into people who would torture a man.
“He may be a demon, but he still bleeds,” one of the hunters said breathlessly, after a jab. “He feels pain.”
“Get a torch,” somebody else said. “See if he burns!”
And then it was terrible. Hana felt as if she were in the middle of a storm, able to see things but buffeted this way and that, unable to do anything about it. People were running. People were getting torches, stone axes, different kinds of flint knives. The clan had turned into a huge entity feeding off its own violence. It was mindless and unstoppable.
Hana cast a desperate look toward the cave, where Old Mother lay confined to her pallet. There was no help from that direction.
People were screaming, burning the stranger, throwing stones at him. The stranger was falling, bloody, smoke rising from his burns. He was lying on the ground, unable to fight back. But still, he didn’t die. He kept trying to crawl away.
Hana was screaming herself, screaming and crying, beating at the shoulders of a hunter who pulled her back. And it went on and on. Even the young boys were brave enough now to run forward and throw stones at the stranger.
And he still wouldn’t die.
Hana was in a nightmare. Her throat was raw from screaming. Her vision was going gray. She couldn’t stand to watch this anymore; she couldn’t stand the smell of blood and burning flesh or the sound of blows. But there was nowhere to go. There was no way to get out. This was her life. She had to stay here and go insane. . . .
CHAPTER 8
Hannah sat up in bed, gasping.
For several moments she didn’t know where she was. Through a gap in her curtains she could see the gray light of dawn—just like Hana’s gray dawn—and she thought she still might be in the nightmare. But then, slowly, objects in the room became clear. Her bookshelves, crammed with books and crowned with one near-perfect trilobite fossil on a stand. Her dresser, its top piled with things that belonged in other places. Her posters of Velociraptor and T. rex.
I’m me. I remember me.
She had never been so happy to be herself, or to be awake.
But that dream she’d just had—that had happened to her. A long time ago, sure, but nothing like so long ago as, say, when the T. rex had been alive. Not to mention the trilobite. A few thousand years was yesterday to Mother Earth.
And it was all real, she knew that now. She accepted it. She had fallen asleep and her subconscious had pulled back the veil of the past and allowed her to see more of Hana’s story.
Thierry, she thought. The people of Hana’s clan tortured him. God knows for how long—I’m just glad I didn’t have to watch more.
But it puts sort of a different twist on things, doesn’t it?
She still didn’t know how the story ended. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But it was hard to blame him for whatever had happened afterward.
An awful feeling was settling in Hannah’s stomach. All those things I said to him—terrible things, she thought. Why did I say all that? I was so angry—I lost control completely. I hated him and all I cared about was hurting him. I really thought he must be evil, pure evil.
I told him to go away forever.
How could I have done that? He’s my soulmate.
There was a strange emptiness inside her, as if she’d been hollowed out like a tree struck by lightning.
Inside the emptiness, a voice like a cool dark wind whispered, But you told Paul that he kept killing you over and over. Is that justifiable? He’s a vampire, a predator, and that makes him evil by nature. Maybe he can’t help being what he is, but there’s no reason for you to be destroyed again because of it. Are you going to let him kill you in this life, too?
She was torn between pity for him and the deep instinct that he was dangerous. The cool wind voice seemed to be the voice of reason.
Go ahead and feel sorry for him, it said. Just keep him far away from you.
She felt better having come to a decision, even if it was a decision that left her heart numb. She glanced around the room, focused on the clock by her bedside, and blinked.
Oh, my God—school.
It was quarter to seven and it was a Friday. Sacajawea High seemed light-years
away, like someplace she’d visited in a past life.
But it’s not. It’s your life now, the only one that counts. You have to forget all that other stuff about reincarnation and vampires and the Night World. You have to forget about him.
You sent him away and he’s gone. So let’s get on with living in the normal world.
Just thinking this way made her feel braced and icy, as if she’d had a cold shower. She took a real shower, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, and she had breakfast with her mother, who cast her several thoughtful glances but didn’t ask any questions until they were almost finished.
Then she said, “Did everything go all right at Dr. Winfield’s yesterday evening?”
Had it only been yesterday evening? It seemed like a week ago. Hannah chewed a bite of cornflakes and finally said, “Uh, why?”
“Because he called while you were in the shower. He seemed . . .” Her mother stopped and searched for a word. “Anxious. Worse than worried but not as bad as hysterical.”
Hannah looked at her mother’s face, which was narrow, intelligent, and tanned by the Montana sun. Her eyes were more blue than Hannah’s gray, but they were direct and discerning.
She wanted to tell her mother the whole story—but when she had time to do it, and after she’d had time to think it out. There was no urgency. It was all behind her now, and it wasn’t as if she needed advice.
“Paul’s anxious a lot,” she said judiciously, sticking to the clean edge of truth. “I think that’s why he became a psychologist. He tried a sort of hypnosis thing on me yesterday and it didn’t exactly work out.”
“Hypnosis?” Her mother’s eyebrows lifted. “Hannah, I don’t know if you should be getting into that—”
“Don’t worry; I’m not. It’s over. We’re not going to try it again.”
“I see. Well, he said for you to call him to set up another appointment. I think he wants to see you soon.” She reached over suddenly and took Hannah’s hand. “Honey, are you feeling any better ? Are you still having bad dreams?”
Hannah looked away. “Actually—I sort of had one last night. But I think I understand them better now. They don’t scare me as much.” She squeezed her mother’s hand. “Don’t worry, I’m going to be fine.”