by L. J. Smith
Dear James,
I’m so sorry, but if I stay to explain this to you, I know you’ll try to stop me. Ash has made me understand the truth—that as long as I stick around I’m putting your life in danger. And I just can’t do that. If something happened to you because of me, I would die. I really would.
I’m going away now. Ash is taking me somewhere far away where you won’t find me. Where they won’t care what I am. I’ll be safe there. You’ll be safe here. And even if we’re not together, we’ll never really be apart.
I love you. I’ll love you forever. But I have to do this.
Please tell Phil goodbye.
Your soulmate, Poppy.
She was dripping tears onto the paper as she signed it.
She put the flyleaf on the pillow and went out to Ash.
“Oh, there, there,” he said. “Don’t cry. You’re doing the right thing.” He put an arm around her shoulders. Poppy was too miserable to shrug it off.
She looked at him. “One thing. Won’t I be putting you in danger if I go with you? I mean, somebody might think you were the one who made me an illegal vampire.”
He looked at her with wide, earnest eyes. They happened to be blue-violet at the moment.
“I’m willing to take that risk,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for you.”
James took the stairs two at a time, sending probing thoughts ahead of him and then refusing to believe what his own senses told him.
She had to be there. She had to be….
He pounded on the door at the same time as he was thrusting the key into the lock. At the same time as he was shouting mentally.
Poppy! Poppy, answer me! Poppy!
And then, even with the door flung open and his own thoughts ricocheting off the emptiness in the apartment, he still didn’t want to believe. He ran around, looking in every room, his heart thudding louder and louder in his chest. Her duffel bag was gone. Her clothes were gone. She was gone.
He ended up leaning against the glass of the living room window. He could see the street below, and there was no sign of Poppy.
No sign of Ash, either.
It was James’s fault. He’d been following his mother’s trail all afternoon, from decorating job to decorating job, trying to catch up with her. Only to find, once he did catch up, that Ash was already in El Camino, and had, in fact, been sent over to James’s apartment hours ago. With a key.
Putting him alone with Poppy.
James had called the apartment immediately. No answer. He’d broken all speed limits getting back here. But he was too late.
Ash, you snake, he thought. If you hurt her, if you put one finger on her…
He found himself roving over the apartment again, looking for clues as to what had happened. Then, in the bedroom, he noticed something pale against the light brown of the pillowcase.
A note. He snatched it up and read it. And got colder and colder with every line. By the time he reached the end, he was made of ice and ready to kill.
There were little round splashes where the felt-tip pen had run. Tears. He was going to break one of Ash’s bones for each one.
He folded the note carefully and put it in his pocket. Then he took a few things from his closet and made a call on his cellular phone as he was walking down the stairs of the apartment building.
“Mom, it’s me,” he said at the beep of an answering machine. “I’m going to be gone for a few days. Something’s come up. If you see Ash, leave me a message. I want to talk with him.”
He didn’t say please. He knew his voice was clipped and sharp. And he didn’t care. He hoped his tone would scare her.
Just at the moment he felt ready to take on his mother and father and all the vampire Elders in the Night World. One stake for all of them.
He wasn’t a child anymore. In the last week he’d been through the crucible. He’d faced death and found love. He was an adult.
And filled with a quiet fury that would destroy everything in its path. Everything necessary to get to Poppy.
He made other phone calls as he guided the Integra swiftly and expertly through the streets of El Camino. He called the Black Iris and made sure that Ash hadn’t turned up there. He called several other black flower clubs, even though he didn’t expect to find anything. Poppy had said Ash was going to take her far away.
But where?
Damn you, Ash, he thought. Where?
Phil was staring at the TV without really seeing it. How could he be interested in talk shows or infomercials when all he could think about was his sister? His sister who was maybe watching the same shows and maybe out biting people?
He heard the car screech to a stop outside and was on his feet before he knew it. Weird how he was absolutely certain of who it was. He must have come to recognize the Integra’s engine.
He opened the door as James reached the porch. “What’s up?”
“Come on.” James was already heading for the car. There was a deadly energy in his movements, a barely controlled power, that Phil had never seen before. White-hot fury, leashed but straining.
“What’s wrong?”
James turned at the driver’s side door. “Poppy’s missing!”
Phil threw a wild glance around. There was nobody on the street, but the door to the house was open. And James was shouting as if he didn’t care who heard.
Then the words sank in. “What do you mean, she’s—” Phil broke off and jerked the door to the house shut. Then he went to the Integra. James already had the passenger door open.
“What do you mean, she’s missing?” Phil said as soon as he was in the car.
James gunned the engine. “My cousin Ash has taken her someplace.”
“Who’s Ash?”
“He’s dead,” James said, and somehow Phillip knew he didn’t mean Ash was one of the walking dead. He meant Ash was going to be dead, completely dead, at some point very soon.
“Well, where’s he taken her?”
“I don’t know,” James said through his teeth. “I have no idea.”
Phil stared a moment, then said, “Okay. Okay.” He didn’t understand what was going on, but he could see one thing. James was too angry and too intent on revenge to think logically. He might seem rational, but it was stupid to drive around at fifty-five miles an hour through a residential zone with no idea of where to go.
It was strange that Phil felt comparatively calm—it seemed as if he’d spent the last week being wacko while James played the cool part. But having someone else be hysterical always made Phil go levelheaded.
“Okay, look,” he said. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Slow down, okay? We might be going in exactly the wrong direction.” At that, James eased up on the gas pedal slightly.
“Okay, now tell me about Ash. Why’s he taking Poppy somewhere? Did he kidnap her?”
“No. He talked her into it. He convinced her that it was dangerous for me if she stuck around here. It was the one thing guaranteed to make her go with him.” One hand on the wheel, James fished in his pocket and handed a folded piece of paper to Phil.
It was a page torn out of a book. Phillip read the note and swallowed. He glanced at James, who was staring straight ahead at the road.
Phil shifted, embarrassed at having intruded on private territory, embarrassed at the sting in his eyes. Your soulmate, Poppy? Well. Well.
“She loves you a lot,” he said finally, awkwardly. “And I’m glad she said goodbye to me.” He folded the note carefully and tucked it under the emergency brake handle. James picked it up and put it in his pocket again.
“Ash used her feelings to get her away. Nobody can push buttons and pull strings like he can.”
“But why would he want to?”
“First because he likes girls. He’s a real Don Juan.” James glanced at Phil caustically. “And now he’s got her alone. And second because he likes to play with things. Like a cat with a mouse. He’ll fool around with her for a while, and then when he gets tire
d of her, he’ll hand her over.”
Phillip went still. “Who to?”
“The Elders. Somebody in charge somewhere who’ll realize she’s a renegade vampire.”
“And then what?”
“And then they kill her.”
Phil grabbed the dashboard. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that a cousin of yours is going to hand Poppy over to be killed?”
“It’s the law. Any good vampire would do the same. My own mother would do it, without a second thought.” His voice was bitter.
“And he’s a vampire. Ash,” Phil said stupidly.
James gave him a look. “All my cousins are vampires,” he said with a short laugh. Then his expression changed, and he took his foot off the gas.
“What’s the—hey, that was a stop sign!” Phil yelped.
James slammed on the brakes and swung into a U-turn in the middle of the street. He ran over somebody’s lawn.
“What is it?” Phil said tightly, still braced against the dashboard.
James was looking almost dreamy. “I’ve just realized where they’ve gone. Where he’d take her. He told her someplace safe, where people wouldn’t care what she was. But vampires would care.”
“So they’re with humans?”
“No. Ash hates humans. He’d want to take her someplace in the Night World, someplace where he’s a big man. And the nearest city that’s controlled by the Night World is Las Vegas.”
Phil felt his jaw drop. Las Vegas? Controlled by the Night World? He had the sudden impulse to laugh. Sure, of course it would be. “And I always thought it was the Mafia,” he said.
“It is,” James said seriously, swerving onto a freeway on-ramp. “Just a different mafia.”
“But, look, wait. Las Vegas is a big city.”
“It’s not, actually. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I know where they are. Because all my cousins aren’t vampires. Some of them are witches.”
Phil’s forehead puckered. “Oh, yeah? And how did you arrange that?”
“I didn’t. My great-grandparents did, about four hundred years ago. They did a blood-tie ceremony with a witch family. The witches aren’t my real cousins; they’re not related. They’re cross-cousins. Adopted family. It probably won’t even occur to them that Poppy might not be legal. And that’s where Ash would go.”
“They’re cross-kin,” Ash told Poppy. They were driving in the Rasmussens’ gold Mercedes, which Ash insisted his aunt Maddy would want him to take. “They won’t be suspicious of you. And witches don’t know the signs of being a new vampire the way vampires do.”
Poppy just stared at the far horizon. It was evening now, and a lowering red sun was setting behind them. All around them was a weird alien landscape: not as brown as Poppy would have expected a desert to be. More gray-green, with clumps of green-gray. The Joshua trees were strangely beautiful, but also the closest thing to a plant made up of tentacles as she’d ever seen.
Most everything growing had spikes.
It was oddly fitting as a place to go into exile. Poppy felt as if she were leaving behind not only her old life, but everything she’d ever found familiar about the earth.
“I’ll take care of you,” Ash said caressingly.
Poppy didn’t even blink.
Phillip first saw Nevada as a line of lights in the darkness ahead. As they got closer to the state line, the lights resolved into signs with blinking, swarming, flashing neon messages. Whiskey Pete’s, they announced. Buffalo Bill’s. The Prima Donna.
Some guy with a reputation for being a Don Juan was taking Poppy in this direction?
“Go faster,” he told James as they left the lights behind and entered a dark and featureless desert. “Come on. This car can do ninety.”
“Here we are. Las Vegas,” Ash said as if making Poppy a present of the whole city. But Poppy didn’t see a city, only a light in the clouds ahead like the rising moon. Then, as the freeway curved, she saw that it wasn’t the moon, it was the reflection of city lights. Las Vegas was a glittering pool in a flat basin between the mountains.
Something stirred in Poppy despite herself. She’d always wanted to see the world. Faraway places. Exotic lands. And this would have been perfect—if only James had been with her.
Up close, though, the city wasn’t quite the gem it looked from a distance. Ash got off the freeway, and Poppy was thrown into a world of color and light and movement—and of tawdry cheapness.
“The Strip,” Ash announced. “You know, where all the casinos are. There’s no place like it.”
“I bet,” Poppy said, staring. On one side of her was a towering black pyramid hotel with a huge sphinx in front. Lasers were flashing out of the sphinx’s eyes. On the other side was a sleazy motor inn with a sign saying “Rooms $18.”
“So this is the Night World,” she said, with a twinge of cynical amusement that made her feel very adult.
“Nah, this is for the tourists,” Ash said. “But it’s good business and you can do some fairly serious partying. I’ll show you the real Night World, though. First, I want to check in with my cousins.”
Poppy considered telling him that she didn’t really care to have him show her the Night World. Something about Ash’s manner was beginning to bother her. He was acting more as if they were out on a date than as if he were escorting her into exile.
But he’s the only person I know here, she realized with a dismayed sinking in her stomach. And it’s not as if I have any money or anything—not even eighteen dollars for that crummy motel.
There was something worse. She’d been hungry for some time now, and now she was starting to feel breathless. But she wasn’t the dazed, unthinking animal she’d been last night. She didn’t want to attack some human on the street.
“This is the place,” Ash said. It was a side street, dark and not crowded like the Strip. He pulled into an alley. “Okay, just let me see if they’re in.”
On either side of them were high buildings with cinder-block walls. Above, tiers of power lines obscured the sky. Ash knocked at a door set in the cinder block—a door with no knob on the outside. There was no sign on the door, either, just some crudely spray-painted graffiti. It was a picture of a black dahlia.
Poppy stared at a Dumpster and tried to control her breathing. In, out. Slow and deep. It’s okay, there’s air. It may not feel like it, but there’s air.
The door opened and Ash beckoned to her.
“This is Poppy,” Ash said, putting an arm around her as Poppy stumbled inside. The place looked like a shop—a shop with herbs and candles and crystals. And lots of other weird things that Poppy didn’t recognize. Witchy-looking supplies.
“And these are my cousins. That’s Blaise, and that’s Thea.” Blaise was a striking girl with masses of dark hair and lots of curves. Thea was slimmer and blond. They both kept going out of focus as Poppy’s vision blurred.
“Hi,” she said, the longest greeting she could manage.
“Ash, what’s wrong with you? She’s sick. What have you been doing to her?” Thea was looking at Poppy with sympathetic brown eyes.
“Huh? Nothing,” Ash said, looking surprised, as if noticing Poppy’s state for the first time. Poppy guessed he wasn’t the type to worry about other people’s discomfort. “She’s hungry, I guess. We’ll have to run out and feed—”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Not around here. Besides, she’s not going to make it,” Thea said. “Come on, Poppy, I’ll be a donor this once.”
She took Poppy by the arm and led her through a bead curtain into another room. Poppy let herself be towed. She couldn’t think anymore—and her whole upper jaw was aching. Even the word feed sharpened her teeth.
I need…I have to…
But she didn’t know how. She had a vision of her own face in the mirror, silvery eyes and savage canines. She didn’t want to be an animal again and jump on Thea and rip her throat. And she couldn’t ask how—that would give her away as a new vampire for sure. She stood, trembling, unable to
move.
CHAPTER 15
“Come on, it’s okay,” Thea said. She seemed to be about Poppy’s age, but she had a gentle, sensible air that gave her authority. “Sit down. Here.” She set Poppy on a shabby couch and extended her wrist. Poppy stared at the wrist for an instant and then remembered.
James, giving her blood from his arm. That was how to do it. Friendly and civilized.
She could see pale blue veins under the skin. And that sight blasted away the last of her hesitation. Instinct took over and she grabbed Thea’s arm. The next thing she knew she was drinking.
Warm salty-sweetness. Life. Relief from pain. It was so good that Poppy could almost cry. No wonder vampires hated humans, she thought dimly. Humans didn’t have to hunt for this marvelous stuff; they were full of it already.
But, another part of her mind pointed out, Thea wasn’t a human. She was a witch. Strange, because her blood tasted exactly the same. Poppy’s every sense confirmed it.
So witches are just humans, but humans with special powers, Poppy thought. Interesting.
It took an effort to control herself, to know when to stop. But she did stop. She let go of Thea’s wrist and sat back, a little embarrassed, licking her lips and teeth. She didn’t want to meet Thea’s brown eyes.
It was only then that she realized she’d been keeping her thoughts shielded during the entire process. There had been no mental connection as there had been when she shared blood with James. So she’d mastered one vampire power already. Faster than James or Ash had expected.
And she felt good now. Energetic enough to do the Netherlands skippy dance. Confident enough to smile at Thea.
“Thank you,” she said.
Thea smiled back, as if she found Poppy odd or quaint, but nice. She didn’t seem suspicious. “It’s okay,” she said, flexing her wrist and grimacing gently.
For the first time Poppy was able to look around her. This room was more like a living room than part of a shop. Besides the couch there was a TV and several chairs. At the far end was a large table with candles and incense burning.