Night World 1

by L. J. Smith

  She was worried they might have already lost the sisters—it was such a dark night. But when she and Mark squeezed through the gap in the rhododendron bushes, she saw a light ahead. A tiny, bobbing white light. The sisters were using a flashlight.

  Keep quiet, move carefully. Mary-Lynnette didn’t dare say it out loud to Mark, but she kept thinking it over and over, like a mantra. Her whole consciousness was fixed on the little shaft of light that was leading them, like a comet’s tail in the darkness.

  The light took them south, into a stand of Douglas fir. It wasn’t long before they were walking into forest.

  Where are they going? Mary-Lynnette thought. She could feel fine tremors in her muscles as she tried to move as quickly as possible without making a sound. They were lucky—the floor of this forest was carpeted with needles from Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine. The needles were fragrant and slightly damp and they muffled footsteps. Mary-Lynnette could hardly hear Mark walking behind her except when he hurt himself.

  They went on for what seemed like forever. It was pitch dark and Mary-Lynnette very quickly lost any sense of where they were. Or how they were going to get back.

  Oh, God, I was crazy to do this—and to bring Mark along, too. We’re out in the middle of the woods with three crazy girls….

  The light had stopped.

  Mary-Lynnette stopped, holding out an arm that Mark immediately ran into. She was staring at the light, trying to make sure it really wasn’t moving away.

  No. It was steady. It was pointed at the ground.

  “Let’s get closer,” Mark whispered, putting his lips against Mary-Lynnette’s ear. She nodded and began to creep toward the light, as slowly and silently as she knew how. Every few steps she paused and stood absolutely still, waiting to see if the light was going to turn her way.

  It didn’t. She got down and crawled the last ten feet to the edge of the clearing where the girls had stopped. Once there, she had a good view of what they were doing.

  Digging. Kestrel had shoveled the pine needles aside and was working on a hole.

  Mary-Lynnette felt Mark crawl up beside her, crushing sword fern and woodfern. She could feel his chest heaving. She knew he saw what she saw.

  I’m so sorry. Oh, Mark, I’m so sorry.

  There was no way to deny it now. Mary-Lynnette knew. She didn’t even need to look in the bag.

  How am I going to find this place again? When I bring the sheriff back, how am I going to remember it? It’s like a maze in one of those computer fantasy games—Mixed Evergreen Forest in every direction, and nothing to distinguish any bit of it from any other bit.

  She chewed her lip. The bed of moist needles she was lying on was soft and springy—actually comfortable. They could wait here for a long time, until the sisters left, and then mark the trees somehow. Take photographs. Tie their socks to branches.

  In the clearing the flashlight beam showed a hand putting down the shovel. Then Rowan and Kestrel lifted the garbage-bagged bundle—Jade must be holding the flashlight, Mary-Lynnette thought—and lowered it into the hole.

  Good. Now cover it up and leave.

  The beam showed Rowan bending to pick up the shovel again. She began quickly covering the hole with dirt. Mary-Lynnette was happy. Over soon, she thought, and let out a soft breath of relief.

  And in that instant everything in the clearing changed.

  The flashlight beam swung wildly. Mary-Lynnette flattened herself, feeling her eyes widen. She could see a silhouette against the light—golden hair haloed around the face. Kestrel. Kestrel was standing, facing Mark and Mary-Lynnette, her body tense and still. Listening. Listening.

  Mary-Lynnette lay absolutely motionless, mouth open, trying to breathe without making a sound. There were things crawling in the soft, springy needle bed under her. Centipedes and millipedes. She didn’t dare move even when she felt something tickle across her back under her shirt.

  Her own ears rang from listening. But the forest was silent…eerily silent. All Mary-Lynnette could hear was her own heart pounding wildly in her chest—although it felt as if it were in her throat, too. It made her head bob with its rhythm.

  She was afraid.

  And it wasn’t just fear. It was something she couldn’t remember experiencing since she was nine or ten. Ghost fear. The fear of something you’re not even sure exists.

  Somehow, watching Kestrel’s silhouette in the dark woods, Mary-Lynnette was afraid of monsters. She had a terrible, terrible feeling.

  Oh, please—I shouldn’t have brought Mark here.

  It was then that she realized that Mark’s breathing was making a noise. Just a faint sound, not a whistling, more like a cat purring. It was the sound he’d made as a kid when his lungs were bad.

  Kestrel stiffened, her head turning, as if to locate a noise.

  Oh, Mark, no. Don’t breathe. Hold your breath—

  Everything happened very fast.

  Kestrel sprang forward. Mary-Lynnette saw her silhouette come running and jumping with unbelievable speed. Too fast—nobody moves that fast…nobody human….

  What are these girls?

  Her vision came in flashes, as if she were under a strobe light. Kestrel jumping. Dark trees all around. A moth caught in the beam.

  Kestrel coming down.

  Protect Mark…

  A deer. Kestrel was coming down on a deer. Mary-Lynnette’s mind was filled with jumbled, careening images. Images that didn’t make sense. She had a wild thought that it wasn’t Kestrel at all, but one of those raptor dinosaurs she’d seen at the movies. Because Kestrel moved like that.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a deer—but Mary-Lynnette could see the white at its throat, as pure as a lace ruffle at the throat of a young girl. She could see its liquid black eyes.

  The deer screamed.

  Disbelief.

  I can’t be seeing this….

  The deer was on the ground, delicate legs thrashing. And Kestrel was tangled with it. Her face buried in the white of its throat. Her arms around it.

  The deer screamed again. Wrenched violently. Seemed to be having convulsions.

  The flashlight beam was all over the place. Then it dropped. At the very edge of the light, Mary-Lynnette could see two other figures join Kestrel. They were all holding the deer. There was one last spasm and it stopped fighting. Everything went still. Mary-Lynnette could see Jade’s hair, so fine that individual strands caught the light against the background of darkness.

  In the silent clearing the three figures cradled the deer. Huddling over it. Shoulders moving rhythmically. Mary-Lynnette couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, but the general scene was familiar. She’d seen it on dozens of nature documentaries. About wild dogs or lionesses or wolves. The pack had hunted and now it was feeding.

  I have always tried…to be a very good observer. And now, I have to believe my own eyes….

  Beside her, Mark’s breath was sobbing.

  Oh, God, let me get him out of here. Please just let us get out.

  It was as if she’d been suddenly released from paralysis. Her lip was bleeding again—she must have bitten down on it while she was watching the deer. Copperbloodfear filled her mouth.

  “Come on,” she gasped almost soundlessly, wiggling backward. Twigs and needles raked her stomach as her T-shirt rode up. She grabbed Mark’s arm. “Come on!”

  Instead, Mark lurched to his feet.

  “Mark!” She wrenched herself to her knees and tried to drag him down.

  He pulled away. He took a step toward the clearing.

  No—

  “Jade!”

  He was heading for the clearing.

  No, Mary-Lynnette thought again, and then she was moving after him. They were caught now, and it really didn’t matter what he did. But she wanted to be with him.

  “Jade!” Mark said and he grabbed the flashlight. He turned it directly on the little huddle at the edge of the clearing. Three faces turned toward him.

  Mary-Lynnette’s mi
nd reeled. It was one thing to guess what the girls were doing; it was another thing to see it. Those three beautiful faces, white in the flashlight beam…with what looked like smeared lipstick on their mouths and chins. Cardinal red, thimbleberry color.

  But it wasn’t lipstick or burst thimbleberries. It was blood, and the deer’s white neck was stained with it.

  Eating the deer; they’re really eating the deer; oh, God, they’re really doing it….

  Some part of her mind—the part that had absorbed horror movies—expected the three girls to hiss and cringe away from the light. To block it out with bloodstained hands while making savage faces.

  It didn’t happen. There were no animal noises, no demon voices, no contortions.

  Instead, as Mary-Lynnette stood frozen in an agony of horror, and Mark stood trying to get a normal breath, Jade straightened up.

  And said, “What are you guys doing out here?”

  In a puzzled, vaguely annoyed voice. The way you would speak to some boy who keeps following you everywhere and asking you for a date.

  Mary-Lynnette felt her mind spinning off.

  There was a long silence. Then Rowan and Kestrel stood up. Mark was breathing heavily, moving the flashlight from one of the girls to another, but always coming back to Jade.

  “What are you doing out here; that’s the question!” he said raggedly. The flashlight whipped to the hole, then back to the girls. “What are you doing?”

  “I asked you first,” Jade said, frowning. If it had just been her, Mary-Lynnette would have started to wonder if things were so awful after all. If maybe they weren’t in terrible danger.

  But Rowan and Kestrel were looking at each other, and then at Mark and Mary-Lynnette. And their expressions made Mary-Lynnette’s throat close.

  “You shouldn’t have followed us,” Rowan said. She looked grave and sad.

  “They shouldn’t have been able to,” Kestrel said. She looked grim.

  “It’s because they smell like goats,” Jade said.

  “What are you doing?” Mark shouted again, almost sobbing. Mary-Lynnette wanted to reach for him, but she couldn’t move.

  Jade wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well, can’t you tell?” She turned to her sisters. “Now what are we supposed to do?”

  There was a silence. Then Kestrel said, “We don’t have a choice. We have to kill them.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Mary-Lynnette’s hearing had gone funny. She heard Kestrel’s words like a character remembering a phrase in a bad movie. Kill them, kill them, kill them.

  Mark laughed in a very strange way.

  This is going to be really rotten for him, Mary-Lynnette thought, curiously dispassionate. I mean, if we were going to live through this, which we’re not, it would be really rotten for him. He was already afraid of girls, and sort of pessimistic about life in general.

  “Why don’t we all sit down?” Rowan said with a stifled sigh. “We’ve got to figure this out.”

  Mark threw back his head and gave another short bark of a laugh.

  “Why not?” he said. “Let’s all sit down, why not?”

  They’re fast as whippets, Mary-Lynnette thought. If we run now, they’ll catch us. But if we sit, and they get comfortable, and I distract them—or hit them with something…

  “Sit!” she ordered Mark briskly. Rowan and Kestrel moved away from the deer and sat. Jade stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, then sat, too.

  Sitting, Mark was still acting punch-drunk. He waved the flashlight around. “You girls are something else. You girls are really—”

  “We’re vampires,” Jade said sharply.

  “Yeah.” Mark laughed quietly to himself. “Yeah,” he said again.

  Mary-Lynnette took the flashlight away from him. She wanted control of it. And it was heavy plastic and metal. It was a weapon.

  And while one layer of her mind was thinking: Shine the light in their eyes at just the right moment and then hit one of them; another part was thinking: She means they’re people who think they’re vampires; people with that weird disease that makes them anemic; and one final part was saying: You might as well face it; they’re real.

  Mary-Lynnette’s world view had been knocked right out of the ballpark.

  “Don’t you just hate that,” Mark was saying. “You meet a girl and she seems pretty nice and you tell all your friends and then before you know it she turns out to be a vampire. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”

  Oh, God, he’s hysterical, Mary-Lynnette realized.

  She grabbed his shoulder and hissed in his ear, “Get a grip, now.”

  “I don’t see what the point is in talking to them, Rowan,” Kestrel was saying. “You know what we have to do.”

  And Rowan was rubbing her forehead. “I was thinking we might influence them,” she said in an undertone.

  “You know why that won’t work.” Kestrel’s voice was soft and flat.

  “Why?” Jade said sharply.

  “They followed us for a reason,” Rowan said tiredly. She nodded toward the hole. “So they’ve been suspicious for a while—for how long?” She looked at Mary-Lynnette.

  “I saw you dig the hole Tuesday night,” Mary-Lynnette said. She nodded toward the hole. “Is that your aunt in there?”

  There was a brief silence and Rowan looked self-conscious. Then she inclined her head slightly. Gracefully.

  “Oh, hell,” Mark said. His eyes were shut and his head was rolling on his neck. “Oh, hell. They’ve got Mrs. B. in a bag.”

  “Two days,” Rowan said to Jade. “They’ve suspected for two whole days. And we can’t remove memories that are interlaced with other things for that long. We’d never know if we got them all.”

  “Well, we could just take everything for the last two days,” Jade said.

  Kestrel snorted. “And have two more people wandering around with lost time?”

  Mary-Lynnette’s mind went click. “Todd Akers and Vic Kimble,” she said. “You did something to give them amnesia. I knew there had to be a connection.”

  “There’s no other choice for us,” Kestrel said quietly to Rowan. “And you know it as well as I do.”

  She’s not being malicious, Mary-Lynnette realized. Just practical. If a lioness or a wolf or a falcon could talk, it would say the same thing. “We have to either kill or die; it’s as simple as that.”

  Despite herself, Mary-Lynnette felt something like fascination—and respect.

  Mark had his eyes open now. And Rowan was looking sad, so sad. It’s awful, her expression said, but somebody here is going to have to get hurt.

  Rowan bowed her head, then lifted it to face Mary-Lynnette directly. Their eyes met, held. After a moment Rowan’s face changed slightly and she nodded.

  Mary-Lynnette knew that in that instant they were communicating without words. Each recognizing the other as an alpha female who was willing to fight and die for her kin.

  Meaning they were both big sisters.

  Yes, somebody’s going to get hurt, Mary-Lynnette thought. You threaten my family, I fight back.

  She knew Rowan understood. Rowan was going to really hate killing her….

  “No,” a voice said passionately, and Mary-Lynnette realized it was Jade. And the next second Jade was on her feet, hands clenched, words erupting like a steam boiler exploding. “No, you can’t kill Mark. I won’t let you.”

  Rowan said, “Jade, I know this is hard—”

  Kestrel said, “Jade, don’t be a wimp—”

  Jade was trembling, body tensed like a cat ready to fight. Her voice was louder than either of them. “You just can’t do it! I think—I think—”

  “Jade—”

  “I think he’s my soulmate!”

  Dead silence.

  Then Rowan groaned. “Oh, dear…”

  Kestrel said, “Oh, sure.”

  They were both looking at Jade. Focused on her. Mary-Lynnette thought, Now.

  She swung the flashlig
ht viciously at Kestrel wanting to take her out first betting that Rowan would stay behind if Kestrel were hurt. But the swing never connected. Mark threw himself in front of her, slamming into her arm.

  “Don’t hurt Jade!”

  Then everything was just a mad tangle. Arms, legs, grasping fingers, kicking feet. Jade and Mark both yelling for it to stop. Mary-Lynnette felt the flashlight wrenched out of her hand. She found long hair, got hold of it, yanked. Someone kicked her, and pain blossomed in her ribs.

  Then she felt herself being dragged backward. Mark was holding her, pulling her away from the fight. Jade was lying on top of Kestrel and clutching at Rowan.

  Everybody was panting. Mark was almost crying.

  “We just can’t do this,” he said. “This is terrible. This is all wrong.”

  Meanwhile Jade was snarling, “He’s my soulmate, okay? Okay? I can’t do anything with him dead!”

  “He’s not your soulmate, idiot,” Kestrel said in a somewhat muffled voice. She was facedown on the carpet of needles. “When you’re soulmates, it hits you like lightning, and you know that’s the one person in the world you were meant to be with. You don’t think you’re soulmates; you just know it’s your destiny whether you like it or not.”

  Somewhere, deep in Mary-Lynnette’s brain, something stirred in alarm. But she had more urgent things to worry about.

  “Mark, get out of here,” she said breathlessly. “Run!”

  Mark didn’t even ease his grip. “Why do we have to be enemies?”

  “Mark, they’re killers. You can’t justify that. They killed their own aunt.”

  Three faces turned toward her, startled. A half-full moon had risen above the trees, and Mary-Lynnette could see them clearly.

  “We did not!” Jade said indignantly.

  “What made you think that?” Rowan asked.

  Mary-Lynnette felt her mouth hang open. “Because you buried her, for God’s sake!”

  “Yes, but we found her dead.”

  “Somebody staked her,” Kestrel said, brushing pine needles out of her golden hair. “Probably a vampire hunter. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.”

  Mark gulped. “Staked her—with a stake?”