Dark Visions

by L. J. Smith

  that LeShan is dead . . ." He shook his head, but his eyes were gleaming as if he saw a challenge.

  "Rob! Are you telling me-do you want to go, too?"

  "Well, I was thinking about it. They're going to need help."

  "And leadership," Tamsin said, quietly, without sounding ashamed. "Innovation, new ideas-they don't come easily to us."

  Rob nodded. "You help us and we help you. A fair exchange."

  And the great task Rob's been looking for, Kaitlyn thought, somewhat giddy with the suddenness of it.

  Not saving the world, maybe, but fixing a little part of it.

  She didn't know what to say. She was remembering Canada, the lush beauty of the rain forest, the open vastness of the sky. The wild blue ocean.

  "Of course, the rest of you children can stay here," Joyce was saying. "Not at the Institute-that will be closed for good. But I think I could arrange for you to have your scholarships after all. Mr. Zetes had the money put aside in a special account; he had to, for the lawyers."

  Yes, that was the sensible thing to do. School and then college. Her father would want that. And Gabriel was a city boy. Kaitlyn's fingers tightened on his- and then she felt his thought.

  Well, we could just take a vacation, couldn't we? he asked. His gray eyes were sparkling.

  Happiness flooded Kaitlyn to her fingertips.

  We could-yes, we could, she told Rob and Anna and Lewis. We could make up the time at school next year. And meanwhile, it would be very educational. . . .

  And we wouldn't break the web, Rob said, and she could feel his joy, too. He and Gabriel were smiling at each other.

  Of course, we'll have to break it someday, Lewis said quickly. I mean, we can't go around this way forever.

  Of course not, Anna agreed solemnly, her owl eyes crinkling at the edges.

  But just for now . . . Lewis said.

  Just for now, they all agreed, together.

  Talk was going on around them. Joyce was moving toward the front door, saying, "What's that?" Lydia was rummaging through her box.

  "I forgot to show you. Look what I found!" she said to Lewis. She was holding two things: an alarm clock shaped like a cow-and his camera.

  "Hey, where did you get that? That's precious!" Lewis said, taking the cow.

  "I know. I want you to show me what it does." Lydia smiled at him, her new shy smile, and Lewis beamed back. He reached out and squeezed her arm, just once.

  "As soon as we get alone," he said wickedly, "I will."

  "Kaitlyn! Rob!" Joyce was calling from the front door in a voice wavering between laughter and tears.

  "There's someone here to see you, and I don't think you should keep her waiting!"

  They all went, Kaitlyn and Gabriel and Rob and Anna, with Lewis and Lydia following, and Tamsin bringing up the rear with Bri and Renny. When Kaitlyn got to the porch she stopped in astonishment.

  "Oh . . . "was all she could say. Then she said, "Oh, Marisol."

  It was Marisol, thin and rather wobbly on her legs, supported on Tony's arm. She was pale, but her tumbled mahogany hair was the same as Kaitlyn remembered, and a smile was trembling on her full lips.

  "I came to see the guy who healed me," she said. "And all of you."

  "All of them were in it," Tony said proudly. He had a shirt on today, Kaitlyn noticed, and he looked as if someone had just willed him a million dollars.

  Kaitlyn hugged Marisol, and then she had to stand back so Rob could do it. And then Lydia was coming forward, and Bri, looking as if they thought Marisol might hate them. But she smiled at them instead, and there were more hugs. Those who couldn't hug Marisol hugged one another.

  And Joyce, with her aquamarine eyes on Marisol's face, looked as if healing had already begun.

  "We brought you your kitten, too," Tony said to Anna.

  "So now everybody's here," Anna said, pressing the kitten to her cheek, then to Rob's.

  "Hey, yeah-everybody's here! Wait a minute!" Lewis was running. He was back in a moment.

  "Everybody, scrunch together by the door. Some of you get down. The rest lean in! Get closer!"

  I think we're already about as close as we can get, Gabriel said, and Kaitlyn was surrounded by silent laughter.

  "That's it! Hold that smile!" Lewis shouted, and snapped their picture.

  STRANGE FATE preview

  This is an excerpt that shows how Ash Redfern (who has been alerted by Aradia, the Maiden of the Witches, that the Apocalypse, due nearly a year ago and forgotten now by most, is actually going to come) begins to rescue the NIGHT WORLD soulmate couples from the enemies who, for unknown reasons, are targeting the youngest generation of Harmans and Redferns. Ash’s last rescue will be of Mary-Lynnette, and will appear in the book, so the story Those Who Favor Fire will be finished in STRANGE FATE (which I hope to finish this calendar year).

  –L. J.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  "Gotcha!”

  Poppy jumped high and lightly from behind a camouflaging bush and knocked over the Navy SEAL who was looking in exactly the wrong direction. He stared at her in disbelief and terror, his hands automatically going for weapons that weren’t where they should be. All weapons, even rocks and branches, were forbidden in this remote military staging area in one of the wide, wild deserts of southern California,

  The next thing the SEAL thought of was his hands but Poppy had thought of them first, and by now she had both his wrists locked. It must look almost comical, she thought: a petite young girl with tumbling curls of shimmering copper that fell to her shoulders, sitting on the chest of a six and half foot, two hundred and thirty pound, totally buff Navy SEAL and somehow keeping him completely immobilized.

  “What the hell? What the hell?” The guy was staring up at her—goggling actually—and Poppy guessed that he was new to the hunting range.

  “You’re not real,” he choked out.

  Poppy shook her head, causing burnished curls to fly into her eyes. “Wanna bet?

  “How much you got?”

  But by now the SEAL would be thinking of how lovely she was, with her eyes becoming more silvery all the time and the rising moon showing her lips becoming more full, getting that bee-stung look. And now the SEAL would be thinking that she was the most unearthly and exquisite girl he’d ever seen, but all that meant was that Poppy, innocent and mischievous as a kitten, had gotten her psychic probes hooked into his mind, and was changing his perceptions just for fun.

  Okay. Enough fun. Poppy’s had a feeling as if she needed air—which meant, since she didn’t breathe, that she was hungry.

  She could see into the Navy SEAL’s soul now. Part of it was saying, I still don’t believe she’s real. I could break her neck with one karate chop. But, God, she’s so beautiful. . . . I almost wouldn’t mind dying at her hands. . . .

  No, you wouldn’t want to die this way, she told him sternly without speaking. Her voice in his head was pitched just loud enough to hurt—to make him remember her words subconsciously. So if you have any sense, when a spindly little thing like me, or a boy you know you can whip gets you down and starts to examine your throat—well, actually by then it’s probably too late—but you but you try to find some wood, okay?

  The SEAL didn’t think, “Wood?” He just stared. But Poppy had done this before. “Yes, wood,” she said, aloud this time so that he could tell that she was real and

  that she had the voice of a typical American teenager. Somewhere in his soul he’d remember that, too. That she could sound like his little sister, not foreign, not strange. It might save his life.

  Wood is the only thing that can hurt us. A wooden twig is more dangerous than one of your stainless steel Mark Three knives; a twig could save your life. Oorah!

  Poppy dimpled at the man under her. And now it’s 0'dark thirty and you’re really, really sleepy. You just let your eyes drift shut . . . Inside the man’s head she was twiddling knobs and turning levers, slowing his brain waves, making them more synchronous, heig
htening their amplitude. She kept doing it until the theta waves appeared, and then she couldn’t wait any longer. The man was only lightly asleep, but he never felt the two little pricks on his throat. He didn’t feel Poppy’s mouth either as she daintily sucked up the rich red stuff that was now flowing steadily out of a small artery. Poppy kept alert for any noise or movement around her, even as her instincts tried to seduce her into giving herself completely to the experience, to indulge herself in the pure joy of hunger being sated. She had to pull herself away to avoid taking too much—far less than this healthy, husky man would miss. He’d simply wake up on his own in a few minutes, and find that his badge is gone—

  Whoops! Forgot to take the badge, she thought, and without a pause in her drinking, she reached down and plucked the gilded shield from his belt. The badges were currency in this darkest of dark ops training, and Poppy wore them in a doubled belt around her small waist, where they jingled like wind chimes if she wasn’t careful.

  And then the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  Someone behind her. Attack alert.

  Only— Only—

  In all her nearly-a-year’s experience as a vampire, Poppy had never sensed anything like what she was sensing now.

  Whatever it was, it wanted her to turn, and it wanted her to view it, and she’d do that, too. The creature was sending a call directly to her sinews and muscles and completely leaving her brain out of the question. Plus, it had the loudest telepathic call she had ever picked up. The loudest . . . exponentially. She herself felt like a child who’d been brought up on the inland with an aquarium, being suddenly dumped into the middle of the Pacific ocean. And it woke the Navy SEAL up.

  Poppy was moving slowly now, trying to fight the urge, trying to see the creature’s reflection in the SEAL’s now hugely-open eyes. Enormously open eyes, bulging, and his mouth was coming open, too, ready to scream and shatter the silence of a night when even the crickets had stopped chirping.

  Moving smoothly and stealthily, Poppy put a hand over the SEAL’s mouth. She fought with the last of her strength to shake her head at him fractionally, warningly. Then she gave in to the force that was silently twisting her body around and she turned and she saw what was behind her.

  It was a good thing that Don’t scream; don’t scream was still echoing in her mind from trying to warn the man. Behind her, with wings spread as wide as a football field, behind a head so large that her eyes couldn’t take it in all at once, was a dragon.

  It was black. But not a matte black that would simply show up as a darker darkness blotting out the stars high above. It had its own pale purple energy outlining it, demarcating its enormous limbs, its horned head. The energy moved like a two-way spitting fuse connected to an explosive. Poppy had never seen anything like it.

  Don’t move; don’t scream, she sent to the Navy SEAL. I don’t think it will even notice you; not with what I’m going to be doing. You crawl away when I attack it.

  She probably shouldn’t do what she was planning on doing, but she didn’t have time to think it over. Poppy had one weapon that she’d never used against opponents on this test range, never used on any Night Person since she’d developed her talent in one of Circle Daybreak’s safe havens for illegal vampires, mixed Night World/human couples, and witches who had seceded from the High Council, which was now called the Vampire Council.

  To put it simply, while she could slide into a mind as smoothly as a hot knife into butter, or encompass it as gently as a kiss, she could also turn up the volume of her telepathy to killer levels and literally detonate it with something like an H-bomb from the inside out.

  She’d never actually done it, of course. But at the end of her training her teachers had assured her that she could do it to anything that had a brain capable of receiving telepathy.

  Poppy had never in her life seen any non-human thing that looked so capable of receiving telepathy as this dragon did. It positively reeked of magic. It also positively reeked of savage, unrestrained destruction. It was Poppy’s duty as a tenant of the planet Earth to try to obliterate it before it could obliterate her and all the real estate around her.

  But, again, there was no time to consciously think about this. It was all calculated at some subconscious level. Poppy simply went from registering the dragon’s existence to cranking up her telepathy higher and higher—and higher, ready to unleash all at once.

  Things had seemingly moved into slow motion ever since Poppy had seen the dragon. Now, like moving in a dream, Poppy picked out the three horns on the dragon’s head and gathered her stored telepathy like a white-hot ball of energy. Horns were important, she knew. If she could just somehow concentrate all her energy there . . . yes . . . and now to let it go . . .

  Something slammed into her from her left side, picking her up as it passed by the dragon, and kept going, finally sweeping her into a clump of bushes twenty yards away. Poppy was so wound-up that she almost unleashed her telepathic ball of energy at it.

  But the next instant she recognized what had grabbed her.

  It was James. Her soulmate. He still had his outlaw good looks: silky light brown hair, a subtle, intelligent face, and gray eyes that were alternately intense and cool. And Poppy still felt a sharp throb somewhere between sweetness and pain every time she looked at him—even now, when part of her wanted to kill him.

  He’d come between her and her prey. For anyone else that would spell death. Worse, she didn’t understand why he had done it: surely James must realize just how dangerous that thing over there was.

  More dangerous that you could possibly imagine. James’s voice came to her on a tight frequency that was theirs alone, but still so faintly that she could hardly make it out.

  Then I have to go back, she began keeping to their private frequency, and quietly, but James cut her off.

  Poppy, I know you’re brave, he said, and clutched her even more tightly. But sometimes all you can do is retreat. That— thing—over there would simply kill you the moment you annoyed it.

  How do you know? Poppy demanded.

  I don’t know how I know—but I do know. Watch!

  There was now nothing between the Navy SEAL and the dragon. And the SEAL wasn’t taking Poppy’s advice about keeping still and silent. Instead, he was slowly getting up, maddened with fear, trying to scramble away.

  Poppy would never forget the sound that came next.

  It was a roar at a deeper bass than she could hear, even telepathically: a noise she felt deep in her bones. It came out of the dragon’s open mouth, and the next thing that came out was black fire. The black fire burned as if a thousand flame-throwers had been turned on at once, but it also contained some kind of alien energy, something Poppy had never seen before.

  In a micro-second, it turned the man to ash and everything around him to fused glass, as if a million-kilowatt lightning bolt had struck the grass of the hunting range.

  By now, Poppy was clutching James back. Her entire body had suddenly broken out in gooseflesh. She’d never seen this particular kind of cold-blooded murder—much less so much overkill—before. The dragon hadn’t even wanted the SEAL for food. It had flamed him because that was its nature: to kill whatever was in front of it.

  Now we just have to pray that it doesn’t remember about you and turn this way. James’s voice came to Poppy’s head in the barest thread of a whisper. Poppy didn’t dare move even enough to nod, but she forced herself to send out an almost silent Yes, while swallowing down the enormous amount of telepathic energy she’d conjured up. It burned in her chest, struggling to explode free, wanting to unleash an attack against something.

  For what seemed like hours, Poppy knelt in the bush, forcing herself to hang onto her telepathy, painful as it was, and praying that nothing would happen to James. He seemed like a person who was coolheaded in any situation, but Poppy knew that if the dragon tried to attack her, he would go mad and get in the way. That was simply her soulmate’s nature, and she loved him for it.
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  Even here, even now, she pressed her cheek into the hollow of his neck, feeling the tiny movement as he carefully breathed. James was lamia—one of the born vampires—who could breathe and grow up if he wanted. He’d made her into a vampire to save her from dying of cancer, and Poppy loved him even more for the risks he had taken to do it.

  At that moment, the dragon’s head moved, as if seeking something, and to Poppy’s horror it turned in the direction of the clump of bushes where she and James were hidden.

  Could it see them? she wondered, pressing ever more tightly to James. Could it sense them by telepathy? By their temperature? She had to protect James. And she could feel the urgency of his mind, desperate with the need to protect her.

  This close together, with their minds running along the same frantic course, Poppy and James surged into one being. There was an almost audible click as they snapped together like two puzzle pieces joining. Poppy was completely with her soulmate, now, and she felt James realize that even death couldn’t pry them apart. They would die as Poppy-and-James, an entity that was far more than the sum of two individuals.

  At the same time as Poppy felt her body relaxing, melting bonelessly against James, she felt the calm radiance of their joined minds come to a solution. Usually they each kept their temperatures at a steady ninety-eight point six degrees, simply because this was the best temperature for human-like bodies to operate. But they weren’t human, either of them; and just now their joined minds had decided that the best temperature to be was the exact temperature of the bushes around them. This decision was made in an instant, and a moment later it was as if Poppy and James were being dipped into nitrogen dioxide, flash frozen to the same cool state as the bushes.

  The dragon’s enormous pupils contracted, then dilated hugely. Poppy and James knew that this meant that the dragon had just seen something wink out of existence. They watched the dragon swing its gigantic head up and around, as if expecting to find prey which had suddenly leaped out and was making a run for freedom. Silently, the two vampires rejoiced, keeping their soaring jubilation tightly to the privacy of their joined minds.