by L. J. Smith
She felt a hand grab her ankle, hard enough almost to crush her bones. It yanked, trying to drag her back through the gap. Rashel kicked backward with all her strength and then twisted, and her sock came off and she pulled her leg into the padded room.
Come back! You need to come back right now!
The voice was like a teacher’s voice. It was hard not to listen. But Rashel was already scrambling into the plastic tube in front of her. She went faster than she ever had before, hurting her knees, propelling herself with her bare foot.
When she got to the first fish-bowl window, though, she saw a face looking in at her.
It was the tall man. He was staring at her. He banged on the plastic as she went by.
Fear cracked in Rashel like a belt. She scrambled faster, and the knocks on the tube followed her.
He was underneath her now. Keeping up with her. Rashel passed another window and looked down. She could see his hair shining in the sunlight. She could see his pale face looking up at her.
And his eyes.
Come down, came the voice and it wasn’t stern anymore. It was sweet. Come down and we’ll go get some ice cream. What kind of ice cream do you like best?
Rashel knew then that this was how he’d gotten Timmy into the tent. She didn’t even pause in her scrambling.
But she couldn’t get away from him. He was traveling with her, just under her, waiting for her to come out or get to a place where he could reach in and grab her.
Higher. I need to get higher, she thought.
She moved instinctively, as if some sixth sense was telling her which way to turn each time she had a choice. She went through angled tubes, straight tubes, tubes that weren’t solid at all, but made of woven canvas strips. And finally she got to a place where she couldn’t go any higher.
It was a square room with a padded floor and netting sides. She was at the front of the climbing structure; she could see mothers and fathers standing and sitting in little groups. She could feel the wind.
Below her, looking up, was the tall man.
Chocolate brownie? Mint chip? Bubble gum?
The voice was putting pictures in her mind. Tastes. Rashel looked around frantically.
There was so much noise—every kid in the climbing structure was yelling. Who would even notice her if she shouted? They’d think she was joking around.
All you have to do is come down. You know you have to come down sometime.
Rashel looked into the pale face turned up to her. The eyes were like dark holes. Hungry. Patient. Certain.
He knew he was going to get her.
He was going to win. She had no way to fight him.
And then something tore inside Rashel and she did the only thing a five-year-old could do against an adult.
She shoved her hand between the rough cords that made the netting, scraping off skin. She pushed her whole small arm through and she pointed down at the tall man.
And she screamed in a way she’d never screamed before. Piercing shrieks that cut through the happy noise of the other kids. She screamed the way Ms. Bruce at preschool had taught her to do if any stranger ever bothered her.
“Help meeee! Help meeee! That man tried to touch me!”
She kept screaming it, kept pointing. And she saw people look at her.
But they didn’t do anything. They just stared. Lots of faces, looking up at her. Nobody moving.
In a way, it was even worse than anything that had happened before. They could hear her, but nobody was going to help her.
And then she saw somebody moving.
It was a big boy, not quite a grown-up man. He was wearing a uniform like the one Rashel’s father used to wear before he died. That meant he was a Marine.
He was going toward the tall man, and his face was dark and angry. And now, as if they had only needed this example, other people were moving, too. Several men who looked like fathers. A woman with a cellular phone.
The tall man turned and ran.
He ducked under the climbing structure, heading toward the back, toward the tent where Rashel’s mother was. He moved very fast, much faster than any of the people in the crowd.
But he sent words to Rashel’s mind before he disappeared completely.
See you later.
When he was definitely gone, Rashel slumped against the netting, feeling the rough cord bite into her cheek. People down below were calling to her; kids just behind her were whispering. None of it really mattered.
She could cry now; it would be okay, but she didn’t seem to have any tears.
The police were no good. There were two officers, a man and a woman. The woman believed Rashel a little. But every time her eyes would start to believe, she’d shake her head and say, “But what was the man really doing to Timmy? Baby-doll, sweetie, I know it’s awful, but just try to remember.”
The man didn’t believe even a little. Rashel would have traded them both for the Marine back at the carnival.
All they’d found in the tent was her mother with a broken neck. No Timmy. Rashel wasn’t sure but she thought the man had probably taken him.
She didn’t want to think about why.
Eventually the police drove her to her Aunt Corinne’s, who was the only family she had left now. Aunt Corinne was old and her bony hands hurt Rashel’s arms when she clutched her and cried.
She put Rashel in a bedroom full of strange smells and tried to give her medicine to make her sleep. It was like cough syrup, but it made her tongue numb. Rashel waited until Aunt Corinne was gone, then she spat it into her hand and wiped her hand on the sheets, way down at the foot of the bed where the blankets tucked in.
And then she put her arms around her hunched-up knees and sat staring into the darkness.
She was too little, too helpless. That was the problem. She wasn’t going to be able to do anything against him when he came back.
Because of course he was coming back.
She knew what the man was, even if the adults didn’t believe her. He was a vampire, just like on TV. A monster that drank blood. And he knew she knew.
That was why he’d promised to see her later.
At last, when Aunt Corinne’s house was quiet, Rashel tiptoed to the closet and slid it open. She climbed the shoe rack and squirmed and kicked until she was on the top shelf above the clothes. It was narrow, but wide enough for her. That was one good thing about being little.
She had to use every advantage she had.
With her toe, she slid the closet door back shut. Then she piled sweaters and other folded things from the shelf on top of herself, covering even her head. And finally she curled up on the hard bare wood and shut her eyes.
Sometime in the night she smelled smoke. She got down from the shelf—falling more than climbing—and saw flames in her bedroom.
She never knew exactly how she managed to run through them and get out of the house. The whole night was like one long blurred nightmare.
Because Aunt Corinne didn’t get out. When the fire trucks came with their sirens and their flashing lights, it was already too late.
And even though Rashel knew that he had set the fire—the vampire—the police didn’t believe her. They didn’t understand why he had to kill her.
In the morning they took her to a foster home, which would be the first of many. The people there were nice, but Rashel wouldn’t let them hold her or comfort her.
She already knew what she had to do.
If she was going to survive, she had to make herself hard and strong. She couldn’t care about anybody else, or trust anybody, or rely on anybody. Nobody could protect her. Not even Mommy had been able to do that.
She had to protect herself. She had to learn to fight.
CHAPTER 3
God, it stank.
Rashel Jordan had seen a lot of vampire lairs in her seventeen years, but this was probably the most disgusting. She held her breath as she stirred the nest of tattered cloth with the toe of one boot. She could read the
story of this collection of garbage as easily as if the inhabitant had written out a full confession, signed it, and posted it on the wall.
One vampire. A rogue, an outcast who lived on the fringe of both the human world and the Night World. He probably moved to a new city every few weeks to avoid getting caught. And he undoubtedly looked like any other homeless guy, except that none of the human homeless would be hanging around a Boston dock on a Tuesday night in early March.
He brings his victims here, Rashel thought. The pier’s deserted, it’s private, he can take his time with them. And of course he can’t resist keeping a few trophies.
Her foot stirred them gently. A pink-and-blue knit baby jacket, a plaid sash from a school uniform, a Spiderman tennis shoe. All bloodstained. All very small.
There had been a rash of missing children lately. The Boston police would never discover where they had gone—but now Rashel knew. She felt her lips draw back slightly from her teeth in something that wasn’t really a smile.
She was aware of everything around her: the soft plash of water against the wooden pier, the rank coppery smell that was almost a taste, the darkness of a night lit only by a half moon. Even the light moisture of the cold breeze against her skin. She was aware of all of it without being preoccupied with any of it—and when the tiny scratch sounded behind her, she moved as smoothly and gracefully as if she were taking her turn in a dance.
She pivoted on her left foot, drawing her bokken in the same motion, and without a break in the movement, she stabbed straight to the vampire’s chest. She drove the blow from her hips, exhaling in a hiss as she did it, putting all her strength behind it.
“Gotta be faster than that,” she said.
The vampire, skewered like a hot dog, waved his arms and gibbered. He was dressed in filthy clothing and his hair was a bushy tangle. His eyes were wide, full of surprise and hatred, shining as silver as an animal’s in the faint light. His teeth weren’t so much fangs as tusks: fully extended, they reached almost to his chin.
“I know,” Rashel said. “You really, really wanted to kill me. Life’s tough, isn’t it?”
The vampire snarled one more time and then the silver went out of his eyes, leaving only the look of astonishment. His body stiffened and slumped backward. It lay still on the ground.
Grimacing, Rashel pulled her wooden sword out of the chest. She started to wipe the blade on the vampire’s pants, then hesitated, peering at them more closely. Yes, those were definitely little crawly things. And the blankets were just as repulsive.
Oh, well. Use your own jeans. It won’t be the first time.
She carefully wiped the bokken clean. It was two and a half feet long and just slightly, gracefully curved, with a narrow, sharp, angled tip. Designed to penetrate a body as efficiently as possible—if that body was susceptible to wood.
The sword slipped back into its sheath with a papery whisper. Then Rashel glanced at the body again.
Mr. Vampire was already going mummified. His skin was now yellow and tough; his staring eyes were dried up, his lips shrunken, his tusks collapsed.
Rashel bent over him, reaching into her back pocket. What she pulled out looked like the snapped-off end of a bamboo backscratcher—which was exactly what it was. She’d had it for years.
Very precisely, Rashel drew the five lacquered fingers of the scratcher down the vampire’s forehead. On the yellow skin five brown marks appeared, like the marks of a cat’s claws. Vampire skin was easy to mark right after death.
“This kitten has claws,” she murmured. It was a ritual sentence; she’d repeated it ever since the night she’d killed her first vampire at the age of twelve. In memory of her mother, who’d always called her kitten. In memory of herself at age five, and all the innocence she’d lost. She’d never be a helpless kitten again.
Besides, it was a little joke. Vampires… bats. Herself… a cat. Anybody who’d grown up with Batman and Catwoman would get it.
Well. All done. Whistling softly, she rolled the body over and over with her foot to the end of the pier. She didn’t feel like carting the mummy all the way out to the fens, the salt marshes where bodies were traditionally left in Boston. With a mental apology to everybody who was trying to clean up the harbor, she gave the corpse a final push and listened for the splash.
She was still whistling as she emerged from the pier onto the street. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go….
She was in a very good mood.
The only disappointment was the constant one, that it hadn’t been the vampire, the one she’d been looking for ever since she’d been five years old. It had been a rogue, all right—a depraved monster who killed human kids foolishly close to human habitations. But it hadn’t been the rogue.
Rashel would never forget his face. And she knew that someday she would see it again. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but shish-kebab as many of the parasites as possible.
She scanned the streets as she walked, alert for any sign of Night People. All she saw were quiet brick buildings and streetlights shining pale gold.
And that was a shame, because she was in terrific form tonight; she could feel it. She was every bloodsucking leech’s worst enemy. She could stake six of them before breakfast and still be fresh for chemistry first period at Wassaguscus High.
Rashel stopped suddenly, absentmindedly melting into a shadow as a police car cruised silently down the cross-street ahead. I know, she thought. I’ll go see what the Lancers are up to. If anybody knows where vampires are, they do.
She headed for the North End. Half an hour later she was standing in front of a brownstone apartment building, ringing the buzzer.
“Who’s there?”
Instead of answering, Rashel said, “The night has a thousand eyes.”
“And the day only one,” came the reply from the intercom. “Hey there, girl. Come on up.”
Inside, Rashel climbed a dark and narrow stairway to a scarred wooden door. There was a peephole in the door. Rashel faced it squarely, then pulled off the scarf she’d been wearing. It was black, silky, and very long. She wore it wrapped around her head and face like a veil, so that only her eyes showed, and even they were in shadow.
She shook out her hair, knowing what the person on the other side could see. A tall girl dressed like a ninja, all in black, with black hair falling loose around her shoulders and green eyes blazing. She hadn’t changed much since she was five, except in height. Right now she made a barbaric face at the peephole and heard the sound of laughter behind the door as bolts were drawn.
She waited until the door was shut behind her again before she said, “Hi, Elliot.”
Elliot was a few years older than she was, and thin, with intense eyes and little shiny glasses that were always slipping off his nose. Some people would have dismissed him as a geek. But Rashel had once seen him stand up to two werewolves while she got a human girl out a window, and she knew that he had practically singlehandedly started the Lancers—one of the most successful organizations of vampire hunters on the East Coast.
“What’s up, Rashel? It’s been a while.”
“I’ve been busy. But now I’m bored. I came to see if you guys had anything going.” As Rashel spoke, she was looking at the other people in the room: A brown-haired girl was kneeling, loading objects from boxes into a dark green backpack. Another girl and a boy were sitting on the couch. Rashel recognized the boy from other Lancers meetings, but neither of the girls were familiar.
“Lucky you,” Elliot said. “This is Vicky, my new second-in-command.” He nodded at the girl on the floor. “She just moved to Boston; she was the leader of a group on the south shore. And tonight she’s taking a little expedition out to some warehouses in Mission Hill. We got a lead that there’s been some activity out there.”
“What kind of activity? Leeches, puppies?”
Elliot shrugged. “Vampires definitely. Werewolves maybe. There’s been a rumor about teenage girls getting kidnapped and stashed somewhere ar
ound there. The problem is we don’t know exactly where, or why.” He tilted his head, his eyes twinkling. “You want to go?”
“Isn’t anybody going to ask me?” Vicky said, straightening up from her backpack. Her pale blue eyes were fixed on Rashel. “I’ve never even seen this girl before. She could be one of them.”
Elliot pushed his glasses higher on his nose. He looked amused. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew, Vicky. Rashel’s the best.”
“At what?”
“At everything. When you were going to your fancy prep school, she was out in the Chicago slums staking vampires. She’s been in L.A., New York, New Orleans… even Vegas. She’s wiped out more parasites than the rest of us put together.” Elliot glanced mischievously at Rashel, then leaned toward Vicki.
“Ever heard of the Cat?” he said.
Vicki’s head snapped up. She stared at Rashel. “The Cat? The one all the Night People are afraid of? The one they’re offering a reward for? The one who leaves a mark—”
Rashel shot Elliot a warning look. “Never mind,” she said. She wasn’t sure she trusted these new people. Vicky was right about one thing: you couldn’t be too careful.
And she didn’t like Vicky much, but she could hardly turn down such a good opportunity for vampire hunting. Not tonight, when she was in such terrific form.
“I’ll go with you—if you’ll have me,” she said.
Vicky’s pale blue eyes bored into Rashel’s a moment, then she nodded. “Just remember I’m in charge.”
“Sure,” Rashel murmured. She could see Elliot’s grin out of the corner of her eye.
“You know Steve, and that’s Nyala.” Elliot indicated the boy and girl on the couch. Steve had blond hair, muscular shoulders, and a steady expression; Nyala had skin like cocoa and a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were sleepwalking. “Nyala’s new. She just lost her sister a month ago,” Elliot added in a gentle voice. He didn’t need to say how the sister had been lost.
Rashel nodded at the girl. She sympathized. There was nothing quite like the shock of first discovering the Night World, when you realized that things like vampires and witches and werewolves were real, and that they were everywhere, joined in one giant secret organization. That anybody could be one, and you’d never know until it was too late.