by L. J. Smith
And…now she saw what the electric feeling of being soulmates was for. All the sensations she’d felt when touching his hand, only intensified. And not unpleasant. It was only unpleasant if you were afraid of it.
Afterward, Ash pulled away. “There. You see,” he said shakily.
Mary-Lynnette took a few deep breaths. “I suppose that’s what it feels like to fall into a black hole.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No, I mean—it was interesting.” Singular, she thought. Different from anything she’d ever felt before. And she had the feeling that she would be different from now on, that she could never go back and be the same person she had been.
So who am I now? Somebody fierce, I think. Somebody who’d enjoy running through the darkness, underneath stars bright as miniature suns, and maybe even hunt deer. Somebody who can laugh at death the way the sisters do.
I’ll discover a supernova and I’ll hiss when somebody threatens me. I’ll be beautiful and scary and dangerous and of course I’ll kiss Ash a lot.
She was giddy, almost soaring with exhilaration.
I’ve always loved the night, she thought. And I’ll finally belong to it completely.
“Mary-Lynnette?” Ash said hesitantly. “Did you like it?”
She blinked and looked at him. Focused.
“I want you to turn me into a vampire,” she said.
It didn’t feel like a jellyfish sting this time. It was quick and almost pleasant—like pressure being released. And then Ash’s lips were on her neck, and that was definitely pleasant. Warmth radiated from his mouth. Mary-Lynnette found herself stroking the back of his neck and realized that his hair was soft, as nice to touch as cat’s fur.
And his mind…was every color of the spectrum. Crimson and gold, jade and emerald and deep violet-blue. A tangled thorn-forest of iridescent colors that changed from second to second. Mary-Lynnette was dazzled.
And half frightened. There was darkness in among those gemlike colors. Things Ash had done in the past…things she could sense he was ashamed of now. But shame didn’t change the acts themselves.
I know it doesn’t—but I’ll make up for them, somehow. You’ll see; I’ll find a way….
So that’s telepathy, Mary-Lynnette thought. She could feel Ash as he said the words, feel that he meant them with desperate earnestness—and feel that there was a lot to make up for.
I don’t care. I’m going to be a creature of darkness, too. I’ll do what’s in my nature, with no regrets.
When Ash started to lift his head, she tightened her grip, trying to keep him there.
“Please don’t tempt me,” Ash said out loud, his voice husky, his breath warm on her neck. “If I take too much, it will make you seriously weak. I mean it, sweetheart.”
She let him go. He picked up the yew stick and made a small cut at the base of his throat, tilting his head back like a guy shaving his chin.
“Ow.”
Mary-Lynnette realized he’d never done this before. With a feeling that was almost awe, she put her lips to his neck.
I’m drinking blood. I’m a hunter already—sort of. Anyway, I’m drinking blood and liking it—maybe because it doesn’t taste like blood. Not like copper and fear. It tastes weird and magic and old as the stars.
When Ash gently detached her, she swayed on her feet.
“We’d better go home,” he said.
“Why? I’m okay.”
“You’re going to get dizzier—and weaker. And if we’re going to finish changing you into a vampire—”
“If?”
“All right, when. But before we do, we need to talk. I need to explain it all to you; we have to figure out the details. And you need to rest.”
Mary-Lynnette knew he was right. She wanted to stay here, alone with Ash in the dark cathedral of the forest—but she did feel weak. Languid. Apparently it was hard work becoming a creature of darkness.
They headed back the way they had come. Mary-Lynnette could feel the change inside herself—it was stronger than when she’d exchanged blood with the three girls. She felt simultaneously weak and hypersensitive. As if every pore were open.
The moonlight seemed much brighter. She could see colors clearly—the pale green of drooping cedar boughs, the eerie purple of parrot-beak wildflowers growing out of the moss.
And the forest wasn’t silent anymore. She could hear faint uncanny sounds like the soft seething of needles in the wind, and her own footsteps on moist and fungus-ridden twigs.
I can even smell better, she thought. This place smells like incense cedar, and decomposing plants, and something really wild—feral, like something from the zoo. And something hot…burny…
Mechanical. It stung her nostrils. She stopped and looked at Ash in alarm.
“What is that?”
He’d stopped, too. “Smells like rubber and oil….”
“Oh, God, the car,” Mary-Lynnette said. They looked at each other for a moment, then simultaneously turned, breaking into a run.
It was the car. White smoke billowed from under the closed hood. Mary-Lynnette started to go closer, but Ash pulled her back to the side of the road.
“I just want to open the hood—”
“No. Look. There.”
Mary-Lynnette looked—and gasped. Tiny tongues of flame were darting underneath the smoke. Licking out of the engine.
“Claudine always said this would happen,” she said grimly as Ash pulled her back farther. “Only I think she meant it would happen with me in it.”
“We’re going to have to walk home,” Ash said. “Unless maybe somebody sees the fire….”
“Not a chance,” Mary-Lynnette said. And that’s what you get for taking a boy out to the most isolated place in Oregon, her inner voice said triumphantly.
“I don’t suppose you could turn into a bat or something and fly back,” she suggested.
“Sorry, I flunked shapeshifting. And I wouldn’t leave you here alone anyway.”
Mary-Lynnette still felt reckless and dangerous—and it made her impatient.
“I can take care of myself,” she said.
And that was when the club came down and Ash pitched forward unconscious.
CHAPTER 16
After that, things happened very fast, and at the same time with a dreamy slowness. Mary-Lynnette felt her arms grabbed from behind. Something was pulling her hands together—something strong. Then she felt the bite of cord on her wrists, and she realized what was happening.
Tied up—I’m going to be helpless—I’ve got to do something fast….
She fought, trying to wrench herself away, trying to kick. But it was already too late. Her hands were secure behind her back—and some part of her mind noted distantly that no wonder people on cop shows yell when they’re handcuffed. It hurt. Her shoulders gave a shriek of agony as she was dragged backward up against a tree.
“Stop fighting,” a voice snarled. A thick, distorted voice she didn’t recognize. She tried to see who it was, but the tree was in the way. “If you relax it won’t hurt.”
Mary-Lynnette kept fighting, but it didn’t make any difference. She could feel the deeply furrowed bark of the tree against her hands and back—and now she couldn’t move.
Oh, God, oh, God—I can’t get away. I was already weak from what Ash and I did—and now I can’t move at all.
Then stop panicking and think, her inner voice said fiercely. Use your brain instead of getting hysterical.
Mary-Lynnette stopped struggling. She stood panting and tried to get control of her terror.
“I told you. It only hurts when you fight. A lot of things are like that,” the voice said.
Mary-Lynnette twisted her head and saw who it was.
Her heart gave a sick lurch. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was—surprised and infinitely disappointed.
“Oh, Jeremy,” she whispered.
Except that it was a different Jeremy than the one she knew. His face was the same, his hai
r, his clothes—but there was something weird about him, something powerful and scary and…unknowable. His eyes were as inhuman and flat as a shark’s.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said in that distorted stranger’s voice. “I only tied you up because I didn’t want you to interfere.”
Mary-Lynnette’s mind was registering different things in different layers. One part said, My God, he’s trying to be friendly, and another part said, To interfere with what?, and a third part just kept saying Ash.
She looked at Ash. He was lying very still, and Mary-Lynnette’s wonderful new eyes that could see colors in moonlight saw that his blond hair was slowly soaking with blood. On the ground beside him was a club made of yew—made of the hard yellow sapwood. No wonder he was unconscious.
But if he’s bleeding he’s not dead—oh, God, please, he can’t be dead—Rowan said that only staking and burning kill vampires….
“I have to take care of him,” Jeremy said. “And then I’ll let you go, I promise. Once I explain everything, you’ll understand.”
Mary-Lynnette looked up from Ash to the stranger with Jeremy’s face. With a shock, she realized what he meant by “take care of.” Three words that were just part of life to a hunter—to a werewolf.
So now I know about werewolves. They’re killers—and I was right all along. I was right and Rowan was wrong.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Jeremy said—and his lips drew back.
Mary-Lynnette’s heart seemed to slam violently inside her chest. Because his lips went farther up than any human’s lips could. She could see his gums, whitish-pink. And she could see why his voice didn’t sound like Jeremy’s—it was his teeth.
White teeth in the moonlight. The teeth from her dream. Vampire teeth were nothing compared to this. The incisors at the front were made for cutting flesh from prey, the canines were two inches long, the teeth behind them looked designed for slicing and shearing.
Mary-Lynnette suddenly remembered something Vic Kimble’s father had said three years ago. He’d said that a wolf could snap off the tail of a full-grown cow clean as pruning shears. He’d been complaining that somebody had let a wolf-dog crossbreed loose and it was going after his cattle….
Except that of course it wasn’t a crossbreed, Mary-Lynnette thought. It was Jeremy. I saw him every day at school—and then he must have gone home to look like this. To hunt.
Just now, as he stood over Ash with his teeth all exposed and his chest heaving, Jeremy looked completely, quietly insane.
“But why?” Mary-Lynnette burst out. “Why do you want to hurt him?”
Jeremy looked up—and she got another shock. His eyes were different. Before she’d seen them flash white in the darkness. Now they had no whites at all. They were brown with large liquid pupils. The eyes of an animal.
So it doesn’t need to be a full moon, she thought. He can change anytime.
“Don’t you know?” he said. “Doesn’t anybody understand? This is my territory.”
Oh. Oh…
So it was as simple as that. After all their brainstorming and arguing and detective work. In the end it was something as basic as an animal protecting its range.
“For a hunting range, it is small,” Rowan had said.
“They were taking my game,” Jeremy said. “My deer, my squirrels. They didn’t have any right to do that. I tried to make them leave—but they wouldn’t. They stayed and they kept killing….”
He stopped talking—but a new sound came from him. It started out almost below the range of Mary-Lynnette’s hearing—but the deep rumbling of it struck some primal chord of terror in her. It was as uncanny and inhuman as the danger-hum of an attacking swarm of bees.
Growling. He was growling. And it was real. The snarling growl a dog makes that tells you to turn and run. The sound it makes before it springs at your throat….
“Jeremy!” Mary-Lynnette screamed. She threw herself forward, ignoring the white blaze of pain in her shoulders. But the cord held. She was jerked back. And Jeremy fell on Ash, lunging down, head darting forward like a striking snake, like a biting dog, like every animal that kills with its teeth.
Mary-Lynnette heard someone screaming “No!” and only later realized that it was her. She was fighting with the cord, and she could feel stinging and wetness at her wrists. But she couldn’t get free and she couldn’t stop seeing what was happening in front of her. And all the time that eerie, vicious growling that reverberated in Mary-Lynnette’s own head and chest.
That was when things went cold and clear. Some part of Mary-Lynnette that was stronger than the panic took over. It stepped back and looked at the entire scene by the roadside: the car, which was still burning, sending clouds of choking white smoke whenever the wind blew the right way; the limp figure of Ash on the pine needles; the blur of snarling motion that was Jeremy.
“Jeremy!” she said, and her throat hurt, but her voice was calm—and commanding. “Jeremy—before you do that—don’t you want me to understand? You said that was what you wanted. Jeremy, help me understand.”
For a long second she thought in dismay that it wasn’t going to work. That he couldn’t even hear her. But then his head lifted. She saw his face; she saw the blood on his chin.
Don’t scream, don’t scream, Mary-Lynnette told herself frantically. Don’t show any shock. You have to keep him talking, keep him away from Ash.
Behind her back her hands were working automatically, as if trying to get out of ropes was something they’d always known how to do. The slick wetness actually helped. She could feel the cords slide a little.
“Please help me understand,” she said again, breathless, but trying to hold Jeremy’s eyes. “I’m your friend—you know that. We go back a long way.”
Jeremy’s whitish gums were streaked with red. He still had human features, but there was nothing at all human about that face.
Now, though—slowly—his lips came down to cover his gums. He looked more like a person and less like an animal. And when he spoke, his voice was distorted, but she could recognize it as Jeremy’s voice.
“We do go back,” he said. “I’ve watched you since we were kids—and I’ve seen you watching me.”
Mary-Lynnette nodded. She couldn’t get any words out.
“I always figured that someday, when we were older—maybe we’d be together. I thought maybe I could make you understand. About me. About everything. I thought you were the one person who might not be afraid….”
“I’m not,” Mary-Lynnette said, and hoped her voice wasn’t shaking too badly. She was saying it to a figure in a blood-spattered shirt crouching over a torn body like a beast still ready to attack. Mary-Lynnette didn’t dare look at Ash to see how badly he was hurt. She kept her eyes locked on Jeremy’s. “And I think I can understand. You killed Mrs. Burdock, didn’t you? Because she was on your territory.”
“Not her,” Jeremy said, and his voice was sharp with impatience. “She was just an old lady—she didn’t hunt. I didn’t mind having her in my range. I even did things for her, like fixing her fence and porch for free…. And that’s when she told me they were coming. Those girls.”
Just the way she told me, Mary-Lynnette thought, with dazed revelation. And he was there fixing the fence—of course. The way he does odd jobs for everybody.
“I told her it wouldn’t work.” Mary-Lynnette could hear it again—the beginnings of a snarling growl. Jeremy was tense and trembling, and she could feel herself start to tremble, too. “Three more hunters in this little place…I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t see. So then I lost my temper.”
Don’t look at Ash, don’t call attention to him, Mary-Lynnette thought desperately. Jeremy’s lips were drawing back again as if he needed something to attack. At the same time the distant part of her mind said, So that’s why he used a picket—Ash was right; it was an impulse of the moment.
“Well, anybody can lose their temper,” she said, and even though her voice cracked an
d there were tears in her eyes, Jeremy seemed to calm a little.
“Afterward, I thought maybe it was for the best,” he said, sounding tired. “I thought when the girls found her, they’d know they had to leave. I waited for them to do it. I’m good at waiting.”
He was staring past her, into the woods. Heart pounding, Mary-Lynnette grabbed the opportunity to dart a look at Ash.
Oh, God, he’s not moving at all. And there’s so much blood…. I’ve never seen so much blood….
She twisted her wrists back and forth, trying to find some give in the cords.
“I watched, but they didn’t go away,” Jeremy said. Mary-Lynnette’s eyes jerked back to him. “Instead you came. I heard Mark talking to Jade in the garden. She said she’d decided she was going to like it here. And then…I got mad. I made a noise and they heard me.”
His face was changing. The flesh was actually moving in front of Mary-Lynnette’s eyes. His cheekbones were broadening, his nose and mouth jutting. Hair was creeping between his eyebrows, turning them into a straight bar. She could see individual coarse hairs sprouting, dark against pale skin.
I’m going to be sick….
“What’s wrong, Mary-Lynnette?” He got up and she saw that his body was changing, too. It was still a human body, but it was too thin—stretched out. As if it were just long bones and sinews.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Mary-Lynnette got out in a whisper. She twisted violently at her cords—and felt one hand slide.
That’s it. Now keep him distracted, keep him moving away from Ash….
“Go on,” she said breathlessly. “What happened then?”
“I knew I had to send them a message. I came back the next night for the goat—but you were there again. You ran away from me into the shed.” He moved closer again and the moonlight caught his eyes—and reflected. The pupils shone greenish-orange. Mary-Lynnette could only stare.
That shadow in the clearing—those eyes I saw. Not a coyote. Him. He was following us everywhere.
The very thought made her skin creep. But there was another thought that was worse—the picture of him killing the goat. Doing it carefully, methodically—as a message.
