Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate

by L. J. Smith

  It had been the same with the notes—she’d never told about finding them. For all her mom knew, Hannah’s only problem was bad dreams.

  “So how did it go tonight?” her mother asked now, eye still to the microscope. “That Dr. Winfield is so young—I hope he’s not too inexperienced.”

  Last chance. Take it or lose it. “Uh, it went fine,” Hannah said weakly.

  “That’s good. There’s chicken in the crockpot. I’ll be out in a little while; I just want to finish this.”

  “Okay. Great. Thanks.” Hannah turned and stumbled out, completely frustrated with herself.

  You know Mom won’t really be awful, she scolded herself as she fished a piece of chicken out of the crockpot. So tell her. Or call Chess and tell her. They’ll make things better. They’ll tell you how impossible all this stuff about vampires and past lives is….

  Yes, and that’s the problem.

  Hannah sat frozen, holding a fork with a bite of chicken on it motionless in front of her.

  I don’t believe in vampires or reincarnation. But I know what I saw. I know things about Hana… things that weren’t even in the story I told Paul. I know she wore a tunic and leggings of roe deer hide. I know she ate wild cattle and wild boar and salmon and hazelnuts. I know she made tools out of elk antler and deer bone and flint…. God, I could pick up a flint cobble and knock off a set of blades and scrapers right now. I know I could. I can feel how to in my hands.

  She put the fork down and looked at her hands. They were shaking slightly.

  And I know she had a beautiful singing voice, a voice like crystal….

  Like the crystal voice in my mind.

  So what do I do when they tell me it’s impossible? Argue with them? Then I’ll really be crazy, like those people in institutions who think they’re Napoleon or Cleopatra.

  God, I hope I haven’t been Cleopatra.

  Half laughing and half crying, she put her face in her hands.

  And what about him?

  The blond stranger with the bottomless eyes. The guy Hana didn’t have a name for, but Hannah knew as Thierry.

  If the rest of it is real, what about him?

  He’s the one I’m afraid of, Hannah thought. But he didn’t seem so bad. Dangerous, but not evil. So why do I think of him as evil?

  And why do I want him anyway?

  Because she did want him. She remembered the feelings of Hana standing next to the stranger in the moonlight. Confusion… fear… and attraction. That magnetism between them. The extraordinary things that happened when he touched her hand.

  He came to the Three Rivers and turned her life upside down…. The Three Rivers. Oh, God—why didn’t I think of that before? The note. One of the notes said “Remember the Three Rivers.”

  Okay. So I’ve remembered it. So what now?

  She had no idea. Maybe she was supposed to understand everything now, and know what to do… but she didn’t. She was more confused than ever.

  Of course, a tiny voice like a cool dark wind in her brain said, you didn’t remember all of it yet. Did you? Paul woke you up before you got to the end.

  Shut up, Hannah told the voice.

  But she couldn’t stop thinking. All night she was restless, moving from one room to another, avoiding her mother’s questions. And even after her mother went to bed, Hannah found herself wandering aimlessly through the house, straightening things, picking up books and putting them down again.

  I’ve got to sleep. That’s the only thing that will help me feel better, she thought. But she couldn’t make herself sit, much less lie down.

  Maybe I need some air.

  It was a strange thought. She’d never actually felt the need to go outside for the sole purpose of breathing fresh air—in Montana you did that all day long. But there was something pulling at her, drawing her to go outside. It was like a compulsion and she couldn’t resist.

  I’ll just go on the back porch. Of course there’s nothing to be scared of out there. And if I go outside, then I’ll prove there isn’t, and then I can go to sleep.

  Without stopping to consider the logic of this, she opened the back door.

  It was a beautiful night. The moon threw a silver glow over everything and the horizon seemed very far away. Hannah’s backyard blended into the wild bluestem and pine grass of the prairie. The wind carried the clean pungent smell of sage.

  We’ll have spring flowers soon, Hannah thought. Asters and bluebells and little golden buttercups. Everything will be green for a while. Spring’s a time for life, not death.

  And I was right to come out. I feel more relaxed now. I can go back inside and lie down….

  It was at that moment that she realized she was being watched.

  It was the same feeling she’d been having for weeks, the feeling that there were eyes in the darkness and they were fixed on her. Chills of adrenaline ran through Hannah’s body.

  Don’t panic, she told herself. It’s just a feeling. There’s probably nothing out here.

  She took a slow step backward toward the door. She didn’t want to move too quickly. She had the irrational certainty that if she turned and ran, whatever was watching her would spring out and get her before she got the door open.

  At the same time she edged backward, her eyes and ears were straining so hard that she saw gray spots and she heard a thin ringing. She was trying, desperately, to catch some sign of movement, some sound. But everything was still and the only noises were the normal distant noises of the outdoors.

  Then she saw the shadow.

  Black against the lighter blackness of the night, it was moving among the bluestem grass. And it was big. Tall. Not a cat or other small animal. Big as a person.

  It was coming toward her.

  Hannah thought she might faint.

  Don’t be ridiculous, a sharp voice in her head told her. Get inside. You’re standing here in the light from the windows; you’re a perfect target. Get inside fast and lock the door.

  Hannah whirled, and knew even as she did it that she wouldn’t be fast enough. It was going to jump at her exposed back. It was going to…

  “Wait,” came a voice out of the darkness. “Please. Wait.”

  A male voice. Unfamiliar. But it seemed to grab Hannah and hold her still.

  “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  Runrunrunrun! Hannah’s mind told her.

  Very slowly, one hand on the doorknob, she turned around.

  She watched the dark figure coming out of the shadows to her. She didn’t try to get away again. She had a dizzying feeling that fate had caught up with her.

  The ground sloped, so the light from the house windows showed her his boots first, then the legs of his jeans. Normal walking boots like any Montanan might wear. Ordinary jeans—long legs. He was tall. Then the light showed his shirt, which was an ordinary T-shirt, a little cold to be walking around at night in, but nothing startling. And then his shoulders, which were nice ones.

  Then, as he stepped to the base of the porch, she saw his face.

  He looked better than when she had seen him last. His white-blond hair wasn’t crazily messed up; it fell neatly over his forehead. He wasn’t splattered with mud and his eyes weren’t wild. They were dark and so endlessly sad that it was like a knife in the heart just to see him.

  But it was unmistakably the boy from her hypnosis session.

  “Oh, God,” Hannah said. “Oh, God.” Her knees were giving out.

  It’s real. It’s real. He’s real and that means… it’s all true.

  “Oh, God.” She was trembling violently and she had to put pressure on her knees to keep standing. The world was changing around her, and it was the most disorienting thing she’d ever experienced. It was as if the fabric of her universe was actually moving—pulsing and shifting to accommodate the new truths.

  Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  “Are you all right?” The stranger moved toward her and Hannah recoiled instinctively.

>   “Don’t touch me!” she gasped, and at the same moment her legs gave out. She slid to the floor of the porch and stared at the boy whose face was now approximately level with hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he almost whispered. “I know what you’re going through. You’re just realizing now, aren’t you?”

  Hannah said, whispering to herself, “It’s all true.”

  “Yes.” The dark eyes were so sad.

  “It’s… I’ve had past lives.”

  “Yes.” He squatted on the ground, looking down as if he couldn’t keep staring at her face anymore. He picked up a pebble, examined it. Hannah noticed that his fingers were long and sensitive-looking.

  “You’re an Old Soul,” he said quietly. “You’ve had lots of lives.”

  “I was Hana of the Three Rivers.”

  His fingers stopped rolling the pebble. “Yes.”

  “And you’re Thierry. And you’re a…”

  He didn’t look up. “Go on. Say it.”

  Hannah couldn’t. Her voice wouldn’t form the word.

  The stranger—Thierry—said it for her. “Vampires are real.” A glance from those unfathomable eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Hannah breathed and looked down at him. But the world had finished its reshaping. Her mind was beginning to work again.

  At least I know I’m not crazy, she thought. That’s some consolation. It’s the universe that’s insane, not me.

  And now I have to deal with it—somehow.

  She said quietly, “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “God—no!” He stood up fast, uncoiling. Shock was naked on his face. “You don’t understand. I would never hurt you. I…” He broke off. “It’s hard to know where to begin.”

  Hannah sat silently, while he looked around the porch for inspiration. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. She’d told Paul that this boy had killed her, kept killing her. But his look of shock had been so genuine—as if she’d hurt him terribly by even suggesting it.

  “I suppose I should start by explaining exactly what I am,” he said. “And what I’ve done. I made you come outside tonight. I influenced you. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to talk to you.”

  “Influenced me?”

  It’s a mental thing. I can also just communicate this way. It was his voice, but his lips weren’t moving.

  And it was the same voice she’d heard at the end of her hypnotic session, the voice that wasn’t Paul’s. The one that had spoken in her head, saying, Hannah, come back. You don’t have to relive this.

  “You were the one who woke me up,” Hannah whispered. “I wouldn’t have come back except for you.”

  “I couldn’t stand to see you hurting like that.”

  Can somebody with his eyes be evil?

  He was obviously a different sort of creature than she was, and every move he made showed the grace of a predator. It reminded her of how the wolves had moved—they had rippled. He did, too, his muscles moving so lightly under his skin. He was unnatural—but beautiful.

  Something struck her. “The wolves. I picked up a silver picture frame to bash them with. Silver.” She looked at him. “Werewolves are real.” At the last moment her voice made it a statement instead of a question.

  “So much is real that you don’t know about. Or that you haven’t remembered yet. You were starting to remember with that shrink. You said I was a Lord of the Night World.”

  The Night World. Just the mention of it sent prickles through Hannah. She could almost remember, but not quite.

  And she knew it was crazy to be kneeling here having this conversation. She was talking to a vampire. A guy who drank blood for a living. A guy whose every gesture showed he was a hunter. And not only a vampire, but the person her subconscious had been warning her about for weeks. Telling her to be afraid, be very afraid.

  So why wasn’t she running? For one thing, she didn’t think her legs would physically support her. And for another—well, somehow she couldn’t stop looking at him.

  “One of the werewolves was mine,” he was saying quietly. “She was here to find you—and protect you. But the other one… Hannah, you have to understand. I’m not the only one looking for you.”

  To protect me. So I was right, Hannah thought. The gray female was on my side. She said, “Who else is looking?”

  “Another Night Person.” He looked away. “Another vampire.”

  “Am I a Night Person?”

  “No. You’re a human.” He said it the way he said everything, as if reminding her of terrible facts he wished he didn’t have to bring up. “Old Souls are just humans who keep coming back.”

  “How many times have I come back?”

  “I… I’d have to think about it. Quite a few.”

  “And have you been with me in all of them?”

  “Any of them I could manage.”

  “What do the rest of the notes mean?” Hannah had been gathering speed, and now she was shooting questions at him in machine-gun fashion. She thought she was in control, and she hardly noticed the hysterical edge to her own voice. “Why am I telling myself I’ll be dead before I’m seventeen?”

  “Hannah…” He reached out a hand to calm her.

  Hannah’s own hand moved by reflex, coming up to ward his off. And then their fingers touched, bare skin to bare skin, and the world disappeared.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was like being struck by lightning. Hannah felt the current through her body, but it was her mind that was most affected.

  I know you! It was as if she had been standing in a dark landscape, lost and blind, when suddenly a brilliant flash illuminated everything, allowing her to see farther than she’d ever seen before. She was trembling violently, pitching forward even as he fell toward her. Electricity was running through every nerve in her body and she was shaking and shaking, overcome by waves of the purest emotion she’d ever felt.

  Fury.

  “You were supposed to be there!” She got out in a choked gasp. “Where were you?”

  You were supposed to be with me—for so long! You’re part of me, the part I’ve always vaguely missed. You were supposed to be around, helping out, picking me up when I fell down. Watching my back, listening to my stories. Understanding things that I wouldn’t want to tell other people. Loving me when I’m stupid. Giving me something to take care of and be good to, the way the Goddess meant women to do.

  Hannah—

  It was the closest thing to a mental gasp Hannah could imagine, and with it she realized that somehow they were directly connected now. He could hear her thoughts, just as she could hear his.

  Good! she thought, not wasting time to marvel over this. Her mind was raging on.

  You were my flying companion! My playmate! You were my other half of the mysteries! We were supposed to be sacred to each other—and you haven’t been there!

  This last thought she sent squarely toward him. And she felt it hit him, and felt his reaction.

  “I’ve tried!”

  He was horrified… guilt-stricken. But then, Hannah could sense that this was pretty much the usual state for him, so it didn’t affect him quite as much as it might have someone else. And beneath the horror was an astonishment and burgeoning joy that sent a different kind of tingle through her.

  “You do know me, don’t you?” he said quietly. He pushed her back to look at her, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “You remember… Hannah, how much do you remember?”

  Hannah was looking at him, studying him…. Yes, I know that bone structure. And the eyes, especially the eyes. It was like an adopted child discovering a brother or sister and seeing familiar features in an unfamiliar face, tracing each one with wonder and recognition.

  “I remember… that we were meant for each other. That we’re”—she came up with the word slowly—“soulmates.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. Awe was softening his features, changing his eyes. The desperate sadness that seemed so much a part of them was lightening. “So
ulmates. We were destined for each other. We should have been together down the ages.”

  They were supporting each other now, Hannah kneeling on the porch and Thierry holding her with one knee on a step. Their faces were inches apart. Hannah found herself watching his mouth.

  “So what happened?” she whispered.

  In the same tone, without moving back, he whispered, “I screwed up.”

  “Oh.”

  Her initial fury had faded. She could feel him, feel his emotions, sense his thoughts. He was as anguished at their separation as she was. He wanted her. He loved her… adored her. He thought of her the way poets think of the moon and the stars—in ridiculous hyperbole. He actually saw her surrounded by a sort of silvery halo.

  Which was completely silly, but if he wanted to think of her that way—well, Hannah wouldn’t object. It made her want to be very gentle with him.

  And right now she could feel his warm breath. If she leaned forward just an inch her top lip would touch his bottom lip.

  Hannah leaned forward.

  “Wait—” he said.

  That was a mistake, saying it out loud. It moved his lips against hers, turning it from a touch into a kiss.

  And then, for a while, neither of them could resist. They needed each other so desperately, and the kiss was warm and sweet. Hannah was flooded with love and comfort and joy.

  This was meant to be.

  Hannah was dizzy but still capable of thought. I knew life had something wonderful and mysterious to give me. Something I could sense but not see, something that was always just out of reach.

  And here it is. I’m one of the lucky ones—I’ve found it.

  Thierry wasn’t as articulate. All she could hear him think was, Yes.

  Hannah had never been so filled with gratitude. Love spilled from her and into Thierry and back again. The more she gave, the more she got back. It was a cycle, taking them higher and higher.