Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate

by L. J. Smith

  It was like a giant chimney, except that the walls were nowhere near that close to each other. And nowhere near irregular enough to climb.

  No human could get out this way.

  I suppose they had some sort of elevator or something when the mine was working, Hannah thought dazedly. She was sick and numb. She couldn’t believe that her triumph had turned into this.

  For a while she shouted, staring up at that square of infuriating, unattainable sunlight. When she got so hoarse she could scarcely hear herself anymore, she admitted that it was no use.

  Nobody is going to come and rescue you. Okay. So you have to rescue yourself.

  But all I’ve got is rocks…. No.

  No, I’m free now. I can move around. I can get to the scaffolding.

  I’ve got rocks—and wood.

  Hannah stood paralyzed for a second, then she clutched the lantern to her chest and went running back down the passageway.

  When she got to her cavern, she examined the scaffolding excitedly.

  Yes. Some of this wood is still good. It’s old, but it’s hard. I can work with this.

  This time, she made a real hand-ax, taking special care to fashion the tip, making it thin and straight-edged and sharp. The final tool was roughly triangular and heavy. It fit comfortably in her hand. Hana would have been proud of it.

  Then she used the ax to chop off a length of wood from the creaking, groaning scaffolding. All the while she did it she whistled softly, hoping she wasn’t going to bring the whole structure down on her head.

  She used the ax to shape the length of wood, too, making it round, about as thick as her thumb and as long as her forearm. She knocked off a quartz scraper to do the finer shaping.

  Finally she used a flake to hone one end of the stick to a point. She ground it back and forth against an outcrop of gritty stone to bring it to maximum smoothness and sharpness.

  Then she held out the finished tool and admired it.

  She had a stake. A very good stake.

  And Maya was going to get a surprise.

  Hannah sat down, turned the lantern off to conserve the battery, and began to wait.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was a very long time before Hannah heard footsteps again.

  She distracted herself during the long wait by whistling songs under her breath and thinking about the people she loved.

  Her mother. Her mother didn’t even miss her yet, didn’t know she was gone. But by tomorrow she would. Tomorrow was May first, Hannah’s birthday, and Chess would give her mother the letter.

  Chess, of course. Hannah wished now that she’d spent more time saying goodbye to Chess, that she’d explained things better. Chess would have been fascinated. And she had a right to know she was an Old Soul, too.

  Paul Winfield. That was strange—she’d only known him a week. But he’d tried to help her. And at this moment, he knew more about Hannah Snow than anyone else in Montana.

  I hope he doesn’t start smoking again if he finds out I’m dead.

  Because that was probably how she would end up. Hannah had no illusions about that. She had a weapon—but so did Maya, and Maya was much faster and stronger. She was no match for Maya under the best of circumstances, much less when she was weak and feverish. The best she could hope for was to get Maya to kill her while she was still human.

  She thought about the Circle Daybreak members. They were good people. She was sorry she wouldn’t have the chance to know them better, to help them. They were doing something important, something she instinctively sensed was necessary right now.

  And she thought about Thierry.

  He’ll have to go wandering again, I guess. It’s too bad. He hasn’t had a very happy life. I was starting to think I could take that sadness out of his eyes….

  When she heard a noise at last, she thought it might be her imagination. She held her breath.

  No. It’s footsteps. Getting closer.

  She’s coming.

  Hannah shifted position. She had stationed herself near the mouth of the cavern; now she took a deep breath and eased herself into a crouch. She wiped her sweaty right palm on her jeans and got a better grip on her stake.

  She figured that Maya would shine the flashlight toward the pole where Hannah had been tied, then maybe take a few steps farther inside the cavern, trying to see what was going on.

  And then I’ll do it. I’ll come out of the darkness behind her. Jump and skewer her through the back. But I’ve got to time it right.

  She held her breath as she saw light outside the mouth of the cavern. Her greatest fear was that Maya would hear her.

  Quiet… quiet…

  The light came closer. Hannah watched it, not moving. But her brain was clicking along in surprise. It wasn’t the slanted, focused beam of a flashlight. It was the more diffuse pool of light from a lantern.

  She’s brought another one. But that means…

  Maya was walking in.

  Walking quickly—and not pausing. She couldn’t shine the light onto the pole yet. And she didn’t seem anxious to—apparently it didn’t occur to her that she needed to check on Hannah. She was that confident.

  Hannah cursed mentally. She’s going too far—she’s out of range. Get up!

  Her plan in ruins, she flexed her knees and stood. She heard a crack in her knee joint that sounded as loud as a gunshot.

  But Maya didn’t stop. She kept going. She was almost at the pole.

  As silently as she could, Hannah headed across the cavern. All Maya had to do was turn around to see her.

  Maya was at the pole. She was stopping. She was looking from side to side.

  Hannah was behind her.

  Now.

  Now was the time. Hannah’s muscles could feel how she had to stab, to throw her weight behind the thrust so that the stake went in under Maya’s left shoulder blade. She knew how to do it….

  But she couldn’t.

  She couldn’t stab somebody in the back. Somebody who wasn’t menacing her at the moment, who didn’t even know they were in danger.

  Oh, my God! Don’t be stupid! Do it!

  Oh, my Goddess! a voice echoed back in her head. You’re not a killer. This isn’t even self-defense!

  Frustrated almost to the point of hysteria, Hannah heard herself let out a breath. It was wet. She was crying.

  Her arm drooped. Her muscles collapsed. She wasn’t doing it. She couldn’t do it.

  Maya slowly turned around.

  She looked both beautiful and eerie in the lantern light. She surveyed Hannah up and down, looking in particular at the drooping stake.

  Then she looked at Hannah’s face.

  “You’re the strangest girl,” she said, in what seemed to be genuine bewilderment. “Why didn’t you do it? You were smart enough to get yourself out and make yourself a weapon. Why didn’t you have the guts to finish it?”

  Hannah was asking herself the same thing. Only with more expletives.

  I am going to die now, she thought. And maybe die for good—because I don’t have guts. Because I couldn’t kill somebody I know is completely evil and completely determined to kill me.

  That’s not ethics. That’s stupid.

  “I suppose it’s that Egyptian temple training,” Maya was saying. “Or maybe the life when you were a Buddhist—do you remember that? Or maybe you’re just weak.”

  And a victim. I’ve spent a couple thousand years being a victim—yours. I guess I’ve got my part down perfect by now.

  “Oh, well. It doesn’t really matter why,” Maya said. “It all comes down to the same thing in the end. Now. Let’s get this over with.”

  Hannah stared at her, breathing hard, feeling like a rabbit looking at a headlight.

  Nobody should live as a victim. Every creature has a right to fight for its life.

  But she couldn’t seem to get her muscles to move anymore. She was just too tired. Every part of her hurt, from her throbbing head to her raw fingertips to her bruised and achi
ng feet.

  Maya was smiling, fixing her with eyes that shifted from lapis-lazuli blue to glacier green.

  “Be a good girl, now,” she crooned.

  I don’t want to be a good girl….

  Maya reached for her with long arms.

  “Don’t touch her!” Thierry said from the cavern mouth.

  Hannah’s head jerked sideways. She stared at the new pool of light on the other side of the cave. For the first few seconds she thought she was hallucinating.

  But, no. He was there. Thierry was standing there with a lantern of his own, tall and almost shimmering with coiled tension, like a predator ready to spring.

  The problem was that he was too far away. And Maya was too fast. In the same instant that it took Hannah to make her brain believe her eyes, Maya was moving. In one swift step, she was behind Hannah, with her hands around Hannah’s throat.

  “Stay where you are,” she said. “Or I’ll break her little neck.”

  Hannah knew she could do it. She could feel the iron strength in Maya’s hands. Maya didn’t need a weapon.

  Thierry put the lantern down and raised his empty hands. “I’m staying,” he said quietly.

  “And tell whoever else you’ve got in that tunnel to go back. All the way back. If I see another person, I’ll kill her.”

  Without turning, Thierry shouted. “Go back to the entrance. All of you.” Then he looked at Hannah. “Are you all right?”

  Hannah couldn’t nod. Maya’s grip was so tight that she could barely say, “Yes.” But she could look at him, and she could see his eyes.

  She knew, in that moment, that all her fears about him not wanting her anymore were groundless. He loved her. She had never seen such open love and concern in anyone’s face before.

  More, they understood each other. They didn’t need any words. It was the end of misunderstandings and mistrust. For perhaps the first time since she had been Hana of the Three Rivers, Hannah trusted him without reservation.

  They were in accord.

  And neither of them wanted this to end with a death.

  When Thierry took his eyes from Hannah’s, it was to look at Maya and say, “It’s over, now. You have to realize that. I’ve got twenty people down here, and another twenty on the surface waiting.” His voice became softer and more deliberate. “But I give you my word, you can walk out of here right now, Maya. Nobody will touch you. All you have to do is let Hannah go first.”

  “Together,” Hannah said, coughing as Maya’s hands tightened, cutting off her breath. She gasped and finished, “We go out together, Thierry.”

  Thierry nodded and looked at Maya. He was holding his hand out now, like someone trying to coax a frightened child. “Just let her go,” he said softly.

  Maya laughed.

  It was an unnatural sound, and it made Hannah’s skin crawl. Nothing sane made a noise like that.

  “But that way, I won’t win,” Maya said, almost pleasantly.

  “You can’t win anyway,” Thierry said quietly. “Even if you kill her, she’ll still be alive—”

  “Not if I make her a vampire first,” Maya interrupted.

  But Thierry was shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.” His voice was still quiet, but it was filled with the authority of absolute conviction, a kind of bedrock certainty that held even Hannah mesmerized.

  “Even if you kill her, she’ll still be alive—here.” He tapped his chest. “In me. I keep her here. She’s part of me. So until you kill me, you can’t really kill her. And you can’t win. It’s that simple.”

  There was a silence. Hannah’s own heart was twisted with the force of her love for him. Her eyes were full.

  She could hear Maya breathing, and the sound was ragged. She thought that the pressure of Maya’s hands was infinitesimally less.

  “I could kill you both,” Maya said at last in a grating voice.

  Thierry lifted his shoulders and dropped them in a gesture too sad to be a shrug. “But how can you win when the people you hate aren’t there to see it?”

  It sounded insane—but it was true. Hannah could feel it hit Maya like a well-thrown javelin. If Maya couldn’t have Thierry as her prize, if she couldn’t even make him suffer, what was the point? Where was the victory?

  “Let’s stop the cycle right here,” Thierry said softly. “Let her go.”

  He was so gentle, and so reasonable, and so tired-sounding. Hannah didn’t see how anyone could resist him. But she was still surprised at what happened next.

  Slowly, very slowly, the hands around her neck loosened their grip. Maya stepped away.

  Hannah sucked in a deep breath. She wanted to run to Thierry, but she was afraid to do anything to unbalance the delicate stalemate in the cavern. Besides, her knees were wobbly.

  Maya was moving around her, taking a step or two in front of her, facing Thierry directly.

  “I loved you,” she said. There was a sound in her voice Hannah had never heard before, a quaver. “Why didn’t you ever understand that?”

  Thierry shook his head. “Because it’s not true. You never loved me. You wanted me. Mostly because you couldn’t have me.”

  There was a silence then as they stood looking at each other. Not because they understood each other too well for words, Hannah thought. Because they would never understand each other. They had nothing to say.

  The silence stretched on and on—and then Maya collapsed.

  She didn’t fall down. But she might as well have. Hannah saw the life go out of her—the hope. The energy that had kept Maya vibrant and sparkling after thousands of years. It had all come from her need to win… and now she knew she’d lost.

  She was defeated.

  “Come on, Hannah,” Thierry said quietly. “Let’s go.” Then he turned to shout back into the tunnel behind him. “Clear the way. We’re all coming out.”

  That was when it happened.

  Maya had been standing slumped, her head down, her eyes on the ground.

  Or on her backpack.

  And now, as Thierry turned away, she flashed one glance at him and then moved as fast as a striking snake. She grabbed the black stake and held it horizontally, her arm drawn back.

  Hannah recognized the posture instantly. As Hana of the Three Rivers she’d seen hunters throw spears all the time.

  “Game over,” Maya whispered.

  Hannah had a fraction of a second to act—and no time to consider. All she thought was, No.

  With her whole weight behind the thrust, she lunged at Maya. Stake first.

  The sharp wooden point went in just under Maya’s shoulder blade. She staggered, off balance, her throw ruined. The black stake went skittering across the rough stone floor.

  Hannah was off balance, too. She was falling. Maya was falling. But it all seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  I’ve killed her.

  There was no triumph in the thought. Only a sort of hushed certainty.

  When the slow-motion feeling ended, she found herself the way anybody finds themself after a fall. On the ground and surprised. Except that Maya was underneath her, with a stake protruding from her back.

  Hannah’s first frantic thought was to get a doctor. She’d never seen someone this badly hurt before—not in this life. There was blood seeping out of Maya’s back around the makeshift stake. It had gone in very deep, the wood piercing vampire flesh like razor-sharp steel through a human.

  Thierry was beside her. Kneeling, pulling Hannah slightly away from Maya’s prone form, as if she might still be dangerous.

  Hannah reached for him at the same time, and their hands met, intertwined. She held on tight, feeling a rush of warmth and comfort from his presence.

  Then Thierry gently turned Maya onto her side.

  Hair was falling across Maya’s face like a black waterfall. Her skin was chalky white and her eyes were wide open. But she was laughing.

  Laughing.

  She looked at Hannah and laughed. In a thick choking voice, she gasp
ed. “You had guts—after all.”

  Hannah whispered, “Can we do anything for her?”

  Thierry shook his head.

  Then it was terrible. Maya’s laugh turned into a gurgle. A trickle of blood ran out of the side of her mouth. Her body jerked. Her eyes stared. And then, finally, she was still.

  Hannah felt her own breath sigh out.

  She’s dead. I killed her. I killed someone.

  Every creature has the right to fight for its life—or its loved ones.

  Thierry said softly, “The cycle is broken.”

  Then he let Maya’s shoulder go and her body slumped down again. She seemed smaller now, shrunken. After a moment Hannah realized it wasn’t an illusion. Maya was doing what all vampires do in the movies. She was falling in on herself, her tissues collapsing, muscle and flesh shriveling. The one hand Hannah could see seemed to be wasting away and hardening at the same time. The skin became yellow and leathery, showing the form of the tendons underneath.

  In the end, Maya was just a leather sack full of bones.

  Hannah swallowed and shut her eyes.

  “Are you all right? Let me look at you.” Thierry was holding her, examining her. Then when Hannah met his eyes, he looked at her long and searchingly and said with a different meaning, “Are you all right?”

  Hannah understood. She looked at Maya and then back at him.

  “I’m not proud of it,” she said slowly. “But I’m not sorry, either. It just—had to be done.” She thought another moment, then said, getting out each word separately, “I refuse to be… a victim… anymore.”

  Thierry tightened his arm around her. “I’m proud of you,” he said. Then he added, “Let’s go. We need to get you to a healer.”

  They walked back through the narrow passageway, which was no longer dark because Thierry’s people had placed lanterns every few feet. At the end of the passage, in the room with the vertical shaft, they had set up some sort of rope and pulley.

  Lupe was there, and Nilsson, and the rest of the CIA group. So were Rashel and Quinn. The fighters, Hannah thought. Everyone called and laughed and patted her when she came in with Thierry.