Night World - The Chosen Part 6

"I don't know, and I can't run anymore!" The girl staggered to a halt and bent double, hands on her knees, trying to get her breath back. "My legs. . . are just like jelly."

It was no use, Rashel realized in dismay. She couldn't expect this bit of blo nd fluff to out-sprint a vampire. But if they stopped here in the open, they were dead. She cast a desperate look around.

Then she saw it. A Bostonian tradition-an abandoned car. In this city, if yo u got tired of your car you just junked it on the nearest embankment. Rashel blessed the unknown benefactor who'd left this one. Now, if only they could get in. ...

"This way!" She didn't wait for the girl to protest, but grabbed her and dra gged her. "Come on, you can do it! Make it to that car and you don't have to run anymore."

The words seemed to inspire the girl into a last effort. They reached the c ar and Rashel saw that one of the back windows was broken out cleanly.

"In!"

The girl was small-boned and went through the window easily. Rashel dove a fter her. Then she shoved her down into the leg s.p.a.ce in front of the seat and hissed, "Don't make a sound."

She lay tensely, listening. She barely had time to breathe twice before she he ard footsteps.

Soft footsteps, stealthy as a prowling tiger's. Vampire footsteps. Rashel hel d her breath and waited.

Closer, closer . . . Rashel could feel the other girl shaking. She watched the dark ceiling of the car and tried to plan a defense if they were caught.

The footsteps were right outside now. She heard the grate of gla.s.s not ten fe et from the car door.

Just please don't let them have a werewolf with them, she thought. Vampires might see and hear better than humans, but a werewolf could sniff its prey o ut. It couldn't possibly miss the smell of humans in the car.

Outside, the footsteps paused, and Rashel's heart sank. Eyes open, she silen tly put her hand on her sword.

And then she heard the footsteps moving quickly-away. She listened as they faded, keeping utterly still. Then she kept still some more, while she coun ted to two hundred.

Then, very carefully, she sat up and looked around.

No sight or sound of vampires.

"Can I please get up now?" came a small whimpering voice from the floor.

"If you keep quiet," Rashel whispered. "They still may be somewhere nearby . We're going to have to get to my car without them catching us."

"Anything, as long as I don't have to run," the girl said plaintively, emergi ng from the floor more disheveled than ever. "Have you ever tried to run in f our-inch heels?"

"I never wear heels," Rashel murmured, scanning up and down the street. "Ok ay, I'll get out first, then you come through."

She slid out the window feet-first. The girl stuck her head through. "Don't you ever use doors?"

"Sh. Come on," Rashel whispered. She led the way through the dark streets, moving from shadow to shadow. At least the girl could walk softly, she th ought. And she had a sense of humor even in danger. That was rare.Rashel drew a breath of relief when they reached the narrow twisting alley where her Saturn was parked. They weren't safe yet, though. She wanted to g et the blond girl out of Mission Hill.

"Where do you live?" she said, as she started the engine. When there was no answer, she turned. The girl was staring at her with open uneasiness.

"Uh, how come you're dressed like that? And who are you, anyway? I mean, I'm glad you saved me-but I don't understand anything."

Rashel hesitated. She needed information from this girl, and that was going to take time-and trust. With sudden decision she unwound her scarf, one-hand ed, until her face was exposed. "Like I said, I'm a friend. But first just t ell me: do you know what kind of people had you in that truck?"

The girl turned away. She was already shivering with cold; now she shivered harder. "They weren't people. They were . . . ugh."

"Then you do know. Well, I'm one of the people that hunts down that kind o f people."

The girl looked from Rashel's face to the sheathed sword that rested betw een them. Her jaw dropped. "Oh, my G.o.d! You're Buffy the Vampire Slayer!"

"Huh? Oh." Rashel had missed the movie. "Right. Actually, you can call me R ashel. And you're . . . ?"

"Daphne Childs. And I live in Somerville, but I don't want to go home."

"Well, that's fine, because I want to talk to you. Let's find a Dunkin' Donuts.

Rashel found one outside of Boston, a safe one she knew had no Night World connections. She pulled a coat on over her black ninja outfit and lent Daph ne a spare sweater from the trunk of her car. Then they went inside and ord ered jelly sticks and hot chocolate.

"Now," Rashel said. "Tell me what happened. How did you end up in that tr uck?"

Daphne cupped her hands around her hot chocolate. "It was all so horrible ...

"I know." Rashel tried to make her voice soothing. She hadn't had much pract ice at it. "Try to tell me anyway. Start at the beginning."

"Okay, well, it started at the Crypt."

"Uh, as in 'Tales from the . . .'? Or as in the Old Burial Ground?"

"As in the club on Prentiss Street. It's this underground club, and I mean r eally underground. I mean, n.o.body seems to know about it except the people w ho go there, and they're all our age. Sixteen or seventeen. I never see any adults, not even DJs."

"Go on." Rashel was listening intently. The Night People had clubs, usual ly carefully hidden from humans. Could Daphne have wandered into one?

"Well. It's extremely and seriously cool-or at least that's what I thought. They have some amazing music. I mean, it's beyond doom, it's beyond goth, it 's sort of like void rock. Just listening to it makes you go all weird and b odiless. And the whole place is decorated like this post-apocalypse wastelan d. Or maybe like the underworld. . . ." Daphne stared off into the distance.

Her eyes, a very deep cornflower blue under heavy lashes, looked wistful an d almost hypnotized.

Rashel poked her and chocolate slopped onto the table. "Reminisce about it later. What kind of people were in the club? Vampires?"

"Oh, no." Daphne looked shocked. "Just regular kids. I know some from my s chool. And there's lots of runaways, I guess. Street kids, you know."

Rashel blinked. "Runaways . . ."

"Yeah. They're mostly very cool, except the ones who do drugs. Those are spooky."

An illegal club full of runaway kids, some of whom would probably do anythi ng for drugs. Rashel could feel her skin tingling.

I think I've stumbled onto something big.

"Anyway," Daphne was going on, "I'd been going there for about three we eks, you know, whenever I could get away from home-"

"You didn't tell your parents about it," Rashel guessed flatly.

"Are you joking? It's not a place you tell parents about. Anyway, my family doesn't care where I go. I've got four sisters and two brothers and my mom and my step-dad are getting divorced . . . they don't even notice when I'm gone." "Go on," Rashel said grimly. "Well, there was this guy." Daphne's c ornflower eyes looked wistful again. "This guy who was really gorgeous, and really mysterious, and really just-just different from anybody I ever met.

And I thought he was maybe interested in me, because I saw him looking at me once or twice, so I sort of joined the girls who were always hanging aro und him. We used to talk about weird things."

"Like?"

"Oh, like surrendering yourself to the darkness and stuff. It was like the m usic, you know-we were all really into death. Like what would be the most ho rrible way to die, what would be the most awful torture you could live throu gh, what you look like when you're in your grave. Stuff like that."

"For G.o.d's sake, why?" Rashel couldn't disguise her revulsion.

"I don't know." All at once, Daphne looked small and sad. "I guess because m ost of us felt life was pretty rotten. So you kind of face things, you know, to try to get used to them. You probably don't understand," she added, grim acing.

Rashel did understand. With a sudden shock, she understood completely. The se kids were scared and depressed and worried about the future. They had t o do something to deaden the pain . . . even if that meant embracing pain.

They escaped one darkness by going into another.And am I any different? I mean, this obsession I've got with vampires . . . i t's not exactly what you'd call normal and healthy. I spend my whole life dea ling with death.

"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice came out more gentle than when she'd b een trying to soothe Daphne before. Awkwardly, she patted the other girl's arm once. "I shouldn't have yelled. And I do understand, actually. Please g o on."

"Well." Daphne still looked defensive. "Some of the girls would write poet ry about dying ... and some of them would p.r.i.c.k themselves with pins and l ick the blood off. They said they were vampires, you know. Just pretending ." She glanced warily at Rashel.

Rashel simply nodded.

"And so I talked the same way, and did the same stuff. And this guy Quinn just seemed to love it-hey, look out!" Daphne jerked back to avoid a wave of hot chocolate. Rashel's sudden movement had knocked her cup over.

Oh, G.o.d, what is wrong with me? Rashel thought. She said, "Sorry," through her teeth, grabbing for a wad of napkins.

She should have been expecting it. She had been expecting it; she knew tha t Quinn must be involved in this. But somehow the mention of his name had knocked the props from under her. She hadn't been able to control her reac tion.

"So," she said, still through her teeth, "the gorgeous mysterious guy was n amed Quinn."

"Yeah." Daphne wiped chocolate off her arm. "And I was starting to think he really liked me. He told me to come to the club last Sunday and to meet hi m alone in the parking lot."

"And you did." Oh, I am going to kill him so dead, Rashel thought.

"Sure. I dressed up . . ." Daphne looked down at her bedraggled outfit. "Well , this did look terrific once. So I met him and we went to his car. And then he told me that he'd chosen me. I was so happy I almost fainted. I thought he meant for his girlfriend. And then . . ." Daphne trailed off again. For the first time since she'd begun the story, she looked frightened. "Then he asked me if I really wanted to surrender to the darkness. He made it sound so roma ntic."

"I bet," Rashel said. She rested her head on her hand. She could see it al l now, and it was the perfect scam. Quinn checked the girls out, discovere d which would be missed and which wouldn't. He kidnapped them from the par king lot so that no one saw them, no one even connected them with the Cryp t. Who would notice or care that certain girls stopped showing up? Girls w ould always be coming and going.

And there had been nothing in the newspaper because the daylight world didn'

t realize that girls were being taken. There probably wasn't even a struggle during the abduction, because these girls were willing to go-in the beginni ng.

"It must have been a shock," Rashel said dryly, "to find out that there really was a darkness to surrender to."

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, it was. But I didn't actually find that out then. I just sa id, sure, I wanted to. I mean, I'd have said the same thing if he asked me d id I really want to watch Lawrence Welk reruns with him. He was that gorgeou s. And he was looking at me in this totally soulful way, and I thought he wa s going to kiss me. And then ... I fell asleep." Daphne frowned at her paper cup.

"No, you didn't."

"I did. I know it sounds crazy, but I fell asleep and when I woke up I was i n this place, this little office in this warehouse. And I was on this iron c ot with this pathetic lumpy mattress, and I was chained down. I had chains o n my ankles, just like people in jail. And Quinn was gone, and there were tw o other girls chained to other cots." Without warning, Daphne began to cry.

Rashel handed her a napkin, feeling uncomfortable. "Were the girls from the Crypt, too?"

Daphne sniffed. "I don't know. They might have been. But they wouldn't talk t o me. They were, like, in a trance. They just lay there and stared at the cei ling."

"But you weren't in a trance," Rashel said thoughtfully. "Somehow you woke up from the mind control. You must be resistant like me."

"I don't know anything about mind control. But I was so scared I pretended t o be like the other girls when this guy came to bring us food and take us to the bathroom. I just stared straight ahead like them. I thought maybe that way I would get a chance to escape."

"Smart girl," Rashel said. "And the guy-was it Quinn?"

"No. I never saw Quinn again. It was this blond guy named Ivan from the clu b; I called him Ivan the Terrible. And there was a girl who brought us food sometimes-I don't know her name, but I used to see her at the club, too. T hey were like Quinn; they each had their own little group, you know."

At least two others besides Quinn, Rashel thought. Probably more.

"They didn't hurt us or anything, and the office was heated, and the food w as okay-but I was so scared," Daphne said. "I didn't understand what was go ing on at all. I didn't know where Quinn was, or how I'd gotten there, or w hat they were going to do with us." She swallowed.

Rashel didn't understand that last either. What were the vampires doing with the girls in the warehouse? Obviously not killing them out of hand.

"And then last night ..." Daphne's voice wobbled and she stopped to breathe.

"Last night Ivan brought this new girl in. He carried her in and put her on a cot. And . . . and . . . then he bit her. He bit her on the neck. But it wasn't a game." The cornflower-blue eyes stared into the distance, wide with rem embered horror. "He really bit her. And blood came out and he drank it. And w hen he lifted his head up I saw his teeth." She started to hyperventilate.

"It's okay. You're safe now," Rashel said.

"I didn't know! I didn't know those things were real! I thought it was all just . . ." Daphne shook her head. "I didn't know," she said softly.

"Okay. I know it's a big shock. But you've been dealing with it really well.

You managed to get away from the truck, didn't you? Tell me about the truck."

"Well-that was tonight. I could tell day from night by looking at this littl e window high up. Ivan and the girl came and took the chains off us and made us all get in the truck. And then I was really scared-I didn't know where t hey were taking us, but I heard something about a boat. And I knew wherever it was, I didn't want to go."

"I think you're right about that."

Daphne took another breath. "So I watched the way Ivan shut the door of the truck. He was in back with us. And when he was looking the other way, I so rt of jumped at the door and got it open. And then I just fell out. And the n I ran-I didn't know which way to go, but I knew I had to get away from th em. And then I saw you. And ... I guess you saved my life." She considered.

"Uh, I don't know if I remembered to say thank you."

Rashel made a gesture of dismissal. "No problem. You saved yourself, really.

" She frowned, staring at a drop of chocolate on the plastic table without s eeing it.

"Well. I am grateful. Whatever they were going to do to me, I think it mus t have been pretty awful." A pause, then she said, "Uh, Rashel? Do you kno w what they were going to do to me?"

"Hm? Oh." Rashel nodded slowly, looking up from the table. "Yes, I think s o."