Night World 1 (34 page)

It was, and so were a lot of other things.

The first sob was hard to get out. So hard that she'd have thought there would be a pause before the next—but, no. There was no pause between that one and the next, or the next or the next. She cried for a long time. And the fire burned itself out and the sparks flew upward and Ash held her all the while.

“
W
ell, she wasn't telling humans anything—but she did defy the authority of the Night World,” Ash said in his most lazy, careless voice.

Quinn said succinctly, “How?”

It was late Monday afternoon and the sun was streaming through the western windows of the Burdock farmhouse. Ash was wearing a brand-new shirt bought at the Briar Creek general store, a turtleneck with long sleeves that covered the almost-healed scars on his throat and arms. His jeans were bleached white, his hair was combed over the scab on the back of his head, and he was playing the scene of his life.

“She knew about a rogue werewolf and didn't tell anybody about him.”

“So she was a traitor. And what did you do?”

Ash shrugged. “Staked her.”

Quinn laughed out loud.

“No, really,” Ash said earnestly, looking into Quinn's face with what he knew were wide, guileless eyes—probably blue. “See?”

Without taking his eyes from Quinn's he whipped a pink-and-green country quilt off the bundle on the couch.

Quinn's eyebrows flew upward.

He stared for a moment at Aunt Opal, who had been cleaned so that you'd never know she'd ever been buried, and who had the picket stake carefully replaced in her chest.

Quinn actually swallowed. It was the first time Ash had ever seen him falter.

“You really did it,” he said. There was reluctant respect in his voice—and definite shock.

You know, Quinn, Ash thought, I don't think you're quite as tough as you pretend. After all, no matter how you try to act like an Elder, you're only eighteen. And you'll
always
be eighteen, and next year maybe I'll be older.

“Well,” Quinn said, blinking rapidly. “Well. Well—I have to hand it to you.”

“Yeah, I just decided the best thing to do was clean up the whole situation. She was getting on, you know.”

Quinn's dark eyes widened fractionally. “I have to admit—I didn't think you were
that
ruthless.”

“You've gotta do what you've gotta do. For the family honor, of course.”

Quinn cleared his throat. “So—what about the werewolf?”

“Oh, I took care of that, too.” Ash meandered over and whipped a brown-and-white quilt off Exhibit B. The wolf was a charred and contorted corpse. It had given Mary-Lynnette hysterics when Ash insisted on pulling it out of the car, and Quinn's nostrils quivered when he looked at it.

“Sorry, it does smell like burnt hair, doesn't it? I got a little sooty myself, keeping him in the fire….”

“You burned him
alive
?”

“Well, it is one of the traditional methods….”

“Just put the blanket back, all right?”

Ash put the blanket back.

“So, you see, everything's taken care of. No humans involved, no extermination necessary.”

“Yes, all right…” Quinn's eyes were still on the quilt. Ash decided the moment was right.

“And by the way, it turns out the girls had a perfectly legitimate reason for coming. They just wanted to learn to hunt. Nothing illegal about that, is there?”

“What? Oh. No.” Quinn glanced at Aunt Opal, then finally looked back at Ash. “So they're coming back now that they've learned it.”

“Well, eventually. They haven't quite learned it yet…so they're staying.”

“They're
staying
?”

“Right. Look, I'm the head of the family on the West Coast, aren't I? And I say they're staying.”

“Ash…”

“It's about time there was a Night World outpost in this area, don't you think? You see what's happened without one. You get families of outlaw werewolves wandering around. Somebody's got to stay here and hold down the fort.”

“Ash…you couldn't
pay
Night People to strand themselves out here. Nothing but animals to feed on, nobody but humans to associate with…”

“Yeah, it's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Besides, wasn't it you who said it's not good living your whole life isolated on an island?”

Quinn stared at him, then said, “Well, I don't think this is much better.”

“Then it serves my sisters right. Maybe in a few years they'll appreciate the island more. Then they can hand the job over to someone else.”

“Ash…no one else is going to
come
here.”

“Well.” With the battle won, and Quinn simply looking dazed and as if he wanted to get back to Los Angeles as fast as possible, Ash allowed himself a small measure of truth.

“I might come visit them someday,” he said.

“He did a beautiful job,” Rowan said that evening. “We heard it all from the kitchen. You would have loved it.”

Mary-Lynnette smiled.

“Quinn can't wait to get away,” Jade said, intertwining her fingers with Mark's.

Kestrel said to Ash, “I'd just like to be around when you explain all this to Dad.”

“That's funny,” Ash said. “I feel just the opposite.”

Everyone laughed—except Mary-Lynnette. The big farm kitchen was warm and bright, but the windows were darkening. She couldn't see anything in the gathering darkness—in the last two days the effects of her blood exchange had faded. Her senses were ordinary human senses again.

“You're sure you won't get in trouble?” she asked Ash.

“No. I'll tell our dad the truth—mostly. That an outlaw werewolf killed Aunt Opal and that I killed the werewolf. And that the girls are better off here, hunting quietly and watching out for other rogues. There's sure to be some record of the Lovett family…. Dad can check out the history all he wants.”

“A whole family of outlaw werewolves,” Kestrel said musingly.

“Of
crazy
werewolves,” Ash said. “They were as dangerous to the Night World as any vampire hunters could be. God knows how long they've been here—long enough for their land to get named Mad Dog Creek.”

“And for people to mistake them for Sasquatch,” Mark said.

Rowan's brown eyes were troubled. “And it was my fault that you didn't know,” she said to Mary-Lynnette. “
I
told you he couldn't be the killer. I'm sorry.”

Mary-Lynnette captured her gaze and held it. “Rowan, you are
not
going to feel guilty for this. You couldn't have realized. He wasn't killing for food like a normal werewolf. He was killing to protect his territory—and to scare us.”

“And it might have worked,” Mark said. “Except that you guys didn't have anywhere else to go.”

Ash looked at Mark, then at his sisters. “I have a question. Is the territory around here going to be enough for
you
?”

“Of course,” Rowan said, with gentle surprise.

“We don't always need to
kill
the animals,” Jade said. “We're getting it down pat now. We can take a little here and a little there. Heck, we can even try the
goat.
”

“I'd rather try Tiggy,” Kestrel said, and for a moment her golden eyes glimmered. Mary-Lynnette didn't say it, but she wondered sometimes about Kestrel. If maybe, someday, Kestrel might need a bigger territory of her own. She was a lot like Jeremy in some ways.

Beautiful, ruthless, single-minded. A true Night Person.

“And what about you?” Ash said, looking at Mark.

“Me? Uh…Well, when you get down to it, I'm kind of a hamburger guy….”

“I tried to take him hunting last night,” Jade interpreted. “You know, just to show him. But he threw up.”

“I didn't actually—”

“Yes, you did,” Jade said calmly and cheerfully. Mark looked away. Mary-Lynnette noticed they didn't stop holding hands.

“So I take it you're not going to become a vampire,” Ash said to Mark.

“Uh, let's just say not any time soon.”

Ash turned to Mary-Lynnette. “And what about the human end of things? Do we have that taken care of?”

“Well, I know everything that's going on in town—by which I mean that I talked with Bunny Marten this morning. I'm so glad she's not a vampire, incidentally….”

Mark said, “I always knew it.”

“Anyway, here's the quick version.” Mary-Lynnette held up a finger. “One, everybody knows that Jeremy is gone—his boss at the gas station missed him yesterday and went up to check the trailer. They found a lot of weird stuff there. But all they know is that he's disappeared.”

“Good,” Rowan said.

Mary-Lynnette held up another finger. “Two, Dad is sorry but not surprised that the station wagon blew up. Claudine has been predicting it would for a year.”

Another finger. “Three, Mr. Kimble doesn't have any idea
what
killed his horse—but now he thinks it was an animal instead of a person. Vic Kimble thinks it was maybe Sasquatch. He and Todd are very spooked and want to get out of Briar Creek for good.”

“And let's have a moment of silence to show how we'll miss them,” Mark said solemnly, and blew a raspberry.

“Four,” Mary-Lynnette said, holding up a fourth finger, “you girls are eventually going to have to mention that your aunt hasn't come back from her ‘vacation.' But I think you can wait awhile. Nobody comes out here so nobody will notice she's gone. And I think we can bury her and Jeremy safely. Even if somebody finds them, what have they got? A mummy that looks about a thousand years old and a wolf. They won't be able to connect them to the missing people.”

“Poor old Aunt Opal,” Jade said, still cheerful. “But she helped us in the end, didn't she?”

Mary-Lynnette looked at her. Yes, there it is, she thought. The silver in the eyes when you laugh about death. Jade is a true Night Person, too.

“She did help. And I'm going to miss her,” she said out loud.

Kestrel said, “So everything is taken care of.”

“Seems like it.” Ash hesitated. “And Quinn is waiting down the road. I told him it would only take a couple hours to finish making arrangements and say goodbye.”

There was a silence.

“I'll see you off,” Mary-Lynnette said at last.

They went together to the front door. When they were outside in the twilight Ash shut the door behind them.

“You still can come with me, you know.”

“With you and Quinn?”

“I'll send him away. Or I'll go and come back tomorrow and get you. Or I'll come back and stay….”

“You need to go tell your father about this. Make everything right with him, so it's safe for your sisters. You
know
that.”

“Well, I'll come back after
that,
” Ash said, with an edge of desperation to his voice.

Mary-Lynnette looked away. The sun was gone. Looking east, the sky was already the darkest purple imaginable. Almost black. Even as she watched, a star came out. Or—not a star. Jupiter.

“I'm not ready yet. I wish I were.”

“No, you don't,” Ash said, and he was right, of course. She'd known ever since she sat there by the road, crying while her car burned. And although she'd thought and thought about it since then, sitting in her darkened room, there was nothing she could do to change her own mind.

She would never be a vampire. She just wasn't cut out for it. She couldn't do the things vampires had to do—and stay sane. She wasn't like Jade or Kestrel or even Rowan with her pale sinewy feet and her instinctive love of the hunt. She'd looked into the heart of the Night World…and she couldn't join it.

“I don't
want
you to be like that,” Ash said. “I want you to be like
you.
”

Without looking at him, Mary-Lynnette said, “But we're not kids. We can't be like Jade and Mark, and just hold hands and giggle and never think about the future.”

“No, we're only soulmates, that's all. We're only destined to be together forever….”

“If we've got forever, then you can give me time,” Mary-Lynnette said. “Go back and wander a little. Take a look at the Night World and make sure you want to give it up—”

“I know that already.”

“Take a look at humans and make sure you want to be tied to one of them.”

“And think about the things I've done to humans, maybe?”

Mary-Lynnette looked at him directly. “Yes.”

He looked away. “All right. I admit it. I've got a lot to make up for….”