wake up in the morning.
All that warmth and closeness-she'd felt that for a vampire? She'd been excited by a parasite's touch?
She'd wanted to comfort a leech?
And not just any leech, either. The infamous Quinn. The legendary human hater. How could she have let
him go? How many people would suffer because of her lapse in sanity?
Who knows, she decided finally, maybe it had been some kind of mind control. She certainly couldn't
make any sense of it otherwise.
By Thursday, one thing at least was clear in her mind. Vicky had been right about the consequences of
what she'd done. Rashel hadn't thought about that at the time, but now she had to face it. She had to make it right.
She had to find the kidnapped girls on her own- if girls were getting kidnapped. There was nothing about
missing teenagers in the Globe. But if it was happening, Rashel had to find out about it and stop it... if she could.
Okay. So she'd go back to Mission Hill tonight and start investigating. Check the warehouse area
again-this time, her way.
There was one other thing that was clear to her, that became obvious as she got her priorities straight.
Something she had to do, not for Nyala, or for Vicky, or for the Lancers, but just for herself. For her
own honor, and for everybody who lived in the world of sunlight.
The next time she saw Quinn, she had to kill him.
Rashel moved along the deserted street, keeping to the shadows, moving silently. Not easy when the
ground was wet and strewn with broken glass. There were no sidewalks, no grass, no plant life of any
kind except the dead weeds in the abandoned lots. Just soggy trash and shattered bottles.
A grim place. It fit Rashel's mood as she made her way stealthily toward the abandoned project
building where Vicky had brought them Tuesday night.
From its front door, she surveyed the rest of the street. Lots of warehouses. Several of them were
protected with high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. All of them had barred windows-or no
windows-and metal freight doors.
The security precautions didn't bother Rashel. She knew how to cut chain-link and pick locks. What
bothered her was that she didn't know where to start.
The Night People could be using any of the warehouses. Even knowing where Steve and Vicky had
fought Quinn didn't help, because he had jumped them. He'd obviously seen them lying in ambush and
deliberately gone after them. Which meant his real destination could have been any of the buildings on this
street-or none of them.
All right. Patience was indicated here. She'd just have to start at one end . .
Rashel lost her thought and leaped back into the shadows before she consciously realized why she was
doing it. Her ears had picked up a sound-a low rumbling coming from somewhere across the street.
She flattened herself against the brick wall behind her, then kept her body absolutely immobile. Her eyes
darted from building to building and she held her breath to hear better.
There. It was coming from inside that warehouse, the one down at the far end of the street. And she
could identify it now-the sound of an engine.
As she watched, the freight door in the front of the warehouse went sliding up. Headlights pierced the
night from behind it. A truck was pulling out onto the street.
Not a very big truck. A U-Haul. It cleared the doors and stopped. A figure was pulling the sliding metal
door down. Now it was making its way to the cab of the U-Haul, climbing in.
Rashel strained her eyes, trying to make out any signs of vampirism in the figure's movements. She
thought she could detect a certain telltale fluidity to the walk, but it was too far away to be sure. And
there was nothing else to give her a clue about what was going on.
It could be a human, she thought. Some warehouse owner going home after a night of balancing books.
But her instinct told her differently. The hair at the back of her neck was standing on end.
And then, as the truck began to cruise off, something happened that settled her doubts and sent her
flying down the street.
The back doors of the U-Haul opened just a bit, and a girl fell out. She was slender, and a streetlight
caught her blond hair. She landed on the rubble-strewn road and lay there for an instant as if dazed. Then
she jumped up, looked around wildly, and started running in Rashel's direction.
Chapter 7
By the time Rashel intercepted the girl, the truck was already braking to turn around. Someone was
shouting, "She's out! We lost one!"
"This way!" Rashel said, reaching toward the girl with one hand and gesturing with the other.
Up close, she could see that the girl was small, with disheveled blond hair falling over her forehead. Her
chest was heaving. Instead of looking grateful, she seemed terrified by Rashel's arrival. She stared at
Rashel a moment, then she tried to dart away.
Rashel snagged her in midlunge. 'Tm your friend! Come on! We've got to go between streets, where the
truck can't follow us."
The truck was finishing its turn. Headlights swept toward them. Rashel looped an arm around the girl's
waist and took off at a dead run.
The blond girl was carried along. She whimpered but she ran, too.
Rashel was heading for the area between two of the warehouses. She knew that if there really were
vampires in that truck, her only chance was to get herself and the blond girl to her car. The vampires
could run much faster than any human.
She'd picked these two warehouses because the chain-link fence behind them wasn't too high and had
no barbed wire at the top. As they reached it, Rashel gave the girl a little shove. "Climb!"
"I can't!" The girl was trembling and gasping. Rashel looked her over and realized that it was probably
the literal truth. The girl didn't look as if she'd ever climbed anything in her life. She was wearing what
seemed to be party clothes and high heels.
Rashel saw the truck's headlights in the street and heard the engine slowing.
"You have to!" she said. "Unless you want to go back with them." She interlocked her fingers, making a
step with her hands. "Here! Put your foot here and then just try to grab on when I bounce you up."
The girl looked too scared not to try. She put her foot in Rashel's hand-just as the headlights switched