Lily was headed for the very last house on the sandy unpaved road.
It was one of those huge "summer cottages" that was really a mansion. A ma ssive white frame house, two and a half stories high, with elaborate ornam entation.
Shock coursed through Rashel.
A frame house. Wood.
This place wasn"t built by vampires.
The lamia built out of brick or fieldstone, not out of the wood that was let hal to them. They must have bought this island from humans.
Rashel was tingling from head to toe. This is definitely not a normal encla ve. Where are all the people? Where"s the town? What are we doing here?
"Move, move." Lily marched them around the back of the house and inside. And at last, Rashel heard the sounds of other life. Voices from somewhere i nside the house.
But she didn"t get to see who the voices belonged to. Lily was taking them i nto a big old-fashioned kitchen, past a pantry with empty shelves.
At the end of the pantry was a heavy wooden door, and on a stool by the door was a boy about Rashel"s age. He had bushy brown hair and was weari ng cowboy boots. He was reading a comic book.
"Hey, Rudi," Lily said crisply. "How"re our guests?"
"Quiet as little lambs." Rudi"s voice was laconic, but he stood up respectfull y as Lily went by. His eyes flickered over Rashel and the other girls.
Werewolf.
Rashel"s instincts were screaming it. And the name . . . werewolves often had names like Lovell or Felan that meant wolf i n their native language.
Rudi meant "famous wolf" in Hungarian.
Best guards in the world, Rashel thought grimly. Going to be hard to get pas t him.
Rudi was opening the door. With Lily prodding her from behind, Rashel walk ed down a narrow, extremely steep staircase. At the base of the stairway w as another heavy door. Rudi unlocked it and led the way.
Rashel stepped into the cellar.
What she saw was something she"d never seen before. A large low-ceilinged room. Dimly lit. With two rows of twelve iron beds along opposite walls.
There was a girl in each bed.
Teenage girls. All ages, all sizes, but every one beautiful in her own unique way.
It looked like a hospital ward or a prison. As Rashel walked between the rows , she had to fight to keep her face blank. These girls were chained to the be ds, and awake . . . and scared.
Frightened eyes looked at Rashel from every cot, then darted toward the we rewolf. Rudi grinned at them, waving and nodding to either side. The girls shrank away.
Only a few seemed brave enough to say anything.
"Please . . ."
"How long do we have to stay here?"
"I want to go home!"
The last two beds in each row were empty. Rashel was put into one. Daphne looked both sick and frightened as the shackles dosed over her ankles, but she went on gamely sta ring straight ahead.
"Sleep tight, girlies," Rudi said. "Tomorrow"s a big day."
And then he and Lily and Ivan walked out. The heavy wooden door slammed behind them, echoing in the stone-walled cellar.
Rashel sat up in one motion.
Daphne twisted her head. "Is it safe to talk?" she whispered.
"I think so," Rashel said in a normal voice. She was staring with narrowed eyes down the rows of beds. Some of the girls were looking at them, some were crying. Some had their eyes shut.
Daphne burst out with the force of a breaking dam, "What are they going to do to us?"
"I don"t know," Rashel said. Her voice was hard and flat, her movements disci plined and precise, as she slid the knife out of her boot. "But I"m going to find out."
"What, you"re gonna saw through the chains?"
"No." From a guard on the side of the sheath, Rashel pulled a thin strip of me tal. She bared her teeth slightly in a smile. "I"m going to pick the lock."
"Oh. Okay. Great. But then what? I mean, what"s happening here? What kind of place is this? I was expecting some kind of-of Roman slave auction or something, with, like, everybody dressed in togas and vampires waving an d bidding-"
"You may still see something like that," Rashel said. "I agree, it"s weird. This is not a normal enclave. I don"t know, maybe i t"s some kind of holding center, and they"re going to take us someplace else to sell us. . . ."
"Actually, I"m afraid not," a quiet voice to her left said.
Rashel turned. The girl in the bed beside her was sitting up. She had flaming red hair, wistful eyes, and a diffident manner. "I"m Fayth," she said.
"Sh.e.l.ly," Rashel said briefly. She didn"t trust anyone here yet. "That"s Dap hne. What do you mean, you"re afraid not?"
"They"re not taking us somewhere else to sell us." Fayth looked almost apolo getic.
"Well, I"d like to know what they"re going to do with us here," Rashel said.
She sprung one lock on the shackles and jabbed the lockpick into the other.
"Twenty-four girls on an island with one inhabited house? It"s insane."
"It"s a bloodfeast."
Rashel"s hand on the lockpick went still.
She looked over at Fayth and said very softly, "What?"
"They"re having a bloodfeast. On the spring equinox, I think. Starting tomor row night at midnight."
Daphne was reaching across the gap for Rashel. "What, what? What"s a bloo dfeast? Tell me."
"It"s . . ." Rashel dragged her attention from Fayth. "It"s a feast for vampi res. A big celebration, a banquet. Three courses, you know." She looked around the room. "Three girls. And there are twenty-four of us. . . .""Enough for eight vampires," Fayth said quietly, looking apologetic.
"So you"re saying that they take a little blood from each of three girls." Da phne was leaning anxiously toward Rashel. "That"s what you"re saying, right?
Right? A little sip here, a little sip there-" She broke off as Rashel and Fa yth both looked at her. "You"re not saying that."
"Daphne, I"m sorry I got you into this." Rashel took a breath and opened the second lock on her shackles, avoiding Daphne"s eyes. "The idea of a bloodfe ast is that you drink the blood of three people in one day. All their blood.
You drain them."
Daphne opened her mouth, shut it, then at last said pathetically, "And you do n"t burst?"
Rashel smiled bleakly in spite of herself. "It"s supposed to be the ultimate h igh or something. You get the power of their blood, the power of their lifefor ce, all at once." She looked at Fayth. "But it"s been illegal for a long time."
Fayth nodded. "So"s slavery. I think somebody wants it to make a comeback .".
"Any idea who?"
"All I know is that somebody very rich has invited seven of the most power ful made vampires here for the feast. Whoever he is, he really wants to sh ow them a good time."
"To make an alliance," Rashel said slowly.
"Maybe."
"The made vampires ganging up against the lamia."
"Possibly."
"And the spring equinox . . . they"re celebrating the anniversary of the firs t made vampire. The day Maya bit Thierry."
"Definitely."
"Just wait a minute," Daphne said. "Just everybody press pause, okay? How come you know about all this stuff?" She was staring at Fayth. "Made vampi res, this vampires, that vampires, Maya ... I never heard of any of these people."
"Maya was the first of the lamia," Rashel said rapidly, glancing back at h er. "She"s the ancestress of all the vampires who can grow up and have chi ldren-the family vampires. The made vampires are different. They"re humans who get made into vampires by being bitten. They can"t grow any older or have kids."
"And Thierry was the first human to get made into a vampire," Fayth said. "
Maya bit him on the spring equinox . . . thousands of years ago."
Rashel was watching Fayth closely. "So now maybe you"ll answer her ques tion," she said. "How do you know all this? No humans know about Night World history-except vampire hunters and d.a.m.ned Daybreakers."
Fayth winced, and then Rashel understood why she seemed so apologetic. "I"m a d.a.m.ned Daybreaker."
"Oh, G.o.d."
"What"s a Daybreaker?" Daphne prompted, poking Rashel.
"Circle Daybreak is a group of witches who"re trying to get humans and Nigh t People to ... I don"t know, all dance around and drink c.o.ke together," Ra shel said, nonplussed. She was confused and revolted-this girl had seemed s o normal, so sensible.
"To live in harmony, actually," Fayth said to Daphne. "To stop hating and ki lling each other."
Daphne wrinkled her nose. "You"re a witch?"
"No. I"m human. But I have friends who"re witches. I have friends who"re vampires. I know lamia and humans who"re soulmates-"
"Don"t be disgusting!" Rashel almost shouted it. It took her a moment to get hold of herself. Then, breathing carefully, she said, "Look, just watch it, Daybreaker. I need your information, so I"m willing to work with you-tempor arily. But watch the language or I"ll leave you here when I get the rest of us out. Then you can live in harmony with eight vampires on your own."
Despite her effort at control, her voice was shaking. Somehow Fayth"s words seemed to keep echoing in her mind, as if they had some strange arid terri ble importance. The word soulmates itself seemed to ricochet around inside her.
And Fayth was acting oddly, too. Instead of getting mad, she just looked at Rashel long and steadily. Then she said softly, "I see . . ." Rashel didn"t like the way she said it. She turned toward Daphne, who was saying eagerly, "So we"re going to get out of here? Like a prison break?"
"Of course. And we"ll have to do it fast." Rashel narrowed her eyes, trying t o think. "I a.s.sumed we"d have more time . . . and there"s that werewolf to ge t past. And then once we do get out, we"re on an island. That"s bad. We can"t live long out in the wild-it"s too cold and they"d track us. But there has t o be a way. . . ." She glanced at Fayth. "I don"t suppose there"s any chance of other Daybreakers showing up to help."
Fayth shook her head. "They don"t know I"m here. We"d heard that something was going on in a Boston club, that somebody was gathering girls for a bl oodfeast. I came to check it out-and got nabbed before I made my first rep ort."
"So we"re on our own. That"s all right." Rashel"s mind was in gear now, hum ming with ideas. "Okay, first, we"ll have to see what these girls can do-wh ich of them can help us-"
Fayth and Daphne were listening intently, when Rashel was interrupted by the last thing she expected to hear in a place like this.
The sound of somebody shouting her name.
"Rashel! Rashel the vampire hunter! Rashel the Cat!"
CHAPTER 12.
The voice was shrill, almost hysterical.
Unbalanced, Rashel thought dazedly, looking around. The sound of her secre t being yelled out loud stunned her.
But just for an instant. The next moment she was moving swiftly between the rows of girls, looking for ...
"Nyala!"
"I know why you"re here!" Nyala sat up tensely. She looked just as she had when Rashel had seen her last, cocoa skin, queenly head, wide haunted eye s. She was even dressed in the same dark clothes she"d been wearing the ni ght they caught Quinn.
"You"re here because you were in on it all along! You pretend to be a vampi re hunter-"
"Shut up!" Rashel said desperately. Nyala was shouting loud enough to be he ard on the other side of the door. She knelt on Nyala"s bed. "I"m not pretending, Nyala."
"Then how come you"re free and we"re all chained up? You"re on their side!