Black Dawn Read online

  This boy was a vampire.

  The strange thing was that, unlike Bern, he didn’t get uglier when he changed. His face seemed paler and finer, like something chiseled in ice. His golden eyes burned brighter, framed by lashes that looked even blacker in contrast. His pupils opened and seemed to hold a darkness that could swallow a person up.

  But it was the mouth that had changed the most. It looked even more willful, disdainful, and sullen—and it was drawn up into a sneer to display the fangs.

  Impressive fangs. Long, translucent white, tapering into delicate points. Shaped like a cat’s canines, with a sheen on them like jewels. Not yellowing tusks like Bern’s, but delicate instruments of death.

  What amazed Maggie was that although he looked completely different from anything she’d seen before, completely abnormal, he also looked completely natural. This was another kind of creature, just like a human or a bear, with as much right to live as either of them.

  Which didn’t mean she wasn’t scared. But she was frightened in a new way, a way ready for action.

  She was ready to fight, if fighting became necessary. She’d already changed that much since entering this valley: fear now made her not panicked but hyper alert.

  If I have to defend myself I need both hands. And it’s better not to let him see I’m scared.

  “Maybe you can’t ignore your kind of thirst,” she said, and was pleased that her voice didn’t wobble. “But I’m fine. Except that you’re hurting my wrist. Can you please let go?”

  For just an instant, the brilliant yellow eyes flared even brighter, and she wondered if he was going to attack her. But then his eyelids lowered, black lashes veiling the brightness. He let go of her wrist.

  Maggie’s arm sagged, and the leather bag dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers. It landed safely at her feet. She rubbed her hand.

  And didn’t look up a moment later, when he said with a kind of quiet hostility, “Aren’t you afraid of me?”

  “Yes.” It was true. And it wasn’t just because he was a vampire or because he had a power that could send blue death twenty feet away. It was because of him, of the way he was. He was scary enough in and of himself.

  “But what good is it, being afraid?” Maggie said, still rubbing her hand. “If you’re going to try to hurt me, I’ll fight back. And so far, you haven’t tried to hurt me. You’ve only helped me.”

  “I told you, I didn’t do it for you. And you’ll never survive if you keep on being insane like this.”

  “Insane like what?” Now she did look up, to see that his eyes were burning dark gold and his fangs were gone. His mouth simply looked scornful and aristocratic.

  “Trusting people,” he said, as if it should have been obvious. “Taking care of people. Don’t you know that only the strong ones make it? Weak people are deadweight—and if you try to help them, they’ll drag you down with them.”

  Maggie had an answer for that. “Cady isn’t weak,” she said flatly. “She’s sick. She’ll get better—if she gets the chance. And if we don’t take care of each other, what’s going to happen to all of us?”

  He looked exasperated, and for a few minutes they stared at each other in mutual frustration.

  Then Maggie bent and picked up the bag again. “I’d better give it to her now. I’ll bring your canteen back.”

  “Wait.” His voice was abrupt and cold, unfriendly. But this time he didn’t grab her.

  “What?”

  “Follow me.” He gave the order briefly and turned without pausing to see if she obeyed. It was clear that he expected people to obey him, without questions. “Bring the bag,” he said, without looking over his shoulder.

  Maggie hesitated an instant, glancing down at Cady. But the hollow was protected by the overhanging boulders; Cady would be all right there for a few minutes.

  She followed the boy. The narrow path that wound around the mountain was rough and primitive, interrupted by bands of broken, razor-sharp slate. She had to pick her way carefully around them.

  In front of her, the boy turned toward the rock suddenly and disappeared. When Maggie caught up, she saw the cave.

  The entrance was small, hardly more than a crack, and even Maggie had to stoop and go in sideways. But inside it opened into a snug little enclosure that smelled of dampness and cool rock.

  Almost no light filtered in from the outside world. Maggie blinked, trying to adjust to the near-darkness, when there was a sound like a match strike and a smell of sulphur. A tiny flame was born, and Maggie saw the boy lighting some kind of crude stone lamp that had been carved out of the cave wall itself. He glanced back at her and his eyes flashed gold.

  But Maggie was gasping, looking around her. The light of the little flame threw a mass of shifting, confusing shadows everywhere, but it also picked out threads of sparkling quartz in the rock. The small cave had become a place of enchantment.

  And at the boy’s feet was something that glittered silver. In the hush of the still air, Maggie could hear the liquid, bell-like sound of water dripping.

  “It’s a pool,” the boy said. “Spring fed. The water’s cold, but it’s good.”

  Water. Something like pure lust overcame Maggie. She took three steps forward, ignoring the boy completely, and then her legs collapsed. She cupped a hand in the pool, felt the coolness encompass it to the wrist, and brought it out as if she were holding liquid diamond in her palm.

  She’d never tasted anything as good as that water. No Coke she’d drunk on the hottest day of summer could compare with it. It ran through her dry mouth and down her parched throat—and then it seemed to spread all through her, sparkling through her body, soothing and reviving her. A sort of crystal clearness entered her brain. She drank and drank in a state of pure bliss.

  And then, when she was in the even more blissful state of being not thirsty anymore, she plunged the leather bag under the surface to fill it.

  “What’s that for?” But there was a certain resignation in the boy’s voice.

  “Cady. I have to get back to her.” Maggie sat back on her heels and looked at him. The light danced and flickered around him, glinting bronze off his dark hair, casting half his face in shadow.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, but in a voice that shook slightly. “I think you probably saved my life again.”

  “You were really thirsty.”

  “Yeah.” She stood up.

  “But when you thought there wasn’t enough water, you were going to give it to her.” He couldn’t seem to get over the concept.

  “Yeah.”

  “Even if it meant you dying?”

  “I didn’t die,” Maggie pointed out. “And I wasn’t planning to. But—yeah, I guess, if there wasn’t any other choice.” She saw him staring at her in utter bewilderment. “I took responsibility for her,” she said, trying to explain. “It’s like when you take in a cat, or—or it’s like being a queen or something. If you say you’re going to be responsible for your subjects, you are. You owe them afterward.”

  Something glimmered in his golden eyes, just for a moment. It could have been a dagger point of anger or just a spark of astonishment. There was a silence.

  “It’s not that weird, people taking care of each other,” Maggie said, looking at his shadowed face. “Doesn’t anybody do it here?”

  He gave a short laugh. “Hardly,” he said dryly. “The nobles know how to take care of themselves. And the slaves have to fight each other to survive.” He added abruptly, “All of which you should know. But of course you’re not from here. You’re from Outside.”

  “I didn’t know if you knew about Outside,” Maggie said.

  “There isn’t supposed to be any contact. There wasn’t for about five hundred years. But when my—when the old king died, they opened the pass again and started bringing in slaves from the outside world. New blood.” He said it simply and matter-of-factly.

  Mountain men, Maggie thought. For years there had been rumors about the Cascades, about
men who lived in hidden places among the glaciers and preyed on climbers. Men or monsters. There were always hikers who claimed to have seen Bigfoot.

  And maybe they had—or maybe they’d seen a shapeshifter like Bern.

  “And you think that’s okay,” she said out loud. “Grabbing people from the outside world and dragging them in here to be slaves.”

  “Not people. Humans. Humans are vermin; they’re not intelligent.” He said it in that same dispassionate tone, looking right at her.

  “Are you crazy?” Maggie’s fists were clenched; her head was lowered. Stomping time. She glared up at him through narrowed lashes. “You’re talking to a human right now. Am I intelligent or not?”

  “You’re a slave without any manners,” he said curtly. “And the law says I could kill you for the way you’re talking to me.”

  His voice was so cold, so arrogant . . . but Maggie was starting not to believe it.

  That couldn’t be all there was to him. Because he was the boy in her dream.

  The gentle, compassionate boy who’d looked at her with a flame of love behind his yellow eyes, and who’d held her with such tender intensity, his heart beating against hers, his breath on her cheek. That boy had been real—and even if it didn’t make any sense, Maggie was somehow certain of it. And no matter how cold and arrogant this one seemed, they had to be part of each other.

  It didn’t make her less afraid of this one, exactly. But it made her more determined to ignore her fear.

  “In my dream,” she said deliberately, advancing a step on him, “you cared about at least one human. You wanted to take care of me.”

  “You shouldn’t even be allowed to dream about me,” he said. His voice was as tense and grim as ever, but as Maggie got closer to him, looking directly up into his face, he did something that amazed her. He fell back a step.

  “Why not? Because I’m a slave? I’m a person.” She took another step forward, still looking at him challengingly. “And I don’t believe that you’re as bad as you say you are. I think I saw what you were really like in my dream.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said. He didn’t back up any farther; there was nowhere left to go. But his whole body was taut. “Why should I want to take care of you?” he added in a cold and contemptuous voice. “What’s so special about you?”

  It was a good question, and for a moment Maggie was shaken. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’m nobody special. There isn’t any reason for you to care about me. But it doesn’t matter. You saved my life when Bern was going to kill me, and you gave me water when you knew I needed it. You can talk all you want, but those are the facts. Maybe you just care about everybody, underneath. Or—”

  She never finished the last sentence.

  As she had been speaking to him, she was doing something she always did, that was instinctive to her when she felt some strong emotion. She had done it with P.J. and with Jeanne and with Cady.

  She reached out toward him. And although she was only dimly aware that he was pulling his hands back to avoid her, she adjusted automatically, catching his wrists. . . .

  And that was when she lost her voice and what she was saying flew out of her head. Because something happened. Something that she couldn’t explain, that was stranger than secret kingdoms or vampires or witchcraft.

  It happened just as her fingers closed on his hands. It was the first time they had touched like that, bare skin to bare skin. When he had grabbed her wrist before, her jacket sleeve had been in between them.

  It started as an almost painful jolt, a pulsating thrill that zigged up her arm and then swept through her body. Maggie gasped, but somehow she couldn’t let go of his hand. Like someone being electrocuted, she was frozen in place.

  The blue fire, she thought wildly. He’s doing the same thing to me that he did to Bern.

  But the next instant she knew that he wasn’t. This wasn’t the savage energy that had killed Bern, and it wasn’t anything the boy was doing to her. It was something being done to both of them, by some incredibly powerful source outside either of them.

  And it was trying . . . to open a channel. That was the only way Maggie could describe it. It was blazing a path open in her mind and connecting it to his.

  She felt as if she had turned around and unexpectedly found herself facing another person’s soul. A soul that was hanging there, without protection, already in helpless communication with hers.

  It was by far the most intense thing that had ever happened to her. Maggie gasped again, seeing stars, and then her legs melted and she fell forward.

  He caught her, but he couldn’t stand up either. Maggie knew that as well as she knew what was going on in her own body. He sank to his knees, holding her.

  What are you doing to me?

  It was a thought, but it wasn’t Maggie’s. It was his.

  I don’t know . . . I’m not doing it . . . I don’t understand! Maggie had no idea how to send her thoughts to another person. But she didn’t need to, it was simply happening. A pure line of communication had been opened between them. It was a fierce and terrible thing, a bit like being fused together by a bolt of lightning, but it was also so wonderful that Maggie’s entire skin was prickling and her mind was hushed with awe.

  She felt as if she’d been lifted into some new and wonderful place that most people never even saw. The air around her seemed to quiver with invisible wings.

  This is how people are supposed to be, she thought. Joined like this. Open to each other. With nothing hidden and no stupid walls between them.

  A thought came back at her, sharp and quick as a hammer strike. No!

  It was so cold, so full of rejection, that for a moment Maggie was taken aback. But then she sensed what else was behind it.

  Anger . . . and fear. He was afraid of this, and of her. He felt invaded. Exposed.

  Well, I do, too, Maggie said mentally. It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid. It was that her fear was irrelevant. The force that held them was so much more powerful than either of them, so immeasurably ancient, that fear was natural but not important. The same light shone through each of them, stripping away their shields, making them transparent to each other.

  It’s all right for you. Because you don’t have anything to be ashamed of ! The thought flashed by so quickly that Maggie wasn’t even sure she had heard it.

  What do you mean? she thought. Wait . . . Delos.

  That was his name. Delos Redfern. She knew it now, as unquestionably as she knew the names of her own family. She realized, too, as a matter of minor importance, an afterthought, that he was a prince. A vampire prince who’d been born to rule this secret kingdom, as the Redfern family had ruled it for centuries.

  The old king was your father, she said to him. And he died three years ago, when you were fourteen. You’ve been ruling ever since.

  He was pulling away from her mentally, trying to break the contact between them. It’s none of your business, he snarled.

  Please wait, Maggie said. But as she chased after him mentally, trying to catch him, to help him, something shocking and new happened, like a second bolt of lightning.

  CHAPTER 9

  She was in his mind. It was all around her, like a strange and perilous world. A terribly frightening world, but one that was full of stark beauty.

  Everything was angles, as if she’d fallen into the heart of a giant crystal. Everything glittered, cold and clear and sharp. There were flashes of color as light shimmered and reflected, but for the most part it was dazzling transparency in every direction. Like the fractured ice of a glacier.

  Really dangerous, Maggie thought. The spikes of crystal around her had edges like swords. The place looked as if it had never known warmth or soft color.

  And you live here? she thought to Delos.

  Go away. Delos’s answering thought came to her on a wave of cold wind. Get out!

  No, Maggie said. You can’t scare me. I’ve climbed glac
iers before. It was then that she realized what this place reminded her of. A summit. The bare and icy top of a mountain where no plants—and certainly no people—could survive.

  But didn’t anything good ever happen to you? she wondered. Didn’t you ever have a friend . . . or a pet . . . or something?

  No friends, he said shortly. No pets. Get out of here before I hurt you.

  Maggie didn’t answer, because even as he said it things were changing around her. It was as if the glinting surfaces of the nearby crystals were suddenly reflecting scenes, perfect little pictures with people moving in them. As soon as Maggie looked at one, it swelled up and seemed to surround her.

  They were his memories. She was seeing bits of his childhood.

  She saw a child who had been treated as a weapon from the time he was born. It was all about some prophecy. She saw men and women gathered around a little boy, four years old, whose black-lashed golden eyes were wide and frightened.

  “No question about it,” the oldest man was saying. Delos’s teacher, Maggie realized, the knowledge flowing to her because Delos knew it, and she was in Delos’s mind.

  “This child is one of the Wild Powers,” the teacher said, and his voice was full of awe—and fear. His trembling hands smoothed out a brittle piece of scroll. As soon as Maggie saw it she knew that the scroll was terribly old and had been kept in the Dark Kingdom for centuries, preserved here even when it was lost to the outside world.

  “Four Wild Powers,” the old man said, “who will be needed at the millennium to save the world—or to destroy it. The prophecy tells where they will come from.” And he read:

  “One from the land of kings long forgotten;

  One from the hearth which still holds the spark;

  One from the Day World where two eyes are watching;

  One from the twilight to be one with the dark.”

  The child Delos looked around the circle of grim faces, hearing the words but not understanding them.

  “ ‘The land of kings, long forgotten,’ ” a woman was saying. “That must be the Dark Kingdom.”