sense of resignation, that the next thing she would feel was teeth ripping through her flesh. The oldest way
to die in the world.
I'm sorry, Daphne, she thought. I'm sorry, Nyala. Please go and be safe.
And then everything seemed to freeze.
The wolf stopped in midlunge, head jerking backward. Its eyes were wide and fixed. Its jaws were open
but not moving. It looked as if it might howl.
But it didn't. It collapsed in a hot quivering heap on top of Rashel, legs stiff. Rashel scrambled out from
under it automatically.
And saw her knife sticking out of the base of its skull.
Quinn was standing above it.
"Are you all right?"
He was breathing quickly, but he looked calm. Moonlight shone on his black hair.
The entire world was huge and quivering and oddly bright. Rashel still felt as if she were moving in slow
motion.
She stared at Quinn, then looked toward the wharf.
Girls were scattered all over, as if frozen in the
middle of running in different directions. Some were on the decks of the two remaining boats. Some
were heading toward her. Daphne and Nyala were only fifteen feet away, but they were both staring at
Quinn and seemed riveted in place. Nyala's expression was one of horror, hate-and recognition.
Waves hissed softly against the dock.
Think. Now think, girl, Rashel told herself. She was in a state of the strangest and most expanded
consciousness she'd ever felt. Her hands were icy cold and she seemed to be floating-but her mind was
clear.
Everything depended on how she handled the next few minutes.
"Why did you do that?" she asked Quinn softly. At the same time she shot Daphne the fastest and the
most intense look of her life. It meant Go now. She willed Daphne to understand.
"You just lost a guard," she went on, getting up slowly.
Keep his eyes on you. Keep moving. Make him talk.
"Not a very good one," Quinn said, looking with fastidious disgust at the heap of fur.
Go, Daphne, run, Rashel thought. She knew the girls still had a chance. There were no other vampires
coming down the path. That meant that Rudi had either been too angry to give a general alarm or too
scared. That was one good thing about werewolves-they acted on impulse.
Quinn was the danger now.
"Why not a good one?" she asked. "Because he damaged the merchandise?" She lifted her torn shirt
away from her ribs.
Quinn threw back his head and laughed. Something jerked in Rashel's chest, but she used the moment to
change her position. She was right by the wolf now, with her left hand at the exact level of the knife.
"That's right," Quinn said. A wild and bitter smile still played around his lips. "He was presumptuous.
You almost surrendered to the wrong darkness there, Shelly. By the way, where'd you get a silver
knife?"
He doesn't know who I am, Rashel thought. She felt both relief and a strange underlying grief. He still
thought she was some girl from the club- maybe a vampire hunter, but not the vampire hunter. The one
he'd admitted was good.
So he's unprepared. He's off his guard.
If I can kill him with one stroke, before he calls to the other vampires, the girls may get away.
She glanced at the wharf again, deliberately, hoping to draw his gaze. But he didn't look behind him, and
Daphne and the other stupid girls weren't leaving.
Refusing to go without her. Idiots!
Now or never, Rashel thought.
"Well, anyway," she said, "I think you saved my life. Thank you."
Keeping her eyes down, she held out her hand.
her right hand. Quinn looked surprised, then reached out automatically.
With one smooth motion, like a snake uncoiling, Rashel attacked.
Her right hand drove past his hand and clamped on his wrist. Her left hand plunged down to grab the
knife. Her fingers closed on the hilt and pulled- and the sheath with its attached silver blade stayed in the
werewolf's neck.
Just as she'd planned. The knife itself came free, the real knife, the one made of wood.
And then Quinn tried to throw her and her body responded automatically. She was moving without
conscious direction, anticipating his attacks and blocking them even as he started to make them. It
transformed the fight into a dance. Faster than thought, graceful as a lioness, she countered every move
he made.
Zanshin to the max.
She ended up straddling him with her knife at his throat.
Now. Fast. End it.
She didn't move.
You have to, she told herself. Quick, before he calls the others. Before he knocks you out telepathically.
He can do it, you know that.
Then why isn't he trying?
Quinn lay still, with the point of the wooden knife in the hollow of his throat, just where his dark collar
parted. His throat was pale in the moonlight and his hair was black against the sand.
Footsteps sounded behind Rashel. She heard rapid light breathing.
"Daphne, take the boats and go now. Leave me here. Do you understand?" Rashel spoke every word
distinctly.
"But Rashel-"
"Do it now!" Rashel put a force she hadn't known she had behind the words. She heard the quick intake
of Daphne's breath, then footsteps scampering off.
All the while, she hadn't taken her eyes off Quinn.
Like everything else, the green-black blade of her knife was touched with moonlight. It seemed to
shimmer almost liquidly. Lignum vitae, the Wood of Life. It would be death for him. One thrust would put
it through his throat. The next would stop his heart.
"I'm sorry," Rashel whispered.
She was. She was truly sorry that this had to be done. But there was no way out. It was for Nyala, for