Dark Angel; The Chosen; Soulmate (20 page)

He stood facing her. He was shining just dimly. His eyes were dark and bruised-looking, but his lips were smiling. And he was more beautiful than she had ever seen him.

“Things are going to work out, you know,” he said softly. “For you. Your mom's going to get better.”

Gillian nodded. “I think so, too.”

“And I checked on Tanya and Kim. They're going to be all right. Tanya's still got all her fingers.”

“I know.”

“You should go see Melusine. You could help them a lot with Circle Daybreak. And they can help you deal with the Night World.”

“Yes. All right.”

“And you might want to talk to Daryl at school. She's got a secret that Kim was spreading rumors about last year. It's that—”

“Ang—Gary!” Gillian held up her hand. “I don't want to
know. Someday, if Daryl wants to tell me her secret, she can do it herself. But if not—okay. I have to deal on my own, now.”

She'd already thought about school, all last night while she'd been lying alone in her room. Things were going to change, obviously. It was surprisingly easy to sort out which friends mattered.

Amanda the Cheerleader and Steffi the Singer and J.Z. the Model were all right. No better and no worse than any of the less popular girls. She wouldn't mind if they still liked her.

Daryl—who was not Daryl the Rich Girl anymore, but just Daryl—was better than all right. The sort that might turn out to be a real friend. And of course there was Amy. She owed Amy a lot.

As for the others—Tanya and Kim and Cory and Bruce and Macon—Gillian didn't really
want
to know them. If she never went to another Popular Party, that was fine.

“And I don't want to know if J.Z. really tried to kill herself, either,” she said now.

Gary shut his mouth. Then his eyes actually seemed to twinkle. “You're going to do all right.” And then, for the first time, he looked at David.

They stared at each other for a moment. Not hostile. Just looking.

When Gary turned hack to Gillian he said very quietly, “One last thing. I didn't change my mind about killing him because I couldn't go through with it. I did it because I didn't want you to hate me forever.”

Oh.

Gillian put out her hand. So did he. Their fingers were close together, blurring into each other… but they couldn't touch. They never would.

And then suddenly, Gary looked startled. He turned to look up and behind him.

At the dark, starlit sky.

Gillian couldn't see anything. But she could
feel
something. A sort of rushing. Something was coming.

And Gary was lifted toward it like a leaf on the wind.

His hand was still stretched toward her, but he was in the air. Weightless. Bobbing. And as Gillian watched, his startled expression melted into something like awe.

And then joy. Joy and… recognition.

“I've got to go,” he said wonderingly.

Gillian was staring at the sky. She still couldn't see anything. Not the tunnel, not the meadow. Did he mean he had to go to the between-place?

And then she saw the light.

It was the color of sunlight on snow. That brilliant, but not painful to look at. It seemed to shimmer with every color in the universe, but all together the colors made white.

“Gary—”

But something was happening. He was moving without moving. Rushing away in some direction she couldn't point to. Getting smaller. Fading. She was losing him.

“Goodbye, Gary,” she whispered.

And the light was going, too. But just before it went, it seemed to take on a shape. It looked something like huge white wings enfolding him.

For the briefest instant, Gillian felt enfolded, too. By power and peace… and love.

And then the light was gone. Gary was gone. And everything was still.

“Did you see that?” Gillian whispered through the ache in her throat.

“I think so.” David was staring, his eyes big with awe and wonder.

“Maybe… some angels are real.”

He was still staring upward. Then he drew in his breath. “Look! The stars—”

But it wasn't stars, although it looked like stardust. Crystalline points of light, frozen beauty sifting down. The air was full of it.

“But there aren't any clouds….”

“There are now,” David said. Even as he said it, the stars were covered. Gillian felt a cool touch on her cheek.

Like a kiss.

And it was ordinary snow, just an ordinary miracle. She and David stood hand in hand, watching it fall like a blessing in the night.

For Lolly Carter

It happened at Rashel's birthday party, the day she turned five years old.

“Can we go in the tubes?” She was having her birthday at a carnival and it had the biggest climbing structure of tubes and slides she had ever seen.

Her mother smiled. “Okay, kitten, but take care of Timmy. He's not as fast as you are.”

They were the last words her mother ever said to her.

Rashel didn't have to be told, though. She always took care of Timmy: he was a whole month younger than she was, and he wasn't even going to kindergarten next year. He had silky black hair, blue eyes, and a very sweet smile. Rashel had dark hair, too, but her eyes were green—green as emeralds, Mommy always said. Green as a cat's.

As they climbed through the tubes she kept glancing back at him, and when they got to a long row of vinyl-padded
stairs—slippery and easy to slide off of—she held out a hand to help him up.

Timmy beamed at her, his tilted blue eyes shining with adoration. When they had both crawled to the top of the stairs, Rashel let go of his hand.

She was heading toward the spiderweb, a big room made entirely of rope and net. Every so often she glanced through a fish-bowl window in one of the tubes and saw her mother waving at her from below. But then another mother came to talk to hers and Rashel stopped looking out. Parents never seemed to be able to talk and wave at the same time.

She concentrated on getting through the tubes, which smelled like plastic with a hint of old socks. She pretended she was a rabbit in a tunnel. And she kept an eye on Timmy—until they got to the base of the spiderweb.

It was far in the back of the climbing structure. There were no other kids around, big or little, and almost no noise. A white rope with knots at regular intervals stretched above Rashel, higher and higher, leading to the web itself.

“Okay, you stay here, and I'll go up and see how you do it,” she said to Timmy. This was a sort of fib. The truth was that she didn't think Timmy could make it, and if she waited for him, neither of them would get up.

“No, I don't want you to go without me,” Timmy said. There was a touch of anxiety in his voice.

“It's only going to take a second,” Rashel said. She knew
what he was afraid of, and she added, “No big kids are going to come and push you.”

Timmy still looked doubtful. Rashel said thoughtfully, “Don't you want ice cream cake when we get back to my house?”

It wasn't even a veiled threat. Timmy looked confused, then sighed heavily and nodded. “Okay. I'll wait.”

And those were the last words Rashel heard
him
say.

She climbed the rope. It was even harder than she'd thought it would be, but when she got to the top it was wonderful. The whole world was a squiggly moving mass of netting. She had to hang on with both hands to keep her balance and try to curl her feet around the rough quivering lengths of cable. She could feel the air and sunlight. She laughed with exhilaration and bounced, looking at the colored plastic tubes all around her.

When she looked back down for Timmy, he was gone.

Rashel's stomach tensed. He
had
to be there. He'd promised to wait.

But he wasn't. She could see the entire padded room below the spiderweb from here, and it was empty.

Okay, he must have gone back through the tubes. Rashel made her way, staggering and swaying, from one handhold to another until she got to the rope. Then she climbed down quickly and stuck her head in a tube, blinking in the dimness.

“Timmy?” Her voice was a muffled echo. There was
no answer and what she could see of the tube was empty. “Timmy!”

Rashel was getting a very bad feeling in her stomach. In her head, she kept hearing her mother say,
Take care of Timmy
. But she hadn't taken care of him. And he could be anywhere by now, lost in the giant structure, maybe crying, maybe getting shoved around by big kids. Maybe even going to tell her mother.

That was when she saw the gap in the padded room.

It was just big enough for a four-year-old or a very slim five-year-old to get through. A space between two cushiony walls that led to the outside. And Rashel knew immediately that it was where Timmy had gone. It was like him to take the quickest way out. He was probably on his way to her mother right now.

Rashel was a very slim five-year-old. She wiggled through the gap, only sticking once. Then she was outside, breathless in the dusty shade.

She was about to head toward the front of the climbing structure when she noticed the tent flap fluttering.

The tent was made of shiny vinyl and its red and yellow stripes were much brighter than the plastic tubes. The loose flap moved in the breeze and Rashel saw that anyone could just lift it and walk inside.

Timmy wouldn't have gone in
there
, she thought. It wouldn't be like him at all. But somehow Rashel had an odd feeling.

She stared at the flap, hesitating, smelling dust and popcorn in the air. I'm brave, she told herself, and sidled forward. She pushed on the tent beside the flap to widen the gap, and she stretched her neck and peered inside.

It was too dark to see anything, but the smell of popcorn was stronger. Rashel moved farther and farther until she was actually in the tent. And then her eyes adjusted and she realized that she wasn't alone.

There was a tall man in the tent. He was wearing a long light-colored trench coat, even though it was warm outside. He didn't seem to notice Rashel because he had something in his arms, and his head was bent down to it, and he was doing something to it.

And then Rashel saw what he was doing and she knew that the grown-ups had lied when they said ogres and monsters and the things in fairy-tale books weren't real.

Because the tall man had Timmy, and he was
eating
him.

Eating him or doing something with his teeth. Tearing and sucking. Making noises like Pal did when he ate his dog food.

For a moment Rashel was frozen. The whole world had changed and everything seemed like a dream. Then she heard somebody screaming and her throat hurt and she knew it was her.

And then the tall man
looked
at her.

He lifted his head and looked. And she knew that his face alone was going to give her nightmares forever.

Not that he was ugly. But he had hair as red as blood and eyes that shone gold, like an animal's. There was a light in them that was like nothing she had ever seen.

She ran then. It was wrong to leave Timmy, but she was too scared to stay. She wasn't brave; she was a baby, but she couldn't help it. She was still screaming as she turned around and darted through the flap in the tent.

Almost
darted through. Her head and shoulders got outside and she saw the red plastic tubes rising above her—and then a hand clamped on the back of her Gymboree shirt. A big strong hand that stopped her in midflight. Rashel was as helpless as a baby kitten against it.

But just as she was dragged back into the tent she saw something.
Her mother
. Her mother was coming around the corner of the climbing structure. She'd heard Rashel screaming.

Her mother's eyes were big and her mouth was open, and she was moving fast. She was coming to save Rashel.

“Mommeeeeeeeee!” Rashel screamed, and then she was back inside the tent. The man threw her to one side the way a kid at preschool would throw a piece of crumpled paper. Rashel landed hard and felt a pain in her leg that normally would have made her cry. Now she hardly noticed it. She was staring at Timmy, who was lying on the ground near her.

Timmy looked strange. His body was like a rag doll's—arms and legs flopped out. His skin was white. His eyes were staring straight up at the top of the tent.

There were two big holes in his throat, with blood all around them.

Rashel whimpered. She was too frightened to scream anymore. But just then she saw white daylight, and a figure in front of it. Mommy. Mommy was pulling the tent flap open. Mommy was inside, looking around for Rashel.

That was when the worst thing happened. The worst and the strangest, the thing the police never believed when Rashel told them later.

Rashel saw her mother's mouth open, saw her mother looking at her, about to say something. And then she heard a voice—but it wasn't Mommy's voice.

And it wasn't an out-loud voice. It was inside her head.

Wait! There's nothing wrong here. But you need to stand very, very still
.

Rashel looked at the tall man. His mouth wasn't moving, but the voice was his. Her mother was looking at him, too, and her expression was changing, becoming relaxed and… stupid. Mommy was standing very, very still.

Then the tall man hit Mommy once on the side of the neck and she fell over and her head flopped the wrong way like a broken doll. Her dark hair was lying in the dirt.

Rashel saw that and then everything was even more like a dream. Her mother was dead. Timmy was dead. And the man was looking at her.

You're not upset
, came the voice in her head.
You're not frightened. You want to come right here
.

Rashel could feel the pull of the voice. It was drawing her closer and closer. It was making her still and not afraid, making her forget her mother. But then she saw the tall man's golden eyes and they were
hungry
. And all of a sudden she remembered what he wanted to do to her.