"The Big E sent us some backup," Vicky was saying, and Rashel felt a surge of fear. She counted five flashlights, and in the edges of beams she caught the figures of a couple of st.u.r.dy-looking guys. Lancers.

Rashel tried desperately to gather her wits.

She knew what had to be done, at least. She nudged Quinn with her shoulder and whispered, "Get out of here. There should be another stairway on the ot her side of the room. When you run for it, I'll get in their way." She pitc hed her voice so low that only vampire ears could hear it. The good thing a bout having her face veiled was that n.o.body could read her lips.

But Quinn wasn't going. He looked as if he'd just been awakened with a bucket ful of ice water. Shocked, angry, and still a little dazed. He stood where he was, staring into all the flashlights like an animal at bay.

The lights were advancing. Rashel could make out Vicky's figure now at the front. There was going to be a fight, and people were going to get killed.

Steve's voice said, "What did he do to you?"

"What's she been doing with him, that's the question," Vicky snapped back . Then she said clearly, "Remember, everybody, we want him alive."

Rashel gave Quinn a harder shove. "Go." When he just glared, she hissed, "

Don't you realize what they want to do to you?"

Quinn turned so that the advancing party couldn't see his face. He snarled, "They're not exactly overjoyed with you either."

"I can take care of myself." Rashel was shaking with frustration. "Just leave . Go!"

Quinn looked as angry with her as he was with the hunters. He didn't want h er help, she realized. He wasn't used to taking anything from anyone, and t o be forced to do it made him furious.

But there wasn't any other choice. And Quinn finally seemed to recognize that . With one last glare at her, he broke and headed for the darkness at the oth er side of the cellar.

The flashlights swung in confusion. Rashel, glad to be able to move, sprang between the vampire hunters and the stairway.

And then there was a lot of fumbling and crashing, with people running into each other and swearing and yelling. Rashel enjoyed the chance to work off her frustration. She got in everyone's way long enough for a very fast vampire to disappear.

After which it was just her and the vampire hunters. Five flashlights tur ned on her and seven amazed and angry people staring.

Rashel got up and brushed herself off. Time to face the consequences. She st ood, head high, looking at all of them.

"What happened?" Steve said. "Did he hypnotize you?"

Good old Steve. Rashel felt a rush of warmth toward him. But she couldn't u se the out he was offering her. She said, "I don't know what happened."

And that was true. She couldn't even begin to explain to herself what had go ne on between her and the vampire. She'd never heard of anything like it.

"I think you let him get away on purpose," Vicky said. Rashel couldn't see V icky's pale blue eyes, but she sensed that they were as hard as marbles. "I think you planned it from the beginning-that's why you told us to go up to t he street."

"Is that true?" One of the flashlights swung down and suddenly Nyala was in front of Rashel, her body tense, her voice almost pleading. Her eyes were fixed on Rashel's, begging Rashel to say it wasn't so. "Did you do it on pu rpose?"

All at once Rashel felt very tired. Nyala was fragile and unstable, and in her own mind she'd made Rashel into a hero. Now that image was being shatte red.

For Nyala's sake, Rashel almost wished she could lie. But that would be wors e in the end. She said expressionlessly, "Yes. I did it on purpose."

Nyala recoiled as if Rashel had slapped her.

I don't blame you, Rashel thought. I think it's crazy, too.

The truth was that the farther away she got from Quinn's presence, the less she could understand what she'd done. It was beginning to seem like a dream, and not a very clear dream at that.

"But why?" one of the Lancer boys at the back asked. The Lancers knew Rash el, knew her reputation. They didn't want to think the worst of her. Like Nyala, they desperately wanted an excuse.

"I don't know why," Rashel said, looking away. "But he wasn't controlling my mind."

Nyala exploded.

"I hate you," she burst out. She was trembling with fury, spitting out sent ences at Rashel like poison darts. "That vampire could have been the one wh o killed my sister. Or he could have known who did it. I was going to ask h im that, but now I'll never get the chance. Because of you. You let him go.

We had him and you let him go!"

"It's more than that," Vicky put in, her voice cold and contemptuous. "We we re going to ask him about those teenage girls getting kidnapped. Now we can'

t. So it's going to keep happening, and it's all going to be your fault."And they were right. Even Nyala was right. How did Rashel know that Quinn hadn't killed Nyala's sister?

"You're a vampire lover," Vicky was saying. "I could tell from the beginnin g. I don't know, maybe you're one of those d.a.m.ned Daybreakers who wants us all to get along, but you're not on our side."

A couple of the Lancers started to protest at this, but Nyala's voice cut thro ugh them. "She's on their side?" She stared from Vicky to Rashel, her body rig id. "You just wait. Just wait until I tell people that Rashel is the Cat and t hat she's really on the Night World side. You just wait."

She's hysterical, Rashel realized. Even Vicky was looking surprised at this, as if she were uneasy at what she'd started. "Nyala, listen-" Rashel began.

But Nyala seemed to have reached some peak of fury at which nothing from ou tside could touch her. "I'll tell everybody in Boston! You'll see!" She whi rled around and plunged toward the stairway as if she were going to start d oing it right now.

Rashel stared after her. Then she said to Vicky, "You'd better send a couple of the guys to catch up to her. She's not safe alone in this neighborhood."

Vicky gave her a look that was half angry and half shaken. "Yeah. Okay. E verybody but Steve go after her. You guys take her home."

They left, not without a few backward glances at Rashel.

"We'll drive you back," Vicky said. Her voice wasn't warm, but it wasn't as h ostile as it had been.

"I'll walk to my own car," Rashel said flatly.

"Fine." Vicky hesitated, then blurted, "She probably won't do what she said.

She's just upset."

Rashel said nothing. Nyala had sounded-and looked-as if she meant to do exac tly what she said. And if she did . . .

Well, it would be an interesting question as to who would kill Rashel first, the vampires or the vampire hunters.

Wednesday morning dawned with gray skies and icy rain. Rashel trudged from cla.s.s to cla.s.s at Wa.s.sa-guscus High, lost in thought. At home, her latest foster family left her alone-they were used to her going her own way. She sat in her small bedroom in the townhouse with the lights dimmed, thinkin g.

She still couldn't understand what had happened to her, but with every hour the memory of it was fading steadily. It was too strange to fit into the r eality of life, and it became more and more like a dream. One of those drea ms in which you do things you would never ordinarily do, and are ashamed of when you wake up in the morning.

All that warmth and closeness-she'd felt that for a vampire? She'd been exci ted 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 contro l. 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 kidnapp ed. There was nothing about missing teenagers in the Globe. But if it was hap pening, 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. Chec k the warehouse area again-this time, her way.

There was one other thing that was clear to her, that became obvious as she g ot her priorities straight. Something she had to do, not for Nyala, or for Vi cky, or for the Lancers, but just for herself. For her own honor, and for eve rybody 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 sile ntly. Not easy when the ground was wet and strewn with broken gla.s.s. There were no sidewalks, no gra.s.s, no plant life of any kind except the dead weed s 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 th e abandoned project building where Vicky had brought them Tuesday night.

From its front door, she surveyed the rest of the street. Lots of warehouse s. Several of them were protected with high chain-link fences topped with b arbed 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-li nk and pick locks. What bothered her was that she didn't know where to star t.

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 th em. 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 consc iously realized why she was doing it. Her ears had picked up a sound-a lo w 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 u p. 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 c ab of the U-Haul, climbing in.

Rashel strained her eyes, trying to make out any signs of vampirism in the f igure'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 st anding on end.

And then, as the truck began to cruise off, something happened that settled h er 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-st rewn road and lay there for an instant as if dazed. Then she jumped up, looke d around wildly, and started running in Rashel's direction.

CHAPTER 7.

By the time Rashel intercepted the girl, the truck was already braking to t urn around. Someone was shouting, "She's out! We lost one!"

"This way!" Rashel said, reaching toward the girl with one hand and gesturin g with the other.

Up close, she could see that the girl was small, with disheveled blond hair f alling over her forehead. Her chest was heaving. Instead of looking grateful, she seemed terrified by Rashel's arrival. She stared at Rashel a moment, the n 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 loope d 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 tha t if there really were vampires in that truck, her only chance was to get h erself and the blond girl to her car. The vampires could run much faster th an 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, Rash el gave the girl a little shove. "Climb!"

"I can't!" The girl was trembling and gasping. Rashel looked her over and rea lized 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 interl ocked 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 off.

It was what Rashel had expected. The darkness was an advantage to the vamp ires; they could see much better in it than humans. They were going to fol low on foot.

Rashel took a breath, then heaved upward explosively as she exhaled. The blo nd girl went sailing toward the top of the fence with a shriek.

A bare instant later, Rashel launched herself at the top of the fence, grabbe d it, and swung her legs over. She dropped to the ground almost noiselessly a nd held her arms up to the blond girl.

'Let go! I'll catch you."

The girl, who was clambering awkwardly over the top, looked over her should er. "I can't-"

"Do it!"

The girl dropped. Rashel broke her fall, set her on her feet, and grabbed h er arm above the elbow. "Come on!"

As they ran, Rashel scanned the buildings around them. She needed a corner, someplace where she could get the girl behind her and safe. She could defe nd a corner-if there weren't more than two or three vampires.

"How many of them are there?" she asked the girl.

"Huh?" The girl was gasping.

"How-many-are-there?"