Lisa Jane Smith - Night World 08 - Black Dawn.pdf - Lisa Jane Smith - goonee

First published in 1997 by Pocket Books,

a divis ion of Simon & Schuster Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First published in Great Britain in 1998

by Hodder Children's Books

a division of Hodder Headline Limited

338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

This edition published in 2002

The right of Lisa J Smith to be identified as

the Author of the Work has been asserted by her

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988.

10987654321

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means without the prior written

permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

in any form of binding or cover - other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 0340 70954 5

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

The battle is coming...

The lines are being drawn. The new Night People are more ruthless and

bloodthirsty than ever before, and they're getting ready to destroy the human

world. But the light has its champions, too. Four children have been born, four

Wild Powers who can stop the darkness from winning ... if they and their

soulmates can survive.

Romantic horror reaches new heights in these tales of terror and forbidden love.

The Night World ... love was

never so scary.

The Night World isn't a place. It's all around us. It's a secret society of vampires, werewolves, witches,

and other creatures of darkness that live among us. They're beautiful and deadly and irresistible to

humans. Your teacher could be one, and so could your boyfriend.

The Night World laws say it's okay to hunt humans. It's okay to toy with their hearts, it's

even okay to kill them. There are only two things you can't do with them.

1) Never let them find out that the Night World exists.

2) Never fall in love with one of them.

These are stories about what happens when the rules get broken.

For Michael Penny and Matthew Penny

CHAPTER

M aggie Neely woke up to the sound of her mother screaming.

She'd gone to bed as usual, with Jake the Great Dane sprawled heavily across her feet

and the three cats jockeying for position around her head. Her cheek was resting on

her open geometry book; there were homework papers scattered among the blankets,

along with fragments of potato chips and an empty bag. She was wearing her jeans

and a flowered pajama top plus the only two socks she'd been able to find last

night: one red velveteen anklet and one blue cotton slouch sock.

Those particular socks would eventually mean the difference between life and death

for her, but at the moment Maggie had no idea of that.

She was simply startled and disoriented from being wakened suddenly. She'd

never heard this kind of screaming before, and she wondered how she could be so

certain it was her mother doing it.

Something ... really bad is happening, Maggie realized slowly. The worst.

The clock on her nightstand said 2:11 A.M.

And then before she even realized she was moving, she was lurching across her bedroom

floor, with piles of dirty clothes and sports equipment trying to trip her up. She

banged her shin on a wastebasket in the middle of the room and ploughed

right on through. The hallway was dim, but the living room at the end was blazing

with light and the screams were coming from there.

Jake trotted along beside her. When they got to the foyer by the living room

he gave a half growl, half bark.

Maggie took in the whole scene in a glance. It was one of those moments when

everything changes forever.

The front door was open, letting in the cold air of a November night in Washington.

Maggie's father was wearing a short bathrobe and holding her mother, who was pulling and

tearing at him as if she were trying to get away, screaming breathlessly all the while. And in

the doorway four people were standing: two sheriffs, a National Park ranger, and

Sylvia Weald.

Sylvia. Her brother Miles's girlfriend.

And knowledge hit her quick and hard as a hammer blow.

My brother is dead, Maggie thought.

CHAPTER

Beside her, Jake growled again, but Maggie only heard it distantly. No one else even

looked toward them.

I can't believe how well I'm taking this, Maggie thought. Something's wrong with me. I'm

not hysterical at all.

Her mind had gotten hold of the idea quite clearly, but there was no reaction in her

body, no terrible feeling in her stomach. An instant later it swept over her, exactly

what she'd been afraid of. A wash of adrenaline that made her skin tingle painfully

and a horrible sensation of falling in her stomach. A numbness that started in her

cheeks and spread to her lips and jaw.

Oh, please, she thought stupidly. Please let it not be true. Maybe he's just hurt. That

would be all right. He had an accident and he's hurt-but not dead.

But if he were hurt her mother wouldn't be standing there screaming. She would be on her

way to the hospital, and nobody could stop her. So that didn't work, and Maggie's

mind, darting and wheeling like a frightened little animal, had to go back

to Please don't let this be true.

Strangely, at that moment, it seemed as if there might be some way to make it

not true. If she turned around and sneaked back to her bedroom before anyone

saw her; if she got into bed and pulled the blankets over her head and shut

her eyes ...

But she couldn't leave her mother screaming like this.

Just then the screams died down a little. Her father was speaking in a voice that

didn't sound at all like his voice. It was a sort of choked whisper. "But why didn't

you tell us you were going climbing? If you left on Halloween then it's been six

days. We didn't even know our son was missing...."

"I'm sorry." Sylvia was whispering, too. "We didn't expect to be gone long. Miles's

roommates knew we were going, but nobody else. It was just a spur-of-the-moment

thing-we didn't have classes on Halloween and the weather was so nice and Miles said,

hey, let's go out to Chimney Rock. And we just went...."

Hey, let's go. He used to say that kind of thing to me, Maggie thought with a strange,

dazed twinge. But not since he met Sylvia.

The male sheriff was looking at Maggie's father. "You weren't surprised that you

hadn't heard from your son since last Friday?"

"No. He's gotten so independent since he moved out to go to college. One of his

roommates called this afternoon to ask if Miles was here-but he didn't say that

Miles had been gone for almost a week. I just thought he'd missed a class or

something...." Maggie's father's voice trailed off.

The sheriff nodded. "Apparently his roommates thought he'd taken a little

unauthorized vacation," he said. "They got worried enough to call us tonight-but

by then a ranger had already picked up Sylvia."

Sylvia was crying. She was tall but willowy, fragile looking. Delicate. She had

shimmering hair so pale it was almost silvery and clear eyes the exact color of wood

violets. Maggie, who was short and round faced, with fox-colored hair and brown eyes,

had always envied her.

But not now. Nobody could look at Sylvia now without feeling pity.

"It happened that first evening. We started up, but then the weather started turning

bad and we turned around. We were moving pretty fast." Sylvia stopped and pressed a fist

against her mouth.

"It's kind of a risky time of year for climbing," the female sheriff began gently, but

Sylvia shook her head.

And she was right, Maggie thought. It wasn't that bad. Sure, it rained here most of the fall, but

sometimes what the weather people called a high pressure cell settled in and the skies

stayed blue for a month. All hikers knew that.

Besides, Miles wash t scared of weather. He was only eighteen but he'd done lots of

hard climbs in Washington's Olympic and Cascade ranges. He'd keep climbing all

winter, getting alpine experience in snow and storms.

Sylvia was going on, her voice getting more jerky breathless. "Miles was ... he'd had the flu a

week before and he wasn't completely over it. But he seemed okay, strong. It

happened when we were rappelling down. He was laughing and joking and

everything.... I never thought he might be tired enough to make a mistake...." Her

voice wavered turned into a ragged sob and the ranger put his arm around her.

Something inside Maggie froze. A mistake? Miles?

She was prepared to hear about a sudden avalanche or a piece of equipment failing. Even

Sylvia falling and knocking Miles off. But Miles making a mistake?

Maggie stared at Sylvia, and suddenly something in the pitiful figure bothered her.

There was something odd about that delicately flushed face and those tear-drenched violet

eyes. It was all too perfect, too tragic, as if Sylvia were an Academy award-winning

actress doing a famous scene-and enjoying it.

"I don't know how it happened," Sylvia was whispering. "The anchor was good. We

should have had a back-up anchor, but we were in a hurry. And he must have ... oh,

God, there must have been something wrong with his harness. Maybe the buckle

wasn't fastened right, or the carabiners might have been upside down...:'

No.

Suddenly Maggie's feelings crystalized. It was as if everything came into focus at once.

That's impossible. That's wrong.

Miles was too good. Smart and strong and an amazing technical climber.

Confident but careful. Maggie only hoped she'd be that good someday.

No way he'd buckle his harness wrong, or clip his 'biners upside down. No matter

how sick he was. In fact, no way he'd go without a back-up anchor. I'm the

one who tries to do things like that, and then he yells at me that if I'm not careful I'm

going to have an adventure.

Miles doesn't.

So it meant Sylvia was lying.

The thought came to Maggie on a little wave of shock. It made her feel as if she

were suddenly speeding backwards, or as if the room were receding from her very

fast.

But why? Why would Sylvia make up such a terrible story? It didn't make any sense.

Lisa Jane Smith - Night World 08 - Black Dawn.pdf

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