The last battle has come; the Apocalypse is here. The lines have been drawn, and the Darkness is infusing its warriors with new power. The new Night People have partnered with dragons. They have powers that the world has never seen. The goal is to destroy humankind.
Circle Daybreak has found four young champions to fight in this last battle; four Wild Powers to stand against the darkness. But if one of the four should choose to go over to the other side, all the prophecies and legends say that humankind is doomed.
Sarah and her Friends
SARAH STRANGE
Sarah Strange is sixteen years old, a junior at Ann Spencer High School in Bellerophon, Virginia. She is described by a more popular classmate as a “zaftig nobody,” and has been trying to diet since she can remember. Since her mother’s death a year ago, she has been having strange dreams about dragons. Recently, her dreams have been about people from the Night World.
Sarah has flyaway light brown hair and aquamarine eyes. She avoids mirrors.
Sarah Strange as a child when tragedy struck her and Kierlan both
KIERLAN DRACHE
Kierlan is a shapeshifter, who becomes a tiger when he changes. He is also the fourth Wild Power, although two years younger than the other three. He is in love with Sarah, and soon finds that he and Sarah have woven the silver cord of soulmates with her. His cousin is Galen Drache, from Witchlight. Kierlan looks like a tiger even in human form, with ruddy gold hair and eyes that are only a shade or two darker. He is extremely popular at Ann Spencer high school, and a savant at math.
MAL HARMAN
Maledict is the offspring of a Redfern vampire father and a Harman witch mother. He is lamia, a family vampire, who can control his aging and eat, breathe, and have children. He is very handsome and athletic, bi-racial, and wildly popular at Sarah’s high school. He is also the “last resort”—the sworn bodyguard—for Kierlan. Mal is also in love with Sarah, and also has spun the silver cord of soulmates with her. Sarah is the only person in Night World history to have two soulmates.
Maledict Harmon
The Visions
Sarah Strange is sixteen years old, a junior at Ann Spencer High School in Bellerophon, Virginia. Since her mother’s death a year ago, she has been having strange dreams about dragons. Recently, her dreams have been about people from the Night World. These characters include: Ash Redfern, Aradia Achebe, Poppy and James, Gillian and David, Thea and Eric and Blaise, Rashel and Quinn, Lord Thierry and Hannah, Jez and Morgead, Delos and Maggie, and Keller, Galen, and Iliana…AND Hellewise Hearth Woman, Maya Dragonslayer, and their mother, the beauteous (and zaftig) Hecate Witch-Queen.
FROM STRANGE FATE
The only strange thing about Sarah Strange is that her migraines lead to visions of the Night World. Oh, and that she has not just one but two soulmates . . .
The first Soulmate:
Her name was Sarah Strange, but the only strange thing about her was the visions that came from migraines. Sarah wondered what people would say if they knew about the contents of these dreams. About the weird creatures that seemed so real in them—weird, and yet sometimes, like today, heartbreakingly brave and loving.
The dreams had begun the night after her mother had died.
“Thank you,” Sarah said to Mal Harman, at last. “Thank you for—finding me. But”—she put a shaky hand to her forehead, feeling a sudden chill—“just how did you find me? I mean, honestly, you know, in another second, I’d have been on the restroom floor. I mean, that would have been embarrassing, just faceplanting right onto the tile. Although it wouldn’t be the first time, I guess. Well, you should know. I mean, well, oh, my God—”
She knew she was babbling nervously. She couldn’t stop.
“My class got out early,” Mal said easily. “And I just happened to be walking in the hall when somebody said that you’d just stumbled into the restroom. I figured that ‘stumbled’ meant you were having a migraine. And I was right.”
There! It all had a simple, logical explanation. Things that initially seemed weird about Mal always ended up having simple explanations. “And it didn’t bother you that it was the girl’s restroom?” Sarah asked him, quirking her mouth.
“Should it?” Mal asked calmly. “It’s not like the guy’s john where everything is . . . all hanging out.”
Sarah had to fight the urge to laugh, because her head still ached dully and she knew if she laughed, the tears would start again, too. Usually, Mal left lines like that for Kierlan.
“Well anyway, thank you for—for talking to me,” she said. “I mean, I really do appreciate that. You . . . well you helped me a lot, you know, when I was at the end of my rope . . .”
She didn’t know why she couldn’t bring herself to say, “thank you for soothing me.” Mal had been soothing her, gentling her like a terrified horse or falcon, and they both knew it.
She made herself look at Mal. It wasn’t much of an ordeal. He had dark, carelessly disheveled hair that fell into eyes that were . . . well, in the dim light they were like windows into another world. Sarah knew that they were really blue-gray: pale, clear, and jewel-like. His skin was mocha in sharp contrast: Mal was bi-racial.
But he gave off the aura of a frozen flame, as if he was a prince under a spell of eternal ice.
Which didn’t explain why, these days, the blood rushed to Sarah’s face when she had to look at him, or why her heart always seemed to beat faster.
“Was my step-dad—Alan—still here when you brought me home?” she asked, desperate to make conversation. She wouldn’t call her stepfather “Dad.” She wouldn’t. “Or had he already taken off for work? I mean, because he usually hangs around—I mean, I don’t even know what he does in the mornings anymore . . .”
Mal shrugged. “He was going out as I came in.”
“Did he ask you a million questions? About me, I mean. I guess I must have looked pretty silly, out cold like that. I mean . . .” Sarah’s stepfather was always taking her to new doctors, who were fascinated by her migraines, but never had any helpful solutions for them. She had tried everything from anti-depressants to Vision Quests.
“I didn’t have any trouble with him,” Mal said briefly. “I guess he had to run.”
“Amazing,” was all Sarah could manage. “I mean, a lot of the time he just telecommutes.” Maybe Mal’s icy air had been too much even for Stepfather Alan.
Sarah had two stepbrothers and a stepsister, all strong and healthy and good-looking in a rangy, athletic, freckled way. All three of them teased her, especially about getting more exercise and eating more salads, and Sarah was usually far too late in thinking of a stinging reply to some clever remark. Stepfather Alan thought a great deal like them and was too busy to interfere. Kierlan had dubbed them “Alan-and-the-Alanettes.”
“Well,” Sarah said finally to Mal, “thank you again—for everything. I mean, for not leaving me after you brought me home. I mean, that was kind, you know.”
She said this thinking of Pamela and the little turquoise Homecoming dress, but Mal was inscrutable. “I couldn’t just leave you all alone. Not with the nightmare you were having.”
Dread surged through Sarah. “The nightmare? Did I say anything? Like, talk in my sleep? Did I—I mean you know how I talk when I’m nervous. I mean, did I get nervous in my sleep and just chatter away?”
“No, but you were sure upset. More upset than usual.”
“Well . . .” Sarah thought of the guy in her dream. Ash. For a short while she had been Ash; had been a sleek and stealthy hunter who drank—her stomach gave a sudden lurch—blood. God, how disgusting.
She’d been a mythical creature, a vampire.
But why? Was it because her mom had contracted leukemia at the end, when all the bio-chemo had destroyed her good cells? Had that come together in her head and made her dream of vampires?
Maybe. But if the blood was a symbol for leukemia, then Sarah knew what the terrible black dragons represented. Cancer.
Mal was still looking at her. Waiting. Sarah tried to remember what they’d been talking about. “Yes, she said dully. “It was . . . a bad one. I mean . . . well, yes, it was bad.”
Mal held her gaze. Of course, he knew that Sarah had dreams during the migraines, and anybody else would have pressed her to talk about this one, but Mal didn’t. That was another thing about Mal. He allowed you your privacy, but he expected you to respect his own in return. That was difficult, especially given the many mysteries about him.
He lived alone in a three-story Georgian house, as symmetrical and precise as his own features, on the edge of town. He didn’t have any relatives that Sarah knew of. Nobody knew where his money came from, and nobody dared ask. He hung out with a grand total of two other high school students: herself and Kierlan Drache—and he made that seem like a royal favor. He wasn’t Sarah’s boyfriend, and he’d never said or done anything that would make her feel he wanted to be.
Still, they’d used to be more . . . well, comfortable . . . together. Even when Sarah’s mother had been dying, Sarah and Mal could lie together side by side on Grady’s Hill and just cloudgaze and the silence had never seemed oppressive. It had felt okay—more than okay—when Sarah was alone with him.
What had happened since then?
Sarah’s mom had gone on to a better world. That had to be it. Because the only other thing Sarah could think of was that she, Sarah, had grown up. She’d finally gotten some breasts, even if they weren’t as big as Pam’s, and her waist flared out into curvy hips now, which gave her an ass. A lot of ass, actually. She was a “young woman,” but she wasn’t made of porcelain, which was how Mal treated her; touching her only when he had to and then with great care and restraint. Like today, holding out his arms for her instead of just sweeping her up in the bathroom.
He wouldn’t even meet her eyes most of the time these days.
Yet he always appeared at the very moments when Sarah was most distressed. Like today, when she had needed someone to save her as the migraine hit—there he had been.
He was a mystery.
Even as she thought the words, Sarah realized that she had been staring at Mal. Whenever she did that these days he looked away. But this time, just as she was turning away from him, embarrassed, he looked up and their gazes tangled. His eyes, those eyes that looked like windows onto another world, seemed to get caught up with hers. His gaze was serious and earnestly questioning, but not cold or sarcastic.
“Are you sure that you—?” he couldn’t seem to complete the question.
Now that those eyes were looking straight into Sarah’s, Sarah realized that she herself couldn’t look away. It was like being hypnotized—of being drawn in. No, of rushing in, now, as fast as if she were flying toward something. Something at the center of herself, and of Mal: of both at the same time.
Overcome by wonder, Sarah could feel the rhythm of her own heart in her ears, and, too, the rhythm of another heart: deeper, slower, beating in counterpoint to hers. But the two rhythms were converging now.
Sarah felt an unbearable wave of tension as the throbbing pulses began to come faster, closer together. A time was coming when their two hearts would beat exactly at once. And then . . . and then . . .
This is what you were born for, a voice in Sarah’s mind told her. That word that you used when you were Ash—that word “soulmate”—you’re going to find out what it means—
“No,” Mal said, and suddenly his face was dismayed—dismayed and alarmed. “I didn’t mean that.”
“What? Why?” Sarah hardly knew what she was saying. All she knew was that she didn’t want this to stop, and she didn’t want Mal to want it to stop, or to look the way he was now looking. “Mal, I—I don’t know what’s wrong. I mean, I mean . . .”
Sarah caught at his hand to reassure him, touching his fingers.
That was when the terror exploded in Mal, and the entire universe exploded for Sarah.
Just the touch of bare fingers to bare fingers was enough. They were rushing somewhere, and all Sarah could hear was the pounding of their pulses, beating exactly in time together.
“Mal . . .”
Mal was feeling it, too. She could sense his feelings; she knew them as certainly as she knew her own feelings. There was a buzzing in her body, deep inside, that was pleasant—more than pleasant—and it was growing.
She and Mal were careening now toward a final heartbeat that would open everything, that would answer all her frustrated questions about him.
“Sarah. Sarah,” Mal said huskily. “We can’t—”
They were.
I should be afraid, Sarah thought. She wasn’t afraid. This was only Mal, her friend, her trusted friend, and now she was about to know him better than anyone else in the world.
The second Soulmate:
If you’d asked me last night, I’d have said that I trust my best friends implicitly, Sarah thought. But do I act as if I trust them? If I trust them so much, why haven’t I told either of them about my visions already?
The dreams had started the very night after her mother had died and had only gotten worse in the following year.
Now Kierlan Drache was gazing at her quizzically. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m sorry. I mean, I was just thinking of poor Pamela bumping across the floor on her face.”
Kierlan laughed and stretched. “Oh, is that it? Is Pooh Bear afraid that I’d do the same thing to her?” Suddenly, surprisingly, Kierlan dropped the toddler talk. “Do you think that’s the way I’d carry you out, Sarah?”
He so seldom called her by her real name that Sarah felt a strange, sweet throbbing shock. She said at random, and knowing that she sounded absurd, “I never think about that kind of thing with us.”
She wanted to add “Tigger,” but that could either help or hurt her. It might lead to thoughts of why, so long ago, they had become Tigger and Pooh to each other when neither of them used any other pet names for anyone else.
She was looking away, but she didn’t need to see Kierlan’s expression when he laughed.
“I think you’re afraid . . . Sarah. But why should you be afraid of me?”
“I’m not! Why are we even talking about this? I mean, there’s absolutely nothing to discuss, you know. I mean, I don’t even know what you mean!”
“Ever since I bumped Pam Adams over the floor, you’ve been looking at me as if I were Jack the Ripper.”
“I have not.” But Kierlan was right. Sarah had thought it at the time: what kind of boy drags a golden-haired beauty with endless legs around with her face in the dust? And the corollary: I’m plain and plump and brown-haired. How would he drag me?
“I think you don’t believe me. I think I need to show you,” Kierlan said, his voice like silk.
“No,” said Sarah, wishing she had Mal’s power to leash and muzzle Kierlan with a glance. “I’m telling you, I’m not afraid of you in the least. I mean, in the least.” There, she had played her trump card.
And it misfired. “Of course, you’re not. So, you won’t mind a little demonstration, will you, Sarah? If you’re not afraid then you can’t mind,” said Kierlan and suddenly Sarah felt the throbbing sweetness swell larger and larger inside her.
She wished desperately that Mal would come running in from doing his errand. The weird thing was that she also wished desperately that Mal was having trouble finding an amenable police officer and paramedic and wouldn’t come.
What is wrong with me?
Kierlan was facing her, quite close. And, yes, she was blushing furiously.
Kierlan leaned forward. “I think Pooh Bear just has a little bit of stage fright,” he said, changing tactics, his voice very gentle. “But does she want to know what I’d do with her?”
This time Sarah couldn’t bring herself to say “No.” She could blame it on any number of things: dry mouth, basic stupidity, anything, but the truth was that she just couldn’t say it. In fact, she couldn’t seem to move or make a sound, of approval or protest. I think I’m hypnotized. Like a fly in a spider’s web. Wait, I mean, do spiders hypnotize flies? Or do I mean a rat hypnotized by a snake? I hate to think of myself as a rat. . . .
“We won’t put Pooh under another table,” Kierlan was saying. “I think she’s had enough of that. But, you see, sweetheart, Pamela Adams was supposed to protect Pooh and she didn’t do a very good job. So, it doesn’t matter if her face went bump bump bump on the floor coming out.” He put one finger under Sarah’s chin and tilted it until she was looking at him fully.
He didn’t say anything more, but his eyes were the color of a tiger’s eyes. Extraordinary that a human could have eyes like that. In the quiet twilight of Sarah’s room with its forest wallpaper they seemed most appropriate—and yet disturbing. They gathered all the light there was and, Sarah would swear, reflected it back. It would have been impossible for Sarah, who loved nature—even reading about it—not to think, ‘Tyger . . .’
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night,” whispered Kierlan, and Sarah felt the shock spread all along her nerves. She tried to swallow and looked at Kierlan with what she knew were wide eyes.
“If I saw you under a table,” singsonged Kierlan, “I’d move the table, if I were able. And then I’d just bend right down–and pick you up and carry you round.”
And with one motion he picked Sarah up, but not in a fireman’s lift, the way he had picked up Pamela. He picked Sarah up bridal style, as if he were about to step over the threshold of their new home. Unexpectedly, Sarah felt very fragile in his arms. It was ridiculous—she was far from fragile—but it was true. She also, paradoxically, felt very cozy and at home with those hard, strong arms around her.
“And that should put all Sarah’s fears to rest, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” whispered Sarah, but it was an automatic, mesmerized sound and she still stared wide-eyed at Kierlan’s face, at his eyes, at his mouth, which was not just mobile but quite beautiful in its way, with all the classic curves of a marble statue—but the warm color of flesh.
Kierlan looked down with his tiger eyes suddenly seeming very wise and old.
“Unless,” he said, “Sarah wants to know what might happen next. Does she want to know?”
Sarah stared. He had asked outright . . . and she felt as if he’d put a spell on her. A spell of silence—and stillness. Despite all she’d been through, she’d never been as terrified as this—and yet it wasn’t merely terror that kept her still. It was longing, stronger and sweeter every minute.
“Do you want to know, Sarah?”
Sarah’s heart was beating hard enough to make her shudder in his arms. She still couldn’t speak but she knew, now, what her answer was. She clung to him and turned her face slightly—not away, but toward, tipping her chin up.
“Oh, hell,” whispered Kierlan. “Come here, Angel Eyes.”
He kissed her.
###
