steadied him, held him up, and tried to convince him to go back.
But Quinn could only think of one thing: getting to his father. His father was a minister; his father would
know what to do. His father would help.
And Dove, at last, agreed to go with him.
Later Quinn would realize that of course he should have known better.
They reached Quinn's home. At that point, if Quinn was afraid of anything, it was that his father wouldn't
believe this wild story of bloodthirst and death. But one look at Quinn's new teeth convinced his father of
everything.
He could recognize a devil when he saw one, he said.
And he knew his duty. Like every Puritan's, it was to cast out sin and evil wherever he found it.
With that, his father picked up a brand from the fire-a good piece of seasoned pine-and then grabbed
Dove by the hair.
It was around this time that the screaming started, the screaming Quinn would be able to hear forever
after if he listened. Dove was too gentle to put up much of a fight. And Quinn himself was too weak to
save her.
He tried. He threw himself on top of Dove to shield her from the stake. He would always have the scar
on his side to prove it. But the wood that nicked him pierced Dove to the heart. She died looking up at
him, the light in her brown eyes going out.
Then everything was confusion, with his father chasing him, crying, brandishing the bloody stake pulled
from Dove's body. It ended when Hunter Red-fern appeared at the door with Lily and Garnet. They
took Quinn and Dove home with them, while Quinn's father went running to the neighbors for help. He
wanted help burning the Redfern cabin down.
That was when Hunter said it, the thing that severed Quinn's ties with his old world. He looked down at
his dead daughter and said, "She was too gentle to live in a world full of humans. Do you think you can
do any better?"
And Quinn, dazed and starving, so frightened and full of horror that he couldn't talk, decided then that he
would. Humans were the enemy. No matter what he did, they would never accept him. He had become
something they could only hate-so he might as well become it thoroughly.
"You see, you don't have a family anymore," Hunter mused. "Unless it's the Redferns."
Since then, Quinn had thought of himself only as a vampire.
He shook his head, feeling clearer than he had for days.
The girl had disturbed him. The girl in the cellar, the girl whose face he had never seen. For two days
after that night, all he could think of was somehow finding her.
What had happened between them... well, he still didn't understand that. If she had been a witch, he'd
have thought she bewitched him. But she was human. And she'd made him doubt everything he knew
about humans.
She'd awakened feelings that had been sleeping since Dove died in his arms.
But now... now he thought it was just as well he hadn't been able to find her. Because the cellar girl
wasn't just human, she was a vampire hunter. Like his father. His father, who, wild-eyed and sobbing,
had driven the stake through Dove's heart.
As always, Quinn felt himself losing his grip on sanity as he remembered it.
What a pity that he'd have to kill the cellar girl the next time he saw her.
But there was no help for it. Vampire hunters were worse than the ordinary human vermin, who were
just stupid. Vampire hunters were the sin and the evil that had to be cast out. The Night World was the
only world.
And I haven't been to the dub in a week, Quinn thought, showing his teeth. He laughed out loud, a
strange and brittle sound. Well, I guess I'd better go tonight.
It's all part of the great dance, you see, he thought to the cellar girl, who of course couldn't hear him. The
dance of life and death. The dance that's going on right this minute all over the world, in African savannas
and Arctic snowfields and the bushes in Boston Common.
Killing and eating. Hunting and dying. A spider snags a bluebottle fly; a polar bear grabs a seal. A
coyote springs on a rabbit. It's the way the world has always been.
Humans were part of it, too, except that they let slaughterhouses do the killing for them and received
their prey in the form of McDonald's hamburgers.
There was an order to things. The dance required
that someone be the hunter and someone else be the hunted. With all those young girls longing to offer
themselves to the darkness, it would be cruel of Quinn not to provide a darkness to oblige them.
They were all only playing their parts.
Quinn headed for the club, laughing in a way that scared even him.
The club was only a few streets away from the warehouse, Rashel noted. Made sense. Everything about
this operation had the stamp of efficiency, and she sensed Quinn's hand in that.
I wonder what he's getting paid to provide the girls for sale? she thought. She'd heard that Quinn liked
money.
"Remember, once we get inside, you don't know me," she said to Daphne. "It's safer for both of us that
way. They might suspect something if they knew that first you escaped and now you're turning up with a
stranger."
"Got it." Daphne looked excited and a little scared. Under her coat, she was wearing a slinky black top
and a brief skirt, and her black-stockinged legs twinkled as she ran toward the club door.
Under Rashel's coat, hidden in the lining, was a knife. Like her sword, it was made of lignum vitae, the
hardest wood on earth. The sheath had several interesting secret compartments.
It was the knife of a ninja, and Sensei, who had taught Rashel the martial arts, wouldn't have approved