Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,90

side yards, making her squint. A girl in her late teens stood on the porch. The western sky at her back set her brilliant white hair afire. Clear eyes shone out of her shadowed face.

“Milada, come in—” Rachel said. In that same moment, she knew the girl was not Milada. But that was the only logical connection her brain could make.

The girl looked back at Rachel with an equally startled expression. She was perhaps an inch shorter than Milada. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail. She was wearing green hospital scrubs. She could have passed for any of the medical students Rachel saw all the time at DCH—if not for her extraordinary complexion and strange outfit.

The mention of Milada’s name told the girl what she needed to know. “Excuse me,” she said. She pushed past Rachel and strode into the foyer and down the hallway, hesitating briefly at the stairway and then becoming aware of the commotion radiating from the family room.

“W-wait!” Rachel said, coming to her senses and hurrying after her.

David glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see his wife. He leapt to his feet. “Who—?” he started to say.

The girl’s eyes focused on him briefly and then fell on Jennifer, as the gaze of a circling hawk falls on its prey. She stepped forward. David held out his arms, shielding his children from this stranger.

Rachel’s frantic mind finally connected a name with the face. The picture she’d seen on Milada’s kitchen counter. “Kam—” she started to say.

Kamilla whirled on her, teeth clenched, her eyes bright with shock. “What did she do? What did Milada do?”

Rachel stared at her dumbly. “It—it was my idea,” she felt compelled to say.

“Your idea? How could it be your idea?” Kamilla’s eyes narrowed. She seized Rachel’s chin and turned her head to one side and the other. Though there was nothing to see, Rachel’s hand reflexively went to the invisible scars on her throat.

“I didn’t sleep—” Rachel said defensively. She choked off the rest of the sentence.

David stepped forward to defend his wife from this incomprehensible hostility. “Look here—”

Kamilla stretched out her right hand toward him, a gesture made with such resolute authority that David yielded to its force. She focused her eyes on Rachel. “I have the test results. So don’t tell me—”

“The test results?”

“The genetic test Milada ran through Wylde. Damn it! What were you thinking?” Rachel sensed that the question was directed as much at Milada as herself.

“Hey!” said David. “You don’t use that kind of language—”

“Stay out of this!” she snapped.

“Stay out of what? What are you talking about? What’s Milada got to do with this?”

“But—but she refused,” Rachel said. “I asked her. But she refused.”

“Refused to do what?” the girl growled.

Another horror seized Rachel. The girl’s body eclipsed her husband’s presence, creating a small pocket of privacy between them. “Please.” Rachel’s voice fell into a harsh whisper, the air barely escaping her lips. “He doesn’t know.” Truth stood before her, ready to destroy her utterly, and all she cared about in that moment was the lie. Rachel would have knelt before the girl if she believed it would further her cause.

The few seconds of tense quietude was all David needed to gird up his loins. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing here, but you’re going to have to leave.” He stepped forward and grabbed the girl by the wrist, placing his left hand against her shoulder to leverage her away from his wife. Rachel could not remember the last time he had laid hands on another person in anger.

She didn’t budge. Rachel blanched. “Don’t touch her—” she gasped so desperately that he dropped his hold as if touching a hot iron.

Kamilla shot her an icy glare. “Give me some credit. Please.”

David had not exhausted all his courage. “What is going on? What was she looking at Jennifer like that for? What does she have to do with Milada?”

“She’s her sister,” Laura and Jennifer piped up together.

The three adults turned as one. Laura and Jennifer were backed up against the far wall of the family room, looking alternatively aghast and enraptured by the drama unfolding in front of them.

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Laura shrugged a nonchalant teenage shrug. “Or maybe she’s another vampire.”

David gaped at his older daughter. Rachel clenched her fists and closed her eyes and prayed.

“Laura, be serious,” her father said.

“Yes, Laura, be serious,” echoed Kamilla.

The abrupt, absurd turn of the argument drained the energy from the