"Ophelia was servicing one of the cars we took on the mission, and she found this."
I lifted my brows as the newcomer handed Serena a tiny metallic object. It was round and silver, spattered in mud.
"It was up in the wheel well. Ginger says it's a tracking device, so it's only a matter of time until they get here. She's ordered a 3-D."
My mother's face went pale, and she shot me a look. "We have to go." Grabbing my hand, she tugged me to my feet. The other woman had already disappeared from sight.
"I don't understand," I asked. "What is that thing? And what's a 3-D?"
"That," my mother said, holding the thing up as she pulled me beside her into the hall, "is a tracking device. 3-D stands for Depart, Destroy, Defend. It means we evacuate the house immediately. And since there's no time to remove every sensitive document, we burn the place down behind us as we leave.
Then we gather in a safe location to figure out just how badly our secrets have been compromised."
"But" I began.
"There's no time. Whoever planted that unit could be here any second. They could be here now, for all we know."
"Where will you go?" I was running now, to keep pace with her.
"Don't worry, Lilith. We have safe houses all over the continentall over the world. We'll go to the closest one, and I promise to keep you safe until we get there, as I so miserably failed to do on the day you were born."
I blinked in amazement and touched her arm. "I do not blame you for that."
"I blame myself." She squeezed my hand. "Come on. We need to hurry."
Together we raced downstairs, where I saw women rushing around. But it wasn't chaotic. Each one seemed to know exactly where she was going and what she had to do. Mother and I rushed to the bedroom I sensed was hers, and I watched in awe as she yanked a bag from beneath her bed, fully packed already.
She handed a second bag to me. "I packed this for you while you were sleeping. You needed clothes."
"And you? How did you know you would need to pack for yourself, too?"
"We always have a bag packed with our essentials inside. We're constantly prepared for trouble, Lilith.
Come with me. Now."
My hand in hers again, we ran back into the hall and down the stairs to ground level and a room that could easily have been called a great hall. It was huge, ornate, echoing with every footstep. I glimpsed fireplaces, a crystal chandelier, oriental rugs of massive size and little else. We were quickly joined by a dozen other women, each with a bag. There were suitcases, duffels, backpacks and everything in between.
My mother opened the door and, stepping out, stared into the night. And that was when I felt itthe presence.
I grabbed her shoulder and jerked her back inside, even as a shot rang through the darkness. The bullet hit the ornate light that had been glowing beside the door, right next to my mother's head. Glass shattered as she and I tumbled inside, and someone else slammed the heavy door closed.
"Are you all right?" I asked my mother, pushing her hair aside to examine her head, seeing no damage, smelling no blood.
"Yes. But who ?"
"I felt themtwo of them. Vampires," I told her, staring at the closed door as tears burned in my eyes.
"One I don't know. And one I do. It was Ethan. And from what I sensed before he shut me out, the other one has to be James." I lowered my head. "I can't believe Ethan would do this. I trusted him."
For the second time in as many hours, tears flooded from my eyes and my chest went tight. Ethan. How could he turn on me this way? Or had his help been only a part of some game he and his brother had been playing the whole time?
Ethan, I thought, but only to myself, closing my eyes and clutching my chest. Ethan, why? Why, when I could have loved you?
Ethan went rigid when he saw his brother leveling a weapona real one, not a tranquilizer gunat the woman who was silhouetted in the open doorway. And then he spun and back-kicked, even as the shot went off. The gun flew in an arc and hit the pavement several yards away, while James gripped his own hand, hissing in pain.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Ethan demanded. "Dammit, James, that could've been Lilith."
"I could see that it wasn't."
"How? I've slept with her, and I couldn't tell."
James went still, turning to stare at his brother's face. His own had gone solemn and dark. "You've slept with her?"
Ethan averted his face. The partial dose of the drug had finally taken effect, and he'd awakened only an hour ago to find himself still in the Bronco, his brother still at the wheel. His eyes had immediately been drawn to a small device stuck to the windshield, held there by a suction up. It had a flashing light and an intermittent beep that would, he imagined, become maddening in very short order.
"I told you I'd find Lilith for you," James said with a nod at the thing. "I slipped a tracking unit onto one of the cars they had hidden off the roadside, just before they attacked you."
It had occurred to Ethan then to wonder just where his brother's priorities lay. If their situations had been reversed, he would have been thinking about saving his brother first and foremost, with tracking the perpetrators far below that in importance. But he'd brushed that thought away, telling himself that it had ended up working to his advantage, now that their attackers were holding Lilith prisoner.
Now, though, all Lilith's doubts about James were ringing in his mind. And he wondered
"You've actually slept with her?" James asked again, his voice registering intense displeasure and bringing Ethan back to the present with a jolt.
"I didn't mean to say that."
"But you did say it You're involved with her. Good grief, Ethan, is it just sex? Or is there more to it than that?"
"That's none of your business." But Ethan wondered how he would have answered the question if he'd chosen to. He didn't even know himself what was between himself and Lilith. But he knew it was driving him crazy to believe she was in danger right now and beyond his reach. He realized, though, that his brother was waiting, almost demanding that he say something more. He shook himself and tried. "I justGod, you could have killed her."
"It wasn't her."
"Then you could have killed whoever it was!"
"And why would you care if I killed your girlfriend's abductors?"
Ethan shook his head and turned again to face the mansion. It was built of rough hewn blocks of glittering white granite. The front door was brick red, with stained glass sidelights that matched the peacock tail window in the door itself. The knocker was brass. An owl.
They must have a thing for owls here. There were two others perched atop the pillars at either side of the front gate. Giant white stone owls, like sentries guarding the entrance. The gate itself was wrought iron, and a fence of the same design encircled the entire place, as far as he could see.
From within, he picked up the clear sense of women.
Many of them. Mortals, all. The only vampire essence he felt was Lilith's own alluring aura, and it did things to him, even then. And there were none of The Chosen there, either.
"I don't think these peoplethese womenare DPI, James," Ethan told his brother. "They don't give off that stench, if you know what I mean."
"They have a more pleasant energy about them, true," James agreed. "But it could be just because they're women? Because they have to be some other branch of the DPI, just a less nasty one, perhaps.
Maybe even unaware of the less palatable things, shall we say, that the DPI has been doing."
"If that's the caseif they don't knowthen maybe we can reason with them. Maybe if they knew"
"You want to reason with them?" James's words were heavy with sarcasm. "You want to reason with the people who drugged and kidnapped your woman?"
"She's not my woman."
"I hope that's true. But either way"
"I'm going to the door. We have to get her out of there."
"They'll drug you and imprison you, too. Hell, it's probably what they're waiting for. It's probably the only reason she's still alive."
"Thank God she is," Ethan muttered. Heaving a sigh, he focused his mind on Lilith, brought the image of her face into his mind. His gut clenched as he envisioned her arched, slightly heavy brows, her cheekbones and the smoothness of her skin. The intensity that was always swirling in her emerald eyes.
Lilith, he called mentally. Are you all right? Have they harmed you?
She didn't reply. Frowning, he tried harder. Lilith? I'm with James. We've come to rescue you. How many of them are there? Are you under guard?
And still there was nothing. He tipped his head to one side.
And then James said, "I've stopped feeling them." He met Ethan's eyes. "Only moments ago I sensed them, all of them, near the front of the house. But nowthere's nothing."
"They must be getting away!" Ethan surged from their hiding place beyond the shrubbery that lined the lane, leaping the bushes, crossing the road at a sprint no human could match. As the tall iron fence loomed before him, he bent his knees and sprang upward, sailing easily over it. And then he was racing up the drive, toward the front door. He didn't stop there. He didn't knock. He didn't even slow down.
He just hit the door with one shoulder, and it flew open. Bits of wood flew like shrapnel, and the door hit the wall so hard its knob cracked the plaster.
He ran a few steps inside, then stopped, turning his head left and right, scenting the air, but feeling only emptiness. "Lilith!"
"She's not here, little brother," James said. He'd been only a few steps behind Ethan on the way in.
"There must be some other way out," James said, looking around.
"How about you tell me something I don't know, James?"
James frowned, wrinkling his nose. "Okay. This place is about to go up in flames."
"What?"
"Run!" Even as he said it, James gripped Ethan's arm and propelled him back through the front door even as a series of explosions ripped the night. From the front step, they leapt as one, landing on the grass just inside the giant fence. Behind them, windows shattered, glass flying wildly, and flames sprang to life as if from nowhere.
Getting his feet, Ethan turned to look back at the place, stunned beyond belief. "What the hellwhy would they ?"
Brushing himself off, James gripped his arm. "There were things there they didn't want us to find.
Secrets."
"But we already knew they were DPI," Ethan said. "What other secrets could they possibly have?" He frowned and turned his head slowly. "Unless they're not."
"Of course they are," James said. "Who else would kidnap Lilith?"
He turned, looked briefly at the fence, then bent low and jumped, clearing it easily. He landed on the other side and looked through the bars at Ethan. "You coming?"
"Whoever they were," Ethan said, "they knew where to wait for us. They knew where we were going."
"Ethan, will you get out of there before the entire house blows up? You're too close to the flames for my peace of mind."
Ethan nodded and jumped the fence. But his mind was on other things as he landed beside his brother, and searched James's eyes and mind. "How could they have known where we were going last night, James? How could they have known that Lilith and I were heading back to The Farm? I removed the tracking device they'd implanted beneath her skin. And I didn't tell anyone but you."
"Don't even think it, Ethan. Don't even. Maybe they had you under surveillance the whole time. Maybe they spotted you out of sheer luck. Maybe they had another tracking device implanted in Lilithone you didn't find. There are a thousand maybes."
"Maybe you told them. Maybe you've been working for the DPI all along."
"I thought you just decided those Amazons weren't the DPI? How does that fit with this new theory of yours?"
Ethan didn't answer, just continued watching James, praying he was wrong in what he was starting to think.
"You're a real disappointment, you know that?" James said. "I freaking risk my neck to help you and your insane lunatic girlfriend, and at the first sign of trouble, you accuse me of betraying you. What the hell, Ethan? I'm your brother."
"I know."
"Yeah. Right." James lowered his head and started walking.
"Where are you going?"
"We need to put some distance between us and that inferno before the fire department gets here. And it'll be daylight by the time they leave. We need shelter."
Ethan walked a little faster, caught up to James and fell into step beside him. "I'm sorry."
"I don't suppose I blame you. I mean, we've been apart for two years, and neither of us is the man we were before. We're vampires now."
Ethan nodded.
"At sundown we'll come back here and figure out how they got out, where they went. Then we'll find your Lilith."
"We have to," Ethan said softly. "We have to, James."
"I will not rest until I do what I came to do. You have my word," James promised.
As Ethan stared into his brother's eyes, he felt a little chill and didn't know why. But then James smiled warmly, and whatever had been there was gone. A few minutes later they reached the Bronco.
Serena and the other women had trooped through the house as if it were a long practiced routine, and I was beginning to think perhaps it was. They led me to a sunroom in the back and out through its glass doors into a maze like garden. We made our way along its twisting paths until we reached the center, where a massive white statue stood: a Greek Goddess, with an owl on her shoulder.
Athena, I guessed.
Leaning over, Ginger, the redhead who appeared to be the group's leader, pushed at the statue's base, and I gasped as an entire section of the thing simply slid open, revealing a dark stone stairway descending into the earth.
"Quickly, ladies. Hurry now," Ginger ordered.
Swiftly, silently, the first women stepped down those hidden stairs and vanished into the earth. I saw lights appear, flickering like flames, and realized there must be candles positioned along the way.
Serena and I entered after the first few women had gone down, and she turned to call encouragement to the others as they came. Ginger came last, and I heard the stone sliding back into place a second later.
As we moved deeper into the underground passage, my mother found a candle in a wall sconce and took it down. She pulled a lighter from somewhere and put its flame to the wick, then offered the light to me.
I drew back. "That's all right. I prefer to keep a little distance between myself and open flames." She smiled, and her face in the candleglow was beautiful. "I'm very glad you found me," I told her. "Thank you, for never giving up the search."
"Thank you for staying alive and keeping your sanity in that place. Otherwise there wouldn't have been much to find." She lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry about Ethan."
"I never should have trusted him. From the first it's been, 'my brother this' and 'my brother that.' I can't compete with that, nor do I want to."
"Blood ties are powerful, Lilith."
"He took his brother's side against me." My voice broke a little when I said that, because it hurt so much to acknowledge the truth that had become so glaringly obvious.
"You don't know that. He could be deceived by his brother, just as you thought from the start. He might still be unaware of what James is up to."
I said nothing, but I felt a swell of something in my chest, as if my heart were admitting a small rush of hope. I hated that feeling. I would only be let down all over again if I let myself hope.
And yet that tiny flame flickered, refusing to die away, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn't there.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To our secret library. It's well hidden. There are some things that the world must never knowand though we keep careful records of your kind, we would never risk our knowledge of you falling into the wrong hands."
Ahead, I saw a doorway opening, lights coming on from within. "There's power way down here?"
"Yes, and everything else we could need, including an entire network of escape tunnels. Any pursuer would find it difficult to decide which one to follow. But we won't use those just yet. We'll be safe here for today."
"But what if they find the entrance?"
"If the hidden passage opens, an alarm light will flash in the library. We'll know they're coming long before they reach us. But it's highly doubtful anyoneeven a vampirecould locate that passage or figure out how to open the door." She glanced at me with a reassuring smile. "You didn't guess it was there, did you?"
I breathed a sigh of relief. "No. Not until I saw it sliding open."
My mother smiled and patted my hand. "I told you I'd keep you safe. Come, I want you to see this."
And with that she led me the last few steps along the corridor and through the open door. Before me, a room opened out, round, with a domed ceiling and not a window in sight. Its walls appeared to be made of books. Nothing but books and more books, and more and more books. There were computers on desks in various spots, too, and on the farthest curve of the circular walls, another doorway.
"Where does that one lead?" I asked.
"To the vaults. We have a lot of artifacts that need to be just as well guarded as the records." She nodded to her right. "That bookshelf opens to reveal the entrance to four escape tunnels. The one to the left, four more. They open by a switch hidden in the light fixture there." She pointed.
I nodded. "I don't like the idea of spending the day here," I told her. "I'm helpless when I sleep. And if someone does find the passage, I'd be right here, waiting for them to find me."
"How could anyone find the passage?" she asked.
I shrugged and averted my eyes. "Ethan and I have been close. Or I thought we were. There was a connection between us. I think it was real, even if it meant nothing to him in the end."
"I see," she said softly, and I got the feeling she really did.
"He might be able to sense me, even if no one else could," I told her.
She nodded. "We'll all be awake. We'll protect you. If the passage opens, we'll carry you out of here, if necessary."
I looked slowly at the women who shared the library with us. One had located a closet and was pulling blankets and pillows from its depths, and handing them out to the rest, so they could nap on and off throughout the dayin shifts, no doubt. Another was entering what looked like a pantry. I smelled food coming from it, and I felt jealous that these mortals would eat while I had to go hungry.
Unless I decided to eat one of them, I thought, with a private, inner grin. I wouldn't of course, but I amused myself with my own little joke, even while deciding not to share it. They likely wouldn't find it very funny.
"You can trust them," my mother told me. "These woman have worked as hard as I have to find you, most without even knowing you were my daughter, though they all know it now. Some have been here for as long as I have. A few, even longer. They love me, and because of that, they'll be loyal to you. You have nothing to fear from any of them, I swear it."
"I'm sorry. I'm just not used to trusting anyone. Ethan really was the first, and you've seen how that turned out."
"You don't yet know how that turned out."
I looked at her, frowning and wishing with everything in me that I could believe her.
She stroked my hair, her touch tender and loving beyond measure. "You have a set of circumstances that seem to suggest he has betrayed you. But you don't know, Lilith. Try not to judge him until you do."
I nodded, and felt the pull of the unseen sun upon my body. My limbs were growing heavy, my movements clumsy and labored. My eyelids kept dropping closed.
A young woman touched my shoulder, and when I looked her way, she handed me a blanket and pillow. "Pick a spot near the escape tunnels, so we can get you out first if anything should happen."
I shot a swift look at my mother, then returned my probing but sleepy gaze to this girl, with her pixie brown hair and twinkling blue eyes. "Why would you want to get me out first?"
"While you sleep, you're helpless, right? Naturally we'd take you out first. You'd be the most at risk."
She smiled a little. "Besides, you've been a pet project of ours since long before I came here. We couldn't let anything happen to you now."
I nodded, and the girl turned and hurried away. Looking once more at my mother, I said, "I guess I can trust them." I didn't though. Not fully, and not deep down. How could I? I didn't know them.
But I trusted Serena. My mother. I trusted her and hoped I wasn't wrong again. Taking my pillow and blanket, I chose a spot, spread the blanket on the floor and lay down on it, resting my head on my hand, my elbow on the soft pillow. "They look up to you here," I said.
She nodded "I'm Ginger's second. Though if you'd told me I would ever rise to this position twenty years ago, I would have said you were crazy." She shrugged. "I came here, joined this order, for one purpose and one purpose only. I thought it was my best chance to find you."
"But that changed, didn't it?"
She nodded and looked around the library, pride beaming from her eyes. "Their cause is so good, so noble and just. The more I learned about them, the more I believed in what they were doing. Fighting to protect an entire race that has as much right to exist as any of us do."
I nodded slowly. "Have you known many of them, then? Vampires?"
"Known? No, I wouldn't say I've really ever known any of them. I've encountered a handful, and I've helped a great many, though always without their knowledge."
"Even" I was having trouble staying awake, and soon I would be helpless to even try. "Even the Wildborns?"
"Until you, I never knew there were any other kind," she said.
I frowned. "I don't understand why anyone would help them." My eyes fell closed, and my mind faded to black. The last thing I heard was her voice.
"Rest now, daughter. We'll talk again at sundown."
