His brother rode a horse of his own, an Arabian, far sleeker and smaller than Ethan's powerful draft horses. He sat his mount well, wearing a long black coat that was split in the back. He was about ten yards ahead on the trail.
"How did you find me?" Ethan asked.
"There's no time. Take her north, Ethan. You'll emerge from the woods onto a road. Follow it west for fifteen miles. There you'll find a house you can use for shelter, something to eat, and a shed for the horses."
"How did you know where to find us? And why now? Where have you been, James? I've been looking for you for"
"If you don't hurry up, you're both going to end up back on The Farm. They're coming. Get her up, dammit!"
Ethan gathered Lilith up in his arms, and held her against him as he climbed onto Charybdis's powerful back once again. He placed her sideways in front of him, her legs dangling over one side of the horse, her body against his, his arm holding her hard around the . shoulders. He took the reins in his free hand and clicked his tongue, the lifted his head to look ahead of him.
"Thank you, James. I"
But James had vanished.
Ethan fell silent, scanning the woods around him. He could still hear the Arabian's hoofbeats fading in the distance as his brother galloped away. Urging Charybdis into a trot and holding Lilith tightly, Ethan sent out a mental call to James, but it went unanswered.
God, he hadn't seen his brother in two years. For him appear him just this oncehere and nowhow could it be? How had his brother known? His mind was spinning with so many questions.
But James was long gone, and Lilith needed him. A tranquilizer. It had taken a while to work, and he suspected she'd received only a partial dose, possibly from that first dart that had grazed her.
He glanced back, glad to see Scylla following along behind him as he rode in the direction James had suggestedalthough the entire time a part of him fought not to wheel his horse around and gallop after his brother instead.
Serena remembered it so vividly that it was as if it were still happening. She felt herself standing at the dark entrance to the cave, staring inside and wishing she could see the two who hid within its shadowy walls. But she didn't have a vampire's vision. Behind her, at her signal, a dozen of her sisters turned on their flashlights and aimed them into the cave's mouth, both to reveal whoever lurked inside and to blind them enough to prevent an attack.
Because they might attack. The vampires had no way of knowing that the Sisterhood of Athena were on their side. And they must know they were being hunted by those who wanted only to kill them.
For just one brief moment, Serena glimpsed the tall, proud, beauty within, shielding her face against the light, her pale skin and endless copper hair all thai were really visible. There was a man with her.
Vampires, both. Serena had been with the Sisterhood long enough to easily tell mortal from immortal, even with no more than a glance. And no more than a glance was all she gave the male. The woman was her goal. Just as she had been for the past twenty-two years.
Lilith. Her daughter.
So beautiful. Ivory skin, smooth as silk. Long, wild curls that twisted and writhed all the way to her hips, gleaming bronze in the flashlight beams. She was tall and very slender, and her eyeswere they green like Serena's own? Was there a slight resemblance in the bone structure, the cheekbones, the stubborn chin?
Could this really be her long lost baby girl?
Before Serena could complete the thought, her sisters were aiming weapons as well as lights. With hands that trembled, she lifted her own, her prepared speech frozen on her lips.
I think I may be your mother. You were taken from me long ago, before I ever even got to hold you.
I've devoted every moment of my life since to searching for you, finding you. You're beautiful, and I love you, and you can trust me. And these guns won't harm you. They're only for our own protection, just until I can make you understand. I've come to help you, because I would never hurt you. And everything's going to be all right now. And thank God, thank God, thank God I've found you.
But none of those words made their way past her lips.
Her brain froze on one simple fact. If this was her baby girl, then what Callista had told her was true.
Her daughter was a vampire.
She managed to say somethingsomething ineffective, by all evidencebecause in the next instant someone shot, and then the two vampires exploded from the cave. Sisters fell like dominoes as what seemed like a dark twister crashed through them. And then the vampires were gone.
Serena found herself lying face up in a clump of brush. "No," she whispered. And then, scrambling upright, she shouted it. "No, wait! You don't understand!" And she began running in the direction they had taken. "Come back! You have to listen to me!"
But there was no response.
She kept going, using her flashlight to scan the ground for tracks. The Sisterhood had trained her, and trained her well. She could track better than most avid hunters. All the sisters could.
Eventually she came to a spot where signs of the vampires' passing met up with hoofprints in the soft, damp ground. She followed the hoofprints, moving as quickly as she could, but she knew she would never catch them. Her daughterher one chance at finally finding her babywas vanishing practically before her eyes.
Her whole body trembling, she stopped at last and stood staring into the distance.
"I'll find you baby. I swear to God, I'll keep searching until I find you."
Wiping away her tears, she turned and walked back along the path to the clearing outside the cave. And there she saw her sisters, some injured, others tending to them. Shaking her head slowly, she drew a breath, and got to work.
In my dream I was back there. I was back at The Farm
Ethan was gone, and I had been dejected since I'd awakened one morning to hear the gossip that claimed he had escaped. He wouldn't have done that, would he? I thought. He wouldn't have gone and left me behind.
I was the rebel, the untamable one. The one constantly being punished. The one whose mind-bending drugs were being increased beyond anything that had even been attempted before, in order to bring me into submission.
I'd heard the nurses talking about that. And I was afraid, because since this last time, I hadn't felt right.
My thinking was clouded. My temper was dulled. Part of me wanted to just give in and do what the keepers told me to do. Part of me wondered if maybe being there wasn't so bad after all.
And then I heard one nurse mention an antidote by namesomething that could be used on me in case of accidental overdose. Melanine, she said. And I knew I had to find it somehow; Because I could feel my mind slipping from my grasp.
And so I'd been very obedient that day and pretended that I no longer cared enough to disagree with the teachers. I worked hard and fell into bed. And they relaxed a little. At least enough that I didn't wind up in the punishment barracks again. Then, in the dead of night, I sneaked out of my barracks and made my way to the medical facility. I knew where it was located, but I had never ventured into that part of the compound before. I'd never had reason. I did on that night, though, and I hoped I would be able to find the right building.
Unlike most other places on the compound, the medical center was only lightly guarded, and I wondered at that. As I headed closer, I passed another building. A small tin shack, perhaps six feet square. No windows, and only one door, with two guards stationed in front of it.
Two guards. For a shack so tiny it couldn't possibly hold more than one person? Who was so importantor so dangerous? There was a barbed-wire fence around the men and the shack, and signs that warned against stepping past it.
I paused, hidden from the guards' view by the shadows, something compelling me to halt there for just a moment.
And then I heard it. A voice, all in my head, but far too real to ignore.
Young one. Lilith. You're very special. I sense it in you. I am very weak and will not be able to help you much longer. So come to me. Come to me, Lilith.
I swallowed hard, my eyes widening, my heart racing. I knew the voice came from inside that tiny, well-guarded building. I knew it.
I need your help, child, as much as you need mine. Please, find a way to get inside. I promise you won't need any help at all getting back out.
Something wouldn't let me disobey. He sounded weak. He sounded as if he were suffering, in great pain.
And I didn't like seeing anyone tortured. I knew all too well how that felt.
Licking my lips, I tried to think of a way to get the guards' attention away from their duty, and I came up with a method quite easily. I backed away until I was near the huge electrified fence that surrounded the entire compound. We all knew it was deadly and rigged to sound an alarm when touched.
I picked up a rock from the ground and threw it as hard as I could at the nearest metal fence pole. The rock hit, and a shower of white-gold sparks sizzled from the point of impact and the alarm began to shriek. The guards raced away from their post.
I ran very fast toward the tiny building, diving over the barbed-wire fence, landing hands first, and tucking and rolling to break my fall.
Then, wasting not a single second, I scrambled to my feet and ran to the door. Even as I stood there fumbling with the lock, it clicked open all on its own. I wondered if the person inside were magic. A wizard?
I stepped inside, and then I caught my breath.
It was stifling inside, like an oven. And he was lying on a hard table, beneath a white sheet, and his face was gaunt, bleached white skin stretched so tightly over sharply delineated bones that I thought it could easily be peeled away.
His cheeks were hollow, the cheekbones and jaw as prominent as a naked skull's. White matted hair covered his scalp in tufts, with pale skin in between. And his eyes pale, ice-blue eyes that seemed to be clouding over withwell, to me, it looked like death.
"Who who are you?" I whispered.
"A vampire, child."
"A real one?" I'd been taught of them in my studies. I knew they existed.
And I knew, even then, of my own unique connection to them as one of The Chosen.
But I'd never seen one before.
"Yes, a real one." He spoke very slowly, each word seeming to emerge only with extreme effort. "But not for much longer, I fear. I'm dying, child."
"You are?"
He nodded. "You and I have a special bond, child, and I do not have time to explain it to you. But I will tell you that I'll be far happier dead than living in this hell any longer."
"Why are you here? What are they doing to you?" I asked.
He blinked, and I thought with alarm that I could see through his eyelids. His hands moved as if to gesture, but they fell again with a clanging and banging noise. Manacles and chains, I saw now, at his wrists and feet.
"When they want to make a vampire, they get the blood from me, but they're afraid I'll regain my strength and destroy them, so they don't give me enough in return. I grow weaker every day. But my bloodline is strong, Lilith. If you'll take the gift I offer, you'll become a vampire, too, this very night, and you'll be strong enough to jump the fence and run away. But it has to be now. Right now. I'm not going to live another night. Perhaps not even another hour."
I thought about all the others here. I thought about the revolt I had hoped to instigate, the coup I'd hoped to lead that would put this place into our control. But I thought perhaps those things would be better accomplished from the outside. I could grow strong. I could learn more. I could solicit help.
I blinked and, meeting the old man's eyes, nodded my acceptance. "What do you want me to do?"
He lifted a hand, the chain jangling as he moved it, and gestured me closer. I moved, and when I was near enough, he closed his hand on the back of my head and jerked me forward. He was remarkably strong, far stronger than I would have imagined. If this were weakif this were dyingthen what had he been like in what he called life?
He whispered in my ear, and I shuddered, then gasped as he yanked my head right down to his and forcefully pressed my neck against his dry, shrunken mouth. I felt it open. I felt his wet tongue, and then the powerful jaw clamped down on my throat, his razor sharp teeth sinking into my flesh. I felt them pop through the tougher tissue of my vein, and then he was suckling me, drinking me. Drinking my blood.
I woke all at once, my eyes flying open wide. My head felt as if it were being pounded from within by an oversized mallet. My limbs didn't respond to my mind's commands right away, and when they did, they were uncoordinated and weak. Focusing my eyes required no small effort, but I managed it, though it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time.
As I blinked away the sleep fog, I tried to get my bearings. I was lying on my back. There were pillows beneath my body. Soft ones. I was I was naked. Yes, I felt the chill air touching my skin. And something else, just as cool, but more substantial.
Hands.
Ethan's hands.
As I lay there, his palms moved over my right arm, skin brushing across skin, his touch more than a caress that made me tingle down deep. He was looking for something. Feeling for something.
As I frowned and tried to lift my head, only to have it refuse to obey, Ethan moved his hands to my other arm, running them over it in the same thorough, tender way. From my fingers to my wrist, over my forearm to my elbow and along the tender skin inside the bend. He skimmed and squeezed and felt my bicep and tricep and up to my shoulder, and even underneath, and I bit my lower lip against the swell of unbearable pleasure. I bit it hard, but I couldn't feel my own teeth sinking into my flesh. I could only feel Ethan's hands on my skin.
And then he moved to my foot, and again he began that delicious, sensual hunt, as if for some tiny treasure. His hands skimming, his fingers pressing and moving in small circles. The ball of my foot, my ankle, each and every toe. And then to the calf, not missing an inch of flesh as he went. His touch moved higher, to my thigh, to the tender skin inside it, and then still higher.
I slapped his hand, a reflex that halted his progress. He turned his head, meeting my eyes, holding my gaze. "You're awake," he said, and he sounded relieved.
"Obviously. The question is, why was I otherwise?"
"Those womendo you remember? At the cave?"
I nodded, impatient to hear the rest. Meanwhile, I scanned my surroundings, beginning with those nearest to me. My bed, I discovered, was a chaise longue, a big one, deep and plush and brown. It was situated in one corner of a smallish room, a nice room.
"The weapons they used were tranquilizer guns."
I lifted my brows, curious. "I wouldn't think any ordinary tranquilizer would be effective on a vampire."
"I wouldn't, either. But then again, I've only been on the outside for a couple of years, and I've had no contact with other vampires. Apparently someone has come up a tranq that does work on us." He touched my upper arm, just below the shoulder. "One of the darts grazed you here. You must have received a small enough dose that the effect was delayed."
"That makes sense." Except that I hadn't felt the dart graze me. And yet, there on my arm, was the evidence of it. A narrow cut, like a furrow in my flesh. Perhaps the heat of the moment had distracted me.
He had lost interest in explanations. His eyes were once again focused on my body, and his hands had resumed their intense exploration. He was about to continue his examination-by-touch of my inner thigh.
"And yet," I said aloud, "it doesn't begin to explain why I am currently naked, or why you are currently touching every part of my body in an apparent attempt to drive me insane."
My words stopped him again. He drew his hands away from me and sat up straighter on the edge of the chaise. "Sorry. I" He paused, then looked me in the eye. "My brother was there."
"Your brother? He was where?"
Ethan leaned over me once more, but this time only long enough to reach past me for a blanket that had been tossed over the back of the chair, beyond my peripheral vision. He draped it over me before speaking. "He showed up in the woods just after you passed out and fell off Scylla. He was on horseback, too."
I frowned hard, my vision sharper now as the drug began to wear off, and searched his face. "Are you sure you didn't get nicked with a dart yourself?"
"He was there. He rode up to within thirty feet of us, said you'd likely been hit by a tranquilizer dart, told me to bring you here because it would be safe, and then he took off in the opposite direction before I could even ask him any thing."
I felt the pain in him.
He sighed and went on. "He was like us," he said softly. "He was a vampire."
I blinked, knowing instantly what that suggested even before he repeated my own thoughts back to me.
"That means he was probably changed by the keepers and sent into the service of the DPI. He probably works for them."
I nodded. But despite the fact that I was in complete agreement with him, I found myself wanting to give him hope that things were not what they seemed. "Not necessarily," I said. "I'm a vampire. So are you.
And neither of us works for them."
"That's true."
"And," I went on, "you still haven't come to the part where you explain why you're groping me."
He lifted one brow, sending me a wounded look. "Groping? I thought I was employing the tenderest of caresses."
"All right. That, then."
"Gee, thanks."
I shrugged. "I didn't say I minded."
He met my eyes, and I the heat in his own was palpable. "You didn't?"
"Mmm, no. But on the other hand, I didn't get the feeling it was intended as foreplay."
"It would have been much better if that's what I was doing."
"No doubt," I said, pouring sarcasm into it. In fact, I didn't doubt it. We would be good together, he and I. We would be explosive. We'd been explosive when we'd done no more than kiss, and now I could hardly wait to have crazy-mad sex with him.
"I was looking for a tracking device." I frowned, but he went on. "I've been thinking about what you said before. About how if they have some way to track you, it has to be something on the inside. And it makes sense. After I escapedafter James and I escaped, I mean"
"If he did escape."
"After I escaped, then, they might have decided to find a way to keep tabs on any future runaways.
Maybe they implanted some kind of microchip or something." He frowned, searching my eyes as thoroughly as he had been searching my body. "You said you remembered me. What else do you remember?"
Frowning, I thought back. "I lived in a room with another woman. Her name was" I squeezed my eyes tight. "God, I can see her face. She was a strawberry blonde, with freckles just across the bridge of her nose, and blue, blue eyes. What was her name?"
Ethan's hand covered my clenched fist. "Don't try to force it. Just let it come, holes and all, and tell me about what comes to you."
But it infuriated me that I couldn't remember her name, when I could so clearly remember her face. Even her voice. "She had the brightest smilewhen we were younger. I remember noticing that she smiled less and less as we grew up. By the time I decided to escape, she was like like a"
"I know. I know."
"We bunked together. There were ten rooms in each of the little painted cinder block buildings. Two of us to each room. Ours was called Cabin Ten. It was yellow. The twenty of us had a little kitchenette, a tiny living area, a television and some easy chairs. There were two bathrooms, one at each end."
"Sounds just like my cabin. Twenty-one, other end of the compound. There were barracks, too, with two rows of cots and just enough space to walk between them. We'd spend thirty days in the cabins, then thirty in the barracks."
"I don't remember that."
"Anything else hitting your memory just yet?"
I lowered my head and thought of the dream, of the old man, but I couldn't bring myself to talk about that!. Not yet. So I pushed it aside and searched elsewhere in my mind.
"I remember martial arts classes. I remember that's where I was going when I used to pass you every day. And I used to look forward to that as if it wereI don't know, a highlight of my existence. The way you would always look at me, right into my eyes, the way you would hold my gaze and how it made my stomach knot up and filled me with joy, just joy. And hunger. And" I stopped talking there and bit my lips, because the memory was so real and so vivid that I was beginning to feel those things again now.
Drawing a breath, I steadied myself.
"It was the same for me, Lilith. Don't ever doubt it."
"It can't have been," I said softly. And I felt a burning in my eyes that I was sure was a very rare thing for me. "It can't. Because I never could have left you behind in that place. Not in a million years."
He averted his eyes, but I felt the rush of guilt that filled him then. Clearing his throat, he started to speak, then seemed to change his mind.
Sighing, I went on. "What I do not remember is someone implanting me with any microchip or tracking device."
I sat up slowly, looking around the house, my eyes pausing on the windows, my senses suddenly picking up. "They weren't implanting anything before you left, right?" I asked.
"No. Not that I know of, and I assume if they had been, they'd have found me long before now."
"So if your brother found us by means of a chip that wasn't in use until after he left, then"
"Then he really has been working for them all this time." He rose to his feet in a rush of motion. "But that doesn't make sense. If he's working for them, why would he help us? He helped us, Lilith."
"Did he?" I asked softly. "Or did he just set us up for a DPI trap?"
He went tense, his eyes flaring just a little. There was a moment of silent intensity, in which I knew he was scanning the night for any sign of someone else, friend or enemy, vampire or mortal, nearby. I knew it because I was doing the same thing. And feeling nothing.
Yet.
"I don't believe he would do that," Ethan said softly. And then he fetched my clothes, or the shirt that passed for clothes, at least, and handed it to me. "But I think it would be a good idea for us to leave here, just in case."
"I think that's wise." I rose, unashamed and unembarrassed, and dressed. "We'll find a better place to rest, and if we get there early enough, I'll finish inspecting myself for any lump or bump that might be a subcutaneous bit of electronic gadgetry."
"I really don't mind doing it for you," he said. And he said it without changing his inflection, so that in the midst of the tension, the fear that we were sitting in the jaws of a trap that might spring closed at any moment, the remark truly made me smile.
"We'll see," I promised.
He handed me a glass filled to the brim with something red. "Here. James told me there would be sustenance here. He was honest about that much, anyway."
"Aren't you afraid it might be drugged?"
"No, since I drank some almost an hour ago."
"That's reassuring, at least" I told him, and downed it as Ethan quickly moved through the house, probably in search of any other items we could use. Within moments he rejoined me, a small bundle under his arms.
We left the house, moving quickly to a large shed in the back, where I felt Scylla and Charybdis's presence before I heard or smelled them. They were alert already. Aware we were coming, I wondered, or sensing something elselike impending danger?
As we walked, it was as if I could feel eyes on me from the woods around us, from the house itself, as if we were surrounded by our enemies and would be attacked at any moment.
And yet I knew that was not my preternaturally sharp senses talking. It was my own fear.
We opened the barn door, and Ethan quickly reached in for Charybdis, speaking soothingly and walking the massive stallion outside. As soon as he was out of the way, I gripped Scylla's halter and led her out, as well, swinging myself onto her back the moment she reached the open, where there was room.
Let's go slow and silent, Ethan said to me, speaking to me with the power of his mind.
How, when everything in me is telling me to launch her into a full gallop?
He rode directly beside me, on the right, and his eyes met mine, his smile, as reassuring as it could possibly have been. Patience.
Even the horses wanted to run, though. I could feel it. They were sensing exactly what I was. Picking up on my fears? I wondered. Or was something more substantial about to take place?
And then I felt it. And I knew he felt it, too. Something was coming, and it was coming from above.
Ethan shot me an alarmed look just as the warning bells rang in my mind. And then he clenched his knees on his stallion's sides and shouted, "Run!"
We took off, the horses, magnificent beasts that they were, nearly flying through the night, their hoofbeats pounding so loudly that at first, I didn't recognize the sound of the helicopter blades slicing the very fabric of the night sky. But then the spotlights poured down from above and there was no more mistaking them. Even in the darkness, I could see the logo on the side of the three black insect-like helicopters. A white-hot lightning bolt piercing a blood red crescent moon. And suddenly something flashed through my mind, and I realized I knew that symbol well. I'd seen it often enough on The Farm. It was stamped on everything, from the labels of the clothes they gave us to wear to the boxes, cans and wrappers that held our food and drink, to the furnishings, the bedding, even the light bulbs. Everything bore that same symbol. One I now equated with captivity and pursuit and danger.
How could the idiots still living on The Farm not see the things that Ethan and I had seen? How could they be content to live a life imprisoned?
Gunshots shocked me from my thoughts. They were firing at us from the choppers! Ethan gripped Scylla's halter and veered Charybdis toward the sheltering trees. As if I wasn't going to follow at a full gallop! I smacked his hand away and took control of my mare, as we raced in a zig-zag pattern across the small patch of open ground toward the trees and the mountains beyond them.
We galloped as if competing in a raceand maybe we were, a race for our livesand we crouched low over the horses' necks as they ran. I held to Scylla's mane for dear life and hoped I wasn't tugging too hard as her powerful stride jostled me from one side to the other. All the while I clung as hard as I could with my legs.
Finally we pierced the forest wall and dove into its embrace. Deeper and deeper into the forest we went, while the three choppers circled overhead. But not right overhead. After only a few moments, they were buzzing this way and that, and I realized they couldn't see us anymore. But soon enough they would.
They would cordon off the forest and send in searchers. Somewhere their fearless leaders might very well be organizing that already.
"We've got to make for the mountains," Ethan called to me. "It's our best chance."
Maybe, I thought, our only chance.
