Bloodline (20 page)

I clutched her tighter, and my shoulders trembled. I felt my own tears rolling down my cheeks. Gently, she held me away from her to look at my face. I wasn't ashamed of my tears. I didn't need to be ashamed of anything with her.

With the most tender touch I had ever felt, she brushed my wet cheeks with her fingertips. “It's all right. This must be overwhelming for you.”

Sniffling, I nodded. “I don't know you, but it's as if a part of me does.”

“The part that came from me, perhaps?”

“All of me came from you.”

She smiled at me. “Including the stubbornness that wouldn't allow those bastards to tame you.”

I blinked and smiled back at her. “Yes, it must have. For you to have refused to give up trying to find me for so many years—you must be as stubborn as I am.”

Serena nodded, wiped at her own eyes then, and smiled.

“I'll stay here for today,” I told her. “I'll rest and recover. But at sundown, I have to go after Ethan.”

“You love him?” she asked.

I blinked, then frowned. “How can I answer that? Until just now…Mother…” I smiled as I called her that for the first time. “Until just now, I didn't think I could love anyone. But…I…love you.”

“And I love you, Lilith.” She slid an arm around my waist, walking me along the hallway toward a massive staircase. The other woman, Ginger, stayed behind, but I heard her sniffle and clear her throat. “We have more than an hour until sunrise,” Serena said, leading me past the staircase to the farthest reaches of the corridor. “And so much talking to do. Let's sit in the solarium while we can still look out at the stars.”

“Yes. I'd like to know about my family.”

She nodded, opening a door and leading me up a flight of stairs. “Yes, and you can tell me about your escape, and what you've done and seen since then. And you can tell me about your Ethan.”

My Ethan. I hadn't thought of him that way, and it made my heart jump a bit when she said it. But I didn't know if he truly was mine in any way. He'd lied to me.

For the first time, though, I thought I might have a clue as to why. His brother was his family. The bond I
felt with my mother was a revelation to me, and perhaps he felt a similar one to James. That bore some consideration, didn't it?

We emerged into a circular room, with walls only about four feet in height. Everything else, from there up to the domed ceiling, was made of glass. The frame that held it looked like a spider's web. And beyond the glass, the stars glittered like icicles in moonlight.

She led me to a pair of comfortable chairs, and I sat, staring upward. “This order of yours—can you tell me its name?”

She was silent for a moment. “It's secret. We couldn't continue in our work if word of our existence leaked out, Lilith.”

I nodded. “I won't repeat anything you tell me in confidence,” I promised her.

“We are called the Sisterhood of Athena,” she told me. “We're more centuries old than even we know for sure. We go back as far as the written word, that much we know.”

“And…your work?”

She looked at me, trust in her eyes. “We observe and protect the supernatural order. We watch over vampires, Lilith. We seldom interfere in the affairs of the Undead, but when others do, then we step in. This Farm that the DPI is running, the abduction and imprisonment and, apparently, the indoctrination of the Chosen—that's not natural. It's not allowing you, and all of them, to grow and live and choose with your own free will. They're trying to own and control, perhaps even to enslave, an entire race. And that cannot be allowed.”

I watched her and frowned. “But what can you hope to
do about it? You're just a group of ordinary mortal women.”

“Mortal, yes. Ordinary?” Her smile widened a little. “No, we're far from ordinary. We're strong. We're fast. We're skilled. We spend our lives training, so that if and when we are needed, we can be effective, even deadly if necessary. The Sisters of Athena are warrior women, Lilith.”

I tipped my head to one side. “Then why have you allowed The Farm to continue as long as it has?”

“We couldn't find it. We finally got a lead on a handful of individuals we felt might be connected, and we sent a member out to make inroads with them. She made one of the men fall in love with her, and eventually he brought her in as a keeper. But when she was taken in for the first time, she was blindfolded, and once they're inside, the keepers aren't allowed to leave until their time has been served. Three years. She's been there more than two now, and in all that time she's only managed to contact us twice, both times just in the past few days, to tell us of your escape, and then the fact that the DPI knew you and Ethan were coming and would be waiting in ambush.”

I went tense in my chair. “I know who she is!” I said, as the image of a kind-faced blond woman flashed into my mind. The one keeper who'd always shown kindness, humanity and concern, but only when the others weren't watching. “Her name is Callista, isn't it?”

She blinked in surprise. “Yes. How do you know?”

I shook my head slowly, remembering. “She was…different. Kind when she could be, without being observed. Of course, she had to pretend she was one of them, but I always knew there was something more to her.”

My mother looked troubled then. And I understood why. “She took a great risk, sending out that warning for my sake, didn't she?” I asked.

“Yes, she did. If they find out, she'll be killed. But she knew that, and she took the risk of her own free will.”

“So she told you where The Farm is?” I asked, already worried about finding my way back.

“We have the coordinates. We triangulated the cell phone's signal.”

“And what will you do, now that you know where it is?” I asked.

“We'll take a few more days. We'll surveil the place, map it, know it by heart without them ever knowing we've been near. We'll come up with a plan, and then we'll move in and destroy The Farm in the most efficient, safest way we can come up with.”

She sounded almost like Ethan when she spoke about time and surveillance and plans, I thought.

“Our goal,” she went on, “is to free the prisoners, save our sister Callista and prevent innocent blood from being shed.”

I sighed and lowered my head. “I'd go with you if I could, but I can't wait for all that. If Ethan was taken there, they could be planning to kill him at any time. If they haven't already.”

“Can't you try to contact him? Mentally?” she asked.

I closed my eyes. “I've been trying ever since I woke up. But there's no response. Ethan thought there was some kind of barrier around that place—one that prevented mental contact between the prisoners and anyone outside.” My throat went tight. “Or perhaps he really is already dead.”

“Lilith, I think the man who took him was a vampire.”

I frowned and opened my eyes. “How would you know?”

She tipped her head and frowned back at me in an almost amusing way. “I've been studying them for a long time now. I know a vampire when I see one, and I'm almost certain it was a vampire who took Ethan.”

I blinked rapidly as I processed that information. “It could have been his brother, James. He vanished from The Farm almost three years ago. Some believed he escaped. Others believed he had been transformed and sent out to work for the DPI.”

“Do you know what kind of work they make their Farm-raised vampires do?”

“I only know what they told us. That we would be serving our country for the good of all. And that anyone who escaped would be hunted down and killed.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “By someone like James, maybe.”

“He wouldn't kill his own brother!” Serena said it as if she were willing it to be true.

“You don't understand what they do to us there, Mother. They—they brainwash. They program. They drug. Most can't withstand it. They become loyal, obedient unto death.”

“I can't imagine any vampire being so thoroughly controlled.”

I glanced at her, wondering how many vampires she had known.

She read my look. “I've met some, but none who were raised as you were.”

“You've met the Wildborns?” I was stunned. “And lived to tell about it?”

She smiled. “Wildborns? That's what you call them?”

I nodded. “And we're Bloodliners,” I told her. “That's what they call us at The Farm. They say we're all the same bloodline, once we're made over.”

She frowned, a troubled look crossing her face. “But…how are you made over?”

“Through transfusions. They drain our blood and infuse us with vampiric blood.”

“But…where are they getting the vampiric blood?” she asked.

I blinked, remembering the horror. “They had a captive vampire there. I saw him, before I left. He was in so much pain. He…he made me take his blood. I think I killed him, and I think that's what he intended.”

She closed her eyes and leaned over in her chair to hug me gently. “You couldn't have known.”

I lowered my head to her shoulder. “It was cruel, the way he was kept. And I felt for him. But he must have been different from the rest. The Wildborns are vicious. They're savages. Killers. Like wild animals.”

She met my eyes, her own gleaming with utter disbelief. But even as she parted her lips to speak, the door to our haven burst open and another woman surged inside. My mother shot to her feet.

“Serena, we have to evacuate immediately!” the newcomer shouted, all but breathless.

“Why? What's happened?”

“The vampires have found out where we are.”

“O
phelia 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 said. “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 continent—all 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 it—the 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 them—two 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 weapon—a real one, not a tranquilizer gun—at 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 cup. 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 him 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 just—God, 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's-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 people—these women—are 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 could it be just that they
are
women? Certainly they're some other branch of the DPI, just a less maleficent one, perhaps. Maybe even unaware of the…less palatable things the DPI has been doing.”

“If that's the case—if they don't know—then 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.

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 now—there'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 had been only a few steps behind Ethan on the way in. “There must be some other way out.”

“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!” 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 flew wildly and flames sprang to life as if from nowhere.

Getting to his feet, Ethan turned to look back at the place, stunned beyond belief. “What the hell—Why 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. He landed beside his brother, straightened and searched James's eyes, his 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 told no one 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 Lilith—one you
didn't
find. There are a thousand maybes.”

“Or maybe you told them. Maybe you've been working for the DPI all along.”

“I thought you just decided those Amazons were
not
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?”