Bloodline (24 page)

The boy nodded and braced himself. Ethan got out his pocketknife, opened it and wished to God for some alcohol to sterilize it. The kid wasn't a vampire, but he would still be prone to infection.

“It's one snip, it'll be fast.”

On the plus side, not yet being a vampire, the kid wouldn't feel pain the way the undead did. But he would be just as prone to bleeding out.

Bracing himself, Ethan poked the blade underneath the lump, making an incision rather than just slicing off the skin entirely. The boy arched his back and hissed. Quickly, Ethan squeezed the device, and it popped out.
Then he tore a strip from his shirt and wadded it up. “You can hold this there, keep the pressure on,” he said.

“Wait.” The girl handed him something. A strip of cloth torn from her own shirt, bearing a gob of some sticky substance.

Ethan looked at her, his question in his eyes.

“It's sap, from the tree. It's a pine, so it's antiseptic and should help with the bleeding.” She held up the duct tape she had pulled from her mouth. “This might help, too.” Her speech was still slurred, but her mind was clearly sharp—even with the drugs they'd given her.

“You're amazing,” Ethan said, sincerely impressed by her. “But save some of that for yourself—you're going to need it.”

“No, I won't,” she said. And, turning, she lifted her shirt and showed him that she bore no tiny lump at the small of her back. “I've only been here a little while. They hadn't got around to tagging me yet probably.”

He nodded and looked at the electronic chip in his hand. “Patch him up, and stay right here. I'll be back, I promise. Don't move, don't make any noise, cover yourselves in brush. I think you'll be all right until I return.”

She nodded and turned to do as he had asked of her.

Ethan dashed out of their shelter, running as far and as fast as he could, circling the compound until he estimated he was on the opposite side, then dashing directly away from it into the forest. Once he got far enough to satisfy himself, he began listening for a stream or the river, and once he homed in on one, he raced toward it.

It was a winding and deep river, not a stream at all, and he was glad of it. He took enough time to peel a shell-
shaped bit of bark from a nearby tree and test it to be sure it would float. Finally he set the tracking chip in the middle of it. He set the little boat adrift on the river, then turned and raced back the way he had come.

His entire mission took, he estimated, around twenty minutes. And then he was back with the others again.

They looked up at him with surprise in their eyes, as if they hadn't really expected him to return. At least, that was the feeling he got from the boy. The girl had a more knowing expression in her eyes, and Ethan sensed that there was a reason for it.

“We have to move,” he told them, and helped them to their feet.

“You're a vampire, aren't you?” the girl said softly.

He nodded. “This way, it's more than a mile. Can you make it?”

“I'd make it if I had to crawl, as long as it meant getting out of there.” She turned to glance at the boy. “How about you?”

“I can make it,” he muttered.

“You're really a vampire?” the girl asked.

Ethan nodded.

“And you're obviously not working for them. So—you have to be Ethan.”

Ethan glanced back at her but never slowed his pace. “What makes you so sure I'm not James?”

“James works for them. Everyone knows that,” she said.

“You know a lot for a newly acquired captive, Miss…?”

“I'm Ellie. He's Jeremy.”

“And what happened to your family, Ellie?”

“My parents were archaeologists, on their way to a dig in South America. Their plane went down in the jungle.”

“And then these jerks showed up to take you in,” Ethan said. “Veer left up here. Try to hurry.”

“You came for Lilith, didn't you?” Ellie asked.

He frowned hard at her this time, pausing only briefly. “Have you seen her?”

“No, but I heard some of the keepers talking. They said she'd been brought in, and that something big was going to happen.”

“Something horrible, I'll bet,” Jeremy said. “They'll try to make an example out of her. We have to try to stop them.”

Surprised, Ethan stopped walking and turned around. “I have every intention of trying to stop them. I just need to get you two to safety first, as fast as possible, and then I'll go back.”

Jeremy held his gaze, lifting his chin though it seemed to require a great effort. “We should go back together. We could help you.”

“Why would you want to?” Ethan asked.

Jeremy frowned, as if that were a ridiculous question. “You're legends, you and Lilith. The only two ever to escape and survive.”

“How did you know we had survived?” Ethan asked him.

“It was all over camp as soon as they brought her in.”

Ethan reached for the kid so suddenly it frightened him. He jumped as Ethan's hand clasped his shoulder. “Do you know where she is? Where they're keeping her?”

The kid blinked, regained his composure and lowered his head. “No. I'm sorry.”

Ellie shouldered her way between them, staring up at Ethan a little defiantly. “We're on your side, you know. We want to help.”

Ethan felt a tightness in his throat, one he was unaccustomed to feeling, and he found himself absurdly glad he had found and rescued these people, even though it had delayed him in saving Lilith. “I'm sorry,” he said. “It's just—I have to get to her before it's too late.”

“We want that as badly as you do,” Ellie said. “She's a hero. Her escape is what inspired our entire movement.”

“Movement?”

She nodded, and Jeremy said, “We're…well, I guess you'd call us the resistance. We stopped letting them believe they'd broken us. We became as rebellious as Lilith was, modeled ourselves after her. No more pretending to accept their bull. We meet in secret and plan for the day when there will be enough of us to make a real difference.”

Ellie said, “The keepers don't know about the meetings, or how organized we've become, even though it's only been a few days. They just see us rebelling. That's why we ended up in the torture rooms.”

“So there are more of you?” Ethan asked.

Ellie nodded. “Sixteen. Before long we'll have enough to overthrow this place.”

“We're going to overthrow this place now,” Ethan said.

Ellie gripped Ethan's arm. “Never mind getting us to safety, Ethan. We can't leave her there. I heard she was coming back for us, so we have to do the same for her. Let's go back—right now. Let's go back and get Lilith out of there.”

He hesitated, then glanced at Jeremy, his brows raised in question.

“I'm with Ellie,” the young man said.

“Lilith won't settle for us just getting her out,” Ethan told them. “She won't leave that place unless we can take everyone with us. You should know that before we go in.”

The two exchanged a worried look, but then Ellie sighed and nodded. “We'd better connect with the rest of our group and organize something as fast as we can. We're going to need all the help we can get.”

* * *

I woke in chains.

Lifting my head slowly, I tried to focus, to get my bearings, but it wasn't easy. I was upright, I realized slowly, my wrists and ankles spread and shackled to the wall at my back. I was still wearing the clothes given to me by my mother.

My mother.

My heart twisted a little at the memory of her, because I was terrified that I would never see her again. But I had no time to dwell on that regret at the moment.

Instead, I let my gaze scan the room. The wall at a right angle to mine—brick. No windows. The one across from me, also brick, and in its center…

“James.”

He was shackled just as I was. His shirt had been torn open, and I saw welts crisscrossing his chest and tiny streams of blood trickling from them. I could only hope they weren't deep enough to cause him to bleed out.

“How much did you tell them?” I asked him.

He met my eyes. “Nothing.”

I searched those eyes of his, and was reminded sharply and painfully of the last time I'd looked deeply into
Ethan's eyes. So similar, physically, and yet so very different, too. I felt relief, not heartache, when I thought of Ethan now. Relief at knowing he hadn't betrayed me the way I feared he had. His brother had been working without his knowledge. All of that was clear to me now. Oh, Ethan had indeed lied to me—he had broken his promise and told his brother our plans after vowing he wouldn't.

But that was a far cry from conspiring against me, from plotting my recapture and even my death.

“I told them nothing. But you don't believe that, do you?” James asked.

“Why would I believe anything you have to say to me? You've already proven yourself a traitor against your own kind.”

“But not against my own brother.”

I stared hard at him, trying to read his thoughts.

“If I'd told them what they wanted to know, do you think I'd still be here?” he asked.

I shrugged as best I could with my arms stretched in a V above me and held in place by manacles and short lengths of chain. “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe they left you here to see what you could get out of me.”

“They don't want to get anything out of you, Lilith. You won't be questioned, and you won't be tortured.”

“No? And how do you know that?”

“They're making no secret of it. You're simply going to be executed. They're calling an assembly on the parade grounds. Everyone here, captives and keepers alike, is going to watch it happen.”

His words, each one of them, hit my nerves like knives plunging into my flesh. Each one made me flinch in pain,
tremble in fear, dread what was to come. “How am I going to be killed?” I asked him, unsure whether I really wanted to know.

“They didn't say.”

I lowered my head, stared at the floor. “When?”

“I don't know. I heard one source claim it would be before sunrise. Another said tomorrow night. Either way, it's soon. You won't have long to wait.”

Raising my head, I looked for a window, but there were none, so I couldn't judge the time by the stars in the night sky. And then I realized how they would kill me, and I went rigid with fear. I felt my eyes widen. “They'll stake me out to await the sunrise, won't they?”

James shrugged.

“God, I don't want to burn alive.”

“I can't think of anyone who really does.”

“Are you
joking?
Are you being
sarcastic
about my impending death, James? Has it even occurred to you that you're the cause of it?”

He blinked and averted his eyes.

“Your brother might just love me. Have you thought of that? He'll never forgive you for this.”

“No, probably not. But at least he'll be alive.”

“And he wouldn't have been otherwise? Is that how you justify what you've done, James?”

He shot me a look that should have wilted me. “Yes, that's how I justify it. If you'd stayed with him, someone would have found you sooner or later. They doubled their efforts to recapture Ethan when you escaped. They realized that more would follow unless they stamped out the spark of rebellion you two ignited. If it had been any of the other operatives—anyone but
me—Ethan would be facing the same brutal end that you are.” He looked me up and down, then looked away, turning his head hard, as if he couldn't stand the sight of me. Or maybe it was his own guilt that made looking at me impossible for him. “I had to capture
you
to save
him.
I had no choice.”

“You really believe that, don't you?” I was disgusted. “Why is it that their brainwashing works with some people but not others? How is it that you couldn't see any other option? Like turning against them. Like sowing the seeds of rebellion the way I—”

I blinked then, as I remembered the few bits of my past that had still been missing. “As I tried to do. I thought I could ignite a spark and then feed it until it became a full-blown flame that would devour this place whole. Why wasn't something like that an option for you, James?”

He looked at me with such a puzzled expression that I knew he couldn't imagine it as an option even now.

“I
work
for them,” he explained. “I can't work
against
them. They
made
me.”

“And they can unmake you. You were created for one purpose only—to serve. To kill on command. To follow orders—to the point of death, if necessary. I know,” I said. “I know because they tried to imprint my brain with all that nonsense, too, James, but I wouldn't listen. I wouldn't believe. I wouldn't give in. And you did. Think about it. How much sense does it make that you should obey them without question just because they say so?”