Bloodline (25 page)

He blinked, shaking his head. “It's our purpose.”

“Is it?”

He wasn't responding to me anymore. It felt as if a wall had come down between us. He wouldn't look at me,
wouldn't listen. There was nothing but emptiness in his eyes. I lowered my head and sighed, giving up.

The door burst open then, and several keepers came inside. And I knew, with a gut-deep horror, that they had come for me.

T
he keepers, four of them—two men and two women—armed with tranq guns, marched straight to me. But only one met my eyes, and I remembered her. She was Callista, the one who had always been as kind as she could without being discovered. And now I knew why that was. She was not truly one of them, never had been. She was a Sister of Athena, working here undercover, to learn the DPI's secrets.

I met her eyes, felt her anguish and, I hoped, let her know that I knew who she was. Then I quickly lowered my head again, not wanting to risk anyone else seeing any hint of a message passing between us.

Callista was blond, blue-eyed and small in stature. Her movements were quick and sharp, and I sensed a strength in her that wasn't readily apparent. The other woman had straight brown hair, very bad skin and no hint of such inner power.

“Shouldn't we drug her again?” one of the men asked.

“She's still plenty weak from the first dose,” Callista said.

“You sure?” The men looked at me closely. Perhaps
too closely. These bastards, I realized, were used to dealing with the Chosen, not with the Undead. They were afraid of me, as well they should be. Given half a chance, I would gladly tear out their hearts.

Callista shot their curious looks right back at them. “I'm the medical officer here, gentlemen, but if you think you know more than I do, feel free to drug her again. Guidelines, however, state that four hours between injections is sufficient to keep a vampire weakened and unable to fight. And it's only been two.”

The men looked at each other. One said, “They want her conscious for the end. I suppose we'd better not tranq her again so close to dawn.”

“I thought we were taking her to the holding cell and the execution would take place tomorrow,” Callista said.

“That was before the latest…incident,” the brunette said. And I heard her mind as she recalled that two prisoners she thought of as rebels had escaped within the past hour. “Now the powers that be want to move things up.”

In case those rebels had help, I suspected. And I opened my mind to feel for him—for Ethan. Was he here? Had he come after me? Would he, when coming back here was the last thing he had ever wanted to do?

“How close is it to dawn?” I asked.

They all looked at me as if shocked I had spoken at all. I hadn't meant to, but I had to know.

“A couple of hours,” Callista said softly. She approached me, and I tensed. But I sensed something. I saw the intensity with which she looked at me while her back was turned toward the others. As if she were trying to
speak to me with her mind—the way vampires could do with each other.

Frowning, I probed her mind with mine and found the message waiting there.

I'll slip you something before it happens. I promise you won't suffer. I'll slip you something before it happens. I promise you won't suffer. I'll slip…

I met her eyes and nodded once, by way of thanks. It was a small kindness, but all she had to offer.

She unlocked the shackles that held me to the wall, but I was still too weakened from the drug to break free and run for my life, though it was what I wanted more than anything else to do.

Another keeper came close, and knelt, intending to attach the chains that dangled from my wrists to the ones that held my ankles, but I wasn't too weak to deal with that. I brought my hands down fast on the back of his head, forcing it downward just as my knee came up to connect with his chin.

When I let go, he slumped to the concrete floor. Not just unconscious. Dead.

I lifted my gaze to the others. “You really shouldn't get too close. I'll take as many of you with me as I possibly can.”

They all kept their distance after that, even Callista, who had no cause to be afraid but was anyway, and stuck to pointing their weapons at me.

I glanced at James as I shuffled out, but he only watched me go. Mindless twit. The man must have the will of a grapefruit. Thank goodness Ethan wasn't so weak.

They led me through the compound. It was a fair
distance to the parade grounds, not that there had ever been any parades there—at least not within my memory. But this had been a military base once, and the name, I supposed, had stuck. We passed things that were familiar to me. The barracks where I had once lived. The school building where I had spent my days. The gymnasium where I had learned kickboxing and tae kwon do and swordplay. The firing range where they had only let us use blanks.

Then, finally, they led me onto the parade grounds, and I saw that a pole stood upright in the very center. Its bottom was embedded deeply in the earth. And there were iron rings high and low.

They led me right up to that pole, motioned with their guns for me to turn around and told me to raise my hands above my head, so they could fasten my shackles to the rings.

I shook my head. “I'm not aiding you in any way. Come and do it yourself, if you have the nerve.”

One of the men did just that. With an angry sigh, he yanked something from his rear pocket, lunged at me and jabbed me in the belly with it. It sent a jolt through me that had me screeching in pain, then sinking to the ground as my entire body vibrated.

“Stun gun. And I'll use it again if you keep up with the bull,” he said. He gripped my wrists, lifted me and slammed my arms against the pole, over my head. With a quick snap the chain between my manacled wrists was anchored to the ring. A moment later and the chain between my ankles was attached to the other.

“There, bitch. Enjoy the sunrise.” He smiled slowly, and then, before I knew what he was about to do, he
jabbed me with the device again, sending another shock through my body.

I screamed as tears of helpless rage ran like rivers over my face.

* * *

Ethan lunged at the sound of Lilith's scream, only to feel himself gripped by four strong young hands and tugged back. It would have been easy to overpower them, of course. They were only mortals.

But he let them pull him back behind the metal-sided building where they'd been crouching. He knew he would be killed if he dashed into the open, as he had nearly impulsively done. And if he allowed himself to die before Lilith was safe again, she would never survive.

“That came from the other end of the compound,” Ellie whispered. “God, how did her voice carry so far?”

“We're vampires. Everything's…intensified. Strength, speed, every sense, and the volume and resonance of our voices.”

“We need to get closer, see what's going on,” she said.

“
I
need to get closer,” Ethan told her. “You two need to go gather your band of rebels and get them ready to fight their way out of here. We'll meet in, say, thirty minutes.”

“Okay,” Ellie said. “At the far end of the compound, by the fence. We'll find you there. Thirty minutes.” She gripped Jeremy's hand, but he pulled it free.

“I'm going with Ethan,” he said.

“No,” Ethan told him. “You'll only slow me down.”

“I'm going with you. You might need my help, and Ellie won't. Rounding up the group is an easy job. All she needs to do is stay out of sight and tell one or two of them.
They'll spread the word and meet us. But you might have to fight, and if you do, I'm going to fight at your side.”

“You couldn't even begin—”

“I'm going, so stop wasting time.”

Ethan sighed but gave in, then turned in the direction from which the scream had come. “Try to keep up, kid.”

“Try to outrun me,” the boy said with a cocky grin.

Ethan took off at full preternatural speed, rendering him no more than a blur, there one moment, gone the next, to Jeremy's mortal eyes. And all to make a point. He stopped near a tree a few hundred yards away and waited, watching with undisguised amusement, for the kid to catch up.

Jeremy came running, carefully keeping himself concealed from view, using trees and brush for cover.

When he got there, he braced one hand against Ethan's tree, let his head hang and sucked in breath after breath.

“That was pretty fast—for a mortal,” Ethan said. “Well, for a mortal who's been tortured for the past couple of days, at least. Which, actually, isn't very fast at all.”

“Yeah, yeah. You were…right.”

“You've never seen a vampire before, have you?”

“No. Only other Chosen Ones, like me. Once they change you over, they…we never see you again.”

Ethan nodded. “I remember.”

“I had no idea you could move that fast.”

“You can climb on my back for the rest of the way.”

The kid's brows went up questioningly.

“Our strength increases just as much as our speed when we become…what we are.”

“It seems to me that I'd be a lot more help to you if you—you know, transformed me.”

“There's no time. You'd need a day to sleep while the change fully took hold, and I'd need a day to recover from the blood loss, or a ready supply at hand to replenish myself.”

He nodded, but Ethan could tell he was still thinking about it. Craving the power, the strength, the illusion of immortality. And that was all it was: an illusion. They could die—quite easily, in fact—which was why he was so afraid of losing Lilith right now. If he hadn't already lost her.

Perhaps that pain-racked scream he'd just heard had been the last sound she would ever utter.

The thought made his stomach heave. “Climb on.” Ethan turned, presenting his back to the scrawny boy. Jeremy wrapped his arms around Ethan's neck and his legs around his waist. “Hang on,” Ethan said, and then he launched into motion.

By the time they stopped again, they were crouching in some scrub brush behind a metal building that was surrounded by its own fence, a smaller, shorter version of the one that encircled the entire compound. A sense of Lilith's presence there brought Ethan to a grinding halt.

“This is where they would be keeping her,” Jeremy said. “The few who've ever been put to death have been kept here beforehand. Though—we're not supposed to know that.”

“I didn't know they'd ever put anyone to death.”

“Only in the past six months. One prisoner who tried to escape. Two keepers caught breaking some rule or other.”

“They're getting desperate,” Ethan mused. “Your re
sistance movement, my escape and then Lilith's. They must sense they're running out of time.”

“Good,” the kid muttered. “I hope they're scared shitless.”

“Crude turn of phrase. Not that I disagree.”

“Do you…you know, sense her inside?”

“I sense something. I don't know.”

“How do we get in?” Jeremy asked.

“
We
don't.
I
do.” Ethan looked around, spotting a barrel nearby. Sniffing the air, he frowned. “Do you have a lighter? Or some matches?”

“I know where to find them,” Jeremy said. “Why?”

“I want you to give me five minutes—then I want you to twist up a rag, stuff it into that barrel over there and light it. Then get under cover.”

“Five minutes.”

“Count them off. One, one thousand, two, one thousand…”

The kid picked up the count. Bending his knees before giving the boy a chance to get to four, Ethan pushed off and cleared the small fence that surrounded this one building. He landed near the rear of the building, pressed a hand to the window, wiped the pane clear of the accumulated dust and stared inside.

At his brother.

He scanned the rest of the room, but he saw no one else. Nor did he sense anyone else inside, though the essence of Lilith teased his senses, and he realized that she must have been there recently but had clearly been moved elsewhere.

Ethan!
James called mentally.
Ethan, is that you? What the hell are you doing here?

Ethan drove a foot through the window, then dove
inside, rolling over the floor and springing to his feet, ready to defend against attack.

“It's all right, Ethan,” James said. “There's no one here. They've all gone.”

Ethan's eyes focused on James, first in fury, and then that eased when he saw the marks of torture on his brother's face and body.

“I thought you worked for them, big brother. So why are
you
in chains?”

Lowering his eyes in what appeared to be shame, James whispered, “I only gave them half of what they wanted. The DPI doesn't like to settle for partial portions.”

Ethan blinked. “You gave them Lilith—the woman I…a woman I care about. You deceived me in order to get your hands on her. You used me—used my love for you and my trust in you—to capture her for those DPI bastards. You betrayed me, James.”