The Present

Ethan's first chore in the evening was to see to Scylla and Charybdis. The draft horses were big enough to qualify as monsters, though he supposed naming them for sea serpents was a bit of a stretch.

He smiled at the notion of his companions as the legendary creatures from the tales of Ulyssesguarding his solitude, the way their namesakes had guarded the Straits of Messina: As he strode through the deepening darkness, along the path that twisted from the house to the stable, he heard them blowing a soft welcome from within. They sensed him coming. They would sense danger, as well, and paw and snort their warnings. They seemed to understand that there were somemanywho wanted him dead.

He was almost to the stables and deep in thought when he stopped walking and lifted his head, suddenly picking up the clear scent of another of his own kind.

Another vampire. Close.

A Wildborn? Or one of the Bloodliners, like him? One trained to kill, and sent out to hunt him down and destroy him, as all escapees were hunted down and destroyed?

Standing utterly still, he honed his senses, feeling for the presence, sensing for any sign of a threat. The horses hadn't pawed or stomped. They hadn't blown in anger or snorted, the way they would if danger were near. Why not?

The presence was that of a female, and the only emotion coming from her was fear. She felt him, too; he could sense it. But not deliberately. She wasn't scanning the airwaves for his vibration. She'd found it by accident. And now that she had, she wasn't probing his mind, the way he'd taught himself to do with others since he'd stolen blood from the labs at The Farm and transformed himself two years ago.

He didn't feel any hint of danger or menace. Even so, he tugged the pitchfork from its nail on the wall as he entered the barn. It would stab deeply, and she would bleed out well before the dawn brought sleep and its attendant healing power.

He stepped inside, his nose filling at once with the pleasing aromas of fresh, high quality hay, straw bedding, honeyed oats and the scent of horseflesh, sharp and rich.

Scylla snorted softly and swished her tail. Not a warning, but a message that something had her wound up. Excited. Anxious, perhaps, but not afraid.

Easy, girl, Ethan thought at her. I already know someone's here. Just not exactly where.

He rounded a corner and met the mare's eyes. She shook her mane, then shifted her gaze, and bobbed her head up and down.

He nodded, then glanced at the stall beside hers, where Charybdis stood munching a mouthful of hay as if he hadn't a care in the world. And a lot of help you are, Ethan thought. Though he knew if there were any real threat, Charybdis would be kicking down the stall door. Instead, the stallion only blinked at him and then went back to chewing.

Ethan shifted the pitchfork into his other hand, and walked without making a sound toward the tack room's red wooden door. It was closed. She was on the other side. The closer he got to the door, the more certain he was of that.

He glanced at the pitchfork in his hand and wondered what sort of weapons she might be intending to use on him. A gun? Some sort of electric-shock device, like the ones he'd been forced to wield against other innocent captives at The Farm? A blade, razor sharp and big enough to behead him? Was he insane to be walking into the tack room with only a pitchfork?

He didn't see that he had any choice. If one of the Wildborns had found him, he had to kill it before it spread word of his existence, and that of his kind, to the rest of them. And if it was an assassin sent from The Farm, then the same reasoning applied. Kill or be killed.

He couldn't be found. He'd made a life for himself, and he intended to keep itat least long enough to find out what had happened to his brother.

Because James had left, and Ethan still didn't know how or why. Some of the captives said he'd been made over into a vampire and sent out on a mission for the organization to which they all owed their livessuch as they werethe Department of Paranormal Investigation. But Ethan preferred to believe his brother had escaped and survived, just as he had done. And now his goal in life was to find his brother and make sure he stayed safeand free.

But right now he had a lurking vampiress to contend with.

Slowly, he opened the tack room door.

His gaze shot right to her, as unerringly as if that extra sense of his had attuned itself automatically and instantly to her aura. He saw coppery curls, scads of them, and pale pink skin. She was sitting on the floor, her back pressed into a corner, her knees drawn up, her head bowed down, her long hair covering everything other than a glimpse of rounded buttock, a bit of knee here, shin there, a bare foot peeking out beneath it all.

He'd only known one woman with hair like that in all his life. She hadn't been a vampire then. She'd been just another one of the Chosen, another captive being raised on The Farm. Just like him. A member of the Bloodline.

She lifted her head slowly. One long, slender hand rose to push that glorious hair away from her face, and she speared him with the luminous emeralds that were her eyes.

He held that gaze, tried to read her jumbled, confused thoughts, and finally he spoke.

"Are you here to kill me, then?"

Lashes, thick as black ferns, swept downward to hide those eyes from him. "Why would I want to kill you?"

And then her lashes rose again, and she met his gaze with an impact he felt in his chest. There was fear there. And there were a lot of other things swirling in the depths of her eyes, as well. But one thing there wasn't, and that was the recognition he'd expected to see.

"I don't even know you," she went on. And then, biting her bottom lip, she added, "I don't even know me. Not even my name."

As the words hung in the air between them, she rose slowly and stood facing him, her hands at her sides.

She was naked and beautiful and vulnerable in every sense of the word. She was not the wild child he'd known.

At The Farm, she'd been untamable. Unbreakable. She would argue about the lessons they were taught, day in and day out. She would disagree. She would refuse to be as mindlessly obedient as they were supposed to strive to be. Oftentimes the Bloodliners would be ordered to perform a task that had no reason, made no sense. Twist the head off this squirrel. Eat this handful of maggots. Stand outside in the middle of a blizzard, barefoot, for twelve hours.

She, unlike all the rest, had refused.

They'd deprived her of sleep. They'd increased the dosages of the drugs they administered. They'd kept her in the isolation room, eyes taped open to see the insane images flashing across a wall-sized screen, while the headphones strapped to her ears screamed indoctrination into her head.

It had been torture, what they'd done to her. And he probably didn't know the half of it, because he hadn't witnessed it. It was all rumor, whispered among the frightened, obedient, mindless captives. They would kill her, it was said, if they couldn't break her.

At least he'd had sense enough to pretend to submit until the chance to escape had come at last.

And now, here she was, a vampiress, a Bloodliner, who didn't know him and claimed not to know her own name.

What the hell had they done to the indomitable shrew he remembered? What had they done to Lilith?

21 Years Ago

Serena closed her eyes and remembered again the sound of her daughter's first congested, lamb-like cries. So fragile, so fresh.

She watched the clock from beneath lowered lids, and she didn't get out of her bed until the very minute.

And then she pushed back the covers and tested her legs, putting her weight on them slowly. They didn't buckle, so she got all the way up, then turned to fix the bed, tucking pillows under the covers to simulate a sleeping patient. She pulled the curtains all the way around the bed, moving them as quietly as she could. Then she scanned the room, in search of anything she could take with her, anything that might help her in her flight. But there was nothing.

The nurse had told her that she would find everything she needed in a backpack outside. She was just going to have to trust that that was true.

Stiffening her spine, she went to the window, silently pulled the cord to raise the blinds, then flipped the window latch and pushed upward. The window opened easily. She'd expected it to be more difficult.

Leaning over the sill, she looked down. It didn't seem like such a long ways. She was barefoot, wearing only a hospital gown. But if she were quick, she could escape unnoticed and duck out of sight. Maybe no one would see her.

She swung one leg over, and then, sitting on the sill, swung the other one outside. She twisted to face the window and, lying on her belly, shimmied down, gripping with her hands and finally lowering herself, dangling there. Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, she let go, pushing off just slightly, so she wouldn't smash into the wall on the way down.

Her feet hit almost instantly, in less than a second, and it wasn't much of an impact. Her knees gave, she landed on her backside and bit back a yelp of pain, and that was that. She had to blink a few times to get it through her head that it really had been just that easy.

Maybe there wasn't some giant conspiracy going on. If they were truly lying to her about her baby, wouldn't they have taken greater precautions to keep her from escaping? Wouldn't they have locked the window, at least?

Serena had landed on a grassy lawn, with hedges bordering the sidewalk that meandered past. She didn't see anyone around. Swallowing hard, she got to her feet, then moved to those hedges and, parting branches, searched within them.

The large green backpack was right there. She spotted it almost immediately and yanked it out, then peeled back the zipper. Inside she saw clothes, shoes, a file folder. There was more, but she felt compelled to hurry. To get dressed and get away from this place.

A car door closed, startling her, so she zipped the pack shut again and drew back into the shadows.

She caught sight of an alcove around the corner. It was blocked by hedges and the angled walls of the hospital building itself. Not entirely, but maybe enough. She hurried to it, and saw benches, tables and ashtrays.

It must be where the staff took their lunch breaks when the weather was good.

Serena yanked the clothing from the bag, moving rapidly now. A pair of jeans came out first. There were panties beneath them, and several large sized maxipads like the one she was already wearing, post-labor.

She pulled on the clothes underneath her hospital gown, then grabbed the sports bra and T-shirt from the bag, and put them on as well. She was in such a hurry that she wouldn't have taken the time for the sports bra, but her breasts were swollen with milk, and heavy and tender and sore. It would help. So she spent those few extra seconds to put it on without removing the hospital gown. And then she untied the strings holding the gown in back, stripped it off and stuffed her arms into the T-shirt sleeves almost in one motion. There were shoes in the backpack. Flip-flops. She shoved her feet into them, wadded up the hospital gown and stuffed it into the bag, then zipped it and headed for the sidewalk. Walking fast, barely able to suppress the overwhelming urge to break into a run, she left the hospital far behind her.

Soon, sooner than she could have believed, she was walking on a busy sidewalk, past shops and restaurants and convenience stores, and no one was paying any attention to her.

They would be, though. Someone would notice her missing from the hospital. And it wouldn't be long.

But what would they do about it?

There was a ringing sound. A phone ringing. Close.

Frowning, she realized it was coming from inside the backpack, so she stopped walking and yanked it off her shoulder, and dug around inside until she found a brick-sized mobile phone. She pulled it out, extended the antenna, and held it to her ear, terrified and looking around in search of the caller. As if he or she were close. Watching her. God, she was scared, and she wasn't even sure why.

"Did you get clear?"

She recognized the voice. It was the nurse who had helped her. "Yes. I mean, I think so."

"Where are you?"

"I I don't know. On a street." She looked around. "Near the corner of Main Street and Elm. I'm standing in front of a jewelry store."

"Okay, listen, there's a bus stop about a block ahead of you, on Main. Do you see it?"

Serena looked one way, then the other, and spotted the bench inside the plastic weather guard. "I see it."

"The bus should be pulling up any minute now. Get on it. Get off at the third stop. I'll pick you up there.

I'll be in a red VW, okay?"

"I don'tI don't understand what's going on. Is my baby alive? Why are they lying to me? Why couldn't I just tell them I wanted to leave and sign myself out? What"

"The bus should be there any second, Serena. Don't miss it. There's money in the same pocket where you found the phone."

"But"

"Your baby's alive. Now go. Catch that bus. I'll explain the rest once you're safe."

The phone cut off. But Serena had heard the only words she really needed to hear. "My baby's alive,"

she whispered. A smile pulled her dry lips, feeling alien. "My baby's alive ," she said again, and she got up just as the giant bus lumbered into sight and pulled to a stop. She was running for the bus stop as the air brakes hissed and the door cranked open. She tucked the phone into the backpack and slung it over her shoulder as she got aboard, pausing at the top of the steps to fumble in the backpack for money. She found a wad of bills and a handful of change, dropped some coins into the receptacle, and then made her way to the first empty seat and sank into it.

As soon as the bus lurched into motion, she felt a rush of relief, relief that grew with every bit of distance she put between herself and the hospital. The relief of knowing that her baby was alive was making her almost giddy. And the fear of being pursued was gone, as well.

She wondered what was behind all this. It must be some sort of baby stealing ring. They were probably planning to arrange an expensive adoption to some wealthy couple and make a small fortune by selling her child. The doctor must be in on it. But all her nervousness was probably overkill, wasn't it? And the nurse was no doubt just being dramatic. After all, it wasn't as if they would want to hurt her, was it? Why would they lie to her if they were just going to kill her or something?

She was okay. She was free. Maybe once she started digging, started getting close to finding her baby, maybe there would be danger then. But surely not now. She was away from the hospital. She was meeting with the one person who might be able to tell her what was going on. She was fine. And she was going to get her baby back.

The bus stopped. Serena went back over that phone call in her mind. The third stop. She was to get off at the third stop. So there were two more to go. She used the time to examine the contents of the backpack more carefully. The file folder contained medical recordsher baby's time of birth, weight, length, head circumference, blood type.

Blood typemarked with a star. She read the notation beneath it. Child possesses the Belladonna Antigen. Extremely rare. Government notification mandatory.

She frowned, not knowing what that meant, then felt eyes on her. Glancing up, she saw the man in the seat across from her look away quickly. She closed the file folder and thrust it back into the bag just as the bus stopped again. The man got off.

Serena took a surreptitious look around as the bus began moving again, saw no one paying her undue attention, and again pawed through the bag. There were a set of keys, with a tag on them, like a luggage tag. The address on the inserted card read 72 Montgomery Ave.

Finally the bus stopped for the third time. Serena zipped up the bag, got up and slung it over her shoulder, then made her way to the front down the steps and onto a sidewalk in the suburbs. The bus pulled away as she looked up and down the neat, unlined road. And then she spotted it. A little red VW

Bug, parked across the street alongside a playground. It was a convertible, and the top was down, giving Serena a clear view of the woman behind the wheel. As it was no doubt meant to do.

It was the nurse she remembered, Maureen Keenan, no longer in uniform or wearing a name tag. She lifted a hand in a friendly wave as she saw Serena.

Smiling in relief, certain she was about to get some answers, Serena looked both ways, then began to cross the street. Just as her flip-flops hit the pavement, the little red car exploded.

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