And he trusted his brother. And he couldn"t let her rob him of his only family. It was too much to ask. He was risking his life for her. Shouldn"t that be enough?
We"re going back to The Farm, James. We"re going to try to rescue the other captives.
There was no reply.
James? Are you there?
Nothing.
James! Are you all right?
Still no reply. A sickening feeling began writhing in Ethan"s stomach. He had an awful feeling that heknew why his brother had broken off contact once he"d gleaned the information he"d been seeking.
The information Ethan had promised not to give.
Again, he looked at Lilith.
She stopped walking, her smile blossoming wider as she met his gaze, her own adoring and utterly trusting.
"Thank you, Ethan," she whispered. "Believe me, I know that mere words aren"t enough, but somehow, on the other side of this, I promise you, I"ll find some way to repay you. This means well, it means everything to me. Just everything."
Oh, G.o.d, he thought, unable to hold her steady gaze. He lowered his head, focusing on the road ahead of him and the lights of the town coming into view just ahead. And all the while he prayed silently that she was wrong. That his brother was not, even now, betraying him.
"There"s the village," Lilith said, spotting the cl.u.s.ter of lights and pointing.
"Part one of our mission is all but accomplished. Thank you, Ethan."
Ethan thought he might throw up. But he managed to paste a confident smile on his face and mutter, "You"re welcome."
Ethan scanned several parking lots, peering into one vehicle after another. At last he found keys stuffed under the visor of a dark green older model Ford Bronco. Four wheel drive and solid, with a powerful engine and plenty of room. It was exactly what they needed, equal to almost any challenge they might encounter. Any transportation-related challenge, at least. As perfect as it was for their driving needs, the vehicle couldn"t wipe out a compound full of armed keepers, much less the vampire a.s.sa.s.sins who would be sent after him and Lilith in the unlikely event that they escaped alive.
Who was he kidding? The vampire a.s.sa.s.sins had likely already been dispatched. Just because they hadn"t yet seen them, didn"t mean they weren"t out there, lurking in the night. And he and Lilith were running toward them, rather than away. It was insane.
This mission was suicide. His only hope, he decided, was to talk her out of it before they got themselves both killed. There had to be a way.
They got into the Bronco, and he put the keys into the switch and glanced toward the bar where the vehicle"s owner was presumably spending his time. It was a small establishment housed in slab-sided wooden building with a neon sign in the window advertising a popular brand of beer. A wooden placard nailed above the door proclaimed it the Dirty Dog Bar & Grille. For the life of him, he couldn"t find anything appealing about that name.
Lilith shot him a look. "What are you waiting for?"
"It"s just what we need, but when we start it up, it"ll be loud. The owner"s going to hear it."
"There"s music pouring from that place. He won"t hear a thing."
"And if he does?" "We"re vampires, Ethan. What"s he going to do?"
"Call the police, report it stolen. We can"t afford that. We"re being hunted, don"t forget."
"Oh, for Pete"s sake." She wrenched open the door and got out before he could have known what she was thinking, and even as he got out to go after her, she was marching up the steps of the Dirty Dog, pushing open its darkly stained door and stepping inside.
Ethan followed, but stopped in the doorway, wondering what on earth she intended, even as she strode boldly through the dimly lit barroom and straight to the jukebox, where she bent slightly to yank its power cord from the outlet in the wall behind it.
Then she straightened and turned to face the crowded room.
Dressed in her snug fitting jeans and tank top, with the green shirt dangling open, her hair long and curling, she made quite a picture, especially with the jukebox cord dangling from one hand.
Conversations stopped just as suddenly as the music had, and every eye turned toward her. Men who"d been sitting on stools in front of the polished hardwood bar stared at her. Couples sitting at small round tables set their gla.s.ses down, and those standing here and there around the plank floor turned toward her. No one said a word.
"Sorry to interrupt your evening," Lilith said, her voice confident and s.e.xy as h.e.l.lto Ethan, at least. "I need to speak with the owner of the green Ford Bronco in the parking lot."
People frowned, murmured to one another. Male eyes devoured her from head to toe. A big man slid from his barstool and said, "That would be me. Did you ding it or something?"
"Ding it?"
"Hit it? Dent it? What?"
She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Nothing like that. I want to borrow it."
His face split in a grin, and he glanced behind him at some other men. "She wants to borrow it. h.e.l.l, well, if that"s all, I"ll just hand over the keys."
A round of boisterous laughter burst from the patrons. Lilith only blinked and kept smiling. "No need.
You left them under the visor. I wanted to just take it, but my friend was reluctant."
The laughter died. The man"s smile faded. He took three steps closer, bringing him to within a few feet of her. Ethan started forward from his spot in the doorway, but Lilith quickly held up a hand toward him.
"Are you freakin" crazy, lady? I"m not loaning you my truck."
"Yes, you are." She took a single step closer to the big man. Then she pressed her palm to his cheek, and Ethan could feel the intensity in her eyes as they bored into the man"s. Her voice dropped to a mere whisper. "You trust me. We"re old friends. You were only playing with me before. It"s a running joke between us, my showing up to ask for favors. You know I"ll return your truck unscathed and with my undying grat.i.tude, and you want that more than you want to draw another breathwhich is also an option.
You won"t worry about the Bronco. You won"t give a second thought to this arrangement. It will all makeperfect sense to you until I return your vehicleone week from today and just as good as new. I promise."
As she spoke, Ethan watched the man"s face change. It seemed to lose all expression. His eyes emptied, and his jaw went lax. When she straightened away from him and met his gaze again, he only nodded.
"So it"s okay if I borrow it, then?" she asked, louder now, for the benefit of his fellow drinkers.
"Yes. It"s okay."
Ethan heard some of the others gasp, heard them speaking to one another softly. Finally one man spoke louder. "Have you lost your mind, Sam?"
Sam blinked and turned his head toward the other man. "She"s an old friend. I was only playing with her before. It"s a running joke between us."
"I"m an old friend," the man said. "How come I never heard of her?"
"She"s an old friend," Sam repeated. Then, as if unable to do otherwise, he returned his attention to Lilith. "Take it. It"s full of gas."
"Thank you, Sam. I"ll see you in a week."
He smiled a little crookedly and stood exactly where he was as she turned, bent and plugged the jukebox in again. The music resumed as she walked to the door. Ethan stepped aside to let her pa.s.s.
"You"re out of your mind, you know that?" he asked, following her.
She smiled at him as they hurried across the parking lot. "I remembered that I was trained in mind control techniques, the power of vampiric suggestion, back at The Farm. So were you, I bet. But it was only theory. I couldn"t put it to the test, because I wasn"t a vampire yet." She opened the pa.s.senger door.
"But you were right, Ethan, when you told me about it before. It really works."
"Apparently so." He was standing behind her as she climbed into the Bronco. She reached for the door, but before pulling it closed, she frowned at him. "Will you get in? We have work to do."
Indeed they did. And he was beginning to realize that finding a way to convince her to change her mind was going to be as big a challenge as the mission itself. He"d been thinking of her as a child, a newly transformed vampire, alone in the world, weak and uncertain. But he could see now that the old Lilith was alive and well inside her, and returning to the fore at a frightening pace.
Sighing, he went around to the driver"s side, got behind the wheel and started the engine. The powerful machine roared to life, its deep, noisy growl providing little comfort. He backed carefully out of the parking s.p.a.ce, planning his words carefully as turned on the headlights and began to drive.
"This bridge where you woke upone of them saw you there. They could still be watching for you."
"Yeah, I"ve thought about that. You were at The Farm. Don"t you remember where it is? How to get there?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. The only thought I had that night was getting away. I ran, just like you did, and I never looked back." She studied him, and he knew she was trying to see inside his mind, read his thoughts to determine if he were lying or not. And he was. He knew, more or less, how to get back to that place. But he blocked his thoughts from her, wondering whether she knew that, or if she just a.s.sumed she wasn"t very good at mind-reading yet.
"You couldn"t even get us into the general vicinity?" she asked. "I"m sure if we got close, we could sense the others. Couldn"t we?"
"I don"t think we could. There"s some kind of barrier around the place. A forcefield or something like that. As soon as I was beyond the fence, I noticed it." That much, at least, was true.
"How could you know? You"d only just become a vampire."
"I"d been taught that vampires sense the presence of the Chosen. You were taught that too, weren"t you?"
She nodded, saying nothing.
"I tried to feel that, to sense them, to see if I could tell whether my escape had been detected. And I felt nothing. Just emptiness. I wondered if they"d lied about that, but I"ve felt it since."
"I see," she said softly, probably not believing him. "Then I guess we"ll just have to take our chances at the bridge and hope I can find my way back from there."
"There is another way."
She looked at him, and this time she knew what he was thinking, though he didn"t think it was because she was reading his mind. "We"re not contacting your brother. I don"t trust him, Ethan. But I do trust you.
I trust you to keep your promise to me. I hope I"m not making a mistake."
I waited for Ethan to reply, to rea.s.sure me that I could trust him completely. But he didn"t, and that worried me.
Still, he managed to get us to the bridge where I had awoken. He drove through the town that bordered his home, and I knew that being so close was difficult for him. He wanted to check on his horses, to see whether they"d made it back safely and see to their comfort if they had. But he never spoke those desires. It would do no good. We both knew we couldn"t return there. So we drove on, through the little town, and when I saw the field through which I had run, I pointed. "There"s another road on the far side of that field," I said. "That"s the road that leads to the bridge."
He nodded. "Then we"ll take the first left we find and hope for the best."
"Can"t we just drive across the field?" I asked. "Wouldn"t it be faster?"
"That would draw attention, Lilith. We need to remain undetected for as long as possible."
"It"s the dead of night. Who would notice?"
"Why take the risk that anyone would?" I sighed my frustration, but I knew he had a point. So he kept driving, and soon we found a road that went in the direction we wanted, so he took it, and we drove some more.
"It seems too far," I said. "We should have come to the road by now."
"You were running full bore, certain you were being pursued, Lilith. You"re a vampire, don"t forget. You could have covered miles in a very short time."
"I supposewait! There"s a crossroads. Could that be it?"
"I don"t know." He drove until we came to the stop sign where the two roads met. As we sat there, I looked left, then right.
"Which way?" he asked.
"Right I think."
He turned and drove. When I spotted the bridge looming ahead, I nearly bounced in my seat with exhilaration. "There!" I shouted. "There it is!"
"I see it," he said. I could feel him trying not to let any emotion come through in his tone. But d.a.m.n, it felt as if he"d been hoping I wouldn"t be able to find my way quite this easily.
Then again, we weren"t at The Farm. Not yet, anyway.
"We found it, Ethan!" I said, unable to contain my excitement, despite knowing that he didn"t share it.
"We found the bridge. I know we can find The Farm from here. I just know it."
I felt a wave of emotion from him, but it was brief. As if he slammed the doors on it the instant it began to flow. It didn"t feel like what I was feeling. It wasn"t excitement or triumph. Far from it.
"You"re not happy about this, are you, Ethan?"
"I have a deep feeling that we"re driving this borrowed Bronco straight to our deaths, Lilith. So no, I"m not happy about that."
"And yet you"re doing it."
He didn"t answer.
"Go straight from here, and then take the next possible left hand turn. I remember that much, at least."
He nodded and kept driving. He checked the mirrors often, and I did, too, but no one appeared to be following us. So far.
"You were wrong about them watching this place," I said. "No one"s spotted us."
"They can hardly follow every vehicle that pa.s.ses. They may not have known it was us."
"You have a very negative att.i.tude, you know that?" He sighed, and I sensed him frustration. "What"s going to happen to them, Lilith?"
"To whom?" I asked, unable to follow his train of thought.
"These captives you"re risking your life to save," he said. "What do you think they"re going to do once they"re free?"
"Live, I imagine."