"Thank you for staying alive and keeping your sanity in that place. Otherwise there wouldn"t have been much to find." She lowered her eyes. "I"m sorry about Ethan."
"I never should have trusted him. From the first it"s been, "my brother this" and "my brother that." I can"t compete with that, nor do I want to."
"Blood ties are powerful, Lilith."
"He took his brother"s side against me." My voice broke a little when I said that, because it hurt so much to acknowledge the truth that had become so glaringly obvious.
"You don"t know that. He could be deceived by his brother, just as you thought from the start. He might still be unaware of what James is up to."
I said nothing, but I felt a swell of something in my chest, as if my heart were admitting a small rush of hope. I hated that feeling. I would only be let down all over again if I let myself hope.
And yet that tiny flame flickered, refusing to die away, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn"t there.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"To our secret library. It"s well hidden. There are some things that the world must never knowand though we keep careful records of your kind, we would never risk our knowledge of you falling into the wrong hands."
Ahead, I saw a doorway opening, lights coming on from within. "There"s power way down here?"
"Yes, and everything else we could need, including an entire network of escape tunnels. Any pursuer would find it difficult to decide which one to follow. But we won"t use those just yet. We"ll be safe here for today."
"But what if they find the entrance?"
"If the hidden pa.s.sage opens, an alarm light will flash in the library. We"ll know they"re coming long before they reach us. But it"s highly doubtful anyoneeven a vampirecould locate that pa.s.sage or figure out how to open the door." She glanced at me with a rea.s.suring smile. "You didn"t guess it was there, did you?" I breathed a sigh of relief. "No. Not until I saw it sliding open."
My mother smiled and patted my hand. "I told you I"d keep you safe. Come, I want you to see this."
And with that she led me the last few steps along the corridor and through the open door. Before me, a room opened out, round, with a domed ceiling and not a window in sight. Its walls appeared to be made of books. Nothing but books and more books, and more and more books. There were computers on desks in various spots, too, and on the farthest curve of the circular walls, another doorway.
"Where does that one lead?" I asked.
"To the vaults. We have a lot of artifacts that need to be just as well guarded as the records." She nodded to her right. "That bookshelf opens to reveal the entrance to four escape tunnels. The one to the left, four more. They open by a switch hidden in the light fixture there." She pointed.
I nodded. "I don"t like the idea of spending the day here," I told her. "I"m helpless when I sleep. And if someone does find the pa.s.sage, I"d be right here, waiting for them to find me."
"How could anyone find the pa.s.sage?" she asked.
I shrugged and averted my eyes. "Ethan and I have been close. Or I thought we were. There was a connection between us. I think it was real, even if it meant nothing to him in the end."
"I see," she said softly, and I got the feeling she really did.
"He might be able to sense me, even if no one else could," I told her.
She nodded. "We"ll all be awake. We"ll protect you. If the pa.s.sage opens, we"ll carry you out of here, if necessary."
I looked slowly at the women who shared the library with us. One had located a closet and was pulling blankets and pillows from its depths, and handing them out to the rest, so they could nap on and off throughout the dayin shifts, no doubt. Another was entering what looked like a pantry. I smelled food coming from it, and I felt jealous that these mortals would eat while I had to go hungry.
Unless I decided to eat one of them, I thought, with a private, inner grin. I wouldn"t of course, but I amused myself with my own little joke, even while deciding not to share it. They likely wouldn"t find it very funny.
"You can trust them," my mother told me. "These woman have worked as hard as I have to find you, most without even knowing you were my daughter, though they all know it now. Some have been here for as long as I have. A few, even longer. They love me, and because of that, they"ll be loyal to you. You have nothing to fear from any of them, I swear it."
"I"m sorry. I"m just not used to trusting anyone. Ethan really was the first, and you"ve seen how that turned out."
"You don"t yet know how that turned out."
I looked at her, frowning and wishing with everything in me that I could believe her. She stroked my hair, her touch tender and loving beyond measure. "You have a set of circ.u.mstances that seem to suggest he has betrayed you. But you don"t know, Lilith. Try not to judge him until you do."
I nodded, and felt the pull of the unseen sun upon my body. My limbs were growing heavy, my movements clumsy and labored. My eyelids kept dropping closed.
A young woman touched my shoulder, and when I looked her way, she handed me a blanket and pillow. "Pick a spot near the escape tunnels, so we can get you out first if anything should happen."
I shot a swift look at my mother, then returned my probing but sleepy gaze to this girl, with her pixie brown hair and twinkling blue eyes. "Why would you want to get me out first?"
"While you sleep, you"re helpless, right? Naturally we"d take you out first. You"d be the most at risk."
She smiled a little. "Besides, you"ve been a pet project of ours since long before I came here. We couldn"t let anything happen to you now."
I nodded, and the girl turned and hurried away. Looking once more at my mother, I said, "I guess I can trust them." I didn"t though. Not fully, and not deep down. How could I? I didn"t know them.
But I trusted Serena. My mother. I trusted her and hoped I wasn"t wrong again. Taking my pillow and blanket, I chose a spot, spread the blanket on the floor and lay down on it, resting my head on my hand, my elbow on the soft pillow. "They look up to you here," I said.
She nodded "I"m Ginger"s second. Though if you"d told me I would ever rise to this position twenty years ago, I would have said you were crazy." She shrugged. "I came here, joined this order, for one purpose and one purpose only. I thought it was my best chance to find you."
"But that changed, didn"t it?"
She nodded and looked around the library, pride beaming from her eyes. "Their cause is so good, so n.o.ble and just. The more I learned about them, the more I believed in what they were doing. Fighting to protect an entire race that has as much right to exist as any of us do."
I nodded slowly. "Have you known many of them, then? Vampires?"
"Known? No, I wouldn"t say I"ve really ever known any of them. I"ve encountered a handful, and I"ve helped a great many, though always without their knowledge."
"Even" I was having trouble staying awake, and soon I would be helpless to even try. "Even the Wildborns?"
"Until you, I never knew there were any other kind," she said.
I frowned. "I don"t understand why anyone would help them." My eyes fell closed, and my mind faded to black. The last thing I heard was her voice.
"Rest now, daughter. We"ll talk again at sundown."
Chapter Seventeen At sunset Ethan awoke all at once, a feeling of urgency snapping his senses to full awareness. He sat up fast, then blinked away the remnants of the sleep-haze, and looked around the falling down shack where he and his brother had taken shelter.
James lay a few feet away from him, stirring slowly to life, stretching his arms as he sat up. Ethan got to his feet, paced from the sheltered area where they"d slept to the nearest gap in the broken boards and stared outside. "You ready?"
"I"ve barely opened my eyes, Ethan." But James got up and came to join him. Already Ethan was climbing through the opening to the outside, then standing and scanning the night.
"Anyone around?" his brother asked.
"I don"t feel anyone. Including Lilith."
James clapped a hand to his back. "We"ll find her. Let"s get back to that burned out mansion, see if we can find some clue as to who those women are, what they"re up to, why they"ve taken her. And where."
Ethan nodded, but he felt a grim foreboding that didn"t leave much room for hope. "I can"t understand why she hasn"t contacted me."
"Maybe her captors are preventing it. And even if she does, Ethan, you"ll need to exercise extreme skepticism about anything says. They might be coercing her into misleading you."
"n.o.body coerces Lilith into doing anything, brother," Ethan said, as they made their way through the woods to the road. The mansion wasn"t far. They"d deliberately remained close.
"Anyone can be turnedor forcedunder the right circ.u.mstances. Even your feisty Lilith."
"You wouldn"t be so sure of that if you knew her." Ethan spotted the sodden wreckage of the mansion.
There were no mortals near, but the sense of those who had been here earlier permeated the place. Not just the womenbut the firefighters and others who"d rushed to the scene. Tire tracks marred the once perfect lawn, and ashes coated the gra.s.s. The stench of burned wood still filled the air. Yellow tape surrounded the area, woven through the bars of the wrought iron fence that guarded the place. The house had collapsed into a pile of blackened wreckage. It didn"t look as if much had survived.
"The women must have left through the rear or we"d have seen them," James said, then headed across the narrow road. The two of them jumped the fence and headed around the mansion"s remains. Beyond it, there were shrubs and flowering trees, rose bushes, lilacs, plants of every imaginable sort, all interwoven with footpaths. Those plants nearest the house were destroyed, their leaves blackened or burned entirely away.
Others were only wilted, but Ethan doubted they would survive what must have been a blast of extreme heat.
Ethan hurried into the garden, feeling with his mind for any sense of Lilith. There was one, but it was faint, and already fading. "She"s been here," he said. "This way." Choosing the path where his sense of her felt strongest, Ethan followed it, pausing at every fork to feel for her and then moving on. The trail came to an abrupt halt at a giant sculpture of a G.o.ddess. The thing was as tall as two of him and must have weighed tons. He touched it, circled all the way around it, but couldn"t pick up any trace of Lilith"s vibration anywhere. It was as if she"d walked up to the statue and vanished.
"It"s odd," he said softly. "It"s as if she disappeared right here."
"That is odd." James put his hands on the sculpture, feeling every b.u.mp and ripple in the stone as if in search of an answer.
Ethan did the same, but he did it with his eyes and his senses, not his hands. He tried to see what Lilith had seen here, tried to feel whatever she"d felt before she"d vanished. His eyes were drawn to the sandaled foot of the giant G.o.ddess, and he saw a seam in the stone there. Tracing it around the base, he realized it was not some ordinary crack in the stone but a manmade cut. Part of the statue would move away from the restand there had to be some sort of lever to trigger it.
He turned to Ethan, parted his lips to speak, but hesitated at the intense and furious expression on his brother"s face, and the sudden sense of frustration wafting from his brother"s mind. As soon as James felt his attention, the doors of his mind slammed closed. The angry expression faded and was replaced by an innocuous one.
"What do you think, Ethan?" he asked.
Ethan blinked and decided he wasn"t as sure of his brother as he"d been trying to believe he was. He"d ignored the warning signs up to now, allowed his brother to explain them away. AH because he wanted so badly to believe in James. But maybejust in casehe should exercise caution this one time.
"I think it doesn"t much matter where she went from here," Ethan said softly. "I know perfectly well where she"s heading. To The Farm."
"But she"s being held captive by those women."
"Yes, that"s true," Ethan said with a nod. "But if they"re DPI, that"s where they"ll take her. And she"ll probably let them, because that"s where she wants to go."
"And what if they"re not DPI?" James asked.
And Ethan got the distinct impression just thenthough only briefly, so slight he couldn"t even be sure it was realthat James already knew very well that those women were not a.s.sociated with the Division of Paranormal Investigations.
But he didn"t press that the point. "If they"re not DPI," he reasoned, "then she"ll escape and go to The Farm anyway."
"And you really think she"s capable of escaping from that many armed females?"
Ethan nodded. "There"s no question in my mind, James. She"s an amazing woman."
James sighed deeply. "If that"s the case, Ethan, then I"m afraid there"s nothing more we can do for her."
"We can intercept her," Ethan said. Then he sank onto a nearby bench and lowered his head into hishands. "Maybe. I don"t know. I can"t think straight, I"m so d.a.m.n hungry."
"We should get sustenance, then," James said. "There"s a small clinic nearby. We can find blood there."
Ethan lifted his head, nodded, then closed his eyes. "I"m feeling really weak. I don"t know what"s wrong."
James studied him for a moment. "Do you want me to go for the blood, then? Bring it back to you here?"
Ethan nodded. "Yes. That would be great. Would you?"
Slowly James nodded, but his eyes were narrow and probing. "Of course I would, if that"s what you want. I"d do anything for you. You"re my brother. My only family. And I"m yours."
He held Ethan"s eyes for a moment, until Ethan, racked with guilt, had to look away. "I"ll wait right here,"
he said, nearly choking on the blatant lie. If he was wrong, he hoped to G.o.d that James would forgive him for mistrusting him so completely. And he hoped he was wrong. He hoped it with everything in him.
James looked at him hard for a moment longer, but then turned and took off at an easy pace. Ethan watched him go, waiting until he was certain his brother was out of earshot, even feeling for him before proceeding. Then he knelt and began examining the statue again, trying to find the trigger that would open the door hidden in the base. There had to be one.
Within a few moments he located it, a b.u.mp of concrete in the shape of a flower bud. When he depressed it, the base of the statue slid back, revealing a set of stairs leading downward. He felt the touch of subterranean air, damp and cool, and with it, his sense of Lilith returned. She had gone down this hidden stairway. She had descended into the depths of the Earth Herself.
Ethan glanced back once, then started down those stairs, searching along the way for a means to close the door behind him. He found it, a switch in the wall that no one had bothered to try to conceal, and when he flipped it, the statue"s base slid closed, grinding and sc.r.a.ping all the way.
He watched its progress until it had completely closed out the night, and then he moved on. And as he did, another thought occurred to him.
What if his growing suspicions about his brother were correct? He"d been worrying about whether his brother would ever forgive him if those doubts were wrong, but what if they were right? Would Lilith ever forgive him for not believing her from the start? Was it in fact his own fault that she was in the dire situation she faced right now?
Closing his eyes briefly, he leaned against the wall, a wave of weakness sweeping through him. He hadn"t been lying about being hungry and needing sustenance. That much had been utterly true. But it was the thought of losing Lilith"s budding trust in him that had turned his bones to water just then. And it was the even more debilitating thoughtthat he might be responsible for her impending demisethat he found nearly paralyzing.
"First things first, Ethan," he told himself aloud. "If she doesn"t survive this, it won"t much matter if she forgives you or not. And if it"s your fault she"s in this mess, then it"s up to you to get her out of it. So buck up and get movingbefore it"s too late." He drew a breath and prayed in desperate silence that it wasn"t too late already. As soon as night had fallen, I had awakened with a smile tugging at my lips and opened my eyes expecting, for one, brief, blissful moment, to find Ethan lying beside me, staring into my eyes with that look I"d glimpsed in his beforethat look of deep and intense caring. That look that had been a lie.
As I sat up and the reality of that returned to me, I felt the most crushing sense of loss I had ever experienced. He had betrayed meand who knew to what extent? Had he only trusted his brother with information he"d promised me he wouldn"t share? Or was it even worse than that? Was he truly conspiring with his brother against me? Had he been doing so the entire time?
My mother soothed me, seeming to know, without a word from me, the emotions that were crashing within me like waves upon a rocky sh.o.r.e. She stroked my hair, and handed me a cup filled with warm blood, to nourish and sustain me. I had no idea where she"d gotten it, and I didn"t ask.
I thanked her, though, and she said the most peculiar thing to me. She said, "There"s no need for thanks, Lilith. This is just what mothers do. They care for their daughters. They stand by them in times of trouble and need. They do anything within their power to help. And I have a lot of lost time to make up for with you."
I wondered, as I studied her beautiful face, if that were true. Was that really what mothers did? All of them? I"d never known a mother before and had no reference for comparison. But she hadn"t lied to me so far, so I decided to believe her.
Mothers must be the most exceptional beings in existence, I thought. And mine, in my mind, stood above them all. I was a vampire. And she loved me still.
The leader, Ginger, opened the secret panel to one set of tunnels and called out to us to hurry, so we did. I was led through a snake"s nest of tunnels, over a distance of what had to be several miles. I could see perfectly in the darkness, but I knew that the other women couldn"t, yet they moved with confidence, without hesitation. I found myself admiring their sureness and lack of fear. My mother and I were in the midst of the group, moving single file and slightly stooped, due to the tunnel"s low ceiling. She held my hand, walking directly ahead of me, as if she were strong and I were weak. As if she were the one who would protect me from harm, when I was, in fact, as strong as any ten of these womenmaybe more.
And yet it felt somehow natural, so I let her lead.
The tunnels were dug deep, supported by braces every few feet. I felt as if I were traversing the arteries of the earth as I smelled the rich scent of soil all around me. It was as close to a grave as I would ever come, I thought. And then I realized that I hoped that were true. I wondered, with a pang of sadness, if any of these doomed mortals, with their abbreviated life spans, felt a sense of their inevitable end here.
And for the first time it occurred to me that my mother, a mortal, would grow old. Would die. How could they live with that certainty ever present in their minds?
How could I? I had only just found my mother. The thought of losing her, even at some distant point in the future, was painful, far more painful than I would ever have expected.