Wings In The Night - Bloodline Part 8

"What?" She couldn't have angered him more if she'd tried. "Why the h.e.l.l would you want to go back?"

Turning the mare to face him, she said, "To do the right thing. To rescue the others and put this obscenity to a stop, of course."

He shook his head. "Don't you think if that were possible, I'd have done it myself?"

"Obviously notsince you didn't."

"Lilith, you can't do this. Not if you want to live."

"I have to. How could I live with all those prisoners on my conscience?" She frowned at him, tipping her head to one side. "How have you?"

I sat there, astride the mare, watching him wrestle with his ego. His conscience, I thought, had long since been beaten into submission.

"Do you remember that place?" he asked me at length. "Do you remember what they did to you there?"

"No."

"Do you even remember where it is?"

"I'll find it."

"How?"

"The same way I found you, I imagine. I was drawn here, probably my vampiric brain felt you, knew you were here. You said yourself, we can sense other vampires."

"There are other vampires everywhere. You'd have to be the luckiest person on the planet to just happen upon The Farm." He lowered his head, shaking it. "You'll never find it, Lilith."

"Then tell me where it is," I said.

"So you can go there and get yourself killed?" He shot his eyes to hers. "I couldn't live with myself if I did that."

"Yet you could live with your own escape, leaving me and the others behind. Believing I was probably dead by now. G.o.d, Ethan, you've thought I was dead this long without remorse. How is this different?"

He closed his eyes. "Not without remorse, Lilith. Never without remorse. Your face, your spirit, have haunted me ever since I left. Why do you think I bought that painting? It was to remind me, in case I should ever forget. I look at it to punish myself for saving my own life and claiming my own freedom." "And yet you didn't come back for us."

He drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders. "I intended to. But not just yet."

"If not now, then when?"

"When I find my brother."

I frowned, searching his face. "Your brother?"

"James. He was there with me, ever since we were kids. I think he was five and I was three when they took us to The Farm. Our parents had been killed. We both had the antigen."

I was interested. My common sense told me to just turn the horse and ride away, to go about my newfound mission. But I wanted to know. And there was something else. Something I hated to admit, even in the most hidden parts of my mind. But I didn't want to leave him. I didn't want to believe he was the kind of man who would save himself at the expense of others. I wanted him to convince me that he was better than that.

Giving in to such useless feelings was likely counterproductive, and yet I slid down from the mare's back.

"One day, about two and a half years ago, James disappeared," he said, when he saw that I wanted to hear more. "No one would tell me where he'd gone. The keepers would only say that I had to obey without questionand that included questions about James."

"He was older. You said we were all intended to be transformed and sent out on missions for this DPA."

"I. DPI," he corrected.

"What does it stand for?"

"I never knew." He shrugged. "There were rumors about James, of course. Some said he'd had escaped and that they'd sent an a.s.sa.s.sin to kill him. That he was cold in the ground before his first night of freedom ended. Others believed he had been transformed and put to work."

"What did you believe?" I asked him.

He swung his head around, as if he had briefly forgotten I was there. "I believe he escaped and survived.

That's why I rah away myself, six months later. To find my brother, to ask him what was really going on."

"Why do you think he Would know any more than you do?" I asked.

"He's my older brother. He's always known more than I do. Besides, he remembers more about when we first went there. And he's been on the outside longer than I have. Long enough to find things out, maybe."

I paced to the water's edge, gazed at the paling sky. "It will be daylight soon."

"Too soon for us to make it back to the house." "We can't go back there, anyway," I reminded him. "That woman"

"I felt no threat from hen Though I'm sure she had her own agenda and was keeping things from melying to me, perhapsI didn't sense danger. More a sense of desperation, in fact."

"And she told you the the DPI would find me soon."

"Yes." He sighed, studying me. "We'll find shelter for the day. It's too close to dawn for you to make any progress on this insane suicide mission of yours, anyway." He met my eyes, let his linger there. "Stay with me, Lilith."

Chapter Eight.

"I'll stay with you," I told him. "But only for the day. At sundown, I'm leaving."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he clicked his tongue at Charybdis, and the stallion trotted to his side.

Ethan took hold of the horse's reins and began walking. I walked alongside him.

"There are guards at the compound. Dozens of them. And they're armed," he said.

I shrugged. "They're also ordinary. I'm a vampire."

"That doesn't make you invinciblenot to mention that they have vampires on their side, too."

I sighed. "I have to help the others."

"h.e.l.l, Lilith, most of them don't want to be helped." I frowned at him, but he went on. "Don't you think I tried? I had friends there, people who could have escaped with me. They flat out refused. h.e.l.l, one of them decided to turn me in, and if I hadn't overheard him and moved my entire plan up, I'd never have escaped at all."

"Why would anyone want to stay in captivity?"

"Because they've been broken. Their minds are like oatmeal. They've been programmed, brainwashed, converted into obedient, loyal servants, too afraid to question anything. They have no will of their own anymore."

"I did." He looked at me slowly, and I thought he knew my next question before I asked it. "Did you ask me to go with you?"

"You'd been put into isolation. They couldn't break you, Lilith, and they were determined to. I had no idea what they were doing to you, or what you would be like when you came out. But yes, I'd planned to wait for you to return to the general population and ask you to come with me."

"But then your friend decided to reveal your plan to the guards," I said slowly. "And you had to leave or give up the idea of escape entirely." "Yes. Callista helped me get in to see you, that last night. And even then, I hoped. But you were weak, drugged, barely coherent. There was just no way." He pointed. "There's a cave up there. See it?"

I nodded. "Perhaps I misjudged you," I said. In my heart, I hoped against hope that I had. But it would take some doing for me to truly believe in him, much less trust him again. "If I did, then I'm sorry."

"If you did. You're not certain, then."

"Certainty will take time. And effort."

He nodded slowly. "Lilith, if we can find James, learn what he's learned about the organization, about The Farm, about the Bloodliners who've graduated, where they are and what they dodon't you see? With all that knowledge, we'll have a much better chance of getting the others outif they'll come."

"But you don't know where your brother is," I said.

"Or who he is. What if you're wrong about him? What if he really has become one of the DPI's loyal vampiresa house pet willing to do whatever he's told? What will you do then?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "I don't want to believe that's possible."

"Why do you think he hasn't tried to find you, then, Ethan? Wouldn't he have come back for you if he could?"

"Maybe he did go back and I was already gone. And since then, I've been staying very well concealed."

"So well that I found you on my first night."

"We don't know for sure it was your first night."

I hadn't considered that one.

We'd walked up the slight incline and stood at the cave's entrance. Facing his horse, Ethan removed the saddle, blanket and packs. He left the bridle on, though, looping the reins through the headstall and then knotting them to keep them out of the way, then patted the horse on the rump, and Charybdis trotted back down the slope to join Scylla, already grazing in the lush gra.s.s alongside the stream. Above them, the trees rustled, their dying leaves fragrant with the scent of their decay. And even higher, the stars had paled until they were barely visible as the sky became purple with the approaching dawn.

"Should we tie them or anything?" I asked.

"They'll stay close."

I was impressed but didn't say so. He slung the packs over his shoulder and moved deeper into the cave. At the far end, I saw the charred remains of an old fire, a small stack of branches for firewood and, against the back wall, a rusty-hinged hurricane lantern hanging from a jutting rock formation. "You've been here before, I take it."

"I camped out here before I bought the place. In a few others places, too. I wanted to watch, see who came and went, from a secure distance." I lifted my brows. "You are cautious."

"You will be, too, when the rest of your memory comes back."

The words weren't meant to frighten me, but a chill raced up my spine all the same. "You think it's going to? Come back, I mean?"

"I think so. You remembered me, sort of. You knew that you'd known me, right from the start.

Somewhere down deep, you recognized my energy, followed your sense of it right to my door, even though you didn't know that was what you were doing."

She nodded. "That's the way it works with vampires, though, right? They sense each other?"

"Well"

"But that can't be true. Or you'd be able to sense your brother and walk right up to his door, wouldn't you?"

"Sit. Here, why don't you unpack these while I build a fire?" He handed me the saddlebags as he spoke.

I took them, and sat down on the cave floor, unbuckling the straps and listening to him as he began arranging twigs atop the blackened coals.

"I expected to be able to sense James. Maybe V m just not close enough, though. Distance weakens the connection. But to answer your question, no that's not exactly the way it works. I can sense another vampire who's near, but unless I knew him, had spent time with him, I wouldn't know who he was. I think you must have been fonder of me than I ever knew, to have homed in on me immediately."

"Oh, you think so, do you?" I smiled a little as I tugged items from the packs. Blankets, a Thermos, a long-nosed lighter.

"Something inside you recognized and remembered me, there's no denying that."

"I suppose not." I lowered my head. "What does it mean, do you think?"

"I can only a.s.sume it means your memories aren't gone, exactly. They're only sleeping. And even now, rousing. Night by night, they grow stronger. It won't be long before they all return, I suspect."

I felt myself relax at his interpretation, which was, . if nothing more, some relief from my own. "I like that.

They're sleeping. And beginning to rouse. That means they could wake up fully any time now."

"They could wake up at any moment. And for you to go back there before they have would like going in with your arms missing. Your memory of that place may end up being the best weapon you could wield."

He was crouched in front of the fire, his back to me, as he spoke, setting the twigs alight. I watched the flames lick higher, reaching the larger pieces of wood.

"That would make more sense if I knew for sure that my memory would return. Just waiting for it without knowing, could mean leaving the others there indefinitely."

"If they really wanted to get away, they could. We did." "Not everyone is as strong as you are, Ethan," I said. "Or as stubborn as I was."

"Was?" He turned as he said it, amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, though the topic was a serious one. "You still are."

"So I've discovered."

"It's not just stubbornness, either. You're strong, too. Smart, short-tempered, willful, determined and fiercely independent."

I nodded. "I'm feeling more and more of that myself. But even now, I think you know more about me than I do," I said. "Which means you know I have to go back. With you or without you. I have to."

"I know. I think that's another part of the reason I didn't tell you everything from the start. Deep down, I was afraid you would react exactly the way you are."