Bloodline. Maggie Shayne

      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 it—at 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 lives—such as they were—the Division of Paranormal Investigations. 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 safe—and 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-size 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, lamblike 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 Nurse Keenan had told her to. 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 again, 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 way. She was barefoot, wearing only a hospital gown. But if she was 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