Bloodline

She would go back. He knew she would.

“I need to know,” Lilith said softly. “If there are vampires out there hunting down and killing other vampires, then don’t you think I need to know?”

“You’ll be safe as long as you stay here.” His head came up then, and he plumbed her eyes and her mind at once. “And as long as you aren’t lying to me.”

“I’ve told you everything that’s happened since I woke up beneath that bridge. It feels to me as if I were born in that moment.”

He tipped his head to one side, ran a hand over his chin. “I suspect you were.”

“What do you mean?”

“I believe, Lilith, that you were made over into a vampire, just prior to this…sleep. I think it likely that you awoke to your new life tonight for the very first time.”

“Do vampires normally forget everything that came before?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t. And I’ve never exactly…known any other vampires.”

She flinched when he said that, her head jerking slightly to the left as her eyes squeezed tight.

“What? What is it?”

Brows furrowed, she pinched the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “A flash, maybe. I don’t know.”

“A memory?”

She opened her eyes and speared him with her steady gaze. “I saw a person—at least I think it was a person, though it looked more like a decomposing corpse. It was bound in chains, and I felt its agony. And that was all.”

He tipped his head to one side, studying her and wondering what horrors she had seen at The Farm that he had not.

“Do you know what it could mean?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t.”

“What do you know about our kind?”

How could he answer that? He only knew the Chosen—the captives who, like the two of them, had been raised at The Farm. Everything he knew of vampires had been taught to him by the keepers. And he didn’t trust them—he never had. But as he thought it over, he wondered. If amnesia was a common aftereffect of being made over, that would explain why he’d never heard from James in all this time. Maybe his brother didn’t remember him.

“But then, why all the training and education? Why teach us things we’re only going to forget?” he muttered.

“What are you talking about?”

He snapped his gaze back to hers, aware he’d journeyed deeply into his own mind. “Nothing,” he said. “Just…thinking aloud.”

“Oh.” She stiffened her spine. “That’s not the only…flash of memory I’ve had,” she told him.

He looked at her and tried not to show her that the revelation startled him a bit. Hell, it wasn’t as if he honestly wished her memory were gone forever. He just needed some time—to figure things out.

“I…remember kissing—or being kissed by—a man.” She blinked, but didn’t avert her eyes from his. “It felt like you.”

“But we’ve only just met,” he told her.

“Have we?”

Clearing his throat, he got to his feet, feeling fidgety. “I need to go back to the stable. I was on my way to tend the horses when I found you.”

She nodded, then turned her back to him and walked toward the fireplace, leaning one hand on the mantel, lowering her head so that her hair fell as suddenly as a curtain falling across a stage. It was as if she were already alone in the room.

“You can come with me, if you like.”

Without moving at all, she said, “I’ll stay, if you don’t mind. I have a lot to…process.”

“All right.” He started for the door, then paused, because he hadn’t covered half what he needed to. And he wasn’t certain how he could, not without revealing everything, something he wasn’t confident enough of her motives to do yet. “Lilith, that car you encountered—the Escalade. Are you sure it didn’t follow you here?”

“I’m sure.”

Two words. He hoped she meant them. “If you need me…” he began.

“I’ll open the door and shout.”

No need. Just…shout at me with your mind. I’ll hear you.

Her head rose slowly, and she turned toward him, blinking in surprise. “You will?”

Now that she was looking at him, she would know for sure he wasn’t speaking aloud. This was a skill she needed, and one of the easiest to master—over short distances, at least, and with a willing partner.

It’s one of the benefits of being…what we are, Lilith. He spoke to her clearly, without saying a word, and as she watched, her eyes sharpened with interest. One of many, he added. It’s not a bad thing, being immortal. Not at all.

As he watched her closely, she closed her eyes, and then he heard her thinking, But we aren’t really immortal, are we?

He smiled. “It depends on how we define the word, I suppose,” he said aloud. “Take care around the fire.”

She smiled, apparently pleased that he’d heard and answered her question. That she could speak to him with no more than a thought. He actually thought there might have a been a glimmer of the old light in her eyes.

“Thank you for taking me in, Ethan.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said. And he meant it.

Because, after all, Lilith was the only thing about The Farm that he’d regretted leaving behind. He’d thought of her so much that he’d been unable to keep himself from buying the Waterhouse print when he’d seen it. Because it reminded him of her. Of Lilith. She’d been nineteen when he’d left, and already notorious. Everyone knew who she was.

She was the one they couldn’t break. She was the one who would rather die than submit. She was the voice of his conscience whenever he closed his eyes long enough to listen. She was the face he couldn’t stop seeing in his mind, the name he heard on the wind.

She was the one kiss he had never been able to forget.

He hadn’t named her Lilith because she reminded him of the print. He’d bought the print because it reminded him of her, right down to her name.

She was Lilith.

And somehow, she had found him.