Praise for the novels of
MAGGIE SHAYNE

“The latest from bestseller Shayne is an interesting, inventive tale.”

—Publishers Weekly on Demon’s Kiss

“Suspense, mystery, danger and passion—no one does them better than Maggie Shayne.”

—Romance Reviews Today on Darker Than Midnight

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Maggie Shayne demonstrates an absolutely superb touch, blending fantasy and romance into an outstanding reading experience.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Embrace the Twilight

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Maggie Shayne delivers sheer delight, and fans new and old of her vampire series can rejoice.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Twilight Hunger

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven…. A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night!”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“Shayne’s talent knows no bounds!”

—Rendezvous

“Maggie Shayne delivers romance with sweeping intensity and bewitching passion.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

MAGGIE SHAYNE
BLOODLINE

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

1

My first thought upon waking was that maybe I was dead. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how accurate that initial, intuitive and seemingly irrational notion was. It popped into my consciousness as soon as consciousness itself appeared. It made no sense. It was based upon no reason. It was just there.

I must be dead.

And just as quickly as it had come, the thought was gone again.

I wasn’t dead. I was cold. But it was an odd kind of cold, because it didn’t make me shiver or feel uncomfortable, it was just an awareness of the fact. I was cold. And I was wet, too.

I opened my eyes slowly and blinked to wipe away the blur of sleep, for I must have been asleep. It was dark. Newborn darkness, though. It had that sense to it, though I wasn’t sure at that moment how it was I could sense newborn darkness from any other kind. It wasn’t something I would have thought came naturally to ordinary people. And it was certainly nothing I’d ever noticed before.

Or had I?

Oddly, I didn’t remember, but I dismissed the slightly queasy feeling that notion brought to my stomach and focused instead on my surroundings. The immediate ones first. Beneath me, dirt. Solid packed, damp, but not muddy. A few scraggly patches of crabgrass and dandelions struggling for survival here and there, and looking proud of their triumph in such inhospitable conditions. All right, then. I was on the ground. Not flat ground, but a hillside that sloped precariously downward to a stretch of pavement at the bottom. And on the other side of that pavement, another patch of ground, sloping upward—a mirror image of the one on which I lay. And above them both…a ceiling?

A bridge.

I was on the sloping ground beneath a bridge.

On either side of the bridge, rain poured from heaven’s open spigot, soaking the road at the bottom, except for the part of it that was sheltered.

Why, I wondered, am I lying outdoors, on the ground, under a bridge, in the rain, at night?

Naked.

Refocusing my attention on the things in closest proximity, I noted the damp sheet of cardboard that lay over me, like a makeshift blanket, and noted further that, aside from that, I wore nothing. It had that wet-cardboard smell to it, and as I flipped it off my body, I thought my skin did, as well.

I started to shake. Not from the cold, because the cold didn’t bother me and that had me worried. Maybe my nerves weren’t working just right, but at any rate, I was scared and I could feel panic creeping like ice water through my veins. I closed my eyes, firmed my spine, held my breath, then told myself, “Easy. Just take it easy. Just take it easy and figure this out. It can’t be all that difficult to figure this out.”

Nodding in response to my own advice, I opened my eyes again, and this time I looked down at my own body. I was long, and I was thin. Perhaps athletic, I thought, and it scared me that I didn’t know if that was true or not. Maybe I was just sickly. Although I didn’t feel sickly. And my body seemed more lean than skinny.

In fact, I felt…

Strong.

I opened my hands to see if they worked, then closed them again. I studied my slender arms, lengthy legs, small waist and hips nearly the same size, and my compact, round little breasts, as if I’d never seen them before. And then I noticed a lock of hair hanging over my shoulder, and I grasped it, lifting it to look and feel and smell it.

It was copper in color, the kind of hair they call auburn, I thought, and it was curly and long, long, long, just like the rest of me. But also like the rest of me, I had the feeling I’d never seen it before.

I stood up to see how long my hair was, and also to move around a bit. Maybe if I woke up more thoroughly, this fog in my head would clear and I would know who I was and what I was doing here in the middle of nowhere on the cusp of night, naked and alone.

So I stood there, noticing that my hair reached to the tops of my hipbones, until a sound jerked my attention away from it. Something running, scampering off in the distance. My head snapped toward the sound fast, and I felt my nose wrinkling and realized I was scenting the moist air. My eyes narrowed, and my mind thought, Rabbit. And then I saw it, scurrying from one clump of brush to the next, far in the distance. Perhaps as much as a half mile from me.

There was no possible way I could see a rabbit a half mile away in the dark, in the rain, much less identify it by smell.

And yet I had, and I realized, as my senses came to life one by one, that I could hear many things and smell even more—the flitting of a little bird’s wings and the scent of the leaves in his nest, the hushed flight of a moth and the smell of the fine powder on his body, the bubbling of a stream somewhere beyond sight and the smell of its water and even the fish that lived in its depths. I smelled autumn. There were decaying leaves, their aroma so pungent and wonderful and evocative that it overwhelmed almost everything else. It was comforting, that scent. I heard the sound of cars that had not yet come close enough to see, and I could smell their exhaust.

My brows drew together, and I pressed my fingertips to my forehead. “What am I?” I whispered.

Lights came into view then. Headlights, as a vehicle rolled closer and closer on the road below. I started to move carefully down the hill. My feet seemed extremely sensitive to every pebble, and I sucked air through my teeth, tasting everything it carried in its breath, but I hurried all the same.

I stopped halfway down just as the car rolled under the bridge, and I heard the brakes engage as the vehicle came to an abrupt stop, still ten feet from where I stood.

I didn’t move toward it. I just stood there, naked and waiting. There was something tingling up the back of my neck that felt like unease. Like a warning.

The car was black. Big and black. An SUV, I thought. An expensive one. My eyes slid toward the manufacturer’s logo on the front of the thing, and I saw laurel leaves encircling a shield, with blocks of color on its face. I thought I should remember it, though I wasn’t certain why. As I stared, unsure whether to move closer or turn away, the driver’s-side window, which was deeply tinted, moved downward just a little. A man’s voice said, “Get in.”

The chill along my nape turned icy. I shivered, and everything in me went tense and tight. I felt as if I were coiling up inside myself in preparation for flight, though I didn’t know why I should feel the urge to run. I ignored the impulse, but still I didn’t move.

And then, through the tiny gap in that window, I saw the black barrel of a gun, pointing right at my head, and the voice was cold this time. “I said get in.”

The spring that had been coiling up inside me released all at once. My body sprang into motion as if propelled by some outside force. I turned, I lunged, I leapt, soaring from the embankment to the pavement beyond the bridge, behind the car, where the rain was pounding down. Barely had my feet settled on the macadam before I was moving again. I accelerated into a dead run, the speed of which astounded me.

I heard tires spinning behind me, and then gunshots, three of them, so loud I thought my eardrums had split, but no pain came with those shots. The bullets, though certainly fired at me, had missed their mark. And when I dared to glance over my shoulder, I saw those headlights falling farther and farther behind me as I ran.

That didn’t make any sense at all. The car was chasing me, speeding after me along the same stretch of road. And I was on foot, running through the pouring rain. And yet I was pulling away.

Almost as an afterthought, I veered left, away from the pavement, and sped over uneven terrain, through an open field that was lush with grass and far easier on my tender feet. I ran until the car was long out of sight, and then I kept on running, because there was an ecstatic rush to it that I couldn’t understand.

I leapt over boulders and limbs that appeared in my path. I jumped over the stream I’d heard from so far away, expecting to land somewhere in the middle of it, but clearing it instead. I ran alongside a doe that I startled, and while she flared her nostrils and bounded away with her white tail flying its warning, I passed her, and kept on going.

God, what was this? How was this possible?

Finally, when I began to tire at last, I stopped and again tried to take stock of who and what I was, but I found nothing there.

Tabula rasa. The phrase echoed in my mind. Blank slate. It was as if whatever I had known or been before had been erased.

So instead of searching within me for answers, I took a look at my surroundings, because I would need, I thought, food and shelter and probably some clothing, if I hoped to survive long enough to figure out anything more. Those were the immediate requirements. And they were easier to face than the emptiness inside my mind. Thinking on that brought me to the edge of panic, and I had the feeling that, should I give in to it, I might never return.

I had run into a stand of forest, a woody little paradise, its floor lined with fallen leaves, and its trees awash in russet and scarlet and gold. I walked through it now, following my senses to its edge, where I could look out and see what lay beyond.

Another stretch of pavement, curving into what appeared to be a small town. I saw a tall pointed church steeple. I saw several oversize barns, and lots of little houses. They were clustered together in some places, farther apart in others. Smoke wafted from chimneys, and I smelled the wood burning, and the oil, too. But my eyes fell on one place in particular, a place well beyond a cluster of homes. I didn’t know why. It was far away in the distance. A red house with white shutters. It had a red barn and a lot of green land around it, all of it enclosed by white wooden fences.

And then a flash in my mind. A man, kissing me. Unfamiliar, powerful, wonderful feelings rushing through my body. Lips on mine. My hands tangling in dark hair.

And then it was gone. Gone, just that fast.

I wanted it back. I wanted more of it. But it had receded into the deep black waters inside my mind.

Sighing in disappointment, I returned my attention to that little red farmhouse. It was that place that drew my attention, though I had no idea why. Another place would have been far easier to reach. That one, the one that caught hold of me and held me in its grip, was well past the rest of the town, situated on a hillside and only visible from here because of the angle at which I stood. The town itself was close at hand. That place…that place was miles from me. Isolated. Lonely.

Calling out to me.

I had to go. And I had no idea why I was so compelled.

Yet, I rationalized, I’d had no idea why I’d felt a sense of panic when that car had stopped. And that feeling had proven accurate. So common sense dictated I should pay attention to my feelings. If my senses were somehow heightened beyond normal—which certainly seemed to be the case, since I could see and hear and smell things I shouldn’t be able to—and if my physical speed was also magnified—which it clearly was, since I had outrun a deer and a Cadillac…

Yes. A Cadillac Escalade. That was what that car had been. I smiled a little, slightly gratified to think tiny things were coming back to me.

But the point was, if all these other senses and strengths were somehow heightened, then maybe my intuitions were sharper than usual, as well. Though I couldn’t, just then, have said what “usual” might have been for me.

I would, I decided, trust my intuitions. I would go to that red farmhouse—no, I would go to its barn, which would be safer. That would be my shelter for the moment. And from there I would plan my next move.

So I walked down the slight grassy incline, away from the autumnal beauty of the woods, to the curving country road, and then, keeping to the softest part of the shoulder, I began walking, naked, toward that tiny town. And as I walked, I began to feel aware of a demanding, urgent hunger unlike any I had ever known before.

21 Years Ago

Serena blinked the drug-induced haze from her head and glanced up at the man in the white lab coat, with the stethoscope around his neck. He wasn’t looking at her, but at her chart.

“Where’s my baby? Can I see her now?” Then she smiled a little, through the fog. God, they must have given her a lot of drugs, she thought. “I’m already saying ‘her,’ when I don’t even know for sure, but I expected her to be a girl. Was she? Is she perfect and wonderful? How much did she weigh? Why haven’t the nurses brought her in to me yet?”

The doctor lowered the chart, replaced it on its hook at the foot of the bed, and then he came closer and reached down to pat her hand. Not hold it, just pat it. He wasn’t smiling.

Something clenched tight in the pit of Serena’s stomach. And suddenly she didn’t want to hear what he was going to say.

“It was a girl, yes. But…I’m very sorry, Serena. Your baby was stillborn.”

A sledgehammer hit her squarely in the chest. She fell back against the pillows as every whisper of breath was driven from her lungs. Her hand clutched her chest, because she couldn’t seem to draw more air back in. And then the doctor pressed his icy hand to the nape of her neck, pushing her head forward.

“Put your head down and breathe. Just breathe.” He hit a button on the wall behind the bed and snapped, “A little help in here,” then yanked something from his pocket, snapped it and held it underneath Serena’s nose.

The ammonia smell hit her and burned, making her gasp and jerk her head away. And then she was breathing. In and out. Breathing. As if nothing had happened.

“That’s better.” He glanced up as the door opened and a nurse entered. Pretty, blond and young.

Serena glanced at her only briefly before shooting her gaze straight back to the doctor. “It’s a lie,” she said. “It’s a lie. My baby was not stillborn.”

The nurse came closer. “I know how hard this is. I’m so sorry.”

“My baby was not stillborn,” Serena repeated. And she locked eyes with the doctor. “I heard her cry. I heard her cry.”

“You were heavily sedated,” the doctor said, with no hint of sympathy in his matter-of-fact tone. “This isn’t uncommon, this delusion of having heard the baby cry. I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s fairly normal.”

“I heard her cry,” Serena said again. And then she noticed that the blond nurse couldn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m ordering a sedative,” the doctor said as if she were no longer in the room, then he returned to the foot of the bed, grabbed the chart and scribbled something on it. “Get it into her, stat.”

Serena sat up straighter in the bed. “I don’t need a freaking sedative! I told you, I heard my baby cry. I heard her!” She shot her desperate gaze to the nurse. “I won’t take a sedative. I want a phone. I want the police. I want to know what you people did with my baby.”

“Your baby was stillborn,” the doctor said again.

And very subtly, so slightly that she couldn’t even be sure if she was imagining it, the nurse shook her head as she held Serena’s eyes.

“Get the Valium,” the doctor ordered.

The nurse—her name tag said Maureen Keenan, R.N.—hurried out the door. Serena wondered if she had really seen the silent message Nurse Keenan had sent—and whether the doctor had picked up on it.

No time to tell. He left on the nurse’s heels.

The second the door closed behind him, Serena scanned her hospital room, but there was no telephone in sight. Getting out of the bed, wincing at how sore she was, she went to the window and pressed the slats of the blinds apart so she could see outside.

The sun hung low in the sky. The parking lot lay beyond her window. She was on the second floor.

God, where was her baby?

She heard the door opening and dove back into the bed.

Nurse Keenan was back, syringe in her gloved hands. She came close to the bed, leaned down and clasped Serena’s forearm.

“I really don’t need that, Nurse Kee—”

“It’s Maureen, and I know you don’t need it,” the other woman whispered. “But you do need to listen and do exactly what I tell you. I want you to wait one hour. Pretend to be out cold, because this shit should knock you right on your ass. Understand?”

“But what’s going on? Where’s my baby?”

“I don’t know. I just know you need to get the hell out of here. One hour, then go out the window. Dangle from your hands, then let go, so it won’t be as far to fall. Maybe five feet. There will be a backpack in the bushes with everything you need. One hour, then go. Fake it till then.”

Footsteps came tapping along the hall, and Maureen quickly slid the needle into the pillow and depressed the plunger. “You’re out cold. There’s a clock over there.” She inclined her head slightly. “One hour, then get out. Your life depends on it.”

The door opened, and the doctor walked in. Serena closed her eyes and let her head sink onto the pillow as if she were completely relaxed. She made her breathing slow and even and deep.

“Did she give you any trouble?” he asked.

“Only a little. I talked her around. I think she likes me.”

His cold, gray, unfeeling eyes were still on her. Serena could feel them, even though hers were closed.

“She shouldn’t give us any more trouble tonight,” the bastard said.

“It’s hard on her. Poor thing, thinking she heard her baby cry. What do you suppose is behind that?” the nurse asked.

“You were there, Maureen.”

“Well, not in the room. I mean, I was in the unit, but not—”

“So? Did you hear a baby cry?”

It sounded almost like an accusation. Or maybe a challenge.

“No, Doctor Martin,” Nurse Keenan replied, in a tone that held no life. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

Serena knew it was a lie. She knew it right to her soul. Maureen Keenan knew. She had heard Serena’s baby cry, and she knew. And she wanted to help.

Serena wasn’t imagining anything. She hadn’t been hallucinating or deluded or reacting to drugs. Her daughter was alive. She was alive!

And if it took Serena the rest of her life, she would find her.

2

The Present

Ethan’s first chore in the evening was to see to Scylla and Charybdis. The draft horses were big enough to qualify as monsters, though he supposed naming them for sea serpents was a bit of a stretch.

He smiled at the notion of his companions as the legendary creatures from the tales of Ulysses—guarding his solitude, the way their namesakes had guarded the Straits of Messina.

As he strode through the deepening darkness, along the path that twisted from the house to the stable, he heard them blowing a soft welcome from within. They sensed him coming. They would sense danger, as well, and paw and snort their warnings. They seemed to understand that there were some—many—who wanted him dead.

He was almost to the stable and deep in thought when he stopped walking and lifted his head, suddenly picking up the clear scent of another of his own kind.

Another vampire. Close.

A Wildborn? Or one of the Bloodliners, like him? One trained to kill, and sent out to hunt him down and destroy him, as all escapees were hunted down and destroyed?

Standing utterly still, he honed his senses, feeling for the presence, sensing for any sign of a threat. The horses hadn’t pawed or stomped. They hadn’t blown in anger or snorted, the way they would if danger were near. Why not?

The presence was that of a female, and the only emotion coming from her was fear. She felt him, too; he could sense it. But not deliberately. She wasn’t scanning the airwaves for his vibration. She’d found it by accident. And now that she had, she wasn’t probing his mind, the way he’d taught himself to do with others since he’d stolen blood from the labs at The Farm and transformed himself two years ago.

He didn’t feel any hint of danger or menace. Even so, he tugged the pitchfork from its nail on the wall as he entered the barn. It would stab deeply, and she would bleed out well before the dawn brought sleep and its attendant healing power.

He stepped inside, his nose filling at once with the pleasing aromas of fresh, high-quality hay, straw bedding, honeyed oats and the scent of horseflesh, sharp and rich.

Scylla snorted softly and swished her tail. Not a warning, but a message that something had her wound up. Excited. Anxious, perhaps, but not afraid.

Easy, girl, Ethan thought at her. I already know someone’s here. Just not exactly…where.

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 lunch breaks when the weather was good.

Serena yanked the clothing from the bag, moving rapidly now. A pair of jeans came out first. There were panties beneath them, and several large-size maxi-pads like the one she was already wearing, postlabor. She pulled on the clothes underneath her hospital gown, then grabbed the sports bra and T-shirt from the bag, and put them on, as well. She was in such a hurry that she wouldn’t have taken the time for the sports bra, but her breasts were swollen with milk, and heavy and tender and sore. It would help. So she took those few extra seconds to put it on without removing the hospital gown. And then she untied the strings holding the gown in back, stripped it off and stuffed her arms into the T-shirt sleeves almost in one motion. There were shoes in the backpack. Flip-flops. She shoved her feet into them, wadded up the hospital gown and stuffed it into the bag, then zipped it and headed for the sidewalk. Walking fast, barely able to suppress the overwhelming urge to break into a run, she left the hospital far behind her.

Soon, sooner than she could have believed, she was walking on a busy sidewalk, past shops and restaurants and convenience stores, and no one was paying any attention to her.

They would be, though. Someone would notice her missing from the hospital. And it wouldn’t be long. But what would they do about it?

There was a ringing sound. A phone ringing. Close.

Frowning, she realized it was coming from inside the backpack, so she stopped walking and yanked the sack off her shoulder and dug around inside until she found a brick-size mobile phone. She pulled it out, extended the antenna and held it to her ear, terrified, looking around in search of the caller. As if he or she were close. Watching her. God, she was scared, and she wasn’t even sure why.

“Did you get clear?”

She recognized the voice. It was the nurse who had helped her. “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

“Where are you?”

“I…I don’t know. On a street.” She looked around. “Near the corner of Main Street and Elm. I’m standing in front of a jewelry store.”

“Okay, listen, there’s a bus stop about a block ahead of you, on Main. Do you see it?”

Serena looked one way, then the other, and spotted the bench inside the plastic weather guard. “I see it.”

“The bus should be pulling up any minute now. Get on it. Get off at the third stop. I’ll pick you up there. I’ll be in a red VW, okay?”

“I don’t—I don’t understand what’s going on. Is my baby alive? Why are they lying to me? Why couldn’t I just tell them I wanted to leave and sign myself out? What—”

“The bus should be there any second, Serena. Don’t miss it. There’s money in the same pocket where you found the phone.”

“But—”

“Your baby’s alive. Now go. Catch that bus. I’ll explain the rest once you’re safe.”

The phone cut off. But Serena had heard the only words she really needed to hear. “My baby’s alive,” she whispered. A smile pulled her dry lips, feeling alien. “My baby’s alive,” she said again, and she began walking again just as the giant bus lumbered into sight and pulled to a stop. She was running for the bus stop as the air brakes hissed and the door cranked open. She tucked the phone into the backpack and slung it over her shoulder as she got aboard, pausing at the top of the steps to fumble in the backpack for money. She found a wad of bills and a handful of change, dropped some coins into the receptacle and then made her way to the first empty seat and sank into it.

As soon as the bus lurched into motion, she felt a rush of relief, relief that grew with every bit of distance she put between herself and the hospital. The relief of knowing that her baby was alive was making her almost giddy. And the fear of being pursued was gone, as well.

She wondered what was behind all this. It must be some sort of baby-stealing ring. They were probably planning to arrange an expensive adoption to some wealthy couple and make a small fortune by selling her child. The doctor must be in on it. But all her nervousness was probably overkill, wasn’t it? And the nurse was no doubt just being dramatic. After all, it wasn’t as if they would want to hurt her, was it? Why would they lie to her if they were just going to…kill her or something?

She was okay. She was free. Maybe once she started digging, started getting close to finding her baby, maybe there would be danger then. But surely not now. She was away from the hospital. She was meeting with the one person who might be able to tell her what was going on. She was fine. And she was going to get her baby back.

The bus stopped. Serena went back over that phone call in her mind. The third stop. She was to get off at the third stop. So there were two more to go. She used the time to examine the contents of the backpack more carefully. The file folder contained medical records—her baby’s time of birth, weight, length, head circumference, blood type.

Blood type—marked with a star. She read the notation beneath it. Child possesses the Belladonna antigen. Extremely rare. Government notification mandatory.

She frowned, not knowing what that meant, then felt eyes on her. Glancing up, she saw the man in the seat across from her look away quickly. She closed the file folder and thrust it back into the bag just as the bus stopped again. The man got off.

Serena took a surreptitious look around as the bus began moving again, saw no one paying her undue attention, and again pawed through the bag. There was a set of keys, with a tag on them, like a luggage tag. The address on the inserted card read 72 Montgomery Ave.

Finally the bus stopped for the third time. Serena zipped up the bag, got up and slung it over her shoulder, then made her way to the front, down the steps and onto a sidewalk in the suburbs. The bus pulled away as she looked up and down the neat, unlined road. And then she spotted it. A little red VW Bug, parked across the street alongside a playground. It was a convertible, and the top was down, giving Serena a clear view of the woman behind the wheel. As it was no doubt meant to do.

It was the nurse she remembered, Maureen Keenan, no longer in uniform or wearing a name tag. She lifted a hand in a friendly wave as she saw Serena.

Smiling in relief, certain she was about to get some answers, Serena looked both ways, then began to cross the street. Just as her flip-flops hit the pavement, the little red car exploded.

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