He pushed down the anger threatening to bubble up inside him. Slow and easy was the way to handle this. Her eyes stuttered to his face and she flinched, as if she’d read the emotional weather there and didn’t like it.
A swallow, her vulnerable throat moving. “Whatever he’s paying you, please don’t do this. Please don’t hurt me.” She looked away, toward the milk shake, as if she couldn’t quite figure out how it had gotten in her hand.
What the hell? His jaw was threatening to clench down hard enough to break a tooth. The fear in her was all wrong. If she was terrified, it would completely negate the soothing aspect of a shaman’s scent, and that would open up a whole can of worms—not just for him, but for the younger ones, too.
“Get this straight.” He took a deep breath, leashed the animal in him, and continued. “We’re not going to hurt you. We need you, and I’m sorry it happened this way, but from now on, you’re one of us. You’re ours. The sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be.”
It would take a lot of repeating before that sank in. Might as well get it out of the way first.
“I have to go back to work on Monday.” She blinked again, swallowed hard, and more tears slid down those pretty, curved cheeks. “I’ve got night school, too. I’m studying to be a social worker.”
Well, Christ, honey, we’ve got tons of field-work for you right here. “We’ll settle that later. For right now, you have to eat.” And stop smelling like a downed deer.
She just stared at the milk shake. Zach retreated, settling on the floor behind the driver’s seat, the rhythm of the road soaking into his bones as he tore open a fresh bag and found a burger. The Silence folded around all of them again, and he didn’t think he’d done too badly.
There was no easy way to handle this. But goddammit, she was a shaman. He could smell it on her, the potential some humans and fewer Tribe carried. Once she was triggered, she could be the nucleus of a new Family, a way to rebuild everything. With a shaman they could settle down even in a territory held by others. They were no longer rootless, wandering non-persons, dangerous because they lacked the thing that kept their kind from running amok.
They could be somebodies again, instead of fugitives. She would make them somebodies.
That was worth a little kidnapping, he decided. Whatever life she had back in the city they were now leaving, she would just have to learn to let go of. His little Family needed her too much.
Chapter 7
The van jolted, and Sophie clawed up into full wakefulness, biting back a scream. Someone had draped a coat over her, and it was warm. Thin winter sunlight showed leafless trees, a few ragged pines, not blurring by but merely ambling. The vehicle made a deep turn, braked to a halt, and the engine cut off.
Finally. They were stopping. The eerie quiet in the car was breaking up, too, like ice in a river. Her ears had felt stuffed with cotton wool, but maybe it was the crying.
“Wake up.” The girl shook her shoulder, fingers biting in. Her voice was rusty, as if she’d spent weeks instead of hours not talking. “Time to wash, bleeder.”
Sophie sat up, blinking, and found the tank top had ridden up and twisted around, and the skirt—never very decent in the first place—was hitched up to show her panties, for God’s sake. Her entire face was crusty and aching, and she had to use the bathroom like nobody’s business. Her stomach rumbled.
The side door opened and the van cleared out. It was amazing, how people could fit in here. Clothes tangled across the floor, one bench seat had been taken out, and the back was stuffed with plastic bags. It didn’t smell bad, though, just musky and close.
Sophie clutched the coat to her chest. The girl made a spitting sound of annoyance. “Come on, will you? I’ve got to pee before my kidneys float away.”
You’re not the only one. Mechanically, she pulled the skirt down, tried to straighten the tank top. Lucy’s black heels were on the floor, and the way her back ached she didn’t think she could stand to put them back on.
But she did, because cold air was pouring in through the open side door. Frost rimed the slice of a parking lot she could see, and as soon as she hopped awkwardly out of the van, pulling her skirt down and shivering, she found out they were at a rest stop off the freeway. A brick building housed restrooms, a creek wandered on the side away from the freeway down a short hill, and another building had vending machines behind iron grating, a wall full of maps in plastic cases, and—oh, my God—a Kiwanis booth selling coffee.
An old man sat in the booth, reading a newspaper, occasionally glancing out over the empty parking lot. The van, she now saw, was an older maroon Chevy, and her eyes came back to the man in the coffee booth.
The girl—Julia—jostled her from behind. She had dark eyes, long straight dark hair starred with that single streak that turned out to be white, and a sweet face, with the type of clear pale skin only found on the very young. Amazing skin. She was pretty, but there was an unfinished look around her mouth, like she was trying to be hard and not quite succeeding.
And she looked, for some reason, spoiled. Sophie couldn’t put her finger on quite how, but she had the same overprivileged look as the mean-girl cheerleaders from Sophie’s high school years.
“Come on.” The girl slung her arm over Sophie’s shoulders and started hurrying her to the bathrooms. She was a good head taller, and skinny, but strong. Sophie struggled to keep up, stumbled, and almost turned her ankle. And the girl began to whisper, very fast and low, as if she’d been bursting to talk. “Jeez. You are useless. Don’t worry, I’ve got some stuff that might fit you. Zach’ll take care of anything else later today, probably. We had a good haul last night.” Julia took a deep breath, squeezed Sophie’s shoulders roughly. “He was my brother. Kyle.”
What? Last night was distant and dreamlike, receding like the van. Her heels clicked. Her stomach cramped, and her back was made out of aching concrete. There seemed nothing to say.
“The one who got killed last night. He was my brother.” Julia cast a glance back over her shoulder, her voice dropping even further.
“Oh.” Sophie couldn’t think of anything else to say. My best friend got killed, too, I guess we’re even didn’t sound, well, very useful. It was what Lucy would call Not Helpful.
“It’s not your fault,” Julia continued softly, and she sounded magnanimous, condescending, and outright miserable all at once. “I’m stupid. I’ve always been stupid. I just don’t think. Not like Zach. And our alpha’s dead and all we’ve got is a stupid bleeder to show for it.” She paused, and cast another quick little glance over her shoulder. “Even if you do smell like Mom. I never … I was just … I thought I could kill it. The upir. I’m good at that.”
What, you mean you’re good at killing? God, what a thing to say to someone you’ve kidnapped. Sophie shivered. The thing in the white shirt. She’d stuck around long enough to see something awful, something so unreal, her mind even now shivered away from it. She flinched all over, inside and out, and stumbled again.
It was dark and I was just confused. That’s all.
It was, Sophie reflected, a bad time to start lying to herself. She needed to think clearly if she was going to get out of this mess, and part of thinking clearly was figuring out last night.
What actually had happened? The only thing she was sure of was that Lucy was dead, and she had started running, screaming, a confusion of panic roaring through her. Lucy’s white face, the terrible gaping hole where her throat should be, the thing in the white shirt snarling as its face twisted up, white teeth too big for its livid-lipped mouth—
“Watch where you’re going,” the girl said as Sophie tripped, and