"He's right," Lily said coolly. "They're not for you, Ivan, and they have to be in perfect shape."
Ivan muttered something sullen and Rashel heard footsteps moving away. She lay and listened to her
heart slowly calming.
"I'm going to get some sleep," Quinn said, sounding flat and dull.
"See you Tuesday," lily said.
Tuesday, Rashel thought. Great. It's going to be a very long two days.
They were the most boring two days of her life. She got to know every corner of the small
glass-windowed office. The windows were a problem, since she was never absolutely sure if Lily or Ivan
were outside one of them, standing in the warehouse proper and looking through. She listened carefully
for the warehouse doors, froze instantly at any suspicious sound, and trusted to luck.
Daphne woke up Monday morning. Rashel had her neck twisted sideways and was staring through the
office glass up at the one tiny window set high in the warehouse wall. Just as it turned gray with dawn,
Daphne sat up and screamed.
"Sh! It's all right! You're here in the warehouse with me."
"Rashel?"
"Yeah. We made it. And I'm glad you're awake."
"Are we alone?"
"More or less," Rashel said. "There are two other girls, but they're both hypnotized. You'll see when it
gets lighter."
Daphne let out her breath. "Wow... we did it. That's great. So how come I'm so completely and utterly
terrified?"
"Because you're a smart girl," Rashel said grimly. "Just wait until Tuesday when they take us out."
"Take us out where?"
"That's the question."
Chapter 11
The U-Haul whirred across smooth resonant pavement and Rashel tried to guess where they were. She
had been drawing a map in her mind, trying to imagine each turn they made, each change of the road
underneath them.
Ivan sat slouched, blocking the back doors of the truck. His eyes were small and mean, and they
flickered over the girls constantly. In his right hand he held a taser, a hand-held electrical stun gun, and
Rashel knew he was dying to use it.
But the cargo was being very docile. Daphne was beside Rashel, leaning against her very slightly for
comfort, her dark blue eyes fixed vacantly on the far wall. They were shackled together: although both
Lily and Ivan had been checking Daphne constantly for signs of waking up, they were dearly taking no
chances.
On the opposite side of the truck were the two other girls. One was Juanita, her wavy bronze hair
tangled from two days of lying on it, her bee-stung lips parted, her gaze empty. The second girl was a
towhead, with flyaway hair and Bambi eyes staring blankly. Ivan called her Missy.
She was about twelve.
Rashel allowed herself to daydream about things to do to Ivan.
Then she focused. The van was stopping. Ivan jumped up, and a minute later he was opening the back
doors. Then he and Lily were unshackling the girls and herding them out, telling them to hurry.
Rashel breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh open air. Salty air. Keeping her gaze aimless and glassy,
she looked around. It was twilight and they were on a Charlestown dock.
"Keep moving," Ivan said, a hand on her shoulder.
Ahead, Rashel saw a sleek thirty-foot power cruiser bobbing gently in a slip. A figure with dark hair was
on the deck, doing something with lines. Quinn.
He barely glanced up as Ivan and Lily hustled the girls onto the boat, and he didn't help steady Missy
when she almost lost her balance jumping from the dock. His mood had changed again, Rashel realized.
He seemed withdrawn, turned inward, brooding.
"Move!" Ivan shoved her, and for an instant, Quinn's attention shifted. He stared at Ivan with eyes like
black death, endless and fathomless. He
didn't say a word. Ivan's hand dropped from Rashers back.
Lily led them down a short flight of steps to a cramped but neat little cabin and gestured them to an
L-shaped couch behind a dinette table. "Here. Sit down. You two here. You two there."
Rashel slipped into her seat and stared vacantly across at the sink in the tiny galley.
"You all stay here," Lily said. "Don't move. Stay." She would have made a great
slave overseer, Rashel thought. Or dog trainer.
When Lily had disappeared up the stairs and the door above had banged shut, Rashel and Daphne
simultaneously let out their breath.
"You doing okay?" Rashel whispered.
"Yeah. A little shaky. Where d'you think we're going?"
Rashel just shook her head. Nobody knew where the vampire enclaves were. An idea was beginning to
form in her mind, though. There must be a reason they were traveling by boat-it would have been safer
and easier to keep the prisoners in the U-Haul. Unless they were going to a place you couldn't get to by
U-Haul.
An island. Why shouldn't some of the enclaves be on islands? There were hundreds of them off the
eastern coast.
It was a very unsettling thought.
On an island they would be completely isolated.
Nowhere to escape to if things got bad. No possible hope of help from outside.
Rashel was beginning to regret that she'd brought Daphne into this. And she had the ominous feeling that
when they got to their destination, she was going to regret it even more.
The boat sliced cleanly through the water, heading into darkness. Behind Quinn was the skyline of
Boston, the city lights showing where the ocean ended and the land began. But ahead there was no
horizon, no difference between sky and sea. There was only formless, endless void.