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He seemed withdrawn, turned inward, brooding.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.
The inky blackness was dotted with an occasional solitary winking light-herring boats. They only seemed
to make the vastness of empty water more lonely.
Quinn ignored Lily and Ivan. He was not in a good mood.
He let the cold air soak into him, permeating his body, mixing with the cold he felt inside. He imagined
himself freezing solid-a rather pleasant thought.
Just get to the enclave, he thought emptily. Get it over with.
This last batch of girls had upset him. He didn't know why, and he didn't want to think about it. They
were vermin. All of them. Even the dark-haired one who was so lovely that it was almost too bad she
was certifiably insane. The little blond one was crazy, too. The one who, having had the luck to fall out of
the frying pan once, had come right back, coated herself with butter and breadcrumbs, and jumped in
again.
Idiot. Someone like that deserved...
Quinn's thought broke off. Somewhere deep inside him was a little voice saying that no one, however
idiotic, deserved what was going to happen to those girls.
You're the idiot. Just get them to the enclave and then you can forget all this.
The enclave... it was Hunter Redfern who had first thought of enclaves on islands. Because of Dove,
he'd said.
"We need a place where the Redferns can live safely, without looking over their shoulders for humans
with stakes. An island would do."
Quinn hadn't objected to the classification of himself as a Redfern-although he had no intention of
marrying Garnet or Lily. Instead he said, practically, "Fishermen visit those islands all the time. Humans
are settling them. We'd have company soon."
"There are spells to guard places humans shouldn't go. I know a witch who'll do it, to protect lily and
Garnet."
"Why?"
Hunter had grinned. "Because she's their mother."
And Quinn had said nothing. Later he'd met Maeve Harman, the witch who had mingled her blood with
the lamia. She didn't seem to like
Hunter much, and she kept their youngest daughter, Roseclear, who was being raised as a witch, away
from him. But she did the spell.
And they'd all moved to the island, where Garnet finally gave up on Quinn and married a boy from a nice
lamia family. Her children were allowed to carry on the Redfern name. And as time went on, other
enclaves had sprung up....
But none quite like the one Quinn was heading for now.
He shifted on his seat in the cockpit. Ahead, there was a horizon again. A luminous silver moon was
rising above the pond-still dark water. It shone like an enchantment, as if to guide Quinn's way.
Scrrrunch.
Rashel winced as the boat docked. Somebody wasn't being careful. But they'd arrived, and it could only
be an island. They'd been heading east for over two hours.
Daphne lifted her head weakly. "I don't care if they eat us the minute we get off, as long as I get to feel
solid ground again."
"This practically is solid ground," Rashel whispered. "It's been dead calm the whole way."
"Tell that to my stomach." Daphne moaned, and Rashel poked her. Someone was coming down the
stairs.
It was Lily. Ivan waited above with the taser. They herded the girls off the boat and up onto a little dock.
Rashel did her vacant-eyed staring around again, blessing the moonlight that allowed her to see.
It wasn't much of a dock. One wharf with a gas pump and a shack. There were three other powerboats
in slips.
And that was all. Rashel couldn't see any sign of life. The boats rode like ghost ships on the water. There
was silence except for the slap of the waves.
Private island, Rashel thought.
Something about the place made the hair on the back of her neck rise.
With Lily in front and Ivan in back, the group was herded to a hiking trail that wound up a cliff.
It's just an island, Rashel told herself. You should be dancing with joy. This is the enclave you wanted to
get to. There's nothing... uncanny... about this place.
And then, as they reached the top of the cliff, she saw the rocks. Big rocks. Monoliths that reminded her
eerily of Stonehenge. It looked as if a giant had scattered them around.
And there were houses built among them, perched on the lonely cliff, looking down on the vast dark sea.
They all seemed deserted, and somehow they reminded Rashel of gargoyles, hunched and waiting.
Lily was headed for the very last house on the sandy unpaved road.
It was one of those huge "summer cottages" that was really a mansion. A massive white frame house,
two and a half stories high, with elaborate ornamentation.
Shock coursed through Rashel.
A frame house. Wood.
This place wasn't built by vampires.
The lamia built out of brick or fieldstone, not out of the wood that was lethal to them. They must have
bought this island from humans.
Rashel was tingling from head to toe. This is definitely not a normal enclave. Where are all the people?
Where's the town? What are we doing here?
"Move, move." Lily marched them around the back of the house and inside. And at last, Rashel heard
the sounds of other life. Voices from somewhere inside the house.
But she didn't get to see who the voices belonged to. Lily was taking them into a big old-fashioned
kitchen, past a pantry with empty shelves.
At the end of the pantry was a heavy wooden door, and on a stool by the door was a boy about
Rashel's age. He had bushy brown hair and was wearing cowboy boots. He was reading a comic book.
"Hey, Rudi," Lily said crisply. "How're our guests?"