The Farm (24 page)

My hand flew to the spot on my neck. I remembered what Carter had said about the chips emitting a buzzing sound that annoyed the Ticks. “I thought you said the computer virus or whatever it was would deactivate our chips.”

“It was supposed to,” Sebastian said simply.

Sebastian and Carter exchanged another look.

“Damn it,” Carter muttered. “He really wants her back.”

“He must.”

I looked from Carter to Sebastian. “Who wants who?”

For a long second, neither of them spoke and I got the feeling they were trying to decide how much to tell me. Finally Carter blew out a harsh breath. “The Dean. He really wants you back. The Ticks shouldn’t even know we’re here. Even if the chips were left on, we’re not really close enough for them to hear the sound.”

”So the Ticks really
can
hear the chips? They can hear us coming?” I asked

Carter held up a hand, like he could ward off my growing fear. “It’s just a theory Sebastian has.”

“There are some electronic devices that . . . annoy me,” Sebastian said. “I can hear the signal they emit. It’s like a constant buzzing. We think maybe the chips and the GPS locator buzz for the Ticks. It may vary based on the frequency of—”

“Less science lesson,” I interrupted, “more planning. If the Ticks are using the chips to hunt us down, what do we do? Should we cut them out now?”

“I don’t think they’re after us, precisely,” Sebastian said. “I think they’re following someone else. The Dean must have sent Collabs out to follow us. With the right receiver, the chips have a fifty-mile range. It’s more important right now that we get a head start on those Collabs. Who knows how close they are.”

“Oh, great. So in addition to the Ticks chasing us down, we have a Collab—”

“Or more than one,” Sebastian interjected. “If the Dean has any sense at all.”

“Okay, or more than one, on our tail.” I blew out a breath. “So he’s chasing us and the Ticks are following him, right?”

“Right.”

“Any chance we could get lucky and they’ll catch him before they get to us? Maybe they’ll fill up on Collab and drop out.” The thought made me feel a little queasy and I hated even saying it aloud. I didn’t want the Ticks to kill anyone. Not even a Collab.

“Well, that would be lucky, wouldn’t it?” From Sebastian’s sardonic tone, I could guess just how unlikely he thought that possibility was. “But Ticks don’t eat Collabs. The Deans feed them daily doses of progesterone to make them unappetizing.”

“Eh.” My revulsion slipped out unintentionally.

“Exactly,” Sebastian agreed. “Progesterone is unappetizing enough. It’s why Ticks avoid girls who are pregnant.” He glanced pointedly back down the cellar steps to where McKenna still slept. “But the combination of progesterone and testosterone is practically revolting. To them.”

I thought about the birth control pills that had been in the backpack that blew up. Would they have provided another layer of defense against the Ticks?

Before I could ask Sebastian, he continued, “The Ticks would have to be starving to even be tempted. However, the Collabs could easily be luring them closer to us.”

“Is he luring them closer to us on purpose?” I asked.

“Unlikely. The Dean wants you back.” Sebastian’s tone was casual. As if this wasn’t anything we really had to worry about. “He sent the Collabs to get you. Unfortunately, most Collabs don’t have any idea what they’re really dealing with.”

I snorted. “They’re idiots. I could have told you that much.”

“The question is, how badly does the Dean want you back?”

“Do you think he knows what she is?” Carter asked.

I nearly growled in frustration. “Please don’t tell me you both think this is all because the Dean thinks I’m an
abductura
.”

“You had better hope, young girl, that that is precisely what he believes. Because if it is not, then there is only one other reason for someone to be tracking you.”

A chill chased my confidence down my spine. “And what is that?”

“That it is not a Collab tracking you at all. That Roberto has learned about you and is coming for you himself.”

“What, you think this Roberto guys wants another
abductura
for himself?”

“No, my dear. Roberto already has a very powerful
abductura
in his employ. It is how he’s controlling humanity. If he wants you, it is so he can kill you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Carter

The way he saw it, there was an upside to everything. Whenever things went to hell all at once, it helped to look for that upside. In this particular case, Lily was talking to him again. She still didn’t believe she was an
abductura
, but at least she was no longer treating him like a pariah. As silver linings went, it was pretty damn dingy.

Especially given that the big black cloud threatening to rain on their parade just seemed to get bigger and bigger. For starters, Sebastian hadn’t hunted the night before; that had been obvious when the vampire had growled at Lily. Sebastian didn’t enjoy feeding off Ticks, but he often did it. Carter had seen him single-handedly take on packs with four or five Ticks in them. It didn’t bode well for their progress today that the only packs he’d found had been too large to attack.

However with Collabs and Ticks already tracking them, Sebastian’s hunger was the least of their worries. They’d left Uncle Rodney’s house and been in the car for six hours, pushing the van to its limits. Naturally, they’d debated cutting the chips out as soon as they realized the Dean might be tracking them. But to do that, they’d have to leave Sebastian behind. Maybe he could have driven another car, but who knew how long it would take to find and hotwire a car. Even if the car they found had gas, it was too precious a resource to use traveling in two separate vehicles. At the time, they thought they had enough of a head start on the Collabs to justify keeping them in and just making a run for it. But now they were still being followed by Collabs. They’d attracted the attention of God only knew how many Ticks. And even with the pedal all the way to the floor, Carter knew they weren’t going to get much more out of the ancient van.

Hands gripping the steering wheel, Carter slowed down to take yet another hairpin turn on the windy road. The tires slipped to the right as he pulled out of the turn. The road opened up ahead of him and he took advantage of the straightaway by flooring it, coaxing another five or ten miles an hour out of the vehicle.

Watching the speedometer creep up, Carter blew out a long breath, hoping to slow his pulse. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his blood, but couldn’t tell if his own intuition had kicked in or if he was just responding to Lily’s fear.

She sat in the front passenger seat beside him. Hands gripping the edge of her seat, she alternated between glancing at the speedometer and twisting in her seat to look out the back window.

“Can this thing go any faster?” she asked.

“It’s an aging fifteen-seater school van. What do you think?” He glared at Sebastian in the rearview mirror. “This was really the best you could find when you were looking for a car?”

“I’m sorry, Air Force One wasn’t available. Personally, I was quite happy just to have found something big enough to comfortably seat all of us.” Sebastian leaned forward so he was nearly between the two front seats. “By the way, you might want to consider slowing down. Vehicles such as this aren’t very fuel efficient at high speeds.”

“Maybe. But I’m pretty sure the Collabs behind us aren’t concerned about fuel efficiency.”

“I only point it out because we’re rather close to running on empty.”

Carter glanced down at the fuel gauge. Unfortunately, a look in the rearview mirror showed him another car not that far behind them sliding out of the last turn. He huffed with annoyance, even though he hadn’t meant to.

Lily glanced back, too. “Oh, shit! That’s them, isn’t it? They caught up to us!”

From way back in the van, Joe asked in a sleepy voice, “Hey, anything new?”

Beside him, McKenna stretched her arms overhead. “Are we there yet?”

Lily looked irritated. “Canada is a three-day drive from the Farm. No, we’re not there yet.”

“Then why are we slowing down?”

Lily leaned over the console between them to get a better look at the speedometer. “She’s right. We’re slowing down. Why are we slowing down?”

“We can’t outrun those Collabs. Whatever lead we had six hours ago, we’ve lost. We’ll probably run out of gas before they do. It’s better to stop now, where they can see us doing it on the straightaway, and try to talk to them.”

“You want to talk to them? Are you frickin’ crazy?”

“No. But thanks for the vote of confidence. I’d rather we talk to them now, while someone fills up the gas tank, than run out of gas and have the Ticks eat us all while we negotiate.” He sent Sebastian a look in the mirror. “I assume you don’t have any trouble talking to them while I fill up the gas.”

Sebastian gave a grin that showed off more of his teeth than he usually showed. “Not at all. I’m quite sure I can make them see reason.”

“What about the rest of us?” Lily asked with an eager fidget in her seat. “What do we do?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have Joe up in the front seat ready to leave again in case we get company,” Sebastian said.

“What about me?”

“Young lady, I recommend you stay in the van, sit still, and try to restrain your emotions.”

Lily practically growled.

“He’s right,” Carter said as he let off the gas. “The situation is tense enough as it is. We don’t need you out there spewing emotion all over.”

She snorted. “I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe it. Is this the time and place you want to test it out?”

Grumbling, she sat back and flung her arms across her chest.

Keeping his eyes on the car in the rearview mirror, Carter pressed his foot to the brake and gave the steering wheel a sharp turn, angling the van across the road as it rattled to a stop. The oncoming car would have to stop and he’d be able to keep an eye on the action as he filled up the tank. Struggling not to let Lily’s annoyance with Sebastian influence him too much, he swung open his door. “Let’s do this.”

He jogged around the nose of the van and met up with Sebastian at the back, where the vampire was already unloading the gas cans.

“You sure you can handle two Collabs on your own?” he asked.

“Don’t be insulting.”

“Just don’t do anything too vampirish.”

Sebastian arched an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you haven’t told them that yet, either.”

“They know, but try not to freak them out, okay? Remember that happy
abductura
comment you made? I’m thinking no one’s going to be very happy when they see you go all Vlad the Impaler on a couple of Collabs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sebastian scoffed. “Vlad of Wallachia was in the Order of the Dragon and most decidedly not one of us.”

“Can we save the history lesson for later and settle on a game plan?” Carter remembered how freaked out he’d been the first time he’d seen Sebastian in battle. It had been terrifying and it hadn’t mattered that Sebastian had been defending him and his classmates. Carter continued, “Look, if you think she can handle any more shocks in one day, then go ahead and rip the heads off these guys when they step out of the car. Otherwise, keep it together and have a little discretion.”

Yeah, he was pushing it, talking to Sebastian that way. If they were alone, Sebastian would backhand him for it and probably send him flying with a broken neck. Thank God for their audience and for the fact that Sebastian needed him. For all his smooth manners, Sebastian didn’t deal well with humans. Hunger strained his diplomacy skills to the limits.

In answer, Sebastian growled low in his throat, baring his teeth in an expression no one could mistake for a smile.

“I’ll play nice. But don’t forget how fragile
all
humans are.”

“I won’t.” He almost reminded Sebastian that he knew better than most that vampires had a few fragilities of their own, but instead he said, “Just don’t forget how much you need Lily and we’ll continue to get along just fine.”

Sebastian sneered again before turning his back on Carter and walking out into the road to wait for the rapidly approaching sedan.

Carter didn’t stand around to watch, but unscrewed the cap on one of the cans of gasoline and started dumping it into the van. The four cans they had held a total of eight gallons.
Maybe
enough to keep them moving through the night. If they were only going about forty or forty-five, which would be fast enough to outpace a Tick, but not fast enough to outrun a sedan. Not that the van could do that anyway.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Sebastian standing in the dead center of the road fearlessly staring down the oncoming car. For a second, Carter’s pulse raced. This whole don’t-look-like-a-vampire gambit would only work if the driver slowed down the car and didn’t just barrel over Sebastian.

But—what the hell?—the car wasn’t slowing down. If the car did hit Sebastian, chances were good it would also barrel into the van.

Carter tossed aside the now-empty gas can and darted for the driver’s-side window. He slapped the glass, getting Joe’s attention. Joe cranked down the window.

“He might not stop. Start the car and be ready to get out of his way. If everything goes bad, you ditch us and leave.”

“Dude—”

But Carter didn’t wait to hear what Joe was going to say. Instead, he raced back to the gas tank and started pouring in the second of the gas cans. The glug-glug-glug of the gas seemed slow compared to the pounding of his heart. Whatever else happened, he had to get as much gas into the van as he possibly could.

Sebastian, too, must have realized the car wasn’t going to stop. He started running. Not away from the car, but toward it. That must have gotten the driver’s attention. Apparently it was one thing to ram a person just standing in the middle of the road and another thing entirely to drive into someone crazy enough to play chicken with a car.

The driver turned the car into a spin just as it reached Sebastian. He kept running, leaping onto the hood with unnatural grace. With one hand he grabbed the luggage rack on top of the car. The sedan—caught in the tailspin—slid across the road closer and closer to Carter as if in slow motion. The momentum of the car nearly flung Sebastian off, but he held the luggage rack in a death grip and struggled to swing his legs back up onto the hood.

Watching the car spin toward him, the glug-glug-glug of the gas can seemed unnaturally loud. Then it slowed. Gluuug-gluug. Glug. Glug. He dropped the empty can and leapt out of the way as the car slid to a halt, scraping the side of the van.

Carter landed hard on the asphalt, tucked into a roll, and tumbled into the ditch beside the road. For a heartbeat, the impact radiated through every muscle of his body as the wind was knocked right out of him. The glug-glug sound he’d been so focused on still thrummed in his ears.

His bones creaked and his muscles trembled too much to force his legs to stand—nearly being bisected between two cars did that to a guy—so he scrambled back along the opposite bank, trying to get high enough to see over the crest of the road.

The van wobbled from the impact, rocking back and forth. The van’s passengers were scrambling out the door. Joe must have still been in the driver’s seat, because Carter could hear him cranking the engine over and over, trying to get it started.

Carter pushed himself up, willing his legs to hold him. He had to get Lily, Mel, and McKenna back into the damn van. And then he had to get Joe out of the driver’s seat so he’d stop flooding the engine.

He climbed out of the ditch and back onto the asphalt just in time to see Sebastian punch his hand through the sedan’s windshield to grab the Collab in the driver’s seat. He pulled the screaming guy out through the hole he’d made. Glass sprayed the car and the road, glistening in the late afternoon sun. The screams stopped a moment later when Sebastian twisted the guy’s neck and tossed him aside like he was a rag doll, not so much out of disdain as necessity. The corpse was scratched and bloody from its windshield extraction. Even though the Collabs were pumped full of progesterone to make them unappetizing, Sebastian must not have trusted himself around the smell of that much blood.

So much for the plan where Sebastian tried to act normal. With vampires there was no fight or flight. When their lives were threatened, when their adrenaline got pumping, there was only fight. Fight and kill. There was no logic. No intellect. Only their gut reaction, which was to destroy everything in their path. If that killer instinct had overtaken Sebastian, none of them would be safe.

“Sebastian!” Carter called, hoping he could pull the vampire out of the frenzy before he lost all control.

Sebastian’s head jerked up. He was crouched on the hood of the car like a giant spider, his every muscle tense, poised to attack. His normally pale skin had gone a ghastly white, and his eyes were glazed, yet somehow focused.

In the moment it took Sebastian to get ahold of his bloodlust, the doors of the sedan flew open and two people tumbled out. The first was a Collab, his blue uniform bright and unmistakable in the sunlight. The other man climbed out of the back of the car. He was squat and fat, like the toad he was. The Dean.

Shit.

Deans never left the safety of their Farms. This guy really did want Lily and Mel back. And Lily and Mel had climbed out of the van, like they were eager to return with him. They were still on the far side of the van and he hadn’t seen them yet. Carter started for them. He couldn’t yell at them to get back into the van without letting the Dean know exactly where they were.

Thankfully, the Dean seemed unable to tear his gaze from the broken body of the Collab that Sebastian had just killed. Both he and the other Collab seemed in shock.

Before Carter could move toward Lily and Mel, Sebastian went unnaturally still, then his head whipped around to look out across the field to their west. “Incoming,” he hissed.

Carter followed Sebastian’s gaze. He could see nothing but the faint shimmer of sunlight on windblown grass, but if Sebastian said Ticks were coming, they were.

“How many?” Carter asked, even as he looked around for a weapon. Now the Dean was the least of their worries.

“Two in the lead. Faster than the others. A dozen more behind.”

“Do something!” the Dean ordered the Collab, pointing at Sebastian.