Of course it did. Stupid unicorn blood. The rest of the car’s occupants, who had been wrapped in a tense silence, laughed then. Staring out the window, I noticed that Sam was taking us down a dirt road and into a deeply forested neighborhood. The sun was coming up, and that meant no vampires would be driving around looking for us today. Markus began to duct tape towels up against the back windows to keep the girl in darkness. The sun would still give her one hell of a rash, weakening her, until she was cured. Kyle draped a blanket over her as Sam drove deeper into the forest. We were taking back roads up Mount Hood.
“We’re almost to the drop-off point,” Sam announced, and I saw he had pulled the Humvee up a long private driveway and into a gated compound. There were humans waiting at the gate with semiautomatic rifles.
“Who are these people?” I asked.
Ryder turned around and met my eyes. “Ash sympathizers. Rare people that believe ash shouldn’t be punished for what their parents did, that they should be allowed to mingle with society. Some of them had ash children, or a friend who did.”
Most humans hated ash. I don’t know why, they just did. It was nice to know there were a few out there who got what we went through, who cared.
Sam pulled the Humvee into a dark garage and I saw two oddly familiar faces there. It took me a few moments to place where I remembered them from. My eyes dropped down to the blanket covering Katelynn. Right!
They had been on the news when all hell broke loose. They were her parents. The garage closed then, enclosing us in darkness. Kyle and Markus held their guns close, with the safety off. Ryder popped out of the car and opened the back door, pulling the blankets off the girl. As she sat up, she surprised me with a hug.
Did her skin already look a little less pale? Her eyes a bit less silver?
“Thanks,” she whispered, and then jumped out into her parents’ arms.
Ryder addressed her family and the few surrounding sympathizers. “She’s been inoculated with the cure and will be human within the next few weeks. Don’t ask me how, I can’t tell you. Until then, you must take precautions with the sun, and she might need some final blood to help her heal.”
He dropped a bag from our precious supply into one of the humans’ hands.
Katelynn’s parents looked at Ryder in shock and broke down into tears. The mother wailed, clutching her daughter closely. Tears sprang up in my eyes as I realized what a difference my blood had made in this girl’s life. Never again could I just sit on the sidelines and hide. I had to figure out a way to take who and what I was and use it for the greater good.
I wasn’t used to humans looking at us with anything other than contempt. Most of these sympathizers just looked utterly baffled, but there was no hatred.
“There’s a cure?” rang out from more than one of them.
Ryder nodded, but his expression did not soften. He would not reveal my secret, and we’d be long gone by the time the humans could quiz Katelynn. “No more questions. Thank you for arranging this meet-up with the girl’s family.”
Despite the fact they looked like they wanted to protest, the humans just gave us lingering stares before turning and retreating. The garage door opened and Ryder shut the back hatch, getting into the car, and we were gone, heading down the long driveway and back out onto the road to Mount Hood.
Ryder turned to the driver. “Okay, Sam, I have trusted you this far, but now I need to know where we’re going.”
Sam gripped the wheel, staring out onto the main road. “We drive to Bend, take a private plane from there to north Canada, and then charter a helicopter to our final destination.”
Ryder frowned. “And where is our final destination?”
Sam met Ryder’s eyes for a moment, but then shook his head.
“I can’t tell you, brother. You’ll just have to trust me a little while longer.”
Jayden caught my eye and we both scowled. Sam wouldn’t be leading us into a trap, would he? But Ryder nodded. Clearly he trusted Sam with his life. With all of our lives.
After a three-hour drive, my ass was asleep. My leg was partially healed and we had already gone through fourteen bottles of blood. As we pulled up to the small airport in Bend, Oregon, I was getting an uncomfortable and heavy feeling in my stomach about Sam’s secrecy. Were we all just expected to follow him out of the country into Canada with no other details and a dwindling supply of blood? Apparently so.
There was a small white plane waiting in a massive hanger. The boys began loading our supplies into the cargo holds while Ryder came to help me get inside.
“Who’s flying this thing?” I asked.
“I am,” Sam said, as he took my other arm and helped me up into the plane.
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re a pilot?”
“Yes,” he said, in his limited word usage way.
In such close proximity to Sam, with beams of sunlight filtering across the space, I could see he had the lightest smattering of freckles across his nose. Just another thing I hadn’t known about him. After getting me up the small steps and into the plane, I was deposited into one of the large tan leather seats scattered about the main cabin. There were about ten chairs in total, so it was not a very large area.
I grabbed Sam’s hand before he could leave.