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  Shay nodded. She felt talked out. She felt everythinged out.

  “Here seems good.” Martin pressed lightly on a spot an inch above Shay’s wrist. It hurt, but not too much. When she got this tired, everything hurt.

  She closed her eyes as he swabbed her with alcohol, and the fatigue engulfed her immediately.

  When the blood reaches me, I’ll wake up, she thought. Even without looking, she’d be able to tell when it hit her veins. She’d feel the warmth, the strength …

  “Five more flowers for the chain,” Elena said. “So it will be long enough to go around both of us.”

  Shay opened her eyes in surprise at the childlike voice. Elena sat in the dust under the deep shade of the persimmon tree, a smile on her face and a pile of anemones on her lap. Their blue-purple petals echoed the blue of her eyes, the thing Gabriel liked most about her. He’d never seen anyone with blue eyes but Elena.

  “I don’t twist them as well as you,” Shay said with Gabriel’s voice. But it was different than before, higher and younger.

  “Mistress says boys have hands for hunting and girls for flowers,” Elena said. She bent over her chain of anemones, her chubby fingers working hard to braid the stems together in the gathering dusk. It would be dark soon, and they would have to go to bed.

  Shay looked down at her own hands—Gabriel’s hands. They were tiny, still a bit plump with baby fat, like Elena’s. Was he four years old? Five?

  “When fall comes, we have to move from the nursery,” Gabriel said, reaching for a flower. “I’ll be with only boys.”

  “Older boys.” Elena smiled, and Gabriel smiled with her. He always did. She was his best friend. “I want to be with the older girls.”

  It meant they were big now, that they were too old for the nursery with the babies, Gabriel knew. Not that there were any babies. Only Gabriel and Elena, Lysander, and Philo. Philo was the youngest, and he was three. Mistress was happy when no new babies came. She said it was a blessing.

  “I will miss you,” Shay said, tears filling her eyes. His eyes.

  Elena noticed and flung her arms around him. “We will still play every day,” she promised. “And we will collect the berries together as we always do.”

  “Children! To bed!” Mistress’s voice was strong and commanding, as usual. Elena made a face—they couldn’t finish the flower chain. But there was no point in disobeying. Mistress would find them and carry them to bed if she had to.

  It was dark in the nursery, and Philo was already asleep. Gabriel lay down on his cot next to Elena’s, and they both giggled as Lysander began to sing. He sang every night, nonsense songs to make himself sleepy.

  The screams sounded far away.

  Lysander’s singing faltered for a moment, then went on.

  “I heard something,” Elena whispered.

  “It was the wind,” Gabriel told her.

  But the next scream was louder. Hoarse voices shouting. A woman begging for mercy, sobbing. Could that be Mistress? Gabriel’s blood ran cold. Mistress never cried.

  “I’m afraid.” Elena was crying now too. Lysander had stopped singing. Outside, the dogs were barking and footsteps sounded in the older children’s rooms.

  Gabriel stood on his cot and peered over the window ledge. The fire in the central courtyard blazed, and there were people … grown men and women, people who shouldn’t be here.

  “Not the children! For God’s sake, not the children,” Mistress’s voice sobbed. Gabriel saw her now, at the edge of the firelight. A tall man had her held against him, pinning her arms down as she struggled and cried. He bent to Mistress’s throat … and bit her.

  Gabriel dropped down onto his cot, his breath coming fast. Elena threw herself into his arms, shaking with fear.

  “Your age, girl? Your age!” a harsh voice shouted from the next room.

  “Nine.” It was Melina, Gabriel realized. She slept in the girls’ dormitory.

  “Too old,” another grown voice said. “Find the young ones.”

  Melina screamed, but only for a brief second. Gabriel pictured the man biting Mistress. Had someone bitten Melina, too?

  “Run.” He grabbed Elena’s hand and dragged her off the cot, toward the door that led to Mistress’s room. They were coming from the girls’ dormitory, on the other side of the nursery. “Run!” he yelled to Lysander and Philo.

  Elena was sobbing as they fled through the door. Mistress’s room seemed empty without her loving presence. It had always been a place of safety before, but Gabriel knew they couldn’t stay there.

  He pulled Elena behind him, out the door into the garden, past the persimmon tree, up the path toward the top of the hill.

  “Where is Lysander?” Elena cried. “Philo?”

  Gabriel looked behind them. The other two weren’t there.

  “We have to take care of the babies.” Elena was pulling away, heading back toward the orphanage.

  “No!” Gabriel couldn’t bear the thought of Elena being hurt, like Mistress and Melina. “I’ll go. You hide.” He pushed her down behind a bush. “They won’t find you.”

  Elena’s blue eyes were wide with fear. Gabriel turned and ran back down the path—until strong arms grabbed him, lifted him off the ground.

  “Let go!” He squirmed against the man’s chest, twisted about until he found purchase, then sank his teeth into the wiry forearm, breaking the skin, tasting blood.

  With a cry, the man dropped him. Gabriel hit the dusty ground running … but he only got two steps before the man had him again.

  Elena screamed, and Gabriel whipped his head toward the sound. The bush where he’d left her was rustling. She mustn’t come out of hiding. She musn’t let this man see her. “No!” he yelled as loudly as he could. “Don’t!”

  The bush stopped moving, but Gabriel couldn’t be sure Elena knew he was talking to her. He went limp in the man’s arms. Maybe if he let himself be taken, the man wouldn’t notice the rustling bushes, wouldn’t remember the girl’s scream.

  “Good,” the man said, holding Gabriel away from himself so they could see each other’s faces. Gabriel met his eyes, determined to show no fear. The man held him tightly, but gently. “No more fighting?”

  Gabriel shook his head, wishing they could just go, just leave here so Elena would be safe.

  He couldn’t help himself; his gaze flicked over to where he’d left her. She was still hiding, but he could see her through the branches, her eyes locked with his. She was crying.

  The man turned to look where Gabriel had, and Gabriel caught his breath. No! How could he have been so thoughtless? If Elena were found, it would be his fault. She stayed motionless now, terrified, but Gabriel could still make out her form.

  “The night is dark, boy,” the man said quietly. “Not even I can see everything.”

  He turned away from Elena and carried Gabriel down the path, back into the firelight of the orphanage. Gabriel stared at Elena’s hiding place until the bush was nothing but a spot of blackness in the distance. The screams had ended and even the dogs had stopped barking. In the courtyard the loudest sound was the crackling of the fire.

  “Two small boys are with Gwen,” said the tall man who had bitten Mistress. Gabriel’s stomach rolled over when he spotted her lying lifeless at the man’s feet. “The rest were too old.”

  “This one fought like a warrior, but he’s young,” the man carrying Gabriel said.

  “Did you see any others?” the tall man asked.

  “No, Ernst.” Gabriel knew he was lying. This man had seen Elena; he was sure of it. “But three boys is enough.”

  Ernst reached out and took Gabriel’s face in his hand. Gabriel’s pulse pounded in terror. Would he be bitten now? But Ernst simply nodded. “He’s young. Bring him along, Sam.”

  As they followed Ernst toward a small group of people waiting in the darkness, Gabriel began to cry. Shay felt the shuddering sobs in her own body, felt Gabriel’s anguish as if it were her own.

  Mistress wa
s the only mother he’d ever known, and now she lay on the ground. Fear coursed through Gabriel’s little body—through Shay’s body. The other adults at the orphanage—the teacher, the farmhand—they were dark lumps on the ground as Sam headed away from the buildings.

  “It only looks frightening, boy,” Sam murmured. “You will come to understand in time.”

  “Are they all dead?” Gabriel sobbed. “The older boys and girls?”

  “No one is dead,” Sam replied. “They will wake with the sun, and they will search for you. But they will not find you.”

  “He bit Mistress. She looks dead.” Gabriel could not stop the tears, even when he saw Philo in the arms of a plump woman, Lysander being lifted onto a horse in front of Ernst. There were six of them, the attackers. Six horses. They would be moving fast.

  “We needed strength, and we took it from your people by drinking of them,” Sam told him. “But that is all. We do not take the Givers’ lives.”

  “You’re taking us, too,” Gabriel said.

  Sam smiled, a little sadly. “Yes. We take strength and youth. Tell me your name, boy.”

  “Gabriel,” Shay said.

  “What’s that, honey?” her mom asked.

  Shay blinked, confused, her mother’s face melding with Sam’s for a moment as Martin took the needle from her arm.

  Shay gasped, bolting upright in her bed. “No!”

  “It’s okay, Shay, you were dreaming,” her mother said, taking her hand. “This wasn’t a regular transfusion, was it?” she hissed at Martin.

  “The regular ones aren’t—” Martin began.

  But Shay’s mother had already turned her attention back to Shay. “You’re okay.”

  No, I’m not, Shay thought. I want more.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  “MOM, I JUST READ AN ARTICLE about this great meditation CD. A scientist and a Buddhist worked on it together. It uses a lot of the new information on neurolinguistic programming,” Shay said. She sat at the kitchen table as her mother rinsed the lunch dishes.

  “Sounds interesting,” Mom said, exactly as Shay had known she would. Her mother was into pretty much anything that involved using the mind to help the body.

  “Yeah,” Shay agreed. “I was thinking I might try it. Maybe I’ll order it on Amazon.”

  “I’ll run out to Light and Enlightenment,” her mother offered—exactly as Shay had known she would. Her mother wanted to do anything possible that might improve Shay’s health. She also loved the New Age-ish book store. “What’s it called?”

  “Science of the Ages. There’s some subtitle about combining ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research,” Shay answered, a little ashamed at how easily the lie tripped off her tongue. As far as Shay knew, there was no CD with this title. Which meant her mother would be gone for a while, trying to find something that didn’t exist.

  She left as soon as the last dish was stowed. Shay waited until she saw the car pull out of the driveway, then she jogged in place until she had a tiny bit of sweat going and her pulse was elevated—which didn’t take long.

  Here goes, she thought as she headed to Martin’s study. Playing Martin wasn’t quite as easy as playing her mom, but she had to make it work. Tonight was too important. Shay gave a quick knock, then stepped inside. She let herself flop down into the nearest chair. Martin looked surprised to have a visitor.

  “How goes it?” he asked.

  “So-so,” Shay answered. “You?”

  “I’m more interested in you right now,” Martin said. “You look a little off.”

  “Please don’t turn into my mother,” Shay said. She wanted Martin to bring up the idea of a transfusion, without having a clue that the idea was really hers. It wasn’t as if she was lying. She was weaker. The jogging to up her pulse was simply a precaution, to make absolutely sure Martin said yes to a transfusion today.

  He stood and walked over to her. He placed two fingers on her wrist and looked at his watch. “A little fast,” he commented. His eyes flicked over her face and Shay knew he took in the beads of sweat along her hairline. Martin noticed pretty much everything, all the time, like some kind of machine that stored data to be evaluated later. Some part of him was always scanning, interpreting, researching.

  Say it, Shay silently begged. Say it; say it.

  “A transfusion on Monday and then again on Thursday,” he said slowly. “I know that’s a lot this week already. But I think it might be time for another one.”

  His tone was tentative, as if he were giving her bad news. And in a way he was. Shay knew what he was thinking—the new blood worked better, but it didn’t work for as long. Maybe it wasn’t the new blood. Maybe it was just her body. Maybe nothing would—or could—work for as long anymore. Even the effects of the old blood had started wearing off more quickly.

  Martin never said anything like that out loud, and neither did Mom. What was there to say? That Shay was dying? They all already knew that.

  “We could probably hold off until tomorrow,” Martin added.

  “May as well get it over with now,” Shay said, trying to sound sad. Trying to sound as if she hadn’t planned this entire thing. “I could use some more energy.”

  “You get in bed. I’ll go get the transfusion equipment,” Martin said.

  And then I’ll definitely have enough strength for tonight, Shay thought. Because tonight, she was going to the dock.

  Everyone at school hung out at the dock every weekend, even when it got incredibly cold in the wintertime. Shay wasn’t really sure why, or what happened there, she just knew that she was the only one who had never gone. And she was going to go, even if it was the last thing she ever did.

  But she couldn’t tell her mother about it. And even Martin had started getting on her case about not pushing herself too hard. His worry wasn’t the same as Mom’s though. Martin seemed more concerned that he was running out of time to help her, to figure out how to capitalize on this new blood treatment. The more Shay exhausted herself, the faster the strength of the transfusions wore off. He needed more time to research. Shay sympathized, but that wasn’t going to stop her from living her life while she could.

  And after Martin gave her this transfusion, she’d be able to live it to the fullest.

  “Why are you in such a rush?” Millie asked. “Hot date?”

  Shay shook her head—Gabriel shook his head—and shoved down the feelings of sadness and guilt that filled him at those words. Millie was joking, of course, but her words had reminded him of his last conversation with Sam. It was years ago now, but the memory was as painful as if it had been yesterday. The price of a long life was that years felt like hours.

  But why is he sad? Shay wondered. Did something happen to Sam? Her thoughts were fleeting, disappearing as soon as they came. While the blood flowed into her veins through the transfusion tube, Shay wasn’t in control.

  “I can’t be late. I’m meeting with the Duke University people tonight,” Gabriel said, trying to match Millie’s conversational tone.

  “Right—how could I forget? Ernst has been lecturing me about staying out of sight and how to act if one of them stumbles across us.” Millie shoved a lock of her curly red hair behind her ears and slipped her night-vision glasses back onto her face. Then she took them off. “Why do we even bring these things?”

  “In case some lost hiker comes across us, or the state sends a regulator to check up on our work,” Gabriel replied. “We can’t be too careful.”

  “I see twenty times better without them,” Millie grumbled, but her quick smile told him she understood. When it came to humans finding out about the family’s true nature, every precaution must be taken.

  Gabriel ignored his own glasses and peered through the darkness of the cavern. No sunlight had reached this place in thousands of years, but he could see each stalactite clearly, each boulder and pebble and drop of water.

  The bats were sleeping. Hibernating. The sound of their slow heartbeats soothed Gabriel
. Sometimes he wished he could do that, hibernate for months, when his memories became too hard to bear—of Greece, and of his family, and of Sam.

  “I think I should be insulted that Ernst never chooses me to face-to-face with the humans,” Millie said, jerking him back to reality. “I can’t even remember the last time I talked to one.”

  “It’s not an insult. Be flattered that he spares you,” Gabriel replied. “Ernst considers it a chore to make me interact with them. He’d like us all to avoid any contact with people.”

  “Then why make you meet with them?” Millie asked. “I don’t get him.”

  “Zero contact is too suspicious,” Gabriel answered. “As a bunch of bat-obsessed scientists, people are okay with us keeping to ourselves most of the time. But if we never had any contact with outsiders, it would cause too much speculation.”

  “I guess.” Millie sounded doubtful.

  “And we need to make money. It’s pretty much impossible to do that without at least some interaction with humans,” Gabriel said.

  “Well … it’s impossible to do it legally,” Millie joked.

  What is going on? Shay wondered, her mind struggling to understand. Night-vision goggles, and Duke, and a vampire girl dressed in jeans … it was too strange. For the first time, Shay felt her own mind trying to push its way into the vision.

  Gabriel suddenly jumped, leaping in one move from the cave floor to the top of a rock spire twenty feet in the air. The rush of air past his face, the brief feeling of weightlessness … it made him smile. It made Shay smile. She was clinging to the rock now, a mere foot or two beneath the upside-down bats. Her own thoughts vanished as she peered at their wizened faces, searching for any signs of the white-nose syndrome that was spreading through America’s bat population.

  Millie had jumped up next to her, silent in the cool air of the cave.

  “No signs of the fungus on these little guys,” Millie murmured, studying the faces of the sleeping animals. “There’s another colony up in the crag there. We’ll need climbing equipment to get to them—if we’re worrying about hikers. A twenty-foot climb we can explain. Not a fifty-foot one.”