"You girls ever been to Oregon before?"
Jade blinked and murmured a negative.
"It's got some pretty lonely places," Vic said. "Outhere, for example. Briar Creek was a gold rush town, but when the gold ran out and the railroad passed it by, it just died. Now the wilderness is taking it back."
His tone was significant, but Jade didn't understand what he was trying to convey.
"It does seem peaceful;" Rowan said politely from the backseat.
Vic made a brief snorting sound. "Yeah, well, peaceful wasn't exactly what I meant. I meant, take this road. These farmhouses are miles apart, right? Ifyou screamed, there wouldn't be anyone to hearyou."
Jade blinked. What a strange thing to say. Rowan, still politely making conversation, said, "Well, you and Todd would."
"I mean, nobody else," Vic said, and Jade could feel his impatience. He had been driving more and more slowly. Now he pulled the car off to the side of the road and stopped. Parked.
"Nobody outthere is going to hear," he clarified,turning around to look into the backseat. Jade looked, too, and saw Todd grinning, a wide bright grin with teeth clenched on his toothpick.
"That's right," Todd said. "You're out here alone with us, so maybe you'd better listen to us, huh?"
Jade saw that he was gripping Rowan's arm with one hand and Kestrel's wrist with the other.
Chapter 2
You see, we're both lonely guys," Todd said from the back. ""There aren't any girls our age aroundhere, so we're lonely. And then when we comeacross three nice girls like you-well, we just natu rally want to get to know you better. Understand?"
"So if you girls play along, we can all have fun," Vic put in.
"Fun-oh, no," Rowan said, dismayed. Jade knew she had caught part of Vic's thought and was tryingvery hard not to pry further. "Kestrel and Jade are much too young for anything like that. I'm sorry, butwe have to say no."
"I won't do it even whenI amold enough," Jade said. "But that isn't what these guys mean anyway they mean this." She projected some of the images she was getting from Vic into Rowan's mind.
"Oh, dear," Rowan said flatly. "Jade, you know we agreed not to spy on people like that."
Yeah, but look what they're thinking, Jade said soundlessly, figuring that if she had broken one rule, she might as well break them all.
"Now, look," Vic said in a tone that showed he knew he was losing control of the situation. He reached out and grabbed Jade's other arm, forcingher to face him. "We're not here to talk. See?" He gave her a little shake. Jade studied his features a moment, then turned her head to look inquiringly into the backseat.
Rowan's face was creamy-pale against her brownhair. Jade could feel that she was sad and disap pointed. Kestrel's hair was dim gold and she was frowning.
Well?Kestrel said silently to Rowan.
Well?Jade said the same way. She wriggled as Victried to pull her loser. Come on, Rowan, he's pinching me.
I guess we don't have any choice,Rowan said.
Immediately Jade turned back to Vic. He was still trying to pull her, looking surprised that she didn't seem to be coming. Jade stopped resisting and lethim drag her in close-and then smoothly detached one arm from his grip and slammed her hand upward. The heel of her hand made contact just under his chin.
His teeth clicked and his head was knocked backward, exposing his throat.
Jade darted in and bit.
She was feeling guilty and excited. She wasn't used to doing it like this, to taking down prey that was awake and struggling instead of hypnotized and docile. But she knew her instincts were as good as any hunter who'd grown up stalking humans in alleys. It was part of her genetic programming to evaluate anything she saw in terms of "Is it food? Can I get it? What are its weaknesses?"
The only problem was that she shouldn't been joying this feeding, because it was exactly the opposite of what she and Rowan and Kestrel had come to Briar Creek to do.
She was tangentially aware of activity in the backseat. Rowan had lifted the arm Todd had been using to restrain her. On the other side Kestrel had done the same.
Todd was fighting, his voice thunderstruck. "Heyhey what are you-"
Rowan bit.
"What are you doing?"
Kestrel bit.
"What the freak are you doing? Who are you? What the freak are you?"
He thrashed wildly for a minute or so, and then subsided as Rowan and Kestrel mentally urged him into a trance.
It was only another minute or so before Rowan said, "That's enough."
Jade said, Aw, Rowan ...
"That'senough.Tell him not to remember anything about this-and find out if he knows where Burdock Farm is."
Still feeding, Jade reached out with her mind,touching lightly with a tentacle of thought. Then she pulled back, her mouth closing as if in a kiss as it leftVic's skin. Vic was just a big rag doll at this point, and he flopped bonelessly against the steering wheeland the car door when she let him go.
"The farm's back that way-we have to go back tothe fork in the road," she said. "It's weird," she added, puzzled. "He was thinking that he wouldn't get in trouble for attacking us because-because of something about Aunt Opal. I couldn't get what."
"Probably that she was crazy," Kestrel said unemotionally. "Todd was thinking that he wouldn't get in trouble because his dad's an Elder."
"They don't have Elders," Jade said, vaguely smug."You mean a governor or a police officer or something ?
Rowan was frowning, not looking at them. "All right," she said. "This was an emergency; we had to do it.
But now we're going back to what we agreed."
"Until the next emergency," Kestrel said, smiling out the car window into the night.
To forestall Rowan, Jade said, "You think we should just leave them here?"
"Why not?" Kestrel said carelessly. "They'll wake up in a few hours."
Jade looked at Vic's neck. The two little wounds where her teeth had pierced him were already almost closed. By tomorrow they would be faint red marks like old bee stings.
Five minutes later they were on the road againwith their suitcases. This time, though, Jade was cheerful.
The difference was food-she felt as full of blood as a tick, charged with energy and ready to skip up mountains. She swung the cat carrier and her suitcase alternately, and Tiggy growled.