Free Bloodline by MAGGIE SHAYNE

shoulder as we climbed, and my body slumped once more. Instantly Ethan scooped me up in his strong arms. I curled my own arms around his neck and was asleep before we reached the top of the stairway.

CHAPTER 6
    Present Day
    G inger Walters, head of the Appalachian Regional Branch of the Sisterhood of Athena, frowned at the telephone as it rang.
    Serena looked over at her with curiosity, but nothing more than that. She’d been living with the sisters for more than twenty years now, and she knew how things worked. You knew what you needed to know, nothing more. Hell, aside from herself, Terry—who’d brought her here—Ginger and a handful of others, no one in the entire organization knew that she was the mother of one of the Chosen, one of those rare humans who had the potential to become a vampire. One of the people they watched. Ginger said they never would have let her in, if they’d known. “They” being the higher-ups in the organization. To say they were strict was an understatement. In her time there, Serena had picked up on the unspoken knowledge that once a woman joined the Sisterhood, she was never allowed to leave.
    Never.
    As they grew older, members were transferred to other branches, where research, record-keeping and the like became their jobs, while younger recruits replaced them in the ranks.
    That no one left was extreme, perhaps. But she could see the need for such measures. And the need for secrecy, the need for all of it. She had become as loyal and as devoted to the cause as any of them.
    They were just returning from the wide, fenced-in and ultraprivate lawn in back, where they gathered morning and evening for chi kung and kung fu practice. She had a towel around her neck, was wearing a sweat-damp gi with a black belt around her waist and was barefoot. So were the others who trooped through the house ahead of her, all of them heading to their rooms for a shower.
    They’d come in through the rear door, so it was the kitchen telephone that had sidetracked the honcha, as Serena liked to call their leader. But when Ginger brought the phone to her ear and said, “This is Ginger Walters. Who is calling?” there was something off about her tone. Something that brought Serena up short.
    And when she saw the look on the other woman’s face, she knew something big was going on.
    Ginger’s eyes shot to hers. “Get Terry back here, and close the door. Hurry.”
    Serena nodded and ran out of the room. The others had gone their various ways, but her shout brought Terry in a hurry. Maybe her own voice was giving things away, too. But even if it did, the others wouldn’t snoop or pry or try to listen in. It just wasn’t how they operated. They trusted each other—they had to. Their lives too often depended on it.
    Terry joined her, and together they rushed back into the kitchen. Serena closed the door behind them, and Ginger said, “All right, Callista. Go ahead.” And then she pressed the speaker button and set the receiver down.
    â€œCallista?” Serena whispered in disbelief, sending a quick stunned look at Terry. It had been twenty-eight months since anyone had heard a word from her. She was a sister who had begun a passionate affair with a suspected DPI operative, pretending to know nothing about his work the entire time. Eventually she’d become close enough to him to win his trust, and he had helped her get a job as a “keeper” at some mysterious place they called “The Farm.”
    She’d planned to work undercover, to send back information on The Farm’s location and find out whether the place had anything to do with the missing children they’d been trying for so long to find, including Serena’s own missing baby girl—who would be twenty-one years old by now. But it had been as if Callista had fallen off the planet. And no amount of searching or digging had turned up any sign that she was still