“Omigod,” she gushed. “I thought you looked familiar! I’ve seen your pictures! I should’ve known right away! I’m so embarrassed. Come on, come on. I’m Mallory, by the way. Let’s not stand around in the woods! You must have done a lot of traveling to get here. Come rest. Get something to eat. Omigod.”
We followed her down the narrow trail, which eventually opened up to a huge clearing in the forest. It turned out Wild Pine really was kind of a cross between a camp and a resort. Actually, it kind of reminded me of a Wild West town after all. I could totally picture a shoot-out happening. Nice-looking cabins were arranged in orderly rows and seemed to be divided into business and residential areas. Dhampirs, almost entirely women and children, moved about their business, some pausing to give us speculative looks. Mallory led us toward a large cabin that was situated between the business and residential areas, bouncing with each step she took.
We entered what seemed to be a sort of office, and the first thing I noticed was that they had electricity. I took that as a good omen for plumbing. An older dhampir woman, her blond hair streaked with silver, sat at a desk, clicking something on a computer. She too wore a blue-edged medallion. When she saw us, she stood up and looped her fingers through the belt on her jeans as she leaned against the wall, showing off tooled leather boots that further reinforced my Wild West stereotypes.
“Well, what did you turn up, Mallory?” she asked with amusement.
“Lana, you’ll never believe who this is,” exclaimed Mallory. “It’s—”
“Rose Hathaway and Dimitri Belikov,” supplied Lana. Her eyes then fell on Sydney and me, and she arched an eyebrow. “And Adrian Ivashkov and his infamous wife. I’ve been to Court. I know who the celebrities are.”
“We’re not celebrities,” I assured her, putting my arm around Sydney and nodding toward Rose and Dimitri. “Not like those two.”
Lana’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled at us. “Aren’t you? Your marriage has been the source of a lot of speculation.”
“I think that makes us more of a source of a gossip than celebrities.” Although, as soon as the words left my mouth, I wondered whether there was any real difference between the two.
“Well, I’m delighted to meet you. All of you.” Lana walked forward and shook our hands. “I’ve also heard from Olive how you’ve done some pretty fancy work to create a Strigoi vaccine, Lord Ivashkov.”
I started to say we weren’t having much luck on the vaccine, but something more important in her words drew my attention. “You know Olive.”
“Of course,” Lana said. “I know everyone here.”
“Lana’s our leader,” explained Mallory.
Lana actually guffawed. “I’m more of an administrator. I assume it’s Olive you’re here to see?”
“If you’ll allow it,” said Dimitri politely. “We’d be grateful for any assistance you can offer.”
“Not up to me. It’s up to Olive.” Lana held us in her gaze for a few moments, as though deciding something. At last, she gave a small nod. “I’ll take you to her myself. But first, have some dinner and relax. I know it’s not easy getting here.”
We thanked her for her hospitality, but it was hard to relax, knowing we were so close to finding Olive. I’d given Rose and Dimitri the full rundown on her story when we’d met up in Houghton—at least as much as I knew about it. They were as concerned as I was and also concurred that there was probably something sinister going on if she felt such a strong need to hide her pregnancy. I got the impression that if she had been taken advantage of—and Dimitri found out who was responsible—there were going to be some serious consequences.
Dinner turned out to be chicken salad sandwiches, a surprisingly ordinary meal to be eating in a wilderness resort of half vampires. Sydney didn’t even hesitate before biting into hers, which I thought spoke legions about how far she’d come in dealing with Moroi. Lana meanwhile made it clear to me there were no official feeders around here and that I shouldn’t even think of soliciting blood from any of the Wild Pine dhampirs. There was a catch in her voice as she spoke, however, and combined with what I knew about these communes, I suspected there were dhampirs here who sold their blood to Moroi as freely as they sold their bodies for sex. It was the dark side of these camps, what had given them such a bad reputation. It certainly wasn’t a practice they all engaged in, but it happened frequently enough.
After dinner, Lana was true to her word and led us out herself, giving us a brief tour of the community. As I’d suspected, some of the buildings doubled as businesses.
“We make regular runs into Houghton for supplies,” she explained. “But we also try to be as self-sustaining as we can. We grow a lot of our own food and even make some of our own clothes.” She nodded to one cabin where two dhampir women sat sewing on the porch by lantern light, now that twilight was fast moving in. They waved back in greeting. She pointed out other buildings as we passed them. “That’s Jody’s shop—she can fix anything. And that right there’s our medical center, such as it is. April’s in charge of it, but she’s out of town getting supplies. The things she needs are a little harder to make. Over there is Briana’s school.”
“You’ve got some solar panels over there,” Sydney remarked. “Smart idea out here.”
Lana beamed, clearly proud. “That was Talia’s idea. We get some electricity wired in, but she felt we should have a renewable source on hand.”
I noted all the women’s names and also noted that aside from some of the children, everyone in this community was female. So, it was kind of a shock when I caught a glimpse of a Moroi man walking between a group of cabins set off a bit from the others. Seeing my gaze, Lana scowled and gave a resigned sigh.
“Yes. That’s where the girls who want to ‘entertain’ male guests live.”
“Why don’t you keep them out?” asked Dimitri, his expression dark.
“Because there are some girls who would do it anyway. They’d sneak off, live somewhere unsafe. I’d rather keep everything under my control. Some guys just want a good time, and there are girls who accept that and expect nothing more . . .” As she spoke, Lana watched the Moroi guy I’d seen. A dhampir girl hung on his arm, and they were laughing as they walked past us, caught up in some private conversation. She appeared to be walking him to the community’s exit, and I noted her medallion was ringed in red. Lana turned back to us when they were gone. “Other guys are nothing but trouble. Those are the ones I need to keep an eye on—and sometimes the ones we have to forcibly remove.”