THIRTEEN

Rose

It was a stupid idea. This whole thing was a stupid idea and Rose knew she was going to regret agreeing to it even before she did.

They went straight from the hotel to the bank. Christian spent the entire bus into the city looking over his shoulder and out of the back window, as though a car full of guardians was going to appear chasing the bus. Guardians, or his mother, despite the cold sun glaring down at them.

Unlike when she'd run away from the Academy, Rose wasn't paranoid. As much as she blamed herself for what had happened to Mason, she didn't deny that she'd learned a lot since when she'd run away with Lissa. She'd learned a lot, and right now she was focused. They had an immediate task. It was when they'd reached wherever they were headed, when they had some downtime, that her composure would break.

Besides, what she'd learned from previous Strigoi attacks was that people needed time to recover and no one was going to be coming and knocking on their door until they didn't show up the next morning.

And if they did find her and Christian, that would probably for the best anyway.

Rose knew that the longer they evaded capture, the more likely it was to go wrong for them. Christian was acting out of fear and guilt, he wasn't rational, and the best she could do was to protect him until he came to his senses.

He didn't really want people to go searching for his mom. That would just be putting them in danger, which was what he wanted to avoid.

At least, Rose was pretty sure she understood his motivation perfectly. He was a diversion. He was leading her away from the rest of the world, knowing that she'd catch him eventually, and then he would be the one to deal with her, without anyone else having to get hurt for his sake.

And she was there because she'd convinced him, and it wasn't hard to convince someone who was that scared that they didn't want to be alone.

She wasn't sure what her own plan was. She hadn't thought that far ahead. All she knew was that if she let Christian go, then she didn't know if she'd be able to find him again.

And that he was more likely to get hurt. She wasn't willing to risk that for an instant.

And partly because he'd been rational enough to push the one button that really hurt, that was guaranteed to work, that this was best for Lissa. She'd do whatever it took to make sure Liss was as safe as possible.

She put a hand on his arm before they walked into the bank in front of them. "You could not look any more guilty."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know how to stop it."

"Me neither, but considering you're probably about to ask to take out a pretty big chunk of money, I'd say it's not a great look."

He took a deep breath. "Let's just hope my compulsion can manage where my face fails, then."

They'd always taken Liss's breathtaking compulsion for granted when they were in Portland, but Christian's was a lot more limited, even when using it on humans. It wasn't going to be a case of just getting whatever they wanted, no questions asked.

Still, inside the bank they sat down opposite the teller and he asked her what the maximum amount of money he could withdraw in one go was.

"The maximum amount without warning in advance in $5,000, Sir."

It sounded like a lot in theory, but it wouldn't get two of them that far when they had travelling to do and needed to pay for accommodation.

"Then I'd like to withdraw that much, please," he said, giving her a smile, for the first time in a while not showing his fangs. It looked blatantly false to Rose, but the young woman in front of them gave a dazzling smile and nodded, taking his details.

Rose felt a small flutter in her stomach as she watched him, his guilt controlled now. He must be using his compulsion on the woman, and the effects were just enough to make Rose's skin tingle.

While the woman processed his request, Rose tried to think logistics. They needed to get out of the city. There was a few ways they could do it, but none of them were ideal. Planes would be the quickest method of transport, but they were highly regulated and limited in destination. She didn't doubt that vampires had people working at airlines who would be able to find out exactly where they'd gone.

Train, bus or car had to be the best bet. Buses were slow, so she wanted to avoid them if possible. The car would be ideal, something they could travel in themselves, but she couldn't drive and she didn't know if Christian could. How they would get their hands on a car without either stealing it, or giving away their names and therefore creating a way to track them, she had no idea.

Train was their best bet, at least at first, she reckoned. It was quick, but expensive. It would probably cut into a chunk of their cash before they'd even started, especially last minute tickets, but they'd have to risk it. A train could get them across the county fastest without an exact destination for someone to track like a plane.

While she thought it through, she realised she'd been staring at Christian. The teller gave her a knowing smile as she handed over the money and they stood to leave.

It made her uncomfortable. She wasn't considering the emotional consequences of what she'd done yet. That could come later.

"What now?" Christian asked, immediately becoming edgy again the second they were out of the bank. "We can't stay in the city."

"We can't," she agreed. "I think getting a train is our best bet."

"Won't they be able to track that?"

"I can't think of anything they wouldn't be able to track."

"We need a car."

"You can drive?"

"Yeah. I've got my licence with me as well."

"I don't know how we can get one without you having to give your name, or us stealing one, which they'd be able to track anyway. Only then we'd also have the police on our back."

Christian shifted his weight from foot to foot, unable to stand still. The sun was starting to rise higher in the sky, and it would be making him uncomfortable as well. "Okay. We can think about how we'll get a car on the train," he agreed.

They took a cab to the train station with their newly taken out cash, and then consulted the timetable on the next available train that would take them a good distance.

"There's one in fifteen minutes heading towards Pittsburgh. We can buy tickets for that and get off halfway through. They'll have a lot more guessing to do that way," Rose said.

"Okay."

They hurried through buying their tickets at the automated kiosk, and grabbed a few supplies from the small shop in the station before boarding their train.

They picked two seats without a table, to give them the illusion of privacy, and that was when the adrenaline started to die down.

They'd be on the train for at least the next few hours, with nothing to do except sit there and come to terms with the reality of the decision they'd made.

Rose tried to stay focused. It might seem like they had downtime, but this was when crucial decisions would be made. "We need to decide which stop we're going to get off on."

She brought out the pamphlet with the route map she'd grabbed from the station. There were any number of stations they could choose to get off at, and Rose had heard of none except for Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. It didn't give her a lot to work with.

Christian looked at it blankly as well. "So, how do we choose?"

She looked up to where an LED screen at the front of the carriage displayed the time. It was already 11am. "They're probably going to be coming to wake us up in about two hours," she said. "When we don't show, they'll raise the alarms, and I doubt it'll take them long to figure out we've got this train. We need to be off the train and somewhere else before they realise that."

"So we need a station in the next couple of hours, and probably not one of the big ones."

"Exactly."

They looked at the pamphlet. "Somewhere around Harrisburg then?" Chrisian asked.

"Looks like it."

"I don't suppose you really know anything about the places around here?"

"Not a clue," she admitted. "But I suppose I didn't about the North West either, and that went okay. It was admittedly easier with Lissa's compulsion. We could basically get anyone to do anything, and it allowed us to skirt under the radar pretty well."

"We're going to have to be a bit more devious this time then, because mine isn't anywhere near as strong."

"It seemed to work well enough at the bank."

"I didn't use it then." He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm trying to reserve my energy until it gets to the point I need it."

"Oh. Well, the biggest problem we have is that to effectively remain under the radar, we probably need to convince people to do things that are illegal. We need someone to sell us a car without requiring it to be registered, or to rent us somewhere without proof of ID so we can register under false names. That's where the compulsion is useful." She ran a hand over her face. "It really feels like I was a child the last time I did this."

"Well, you were, really. You were, what, just fifteen? It was a long time ago."

"I guess it was." So much had changed. Everything about her previous escape attempt with Lissa seemed juvenile, all the consequences they hadn't considered, all the ways they'd felt mature but had only really been showing their immaturity.

"It's not too late for you to turn back," Christian said. "Just get off at the next station and go back, tell them what I've done and stop yourself getting into trouble."

"I'm not worried about getting into trouble," she lied. She knew this would have consequences when it came to Liss, and being Liss's guardian. She wasn't that naive anymore. She was ignoring them. The possibility of Christian being hurt, or, more importantly, of Liss being hurt, had to come first.