Seeking Eden Read online

  “They did the Geneto-Test. It was fine. She caught from Ari, just like she was supposed to, and he was a match. But it was still...not right.” Tikva’s voice was muffled, but not enough that Elanna couldn’t hear it.

  She didn’t want to ask what was wrong with the child. It didn’t matter. Ari had been matched to Leah but had never made a child with her or any other hopemother before. This would’ve been his first.

  “It’s because he goes...out,” Tikva said. “That’s what they’re saying. Because he goes into the Blast Zone. And out there.”

  It could be. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Leah had given birth to a child that was not right.

  It would’ve been better if it had died.

  That thought suddenly sickened and horrified her, even though she knew it was true. Elanna pressed her fingertips to her churning belly. It was true, but it wasn’t right. Babies were precious. All babies.

  But if Leah and Ari had been matched and still had a child that wasn’t right, what chance did she have of bearing a baby without problems when she’d caught with Job who’d been tested and found incompatible? They would do worse than take it from her and give it to another woman to raise. They would take it from her and...

  “I have to go.” She stood, the floor slipping under her feet.

  “Elanna, Tikva, hey!” It was Chedva again. The shorter girl was nearly bursting with excitement, practically wriggling in her eagerness to tell Elanna something. “Did you hear the news?”

  “I heard.” Elanna knew Chedva was clueless, but couldn’t believe she’d take such joy in Leah’s misfortune.

  “The gatherers are due back soon,” Chedva said, completely ignoring the story of Leah’s birth and the child. That was typical. Everyone would pretend it hadn’t happened, leaving Leah to mourn in silence. “Zev came on ahead and said the rest would be here in a little while. Oh, Elanna, isn’t it exciting?”

  “Yes,” Elanna answered noncommittally.

  “What do you think they’ll bring back this time? Oh, I hope they’ve found some candy! And some new clothes in my size. I’d love a new dress for summer…”

  Elanna left Tikva sobbing into her pillow and pushed past Chedva to leave the room. True to form, Chedva followed, rattling on as Elanna made her way to the Main Hall. She wanted to cut through there on her way to the birthing room. She wanted to see Leah, even if nobody else would.

  “They’ll all be wanting appointments, you know.” Chedva nudged Elanna with her elbow. “I hope Luz asks me, though it doesn’t really matter. I know. But I’d love to have a baby with Luz, wouldn’t you, Elanna?”

  Elanna thought of the tall, grossly muscled man and his coarse manners. She’d suffered through several appointments with him before realizing that he’d stop asking for her when she stopped pretending to be impressed with his physique. After she’d laughed when he asked if she thought his arms were getting too muscular, he’d never asked for her again.

  “Um…no, not really,” Elanna said. “Listen, Chedva, I’ve really got to go.”

  Chedva trotted after Elanna. “But guess what else? Something really exciting! I heard him say they found a man!”

  By now even more people had crowded into the Main Hall. Elanna could barely move. Even going back the way she came was fruitless.

  “Really?” She was only half-listening. “How neat.”

  Chedva babbled on and Elanna slowly worked her way through the crowd toward the dais. The Beit Din were all there, waiting for the gatherers to come back. Then she saw Leah, face pale and eyes red-rimmed, her hair damp around her forehead. She caught Elanna’s gaze across the room. Elanna moved toward her, but Leah shook her head just slightly.

  Then she looked away. In the next moment the crowd had moved, blocking Elanna’

  s view. When it parted again, the other hopemother was gone.

  −9-

  A cloud stinking of hellfire surrounded him, making him gag. Tobin writhed on the pavement, unable to get up. His eyes bulged from his head, and his ears and nose and mouth filled with the relentless reek and roar.

  Luz materialized beside him, yanking him up by the back of the neck with fingers that felt like pincers of iron. The gatherer pulled Tobin along like a rag doll, shoving him to one side. Fresh pain bloomed like some insane flower as his knees scraped the ground, but he forgot it almost immediately when he saw what had created the noise and the stench.

  It was a truck, monstrous, like none he’d ever seen or even imagined. Black, with tires as high as his head, it was easily fifteen feet long. It revved and growled, farting huge stinking puffs of crackling air that smelled like lightning.

  The windows were glassless and gaping, the cab doors bound with wire and bits of cloth to keep them from flying open. The bed in the back was filled with boxes and packages and all manner of things he couldn’t identify, all surrounded by a sagging wall of barbed wire and pieces of wood studded with nails.

  Luz grinned at him, showing teeth gone gray. Clearly he enjoyed Tobin’s reaction. The huge man gave Tobin an almost friendly tap on the shoulder that nearly knocked him over again.

  “Pretty impressive when you see it in action,” Luz said.

  Now Tobin saw more black-garbed gatherers, some in the front of the truck and others in the back among the packages. Five more, if he had counted them all. More people than he’d ever seen in his entire life, Tobin thought, stunned. He had to lock his knees from sagging again. His eyes went from one to the other of them, back and forth, hardly able to take it all in. People! Eleven of them, and they were only a fraction of the population if what Ari had told him was true.

  “I didn’t really believe it,” he whispered, thinking of the peddler.

  “Believe it,” Zmorah said from beside him. She obviously thought he meant the truck, and he let her think what she wanted.

  “You ride in the front,” Ari commanded, nodding to Luz who began wrangling Tobin up a short ladder attached to the side of the cab. “If you’re tied up you can’t fight, and we can’t have you getting in the way. Things are likely to get a little hairy on the ride home.”

  “Fight?” The pain in Tobin’s jaw made it hard to talk. “Who?”

  “Savages. We’ll be going right through their territory.”

  Tobin’s feet were on the bottom rung of the ladder. With his hands bound behind him, he couldn’t balance himself. Only Luz’s strong hands on his waist kept him from falling. Though he’d only taken one step up the ground seemed very far away. Concentrating suddenly seemed a very good idea.

  Luz shoved him up the next step, pushing when Tobin teetered back. Another step and Tobin was able to bend at the waist along the truck’s hood. The metal was warm under his cheek, the one that didn’t hurt. He didn’t see how he’d be able to go any further.

  He didn’t have to. Two of the gatherers from inside the cab reached through the empty windshield and grabbed him. Another moment of wriggling and they shoved him over the front seat and into the back. Tobin managed to turn over enough so he was sitting on the seat, facing the front, instead of half-lying on the floor.

  Two faces smudged with dirt stared back at him. He’d have thought from the strength they used to pull him in that he’d be looking at a pair of men as big as Luz, but the faces were female. Even through the dirt he could see that. Women had pulled him through the window. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

  Hell. He didn’t know how to feel about anything, did he? Everything that had happened since waking up to Asaph’s blade at his throat had been one seamless nightmare. He couldn’t wish, wouldn’t wish, that he’d stayed home in Eastport, but he did regret not taking another route.

  “Whutsya name?”

  It took him a second to realize that one of the women had spoken to him. Her accent was the same as the others. From her lips, it sounded somehow perky.

  “Tobin,” he said.

  That, for some reason, elicited a giggle from the two of them. He wouldn’t hav