“I am guessing he wanted to terminate the pregnancy and that is why she fled?” Magnus suggested.

“No. He was delighted and hoping for a boy he could mentor,” Allie said grimly, as horrified at the thought as Stella had been. Mouth tightening, she added, “Apparently, a girl baby would have been undesirable and, according to him, ‘best torn apart by the group before it could take more than a breath.’ I gather he considered females quite useless. Stella said there were very few women among the group. A handful, all members of couples that were taken. Never women who were found on their own. They were used to feed the group and never turned.”

“So, she was afraid he would kill the baby if it was a girl,” Magnus said, looking angry at the thought.

“Yes. But she was also terrified of his mentoring the baby if it was a boy. That he’d turn it into a monster like he was. She didn’t want that.”

“That would have scared me silly too,” Tricia admitted.

Allie nodded. “I think it did more than that, though. I think finding out she was carrying a child saved Stella. It brought her out of whatever madness had beset her when she was attacked and turned. Stella says until then she was wandering around in a kind of fog, doing whatever she was told without conscience, feeding on the people she was given, and even luring men to the others when ordered to. But learning she was with child snapped her out of that. She was ashamed of what she’d let herself be cowed into doing, and wanted to be better for her son or daughter. To do that, and to keep her baby safe, she had to leave.”

“I can see that,” Magnus said now. “But if her sire had them all convinced that they could not be away from their room between sunrise and sunset and survive, how did Stella get away and move into the town house across from yours? Calgary, Alberta, is a long way from Vancouver, British Columbia, and she could not take the room with her.”

“Actually, she kind of did,” Allie said, unsurprised by the confusion that caused.

“How?” Tybo demanded.

“She watched the same movies you did,” Allie said with a small smile. “Stella remembered that in the movies, taking dirt from their grave allowed vampires to travel. Since the room they’d been given was both where they died and the closest thing to a grave they had, she gambled on the possibility that taking a bit of the concrete floor would allow her to move around at night and stay somewhere else in daylight without weakening or perishing.”

“Ah,” Tricia said with a grin, and then assured her, “It wasn’t true. She could have left at any time without the concrete, but it was clever of her to think of that anyway.”