I ran over to him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “Rowan, no. You can’t do that. You can’t climb in there, and what? Starve to death?”
“Suffocate.” He shook his head. “Takes about five hours. More, if you panic. They drug us into submission, so there is no panic, but sometimes it can even take just a little bit longer than the five hours.”
I pressed my head into his shoulder, and he hugged me tightly. “We’ll run away. Right now. The six of us. We’ll just go. Fuck graduation. We will run to the sunniest spot on the planet and hide.”
“I am so crazy about you, and you just said the best thing.” He laughed, but it was more of a groan. “There is nowhere we can go where they won’t find us, and then they’ll make it even more painful. We will have shamed them with disgrace. If I thought it would work, I’d run forever.”
I could hardly think. “Rowan, I have so many questions.”
“Let’s walk. More to show you, and like the guard said, we don’t want to be here when they wake up.”
I let him take my arm, and I leaned against him, walking slowly together. “This just can’t be.”
“Yet it is.” He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but boy did it, and I could see how he covered his emotions in that single movement. “What are your questions?”
“You’re only eighteen. Will you be eighteen forever?”
“No, we’ll age slowly. My father is several hundred years old. You wouldn’t know it. Looks about fifty, right?”
Maybe that was the stupidest one I could ask. “So is this what your dad does, then? He just breeds young men to go die and make new vampires? Over and over?”
“I love how your brain works. No, we are the first, and that is where it gets even more complicated. The five of us, as it turns out, are really complicated.”
Once again, we went inside a cabin. Everywhere I looked, there were really old books. “Would you believe vampires have prophecies?”
“Well, seeing as there are vampires, I guess I can believe that they have prophecies. I mean, I don’t know a thing about prophecies.”
He gestured toward the books. “In there is a prophecy that says that five great vampires who died would be reborn. They think that’s us.”
I pointed at him. “You? And the others? You’re reincarnated great vampires?”
“Well, right now, I’m an eighteen-year-old high school student, but apparently when I wake up, I will have that vampire’s soul. No one really explained it to me, just that is what is going to happen. Why we’re so fucking important.” He looked away. “So important we can’t wait until August. You see, there is a war, and it’s been going on a long time. Our clan and someone else’s. They need us to be part of the fight.”
I threw my arms around him again. “How long will you be dead before you wake up?”
“Could be between nine months and a year. They say the longer you take, the stronger you’ll be. I don’t know if that is true, because the ones that go down together also seem to wake up together. So…how does that work? I don’t know.”
I took his cheeks in my hands the way he had taken mine. “Rowan, the point is that you will wake up. Youwillwake up. You won’t be dead.”
“No,Iwill be dead. Everything you know about me? Gone. I’ll be dead. My body will be here, changed significantly. I’ll be drinking blood. And I will be a monster. My dad? He’s not as bad as I could be. He’s had centuries to calm down. I will be a living nightmare to anyone who runs into me for years. Yes, I’ll be dead.” His voice hitched. “We dragged you into this nightmare with us, but, Maci, I am so glad to have known you. So glad you are in my life, even if just for a week. You made us all so happy. Thank you. And I’m sorry.”
I kissed his lips. “Rowan, don’t apologize again. We’re going to fix this. I’m here now, and we’re going to brainstorm.”
He kissed me back, hard, possessive, loving. “Don’t hope for that. We have to make you safe. We have to figure this out. And then we have to die. But in the meantime, maybe we could have fun this week. Maybe that’s possible.”
Nine
We walked in silence,arms around each other, through the darkness that had started to fall around us. He would point things out to me in a quiet voice. “That’s where the servants live.”
I turned to look. “I don’t think it means cleaners and cooks, right?”
“Well, they do that, but no, it mostly means blood servants.”
I almost asked him if they would be who he would feed from in his blood frenzy—if they were who he would kill—but I fortunately fought the impulse. Rowan really didn’t need any more pain. Most of the servants wore all black. Was that a uniform? They were all women. But then there were also some gorgeously dressed women strolling the pavement. They didn’t look like they were rushing anywhere. One of them stopped to hug another one, throwing her head back in joy.
“Who are they?”
He sighed. “Paramours. Sometimes, a vampire will attach to a particular feeding source and decide she belongs to him alone. They become the paramour.”