“Usually that would imply sex.” I watched the women a moment longer. I wasn’t wrong. Those women were in much better physical condition than the others. Being a paramour had its perks, it would seem.
“It still does. I mean, gross to think about, because it involves my dad, but vampires still have sex. Hence, the siring bit. But make no mistake, italwayshas to do with the blood, from what I understand. There is no part of life, or afterlife, for the vampire that doesn’t involve blood.”
I winced. It really was gross to think about. I wasn’t sure it was a vampire problem as much as aparents having sexproblem. No one wanted to picture that. Not at all. I’d unfortunately caught my mother on more than one occasion, but I worked hard to repress those memories. I didn’t let myself think about it. At all.
“So you’ve got blood servants. Paramours. Vampires. And you. All living here.” I wanted to make sure I had it right.
He nodded. “And now you. And the other guys, who lived in their own houses, which were on the outskirts of here. We have to be close by. Everyone who is in this clan. There is a war going on. For hundreds and hundreds of years. There is a guy, they call him the Betrayer, and I don’t know that much about him, except he apparently did just that for a long time—betrayed. Our vamps fight his vamps. It’s a big giant mess. We lose a lot of vampires to it, which is why there is a constant need to make new ones, to have new troops.”
I scratched my head. “I thought male vampires were born.”
“The upper crust are, but some males are made like females are made. However, they’re low rung. They never get to live in a place like this. They fight for them, if they live through that, they hang on the outside. They’re considered very low.” He squeezed my hand. “Understand that’s now how I currently feel. That’s how it is for them. I guess I’ll feel that way when I’m one of them.”
I tugged on his shirt, turning him toward me. “The bottom line here is that you are going to wake up. You are going to be alive again. If we can’t stop this—”
“We can’t,” he interrupted. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up about that. There isn’t any stopping it. If I run away, they will find me, kill me, and put me in that coffin to rise again. I am never going to let that happen. All five of us. It’s a done deal. Period.” He shook his head. “And the thing that rises won’t be me. Whatever it is that makes me, me, that’ll be gone. I’ll be one of them. My cousin—our fathers were cousins—who went after me at the bar the other night, he was quiet and gentle when he was alive. Used to paint pictures of horses in his free time. Now he just wants to feed, to kill, and to kick my ass because of some sort of alpha vampire thing I really don’t understand that means he’s going to be compelled to listen to me when I rise from the dead. Who the fuck knows who I’m going to be? Am I going to be worse than my father? Am I—”
I kissed him. Some part of my soul cried out to do so, and I listened to the instinct. He needed my lips on his in that moment, and I needed to answer the call. It was primal and desperate. Two people in an impossible situation not of our own making. One of us not going to survive this.
When we pulled apart, we both breathed heavily. He cupped my cheek. My lips were sore from the brief embrace. I hadn’t realized we’d clung to each other so tightly, but we had.
“I should have left you alone. When you asked us to be quiet, I should have said sure and we could’ve left.”
I shook my head. “Whatever happens now, I’m really glad you didn’t.”
“You say that because you don’t yet know” —he kissed the end of my nose— “just how bad this will get. I won’t blame you when you hate me.” He blinked. “I may not even care, because I’ll be something else. So I’m here to tell you that I’m sorry. Even if I don’t seem that way then, I am. I’m sorry.”
He hugged me, and I let him. There was so much to digest and a million questions to answer. But one had bugged me from the beginning before I even knew about this craziness. “Where are your mothers?”
“They’re vampires. It was part of the deal. Birth us and be made five years later.”
“And once they’re vampires, they don’t care about you anymore?” I closed my eyes. We couldn’t make that excuse for my mother. She was solidly human and flawed like all the rest of us.
He sighed. “Something happens to the women, almost an amnesia. They don’t really remember their lives the way men seem to. It seems easier to ship them off, according to my father, than keep them here with people trying to get them to remember. Plus, no, they wouldn’t be safe to their human children for a long time. So they go somewhere else, but I’m not clear on where. They rise from the dead in another location, and they leave.”
That didn’t make sense. “Are you sure they’re not killing them and just pretending that’s what they’re doing?”
“I am, actually. Tanner has seen the rising. His father supervises it and does the shipping off. Our mothers are just gone.” He sighed. “Let’s get back. I don’t want a lot of eyes on us. We’re always being watched, but I don’t need extra observation. It creeps me out how they watch me. Like they’re all waiting, counting the days until I’m dead.”
I looked around. “I don’t see anyone looking.”
“That’s right, you wouldn’t. But some day, you’ll feel it because you’ll have learned to tell. The longer you spend here, the more you’ll feel it.”
I swallowed. “Rowan, how long will I have to stay here?”
“Forever.” Griffin’s voice answered me. He stepped toward us, where he must have been waiting near Rowan’s house. “He might try to sugarcoat this a bit, but now that you’re in the know—and really, his dad put you incredibly in the know—they’ll never let you leave. That house with the servants? My guess is this time next year, you’ll be living there.”
“Griffin, fuck.” Rowan ran a hand through his hair. “You could be a little gentler about things.”
He shook his head. “Do you want more lies and easy words? Or do you want the truth, Maci? The hard truth sometimes is what’s called for.”
I didn’t want any more lies. Rowan stepped away from me, his gaze on the house. Ten of the servants rushed out the front door. I blinked. What had they been doing in there? “I better go look and see what they just did. One time, my father had them repaint all the walls while I was in school. No idea what that was.”
Griffin ran a hand through his dark hair. “Look, I don’t want to be harsh with you. That’s not, like…what I want to do.”
“I actually appreciated the truth. I…I can’t live here forever in that house, running around doing the deeds of vampires. This can’t be my life.”
Rowan shot Griffin a look before he headed toward his house. For his part, Griffin walked to me, putting his hands on my shoulders. “We can’t stop what happens to us, but maybe I can work out how to save you. I have a plan. Trust me for a little while. I don’t want you to live in that house either.”