Chapter
18
“She was here.” It was not a
question.
Drake nodded. There was no point in
lying. Rodin could detect Elena’s scent in the air as easily as
he.
“You promised not to try to see
her.”
Drake glanced at his surroundings—the
thick iron bars, the stone floor, the corpse of the large brown rat
in the next cell—before he stated the obvious. “She came to
me.”
“You expect me to believe you did not
summon her? That she found you without any help?”
Drake shrugged. “Believe what you
will.”
Rodin lifted his head and sniffed the
air. “You drank from her.”
Drake’s hands curled around the bars,
his knuckles going white as he tightened his grip. “I
tried.”
Rodin grunted softly as he caught the
faint odor of burnt cloth. “Are you ready to feed?”
Drake nodded. He was certain Elena
would never return to the dungeon, but if she did, he needed to be
in control of his hunger.
“I will send one of the sheep to you,”
Rodin said, approval in his voice. “Is there anyone in particular
you would care for?”
“ No.”
“I have arranged for a meeting between
you and Katiya for tomorrow night.”
Drake took a deep breath. Then, knowing
it was useless, he asked, “Is there nothing I can say or do to
change your mind about this?”
“You are my eldest son. You should have
taken your rightful place at the head of the Council centuries
ago.”
“Let Olaf take my place as head of the
Council. He has made no secret of the fact he wants it. I do
not.”
Rodin uttered a short, pithy curse. “I
thought we had come to terms on this!”
“Yes, your terms!”
“Did I not agree to your stipulations
regarding the woman?”
Drake snorted. “My stipulations?
Keeping her safe is nothing more than she deserves. I brought her
here as a guest. I expected you to treat her as such.”
“Be careful your weakness does not
become your undoing.”
Drake shook his head. “Be careful your
arrogance does not become yours.”
“We are much alike,” Rodin remarked as
he turned to leave. “Perhaps too much.” He paused, speaking over
his shoulder. “Very well,” he said curtly. “I will appoint Olaf as
head of the Council until you come to your senses.”
Drake stared after his sire. Rodin had
changed in the years since Drake had last seen him, but then,
change was inevitable, even for vampires.
It was near midnight when the drone
known as Number Ten entered the dungeon, with one of the sheep in
tow. Drake regarded the girl impassively as the drone unlocked the
door.
“Her name is Sophie,” the drone said,
and thrust her into the cell.
She was tall and slender, with long
brown hair and timid gray eyes. He guessed her to be no more than
fifteen or sixteen. Had he ever been that young? At the moment, he
felt every one of his five hundred years.
He grunted softly as her clean feminine
scent filled his nostrils. It was forbidden for vampires who were
old enough to reproduce to mate with the sheep. It would be doubly
forbidden for him, he mused glumly. He was to save his seed for
Katiya in hopes she would conceive and bear a son.
But it wasn’t Sophie’s body he wanted,
tempting as that might be. It was the blood he could hear
whispering through her veins.
She took an involuntary step backward
when he moved toward her.
Drake stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Is
this your first time?”
She nodded, her gaze darting around the
room, looking everywhere but at him. He couldn’t blame her for
that. With his scorched flesh and gaunt cheeks, he must look like
he had walked out of a nightmare.
“I am sorry the surroundings are not
more pleasant,” he muttered with a wry grin.
She said nothing, only stared at him,
like a fawn confronted by a wolf.
“I will not hurt you,” he said, and
hoped it was true. She flinched when he reached for her hand.
Swallowing his anger and his humiliation, he drew her down on the
pallet. He could smell the terror on her skin, hear it in the rapid
beating of her heart. Taking a deep breath, he murmured, “Relax,
child,” as he wrapped her in his arms.
It took all his willpower to control
himself. Her blood called to him. His body urged him to take her
quickly, to drink and drink and put an end to the incessant pain
that wracked him.
She trembled in his arms, her fear
increasing his instinct to hunt, to take it all. She cried out when
she looked into his face and he knew his eyes had gone
red.
“Do not fight me!” he warned, his voice
harsh. “I will not be responsible for what happens if you
do.”
Eyes tightly shut, she went rigid in
his embrace.
Hating himself for what he was about to
do, hating Rodin for sending him a woman young and untouched, he
lowered his head to her neck and took what he needed so badly,
craved so desperately.
Relief was immediate, quickly soothing
the pain that burned through him, easing a long and terrible
thirst.
He growled when the drone entered the
cell, hissed when the girl was wrested from his arms. And then,
with a cry, he slammed his fist against the stone floor, despising
himself for what he had almost done; indebted, in spite of himself,
to Rodin for sending the drone to take the girl away before he
drained her dry.
Rodin entered the dungeon two hours
later.
Drake regarded his sire through
narrowed eyes. Clad in a long wine-colored dressing gown with a
high, black velvet collar, the Master Vampire looked like royalty.
Which he was, as far as the vampire community was
concerned.
Rodin leaned one shoulder against the
cell door. “I trust the woman was to your liking?”
Drake shrugged. “They are all the same,
as you well know.”
“She satisfied your need?”
“Why did you send that particular
female to me?”
“She was young and untouched, exactly
what you needed for a quick recovery. Judging from your improved
appearance, I would say she was just right.”
“I almost killed her.”
Rodin made a dismissive gesture with
his hand. “It happens now and then.”
“But you made sure it wouldn’t happen
tonight.”
“One of your brothers fancies her,”
Rodin said with a shrug. “I promised him he could have her when you
were through.”
Striving for calm, Drake took a deep
breath. The indifferent attitude of his sire and his brothers
toward the sheep was one of the reasons he had left the Fortress.
He was a vampire, but he had fought against becoming what they
were. In some ways, he thought it would be kinder if they killed
those they fed upon. He couldn’t help thinking that death would be
preferable to captivity, knew that he would rather be dead than
live the kind of life the sheep led, never knowing freedom, never
seeing the outside world, forced to surrender their will to that of
their captors. Occasionally, if one of the vampires took a liking
to a particular man or woman, they claimed them for their own, a
private stash, as it were.
Years ago, one of the human males had
led a rebellion against the vampires. It had not ended well for the
human population. Many of them had perished here, in the
dungeon.
“You are to meet with Katiya tomorrow
night,” Rodin said. “It will give the two of you a chance to get
acquainted. Your mother has requested that we hold a reception in
two weeks to honor your betrothal. You will dress appropriately and
you will dance every dance with Katiya. When the evening is over,
you will escort her to her chambers.”
“Am I ever to have any freedom
again?”
“That depends on you. You will feed
again tomorrow night, and every night until you are
wed.”
“Send me someone with
experience.”
Rodin nodded. “As you wish.” He turned
to leave, then paused. “Do not shame me in front of Katiya’s
parents,” he warned, then vanished from sight.
Drake grasped the bars in his hands.
Katiya’s father, Cezar, was a Master Vampire in his own land. Rodin
and Cezar had been allies for centuries. In the past, they had
joined forces to fight off legions of human hunters bearing torches
and swords and stakes.
But it wasn’t the past that concerned
Drake now. It was Elena. For the first time in days, he could sense
her whereabouts, knew she was in one of the guest chambers
upstairs, sleeping.
And dreaming of him.
Drake smiled faintly. He had promised
Rodin he wouldn’t try to see Elena, but he hadn’t promised not to
visit her in her dreams.
Elena stirred restlessly, tormented by
dreams of Vardin holding her down, forcibly taking her blood, his
eyes a hellish red. And then, abruptly, her dream changed and it
was Drake holding her, his voice softly whispering her name, his
hands gentle as they lightly stroked her hair, the curve of her
cheek. She sighed as he kissed her. Was this also a dream? It felt
so real.
“Drake?”
“Yes, love?”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Yes. And no.” He kissed her again,
kissed her with such aching sweetness it brought tears to her
eyes.
His hands caressed her out of her
nightgown and then he was lying beside her, molding her body to
his, arousing her with strong, masterful hands. She reveled in his
touch, her own hands moving over him, reacquainting herself with
the width of his shoulders, the swell of his biceps, the taste of
his skin on her tongue, the thick silk of his hair.
When he rose over her, his eyes glowing
with need, she opened to him gladly. If she lived to be a hundred,
there would never be anyone else for her. Only Drake, always and
forever, whether they were together or apart.
“I love you,” she
murmured.
“And I love you,” he replied. “Whether
you are near or far, you will always be the other half of my soul,
the wife of my heart.”
He caught her close, their bodies
melding, moving together, her heat warming him, his kisses arousing
her, until she writhed beneath him, reaching, reaching, for that
one perfect moment in time when two became one.
She sobbed with pleasure as he moved
deep within her, caught up in the wonder and the magic that sparked
between them, bound by the passion between them, bound by the
night.
Breathless, she clung to him as
pleasure exploded deep within her, cried his name when she felt him
withdrawing.
“I love you,” he murmured, his voice
fading. “I will always love you.”
She woke naked and alone in her bed,
her cheeks damp with tears.
The woman the drone brought him the
next night was in her late twenties. There was no fear in her eyes
when Drake took her in his arms, only a kind of weary resignation
that twisted like a knife in his gut, flaying him with guilt and
regret for what he was, for the need that would not be
denied.
He bent her back over his arm, his hand
sweeping her hair to the side as he lowered his head to her neck.
He took what he wanted with uncharacteristic roughness, and sent
her away.
When she was gone, he wrapped his hands
around the bars and rested his forehead against the cold steel,
grateful that Elena would soon be gone from this place, a place
that he hated with every fiber of his being.