“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. You will wake up. You won’t be dead.”
“No, I will 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.”
“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, it always has 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 a parents having sex problem. 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.