“Apparently, a whimpering figure was then pushed forward and the speaker slashed at them with something, then tossed them into the room and the door closed.”
Allie paused for another drink, her voice grim when she said, “Stella was still having trouble seeing, but she could smell blood and the person was weeping and she managed to get to her hands and knees to move to them. She wanted to help them, wanted to see if she could stanch their wounds or something, but the smell of the blood was overwhelming and her body was cramping. She said the next thing she knew she was licking up the blood rather than trying to stanch it, and then Stephen was beside her licking at one of the other wounds and they both went a little crazy trying to get more and everything became blurry in her memory again except she recalls the sudden onset of pain. Terrible, screaming agony that left her writhing on the ground and shrieking.”
“She was probably telling the truth and didn’t recall much clearly,” Tricia said quietly when Allie fell silent. “It was probably just nightmarish flashes in her memory. The turning can make a person . . .”
When Tricia paused, looking like she wasn’t sure how to say what she was trying to explain, Magnus said, “During a turn, the turnee becomes desperate to get blood, but once they get it, the nanos set to work on the body in earnest and it is apparently unbearably painful. Turnees have been known to do themselves great harm trying to bring an end to that pain.”
“Yeah,” Tybo murmured. “I’ve even heard of them clawing out their own eyes if not restrained.”
Allie stared at them all blankly, and then asked, “Nanos?”
“Explanations later,” Lucian said coldly. “Continue with what Stella told you.”
For a moment, Magnus thought Allie would rebel and demand answers, but in the end she seemed to decide she’d made him wait long enough and continued.
“Stella didn’t know how long she was in that basement. But the same thing kept happening over and over. She’d wake up in terrible pain in that dark room, either just moments before, or to the sound of, the door opening. The blinding light would come on, a voice would taunt them, and then another poor person would be sliced up and thrown in to them like raw meat tossed to dogs. And every time, she and Stephen would fall on the person in search of their blood and then end up writhing on the ground in agony.”
Allie peered down at her glass and slowly began to rotate it on the tabletop. “Stella was ashamed of what she could remember. And shocked and horrified that she was capable of what she’d done.” Glancing up, she added, “I was rather shocked myself. It just didn’t fit with the woman I’d come to know. Stella was sweet, and funny and kind. This all had to be fantasy, I was sure.”
Lowering her gaze to her glass again, she sighed. “Anyway, Stella said eventually she woke up one night and didn’t hurt everywhere. In fact, she felt amazing. So when the door opened, the light came on, and a bloodied person was tossed in, she felt sure she could resist.”
“But she could not,” Magnus guessed quietly, knowing that while the worst of the turning must have been over at that point, it was still happening, and Stella and her husband would have yet needed a lot of blood. They just wouldn’t have realized it until the scent hit them.
“No. Neither of them could. But this time there was no screaming agony to follow and help them forget. Instead, they were left sated, no longer light blind, and were able to see the charnel house they had made of the room. The decomposing bodies of their victims were all still there, the walls spattered with their blood, and now she could smell the rot. The combination was enough to make her throw up half the blood she’d just consumed, and left her so weak Stephen had to carry her out when this time their captors returned for them.
“Stella said they were taken to another larger room full of people crowding around the edges while a man sat on the only chair in the middle of an open space, like a king on his throne.”
“Did she describe him?” Lucian asked at once. “Tell you his name?”
Allie bit her lip and looked thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “She told me his name. It was strange. Something I’ve never heard before, but . . .” She shook her head. “I’ll remember it eventually. I just can’t recall it right now. I think she said he had dark hair, though. And I remember her saying you wouldn’t think him a monster to look at him. He just appeared normal . . . and if you’d put him in a suit he could have been mistaken for an accountant. She said that somehow made him more terrifying. That he was so average-looking, but so horrible and soulless.”
Lucian frowned at her words, but nodded and sat back, apparently willing to wait to see if the name returned to her.
“Anyway, he welcomed them and explained that through his generosity they had been turned into vampires rather than merely becoming food for the group like the pathetic creatures they had fed on. But now they could not return to their former lives. They were his. He was their sire. They quite simply could not survive without him, and as the room they’d woken in was their grave, they must return to it before dawn every day, and must never leave it before the sun set or they would perish.”
“What?” Mortimer asked with disbelief.
When Allie merely nodded, Tybo grimaced and said, “Some of the tales and movies about vampires suggest they have to return to their coffin when the sun rises and remain until it sets or they will die. A lot also have a thing about keeping dirt from their grave in it if they want to move around and not remain in the graveyard.” He shrugged mildly. “Obviously this rogue was using a variation on that to control his turns. They wouldn’t run away while he was sleeping if they didn’t think they could leave the room where they were turned.”
When Mortimer grunted with disgust at that and then turned back to Allie expectantly, she raised her eyebrows. “So you don’t have to stay in coffins or something from sunrise to sunset.”
“It is morning right now,” Magnus pointed out gently, and she glanced out the window to the front yard with surprise.
“Oh. Right. I forgot,” she muttered.
“We do not sleep in coffins anymore, and would not have perished if we got out of them during daytime when we did,” Magnus assured her.
“So you did sleep in coffins at one time?” she asked with dismay.
“Only because it was safer,” Magnus assured her, and then noticing the way Lucian was shifting impatiently, he smiled wryly at her. “But I shall explain about that later.”
“Right,” she said, eyeing Lucian now herself. “Okay. So, I guess their sire lauded on quite a bit about how lucky they were he had chosen to turn them, and then he gave them a lot of . . . well, sort of rules.”
“What kind of rules?” Katricia asked with curiosity.
Allie thought briefly and then said, “He told them food was now off-limits. It would do them no good and they would just vomit it back up along with the blood they did need. He promised he’d kill them rather than put up with subjects wasting blood that way.” She tilted her head and added, “Which obviously isn’t true since Liam can eat and you guys all had the cookies and hot chocolate and aren’t getting sick.”
Magnus blinked at her words, realizing only then that he too had eaten a cookie, which wouldn’t be remarkable except that he hadn’t felt hunger for food for centuries. If he’d doubted that Allie might be a possible life mate, his sudden indulgence in food eliminated it. That was another sign of having met a life mate, a return of desire for food . . . and sex. Magnus didn’t yet know if he had the desire for sex. He found Allie attractive, but hadn’t suddenly become a slavering animal, wanting to rip her clothes off.