Eternally too late.
But time had already run out.
She didn’t have to turn around to know that Drake was there. Though he made no sound, she could feel his presence looming behind her like a dark cloud. She swallowed hard, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. There was a moment out of time, as if someone had suddenly removed blinders from her eyes and her heart, and she knew him for what he was, almost as if she could see into his very soul. How had she not sensed his preternatural power before? She felt it now. It crawled over her skin, making the fine hairs on her arms stand at attention.
“Good evening, wife,” he said quietly.
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t form the words to ask the questions that pounded in her mind, demanding answers.
“Have you nothing to say?” he asked in that same quiet tone. “No questions to ask me?”
Her silence, combined with her continued refusal to look at him, aroused his anger. She could feel the weight of it pressing down on her like a giant hand.
“Elena, look at me.” It wasn’t a request but a command.
Afraid to provoke him further, afraid of what she would see, she slowly turned to face him, her gaze not quite meeting his. She had expected to find the monster staring back at her, but it was just Drake.
“You have nothing to fear from me, wife.”
She licked her lips, but remained silent. Dozens of questions clamored in her mind: How long had he been a vampire ? When and how had it happened? Was he the only one? How many other men—and women—had he killed? How often did he have to . . .
She shut the door on that train of thought, and all the others. Asking questions, hearing his answers, would make it all too real.
“Elena.” He took a step toward her, but stopped when she recoiled. “Dammit, woman, I am not going to hurt you.”
“How can I believe you?” She shook her head, as if to dispel the memory of what had happened the night before. “I saw what you did. I saw your eyes . . . they were”—she wrapped her arms around her waist—“they were red, and you looked like . . .”
“Go on,” he said, his face and voice devoid of emotion. “How did I look?”
“Like death,” she whispered. “You looked like death.”
“I never wanted you to see me like that.”
“Please, I just want to go home.”
“You are my wife. This is your home now.”
“No! We never consummated our marriage. Please, just let me go back home. I won’t tell anyone what you are, I promise.” Who would believe her?
“Is that what you really want?” Drake asked, his anger surfacing. “To go back and marry that fat old man? To have his hands on you?”
She forced the word through clenched teeth. “Yes.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue.
“Now who is lying? You want me, Elena. You have wanted me from the first night, and we both know it.”
“No!” She shook her head again, more vigorously this time, as if that would make her denial true.
Drake took a deep breath, and changed tack. “Have I mistreated you? Hurt you in any way? Done anything to make you fear me?”
“You lied to me.” She blinked rapidly in an effort to hold back her tears. She didn’t want to go back to her uncle, but how could she stay here? With a vampire?
“I never lied to you.”
“You let me believe you were human,” she retorted. “I’d call that a lie, wouldn’t you?”
“A sin of omission, perhaps,” he allowed grudgingly. “But I had no choice. Telling mortals what we are is forbidden. I could not have told you the truth even had I wished it.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “There are more of you?”
He nodded.
“How many more?” The idea that there could be other vampires living here . . . She felt a burst of hysterical laughter bubble up in her throat. Where else would vampires live but Transylvania? The laughter died in her throat. There were more of them. How was that possible? How on earth was any of this possible?
“I am the only one here,” Drake said, “but there are others. Perhaps half a million of us worldwide.”
It wasn’t a vast number, given the world’s population of over six billion people. Still . . .
“If that’s true, why doesn’t anyone know? If there are vampires running around drinking blood . . .” She paced back and forth a moment, trying to clear her head. “Sooner or later, someone would find out. Wouldn’t they?” When he hesitated, she said, “The truth, Drake. I want the truth.”
“The knowledge of our existence is erased from the mind of anyone who discovers it.”
“Erased?”
“Wiped away. Obliterated.”
“How? How can you do that?” The bitter taste of bile rose in the back of her throat as her imagination conjured visions of Drake cutting away a part of her brain.
When she swayed on her feet, Drake took her by the hand. “You need to sit down,” he said. Guiding her to one of the sofas, he eased her down on the cushions, then went to the carafe on the table and filled a glass with water. “Here, drink this.”
She accepted the glass with a hand that shook visibly.
Drake watched her, his arms folded over his chest, wondering if she was going to faint.
She drained the glass, then looked up at him. “How?” she asked again.
“Nothing as bizarre as what you are thinking,” he assured her. “It is done by a form of hypnosis. Quite painless.”
“Are you going to do that to me?”
“No.” It was true, for the moment.
“What are you going to do to me?”
He lifted one brow. “Do?”
She touched the side of her neck, her gaze on his face.
“Ah, that.” He sat beside her, an oath escaping his lips when she flinched.
“Are you going to . . . to . . . drink from me?”
“I already have.”
She blinked at him. “I don’t believe you. I would have known . . . wouldn’t I?”
“I took only a taste now and then, while you slept.”
Her eyes widened. “Am I going to become a vampire?”
“No.”
She sank back against the sofa cushions, relief evident in every line of her body. “How did you become a vampire?”
“I did not ‘become’ a vampire.” He looked at Elena. She was shivering. He glanced at the hearth. A thought touched the banked coals, bringing the fire to vibrant life. “Vampire.” The word rolled easily off his tongue. “It is what I am. What I have always been.”
Chapter 11
Elena stared at Drake, some of her fear receding as she considered what he had said. “But . . . I thought . . .” She had never heard of anyone being born a vampire. In books and movies, the only way to become one of the Undead was with a blood exchange. She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“We are not the monsters of myth and legend, but they do exist, although they are now few in number.”
“Have you ever met one?”
“Yes, years ago.”
“Do they live the way your people do?”
“No. We are enemies.”
“Why?”
“The Others are a more violent, more barbarous race. They tend to kill their prey and often each other. They have no clan loyalty, no sense of family or honor, no care for anyone but themselves. Centuries ago, the Others declared war on humanity. They killed men, women, and children without reason or mercy, threatening to expose us all. My father summoned the Master Vampires of the other Covens and they destroyed all of the Others they could find. It was a long and bloody battle, but it accomplished its purpose. The Others who survived changed their ways. They did not stop killing but they became more discreet.”
“More discreet?”
“They stopped leaving bodies in the street. They started preying on those who would not be missed—transients and the like. But the war continued. Each Coven
vowed to continue to fight them, and to destroy any that they find.”
“Oh.” She blew out a sigh. “I’m glad I never met one of those. But tell me more about you, about your people.”
“We are a very old race, once hunted to near extinction by zealots and warrior-priests because we need blood to survive. We were accused of witchcraft, or of consorting with Satan, because, once we reach adulthood, the aging process slows as the need for blood becomes stronger.” Though he spoke to her, his gaze was on the flames. “Some give in to the burning need for blood immediately. Some fight it, but the pain of resisting is excruciating. Sooner or later, we all surrender to what is, for us, a basic need for survival. Once we have ingested human blood, three things occur—we are no longer capable of digesting mortal food, we can no longer abide the sun’s light, and we stop aging. The first year after we give in to the urge to drink, we must drink often. To resist can be fatal.”
It was a fantastic story, Elena thought, something one might read in an ancient book of fairy tales. She looked at him closely as a new thought popped into her head. “How old were you when you stopped aging?”
“Nearly thirty.”
She frowned, wondering how long he had fought the compulsion to drink blood.
“Vampires are considered mature at twenty.”
She marveled at his self-control. He had resisted the urge to feed for almost ten years. It was a long time to endure the kind of pain he had described, to fight against something that was a basic need. “How old are you?”
“Five centuries as of last month.”
The number was staggering. What would it be like to live that long? To never age? Never see the sun? Never consume anything but blood—no, that wasn’t true. He drank wine. How was that possible? Curious, she put the question to him.
“I can drink small amounts with no ill effects,” he replied, “as long as I feed beforehand.”
“What’s it like, to live such a long time?”
“It can be challenging. After a few hundred years, you have done everything, seen everything there is to see. For those who dislike change, the world can be a frightening place. Like mortals, our kind respond to the vicissitudes of life in a variety of ways. Some embrace them, some reject them, some choose to seek their own destruction. There are those who simply grow weary of living. They go to the Fortress and bury themselves in the ground.”
Buried alive? She choked back her nausea. She had always been afraid of small, dark places, couldn’t imagine anyone willingly entombing themselves in the ground.
Seeing the revulsion on her face, he said, “For us, it is a way to rest, to rejuvenate ourselves when we have lost the will to live.”
“Have you ever done that?”
“No.” His gaze caressed her face. “I must admit, I was considering it, until I met you.”
“So, the vampires of fiction are just that, fiction?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?”
“The vampires of legend, Nosferatu, also exist, but in very small numbers. I have never met one.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Some believe a fallen angel found one of our kind thousands of years ago. The vampire was dying of injuries inflicted by another of our kind when the angel found him. With his last breath, the vampire bit the angel. The angel died. The vampire was reborn as Nosferatu.”
It was too much, Elena thought. Vampires who were made. Vampires who were born that way. It was all too bizarre to consider, too impossible to be real. She pressed her hands to her temples. She could feel a headache coming on, no doubt caused by the fact that Drake’s revelations had turned her world inside out and upside down.
“Elena, look at me.”
Though reluctant, she did as bidden.
His gaze captured hers as he placed his hands gently over her own. She stared into his eyes, deep, dark, fathomless eyes that seemed to draw her in until she saw nothing else. Gradually, the throbbing in her head disappeared. The tension drained out of her body, leaving her feeling warm and tranquil.
What was he doing to her? Was he hypnotizing her? Erasing her memory? Maybe that would be for the best.
“Relax, wife, the only thing I have done is erase the pain in your head.”
Suddenly weary, she leaned against him. It was too much to absorb—what he was, what he had told her. It was all simply too fantastic to believe. Maybe she was dreaming. Yes, dreaming. Sighing, she closed her eyes. When she awoke tomorrow, life would be normal again.
Drake stroked Elena’s hair, her cheek, the curve of her neck. He had violated vampire law twice now, first in telling her who and what he was, and then by not wiping the knowledge from her mind. He refused to consider taking her life. The rules of the Coven didn’t seem important when she was near. The beat of her heart was music to his ears, the scent of her skin more fragrant than the primroses that grew in the garden, the heat of her body a welcome warmth against his own cool flesh.
After five hundred years as a vampire, there was little left in the mortal world that surprised him, but sitting there, with Elena sleeping beside him, he discovered that he cared more deeply than he had imagined for the woman who was his wife in name only. Even more astonishing was the realization that he wanted her love more than he had ever wanted anything in his life.
With a shake of his head, he stared into the fire, certain that he had a better chance of gaining heaven than winning the fair Elena’s love.
Eyes closed, Elena turned over on her stomach and tried to go back to sleep. After last night, she was reluctant to face a new day, although a glance at her watch told her that the day was already half gone. Plagued by scary dreams, she had awakened several times during the night. Each time, Drake had been there beside her, his voice lulling her back to sleep. Odd, that finding him in her bed hadn’t frightened her, considering all she had learned.
With a sigh of exasperation, she flopped over onto her back. A quick glance showed that she was alone in bed. Well, not exactly alone. Smoke lay on Drake’s pillow, regarding her through half-closed eyes.
Elena turned onto her side, her chin pillowed on her hand. “So, cat, whatever am I to do? How can I stay here with him, knowing what he is? How can I ever trust him?”
The cat blinked at her, then yawned, revealing very white, very sharp teeth.
Elena stared at the cat, and the memory of how Drake’s fangs had looked when he’d bent over one of the robbers rose in her mind. His teeth, too, had been very sharp and very white.
She shook the image away. All felines—and vampires, she supposed—came equipped with very sharp, very white teeth.
After slipping out of bed, she washed her face and hands, brushed her hair and her teeth, then pulled on her khaki shorts and a T-shirt and went downstairs. She was too upset to eat. Instead, she paced the great hall and then, on impulse, she went to the front door, which still refused to open.
She uttered every swear word she knew, but it didn’t make her feel any better, and the darn thing still didn’t open.
Turning away, she practically tripped over the cat. “Must you always be underfoot?” she muttered irritably.
“Meow.”
Sidestepping around the cat, Elena made her way to the kitchen’s back door. Maybe it would open today. Working in the garden might help to calm her nerves, help her to think of what to do next.
She wasn’t surprised when the door still refused to open.
“This is so unfair!” She shook the handle with both hands, and then, her frustration rising, she kicked the door. “I feel like I’m suffocating in here!”
“Meow.”
“Oh, go away.”
But the cat didn’t go away. Slipping between her legs, the big gray tom lifted one paw and gave the door a push.
And it swung open.
With another meow, the cat darted outside.
Elena stared after the remarkable creature for several minutes. Truly, it was a most unusual
cat. Drake admitted to being a vampire. Was he a warlock, as well? Everyone knew witches often kept cats as familiars. But he had said he didn’t own a cat. She frowned. Maybe it was just semantics. Or maybe, she thought with a rueful grin, the cat owned Drake.
With a shake of her head, Elena stepped over the threshold. She didn’t care if the cat possessed some kind of feline mojo or not. All that mattered was that she was outside.
She took a deep breath of the clean, fresh air as she glanced at the high walls that surrounded the castle. There must be a gate. Maybe she had missed it the first time she’d looked. Starting at the corner nearest the house, she made a slow exploration of the wall, but there was no gate, no trellis, no way out. If only she had a ladder.
With a shrug, Elena found the gloves she had worn before and set to work on another patch of weeds. She tried to keep her mind blank as she knelt in the dirt, but, perhaps inevitably, Drake intruded on her thoughts. He was a vampire. It was impossible but true. Try as she might, Elena couldn’t decide how she felt about him now, although, in truth, she had never been certain what to think of him. He was unlike any man she had ever met. Of course, she hadn’t met very many men, especially men who were five hundred years old.
She wasn’t surprised when the cat appeared. Sitting in the shade of an old oak tree, it watched her with a faintly bored expression.
“Too bad you can’t make yourself useful,” Elena muttered. “This would go a lot faster if I had some help.”
With a flick of his tail, the cat curled up and closed its eyes.
An hour or so later, Elena decided she needed a rest. Rising, she stretched her back and shoulders. The exercise had done her good. Feeling suddenly hungry, she peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the iron bench.
Smoke trailed her into the house.
Elena glared at the cat. “You are such a pest. Can’t you find something else to do besides follow me around?”
A loud “meow” was her only answer.
In the kitchen, Elena washed and dried her hands. As always, Drake had provided her with a tasty meal. Whatever faults he might have, he always made sure she had plenty to eat. Sometimes he left her prepared meals; sometimes just the ingredients.
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