He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, then kissed her lightly. “I cannot go.”
“Why not?” She looked up at him, wishing she could see his face. “Why can’t we leave the same way we got here?”
“I am bound.”
“I don’t understand.”
He lifted one leg and she heard the rattle of chains. “Shackles,” he explained. “Only Rodin can free me.” He caressed her cheek. “I never should have brought you here. Never brought you into my life.”
“They feed on people.”
“He told you that?”
“I saw it. I saw them. The . . . the sheep.”
Taking off his coat, Drake spread it on the hard cement. “Come, sit down,” he urged, and sat beside her, his arm sliding around her shoulders to draw her close.
“Did you do that? Feed on those helpless people?”
“Years ago,” he admitted quietly. “When I was very young.”
“Your mother said they don’t kill them. Is that true?”
“Partly. Accidents happen when we are changing. Sometimes there is a loss of control.” There were those in the outside world who preferred to kill their prey. There was no law against it, as long as there were no bodies drained of blood left behind. Vampires who went rogue and became a danger to the Coven were destroyed. But he saw no need to tell Elena that, not now.
“Where do they come from?” she asked hesitantly. “The sheep?”
Drake’s gaze slid away from hers. This was another part of his existence he had hoped to keep hidden from her. “We raise them. They have never known any other life.”
Elena listened in mounting horror as he told her how the people she had seen in the dining hall were the descendants of three couples that Rodin had captured hundreds of years ago.
“As I said, they are rarely mistreated. They are well fed. They are taught to read and write by their parents. Here, in the Fortress, they are given books to read and other things to occupy their time. Some of them work in the kitchens. Others in the laundry. They live in dormitories in the basement—boys in one, girls in another—until they are old enough to mate, and then a select few are allowed rooms of their own.”
“But they’re prisoners. It’s wrong to keep people locked up for food, to breed them like . . . like . . .”
“Sheep?”
“Yes! How can you be a party to such a thing? It’s barbaric!”
“I never said I approved. It is one of the reasons I do not stay here. The reason I left in the first place.”
Elena frowned. If they raised the people for food . . . “Where are the children? The babies?”
“They are housed elsewhere until they are grown.”
“With their parents?”
“Yes, until they are sixteen, and then they come here.”
“But, the children? Are they always locked up? Do they ever get to go outside and play in the fresh air?”
“Elena . . .”
Her answer was there, in the tone of his voice.
Elena stared up at the sliver of sky visible through the roof, her heart aching for the people who were kept here against their will, for the children who would never know the freedom to run and play outdoors. These people deserved to be free, to live their own lives, to come and go as they pleased. She couldn’t begin to imagine how they must feel. And yet, Drake had said they had never known any other life. She thought of the homeless people her uncle had told her about when she complained that she wanted a new dress. He had told her to be thankful for what she had, that there were children who lived on the streets in the big cities who had to beg for their bread, men who had to steal to feed their families.
She shook her head. As terrible as that might be, she thought she would rather starve than spend her life in this place, to have no other purpose than to provide sustenance for vampires.
Drake’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “I cannot change it, Elena,” he said. “It has been our way for centuries. Were it not for the ready supply of blood that is here, Rodin’s people would be forced to prey upon those in the outside world.”
“Are there places like this wherever your people live?”
“Yes. Every country throughout the world has a similar Fortress, and each one is ruled by a Master Vampire.”
“And your father ordered you here to mate with another vampire?”
“Yes. And to take my place on the Council, something I have resisted for three hundred years.”
“That empty chair. It’s for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I noticed that the men all bear a striking resemblance to your father.”
“They are my brothers.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, though we do not all have the same mother.”
“What does the Council do?”
“They judge those who have broken our laws, and execute them, if necessary.”
Elena went cold inside. Were they going to execute Drake for marrying her? Surely not! Surely the members of the Council wouldn’t pass a sentence of death on their own brother. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she had tumbled into a nightmare from which there was no escape.
“Is that what you wish?” Drake asked, stroking her hair.
“What?”
“To escape? To be free of me?”
She chewed on her thumbnail. Did she want that? Did she want to leave Drake and never see him again? Go back to her old life with her uncle? If she left Drake, he would be free to marry the woman Rodin had chosen for him and there would be no need for him to suffer anymore. She shook her head. How could she leave him? “I don’t know.”
“If it is your desire, Rodin will erase your memories of this place and everything that happened since the night we met. It will be as if none of it ever happened.”
“And if I stay?”
“You would be wiser to go.”
She tried to see his face in the darkness. “Is that what you want?”
“I am only thinking of what is best for you.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No. You are the only thing in my life that matters. But there is no place for you here. And even if there were, you would not be happy living among us, knowing what is going on.” He took a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh. “If Rodin offers you the chance to leave, you should take it.”
It wasn’t a decision Elena was ready to make, so she changed the subject. “Is this where you come to feed?”