A Bond of Blood (A Shade of Vampire #9)(19)

Derek turned back to face me. I wished that he could offer me some words of comfort, but there really was nothing more that could be said. “We have to escape from here,” he muttered.

We’d both repeated those words to each other countless times already, but neither of us knew where to even start.

I didn’t remember ever feeling so powerless. It was ironic—I’d wanted to turn back into a vampire all those years ago so that I’d never have to feel helpless, the way I did now.

Thanks to Annora, I’d been rendered as useless as a human. I buried my head against my knees.

Hope that we would ever find Anna in time was nonexistent now. A part of me was already mourning for her and her unborn child.

Another sound of the dungeon door unbolting brought me to my senses. A vampire guard shuffled along the corridor, dragging a frail old woman by the neck. He led her to an empty cell a few feet away from ours and threw her inside. Then he rushed back out of the dungeon and bolted the door behind him.

I stared at the old woman he’d just dumped in here. With light grey, almost white hair, she was short and stick-thin. Her complexion was yellow-tinged and her skin hung against her skeleton like damp fabric against a metal rake. She wore nothing but a thin cotton nightdress and her whole body shivered as she huddled into a corner.

The sorry state of her was enough to distract me for a few moments. “Excuse me,” I called, in as soft a tone as I could manage.

The woman let out a soft whimper.

“Please,” I whispered, “I just want to talk to you.”

She peered at me with anxious eyes.

“I need you to tell me what you know about this place. How long have you been here?’

“A-about a month,” she responded, her voice rasping.

“Do you know what they do with all the humans they collect here?” I asked.

She looked at me in wide-eyed terror.

“Tell me, please,” I urged.

“They’re taken away from here. I don’t know what happens to them.”

“Where are they taken to, do you know?”

“I have no idea. But once they fall through the hole, they never come back.”

Hole? “What hole?” Derek urged.

“I-In one of the dungeons… one of the dungeons where prisoners aren’t kept. There’s a hole in the floor. An abyss.”

Derek and I exchanged shocked glances.

“How is it that you know this, and you’re still here?” I asked.

“I’m… not well.” She held up a weak hand to reveal several scabs. “They noticed I was sick just before they pushed me into the hole. My blood is infected and they decided they didn’t want me. So that’s why I’m back here. I don’t know how long it will be b-before they end me.” She swallowed back a sob.

So it’s true. After all this time, there are gates to other realms still open.

What else could this hole be?

“Have you seen a pregnant woman? Black hair, green eyes?” I asked. “Anna, her name is.”

“No. Not seen a pregnant woman here. Then again, there are a number of dungeons in this castle. But you’re probably wasting your time. My guess is they already took her though the hole.”

“Where is this hole you speak of?” Derek asked, gripping the bars and staring at her intensely.

“It’s not far from the kitchen. A few hallways along.”

“So it’s near this dungeon?”

She nodded. “Quite near.”

The problem was, even if by some miracle we managed to break free from this dungeon and reach the gate, we had no idea where it would lead to and whether we would ever find Anna and her child in the limited time we’d have… assuming they were still alive.

Chapter 18: Sofia

Derek paced up and down the cell for what felt like hours. His demeanor was doing little to calm my own nerves as I sat next to Rose and my father. The other vampires had stopped talking. We were all weak—we hadn’t had blood for too long. As for Rose, I didn’t know when she’d last had a meal, but she looked pale.

Derek and I offered her some of our blood for strength, but she refused. Which came as no surprise. Even when she was ill she refused to drink it.

I suspected that we’d have to force her to drink it if we were trapped here much longer.

The other vampires in our cell huddled as far away from my daughter as possible. We were all starting to suffer from lack of blood and with our stomachs grumbling, the smell of Rose’s sweet blood wasn’t helping.

I leant my head back against the stone wall and shut my eyes.

“What in the world…”

I looked up to see Ibrahim shoot to his feet, flexing his fingers. A few seconds later, the lights fixed to the walls in the dungeon flickered and went out, plunging us into darkness.

“What?” Derek asked, staring at Ibrahim.

The other witches also rushed to stand up.

Ibrahim looked from me to Derek. “I feel my powers returning to me.”

“Huh?”

He turned to the gate and, gripping the bars, uttered a spell. It blasted open, sending pieces of sharp iron flying everywhere.

I scrambled to my feet, staring at the open gate, dumbstruck. We had no time to try to make sense of the situation. Somehow, Annora’s control over us had loosened. How long this would last, we had no idea.