Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
CHERYL
ELLNESARI, PRESENT DAY
M y head is pounding, and my eyelids are heavy.
I’m tired, and I want to sleep, but an insistent poking in my arm won’t let me rest. I open my eyes to glare at whoever is disturbing my peace and find a pair of bright blue eyes, wide with wonder, staring at me.
It’s a youngster, no older than five, with round, pink cheeks and the most adorable mane of curly black hair.
She looks over her shoulder and shouts, “Mama, she’s awake, she’s awake!”
I wince. “Ugh, not so loud, please.”
A female with pale skin and brown hair walks over. She’s wearing a simple blue dress with long bell-shaped sleeves. It’s something I’d see at a Renaissance fair—or in Ellnesari, it seems.
“Hush, child. Let her rest.” The woman pulls her daughter away.
I sit, groaning as I do so. My back is sort of healed, but the skin is still tender. But the most glaring problem is the lethargy. I need my full strength back so I can escape.
I look around and realize I’m in a big room with several beds and a common area with a couple of couches, a wooden table, and a fireplace, but no windows. I’m not in a prison cell, but taking into account that the only way out seems to be through the one door I see, I might as well be.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in Salthollow,” the little girl replies.
“Huh?”
“Ollie, she just got here. She doesn’t know where Salthollow is,” her mother replies. “I’m Lana, and this is my daughter, Ollie. How much do you know about Ellnesari and all the kingdoms?”
“Not much. I’ve been to the Aquila Kingdom, and that’s about it.”
Her eyes widen. “You’ve been to Aquila? How is that possible?”
“Long story. You’re a vampire. How did you end up here?”
Her eyes grow sad. “I was taken when I was fifteen or so.”
She appears to be in her late twenties by human standards, but vampires stop aging at a certain age. It’s impossible for me to tell how old she truly is.
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, it’s hard to say. The years blur together after a while.”
There are other females in the room, all staring at me with varying degrees of curiosity, and some with distrust.
“And you never tried to escape?”
The female touches the choker collar around her neck. “Yes, once, when I got here. But I didn’t get far.”
I touch my own neck and discover I’ve been collared too. “What does this thing do?”
“Renders your body useless in a most painful way.”
Fucking great. No wonder I’m not behind bars when they’ve guaranteed I can’t run away. But maybe if I shift, it’ll break.
A petite blonde female, heavily pregnant, ambles closer, supporting her lower back with her hand. “Hi, I’m Heidi.”
I don’t mean to stare, but my gaze drops to her belly. She looks like she’s about to pop. A pregnant vampire is such a strange sight, and so is the young vampire girl, to be honest.
“I’m due in a week,” she says as if reading my mind.
I look at her face again.
“Sorry. It was rude of me to stare. My name is Cheryl.”
“Nice to meet you, Cheryl.” She smiles, and it doesn’t seem forced.
As a matter of fact, none of the females here look too distraught. Maybe that’s what centuries of captivity did—it snuffed out the fight in them.
Pieces of the conversation I overheard on the way here start to make sense. Somehow, the old creep who runs this place found a way to travel to the human world. He seems obsessed with collecting vampires to fight the shadowbeasts. But I imagine traveling there and kidnapping vampires isn’t easy.
It’s then that the most glaring detail about this place becomes evident to me.
Vampires have been unable to procreate for centuries—since the Nightingales sealed the portals to the human world, to be exact.
But standing before me is one pregnant vampire, and a youngster who was clearly born in Ellnesari.
“Oh my God. That’s what those fuckers are doing here? Breeding vampires like a puppy mill operation?” I blurt out.
Ollie’s mother pulls the little girl closer to her, and Heidi furrows her brow. “I’m glad I was brought here, and now I’m able to bring new life into the world.”
“It doesn’t bother you that your child will be a slave to the monster who took you away from your family?”
Heidi’s expression becomes harder. “I had no family.”
Another female joins us and helps Heidi, but she’s glowering at me. “What do you know of our problems? You’re a wolf shifter. I don’t even know why they put you here with us.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. As far as I know, there aren’t any wolf shifters in Ellnesari besides Karl, and hopefully, he’s far away from this place. I wouldn’t put it past that old creep to force me to procreate. He probably wants to use me to fight shadowbeasts too.
“Where do they keep the males?” I ask, thinking about Ronan.
Heidi trades a look with Lana.
“What is it?” I ask.
“There aren’t any males here,” Lana replies.
Fear spears my chest. “What do you mean? Where do they keep them?”
“What she meant,” the female helping Heidi interjects, “is that there aren’t any males left . They’ve all died.”
“Died how?” I force the words out.
Heidi shudders. “Shadowbeasts.”