The Order.
It was the first thought in Gray's mind as his feet hit dirt and he became mobile once again. The Order had taken him, ripped him from the woman's arms and deposited here.
But where exactly was here?
He glanced around himself, taking in the dirt floor, the stone boulders jutting out behind him and the bars containing him in the front. What the hell was this? And why was this?
He heard voices, deep inside his head. That's where they filtered into, where he could now contain and compartmentalize them. As he went through each one trying to figure out the truth of where he'd landed, his gaze moved through the bars and extended out to the massive oval beyond. It was something akin to a football stadium, but below ground, dark and lit with thousands of candles. He moved toward it, stopping only when he hit metal, and as he listened to the voices around him, he took in the landscape, dotted with stone tables. In the dim candlelight, Gray could make out the writhing bodies of Impure males and females laid out on the stone slabs, their arms and ankles bound, their bodies unclothed and shaking. His mind captured their cries for release, for mercy.
What the fuck was happening here?
More cages, more cells like the one he found himself in circumvented the oval space. One after the other, all facing the center-all able to watch the display. It was like a very large rattrap, Gray mused, and his fellow rats stood like him at the bars of their cages and watched the spectacle before them. Their faces pale, their minds filled with terror and sadness and a bleak hope for escape, while their bodies held rigid, unclothed and cold.
For the first time, Gray realized that he too was naked. The air felt cool and damp against his skin, as though he existed inside a spring-fed brook. But this place in which he had been dropped felt as far from the gentle and sweet smelling forest floor as one could get.
Another one.
Another Impure fool.
The male voice inside Gray's head came from such a distance he could barely make it out, but by the last few words it shot forward and bloomed.
He wasn't alone in his cage.
Gray turned just in time to see a tall blond male walk out of the shadows of the rocks toward him. Gray narrowed his eyes and glanced past the male. How many others were back there? he wondered. And how far did their hiding place stretch? With his eyes narrowed, he glimpsed two others huddled within a split in the rock. An older male and a young female, both nude, both with strangely quiet minds.
"What is this?" Gray asked the male coming toward him, his tone low and fierce. He didn't know if these Impures were friendly or feral. "Where are we?"
"You're kidding, right?" the male said bitterly, his own nude frame gaunt, though his height rivaled Gray's.
Gray held out his arms. "Do I look like I'm kidding? Why are we being held here? Is this something else having to do with Ethan Dare or his followers?"
The male narrowed his eyes. "This is the Paleo."
The word meant nothing to Gray and he continued to press the male for answers. "Never heard of it."
The male sniffed. "Not possible. Anyone who grew up in the credenti knows of the Paleo."
"Yes, Impure," the older male called out from behind the young one, moving his face into the light. It was a long, tired face, and felt somehow familiar. "What game do you play?" he asked brusquely.
"This is no game to me," Gray assured them harshly. "I was brought here without a word, without a chance to fight. I am in the dark about why the Order wants me here and all I'm asking for are answers." He was getting nothing from those around him-nothing but fear and pain and cries for release. It was so much like the time spent in Dare's presence, he could barely stomach it.
"The Order wants you here for the same reason they want all of us here," the young male answered.
"And why is that?" Gray pressed with little patience.
The male shook his head. "Your Impure blood, of course."
A thread of unease moved through Gray. It was a thread born out of suspicion and all that he had learned living with the Roman brothers. "Why would they want my blood? It's weak-it's nothing."
The male tipped up his chin. "Exactly. And they don't want it reproduced, combined with the Pure-they don't want you spreading your Impure seed."
The thread expanded and made his heart constrict in his chest. "They wish to take my blood? Is this a death camp?"
'Tis the death of life as you know it, surely.
The silent words came from the female. Gray's eyes attempted to connect with hers, but she refused to look up.
Near rage began to bubble within him. This was bullshit. This wasn't happening. The Order would take nothing from him-not a hair on his head, not a drop of his blood. He whirled around, fisted the metal bars and started yelling. "Hey! I want out of here now!" His voice echoed in the massive space and spurred on a mental cacophony of pleas for help and whimpers of fear. "I don't belong here! Get me the fuck out-"
Before he finished his demands, he was yanked back by strong arms and landed on his ass in the dirt. The three naked Impures crowded around him.
"Christ!" said the young female.
"Are you trying to get us all killed?" muttered the male.
Trembling, their eyes frantic, unsure, the older male chastised him, "What's wrong with you? Do you want to be dragged from here, laid out on the stone this very moment?"
Snarling, Gray was off his ass and on his feet in seconds. "I don't belong here. This is some kind of mistake."
All three stared up at him, their eyes first angry, then confused. Finally, the female released a weighty breath. "You really don't know, do you? You don't know why you're here-why any of us are here."
Gray just stared at them, his nostrils flaring, his breathing abnormal.
"You weren't born in a credenti, then?" the younger male asked.
"No," Gray said through gritted teeth.
The male looked at the older one, then at the female, then back at Gray. His eyes were touched with pity now. "The Paleo has been in existence since the Order took power. It is where they perform the blood castration ritual."
A slow, sickening feeling moved through Gray's body. There was much he didn't know, so many terms he hadn't been brought up with, but these two words-blood castration-these two words he knew. He had heard about them from the Romans, from the dizzy and despondent minds of nearly every male and female under Ethan Dare's command.
Blood castration.
It was how the Order controlled their Impure population-kept them amenable. By draining all the desire, all the need, all the ability to fuck and to impregnate or be impregnated out of them...
He felt his cock stir against his leg and shook his head. "No. This cannot happen. We will not be forced into such-"
The older male laughed, such a bitter sound Gray could nearly taste it on his tongue. "There is no fighting them, young Impure." His face, so ancient and gaunt, so strangely familiar, softened. "We do not have the strength or the power to fight them."
This was madness-sick and inhumane. This was it, wasn't it? What the three Impure warriors were fighting against? Why they wanted him-needed his help? Gray's head buzzed. And he'd just run from them, like a child to a pretty toy.
Jesus, he should be ashamed.
"How long have you all been here?" Gray asked them. "Days? Weeks?"
"We have avoided the fangs of the Order for nearly three weeks now," the older male said.
"And you were taken from your homes?"
He nodded. "Inside our credenti in Wisconsin. My children here, Uma and Jacobi, were taken first. I, a few days later."
His children. Gray eyed the pair, both somewhere in their mid to late twenties. The female who wouldn't meet his gaze and the male who Gray had spoken to so harshly, the male he had distrusted. Reaching out, he offered his hand to the female, then to her brother. "My name is Gray. Donohue. I live in New York, was taken from there-right off the streets. I swear I'm going to do everything in my power to get us out of here."
Jacobi shook his head. "There is no way out of here but through the Order."
"Donohue?"
It was the older male who spoke. And the sound was riddled with shock. His face no longer held the calm sadness of a moment ago. It was tense and ashen.
"Father?" the female, Uma, said, gathering close to him, concerned. "Father, what's wrong?"
"It can't be." The older male stared at Gray, looked him up and down, shaking his head as he said, "No . . ."
Gray felt the man's anxiety, his deep stare. "What is it?"
"Father," Jacobi urged when the male said nothing. "Please."
"My closest friend, for fifty-two years . . ." uttered the older male. His eyes locked with Gray. "Jeremy Donohue."
The air rushed out of Gray's lungs and was lost. "You knew my father?"
The male reached for Gray's hand and squeezed it hard. "How is it you are here? It is not supposed to be. Your father took great pains to keep this a secret from you, from your sister."
"What secret is that?" Gray asked, his mind and his body pounding with the rapid beats of his heart. It was the sound, the pressure-filled sound of inevitability. He was about to hear-to learn things he wasn't sure he wanted to learn. And yet, he pressed on. "That my mother is a Pureblood? That she mated with a human and gave birth to two Impure balas? That much I know."
The older male's eyes drifted downward, dropping the connection. "He was no human."
Heat slammed into Gray's skin, blood, and he nearly shouted his reply. "What?"
"Your father." He swallowed, licked his dry lips. "He was an Impure." His gaze flickered back up. "One of the most powerful Impures in the Eternal Breed."
Gray shook his head. No. No. This wasn't happening-not this way. Not in a cage, stripped nude, waiting for his blood and his sex drive to run from two puncture wounds in his neck.
"Your father led the resistance," the older male continued. "He was raising an army to take down the Order. He had escaped his credenti when he was still a balas himself. He took care of himself, educated himself, and after he met your mother and gave life to you and your sister, he continued to protect Impures who had left their homes just as he protected you and your sister from being found."
"How?" Gray uttered, his throat as tight as the rest of him. "How did he protect us?"
"He fed you human blood."
"Oh, Christ," Gray whispered.
"It was the only way to tamp down your vampire side, your Impure blood so that the Order wouldn't find you."
Gray's mind spun. He didn't remember this-any of this. The blood meals-it didn't happen.
"But the Order found him."
The older male's words stalled Gray's heart. "What do you mean? What are you saying?"
Tears pricked the male's eyes and his daughter took his hand in hers. "After your birth, the Order found him, brought him here."
Bile rose in Gray's throat, and he shook his head. "No."
"They blood castrated him. And it wasn't just his desire they stole, but his drive, his hunger for the resistance. He wasn't himself again. It was no wonder that your mother turned-"
"My mother?" Gray interrupted. "They didn't take her? Drain her?"
"No. She is Pureblood after all. But by taking your father's desire from him, they forced your mother to turn to another for companionship." His eyes dropped again as if the words he spoke held shame for them all.
And perhaps they did, Gray thought, his mind, his world completely shattered into puzzle pieces he had no idea if he could ever reconstruct.
"Your name?" Gray asked softly.
The older male smiled. "Samuel Kendrick."
Yes. That name sounded right, sounded familiar. "You saw us, me and my sister, before the fire?"
Samuel's gaze shifted to Gray's fire damaged hands. "I did. Your father loved you so very much. I know he would've hated to leave you in such a way, and by the hand of ones he sought so hard to destroy."
Sara's face came before him in his mind. "My sister never meant for it to happen. She was a child, not-"
"No," Samuel said, his eyes now resolute. "That fire was no accident."
So caught up in the moment, in the sudden fierce protectiveness that only a brother feels for his sister, Gray didn't hear the bars pull back behind him, didn't sense the footsteps of the guards as they entered the room.
But Samuel and his children did.
"Don't fight them," Jacobi called, as one guard wrapped his wrists in rope behind his back. "It's not worth it. There is more pain to be had than just the drain of blood."
Instinct struck at Gray just as a guard reached for his arms. A stray dog unwilling to be caught and hauled to the pound. He turned fast and furious and punched the male in the face, then sent a hard kick into one knee. The guard went down with a groan and crash, and Gray leapt at him, ready to keep his back to the dirt, his hands off Gray's flesh. But before his feet even left the ground, he was suddenly rendered immobile.
Jacobi found his gaze and shook his head. "I told you not to fight. It's useless."
Once bound, all four of them were led out of the cell and down the dirt path that bordered the field and its stone tables. The Impure rats in their cages reached out to them as they passed, and Gray's mind was slammed with feeling and with cries and with a rage he now completely understood. They were halted on the path and ordered to stay put. Then Samuel was yanked forward by two guards and pulled toward the nearest stone slab.
Jacobi and Uma screamed for him, struggled against their captors and their bindings, but it was impossible. Their fate, all of their fates were not of their own making anymore.
As Samuel was placed on the slab, his arms and ankles bound, Jacobi strained like an animal at his bindings, and before Gray could say a word or warn him, the male got free and ran at his father.
He got only three feet before he was turned immobile and dropped to the ground.
His heart slamming in his ribs, his gut constricting, his limbs unless, Gray stared at the young male on the ground and at the tears that leaked from his eyes and ran heavy and grief stricken down his cheeks.
Oh, god . . . Oh, god . . .
It was Uma. Beside him. Her silent plea continued, and Gray looked up, followed her line of vision.
A female clad in long red robes had appeared directly at the side of the stone slab. Gray watched as her mouth opened, so wide it split her features in two, and brick red fangs descended menacingly. She was on Samuel in less than an instant, striking hard-entering his vein with a hiss and a crack, sucking the life's blood from his desire and his maleness as though it belonged to her.
Gray opened his mouth to yell, scream, curse his hatred and his vow to see every last member of the Order dead as the dirt at his feet. But no sound left his throat. A hand stole around his chest and he was pulled back so fast he lost his breath and his vision for several seconds.
When it returned, he was in an empty cell, and being pulled, yanked back deeper into the rocks. He struggled against whoever held him, but the arm was firm and resolute and dragged him another ten feet down a wet, black corridor.
"Save the brawn for another time, Impure," the voice behind him hissed.
Oh, shit. Shit, he knew that voice. Goddamn, he knew that voice! He heard the motherfucking voice in his head every night-and every time his cock headed south into some random female.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded as a strip of light beamed past his head and hit his feet.
"Saving your sorry ass."
"Why?"
"Just keep your mouth shut and hang on."
A few more feet and light completely encompassed them. Then sky, and the scent of earth. With a grunt of supreme force, she hauled him up and out of what appeared to be a hole in the ground, then dropped him on the grass.
She was breathing heavy. So was Gray. He stared up at her, nostrils flaring, and wished he wasn't bare-ass naked. Not that she seemed to care. She wasn't staring at anything but his face.
"I have to go back," Gray said.
"You're welcome, moron."
"D, there are Impures down there."
"No shit. I just saved your bare ass from becoming one of them-truly one of them. Not to mention, saving your cock from forever limping at the side of your leg."
So she had noticed.
Gray stood, a flood of renewed determination filling him. Samuel and Uma and Jacobi, he wasn't leaving them down there to be castrated.
"I know what you're thinking," Dillon growled at him, her breath a living thing in the cool morning air. "But you can't save them. The ones you were with."
His chin dropped, his gaze narrowed. "You can. I'll help you."
Her jaw ticked and she slowly shook her head. "No."
"You refuse to help?"
"Damn right I do. I don't give a shit about any of them."
"Just me," he shot back.
She didn't answer. "Let's go."
"No."
She turned to leave and he reached for her arm. "I told you I'm not leaving them."
She whirled around and had his arm tucked behind his back before he took his next breath. "They're already castrated, motherfucker! It's done. Done!"
She never let him say a word in response. Her other hand wrapped around his cock and they were flashed from the stark morning light and the only known portal leading to both the Impures he would never forget and the truth they held deep within their beating hearts.