Allie peered down at her glass and slowly began to rotate it on the tabletop. “Stella was ashamed of what she could remember. And shocked and horrified that she was capable of what she’d done.” Glancing up, she added, “I was rather shocked myself. It just didn’t fit with the woman I’d come to know. Stella was sweet, and funny and kind. This all had to be fantasy, I was sure.”

Lowering her gaze to her glass again, she sighed. “Anyway, Stella said eventually she woke up one night and didn’t hurt everywhere. In fact, she felt amazing. So when the door opened, the light came on, and a bloodied person was tossed in, she felt sure she could resist.”

“But she could not,” Magnus guessed quietly, knowing that while the worst of the turning must have been over at that point, it was still happening, and Stella and her husband would have yet needed a lot of blood. They just wouldn’t have realized it until the scent hit them.

“No. Neither of them could. But this time there was no screaming agony to follow and help them forget. Instead, they were left sated, no longer light blind, and were able to see the charnel house they had made of the room. The decomposing bodies of their victims were all still there, the walls spattered with their blood, and now she could smell the rot. The combination was enough to make her throw up half the blood she’d just consumed, and left her so weak Stephen had to carry her out when this time their captors returned for them.

“Stella said they were taken to another larger room full of people crowding around the edges while a man sat on the only chair in the middle of an open space, like a king on his throne.”

“Did she describe him?” Lucian asked at once. “Tell you his name?”

Allie bit her lip and looked thoughtful for a moment, before saying, “She told me his name. It was strange. Something I’ve never heard before, but . . .” She shook her head. “I’ll remember it eventually. I just can’t recall it right now. I think she said he had dark hair, though. And I remember her saying you wouldn’t think him a monster to look at him. He just appeared normal . . . and if you’d put him in a suit he could have been mistaken for an accountant. She said that somehow made him more terrifying. That he was so average-looking, but so horrible and soulless.”

Lucian frowned at her words, but nodded and sat back, apparently willing to wait to see if the name returned to her.

“Anyway, he welcomed them and explained that through his generosity they had been turned into vampires rather than merely becoming food for the group like the pathetic creatures they had fed on. But now they could not return to their former lives. They were his. He was their sire. They quite simply could not survive without him, and as the room they’d woken in was their grave, they must return to it before dawn every day, and must never leave it before the sun set or they would perish.”