“For a while, it was easy. I would turn them, and Father would feed from them. We left them with enough blood to live, but we didn’t provide them with the guidance they needed to survive. We didn’t expect so many of them to last as long as they did.”

Clarence entered without knocking, but Cyrus didn’t acknowledge him. “Carrie, would you be so kind?”

I poured him a glass from the decanter Clarence handed me, then returned to the couch. “If your father kept making vampires, there would be a lot more of them by now. What stopped him?”

Cyrus didn’t answer until he’d gulped down the first glass and handed it back to Clarence for a refill. “Fear, I suppose. My father was a brave man, but he wasn’t stupid. I think he knew that someday, one of his fledglings would do to him what he’d done to his sire.

“Now my father feeds only once a year. In the meantime, he goes into a sort of hibernation. The day will come when he can walk the earth again, but until then, I serve him at the NewYear.”

“Walk the earth again? What does that mean?” All this information overwhelmed me. “Where does he live?”

With a knowing smile, he waved his index finger at me. “It’s a heavily guarded secret. For the time being, all we need to do is make sure Father is fed every year.”

“Cyrus, that doesn’t make sense. You’re weak after a few days without feeding. If your father’s metabolism has accelerated beyond that, how can he survive drinking blood only once a year?”

“Oh, he doesn’t just drink their blood.” A cruel spark of the Cyrus I recognized returned to his eyes. The blood he’d consumed flushed his cheeks. “He takes their very essence. Carrie, my father is the vampire other vampires fear most. My father is the Soul Eater.”

Fifteen

Consummation

Cyrus’s proclamation shook me to the core. Once I was sure he’d fully recovered from his fast, I left him alone to finish his reading or whatever the hell he did when he was locked away in his study.

The Soul Eater. Though I’d never heard the name, it struck fear into my heart.

Cyrus had given me a brief rundown of the New Year’s festivities. They’d picked January thirtieth because of its proximity to Bride’s Day, an ancient Celtic holiday celebrating the young Sun God’s courtship of the Virgin Goddess.

“It’s all about innocence,” Cyrus had said smugly. “The point of the New Year’s festivities is to choose someone with a pure soul and turn them. When Father kills them, instead of a frothy afterlife of clouds and harps, their souls have nowhere to go. Father collects those souls, and they sustain him for another year.”

What would it be like to be forever trapped in another person’s body? I prayed I’d never find out. I had yet another incentive to stay on Cyrus’s good side. Not that staying on his good side would be any trouble after sunup, if his enthusiasm of the night before was any indication. I tried, and failed, to keep my hormones in check as dawn drew closer.