Eternal Beast: Mark of the Vampire Read Online Free Page B

great oval space belowground that had for centuries been the Order’s den of castration, where the sexual desires of Impure vampires were removed at a steady pace, hummed with the many sounds of blatant misery. Under the golden light of a thousand candles, Feeyan, the one who now led the Order, stilled over the wriggling Impure on the stone table, her fangs an inch deep within his vein. Information was bleeding into her mind at a frantic pace, and she suddenly ceased the bleeding of his body and lifted her snow-white head.
    A few yards away, another member of the Order pulled his fangs from the groin of the Impure male he was castrating and glanced over his shoulder.
    “The human politician has been found?” he queried, blood dripping from his bloodred fangs.
    Feeyan nodded, a thread of anxiety moving through the already heavy feelings of irritation. It was what shehad heard as well. “And our connection to him has been severed.”
    “How could that be?” the dark-haired Order member asked.
    “I am not entirely certain,” she told him. “He was well hidden, his location a secret within the Order.”
    “Perhaps someone inside the facility learned of his identity,” the
paven
said tightly. “The Order would not betray itself.”
    Inside the Paleo, a hush had fallen. From those strapped on the stone tables to the many others locked inside the cages circumventing the arena, Feeyan noticed a keen interest in what was being said. This time she spoke to her colleague inside his mind.
“Think of Cruen. All he has done and continues to do. We are not perfect beings with pure intentions, no matter how we wish we were. We are flawed.”
    The male Order member looked mildly insulted but didn’t voice it.
“Shall I speak to the other members?”
    “Not yet. The senator’s body is being brought to me. Along with the blood memories we’ve collected from his dead employees, we will piece together the truth.”
    “And the location of the
mutore
female who has killed those employees.”
    Feeyan nodded. The
mutore
female. The one called Dillon, who had somehow not only escaped death at birth, but had managed to live as a
veana
without detection. Still lived without detection. How had the Order not sensed her living among the vampire population? Perhaps they were truly flawed. It was a deeply humbling thought, but one that would serve as a reminder and as a fervent push to find this
mutore
and bring herin, comb her mind to see if there were more like her roaming free.
    Feeyan glanced around at the faces of the Impures pressing through the bars of their cells.
“Impures breeding is problem enough. But those mutants, those animals who made it past their first breath would sully our bloodlines like nothing else.”
Feeyan turned, her eyes narrowing on her fellow Order member.
“If we allow even one
mutore
to live, to breed, to think, to decide, it may change the way the Impures view their role and their place in society. We cannot have that.”
    The
paven
nodded.
“Let us see what the senator’s brain has to offer. He gave us the
mutore
’s name, her face, her Beast.”
    “Perhaps in death he can give us her location,” Feeyan said aloud, returning to the Impure male before her—his puncture wounds calling to her razor-sharp fangs. “And the kind of bait we may need to draw her out.”
    Dillon the jaguar paced inside her cage. How could she have let this happen? How could she have allowed herself to get caught? Again?
    Thirty minutes ago, she’d woken up in this same cage, Alexander’s cage beneath his house in SoHo. A prisoner of the three Roman brothers, with a sore back leg and a knot the size of a penny on her neck from where the Pureblood Son of the Breeding Male had stabbed her with that needle.
    Bastard. She hoped she’d granted him a few deep scratches with her claws before she’d passed the hell out. But the one she really wanted to see gutted wasGray Donohue. Without his meddling, Alexander wouldn’t have