Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Well, I love them all in different ways, Ryet. So I guess the answer is yes. But none of them will deliver the gift of Darkness. That’s you. And Syrsee, of course. You are the best of me. And so I will always be there for you. Remember that when the time comes.”
I hear the threat in these last words. Well, threat is probably not the right word. More like a warning, maybe. Because what he really said, and I know this because he’s done it so many times now, is that things are going to get horribly bad for me. There’s no way around it. And he wants me to know he’ll be there when they do.
“Am I going to live through it?” My words come out sleepy and slow. My eyes remain closed.
Paul swipes some hair away from my face. Then he leans in, his mouth touching my neck, his sharp teeth ripping my skin. He licks up some blood before answering my question. “I certainly hope so. You and I, Ryet, are meant to spend eternity together. I’m counting on it.”
And then he feeds. Pulling the blood out of me. Mixing us up once again.
I go somewhere else now. Some other realm, maybe. It’s nothing but an empty place filled with gold and purple mist. But inside the mist there are specks of black.
The Darkness.
The mists, both colors, represent magic. Or a better way to put it, I think is that they represent what can be done with magic. They are like paint colors sitting in front of a canvas, waiting to be used.
Mostly, so far, at least, I’ve used them to dreamwalk.
“But you can do so much more, Ryet.” Paul says this because he’s standing next to me in the mists now, but still feeding on me at the same time.
“Where are you right now?”
He shrugs up one shoulder. “I’m right here.”
“No. Where is your physical body?”
“In the dirt, back home in Montana.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me to do what?”
“Come up out of the ground, of course. I’m waiting for your third life. I’m waiting for the new you.”
“What about this me?” I point to myself.
“All things in good time, Ryet. We’re not in a rush.”
“I don’t understand what will happen.”
He turns and smiles at me. This version of him is wearing a suit. He looks very… Paul. Commanding, and arrogant, and fucking desirable. “You’re going to Hell, Ryet. But don’t worry, I’ll be there too. I must have that final conversation with our Maker.”
“Isn’t the Darkness our maker?”
“It is.”
“Isn’t it… technology?”
“It’s that too.”
“But it’s not like… I mean, does it talk?”
“Of course not.”
“So how do you converse with it?”
Paul turns to smile at me. “What do you mean? We’re talking to it right now.”
I’m just about to ask him to explain when I hear a distant voice. “Ryet?”
“Syrsee?” I’m still looking at Paul and he shoots me a big smile. “Now what are you doing?”
“Just helping things along.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, turning me around. “Come on. Let’s go back. Syrsee doesn’t have much time and there is blood to exchange.”
I’m still trying to figure out what all that means when I wake up in bed. Syrsee is here now, climbing over my body to fit herself into a space that Paul has made between us.
“There you go, sweet Syrsee. Get comfortable,” Paul says. “Let’s all have a drink now, shall we?”
But what the three of us do next is not drinking. It’s blood lust. It’s all kinds of lust. I’m inside Syrsee as she drinks from Paul, Paul’s inside Syrsee as she drinks from me. And then she’s between us as we both drink from her.
It’s… sin.
That’s the only word I have to describe what we do to, and with, each other in this bed. Which isn’t even a bed. It’s nothing but a bit of Darkness.
Just like us.
It is pure sin.
I wake.
And when I open my eyes it’s just me, lying in our bed, with a hard-on and covered in blood. Which would be concerning if I hadn’t been waking up this way for weeks now—the part with Paul, at least. Not Syrsee joining in.
I sit up, letting out a long sigh, and look at my body. Is it my blood? Is it his? I’m not sure. It shouldn’t be possible to actually drink in a dreamwalk, but what the hell do I know about dreamwalking anyway? What the hell do I know about anything, actually? Paul never handed me a rule book. It was always just need-to-know. And, as far as I can tell, my name is the last one on the list of who needs to know. Pretty much everyone in Paul’s life knows more about what’s happening to me than I do.
I swing my legs out of bed and get up. There is blood all over this room, not just the sheets. But there’s no way to tell how much of it is from Syrsee and me drinking all night and how much is from… well, whatever it was that just happened.