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)
Housekeeping cleans up after us every morning after I leave, so I just go into the shower, wash off all the blood, and come out pretending that everything’s fine as I put on my clothes, grab my phone, and leave, heading for the lab where I will spend my day.
And when I come home tonight the apartment will be clean, the sheets will be bright white again, and all I will be thinking about is the drink.
This is my life now.
I live, and eat, and breathe… blood.
The first week or so I was here, I would stop at this café near the research center and grab a cup of coffee. I would stand in line, and glance up at the trendy menu board that had everything written in liquid chalk, and I would smile at the Guild people all around me as they talked about their upcoming days or whatever else was on their minds.
It felt like a very Ryet thing to do. I’m not like a coffee fanatic or anything, but in my other life it was a morning habit. And it’s not hard to blend in here. I’m living in my Ryet body. There are no wings. There’s no bruise-colored skin. My eyes aren’t glowing red. I look like every other human around here so I figured… well, carry on, ya know?
But right around week two, when I started to realize that the blood lust was taking over, I just stopped going in. This was also right about the time when the people in the lab stopped being coy about what it was they wanted from me.
The first few days I showed up in the lab they took blood samples. Lots of them. And it felt pretty normal. I mean, the blood is everything to a vampire. It feels like a logical first step. At the very least, it’s something physical. Something scientific.
But they don’t want my blood. It’s dead outside of me anyway. One day—again, right around week two—they left the samples in the room I was in. The room is big, and open, and there are like half a dozen research stations and twice the number of researchers all sharing this one area. There’s nothing private about it. Half walls made up of soapstone lab benches with open shelving above filled with glassware and other science shit.
Usually they hook me up to an EKG machine or whatever it’s called. I might’ve just made that up because I heard it on TV, but it’s the brainwave electrode thingies they put on your head. It’s actually a helmet, but anyway. My point is, they didn’t take the blood. The lab tech got called away and it was just forgotten about until the end of the day when someone finally noticed.
And the blood in the vials wasn’t even liquid anymore. It looked like molasses, or maybe tar. Thick, and black, and gross. It looked like the Darkness, actually. It looked dead and it was tossed into the trash.
That’s when I figured out that they don’t care about my blood. They’re after something else and that something else was far less tangible. That something else turned out to be the thoughts inside my head.
“Ryet,” the lead researcher told me the next morning, “the magic is inside you, but it’s not something physical. It’s your brainwaves. It’s your frequency. It’s your…” Well, he went on and on about this and the words he used got progressively more and more technical. I vaguely remember him saying something about the Doppler effect, but that’s only because everyone’s heard that term. It’s how they track rain.
What did it all mean? Well, he might’ve told me during that actual conversation, but all I heard was blah, blah, brainwaves. Blah, blah, frequency. Blah, blah, Doppler effect. It made no sense to me at all.
They stopped taking my blood that very day.
And ever since then, when I get to the lab, they wave at me. “Hi, Ryet!” they call out. “Get undressed and we’ll meet you in there.” And then they point to the little dark room made up of glass where my chair lives. It’s a very special chair with a headset, and those electrode thingies that get stuck to various parts of my naked body, and cameras. Lots and lots of cameras.
Because even though nothing has happened so far, I get the feeling that they are expecting something very spectacular to happen very soon.
And they don’t want to miss a moment of it.
They’re gonna record it so all of humanity—or maybe just everyone in this room—will understand exactly who and what they are dealing with. Who and what I really am.
Because Ryet doesn’t live here anymore.
I am the Darkness.
4 - Paul
Sometimes cat, sometimes mouse
Being in the dirt is supposed to be restful. It’s supposed to be like going home. It’s supposed to be like being in the only place you’ve ever known, and once you’re here, inside its soothing embrace, it should feel like you never left.