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)
“Why didn’t you just bury us together? Could’ve saved me some time clawing through the dirt.”
“Because we weren’t sure who would wake up first. You or Ryet.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Well…” Paul’s chuckle reverberates in my head. “Because he’s a monster, Syrsee. And while you’re no angel, you’re no match for him.”
“What are you saying? That if he had woken up first, he’d have torn me apart?”
“See? You’re not so stupid.”
I close my eyes, willing this all to be a nightmare.
“This is as real as it gets because this is as good as it gets.” Paul repeats this phrase with his trademark smarmy charm that I’m sure, if I could see him, would come with a matching smarmy smile. “This, finally, is your reality, Syrsee. You make blood and babies. And for now, you feed me and Ryet. I rather like how this has turned out. You’re pretty, and your blood is sweet, and those babies of ours will be gorgeous. They will ensure an everlasting rule here in this realm we call reality. Which is still a dream so you might as well just give in and enjoy it with me. Ryet sure will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, but I do, Syrsee. At first, he will be all instinct, just like he was when you first made him, feeding on you when he’s hungry and throwing you away when he’s full. But he’ll come around again. I promise, he will. The promise of babies is his lure, not yours. He liked being a father. It worked for him.”
“What?”
“You haven’t thought much about motherhood, so yeah. It’s an adjustment for you. But trust me now, Syrsee. You’ll see. It’s all going to turn out perfect. It will be you and Ryet and the babies in your belly forever, and ever, and ever…”
“Forever? No. It’s not forever, Paul. Because I’m not a vampire. You told me twelve. Twelve babies. So I get twelve years of a fake life as a demon’s broodmare and then… then what? I die and go to Hell?”
“You were always going to Hell, Syrsee. You’re made of Darkness. So that’s got nothing to do with me. I’m trying to make it all better. And I’ve said this several times now. I’m tired of repeating myself. Just do your job.”
These last few angry words of his echo in my head, but once that subsides, the silence left behind is deafening.
I am alone, in the dirt, with an evil, dark thing inside me.
And this is where I will stay until I get myself out of it.
I doze for a while, my head filled with nightmares. And slowly, I begin to hurt. I can’t really move in the dirt. I mean, I understand that it’s possible—with clawing and struggle—to get out of the ground, but it takes an effort and a will that I don’t really have at the moment.
But I do manage to displace enough dirt to move my arms around, and my new evil superpower seems to be night vision, so I can see what is causing my pain. Because it’s everywhere, all over my body, all at once.
It’s bite marks. That’s what I find. Bite marks all over me. Glowing a sick, fluorescent purple. There are so many, it’s like every vampire in the world used me as food.
Which doesn’t really make sense because aren’t Paul and Josep the only ones? Well, and Ryet. But isn’t a vampire a rare thing? How could two vampires have made such a mess of my body?
I don’t know. Nothing makes any sense and I feel like I’m already in Hell, so… I doze, trying my best to find the purple dreamwalk so I can make reality go away.
But it’s not easy. Not like it was. It’s like the purple knows I’m different now and wants nothing to do with me.
That’s when I remember the gold. I have two mists at my disposal. And while the purple was part of Paul, the gold is part of me, the Black witch.
The nightmare.
My nightmare.
I think about this for a while, letting the gold mist surround me in this new place in my head. Letting it heal me. I think. I hope. And I settle into the idea that Paul doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know about the nightmare. About that little girl and her… beast. What was her name again? Coyrah. And the monster was called the aquis equī—which was like a cross between a seahorse and an octopus.
If Lucia was telling the truth—and there’s really no reason to believe she was because pretty much everyone in my life is lying right now—but if she was, then that little girl who tamed the monster is my ancestor.
The start of the Black bloodline.
I feel like Paul has very little respect for this blood of mine. Not the actual blood, which he feeds on, but the genetics. And his dismissal of it—of me—feels wrong. Deceptive. Because if I was weak, he wouldn’t need me. He wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to curate me, and raise me, and keep me close.