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)
“Good news.” He beams. “You’re not.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do it, Paul. I really can’t. I’ve lost all sense of reality. I have no idea where I am, or what I am, or who I am.”
Paul stands up and walks towards me. Our eyes are locked together as he approaches. We stand, facing each other, mere inches apart. He speaks first, pushing a piece of hair away from my face like I’m his fucking lover and he’s trying to be tender. “It’s temporary. I told you that. Remember? It’s all temporary.”
I think back to a conversation we had not that long ago. “If we had a herd,” he said, “it would be easier. Right now, all we have is Syrsee. So we must share. It’s temporary. Black witches are hard to farm.”
I turn my back to him and stare off into the forest. “We’re not here, are we?”
“No.”
I turn back, furious. “Why? Why are you doing this? Are you trying to make me insane?”
Paul laughs. “Insane? Dear Ryet, I’m saving that mind of yours this very moment. You’re doing remarkably well—thanks to me.” Now he glares at me. “But I’m glad you brought it up.”
“I didn’t bring it up, you did.”
He waves a hand in the air. “Regardless. If you don’t pull back and rein it in right now, you’re going to decapitate our one and only Black witch. And while I see the draw of this act—all that Black blood all at once would certainly be the feast of a lifetime—we don’t have a backup food source. So.” He throws up his hands. “That’s why I’m here. Pull back, Ryet. Right now.”
And then he’s gone.
And then I’m gone too. All of it is gone. The woods are gone, and the Guild is gone, and the lab is gone. It’s all gone because it was never real to begin with. Split in half. Be in two places at once. It’s crazy. Even crazier that I fell for it.
I blame the blood.
But I can think about that another time because while I am not longer in the woods of New Hampshire, I am in some other woods. Covered in dirt. Nothing about me feels normal and everything hurts. My whole body screams with pain. The only good thing about this moment is the blood gushing into my mouth like water coming out of a firehose. If water was sweet, and Black, and magical, that is.
I open my eyes and it takes a moment to make sense of what I’m seeing. All the while, Black blood is rushing into my mouth. A moment later I realize I’m looking at… hair.
With a shock, reality comes back and I unlatch my mouth from Syrsee’s neck. She falls back, out of my arms, limp and lifeless on the freshly disturbed earth.
There’s a hole in her neck where I was feeding. A hole.
“Syrsee?” My voice is deep and almost unrecognizable. “Syrsee?” Then the panic sets in. I shake her. “Syrsee!” I stand up and the moment I do, my wings spread out with a great whooshing sound. I look down at myself and recognize the blue-black skin of a demon, but there are marks all over my body. Fang marks. Like a hundred vampires were feeding on me at once.
I look around, frantic. I’m at the compound. I can see the lodge off in the distance. We’re behind it, in the woods just north, and I can see the blue glow of the lit-up pool in the back.
Syrsee has the same marks on her body as well.
I fill up with rage and the anger flows out of my eyes as a maroon glow, illuminating Syrsee’s body with a sick red light that turns into a mist before my eyes.
Feeders. He turned us into feeders.
For who? Just him and Josep?
No. There are way too many bites.
I want to figure this out, it feels very relevant, but Syrsee—she looks bad. I pick up her in my arms, shaking her a little. But this just makes it worse because some of the muscles in her neck have been damaged by my feeding, so her head just lolls back and forth like the broken neck of a dead bird.
But the really gross thing is that I can see her jugular throbbing, blood spilling out of it as I watch. Which means she’s not dead.
Not yet.
She needs blood. A lot of it and right now. I bring my wrist up to my mouth, tear it open with my teeth, and let the blood drop into her open mouth. “Feed, Syrsee! Feed on me!”
The blood coats her tongue and spills over the side, pooling. But she doesn’t swallow. “Come on,” I say, shaking her again. “Come on!”
She chokes, spilling my own blood back into my face. But it’s better than nothing.