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)
“Definitely.”
“Milk him?”
“Yes.”
“Sex?”
“Orgy.”
Joshua smirks. “Well, that’s fun.”
“I certainly hope so. He’s kind of a dick.”
“And what are we harvesting? Liver? Heart? Gonads?”
“All three, I think. But we’ll let Emily decide once we get up to the coven.”
Joshua nods, collecting the jars off the shelf. “OK. Well, if Emily’s tweaking, let’s just take all four.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Do you want to ride with me? Or meet us up there?”
Joshua glances in the direction of the pantry, then looks at me. “I’ll meet you there. He’s…”
“Scary?”
He points at me. “That.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about him, Joshua.” Then I reach over and place a loving hand on his cheek. “He’ll never touch you. He’ll never even get the chance.”
The entire town of White River is mine. All of it, including the people. They are all part of the coven of witches I’ve been breeding for the last hundred and twenty years, give or take. But they are nothing like the line of witches that Syrsee comes from. There is no Black blood running through my women. In fact, it’s the men who have most of the power in my line.
The women, like Emily and all the cooks who came before her, are good at manipulating the inherent properties of plants and mixing them all together in certain proportions using recipes passed down through generations of mothers and daughters. But the potions can only do so much. They help things along.
All the real magic is in the secretions. And manipulating secretions is the magic of men.
Which is why I keep an ample supply of scions. It wasn’t a hedge against Ryet. Well, maybe a tiny hedge. But I knew he was going to work.
No. I keep the scions, like Kael here, for his blood. Blood that is half mine. Which makes it all mine. And then, should I ever need some help to move things along, I come up here with a scion, have a little ritual, kill him, milk him, harvest him, and give that all to Emily—or whoever was in charge of the kitchen at the time, which hasn’t always been Emily, but nonetheless, it is now— and this little kitchen witch will cook me up a custom potion and put it in a vial, or cook me up a pudding and put it in a jar.
Most of the time I take the potion or eat the pudding myself and then I offer Ryet a drink. This is how I slowly, slowly changed him over the last several decades.
It wasn’t the Darkness.
It was me using the Darkness and the men of the White River Coven to create a special kind of magic that I call the Dusk.
I smile at the wordplay, amused at my own cleverness.
If the Dusk was a beer, it would be called Darkness Lite. It takes a little more to get the same buzz, but I’m not looking for the Darkness kind of buzz. I’m going to kill this man. I only need him cooperative and willing until the ritual is over.
I go back outside and get in the truck.
Kael looks at me expectantly, waiting for some kind of explanation. When all I do is stare back at him, he becomes agitated. “Well?”
I smile, picturing him naked. “You have a nice body, you know that, Kael?”
He snorts a little. “Yeah. So?”
“I’m going to enjoy it.”
Now he smirks, confident in his own sex appeal. “Is that what this is about? Sex?”
“It’s always about sex, Kael.”
“Well, for me it’s about blood. So… when do I get some?”
I chuckle and grin. “You’re gonna get some all right.” Then I point at Joshua’s beat-up silver Chevy pick-up as he comes around the side of the church. Joshua smiles at me from the other side of the windshield, then nods his head towards the road.
“I’m going to take you somewhere now, Kael. Somewhere Ryet has never been.”
Kael side-eyes me. “What kind of place?”
“A place where magic is made.”
“Do I get blood at this place?”
“You do.” I picture how this will go down and grin. “You’re gonna get more blood today than I’ve given you before.”
“And sex too, huh?”
“Oh, yes. There will be lots of that as well. It’s going to be a pile of sweaty, bloody bodies, Kael. All fucking, and sucking, and getting off. Me, and you, and him.” I jut my chin at the waiting Joshua. “Plus many others.”
“Any women involved in this?”
“If you want one, sure. There are plenty of women.”
He nods a little, probably picturing all this in his head. “All right. So what’s the catch?”
Kael is smart. There’s always a catch. But he’s nearly twenty in scion years if I recall correctly, so he understands how I work. I do not lie. I always tell him what’s going to happen. So he knows there’s a tradeoff coming.
“We’re going to use you, Kael. Your blood. I need to make some magic. So we’re going to feed and fuck and then I’m going to take your blood and your seed and mix it up with all of ours to make this magic. Does that sound acceptable?”