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)
“That was a lie?”
“No, you idiot. It was the truth, of course. You can’t lie to the Darkness. Not when it’s inside you. And all vampires have the Darkness inside us, even me.”
“I’m not following.”
“Of course not. You’re, what, a hundred and twenty-eight years old? You don’t even have wings, Tristin. How could you know anything?”
“Ya know, for a guy who only got this far because of me, you’re sure being a dick about it. It’s not my fault I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Sorry,” I say, rolling my neck until it cracks. “I do appreciate your help and I didn’t mean to be so blunt.” I rock the vial between my fingers again. “This is the only way to complete the final step of my mission. The fact that I had to give it away in the first place is just… well, divine irony, I suppose. A way to build character, perhaps.”
“So you’re gonna poison Josep with that?”
I shake my head, frowning. “No, Tristin. I’m going to poison myself.” And then I pop the cork on the vial with my thumb and tip all the Black blood into my mouth.
“Wait!” Tristin comes over to me, trying to grab the bottle out of my hand. I let him do this, because it’s too late. It’s empty, save for a thick coating on the sides of the glass. “What are you doing, Paul? Why did you just drink that?”
“Because”—I smile at him now—“it’s the only way.”
Tristin is panicking now, probably imagining how he’ll get out of this mess if I’m not around to save his ass. “The way to what?”
“To give all my Darkness to Ryet. Because, you see, when a maker dies, his protégé inherits all his power by default. And in this case, that would be Ryet. He’s the real hero of this story, not me. I’m certainly not going to be stuck here on Earth acting out the role of the fucking Antichrist for the next seven years. That’s ridiculous. Regardless of how many corners I’ve cut, my mission ends tonight and that means I have an appointment with my own Maker and I’m gonna get the last word here no matter what.”
Tristin is shaking his head. “This is about… spite?”
I shrug. “Call it spite, call it revenge, call it petty, if you like. This is what two thousand years of character-building has turned me into. A petty monster. It is what it is.”
Across the room, the scions begin to wake, moaning a little as they struggle to open their eyes and get to their feet.
I throw up my hands and grow bigger, my skin turning blue-black, my wings popping out of my back, my clothing ripping into shreds as I become the demon I was always meant to be. “Rise, scions!” I bellow.
They look up at me, still half-drunk off the blood, but struggling or not, they all get to their feet with a great expectation.
“It is time to end this now.” I turn to Tristin and make a little bow. “You will stay here. You’ll be safe. Thank you. I sincerely mean that, Tristin. If any of this gets into a history book, I hope they turn you into the unsung hero you are.”
“But… what? Wait!”
But I’m already slipping into the floor. I’m already on the highway to Hell.
And all my scions follow me down into the earth.
27 - Josep
You will live in the hell of my choosing.
I watch the ripples across the pool of water in my cave until the surface is calm again, but me? No. I am not calm. I am not calm at all.
Slowly I turn my head until I’m looking down on Ryet. There are hundreds of bite marks on his body. But it was a trick. His blood was poisoned and my army, small as it was, is dead now.
The anger builds inside me until I’m absolutely certain that I will explode if I don’t release it somehow.
My first instinct is to get this release by torturing Ryet, but he’s not in there. I know he’s not in there because he’s not making any noise and he should be screaming in pain.
So he’s in the purple somewhere.
And if he can’t feel my torture, then what good is it?
I spy a trail of blood on the cave floor and allow my gaze to follow it back to the body of Little Baby, minus one arm.
I smile, then laugh. Because she is making noises. Terrible noises. Groaning, and moaning, and sobbing. Which normally would piss me off enough to push the mute button.
But right now, it pacifies me because I need her pain. I need to hear her suffering. In fact, I need to make her suffer more.
I walk over to her, pick up the arm that’s left, rip it off, and throw it across the cave. It crashes into a wall and the tattered remains fall to the floor.