“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says with something like desperation in her voice. “I didn’t mean you. You’re one of the best people I know.”
I turn to face her with an incredulous expression. “I’m exactly what you just described. My Creator-Father and his kind broke their way onto this plane ages ago. You know he set me and my brothers loose to be plagues upon humankind for millennia. I inflicted my hunger on millions of innocent people. I starved them to death.” I speak through gritted teeth. “Trust me when I say it’s a horrible way to die.”
“But you changed!” Her voice rises with emotion.
I stare at the wall instead of at her. “We still deserve to be destroyed for all the terrible things we did in the past.” I certainly don’t deserve happiness or love. That my brothers have managed to steal happy endings for themselves in spite of the way we all began is miracle enough. It’s just pure greediness to think that I could do the same.
“No,” Phoenix says with adamant force. “Not you.” She turns away from me. “But some of us deserve to be destroyed for the harm we cause.”
Us? “What do you mean by us?”
“I’m not who you think I am.” Her voice has gone quiet.
“Phoenix?” I’m so confused by how this conversation has suddenly turned. Phoenix is perfect in my eyes. Is she saying she thinks she deserves?—
She spins around and glares at me with wild eyes. “I lied to you.”
“What?” What is she even talking about? “How? When did you lie?”
“Every single day you’ve known me. I’m a lie!” Her voice breaks on the last word.
I try to reach for her, but she snatches her arm away before I can make contact.
“Then tell me the truth now.”
“You thought I was nineteen when you met me, but I was much, much older than that.”
I frown because I don’t understand what she’s getting at. “Okay,” I say slowly, but she shakes her head violently.
“I’m ancient. More ancient than you are. But most of my existence was spent in a dark, dark place.” She shudders visibly, and again, I want to reach for her to comfort her. “There was only darkness and no light at all. It was so cold there. I didn’t even know how cold and freezing it was at the time, only that each moment of existence was a misery until I finally glimpsed light and warmth from this plane.”
Her eyes close tightly. Her features twist into a mask of horror. “They say that hell is a hot, fiery place, but I know the truth. It’s cold. Frozen with no light anywhere. So, so dark.” She’s shuddering so hard now that all I want to do is pull her into my arms. She’s in so much pain I can’t stand to watch it. But again, when I try to hold out a comforting hand, she yanks herself back.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“No.” I shake my head in confusion. “Not at all.”
“Iwas a spirit!” Phoenix says while flinging her arms out to the sides. “I stillamone. I come from another realm.”
I can only blink at her, completely shocked. “You’re a…” My mind races. I suppose the angels must have theoretically just been beings…spiritsfrom another plane that sensed this one atone point and managed to break thru, but— “Buthow?Are there more of you that broke through, like the angels did?”
“No.” She shakes her head impatiently. “It was just me, at least that I know of. I glimpsed this plane when some mage or other was experimenting like Sabra does with her circles. They were trying to make contact with planes beyond this one. It wasn’t even a trained mage—just a woman in the middle ages with innate blood magic who kept crying out in powerful desperation to whatever spirit might help her.”
Phoenix breathes out hard, eyes on the floor, hands fisted. “I latched on to her call and answered it. I fed her impulses on how to save herself from her situation…”
Phoenix’s eyes finally lift to mine again. “… But it came at a terrible cost. I was desperate, too. I was— I was so hungry for life and warmth that I would have done anything to get into this world.” She flings an arm out again. “Just like those spirits breaking through the barrier now.”
“Wait,” I reach for her but she jerks away. I want to understand even as I want to comfort her. “So you… lied about Vlad taking you from your mother and father? You’re not actually related to Vlad at all? Is he… another spirit pretending to be human, too?”
“No, no,” she shakes her head impatiently. “Iusedhim. Don’t you see? I usedallmy blood magic ancestors down through the generations.” She looks at me with wild, desperate eyes as if she needs me to understand this. “I felt the warmth coming from this plane when I was trapped in the other realm. I felt their pumping blood with all its potential and all the life force here. I didn’t know much about this world, but I knew the blood was important. The blood was thekey. It was the way in. It drew me like a moth to a flame.
“That first human with blood mage potential who made contact with me was the first Vlad Dracul’s wife. The Vlad Draculwho was a King, like where we get all the Dracula myths from. But really it was her. History doesn’t even remember her name, but it was her who called out into the darkness of the spirit realm, begging for help.
“She had no idea it would be me who answered her call.Meshe was making a bargain with. A blood oath, just like Vlad used to entrap Sabra’s mother, and you in this marriage, and countless others over the centuries.
“Don’t you see?Istarted it all, as a spirit in the dark realm. I created the first blood oath. I made it with her—to save her life in exchange for the baby boy in her belly once he became a man. A son named after his father. Vlad. A son who would become the first vampire, when the bloodlust first came upon him as a man of twenty-five. To pay for how I saved his mother. And the blood sacrifice of his victim… it fed me and gave me a tie into this realm.”
Phoenix’s voice drops to a dry, horrified whisper as she continues. “But I didn’t bargain only for him. It was for his son, too. And his son after that. Generation after generation after generation. They would drink the blood of humansfor me, feeding me their life force until I had enough power stored up to finally,finallyget myself born into this world twenty-nine years ago as a living baby incarnate.”
