If I did, it’ll be worth it, as long as Dorian lives.
Crunching steps on the gravel path. Thethunkof shoe soles on the porch—two pairs of feet.
My left palm is sweating against the gun grip.
A massive male figure enters the house, moving into the frontroom. A man with huge, bronzed muscles and a mane of red hair. His green eyes are startlingly bright, and under his big coat, he’s wearing only a pair of black shorts.
He is the man who should not exist, the character who disappeared from my tablet.
He’s real. Three-dimensional, though there’s an effervescence to his edges, a quivering intangibility, as if he’s not entirely corporeal.
The gun nearly drops from my nerveless fingers. “The fuck,” I whisper.
“Daughter,” he says, and my whole body reverberates, bone-deep, to the cadence of that single word.
It’s the voice I heard from the building.
“You’re not my father,” I whisper.
“No. But I am your progenitor.” He’s advancing, both huge hands outstretched. “Be still, little one.”
I couldn’t move if I wanted to. I’m bound by the power of that voice, crushed into submission by its ancient weight.
“He’s not going to hurt you, Baz,” says a voice from behind the big red-haired man. “You did set him free after all. Well…partly.”
I tense. “Lloyd?”
Lloyd-Henry wears a brown leather jacket, his wavy dark hair tied in a low ponytail at the back of his neck. His stance is loose, easy, casual. Unworried, even though the bodies of two of his friends lie on the floor, one partly corroded, the other leaking blood.
“You,” I hiss, narrowing my eyes at him. “You caused all this. You—”
But my anger is interrupted when the big man’s hand closes on my left wrist. His fingers lack the solidity of flesh, but a raw, buzzing energy supplements whatever muscular strength he’s missing. It reminds me of what I felt when I touched the door of the abandoned building.
He pries the gun from my hand easily and tosses it aside. Then he takes his pointed thumbnail and drags it along my forearm, opening a slit in my flesh. I gasp, tears welling up in my eyes at the pain, but somehow I manage not to scream.
Chills race over my skin, and I want to pull away, but I can’t. I’m forced to be still, cowed by some inner sense of awe—my consciousness bowing to the force of an entity greater than I am.
“Blood of my offspring,” he says and lifts my arm to his mouth.
His body flickers briefly, the pressure of his fingers vanishing for a second before solidifying again. His mouth presses to the wound he created, and he drinks.
Drinks my blood.
Like a fucking vampire.
This isn’t happening. I’m in shock. I must be dreaming it—
“I should thank you,” Lloyd says, stepping forward. “I’ve been feeding his burial site with fresh blood for over a year now without success. I was able to partly wake him, but there was too much iron, too much pollution, too many chemicals. He couldn’t rise—untilyou. You must be a direct descendant. And with the ability to conduct soul transference, too?” He laughs, shaking his head. “What a treasure you are, Basil Allard.”
The giant man is still drinking from me, his red beard coarse against my skin.
“I don’t understand,” I say weakly.
“You drew him, didn’t you?”
“But he was just a character from my imagination,” I falter. “He doesn’t exist.”
Lloyd chuckles. “You must have connected with him somehow. Have you been around any abandoned buildings lately? Like the one near the Chandler Apartments?”
