9 - Ryet
Bacon and dirt.
Iwatch Syrseeas she sleeps and think about what just happened. How she drank me and how it felt. It’s erotic, of course. It’s always been that way, even when Paul was feeding off me. The pull of blood straight from my veins is an aphrodisiac. A very powerful one. Paul explained it once. “It has to be this way, Ryet. How else could I convince men like you to drink monsters like me?”
I close my eyes, replaying that conversation back in my head and suddenly missing him and the way he used to tempt me.
It wasn’t exactly sexual, but it wasn’t exactly not, either.
It has been almost two weeks since I’ve talked to him now. We’ve been estranged for much longer periods. When he goes underground—and he would do this every dozen years or so—it’s always for months at a time. Sometimes years. But he neverleavesme. He would find me in my dreams and I alwaysfelthim. Like he was watching me from some distance away.
Something has changed, though. Something very big, because I don’t feel him watching. What I do feel is his absence. I feel like I might never see him again.
He used to hover like a parent. Always asking me how I felt. Always asking me if I needed blood.
Which makes sense now. Since he literally made me.
How many times has he failed at this? How many Ryets has he gone through?
And how many more are out there?
Am I the only one?
It seems highly unlikely. I mean, there was no guarantee that Syrsee would feed me.
I’m still looking at her when I think these words.Shefed offmetonight. Drank my blood, and not only was she able to keep it down, but it satiated something inside her.
She was restless and now she looks peaceful. The blood is what changed that.
Is she changing as well? No wings are growing out of her back, but is there some kind of second stage to the life of a Black witch?
Paul didn’t let me read the books either. Not literally, of course, but I wouldn’t know anything about the life stages of a Black witch because no one ever tells me anything.
This thought leads me down a new path and my mind drifts to the Guild and how she was approached in town. They want her back, but why? Is it because she is part of the Guild family?
Seems about as likely as there being no other scions out there, ready to transform into vampires.
The Guild is using her to get to me.
I am not afraid of these people. It might be naïve, but I just don’t care about them.
I care about her.
She stirs in her sleep and a piece of hair falls over her face, obstructing my view. I casually, but carefully, push it out of the way so I can continue watching her.
Why is she drinking blood?
And why do I suddenly feel hungry?
My stomach rumbles at the thought of food, and because eating food is both something normal as well as something Syrsee needs, I get up, hike my pants back up my legs, leaving the button open, and go out into the kitchen.
My eyes find the clock as I approach the kitchen—it’s only ten-fifteen—and then I look through all the food she bought and put out on the counter and decide she was going to make chicken and pasta before she took me into the bedroom for sex.
So that’s what I make. And thirty minutes later, the whole place is filled with the scent of something good. Something I haven’t craved in decades. I go back into the bedroom and find Syrsee sprawled out on the bed, face down. She was naked, so she still is, of course. And the way her body is presented to me right now is enticing.
But for some reason, I’m craving that food more than I am her body.
“Syrsee.” I reach down and shake her shoulder.
