“Oh, but I do, Syrsee. At first, he will be all instinct, just like he was when you first made him, feeding on you when he’s hungry and throwing you away when he’s full. But he’ll come around again. I promise, he will. The promise of babies is his lure, not yours. He liked being a father. It worked for him.”
“What?”
“You haven’t thought much about motherhood, so yeah. It’s an adjustment for you. But trust me now, Syrsee. You’ll see. It’s all going to turn out perfect. It will be you and Ryet and the babies in your belly forever, and ever, and ever…”
“Forever? No. It’s not forever, Paul. Because I’m not a vampire. You told me twelve. Twelve babies. So I get twelve years of a fake life as a demon’s broodmare and then… then what? I die and go to Hell?”
“You werealwaysgoing to Hell, Syrsee. You’re made of Darkness. So that’s got nothing to do with me. I’m trying to make it all better. And I’ve said this several times now. I’m tired of repeating myself.Just do your job.”
These last few angry words of his echo in my head, but once that subsides, the silence left behind is deafening.
I am alone, in the dirt, with an evil, dark thing inside me.
And this is where I will stay until I get myself out of it.
I doze for a while, my head filled with nightmares. And slowly, I begin to hurt. I can’t really move in the dirt. I mean, I understand that it’s possible—with clawing and struggle—to get out of the ground, but it takes an effort and a will that I don’t really have at the moment.
But I do manage to displace enough dirt to move my arms around, and my new evil superpower seems to be night vision, so I can see what is causing my pain. Because it’s everywhere, all over my body, all at once.
It’s bite marks. That’s what I find. Bite marks all over me. Glowing a sick, fluorescent purple. There are so many, it’s like every vampire in the world used me as food.
Which doesn’t really make sense because aren’t Paul and Josep the only ones? Well, and Ryet. But isn’t a vampire a rare thing? How could two vampires have made such a mess of my body?
I don’t know. Nothing makes any sense and I feel like I’m already in Hell, so… I doze, trying my best to find the purple dreamwalk so I can make reality go away.
But it’s not easy. Not like it was. It’s like the purple knows I’m different now and wants nothing to do with me.
That’s when I remember the gold. I have two mists at my disposal. And while the purple was part of Paul, the gold is part of me, the Black witch.
Thenightmare.
My nightmare.
I think about this for a while, letting the gold mist surround me in this new place in my head. Letting it heal me. I think. I hope. And I settle into the idea that Paul doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know about the nightmare. About that little girl and her… beast. What was her name again? Coyrah. And the monster was called the aquis equi—which was like a cross between a seahorse and an octopus.
If Lucia was telling the truth—and there’s really no reason to believe she was because pretty much everyone in my life is lying right now—but if she was, then that little girl who tamed the monster is my ancestor.
The start of the Black bloodline.
I feel like Paul has very little respect for this blood of mine. Not the actual blood, which he feeds on, but the genetics. And his dismissal of it—of me—feels wrong. Deceptive. Because if I was weak, he wouldn’t need me. He wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to curate me, and raise me, and keep me close.
Which means I’m strong. I just don’t know it yet.
And this strength comes from Coyrah. That’s what Lucia was telling me.
I am a Black witch and a Black witch is nothing to fuck with.
Eventually I have to concedethat I can’t stay here in the dirt. My body still hurts from all the bites and it’s not getting any better. I don’t think it will get better until I drink from Ryet. And whatever is happening to him, that won’t get any better until he drinks from me.
For better or worse, I love him. He’s my partner. And even if he is a monster now, with little or no resemblance to the man I met in White River, he’s all I’ve got.
I’m not gonna give him up. I can’t. If there’s a way to keep him, I will find it.
It feels like a hollow promise. Something lackluster. I mean, it’s not romantic at all. It’s practical. And I really hate that.
But I cut myself some slack and let out a breath. Because none of this is my fault. Yes, I have made some seriously bad decisions over the past couple of months, but it was mostly reaction to circumstance. It’s not like I planned on becoming something evil. It’s not like I had a choice, either. This is what was handed to me. I’m just doing the best I can to save myself. Which, again, feels a little gross. But self-preservation isn’t a sin. It’s an instinct.
This word makes me cringe because animals have instincts and I’m already feeling less and less human as the moments tick off. But my way out was a choice I gave up back in that bedroom in Paul’s lodge. When I saved Ryet, I agreed to walk this path and now that I’m here, I had better start thinking ofme.
