I smile at the wordplay, amused at my own cleverness.
If the Dusk was a beer, it would be called Darkness Lite. It takes a little more to get the same buzz, but I’m not looking for the Darkness kind of buzz. I’m going to kill this man. I only need him cooperative and willing until the ritual is over.
I go back outside and get in the truck.
Kael looks at me expectantly, waiting for some kind of explanation. When all I do is stare back at him, he becomes agitated. “Well?”
I smile, picturing him naked. “You have a nice body, you know that, Kael?”
He snorts a little. “Yeah. So?”
“I’m going to enjoy it.”
Now he smirks, confident in his own sex appeal. “Is that what this is about? Sex?”
“It’s always about sex, Kael.”
“Well, for me it’s about blood. So… when do I get some?”
I chuckle and grin. “You’re gonna get some all right.” Then I point at Joshua’s beat-up silver Chevy pick-up as he comes around the side of the church. Joshua smiles at me from the other side of the windshield, then nods his head towards the road.
“I’m going to take you somewhere now, Kael. Somewhere Ryet has never been.”
Kael side-eyes me. “What kind of place?”
“A place where magic is made.”
“Do I get blood at this place?”
“You do.” I picture how this will go down and grin. “You’re gonna get more blood today than I’ve given you before.”
“And sex too, huh?”
“Oh, yes. There will be lots of that as well. It’s going to be a pile of sweaty, bloody bodies, Kael. All fucking, and sucking, and getting off. Me, and you, and him.” I jut my chin at the waiting Joshua. “Plus many others.”
“Any women involved in this?”
“If you want one, sure. There are plenty of women.”
He nods a little, probably picturing all this in his head. “All right. So what’s the catch?”
Kael is smart. There’s always a catch. But he’s nearly twenty in scion years if I recall correctly, so he understands how I work. I do not lie. I always tell him what’s going to happen. So he knows there’s a tradeoff coming.
“We’re going to use you, Kael. Your blood. I need to make some magic. So we’re going to feed and fuck and then I’m going to take your blood and your seed and mix it up with all of ours to make this magic. Does that sound acceptable?”
He stares at me for a few moments, eyes narrowing. “That’s it? Feed and fuck and make some magic?”
“That’s literally it.”
“And Ryet has never been here? Or done anything like this?”
This is Kael’s fatal flaw. Jealousy. He hates Ryet. He’s always hated Ryet. He wants to be my blood lover. My one and only. Not because he loves me—Kael here is a psychopath, he’s not capable of love. He wants to be my one and only because he has grand dreams of usurping me.
Which is ludicrous. I have more Darkness in a single strand of hair than he does in his whole body. But you don’t know what you don’t know, so I can’t fault him for dreaming big. And anyway, these big dreams of his are the whole reason he’s going to say yes to this offer.
“Is this guy a vampire?” Kael nods to Joshua.
“No. He’s a witch.”
