15 - Josep
What’s one more day?
Little Baby is life. She is my new purpose.
We are lying together on the floor of my cave, panting and sweating from the sex, and this, I think, is my first experience of bliss that is not about blood.
She’s on top of me, her soft breath fluttering against my chest like butterfly wings, and she is sleeping.
I love.
I am able to love.
It’s a surprise because loving her was not my intention. I had imagined a slave. Sex, blood, whatever I desired her to do—to me, for me—I saw her doing it.
But a slave isn’t real. And ever since the Darkness tricked me into thinking it was Little Baby while I was underground, I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.
What is real?
I admit, I haven’t thought about it much. And it helps that the Darkness explained that it and I are the same, I just forgot we were the same.
But it’sthe Darkness.
And the Darkness doesn’t have regrets, or attachments, or ponder the meaning of life. It’s unable to do any of those things because it exists outside of time. Without time, there is no progression. Without progression, there is just… well. Darkness.
But the Darkness does have one thing: Goals.
Or, more accurately,agoal.
It wants to be in this realm withus. Just because this realm belongs to it doesn’t mean it can partake.
It wants to partake. To be vampires and humans. Plant and animal. It wants blood and sex. And it needs both good and evil—black and white—to fully exist. It needs this or else it is just insanity.
I wouldn’t care if it was tricking me if Little Baby wasn’t here. I wouldn’t care because before her I truly was the Darkness. I realize that now. The Josep who came before Little Baby is someone other than the Josep who came after.
My arms are wrapped around my new precious demon as she sleeps and my thumb is absently stroking her shoulder.
She must be real.
I must not accept anything less than real.
So she is the reason that I gently roll her off me and cover her up with a fur. Then I stand over her, looking down at her face, glowing and pink with life.
She can’t be another illusion, she just can’t. If this little demon was the Darkness, she would be talking to me. Trying to make sure I was doing my job. Trying to influence me and keep me on track.
But she’s not.
It’s enough to convince me for now. And I have things to do.
Not because the Darkness wants me to, but because I need to keep her safe. I need to provide her a future. And at this point, there is only one way to do that.
Kill Paul.
Has he always been trying to kill me? Dark Me, specifically. Not Josep Me.
I don’t think so.
I understand that he was sent on a mission and that mission did involve annihilating the Darkness, so at first glance my logic appears to fail. But becoming a vampire is a disorienting process. The past few days alone are proof of that.
