Page 72 of Blood Lovers

I want to fight him, but he smells good.

“I need you to wake up and drink her. Do you hear me, Ryet?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You will. Trust me.”

“Give me their faces.”

He wilts again. Not like he’s tired, but like he’s disappointed. “I will. But I can’t do that until you drink her. If I give you those memories, the curse changes. And you will die before I can stop it. Go back. Wake up. Drink her until you are so full, you could not take another drop. And then we’ll talk about Jane. I really can give you a final—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Well, you get the idea. But first”—he pushes me off him and stands up—“you drink her.”

“Are you still there? In the room with her?”

“Only in spirit. There are unexpected forces working against me. I’m not sure who they are, or what they are planning, but I cannot be there in person. If I could, you know I would, right?”

When I look up at him, he’s got a weird look on his face. Like he’s… afraid of something. Like he’s afraid I don’t believe him.

“Do you love me?”

He nods without hesitation.

“Why?”

“You’re so—”

“Don’t, Paul. Don’t say ‘beautiful.’ You call them all beautiful. It doesn’t mean anything.”

He hesitates and I feel like time stands still.

Who am I to this demon?

Why is he so infatuated with me?

I treat him like shit. I dismiss him. I ignore him. I insult him. I hate him. “What did I ever do to earn this love?”

“You exist.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - SYRSEE

Vampire and food.

“Don’t bother running.”

Running? I’m still catching up to what’s actually happening. I’m barely comprehending what I’m seeing, so running… that feels like an action one takes when their brain is actually working.

“Sit down, Syrsee.” The vampire nods his head to the chair near the window.

But I don’t sit down. I force myself to take it all in. Ryet, sick in bed, his face pressed up against the bare hip of the vampire, his body sweaty and flushed, naked under the sheet that only barely covers him. He’s breathing hard and trembling, the whole of him shivering like he’s been out in the wind and the cold for months.

The vampire is naked too and he’s absently playing with a stray lock of Ryet’s dark hair as his ice-blue eyes take me in, then narrow as he barks my name. “Syrsee.” The word is sharp and commanding.

I just stare at Ryet. But I notice that there is a lavender haze around the edges of this room, which means the vampire isn’t really here. I’m in his dreamwalk—or maybe he’s in mine.

“He’s dying. I told you that.”