Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I’m just staring at this blood, craving it so hard, but lost in the beauty of just looking at it. Paul’s hand is on my head, guiding my mouth down to Ryet’s neck. And the moment his blood touches my lips, I lose myself. With eyes open I watch as the purple swirls up and the gold mist falls down like rain.
The three of us are somewhere else. All tangled up on a bed. Naked.
Ryet’s bleeding, I’m drinking, and Paul is leaning to me, whispering. “Set me free, Syrsee. Let me go so I can save him for you. Release me.”
I don’t want to pull back from my drink. I don’t know when I’ll get another one. I don’t even know how to release Paul. I don’t even know how I trapped him in the first place.
But then Paul’s whispers are there, his mouth right up next to my ear. “Let me drink you while you drink him. That’s how you release me.”
It doesn’t really add up, but I barely know where I am, so maybe it’s OK to be confused?
Even if I objected, it probably wouldn’t stop him. Because he doesn’t wait for my understanding and I don’t even give him verbal permission, but since when did Paul ever need words? He’s inside me. He’s inside Ryet. This much I know.
And then he’s pulling blood from me and I’m back in that bliss, the blood lust growing stronger and more insistent even though I’m in the middle of getting my hit. Ryet’s hand is on my breast, and every time I take a pull from him, he squeezes it, sending a flood of sensations that get all mixed up with the feeling of Paul taking his own pull from me.
Then Ryet leans to Paul, practically ripping his neck open. Blood suddenly pours down Paul’s neck. I slip my fingers into it, dragging it over to my lips. And then I stop drinking from the meager puncture wounds, and join Ryet as we both drink Paul’s blood from the gaping wound.
Paul pulls off me, digging his fangs into Ryet. But only long enough to get a taste. Not long enough for me to protest. Because before I can object, he’s drinking me again. And we’re drinking him. And then we’re drinking Ryet. And then they’re drinking me.
It’s a blood orgy. Ryet, me, and Paul.
And there’s something inside me that knows… this is exactly how Paul planned it.
He made us for this.
He made us him.
And even though, in the back of my head, all those painful feelings of shame are still there and I know, even if I know nothing else, that this is evil—I don’t want him to ever stop.
I want to stay here and get lost in the blood lust.
Which is, of course, the moment when Paul pulls back and starts whispering again. “Release me, Syrsee. Right now.”
I don’t want to. I want to keep him in this moment forever. And for sure, I do not want to move forward into the dark, depressing, empty future in front of me.
But since when did what I want ever matter to Paul?
“I release you.” I don’t even mean to say it, it just comes out.
And then he’s gone.
And the moment he leaves, the mist begins to fade…
25 - Paul
This is the dream.
When I open my eyes, I’m home.
I sit up, catching the scent of old, dried blood. Then I see Lucia’s head on the floor, near the armoire filled with medical supplies.
It’s a rotting piece of bone and remnant flesh and her formally green eyes are now a gross shade of yellow gray. But a smile creeps across my face. Then a laugh.
This laugh is interrupted by the resounding chime of the lodge doorbell coming from the floors below. I walk to the door, then turn, wanting to take one last look at the room where it all happened. What happened in this tower is the defining moment of my long life and I want to burn it all into my memory.
The bloodstained floor. The dirty IV needle and the tubing attached that used to drain those first drops of Black blood out of Syrsee. The rumpled bedsheets where the three of us consummated the union. And, of course, the lingering gold mist.
A present from Syrsee that she didn’t even know she gave me.
Voices below. But not Josep’s.
Then I remember what’s actually going on here and leave the room. Naked, but fully clothed in my vampire skin. Wings so heavy, the muscles in my back tremble with the effort to hold them upright. I’m out of practice, but I’ll get used to it soon enough.
I hit the floor below, travel the hallway until I reach the stairs that will take me down to the grand foyer, and then descend slowly, as I take in the scene. The gorgeous wood-planked floor that Ryet so painstakingly laid with his own hands is covered in a layer of halfbreed dust that is inches thick.