8 - Ryet
Too much is the only answer .
I go outside and start making my way to the lab, my mind still caught up in the dreamwalk this morning. The three of us. I’ve never been interested in Paul that way and if you had asked me a couple of weeks ago whether or not I’d be up for sharing my girlfriend with a demon, it would’ve been a firm no.
Which bothers me.
Not really the ‘no’ part. Well, that too. Paul. I dunno. I can’t go there right now.
It’s mostly just the fact that I can’t count on anything anymore. Reality is so… unstable and unreliable. And it makes sense, I guess. I did turn into a vampire and I am living in some sort of second body.
That’s another thing, too. Second body? Paul did explain it. Kind of. He was all, “you could split yourselves” and “be in two places at once” and “walk away from your soul.” Which, looking back, really should’ve been the flashing red warning sign where I focused all my attention.
Walk away from your soul? What the fuck? Soulless? And we agreed to this.
It was the blood lust, I’m sure of it. Blood. It makes you do weird shit.
This last thought is still swirling through my head when I realize there’s no one around. Like… no one. I stop on the walking path and look all around. Empty. Every trail, every path—just empty. I’m kind of in the woods now, so I lean to the side, trying to get a glimpse of the clearing up ahead where some shops are, but again, no people.
I throw up my hands. See? This is what I mean. Un. Reliable. I need some stability here. “ Where is everyone !” I yell this into the forest and it echoes back in a weird way, like my own voice mocking me.
“Funny you should ask.”
I whirl around and find Paul sitting on a bench about twenty feet behind me. “What the hell are you doing here? And… nice coat.”
“Isn’t it though?” He grins as he straightens the lapel on his fur coat. An actual fucking grin. Which is so out of character for him—his usual expression is more of an evil smirk—that it knocks me back a step. Because… it looks good on him, that grin. “It’s wolf. It’s not real, of course. It’s made of magic purple dreamwalk.” He looks down at his left shoulder and brushes a leaf off the coat. “But I’m having one made just like it back at the compound.”
I blink my eyes and shake my head a little to snap myself out of whatever trance I’m falling into, then point at him. “How are you here?”
“How do I get anywhere, Ryet? I dreamwalk it.”
“I understand that. But it’s not answering my question.”
“Because you haven’t asked that question yet, Ryet.” He pauses here to smile at me. Not a grin or a smirk. Just a smile. Kind of a sad one. “You’re afraid to ask that question.”
I blow out a breath. I know what he’s gonna say and I don’t want to hear it. I really, really don’t. So instead, I say, “I can’t live like this.”
“Good news.” He beams. “You’re not.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do it, Paul. I really can’t. I’ve lost all sense of reality. I have no idea where I am, or what I am, or who I am.”
Paul stands up and walks towards me. Our eyes are locked together as he approaches. We stand, facing each other, mere inches apart. He speaks first, pushing a piece of hair away from my face like I’m his fucking lover and he’s trying to be tender. “It’s temporary. I told you that. Remember? It’s all temporary.”
I think back to a conversation we had not that long ago. “If we had a herd,” he said , “it would be easier. Right now, all we have is Syrsee. So we must share. It’s temporary. Black witches are hard to farm.”
I turn my back to him and stare off into the forest. “We’re not here, are we?”
“No.”
I turn back, furious. “Why? Why are you doing this? Are you trying to make me insane?”
Paul laughs. “Insane? Dear Ryet, I’m saving that mind of yours this very moment. You’re doing remarkably well—thanks to me.” Now he glares at me. “But I’m glad you brought it up.”
“I didn’t bring it up, you did.”
He waves a hand in the air. “Regardless. If you don’t pull back and rein it in right now, you’re going to decapitate our one and only Black witch. And while I see the draw of this act—all that Black blood all at once would certainly be the feast of a lifetime—we don’t have a backup food source. So.” He throws up his hands. “That’s why I’m here. Pull back, Ryet. Right now .”
And then he’s gone.
And then I’m gone too. All of it is gone. The woods are gone, and the Guild is gone, and the lab is gone. It’s all gone because it was never real to begin with. Split in half. Be in two places at once. It’s crazy. Even crazier that I fell for it.
I blame the blood.
But I can think about that another time because while I am not longer in the woods of New Hampshire, I am in some other woods. Covered in dirt. Nothing about me feels normal and everything hurts. My whole body screams with pain. The only good thing about this moment is the blood gushing into my mouth like water coming out of a firehose. If water was sweet, and Black, and magical, that is.
I open my eyes and it takes a moment to make sense of what I’m seeing. All the while, Black blood is rushing into my mouth. A moment later I realize I’m looking at… hair.
With a shock, reality comes back and I unlatch my mouth from Syrsee’s neck. She falls back, out of my arms, limp and lifeless on the freshly disturbed earth.
There’s a hole in her neck where I was feeding. A hole .
“Syrsee?” My voice is deep and almost unrecognizable. “Syrsee?” Then the panic sets in. I shake her. “ Syrsee !” I stand up and the moment I do, my wings spread out with a great whooshing sound. I look down at myself and recognize the blue-black skin of a demon, but there are marks all over my body. Fang marks. Like a hundred vampires were feeding on me at once.
I look around, frantic. I’m at the compound. I can see the lodge off in the distance. We’re behind it, in the woods just north, and I can see the blue glow of the lit-up pool in the back.
Syrsee has the same marks on her body as well.
I fill up with rage and the anger flows out of my eyes as a maroon glow, illuminating Syrsee’s body with a sick red light that turns into a mist before my eyes.
Feeders . He turned us into feeders .
For who? Just him and Josep?
No. There are way too many bites.
I want to figure this out, it feels very relevant, but Syrsee—she looks bad. I pick up her in my arms, shaking her a little. But this just makes it worse because some of the muscles in her neck have been damaged by my feeding, so her head just lolls back and forth like the broken neck of a dead bird.
But the really gross thing is that I can see her jugular throbbing, blood spilling out of it as I watch. Which means she’s not dead.
Not yet.
She needs blood. A lot of it and right now. I bring my wrist up to my mouth, tear it open with my teeth, and let the blood drop into her open mouth. “Feed, Syrsee! Feed on me!”
The blood coats her tongue and spills over the side, pooling. But she doesn’t swallow. “Come on,” I say, shaking her again. “Come on!”
She chokes, spilling my own blood back into my face. But it’s better than nothing.
“That’s it, Syrsee. Take it. Swallow, please .” And I silently say that word again, Please, Syrsee. Please. Do not make me the one who kills you .
Which is a selfish plea, but it’s an honest one too.
Do not make me the one who kills you .
She coughs again, sputtering. But she’s not swallowing. She’s not taking it in.
Think, Ryet! You’re a vampire now. A real fucking vampire. Which means you have all sorts of powers at your disposal. Use them!
But I don’t know what they are. Paul never explained anything. I have no idea what I am, let alone what I can do.
Which… isn’t entirely true. I do know how to do one thing.
Dreamwalk.
I sit down in the dirt, Syrsee cradled in my arms, and close my eyes. Concentrating. Beckoning the purple mist.
Immediately, I’m inside it, still holding Syrsee’s limp body in my arms, but there are no bite marks and her neck isn’t practically torn in half. She looks like she’s sleeping.
I take a breath, hold it, and slowly let it out. “Wake up now, Syrsee. It’s time to feed.” I say this in my Ryet voice, not the demon one I was using back in reality.
Her eyes flutter, but don’t open. That’s OK, though. I don’t need her awake. She doesn’t even need to bite me because I’m dripping blood into her mouth on the other side of the purple. I just need her to swallow.
Which she does. Once, twice. But that’s it.
I pull out of the dreamwalk and look down at the woman in my arms again. She’s gurgling now, but I can see that the wound in her neck is beginning to heal. Just along the ragged edges, but the blood is clotting.
She’ll be OK.
I stand up, holding her close to my chest, and carry her like I would a baby towards the lodge.
She’ll be OK.
I’m heading towards the pool because it’s the most inviting place I can see at the moment. A place fit for a woman healing from the attack of a vampire.
Everything is lit up around here, but I don’t see any of the halfbreeds. Not a single one, which is weird. Because there are lots of them and they keep strange hours. I keep searching as I walk up to the pool, but the place is truly empty and the silence gives me chills.
What the fuck happened here?
I want to know, but it’ll have to wait. I need to heal Syrsee first. I walk straight into the pool. It’s heated, so it’s warm, but as I enter, the water gets exponentially hotter and I recall a memory of Paul in his demon form making the pool water boil when he swam. Well, mostly he floated on his back, staring up at the sky with his arms spread open wide, like he was daring God to fuck with him.
But I don’t float. I take a seat on the steps that face the house, half in and half out of the water. And then I open up my wrist again and start the process of fixing what I did to her.
How many times will I need to do this in the future?
How many times will I hurt her so badly, I will need to summon Dark magic to heal her?
How much more of her will I take?
Too much. That’s the only answer. Too much.
A noise from the direction of the lodge startles me and I look up to find a shadow backlit by the lights inside the house. A man.
He says nothing and neither do I. We just stare at each other for what feels like a pretty long time, but is probably only about thirty seconds.
Then he clears his throat. “Ryet? Are you… Ryet?”
It’s not a voice I recognize. And he smells weird. Even from here, I can smell him and it’s… wrong. “Who the fuck are you?” Back out here, in reality, my voice is not something I recognize. This guy, whoever he is, doesn’t recognize it either. Not as Ryet’s, because he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t recognize it as… human.
“I… well… I’m…” And then another guy appears. Backlit as well. Then another. They flank the guy in the center. One by one, more men appear until there is a semicircular line at the end of the pool in front of the lodge, all staring at me.
This is when I understand who and what I’m looking at.
Paul’s scions.