12 - Ryet
This is the Kingdom of Darkness
I never knew that scions had a stench to them.
They reek like… rot . Like something two days dead that’s been left out in the hot sun. The scent of one was bad enough, but there are at least a dozen staring at me from the opposite end of the pool, looking like backlit shadows.
The silence lingers because the scion who appeared first, the one who was talking to me, didn’t finish his introduction when his buddies came up behind him.
“Get out of my house.” My voice is nearly unrecognizable. It’s the demon voice. Which matches my new demon body.
The leader, if that’s what he is, bows, falling to his knees and prostrating himself. “My lord?—”
“I’m not your lord.”
He looks up at me, but doesn’t lift his head, only his eyes. “OK. Ryet. That’s who you are, right?” I don’t nod or agree, so he just assumes his guess is correct and keeps going. “There are scions underground. They got to feed off you and they’re transforming as we speak.”
“Get to the point.”
“The point is,” he says, getting to his feet and staring me in the eyes. It comes off as a challenge and even though I’m not his lord, I feel slighted at his overt gesture of disrespect. “The point is that we haven’t fed, Ryet .”
“Am I supposed to care?”
The man sighs and there is some murmuring from the others standing behind him. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I just know I’m starving.”
I think back on my own experience as a scion, trying to remember a time when I was starving, but can’t. I mean, the lust was always there. If Paul bled, I wanted it. But I don’t recall a single time when I ever had to go begging for it. Especially from someone I didn’t even know. “Where is Paul?” I ask him.
“He left. He took Kael and left.”
“To go where?” I notice that my voice is starting to normalize. It’s no longer demonic-sounding, but not quite back to my regular voice, either. My skin is changing too. Instead of the bruised blue and purple color, it’s going pale. And the bite marks that were all over me just minutes ago are starting to heal and disappear.
“No one knows,” the scion says.
“What is your name?”
“Jeff.”
“ Jeff ?” I snicker. “Jeff the vampire? I don’t see it.”
Jeff sighs like he’s tired and then his eyes flicker a weird shade of gold. “Me either.” And these might be the truest words I’ve ever heard from anyone.
“All right, Jeff. I need things. If you help me, I’ll help you.”
“What do you need, my lord?”
“And don’t call me that. I’m not your fucking lord. I’m no one to you and you’re no one to me. Don’t get attached to me or my blood, because I’m not Paul. I’m nothing like Paul. Do you understand me?”
Jeff nods. “Yes. Now how can I help?”
I stand up and get out of the pool, cradling Syrsee in my arms as I walk towards the group of scions. “Where is Josep?”
“No one knows,” Jeff admits. “He was in the ground, but there’s a lot of disturbed dirt over there. Even before you came back to life. I know Paul left, we all saw that. But there’s a lot of turned-over dirt now. Like…” He pauses to take a breath. “Like some of the scions came up too.”
I blow out a breath, silently cursing Paul for causing this mess. “How many? In all, I mean? How many of you are there?”
“Fifty-four in total, but there’s only twenty-two of us left who didn’t get to drink and go into the earth.”
“Twenty-one,” another man says. “Kael left with Paul, remember?”
Jeff nods. “Twenty-one then.”
Fifty-two fucking scions. Fifty-two bets hedged against me.
Well, I guess I know where Paul really stands. “OK,” I say. And while my voice is totally back to normal now, my body is doing weird things that I would like to cover up with clothing sooner rather than later. “I’ll feed you.” There’s a great murmuring conveying relief. “But”—I hold up a hand, gesturing for them to shut up—“I need to take care of Syrsee first.”
“That’s your Black witch, right?” Jeff says this innocuously enough, but he licks his lips. Like he’d like to taste her.
“Jeff? You’re never going to drink her. And if, by some chance, you find yourself presented with an opportunity to drink her, you’re still not going to drink her. Because if you take her blood without my permission, what you’re really doing is taking mine without permission.” My wings suddenly unfurl with a great whoosh of air. And even though all these scions must surely have seen Paul doing this very same thing at some point, they all gasp and take a step back. “ Do you understand me ?” These words come out in an entirely new voice that is deep, and resonant, and echoing with a very serious don’t-fuck-with-me sentiment backing it up.
They all drop to their knees and bow their heads. Some of them say, “Yes, my lord,” out of habit for Paul, probably. But Jeff says, “Yes, Ryet,” like a good little minion.
“All right then. Stand up and… go do something productive.”
“Should I keep working on the coat?” some random scion in back asks.
“What coat?”
Jeff answers me. “Paul wanted us to hunt wolves to make him a coat.”
These words make so little sense to me, I don’t even bother trying to understand them. “I don’t know. I’m taking Syrsee up to my apartment. When she’s better, we’ll talk again.”
Then I fold up my wings and simply walk past them, entering the lodge. They’re not entirely satisfied with this outcome, so they grumble behind me, but I don’t care.
What can they do?
They are just scions. Helpless, in-between creatures that smell like rot.
And it is quickly becoming very, very clear that I am something else entirely.
I don’t think about Syrsee’s limp body in my arms as I make my way over to the north side of the lodge where I have an apartment. I get stuck at the door because I don’t actually remember the code and have to kick it in. And then I pause for another handful of seconds to take in how easily this solid wood door broke under my will. Well, my foot. But it might as well have been my will, that’s how little effort it took to crack it.
The problem with breaking the door is that it won’t close behind me. But this is a secluded section of the lodge, that’s why I put my personal space here. So I don’t care. I just carry Syrsee over to the bed and lay her down. Then I push some sweaty and dirty hair out of her eyes, open my wrist with a clawed fingernail, and let my blood drip into her mouth.
I wait.
It takes nearly ten minutes before she actually swallows. Relieved at this good sign, I get into bed with her. We’re filthy, absolutely covered in smeared blood and dirt, not to mention the scent of the rotting scions that were obviously feeding on us. But I don’t even know if she’s gonna live, so who cares what we look like.
There’s a part of me that thinks my doubt is absurd. I mean, she’s a Black witch and she’s filled with the blood of two old and powerful vampires. Not to mention whatever magic was done to her with those jars and vials we consumed back at my cabin.
But there’s a limit. There has to be a limit to this protection, if that’s what is. This ability to live long past your scheduled demise, and then come back, even better than ever.
Which is a relative term.
This is when I start thinking about me .
I’m… a vampire.
Which should not be a shock, considering all the decades it took to bring me across this finish line. But it is.
I am a vampire.
Not some creature in a book. Not some actor in a movie.
This is my life .
And I have wings.
I’m lying in bed next to Syrsee, who hasn’t moved at all from the position I put her in, but I’m sitting up, resting against pillows, so I can see my body. And it’s not the blue-black bruising body, either. I’m pale to the point of almost being silver. And there isn’t a bite mark on me, thanks to Syrsee’s blood. “What does it all mean?”
“It means you’re complete.”
I look over at the open door and find Paul staring back at me. He looks the same. Beautiful. Dangerous. Predatory.
“Oh, come on, Ryet. Let it go.” He comes in my room without asking and walks over to the bed, bending down to pet Syrsee’s head as he looks at her with adoration. “You’re magnificent. Admit it.” Then he looks back up at me.
We just stare at each other for a while. I don’t know what he sees in me, but in him I see the truth. That he is evil. That I am evil. And Syrsee is, too. “We do not belong in this world.”
Paul scoffs. “It is them who don’t belong here, Ryet. This realm belongs to us .” He stands up, walks over to a massive wingback leather chair, and sinks down into it, crossing his legs and leaning on one of the wide arms as he props his head up with a hand. He looks tired, but exuberant at the same time. “You know what I don’t understand about you, Ryet?”
“Tell me.” My reply doesn’t come out snide or condescending like it used to and I’m surprised to realize that I actually want to hear what he doesn’t understand about me.
“All that church-boy shit you did growing up and you never found it. I mean, it’s all spelled out in there, Ryet.”
“Spelled out in… where? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“See?” He points at me. “This is what I mean. Your… innocence? It’s adorable.” Then he laughs, because I’m getting irritated and I think it’s leaking out of me as red light from my eyes, because Paul will not stop staring at me. “The truth, Ryet. It’s right there.” He pans a hand across the space in front of the chair as if the truth is something tangible that can be with us in this room.
“Why do you have to be so cryptic, Paul? Why can’t you just say what’s on your fucking mind with as few words as possible?”
“Like you?” He chuckles.
“Yeah. Like me. It would save a lot of time.”
“I’m a poet, Ryet.”
This makes me guffaw. “Is that right?”
“Yes. I like symbols, and nuances, and allegories, and, of course, the playfulness of a good double entendre.”
“Well, I like candid, forthright, plainspoken truth.”
“‘If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.’” He smiles at me.
I just sigh.
“I’m Kipling, Ryet.”
I roll my eyes. “OK.”
“You’re a textbook. Both are good in their own way. I make beautiful things, such as yourself. But you? You just want to peel back all the layers of that beauty and see the bloody inner workings. Which is fine with me. As a poet, I can appreciate the abstract elegance in scientific illustrations.”
“ Anyway .” Why do I even bother trying to talk to him? “You were saying? About me missing something in the church?”
He sighs now. It’s a long one. “One day you’ll understand. One day you’ll see all the symbols and nuances that I planted along the way.” Then he gives me a sad smile and a long moment of silence. I’m just about to demand he tell me about the truth about what I’m missing when he speaks again. “This is a place of evil, Ryet. You know this, but I’m telling you again. This is the Kingdom of Darkness. It says as much in the Book. There is no goodness here. It’s not meant to be good because this place is not meant for us.”
“But… us ? You were talking about humans. We’re not human, so we’re not a part of that ‘us.’”
“No. We’re not.”
“Then what does it matter?”
“It matters. Trust me, it does. Now.” He lifts his body up a little so he can reach into his pocket, and then he pulls out a vial, holding it up so that a stray beam of morning sunlight can illuminate the contents within. “This is why I’m here. It’s for Syrsee. I made it special just for her. And by that, Ryet, I mean… just for you . You understand that, right?”
I don’t say anything at first. Just let these words of his roll around in my head so I can filter out the nonsense poetry from the actual facts. Just for me . He wants me to know he loves me. And all of this comes from that.
Any logical person would see the deception here. I mean, just look at what he’s done to me. Look at what he’s done to Syrsee. It’s… gross. And wrong in every way possible. No amount of love can change that.
But in his mind, this all makes sense.
“Do you want me to feed that to her?” I ask.
“No. You drink it, then feed her. That’s the best way because your body will metabolize it better and she will have fewer reactions.”
“What will it do?”
Paul smiles. “Save her, of course. It’s going to save her and—” And then he stutters or… hesitates. Like he almost said too much. And I know— I know —this is the important part. That I should make him say it. That I should refuse to drink whatever’s in that vial until he does. That I should seek the truth.
But I’m tired and even though the thing that loves me most in this world is a mere ten feet away and he’s offering me his version of salvation, I feel forsaken.
So I see the logic in the poetry. It makes all kinds of sense because it’s a way to pretty up the evil.
Paul stands up, walks over to me, and offers me the vial.
I take it and then he turns away, heading towards the door. “Hey, wait,” I say. “Where are you going?”
He doesn’t turn and look at me, just throws a side-eye over his shoulder. “I’ve got things to do, Ryet. We’re on schedule now so don’t procrastinate with that blood. Drink it, feed her, and then we’ll talk.”
He walks out.