16 - Syrsee
His name is Paul
Ryet is talking to me , and I say something back, but I’m drawn to another place and his voice fades along with my awareness of him.
I find myself inside the Darkness.
Here lies infinity. The forever. The eternal. The unknown.
Ever since my grandma died I’ve been looking for the truth. It feels like a mission now. I wanted to read the books because I felt like that was where my truth was hidden. Somewhere deep in the pages of antiquated thoughts, and magic recipes, and philosophical waxing.
But my whole trip to the Guild with Ryet was nothing but a dream. Nothing but a lie.
No wonder I was reading nothing but meaningless things. The Guild library doesn’t hold my truth, I do.
I am the Coyrah and the reason I can’t find my truth is because I have been shattered into so many pieces, there’s not much left of me.
Which begs the question: If this piece of me I’m living in now is but one of hundreds, or thousands, or, who knows, maybe even millions—then what would I be if I was whole?
How much power over the purple and gold would I have if all of that knowledge was contained within a single consciousness?
And what could I do with that power?
Change Ryet back?
No. What’s done is done. He’s a vampire now, whether I like it or not. Whether he likes it or not.
Just like him, I am made of Darkness, but that’s the past. It’s done and there’s nothing I can do to change it. But maybe I could use all that magic to bring forth a better future.
Not for the world—I don’t speak for the world—but just Ryet and me. Couldn’t I use my power to find a way to give us… hope ?
It’s a goal, at least. One that might be futile, but what else am I gonna do? If I am eternal, what better way to spend eternity than hunting down all my missing pieces so I can put them to good use?
This new confidence and understanding forces a change and slowly, the black emptiness fades and then I’m conscious again. Another minute or so passes before I try and open my eyes. And when I do, I wake up immersed in a mist of swirling gold and purple.
It moves around me like a slow-moving tornado, glittering, and sparkling, and catching the light. For some reason, this makes me feel safe. Kind of reminds me of a fairy realm I saw in a movie once.
Which allows me to relax, exhale, and look around.
After a few more seconds I realize it’s not the pretty colors that comfort me, but some internal instinct that this is… home. Somewhere I belong.
My body starts to tingle and a sense of purpose and wellbeing comes over me. A surety, maybe, that I have… arrived.
The only question is, arrived… where ?
It’s impossible to know because there’s no one to ask.
But I’ve been dreamwalking since I was a child. I might not know everything about it—certainly not the gold parts, since they are new—but I know enough to get places. To use it as means to an end.
To use it as a road .
My stomach flutters and my hand automatically drifts down to my stomach as I suddenly realize that there is something growing inside me.
A demon? A god? A vampire?
I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that it’s not mine. It’s not Ryet’s, either. It belongs to the Darkness. We belong to the Darkness as well, I think. But this baby is different. It’s something very, very wrong and it cannot be born. I feel this all the way down to my bones.
It cannot be born.
I don’t know what Paul thinks it is, or what Josep thinks it is, but I don’t care what they think. They made it for all the wrong reasons. I think it’s evil. And not in the same way that I am. Not even in the same way as Paul or Ryet.
It’s more than that. It’s like… Biblical. An Antichrist or something. At the very least, it’s a terrible idea to bring it into the human world and an even worse idea for me to raise it.
I’m shaking my head as I think these last words. No. I’m not gonna do it.
And then I remember something. My own thoughts from months ago. From that night in the lodge bedroom when Lucia died.
Maybe the Darkness wins. Maybe the Darkness takes over the world. Maybe some woman really does pop out a bunch of evil demon babies. Maybe that’s really how all this ends.
But I swear to that good-for-nothing God above, it’s not gonna happen that way because of me.
I was so convinced. In fact, I was here, in this same frame of mind as I am right now. I had a choice back in the lodge bedroom when Lucia came to me and told me to kill Ryet and then myself and I didn’t do it. I put myself on this path. I am this demon’s mother.
It’s my fault we’re here. But this guilt, or self-blame, or whatever emotion it is that I’m feeling, isn’t the important part.
The important part is that while it’s inside of me, I’m in control of it.
“The ouroboros,” I say, repeating the words Lucia spoke to me. The baby is power. And if Paul was telling the truth and my only purpose in this life is to make babies, then it’s a constant source of power. Not for him, but for me .
He was going to take it, of course. Just like the piece of me that was my grandma took it from the piece of me that was my mother.
But couldn’t I take it instead? Couldn’t I just eat my own tail and keep all that power for myself? And, if I were to find all my shattered pieces, couldn’t I scoop them all up and just… put them all back where they belong?
How dark am I? How close to being the actual evil of Darkness am I? Because these thoughts of mine make me feel more like a daughter than a distant cousin.
This final thought is the scary one. Not that any of the previous ideas were in any way calming. But the next thought is… if I did pull myself together and take all my power back, would I still be Syrsee? Would I still love Ryet?
Would I be able to control it?
Most likely not.
It’s probably a really stupid idea to claim my birthright power.
It’s probably gonna come back to bite me, just like that snake eating its tail.
But the only other option is to let everyone else dictate my future.
Paul, or Josep, or Ryet, or the Darkness.
If this is truly my life, isn’t it better to try and change my future rather than letting others do it for me?
Yes.
I know this is the way because I spent my whole life up to this point being ignorant, and afraid, and on the run.
I don’t want to run anymore.
I don’t want this baby.
I don’t want to die, either.
I want to live. I want my power. And I want Ryet to be my future.
From where I’m at presently, none of this seems possible. The deck, as they say, is decidedly stacked against me.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I could, for once, stop running and take a stand. Which sounds good in books and movies. Stories. They speed everything up and make a montage of growth or… something. Time passes, skills are acquired, coping mechanisms are learned. Because this is how growth works. You have to struggle. You have to live through things. This is how you grow. You don’t simply wake up one day and say ‘I’m a hero.’ Because if one was able to simply become courageous, everyone would do it. It’s just not that easy. You have to earn it.
I like personal growth as much as the next person, I just don’t have time for it. The Darkness is coming and I’m not ready. All of this is out of my control.
And… now I sound like a quitter. Is this my fate? To be food? To be a demon-making machine? To lose ?
Even if it is, shouldn’t I at least try to buck the system? Conjure up the essence of heroines in books and take control of my destiny? Be a girl boss? A strong female character who wins despite all odds?
I should. But it doesn’t seem very realistic. And if you know you’re just gonna lose, it’s hard to commit.
Maybe… I should just… redefine winning? I mean, sure, living through this intact, not having a demon baby, and getting to spend thirty or forty years with a man I love—even though he’s a vampire—is the actual prize I’m aiming for. But couldn’t I… maybe… come up with a more magnanimous goal?
Like… saving the rest of the world from an eternity of Darkness instead of living my dream?
Because if this was my goal, then I could lose all three of those things above and still win.
As if I’ve hit on something important, the mist begins to change all around me. Instead of swirling, it starts to coalesce into tall shapes. I watch, slightly hypnotized, as the glittering gold particles separate themselves from the purple and become tall rectangles.
No. Not rectangles. Doors ! Many, many of them. Hundreds, maybe, as I look around. I begin walking forward, trying to see into the ones closest to me.
In the one on my right, I see Ryet. I almost rush forward and walk through it, but I catch a glimpse of motion in another door, and in that one, I see Paul.
Choices. That’s what these doors are.
Ryet is the Vampire. We’re on a bed together and he’s shaking my shoulder, leaning down. Probably because I’m not waking up and he’s worried that I’m dying. I think this room is in the lodge, but that’s just a guess, as well as a detail that doesn’t really matter. Because I recognize this door for what it is. The present.
The other door, the one with Paul, is not the present. It’s him running through the woods, but not the him of today. It’s the him of that dreamwalk I took to the Roman baths. Which is the past.
Choices.
I would like to walk through the door with Ryet, wake up on that bed, and find a way forward with him at my side. It’s so much better than doing this alone.
But if I choose Ryet, I stay the same. Nothing changes. No personal growth.
The present doesn’t offer many opportunities to change your future. You are what you are. But the past… the past is where choices were made that got you here in the first place. So even though this isn’t my past, it’s Paul’s, I walk through that door.
I choose Paul.
As soon as I say his name in my head, I’m there. In the forest, running alongside him. He’s naked and dirty, breathing heavy and concentrating so hard on running, that he doesn’t even notice me.
That’s when I hear noises up ahead and realize Paul isn’t running, he’s hunting. And whatever it is he’s after, it’s just up ahead.
We come through a break in the trees and I see a naked man. He looks over his shoulder, trying to see how close Paul is, and his expression says everything his mouth doesn’t.
He’s dead.
The man stumbles, falls, and then begins to weep as Paul catches up and attacks him like a dog, ripping his throat with his long, sharp teeth. He spits the chunk of meat out and dives down, sucking up the man’s blood.
In the distance, there is a baying of hounds. And they are not that far away.
I squint down at Paul, watching him feed as questions rush into my head. “When is this?” I say it out loud.
Paul hears me, because he stops and looks up at me. His face is covered in blood, his eyes as red as the blood he’s sucking, and his face is so gaunt and white, he looks even more demonic in this starved human form than when he’s wearing the blue-black skin and wings.
His grin is lopsided. And if this were the future, I would recognize this grin as his practiced smarmy smile. But here, in the past, it’s haunting and not the least bit playful.
He growls at me. “Now? You decide to come back now ?” He doesn’t let go of the dead man and he doesn’t straighten up or stand. He remains there, crouched on the ground, with the dead food clutched in his claws.
“When is this?” I ask again. Because clearly time is not passing in the same way for us. In my weird, unreliable dreamwalk time, perhaps minutes have passed. Maybe a couple of hours.
But from the look of him, and his blood-red eyes, it’s been… months?
The hounds are getting closer and this makes Paul cock his head in their direction. Then he looks back at me. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since we last saw each other?” These words come out past the blood in his mouth.
Paul is looking me straight in the eyes and, for some reason, he scares me. So much so that my stomach flips. I shake my head no.
“Seven. Years. Now ask me how long, before right now”—he shakes the dead man in his claws—“has it been since he fed me?”
It’s a rhetorical question, so I don’t answer. Just ask one of my own. “Who, Paul? Who is doing this to you? The Obscurati?” Because clearly, he really is starving.
He scoffs. “The Obscurati? The Obscurati works for Nero. That pathetic little boy who calls himself a ruler. Seven years. Since the night I was born. That’s the last time he fed me.”
Everything I thought I knew about Paul the vampire gets flipped upside down in this moment. He’s scared. And starving. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
I blow out a breath. The hounds are so close now, we might have thirty seconds before they’re upon us and nothing has been settled. I don’t want to leave him like this because it won’t change anything. So I push my wrist into his space. “Drink me.”
“I don’t need you.” He’s scoffing again.
“Drink me. I’m a true Black witch, Paul.” I point to the body on the ground. “I don’t know who this is, but a Black witch he is not. Drink me, kill Nero—everyone hates him anyway—and I’ll be back to feed you again. Only next time, you will tell me everything I want to know. Do we have a deal?”
He looks in the direction of the hounds. They are so close now, and the baying is so loud, I almost miss what he asks next. “How long?” He looks back at me, his eyes dripping blood as if he’s crying. “How long do I have to wait?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s all very new to me and I don’t have much control, but I will find you, I promise, I will. Now drink!”
Almost before those words are out of my mouth, he’s biting my wrist. He’s not careful, he just rips it open. And once again I’m reminded that he is not the practiced, calculating, master vampire that I know in the future.
He is a frightened newborn.
The hounds are suddenly upon us, and they attack. I slip away as mist, but not before I see what happens next. Paul turns, mouth still blood red, just as it was when I came here. But his eyes are now blue.
He is no longer starving.
My blood did that.
And whatever he does next, my blood does that as well. But I don’t see it, because I’m gone.
It is in this moment that I realize what I have actually started here.
I am supposed to be killing him with dead Black blood, but all I have done is make him stronger .
And not only that, I promised to feed him again.
I’ll find you .
I tell myself it’s for answers.
But I think I have the answers I need.
I think I’m doing this for me, not him.
I think there’s much more going on here than anyone has told me. And while everyone has kept me as ignorant as possible through the careful dissemination of truths and lies, I’m finally starting to see the big picture.
This isn’t about vampires.
This isn’t about Black witches.
This isn’t about my eternal soul, this isn’t about ice castles, or the Obscurati, or the magical purple mist, or even Ryet.
This is a battle as old as time.
The battle of all time.
And I have chosen my side.
His name is Paul.
Fuck losing. I’m not redefining anything. I am going to feed this monster, and make him strong, and no matter the cost, we are going to win .
Coming out of this dreamwalk with Paul isn’t like leaving a place. It’s more like an exchange of a place. One moment I’m in that forest, and the next I’m in the swirling purple and gold mist.
I’ll need another word for what this is, because ‘dreamwalk’ doesn’t feel right. Dreamwalking is what I’ve been doing all my life. This is something completely different.
But there’s no time to make up new words. I need to get back to Paul. Seven years went by for him and it was mere moments for me. At least it felt like moments.
So as soon as I manifest, I go looking for the pathways. It’s just… no matter how long I stare, I can’t seem to find the doors again. The mist just continues to slowly swirl around me. I look around and down at myself, watching the mist. And this is when I realize that the baby bump is gone.
I just stare at my stomach for a moment, trying to find a way for this to make sense.
I mean, none of it makes sense. And the easy answer, of course, is that it’s just an illusion. I’m not pregnant with a demon baby, was never pregnant.
It’s a nice thought, I’m just not convinced it’s true. I think I really am pregnant. I think there really is something very, very sick and bad growing inside me.
But it’s such a relief to not see the proof that I can easily push that problem aside to concentrate on the other one.
Which is Paul. I need to find him. He knows what’s going on and he doesn’t seem as committed to keeping his secrets as the Paul I know in my own time.
I need those secrets. Desperately need those secrets.
So I stare at the mist. I squint my eyes, I cross them, I let them go lazy… but nothing works.
“Come on!” I say this out loud as I rub my hands down my face. “Where is Lucia when I need her?”
I look around, hoping that my wish becomes manifest and Lucia appears, but she doesn’t.
But a shape does begin to form. I stand still as the mist bonds and more and more rectangles appear. But when I approach, there’s something wrong with them.
They aren’t doors, they’re… I lean forward, squinting, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Some of them are easy. They show bedrooms, or hallways, or the interior of cars. But some of them show sky and the boughs of trees. Some of them are a blur, like everything is moving. And some of them are the ceiling of a bathroom.
Mirrors. The doors have become mirrors that show the human world. They are all places, obviously, but none of them are Paul .
An idea hits me—maybe that’s how I got to the Roman bath? There was water in there. And the Coyrah was out on the ice.
It’s the water!
The dreamwalk belongs to the vampires. Purple is the earth. The dirt. A highway across the present or a vision of the past.
But gold is the mist. Water. Doorways through time. And it belongs to me .
I turn my head and finally see something familiar. A pink-haired girl on the other side of a rippling pool of water.
And she is standing in a cave.