19 - Ryet
It’s blood lust
“Syrsee?” I shake her a little . “Are you hungry?” I cringe at this question. “For food, I mean.” When she doesn’t open her eyes, I shake her again. “Syrsee? Wake up.”
No response. Not even an eye twitch.
But it’s OK. She was tired. She’s been through a lot— I ate her —but she got my blood and she’s fine.
She is. I’m sure she is. But I just want to be sure. So I prod her again. “Syrsee. Syrsee, you need to wake up. Just for a moment. Just open your eyes for me and then you can go right back to sleep.” I shake her a little harder this time. “ Syrsee .” Her head lolls to the side and her long, dark hair falls over her face.
The panic comes, but I trap it inside me. I’m screaming in my own head. What did he do? What did he feed me that I fed her? What did he do ?
But it wasn’t him. It was me. I ate her .
Calm, Ryet. Stay calm. She woke up, she talked to you. And then Paul ? —
“Oh, fuck.” He gave me a vial of blood. Blood I drank and then fed to her. Without even getting an explanation.
In my defense, Paul did walk out and promise to talk later.
And anyway, Paul doesn’t want to kill Syrsee. Paul made her for me . She’s mine. Whatever he gave me to feed her, it’s not going to kill her.
And now my mind is spinning with all the things in this world that are worse than dying.
Being a vampire is at the top of my list at the moment.
Being a blood slave to a vampire is at the top of Syrsee’s, I’m sure.
I look down at sleeping Syrsee and an ache fills my chest. An overwhelming ache that, mine or not, I’ve already lost her. That she will never love me. That our love never had a chance to begin with. That I will never love or be loved again.
Which isn’t even true because I have Paul.
He’s just… not the one I want. I don’t want to spend eternity with him . I want Syrsee.
“Syrsee?” I say her name quietly, not expecting an answer.
Whatever I fed her, it’s working now and I’ll just have to wait until the process is over.
Paul won’t kill her. Whatever was in that vial, it won’t hurt her.
She needs this sleep. That’s all. She needs to rest so her body can catch up. Hell, so her mind can catch up. So that means I have two options—stay here, waiting for her to wake up, or go looking for Paul and start asking questions.
Where did he say he was going?
He didn’t.
I’ve got things to do , he said. We’re on a schedule .
Which implies, at least through my reasoning, that he’s here on the compound somewhere. If not, one of those scions downstairs will know where he is.
I slide Syrsee’s body off of me and put her head on the pillow. Then I kiss her cheek. “I’ll be back, OK? Don’t go anywhere. Because I’m coming back and you’re gonna be just fine.”
It comes out with much more conviction than I’m feeling right now, but she doesn’t stir.
Reluctantly, I turn away and leave the apartment, muttering, “I’ll be right back,” as I travel the hallway.
The enclosed hallway becomes open on the right side as I approach the main lobby and this is where the wall turns into a railing that leads to the stairs. I pause here, looking down at the stained floor below.
Blood and… I’m not sure. Remnants of body parts, I think.
Something really bad happened here. Something I didn’t notice when I brought Syrsee in last night because we came from the pool out back.
I look around. The whole place is eerily quiet.
Where is everyone?
I stay completely still, using my vampire ears to pick up anything—any kind of sound. But there is no one in this house except for Syrsee and me. Not only can I hear the silence, I can feel it.
Now what?
I have to find Paul, but where do I start?
The dreamwalk seems like a logical place, but I don’t really know how to do that. It’s never been me controlling those things. It was Paul or Syrsee.
I’m sure I could do it, but the silent lodge is creeping me out and I don’t like the idea of closing my eyes and turning my back on reality.
Sniffing the air, I catch Paul’s scent. Tracking must be one of my new vampire superpowers because suddenly, I can smell them all—every single one of his scions. But even though the one guy told me his name was Jeff, I can’t discern his scent from any of the others so it doesn’t mean much to me.
Then there is an odd one. One that does not seem familiar at all, except it reminds me of Syrsee. It’s not her, though. I definitely smell Syrsee and she is distinct from this scent. So I don’t know what to do with that information either.
Paul’s scent, though, is something I can follow.
Maybe.
I did track Syrsee using her scent when I was a scion. That was literally my job. But I have never been able to track Paul. He came and he went, usually in my dreams.
Everything about today seems about as far removed from those days last winter as they can get. I don’t even feel like the same person.
I am not, in fact, the same person.
Hell, I’m not actually a person.
I’m a… I look down at myself and shake my head. I’m a demon. I look like a demon. This is the longest I’ve gone in this form so far and it feels pretty final. Like there’s no going back now. That other guy, the one with the nice body and attractive face, he’s gone.
It’s not true. This is me, no matter what, but I don’t have to stay in this form. Paul didn’t. So one day, if I make it that far, I’ll know how to control it the way he did.
But today is not that day. Today there is no illusion to cover up what I am.
Everything I’ve been through over the last ninety-three years has finally caught up to me. The bill always comes due.
“Enough,” I say out loud, mostly to shake myself out of this creeping feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong. “You’re a fucking vampire, Ryet. A real vampire. You’ve got wings, for fuck’s sake.”
So I let out a breath and continue my walk down the hallway, my fingertips sliding across the wooden railing as I approach the stairs.
I go down the stairs and walk over to the stain on the floor. Which is not really a stain, but leftover blood and… whatever that other stuff is. Body parts, I’m pretty sure.
But it’s days old. Dried and cracking since this is the entrance to the lodge and there’s a whole wall of cathedral windows allowing in sunshine.
The mess is lit up with this sunshine right now. And when I look out the window to check the sun’s position, it feels like late morning.
How long has it been since the three of us fed on Syrsee? It feels like years—months, maybe. But it has to be weeks, at least, because winter was still hanging about and it doesn’t feel like winter anymore.
I can’t reconcile this timeline. There is no way I can put it all together because while I know that Syrsee and I really did go to my cabin in West Virginia, I don’t know how many days passed while we were there and I have no fucking clue at all how many days have passed since I turned into the Darkness and got her pregnant.
I have a bad feeling about all that time between then and now. Like something was happening but I was too fucked up to realize it.
“Lied to, as well,” I absently say, mainly focused on looking around.
In the dining room I find evidence of… well. I’m not really sure. I walk the length of the table, looking at all the bloodstains on the surface, then stop in front of the two golden wingback chairs at the top of the room. I didn’t make these, they were purchased. Not by me, but they’ve been here for decades.
I’ve walked by them literally hundreds of times and never taken a second look, but today they don’t look like chairs in an intimate seating arrangement.
They look like thrones.
I glance over my shoulder, looking at the table. Then back at the chairs.
Even if I couldn’t smell them, I would know that Paul and Josep sat here while something happened on that dining table.
Then it hits me.
They fed .
The scions fed while Paul and Josep watched.
And now it all makes sense.
Because I know, with one hundred percent certainty, that they fed on me .
No, not me.
Us .
Paul fed Syrsee and me to his scions.
Why ?
But as soon as I ask myself this question, the answer is on my lips. “To turn them.”
Turn them into what, though?
Not into vampires. If Paul could turn a horde of scions into vampires simply by feeding them my blood, then why wouldn’t he be able to turn them by feeding them his blood?
No. That’s not what happened here.
And now all those jars and vials in the cabin root cellar make sense. He did something to us. Something that would… what? What would it do to the scions who drank us off this table?
I don’t know. But I suddenly remember that Jeff said he and the rest of them who saw me in the pool didn’t get to feed.
So Paul didn’t do it to all of them. Just some.
Why ?
There’s only one way to get that question answered. Find Paul.
I walk back down the length of the dining table and turn right, heading for the back of the house where the pool is. Paul is here on the property. Even if I didn’t have his scent in the air, I would know this. The lodge is the final scene of whatever act of theater Paul is producing.
I step outside, the air chilly even though it’s spring, and stop in front of the pool as a wave of scents hit me.
I lose Paul’s for a moment because there are so many.
I’m not good at this scent tracking stuff, but this new ability is good enough for me to come to a conclusion.
There were three groups of people: The scions in the dining room who drank. The scions out here, who didn’t. And…
I look around. Like take a good look around. Because this place has never been empty.
And… the halfbreeds.
That’s the bloody mess on the floor of the lobby. Something happened there. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with me.
I’m still trying to put all these pieces together when I sense a weird vibrational change.
I slowly turn my head to the left where the woods are and immediately feel adrift. Like the floor has fallen away beneath my feet. It takes me a moment to realize I have risen up in the air. My wings aren’t even spread out, I just… rose up.
It’s an instinct, I realize. A response to a threat. Because coming out of the woods are… they are… I don’t have a word ready for what they are.
Because they are not scions.
They are not vampires, either.
They are… dead .
Every zombie movie I’ve ever seen flashes though my mind. And this is the same moment when they see me, because their arms reach out for me, and they begin to run as a horde.
My eyebrows go up, that’s how confused I am.
What the hell do they think they’re doing? Are they going to attack me?
I actually laugh.
But then Josep appears between the trees and some of the puzzle pieces start slipping into place.
Paul’s little vials and puddings.
Splitting his scions in half.
Sending Syrsee and me to live in a dreamwalk while some of the scions drank us and some of them didn’t.
This isn’t the birth of the American Vampire, this is a war .
Josep versus Paul.
The Darkness versus… well, that’s where my understanding ends and I don’t have any more time to think about it because Josep is here. He is tall, and muscular, and beautiful. His skin is blue-black and as he exits the trees his wings stretch out and rise up so far on either side of his body, they block out the sun. And as this shadow falls over me, three things happen at the same time:
One, he smiles and his eyes light up with blood lust.
Two, my wings rise up as I bare my fangs and growl.
And three, the horde is here. Right below me. Reaching up with half-decomposed hands, trying to pull me out of the air. They look like they’ve been buried in the ground for decades, clothing tattered and dirty, faces contorted into expressions I don’t even have words to describe—but the most noticeable thing is their scent.
That’s not earth. It’s not dirt or death, either.
It’s blood lust.
I’ve never attached a smell to this longing to feed, but this is what it smells like.
And in their eyes is a singular look. A focus so intense, there’s no way to miss it.
They are hungry for me .