20 - Paul
And now I have to choose
“What was that?”
I ignore Tristin. My eyes are closed. I’m tired from feeding the scions and there are still three to go. If I open my eyes, I’ll see them looking back at me with the blood lust and I’m just not in the mood.
“ Paul ?”
“What?”
“What was that noise?”
“What noise?”
“Don’t you hear it? Listen.”
“All I hear is the disgusting slurping of the scion latched on to my wrist.”
The scion’s eyes open. Well, try to. He’s gone. So while he might hear the irritation in my voice, he’s in no condition to care about it.
“Listen closer ,” Tristin snaps.
So I do. I tune out the scion’s irritating mouth noises and let out a breath. After a few moments I do hear something. “What is that?”
Tristin is so done with me. “That’s what I just asked you .”
“Sounds like…” I listen again. “Battle?”
“Fuck. They’re up. It’s starting. We have to go right now .”
I push this feeder off me, stand up, and look over at my scions—not the hungry ones, but the fed ones. Every single one of them is sleeping.
Even the one I just fed is about to go unconscious.
I point to the mass of bodies on the floor. “Do they look like they’re ready for a battle of the ages? I have three conscious scions, Tristin, and they’re starving.” When I look over at them now, they are using every ounce of self-control they have not to attack me for my blood.
Not that they would get far. These three are no match for me.
But they’re no match for Josep’s army, either.
“How far away are they? How soon will they find him?” There’s real panic in Tristin’s voice now. But it’s understandable. He’s not a vampire, he’s a worthless rogue. Though he does excel at logistics, which came in handy.
I listen again, trying to determine where they are. Then there is a great screech that vibrates the whole valley.
Tristin and I look at each other. “Ryet,” we say at the same time.
“I thought you said you drugged him?” Tristin’s panic has turned into full-blown horror.
“I did.”
“Then why is he awake?”
It didn’t work.
I look at my tiny, slumbering scion army. All oblivious to the chaos that is coming. None in any condition to help me.
Once again, the inhuman screaming from across the compound beckons me. “I have to go.”
Tristin is shaking his head. “No, Paul. You don’t. This is why you made him. He’s doing his job, now you need to do yours.”
In past times I might’ve ripped Tristin’s head off for talking to me this way. For disagreeing with me. Rather, for assuming he has any idea at all about what motivates me. But that’s just it. He doesn’t. Because he has no idea what I’m actually doing.
“Tristin,” I say, stepping forward to place a hand on his head. “You’ve been loyal. And I appreciate that.” Even as I speak, I’m fading, slipping backwards into the purple.
Tristin’s eyes go wide when he realizes I’m leaving. “Wait! No! We can win this, Paul! They are enough!” He points to my scions.
But he’s wrong. We could win this, he’s right about that. But winning was never my goal. Not even in the first days. Losing was the best I could ever hope for.
Losing everything to save him .
So I’m shaking my head as I sink into the dirt feet first and let the Darkness take me across the compound. The cool, damp earth is like a mist as I travel through it.
Even before I return to the world above, I can hear him screaming.
Ryet.
The scions we buried with us have returned and Ryet is in the middle of them. They are attacking from all sides—dozens of them, all trying to feed.
For a moment I’m disoriented. Some leftover insanity from the change, maybe. Or I might just be so distracted by the beauty of him, I can’t think straight. My world stops and goes silent so I can just… stare at him .
Ryet .
His transformation is nearly complete and he is magnificent. His blue skin is so dark, it’s nearly black. His fangs are glistening with saliva as he snaps at the air, an unholy scream charging the air around him with crackling bits of electricity. His eyes are blood red and lit up with fire as his wings expand and contract as he desperately tries to open them to their full span of what must surely be twenty feet or more.
I am struck dumb from his beauty, unable to move until I realize that time didn’t slow down and my first true creation is fighting for his very survival.
Again, I am confused. Because the horde of scions is attacking him and it’s not supposed to be this way. I poisoned Ryet’s blood back in his cabin when I fed him all those jars. That’s why Syrsee got so sick. That’s why it’s taken so long for him to change.
“Confused, Paul?”
Even above the screeching and wailing of scions and newborn vampire alike, Josep’s voice booms through the air. It’s midday, I think. Sunny, blue skies. But with Josep’s announcement comes clouds. Dark, stormy things that look heavy enough to flood the entire Earth.
“What did you do?” My voice is low and deep and words slightly muffled because they have to get past my fangs. If I could see myself in the mirror, I’d be Ryet’s twin. My skin, my eyes, my wings.
But I don’t have to see myself in the mirror because I’m looking at Josep and he’s in his unnatural Dark form as well. We stand on opposite sides of the massive lodge pool, glaring at each other.
Josep smiles first, his lips sticking to his formidable fangs until that smile is so big, he’s grinning. “Did you really think I didn’t know who you were?”
For a split second, I panic. My muscles tense up, ready for the fight I know is coming. But in the next moment that fear is gone and I relax so completely, my wings droop down at my sides. “Did you really think I didn’t know who you were, Josep?”
I’m looking at him—my blood brother, my only friend, my one true enemy—but most of my mind is preoccupied with Ryet’s screaming as he futilely flings the scions off of him, only to have the group behind latch on. Big chunks of his skin are missing. Blood is pouring out of him in rivers because these scions are hungry for him and no matter how many times he snatches them up in his claws and throws them aside, they just get back up and come again.
They were made this way. To feed at any cost. One mission, one mind, one purpose.
To become more of us.
Ryet is losing and it is happening fast.
Which was always the plan, of course.
The official one, anyway.
We made him together, Josep and I. Our first-born. But we were never in agreement with what to do with him afterward.
Josep doesn’t react to my taunt, just licks his lips. “Did you really think I didn’t know what you were doing?”
He doesn’t say he’s referring to Ryet, and he could actually be talking about my mission, but I know he’s not. Because I was never going to sacrifice Ryet for this lot of disposable carcasses and he knew this from the day Ryet was born. “Did you really think I haven’t prepared him for your betrayal?”
Josep bellows out a laugh, guffawing at the noontime sky that looks like midnight, his eyes truly shining with amusement. But just as quickly as those red hellhound eyes widened, they narrow back down and he leans forward, his body growing taller as his true evil reveals itself in the reflection of the pool water.
Darkness.
He wasn’t the favorite.
He is it .
He is evil.
The one thing cast down by the hand of God himself. An unnatural mistake that was thrown away like a piece of trash. Left here on this forsaken planet to rot, or rule, or do whatever the hell it wanted.
Because this place doesn’t belong to us .
There is no amount of sacrifice that will change that.
Not even mine. Because Earth isn’t the home of Darkness, it’s Darkness itself. Made in its likeness. And Josep is but one teeny tiny piece of it.
“Forsaken?” Josep asks, reading my mind, I guess. He’s towering over me now, still on the other side of the pool, but his body is gone and in its place is what he really is, the trickery stripped away so that nothing is left but a set of hellfire eyes and an elongated cylinder of wicked, black sand. “This realm is mine and it was never forsaken. You are the one who was forsaken.”
Despite the constant barrage of screams bellowing out a looming assurance of defeat, I shrug up a shoulder. “And yet here I am.”
He slithers now, nothing left of his body at all. He is black sand above the water, slowly moving across the pool in my direction.
It is evil, yes.
But so am I.
And even though the Darkness never blessed me, I have the blessing of something else. So I too become a cloud of sand. I too become pure evil. It was the deal I made and even though thousands of years have passed since I signed up and I really made the most of my time here, I never truly forgot.
Not truly .
Just… conveniently.
The only way to fight evil is with evil.
And now I have to choose.
The Darkness knows this.
One the one hand, the salvation of an entire planet.
And on the other… well. There’s no way to hide which side I’m on.
I don’t even bother trying.
Josep knows exactly where my loyalty lies.
Which is why he doesn’t attack me .
He attacks Ryet.