Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
LAYDEN
Three days later, and I still can’t quite believe it’s over.
We’re sitting in Phoenix’s apartment—our apartment now, I suppose, since I’ve been staying here. She’s on the couch with her feet tucked under her, a mug of coffee in her hands. I’m on the floor, my back against the couch, close enough that our shoulders touch.
The apartment is small, maybe a thousand square feet total. The furniture is mostly secondhand, mismatched pieces that Phoenix collected over the years. But it’s warm here. Safe.
Normal in a way I’ve certainly never experienced.
“So the police bought the story?” I ask.
Phoenix nods. “Mostly. Sabra helped me with the memory modifications for the first responders. As far as they’re concerned, it was a serial killer who had a breakdown and died by suicide. Case closed.”
“And the woman who was called Ammit?”
“It really is Sabra’s mom, come back from the spirit realm,” Phoenix says. “We don’t know where Ammit went.”
“But how is it her mom? I still never got the full story.” In the aftermath, I just saw Sabra and the woman celebrating and hugging, but we were all too busy cleaning things up and getting the hell out of there to linger on details.
“It turns out Sabra’s mom, Savannah, figured out how to send her soul to the spirit realm, even though it meant her body here dying.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. After decades of fighting Vlad’s compulsion, she saw no other way out.
Once she found out Vlad had put Sabra under his blood compulsion, she thought it was the only move she could make to have a chance at saving both of them.
So Savannah left directions in her grimoire, knowing Vlad would instruct Sabra as he had Savannah, to chase after the strongest mage magic possible, and that it would lead her down the same trail to opening paths to the other realms.”
It blows my mind that the humans of this realm have discovered such power. But then, beings such as my father have been visiting them for millennia, showing them what was possible.
I frown, though. “But I don’t get it. How did Savannah becoming a spirit help save Sabra?”
“Sabra’s mom knew the truth about me. She…
” Phoenix swallows. “She knew my parents. She was able to follow the trail back to the realm I came from. That’s where she hid.
In the abyss. She knew eventually I’d come into my full powers again, as I grew up, and that Sabra would be beside me.
And she,” again Phoenix’s voice wobbles, “she trusted that we’d find the portal back to retrieve her and conquer Vlad once and for all.
She trusted me even though she barely knew me. ”
I hear what she’s not saying. “Your parents must have been really amazing people.”
Phoenix swallows and the tears she’s been fighting fall down her cheeks. “I still don’t know where they are.”
“Does Sabra’s mom know?”
She shakes her head, swiping at her cheeks with her palms. “No. It would have been too dangerous. All of them were on the run from Vlad, so they all split up and vowed never to contact one another.”
“We can look for them now,” I reach out and clasp her hands. It kills me to see her cry. “Now that Vlad’s dead.”
She nods, swallowing hard again. “I really want to. They don’t even know about Vlad.
But it’s still not totally safe for them since all the other vampires just scattered after they felt the blood bond to Vlad lift.
And I know some of them hated my dad. They’d taunt me about it when I was growing up.
They might still be hunting him. The weaker, stupider ones might not survive long without a master to organize them, but others…
” She shudders. “Some of those other bastards will probably become exactly the kind of monsters that give vampires a bad reputation.”
“How are you feeling?” I ask. I worry she’ll feel guilty about the escaped vampires, given her propensity to take on responsibility for everyone and everything.
She considers the question, clearly understanding what I’m not putting into words. “I do feel responsible. But not guilty. They made their choices a long time ago. I can’t fix them.”
It’s a very Phoenix answer. Practical. Clear-eyed about the realities of the situation.
“And Sabra?” I ask.
This time, Phoenix’s smile is genuine. “She’s good.
Really good, actually. Being freed from the blood slavery was like.
.. she said it was like waking up from a nightmare that had been going on for years.
We’ve been talking. Really talking, for the first time since we were teenagers.
Having her mom back helps of course. She’s just so…
happy and relieved. She can have a life now.
They both can. Even if it’s weird that the body her mom is in is like… basically the same age as her.”
“I’m so glad for them,” I tell her.
She bumps her shoulder against mine. “Me too.”
We sit in comfortable silence for a while. I can hear the sounds of the city outside—cars, voices, the general hum of life continuing on. It’s so different from the forest where I spent two hundred years alone. So different from the cold isolation I knew before Phoenix found me.
“Can I ask you something?” Phoenix says eventually.
“Anything.”
“When you were creating those runes—the ones that anchored you to this world—what were you thinking about?”
I turn to look at her. She’s not meeting my eyes, focused very intently on her coffee mug.
“You,” I tell her honestly. “I was thinking about you.”
She does look at me then. “Just me?”
“Just you,” I confirm. “You’re the reason I want to stay in this world. You’re what makes it worth being here.”
She sets down her coffee mug carefully. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on one person.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” I say quickly. “I’m not saying you’re responsible for my happiness. I’m saying you make me want to choose happiness. It’s just that I understood it and felt it for the first time because of you. There’s a difference.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing that. Then she says, “I’m not good at this.”
“At what?”
“This.” She gestures between us. “Being vulnerable. Letting people in. I’ve spent my whole life keeping people at arm’s length because I was terrified they’d find out what I really am.”
“And now?” I ask.
“Now you know exactly what I am,” she says.
“You’ve seen me at my absolute worst. You watched me open a hole to a realm of frozen darkness and nearly get pulled back into it.
” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“You know what I did to get to this realm. And somehow you still look at me like I’m something precious. ”
“You are something precious,” I tell her.
“I’m a spirit who clawed her way into this world by making blood bargains that created vampires,” she says flatly. “I’m the crack in the barrier that almost let your father unleash an army of demons. I’m—”
“You’re the woman who saved me when I was buried alive and half-mad,” I interrupt. “You’re the person who stood between me and my father even though you were terrified. You’re the one who figured out how to trap him when no one else could. You’re the Phoenix who rose from the ashes.”
She’s staring at me now, and I can see her eyes getting bright with more tears she won’t let fall.
“You see the good in me even when I can’t,” she says quietly.
“You see the good in me too,” I point out. “You always have.”
She reaches out and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm now, no longer the frozen cold they were three days ago.
“I want to try,” she says. “This thing between us. I want to try to make it work.”
My heart feels like it might burst out of my chest. “Really?”
“Really,” she confirms. “But you need to know—I’m going to be bad at it sometimes. I’m going to push you away when I get scared. I’m going to say mean things I don’t mean. I’m going to—”
“Phoenix,” I interrupt gently. “I know. I’ve known you for years. I know what I’m signing up for.”
“And you still want this?”
“I’ve wanted this since the moment I met you,” I tell her. “I’ll want it tomorrow. I’ll want it next year. I’ll want it in a decade.”
She laughs, and this time it’s real. “You’re really committing to this, aren’t you?”
“Completely,” I say.
She leans forward and kisses me. It’s soft, tentative. So different from the desperate kiss we shared in the atrium.
When she pulls back, she’s smiling. “Okay then. Let’s try this.”
“Okay,” I echo.
She settles back into the couch, pulling me with her so we’re both stretched out. Her head is on my shoulder, and I can feel her heartbeat against my side.
“Layden?” she says after a while.
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for not letting me go into the dark.”
I tighten my arm around her. “Thank you for not letting me fall in with my father.”
“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” she says. “Two hungry monsters who chose each other.”
“We’re not monsters,” I tell her, and for the first time in my life, I completely believe it.
“No?”
“No. We’re just two people who had terrible beginnings and are trying to make better middles.”
She laughs. “And endings?”
“I don’t know about endings yet,” I admit. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
She tilts her head up to look at me. “Me too.”
And in that moment, in Phoenix’s small apartment with the sounds of the city outside and her warm body pressed against mine, I finally understand what it means to be full.
Not because I’ve consumed something or taken something or claimed something that was someone elses.
But because I chose to love someone and contentment springs up from inside me like an endless well.
And miracle of miracles, she chose to love me back.
The hunger that has defined my entire existence is finally, finally satisfied.