Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Which confirms that they set me up.
It might also be a complication. Because if this is her real scent, they will change her scent after this to hide her from me. And if it isn’t her real scent, I don’t know what she smells like.
There were a few days there where I thought I could hear her. Not like her talking, or anything, but her heartbeat. It’s stupid, and I have no reason to believe this—it’s never been a thing before—but I was sure that the thumping in my head was her. I was just sure of it.
But that disappeared first. The night I found the dead witch in that filthy cabin on the Western Slope.
She was there. The girl. She was there when her grandma died. Then gone. Poof. No trace.
So I think I probably did need to know about that whole Guild thing.
Fucking Paul.
Still, this frustrating delay isn’t enough to dampen my mood. I woke up this morning with a raging headache. I’ve been getting them lately. Not bad ones, but enough to make me consider some pain reliever. The one this morning had me calling down to room service asking for aspirin.
It helped a little, but the throb is still there.
That’s why I’m staying an extra day and not already on the move.
This is my day off and nothing Paul does will ruin it.
So I just go up to my room, grab a drink from the minibar, settle down in another comfortable chair out on the large terrace and watch the ocean move back and forth through the clear glass railing.
I have always been a dreamwalker. Even before Paul stole my soul that night in the alley. I saw things in the purple haze long before he showed up. I saw him coming, actually.
And I was certain that God was gonna protect me.
He didn’t.
So fuck Him.
Here in Miami the dreamwalk comes easy to me and I don’t have trouble recognizing it, even when I don’t recall falling asleep. This one is very purple. Which means it’s one of three things: the future, the past, or something… unfulfilled. It’s hard to tell.
This haze is more of a thick curtain than a fog. I’m still in my hotel room and still on the terrace, but that’s where most of the similarities end.
The ocean is swirling and midnight blue in color. There is a massive whirlpool, like a giant eddy spinning and turning. The sky is the color of a fresh, nasty bruise and the sand is blood red.
A storm begins to rage, tossing thunderheads towards the other side of the world. Lightning skewers the sky and thunder cracks it open. And from this vast, empty, dark hole in the heavens appears a demon.
One I’ve been intimate with.
Paul, in his true form, towers over everything. His body is blueish-purple, like he is a bruise, just like the sky. His face is elongated, horns protruding from the top of his head. Long, thick horns with so many branches, they could be trees. His skin isn’t smooth and fresh, like he presents himself to this world where he does not belong. It is… hide. That’s the only word for it.
Hide. Like of an animal. An alligator, crocodile. Something reptilian.
And those wings. They are grotesquely magnificent. Stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction.
I do not cower from him. I stand on my terrace and tip up my chin, meeting his gaze.
Because he is here for me.
He shrinks down to human size, floating in the air, and lands in front of me. His wings fold up and his expression softens a little.
Silence between us. But so much is being said in that silence.
When he speaks, he is gruff and impatient. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean? I’m fucking dreamwalking. I don’t want anything from you. I didn’t even ask you to come here.”
I am smacked down, my face burning like fire from the rage of his blow. The force of it is so hard, I skid across the Spanish tiles of the terrace and hit the glass doors that lead to the room.
“What the fuck!” I get to my feet. “What the fuck is—”
He strikes me again. Then again. And again. Until my whole body is nothing but burning fire.
“Paul!”
He raises his hand, like he might strike me a final time. So I cover my face.
Which makes him laugh. “You are so selfish.” He seethes these words out at me. “You think I love you, Ryet. You push me away like I’m some… one-night stand. You think I love you? I don’t love you.” He descends and bares his teeth at me, revealing fangs the length of my fingers. “I love your blood, Ryet. We are blood lovers, and nothing more.”
Then, as quick as it all started, it’s over and I’m sitting up in my chair, on the terrace, in the real world, holding my fucking drink—which splashes into my lap.