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)
But it’s not pain I feel now as I gaze upon her face.
Jane.
I’m in the purple. It’s a deep, deep purple, almost black, and it floats around my wife’s petite body like ink in water. She is standing with her back to me, facing a dock lined with boats. But she’s looking over her shoulder with a wide smile and mischief in her eyes.
Her delicate hand points and her mouth silently says, This one.
I look past her to the boat she’s pointing to. It’s not too big—we can’t afford too big. But it’s not a simple fishing boat, either. We already have one of those.
It’s a sailboat.
It’s our dream to sail. Not the Great Lakes, that’s a place you fish, but Florida. We are going to move to Florida and this is the boat we will buy when we get there.
I don’t know how we’re gonna afford this. Maybe it’s just a dream.
But to us, it’s already real. We spend hours in bed at night going through the fantasy, hashing out little details that have no bearing on our everyday lives. What town we will live in, where we will go to church, where the kids will go to school. How I will quit my job and learn to fix boats instead of cars.
We even imagine our house. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a backyard that opens up to a beach.
Jane.
A sharp pain pierces my head.
Jane.
And then I’m in the church, staring at four coffins. One so small, I can’t breathe when I look at it.
They are lined up according to age. I didn’t ask for this information, I overheard someone saying it.
So that small one is Susan. Baby Susan.
And the next one is Nancy. My first daughter.
The next one is my only son, Charlie.
Then Jane.
This is when I realize that I am being carried and there is cold wind whipping around my feverish body.
Paul is leaning in to my face, whispering things. “Forget about them now, Ryet. They’re gone. They’ve been gone for decades.”
Decades.
“You can visit their ashes in the jars down in Josep’s cave if you really need to see them, but I don’t advise it, blood lover.”
That night, in the alley outside the bar, I wasn’t afraid of Paul. Not because I had seen him recently, but because I have always known him.
He was always there. Watching me.
And I liked it. I liked the way he watched me.
This is why God hates me. This is why God took my family. This is why God let the Darkness have me.
Because I flirted with the Devil and now I have to pay the price.
“Shhhhhh.” We’re inside now. The lodge, I think. “You’re going to drink now, Ryet. Syrsee is waiting for you.”
Syrsee.
The brutal heartbreak when I woke up with my mouth on her wrist is back. I have not wanted a woman so much for as long as I can remember and now it’s ruined. I hate her. I never want to see her again. I certainly don’t want to drink her blood.
She betrayed me. She is the Darkness.
I would just like to die now.
Paul is climbing the stairs. They go on forever. This is how I know where we’re going. The little crow’s-nest bedroom has always been off limits. I never much cared why, but I think I asked him once and he said, “This is where everything begins.”
And now I know for sure that I am his everything.
Because this is where he has Syrsee.
He stops climbing and sets me on my feet, holding me up as I lean against the door. Paul’s mood is light and airy, like this is the best summer day of his life. “Don’t fall now, Ryet. Let me get the door open…”
The door does open, and I manage to swivel my head so I can see inside the room.
“Lucia!” Paul bellows this.
Lucia is standing at the edge of the bed holding something in her hand. My vision is blurry and my stomach hurts now. It’s the blood, I realize. I can smell it. It’s so strong, I bend over, ready to retch from the cramping. And as I do this, I see it.
A cooler right next to the door. And I know what’s in that cooler.
The blood.
The cravings hit me in an instant.
And in that same instant, Paul is across the room in his demon form, wings outstretched so all I see is his back. There is a scream—Lucia’s scream—and a noise. Like claws through flesh. A thump. Then something is rolling towards me, with red hair and white face, and when it stops at my feet, Lucia’s lifeless green eyes are looking up at me in a frozen state of disbelief.
I laugh. Loud. Because she has always been expendable.
Then I laugh again. And again. Until I can’t stop and Paul is helping me over to the bed where Syrsee is lying, eyes closed, chained to a wall. There is an IV line in her hand and a syringe sticking out of the port, half of the drug still inside, the other half already working.