Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
A few moments later, she’s breathing normally again.
But this time, her feeding doesn’t elicit an unwanted erotic response. This time she sucks all the energy out of me. I barely have enough strength to pull my hand away and stand up. And it takes a real, concentrated effort to make my way back out to the kitchen and open the lid on the jar labeled ‘Fatigue.’
Only the understanding that this Black magic is going to help me makes it possible for me to bleed myself out yet another time and mix my blood into the pudding.
I eat it. And from the very first spoonful, I feel stronger. By the time I’m done, I feel like a brand-new man. Or, rather, a brand-new monster.
There is only one jar left. ‘Purging.’ And if the pattern holds, this one is for Syrsee. I prepare the pudding with my blood and then grab a bucket from the little kitchen closet, put some water in it, and take it into the bedroom.
Syrsee is sleeping, but it’s coming, so I’m ready.
And by the time she’s done with her purging, her fever is gone, her face is flushed pink with blood, and she is the most beautiful creature that ever lived.
But really, the point is that by the time she’s done I have eaten all the jars and she has eaten me.
I want to be pissed off about this. I want to hate Paul for what he just did to us—even though I don’t even understand what he just did to us. But I can’t be angry with him. Not anymore. I don’t feel it. I want to see him. I want to save him. I want…
“Ryet?”
I startle at the voice, because I’m looking down at Syrsee as this word appears. And it’s not coming from her.
“That’s what he calls you, right?”
I look up and find Jane standing at the end of the bed.
She leans forward a little. “Can you see me?”
I nod.
“Can you… talk?”
I nod again.
“So… are you going to?”
“Talk to you?” My words come out as a breath. “Am I going to talk to you?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. So we can talk.”
I’m suddenly angry. No. Anger is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings towards Jane. I’m enraged. I feel a lot of hate for this woman.
It’s unreasonable and probably related to the guilt about the blood magic I just did on myself and my girlfriend, but I don’t care. I don’t even try to subdue the fury inside me. I send all that rage out towards the woman who used to be my wife.
“So we can talk?” I am spitting words at her.
She smiles at me. That same angelic smile I remember from when she was my wife. “I know you’re angry.”
I stand up, walk to the end of the bed, loom over her, and growl right down into her face. “You have no idea what anger even is.”
She stares up at me with those innocent eyes of hers. So wide. So calm. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Well, you should be.” I sound evil. And if I wasn’t shaking with hostility, I would think a little harder about this new me. But I don’t have room for self-reflection right now. “Why are you here?”
Something has changed in the way I speak. My mouth has changed. And this is when I realize that I have fangs. Not the sharp and dainty points that were there when I woke up in Syrsee’s truck. But fucking fangs. Like I now possess the mouth of a lion, or a bear, or a… a fucking vampire.
That’s not the only change, either. I can feel the new heaviness of the wings. I want to look—I want this bitch to go away so I can figure out what the fuck just happened to me—but I don’t look. I stare straight down into her stupid, innocent eyes.
“I want to tell you,” she says, “that I loved you.”
“Loved?” I scoff. Not because I think she’s lying. I know she loved me. And I loved her too. I scoff because it’s past tense. She gave up on me. And all that time, when I didn’t remember—when Paul was hiding the memories from me—I never gave up on her. I always knew she was there, in my past, and I never stopped trying to find her in my head and I certainly never stopped loving her.
“You didn’t know, so I can’t blame you—”
“Blame me?” Is this bitch for real? “Blame. Me?”
The world around me changes and suddenly I’m in our kitchen. And my kids—Charlie, Nancy, and Susan—are all sitting at the dinner table. I’m holding Jane in my arms and she’s leaning back, her face pointed at the ceiling, happy and laughing.
I close my eyes and shake my head, forcing the memory to go away. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see what I lost.