Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I like personal growth as much as the next person, I just don’t have time for it. The Darkness is coming and I’m not ready. All of this is out of my control.
And… now I sound like a quitter. Is this my fate? To be food? To be a demon-making machine? To lose?
Even if it is, shouldn’t I at least try to buck the system? Conjure up the essence of heroines in books and take control of my destiny? Be a girl boss? A strong female character who wins despite all odds?
I should. But it doesn’t seem very realistic. And if you know you’re just gonna lose, it’s hard to commit.
Maybe… I should just… redefine winning? I mean, sure, living through this intact, not having a demon baby, and getting to spend thirty or forty years with a man I love—even though he’s a vampire—is the actual prize I’m aiming for. But couldn’t I… maybe… come up with a more magnanimous goal?
Like… saving the rest of the world from an eternity of Darkness instead of living my dream?
Because if this was my goal, then I could lose all three of those things above and still win.
As if I’ve hit on something important, the mist begins to change all around me. Instead of swirling, it starts to coalesce into tall shapes. I watch, slightly hypnotized, as the glittering gold particles separate themselves from the purple and become tall rectangles.
No. Not rectangles. Doors! Many, many of them. Hundreds, maybe, as I look around. I begin walking forward, trying to see into the ones closest to me.
In the one on my right, I see Ryet. I almost rush forward and walk through it, but I catch a glimpse of motion in another door, and in that one, I see Paul.
Choices. That’s what these doors are.
Ryet is the Vampire. We’re on a bed together and he’s shaking my shoulder, leaning down. Probably because I’m not waking up and he’s worried that I’m dying. I think this room is in the lodge, but that’s just a guess, as well as a detail that doesn’t really matter. Because I recognize this door for what it is. The present.
The other door, the one with Paul, is not the present. It’s him running through the woods, but not the him of today. It’s the him of that dreamwalk I took to the Roman baths. Which is the past.
Choices.
I would like to walk through the door with Ryet, wake up on that bed, and find a way forward with him at my side. It’s so much better than doing this alone.
But if I choose Ryet, I stay the same. Nothing changes. No personal growth.
The present doesn’t offer many opportunities to change your future. You are what you are. But the past… the past is where choices were made that got you here in the first place. So even though this isn’t my past, it’s Paul’s, I walk through that door.
I choose Paul.
As soon as I say his name in my head, I’m there. In the forest, running alongside him. He’s naked and dirty, breathing heavy and concentrating so hard on running, that he doesn’t even notice me.
That’s when I hear noises up ahead and realize Paul isn’t running, he’s hunting. And whatever it is he’s after, it’s just up ahead.
We come through a break in the trees and I see a naked man. He looks over his shoulder, trying to see how close Paul is, and his expression says everything his mouth doesn’t.
He’s dead.
The man stumbles, falls, and then begins to weep as Paul catches up and attacks him like a dog, ripping his throat with his long, sharp teeth. He spits the chunk of meat out and dives down, sucking up the man’s blood.
In the distance, there is a baying of hounds. And they are not that far away.
I squint down at Paul, watching him feed as questions rush into my head. “When is this?” I say it out loud.
Paul hears me, because he stops and looks up at me. His face is covered in blood, his eyes as red as the blood he’s sucking, and his face is so gaunt and white, he looks even more demonic in this starved human form than when he’s wearing the blue-black skin and wings.
His grin is lopsided. And if this were the future, I would recognize this grin as his practiced smarmy smile. But here, in the past, it’s haunting and not the least bit playful.
He growls at me. “Now? You decide to come back now?” He doesn’t let go of the dead man and he doesn’t straighten up or stand. He remains there, crouched on the ground, with the dead food clutched in his claws.
“When is this?” I ask again. Because clearly time is not passing in the same way for us. In my weird, unreliable dreamwalk time, perhaps minutes have passed. Maybe a couple of hours.