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)
“Confused, Paul?”
Even above the screeching and wailing of scions and newborn vampire alike, Josep’s voice booms through the air. It’s midday, I think. Sunny, blue skies. But with Josep’s announcement comes clouds. Dark, stormy things that look heavy enough to flood the entire Earth.
“What did you do?” My voice is low and deep and words slightly muffled because they have to get past my fangs. If I could see myself in the mirror, I’d be Ryet’s twin. My skin, my eyes, my wings.
But I don’t have to see myself in the mirror because I’m looking at Josep and he’s in his unnatural Dark form as well. We stand on opposite sides of the massive lodge pool, glaring at each other.
Josep smiles first, his lips sticking to his formidable fangs until that smile is so big, he’s grinning. “Did you really think I didn’t know who you were?”
For a split second, I panic. My muscles tense up, ready for the fight I know is coming. But in the next moment that fear is gone and I relax so completely, my wings droop down at my sides. “Did you really think I didn’t know who you were, Josep?”
I’m looking at him—my blood brother, my only friend, my one true enemy—but most of my mind is preoccupied with Ryet’s screaming as he futilely flings the scions off of him, only to have the group behind latch on. Big chunks of his skin are missing. Blood is pouring out of him in rivers because these scions are hungry for him and no matter how many times he snatches them up in his claws and throws them aside, they just get back up and come again.
They were made this way. To feed at any cost. One mission, one mind, one purpose.
To become more of us.
Ryet is losing and it is happening fast.
Which was always the plan, of course.
The official one, anyway.
We made him together, Josep and I. Our first-born. But we were never in agreement with what to do with him afterward.
Josep doesn’t react to my taunt, just licks his lips. “Did you really think I didn’t know what you were doing?”
He doesn’t say he’s referring to Ryet, and he could actually be talking about my mission, but I know he’s not. Because I was never going to sacrifice Ryet for this lot of disposable carcasses and he knew this from the day Ryet was born. “Did you really think I haven’t prepared him for your betrayal?”
Josep bellows out a laugh, guffawing at the noontime sky that looks like midnight, his eyes truly shining with amusement. But just as quickly as those red hellhound eyes widened, they narrow back down and he leans forward, his body growing taller as his true evil reveals itself in the reflection of the pool water.
Darkness.
He wasn’t the favorite.
He is it.
He is evil.
The one thing cast down by the hand of God himself. An unnatural mistake that was thrown away like a piece of trash. Left here on this forsaken planet to rot, or rule, or do whatever the hell it wanted.
Because this place doesn’t belong to us.
There is no amount of sacrifice that will change that.
Not even mine. Because Earth isn’t the home of Darkness, it’s Darkness itself. Made in its likeness. And Josep is but one teeny tiny piece of it.
“Forsaken?” Josep asks, reading my mind, I guess. He’s towering over me now, still on the other side of the pool, but his body is gone and in its place is what he really is, the trickery stripped away so that nothing is left but a set of hellfire eyes and an elongated cylinder of wicked, black sand. “This realm is mine and it was never forsaken. You are the one who was forsaken.”
Despite the constant barrage of screams bellowing out a looming assurance of defeat, I shrug up a shoulder. “And yet here I am.”
He slithers now, nothing left of his body at all. He is black sand above the water, slowly moving across the pool in my direction.
It is evil, yes.
But so am I.
And even though the Darkness never blessed me, I have the blessing of something else. So I too become a cloud of sand. I too become pure evil. It was the deal I made and even though thousands of years have passed since I signed up and I really made the most of my time here, I never truly forgot.
Not truly.
Just… conveniently.
The only way to fight evil is with evil.
And now I have to choose.
The Darkness knows this.
One the one hand, the salvation of an entire planet.
And on the other… well. There’s no way to hide which side I’m on.
I don’t even bother trying.
Josep knows exactly where my loyalty lies.
Which is why he doesn’t attack me.
He attacks Ryet.
21 - Josep
Fantasy
Paul and I break for Ryet in the same moment. I am Darkness. I am ruler of this realm. I am king, not him.