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)
This time, the power is more than just warm, it’s hot. And the strength is in my mind as well as my body.
We leave and enter the next room and I do it all again.
Over, and over, and over.
I take back my power until I am whole.
26 - Paul
A petty monster
I stumble through the door of the building where Tristin is babysitting my scions, trying to hold in all the feelings.
“Well?” Tristin asks excitedly. “What the hell happened? Where’s Ryet?”
I’m looking down at my feet, which are bare, and clawed, and muddy, but my eyes slide up to meet Tristin’s. “I left him.”
Tristin shoots me a confused look. “Left him…? Where?”
The exhale that precedes my answer is long. “With Josep, of course.”
“Why? What was the point of leaving here if you weren’t gonna save Ryet?”
“I am saving Ryet.” But I look away now, hedging. Because the ending I’ve been planning for nearly two thousand years now hinges on many loose ends.
Loose ends like Syrsee. Who is not the strongest of protagonists. She’s rather impressionable, actually. Which is a good quality when you’re trying to coerce someone into doing horrific things that are completely against their human nature, not to mention their inhuman one. But not ideal when you’re relying on them for the final, dramatic ending.
Loose ends like Josep. Who must succumb to certain desires. And while I do know he has Echo, I’m not sure where things stand at the moment. Does he want her enough to save her? Or will he sacrifice her in the end?
Loose ends like Ryet himself. Will he embrace the Darkness? Or will he fight it?
And then, of course, there is an end that was never tight in the first place.
Me.
Before I was the vampire Paul, I was no one. Just a skeptic who spent all of his early adult years whoring around and being inebriated.
But then the miracle happened and there was this moment—a single fucking moment—when I became a believer.
What a mistake that was. What a prime example of wrong time, wrong place. Because this moment of belief caught the attention of my Maker. Which led to me being a scholar, which led to me being a teacher, which led to me being a threat to the Roman Empire itself. Which is where everything really went off the rails, of course. Though you won’t find any of that in the history books.
A picture has been painted over the last two thousand years. Of things I have done, or didn’t do. Good deeds, mostly. But the records of these deeds, like almost everything in this world, are a combination of superstition, outright lies, and good storytelling, to be honest.
For sure, I did the things they say, but it was never with a committed heart.
I was forced. All of this was forced on me. I never wanted to be the Vampire Paul, let alone the harbinger of the Antichrist. Who the hell would want that job?
No one. Not even me.
And yet here I am.
I reach into my pocket, half-expecting it to be gone. But the little glass vial is still there. I pull it out and hold it up to the window, taking advantage of the fading light.
“What’s that?” Tristin asks.
My smile is crooked when I look at him. “Dead Black blood.”
He offers up another look of confusion. “Where did you get it?”
“I took it from the last Black witch I killed. Actually, I threw it up.” I laugh here. It’s a loud one too. And I’m still laughing when the rest of my words come out. “I was giving her the Long Drink and she tricked me into drinking her blood after she died. I got violently ill. Threw it all up over the course of a week.” I chuckle again, thinking of that week that was only a few months ago, but feels like centuries. I tilt the vial back and forth in the dying sunlight, making it sparkle and take on a purple sheen. “I had given up on this, you know that?” Tristin stares blankly back at me. “I looked for it. For hundreds of years, I looked for the little bottle of dead Black blood that I gave Josep when made this little deal.”
Tristin shrugs. “OK.”
“But it’s like he knew or something. He disposed of it. Or maybe just hid it well, because I never could find it. That’s the only way to kill a vampire, you know. Dead Black blood.” I eye Tristin now, who is very much confused. “It was the only way, really, to make this all work.”
“So why did you give it away?”
“It was the only thing of value I had when it came time to talk Josep into accompanying me across the ocean. I mean, I had the lie, of course. ‘We’re gonna steal the Darkness, Josep. We’re gonna take its power and make it ours.’” I chuckle again. “The American Vampires.”