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)
Paul taps my nose, chuckling. “That’s enough for now, boy. But don’t worry. There’s more to come.”
Then he’s leading me through the alley. Down the dark streets of the town I no longer care about. Past shops, and houses—maybe even my own house—until we stop outside one just at the edge of town.
I want to pay attention to things. Details like… where the fuck I am. But I just don’t care. The only thing I care about is him. He’s still holding my hand when he stops at the foot of a bed.
He turns to me, those piercing, ice-blue eyes locked with mine, and he begins to loosen my tie.
I look down at myself, wondering why I’m wearing a suit. But I don’t care. So I just look back up at Paul as he pulls the tie through my shirt collar with a swish of silk. He drops it on the floor and rips my shirt open. Buttons fall off, skittering across the hard-wood floor. He places his hot hands flat on my chest and my heart pounds against his palms.
“You are so beautiful,” he says. “And you taste like youth. Sweet and whole.”
He doesn’t taste sweet and whole. He tastes like something else altogether. Something very, very evil. The opposite of what I was.
And I want more.
He just continues to stand there, looking at me, so I lean in, ready to bite his lip open myself.
When I do this, his fingers pop the button on my slacks. And I know this is not something I’m interested in. I know this.
But at the same time, it feels like a fair trade.
It’s just a transaction, really.
Sex for blood.
So I don’t stop him. And he doesn’t stop me.
We’re in bed, naked, and I’m sucking on his lips, and his hand is between my legs, pumping me into the most erotic experience I might ever have.
I drink him as he pulls the climax out of me, over and over again.
And sometime later, after my lips are sore from sucking the tiny drops from his, and my body is weak and spent, I lean in to his neck and, once again, he lets me.
I know I will pay a price for this, but I don’t care.
I bite him, and I drink him, and he says, “Now you are mine.”
I drink him until I’m so full, I simply fall to the side murmuring, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Until the purple comes and when I wake up, I’m in San Francisco. And I have no idea where I came from or how I got here.
All I know is that I am Ryet and I am his.
The purple leaks into the San Francisco hotel room. Enough of it for me to understand that I am not really there. It’s just a memory, or the future, or some other space in between.
“Oh, you’re here.”
I sigh, pinching the space between my eyes, then look over my shoulder at Paul, who is sitting in a chair near the window, smiling crookedly in my direction. “Did I, or did I not, tell you to get the fuck out of my dreams?”
He stands up, walks over to me, places his hands on my shoulders, and stares into my eyes. “You’re dying. I thought you should know.”
My heart skips. “What?”
“Dying, Ryet. Sixty-five years is a long time for a scion. They typically expire around thirty.”
I blink. “What?”
“Thirty. I’ve kept you going these last several decades because I have kept you close this whole time. I do not let you feed on anyone but me, and then only once a year or so. It was always just enough to rejuvenate you. But it’s not working anymore. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Haven’t I noticed what?”
“Your memory. It’s starting to come back. Pretty soon you’ll not only remember their names, but their faces too. And then you will be back in that moment like all these decades never happened.”
I think I quit breathing. And my mind begins to spin. These few sentences contain so many possibilities, I can barely count them all up.
I can know them again? I can die?
“Death won’t be what you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t get to die, Ryet. You were so religious once, I figured you’d remember this part.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Revelation 9:6, of course. ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.”
I stare at him, trying to process what he’s telling me.
“And then there’s that Job passage. ‘Why is light given to the miserable, and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death that does not come, and search for it like hidden treasure, who rejoice and greatly exult when they can find the grave?’ You don’t get to die, Ryet. You are the living dead now. You will never find that grave and rejoice in it.”