Page 71 of Blood Lovers

“It is. You have no idea—”

“Don’t I?” He laughs. “Do you want me to give you the memories? So we can get past these stupid feelings that you don’t even have? Should I get pictures of them and come back? Should I put you in a dreamwalk and send you to your wife’s bed so you can fuck her one last—”

I hit him. Hard. Hard enough to make him take two steps to the left. When he turns back to me, eyes alight with fury, his lip is bleeding. It is pooling in the corner of his mouth and dripping down his chin.

He laughs at me because there is hunger in my eyes. I can feel it rising up in my stomach like an ache.

But this is a dreamwalk and that blood isn’t even real.

He dabs at his lip with a fingertip, then offers it to me.

I shake my head.

“If this were real life, you would not be able to say no.”

“So what?”

Paul walks over the chair and takes a seat. He props his ankle up on the opposite knee. He’s wearing jeans tonight. Dark jeans and a midnight-blue button-down shirt. Boots on his feet, the kind that lace. He is as beautiful as always.

Except he’s not always beautiful. I know this. It was his true form that I said yes to sixty-five years ago.

He takes a breath and tries to restart this conversation. “You are dying. You must drink the Black witch. If you do, you will not go to Hell. It’s a real place where the Darkness lives incarnate and I’m not the one in charge there. No one will love you. You will get those memories back for a little while, but you won’t care about them because you are looking at an eternity of slavery. And not even the sweet face of your lovely wife, Jane, or that little baby, Susan, will be enough to get you through it. You will degrade into nothing but energy. And then you will just be... evil.”

He shrugs with his hands. Like it can’t be helped.

But I am stuck on those names. “Jane and Susan.” I smile. Because even though I can’t see their faces, I know that very soon I will.

Paul must read my mind or something, because he says, “What about Syrsee?”

“What?”

“She’s nice, right?”

I shrug. “Yeah. She is.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t fuck with her.”

“How have you not figured this out yet? She’s the Black witch, Ryet. It’s Syrsee.”

“What?” Now I’m just annoyed. “Why do you always have to take it one step too far?”

He bellows out a laugh. Then his face goes serious. “Syrsee is the Black witch. I am in the cottage with her right this moment. You are passed out sick. Do you recall getting sick?”

I huff out a breath. “Yeah.”

“You drank her last night.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “How do you know that?”

He just shakes his head at me. “Ya know, perhaps you’re telling the truth. Maybe you are preoccupied with that family of yours. It would explain your cluelessness.”

“I took a few sips from her lip, that’s it.”

“That’s the only reason you’re still with me, Ryet. You took a few sips. But you need more. Much, much more.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m not going to kill her to save myself from the eternal damnation I have certainly earned.”

“She won’t die. In fact, she’s going to enjoy it. Maybe even more than you do.”

I sit down on the bed. Paul immediately gets up and sits down next to me. His arm snakes its way around my shoulders and he pushes on my head until my cheek is resting on his collarbone. “We’re going to get through this.”