Page 73 of Blood Lovers

Finally, I let out a breath and look at the vampire. “You can’t hurt me and neither can he.”

“Dear girl.” He smiles at me, making his ice-blue eyes light up. “Why in the world would I ever want to hurt you?”

“That’s a joke, right? You want to drink me. You want to feed on me. You want to imprison me, and use me, and then, decades from now, I will die just like my grandma. Old, and crazy, and used up.”

“Used up? She was barely used at all. And she might’ve been old, but she was not crazy and she was not stupid. She certainly got the best of me. So if I were you, I’d aspire to be that woman.”

My reality shifts when these words come out of his mouth. I’m talking backwards, and sideways and fucking pear-shaped upside down. I want to ask a thousand questions. I want to know everything about her. My grandma. The woman who saved me from a death cult of witches, and hid me away, and gave me to the Guild to raise up, and educate, and then… then what?

I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Because none of what’s been happening to me the last twenty-eight years is making any sense at all today. I don’t know who I am, or where I came from, or where I belong, or what any of this means.

And I hate that. I also hate the new, sudden realization that the Guild knows more about me than I ever will. And they were never going to tell me.

And maybe Zusi too.

What if Zusi knows everything? What if—

“I’m not your father.”

“What?” I almost choke this word out.

“I can read your mind. That was coming up quick. So I would just like to nip it in the bud. We are not related.”

For several heartbeats I can’t stop the dizzying effect his words have on me. But somehow, I manage to blurt, “Thank God,” under my breath.

“It’s got nothing to do with God. You’re a creature of the dark, Syrsee. You are the blackness. You are the evil everyone warned you about. But you’re also very powerful. Why do you think they kill your kind? Hmm?”

Is this thing asking me questions?

Am I actually having a conversation with a monster?

“They kill you, not because they fear you—though they do fear you—but because what you are is so much more than they are. The Guild was never going to tell you the truth, you know.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know everything about it. As do they. But they can’t tell you who and what you really are because then…” He shrugs and smiles at the same time. Ryet moans, repositioning himself in his sleep so that his cheek is resting on the vampire’s bare thigh.

This makes the vampire look down and stroke him, his long, pale fingers gently swiping up and down Ryet’s cheek. And I catch a look of… concern, I think. But a moment later, the vampire’s attention is back on me. “He’s dying. I would like to save him. But I cannot. Only you can do that.”

“What?”

“He needs your blood, Syrsee. Quite a bit of it. But you don’t have to give it—”

I laugh. Loud.

“What’s so funny?”

“He needs…” I laugh again. “I’m… I’m supposed to feed him?”

The vampire is not frowning. But the brightness is definitely gone. “That’s your purpose. Part of it, anyway. Do you know what the other part is?”

“My purpose.” The guffaw that bursts forth is both loud and long. “My purpose? I’m food, you asshole!”

“Do you want to know the other part or not?”

“Other part of what?”

“The Guild kept it secret from you. They’re so afraid of you, Syrsee. They raised you in hopes of hiding the truth from you forever. Do you know why you’re not going back to the library?”