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We’ll meet again one day.

S yrsee’s fever has not yet broken and it’s been nearly a week. I did have to leave her alone for about an hour several days back because I ran out of bacon. But other than that, I’ve been by her side this whole time, giving her small amounts of my blood to bring her fever down.

Meanwhile, as I’ve been doing this, I’ve also been eating real food non-stop and taking regular trips down to the basement tunnel to cover myself in dirt.

What the actual fuck is happening to us?

If I could leave Syrsee alone I’d be in town right now trying to find that fucking Guild Lounge. I’d turn myself in to them just to get answers.

I’m almost to the point of putting her in the truck and carrying her into that general store with me because I don’t know how long I can go on like this. When will she wake up? What is happening to her? What’s happening to me?

Paul, where the fuck are you when I need you?

Oh, I’ve been having regular conversations with him too. Not real him, of course. Some kind of hallucination, I think. There’s no purple to indicate I’m in a dreamwalk, but I know it’s not real because he looks blurry and smudgy. Like he’s been in the dirt too.

He’s also annoying in that smarmy way I hate. The ultimate smooth talker, always demanding that I come find him so he can illuminate me with the answers to all my questions.

And, actually, I probably would. More than likely, if Syrsee wasn’t so sick and I wasn’t afraid to leave her alone, I’d be back in the truck driving to Montana to go look for him. Because I don’t understand what is happening and it’s entirely possible that I’m fucking up really critical things that will affect our futures.

Also, I feel guilty about Syrsee. Because the last conversation we had was a fight over me having to feed her. And I just can’t take the irony of it. She was just pissed at me because she was my food and less than a day later, our roles were reversed. And we were having the same fight, but in reverse.

What the fuck is happening?

And, oh, yeah, the wings? Leaving again to go shopping in town for more bacon is a fantasy because the fucking wings are growing like… well, like nothing I’ve ever seen in nature. A weed, I guess. My wings are like weeds. Getting bigger, and thicker, and heavier by the hour. There aren’t any feathers yet—and it’s not a good look. It’s like wearing a skeleton on my back. At least fucking Paul had bat wings. My wings make me feel like I’m carrying around something that has died and rotted away.

And don’t even get me started on the dirt. I crave bacon and dirt.

This is my life. Frying bacon and eating it by the pound. Bleeding myself out to keep Syrsee alive—or… something. And lying in the hole I dug under the house so I can cover myself with dirt.

It’s been eight and a half days and I feel like I’m going crazy.

No. I feel like Syrsee when she stood out on the side of the highway in Arizona, looking up at that horse and rider sign, yelling at me because I had been sick for ten days and she had been taking care of me that whole time, all by herself, and she had reached her limit.

I pause my mental rant here and think about this.

Ten days.

Maybe she’s on her own ten-day transformation? Maybe this will break in another day and a half?

A little bit of hope swells up inside me.

But what if it doesn’t? What if she never wakes up again?

It could happen.

The phone in the kitchen rings, shocking me back into the present. It’s probably Echo again. And even though I’m not in the mood to talk to her, or hear her complaints about how all the halfbreeds are starving, I get up and answer it anyway.

“Now what, Echo?” And all my irritation, and annoyance, and resentment comes out in these three words.

“Um.” There’s a pause. Then—“Is this… Ryet?”

“Who’s this?” It’s definitely not Echo and my aggravation is building.

“Zusi. I know Syrsee is there and I know she’s mad at me, but please… please let me talk to her.”

“Where are you?” Now I’m beyond annoyed, I’m pissed. Because she’s got this phone number and she’s bothering me when I have more pressing matters to concern myself with.

“I’m in town.”

“At the lounge?”

“You know about the lounge?”

“Syrsee told me some guy named Tristin was waiting for her when she went into town to shop.”

“Did she say anything about me?” Zusi sounds a little desperate for information.

I don’t feel sorry for her. She hurt Syrsee. She betrayed her. And to me, how that betrayal happened, or whether or not she knew about the plan hatched between Paul and the Guild, doesn’t matter. She hurt Syrsee and now I want to hurt her back. “No, Zusi. She didn’t mention you at all.”

All I get in response is a long breath of air.

“Is that it?”

“Wait—you’re not going to let me talk to her? You’re not even gonna tell her I’m on the phone?”

I hesitate here, which is a mistake. Because obviously Syrsee is unconscious and can’t come to the phone, so there is no reason for me to tell her anything.

And apparently Zusi is wise to the way of hesitations because she picks up on it immediately. “What? What’s wrong? Is she OK?”

“She’s fine. She just doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Syrsee!” Zusi is yelling into the phone so I have to hold it away from my ear. “Syrsee, just talk to me. Please! Let me tell my side of the story! It’s not what you think! I would never betray you!”

I hang up the phone, then pick it back up, check for a dial tone, and leave it off the hook. The vintage way to block someone from calling you back.

Then it hits me that it wasn’t Echo calling and I kinda want to talk to her. So I depress the switch, get a dial tone, and call the kitchen landline at the lodge.

It rings. And rings. And rings. After fifteen of them, I hang up, wishing I had my cell phone so I could call her directly, but I don’t even remember the last time I saw that phone.

Also, what the fuck? Even if Echo is busy, there are dozens of halfbreeds at the compound. Someone should’ve been within earshot of the kitchen and picked it up.

This has me wondering just how bad things are getting out west.

Paul appears sitting at my little table. He’s leaning back in the chair wearing a vintage suit that reminds me of our time in San Francisco, back when I was newly second-born. “I have all the answers you’re looking for, Ryet. All you have to do is come find me.”

I know he’s not there. I’m hungry, that’s all. For blood, not bacon. And feeding from an unconscious Syrsee feels a little bit too coercive for my comfort level. I don’t need a lot of blood right now—I’m seriously surviving on the bacon. But every couple of days I do need some . I’m going on day three since my last drink and I’m trying my best to put the next feeding off as long as possible, hoping she will wake up before I absolutely have to do it, so Paul’s ghost isn’t exactly a surprise.

Still, I’m tired of being alone. Illusion Paul is better than nothing, I guess. I take a seat at the table across from him, letting out a long breath. “I can’t come find you, Paul.”

“Why not?”

“Because Syrsee is sick and I can’t leave her alone.”

Paul chuckles in that disingenuous way he has. Like he’s laughing at me. “You don’t have to leave , Ryet.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a vampire with the gift of dreamwalking. Why do you think you’re so attracted to that dirt under the house?”

I just stare at him. Almost unable to think, my head is so foggy. “ What ?”

“The dirt, Ryet. Why do you think I go into the earth? Do you think I sleep there?”

“Well…” I kinda did think that. And then I’m so tired of these fucking mysteries, and unanswered questions, and loss of control over my own life that I just give up. “Why don’t you just tell me what the dirt is for, Paul? And why don’t you just tell me what you want me to do with it? Let’s make it all very simple for once.”

“You would like me to tell you what to do so you can follow directions?” He laughs here. “Since when?”

“Since now . What is the dirt for?”

That smarmy smile of his is back as he relaxes into his chair. “It’s a conduit. It runs between worlds, through this world, all over the place, actually. You can go anywhere you want in the dirt, Ryet. And you don’t even have to move.” He taps his head. “It’s all up here.” He pauses again, eyes practically twinkling. “Of course, there is… a catch .”

I open my mouth to reply, but he’s gone. Like he was never sitting in that chair in the first place. Or… maybe… like he was here and he just ran out of time.

Was he not an illusion? Was that really him? Is being stuck in the purple like being in the dirt? Only he’s unable to come out of it?

I get up and start pacing the room, my boots thudding on the wide-plank hardwood floors.

If so, this whole purple thing doesn’t sound like much of a punishment. He can come and go places as… what? A ghost? Not a ghost. Ghosts are dead people. He’s not dead, he’s just stuck. So he comes and goes as a… well, I don’t have a word for that. A kind of energy, maybe.

Of course, being pure energy has its limitations. Maybe he can’t hang around for long because he runs out of energy. Maybe it costs him a lot to come visit me like this, so being corporeal is a need. So he can affect the real world.

It makes sense, in a vampire way, I guess.

I blow out a long breath as I walk into the bedroom to check on Syrsee. She looks the same. Sweaty, pale, and unconscious. I sit down next to her on the bed, bite my palm, and then trickle the blood past her lips. After about a minute of this, she swallows. And I wait—like I do every single time—to see if this is the limit. To see if we’ve crossed some kind of threshold. To see if this is enough to wake her up.

It’s not.

So my next decision isn’t really a choice, it’s a foregone conclusion.

I get up, take off my clothes, then go down to the tunnel that leads to the root cellar. The whole passage has been torn up at this point. It’s nothing but dark, rich, loose earth. And not only does it feel soothing under my bare feet, it smells pretty fucking good too.

Not really sure how this whole dirt road thing works, I figure I must be on the right track if all my instincts are telling me to just lie down in the hole and cover myself up. So that’s what I do. And as soon as I’ve got a good layer of it over me, I feel better. Like I’ve been carrying a weight and I just put it down.

I’m not completely covered and my face isn’t covered at all, but I begin to wonder what would happen if I was truly immersed in the earth. And for long periods of time, the way Paul does it.

It’s not something I’m going to try now. How would I breathe? Do I need to breathe? I have so many questions and the only way to get answers is to initiate this conduit through the purple that vision-Paul was talking about.

I don’t know how one might do that, but I am pretty familiar with dreamwalking. And the moment I think this, I close my eyes and there it is. The lavender mist, floating all around me. Only I’m not lying down in a hole, I’m standing in the middle of that forest. The winter one where I saw Paul sitting on the fallen tree trunk while holding that baby.

And then there he is, minus the baby—naked and covered in dirt, just like me.

He just stares at me for a long moment. It’s unsettling because normally this stare would be accompanied by the smarmy smile, and this time he’s not smiling.

“What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

He lets out a breath, and with it comes a small smile. But the tone of his voice is different. It’s not that fake congeniality, but low, and deep, and serious. “I just… I can’t believe it worked. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been trying to make this happen?”

“Hundreds of years?”

“ Yes . Hundreds of years. It was Syrsee who made it happen. Well”—he sighs—“it was all of us. Me, Josep, the Darkness. And reluctantly, I have to give Lucia credit as well. She was the origin witch for Syrsee’s bloodline, after all. Of course, I’ve used the blood of every single Black witch I’ve ever tasted since landing in America for that purpose as well. But without Lucia, we wouldn’t have been able to create a new strain.”

“New strain of what ?” He’s calm and sounding very rational. But I’m not. And this question comes out with a lot of anger and pent-up frustration.

“Of…” He pauses, like he’s struggling to find the right word. “Of… sustenance , Ryet.”

“Sustenance? What a gross word, Paul. She’s not food.”

Paul doesn’t even argue with me. Just kinda shrugs his shoulders. Then redirects the conversation away from Syrsee with another question. “What do you think of them?”

“Them? Could you be any less specific?”

“The wings, Ryet. What do you think of the wings?”

I look over my shoulder and find that they are complete and all the bones have been covered with a thin grayish-purple membrane. I raise one shoulder and the corresponding wing flutters a little. I can suddenly feel all the new muscles along my back that control this movement. Then I redirect my attention back to Paul. “What are they for?”

He tilts his head at me, like he doesn’t understand the question. “What?”

“Why do we have wings, Paul? It feels… cliché.”

Paul almost laughs. “Cliché? That’s funny.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve found that the human lore tends to leave the wings out in most of their fictions.”

He’s right, I guess. “Who cares about that. Why do we need wings?”

“For flying, of course.”

He says this like I’m an idiot. Which isn’t even fair. “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve even seen your wings, so don’t act like I should know this.”

“Well, that’s because the flying isn’t for out there , Ryet. It’s for in here.”

I have exhausted my patience for Paul’s explanation of vampire wings. But at least he’s provided me with a logical segue between that subject and the more important one, which is where I’m currently at. “What is this place? Some kind of advanced dreamwalk or something?”

“No, Ryet. It’s not a dreamwalk. It’s reality. The reality that exists to feed the Darkness. The only reality that really matters, when you boil it all down to nothing.”

I close my eyes, shake my head, and force myself to be patient. I open them back up. Breathe. “Can you maybe explain that in a little more detail?”

“How about this?” As he talks the space around me changes from a snowy forest to a luxury hotel suite located someplace very sunny. It’s the hotel room where I woke up from being second-born.

We’re both on the bed now, side by side and leaning back against the headboard. Clothed—thank God—but close enough to each other that I have a compulsion to move over and put some distance between us. Which I do.

Paul chuckles. “You’ve always been so resistant, Ryet.”

“What are you talking about? There were times that I was begging you for blood.”

He turns his head, that fucking smarmy smile back. “You know damn well I’m not talking about the blood.” The smiles fades. “I’m talking about us, Ryet.”

“There is no ‘us,’ Paul.”

“See? This is what I mean. You say that and you know it’s not true. It’s always been us, Ryet. Us against… everything .” He pans a hand through the air, trying to give the meaning of ‘everything’ some actuality. “I understand that you hate me. I do. I don’t even mind that you hate me because you don’t understand anything about what’s happening to you, and Syrsee, and me, and Josep.”

I scoff. “How the hell did Josep get included in that list? I’ve never even met the guy.”

“See, this is what I mean. You don’t understand. But I do. I understand your hatred for me. I can’t blame you—not really. I was, after all, the monster that killed your family.”

“Oh. My God. Did you really just go there?”

“I did. For a good reason. You see, if I hadn’t killed them in that fire, Ryet, you would’ve taken them to Hell with you.”

I blink. “What?”

He puts up a hand. “Not Jane, of course. She was safe. But your children?” Paul shakes his head. “They had the Darkness in them because they were part of you. They were damned from the moment they were conceived. Burning them in that church while they were still young and innocent was the only way I could set their souls free. It was the best possible outcome.”

Something happens here because everything in front of me—on all sides of me—narrows down into a dark tunnel of empty blackness with just a little bit of light in the center allowing me to see. Like I’m looking at life through a telescope.

Maybe like I’m seeing it for the first time.

Is this true? Were my children damned?

I can’t speak, so I don’t ask. But I don’t need to ask. I know he’s telling the truth. I was made . Produced. Bred. I was never a man, ever. I have always been the monster.

And maybe I didn’t always know this, but I felt it. That’s probably why I was such a fucking church boy. That’s probably why I was compelled to be good .

I was born evil. I am evil. I am one of them now.

No, Ryet . I huff out a little air. You have always been one of them . And if you were one of them, then all your children were too .

It’s true. Burning them was the best possible outcome.

Wow. I huff out a little laugh, shaking my head. I am a gullible fool if I believe this. I am making excuses for my… abuser? Not quite the right word. Captor? Doesn’t really fit either. Master?

There we go. Master. As in, I am a slave. And this master just told me that he killed my entire family—burned them alive in a fire—to save their souls.

The problem is, it kinda makes sense. Now that I have a few more details about who and what I am. About where I come from. And even in the human world, genetics is passed through blood. It’s a little more complicated than that—germ cells, and chromosomes, and heritable traits and all that science bullshit. But it’s not a far-fetched theory to conclude that because my children had my blood that they were also part of the dark world just below the surface.

I take in a breath. I let out a breath. And with that breath I let my family go again. It’s done. Jane made that very clear. She is saved and I am damned and if this fire did burn the evil out of my children and save their souls, well… Paul’s right. It truly was the best possible outcome.

“Would you like to know where Josep fits in?”

The tunnel vision fades when I turn my head to look at Paul. “What?”

“Would you like to know what’s happening? Or do you need a little more time?”

I don’t answer that question. Instead, I ask one of my own. “Where are you?”

“I’m right here, as you can see.”

“Where is this place? Where are you?”

“Do you have an urge to come save me?”

“Do you need saving?”

He hesitates for a moment. “Perhaps.” He hesitates again. “But don’t bother coming to find me. It needs to be Syrsee, Ryet. It’s her spell. She’s the one who needs to break it. If you come…”

Another hesitation. So he’s either lying or unsure of himself. I don’t like either of these possibilities. If he’s lying, well, that would be very Paul of him. Which is bad, because untangling his lies would confuse me further, waste time, and put Syrsee in more danger. But if he’s hesitating because he’s unsure… I dunno. I think that’s probably worse. Because I’ve always counted on Paul to be my… leader. To be in charge of making sure things turned out—well, not OK. Nothing is OK—but making sure things turned out the way they should .

“If I come… what? What were you gonna say?” I’m looking at him now. Straight in the eyes.

“If you come any further into the Darkness, it’ll get you, Ryet.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You belong to the Darkness. You understand that, don’t you? You’re made of it. Just like me, just like Josep, just like Syrsee. And once you meet it, you can’t go back from that. Of course, there’s no way to stop this meeting. It is going to happen, but it needs to happen a specific way. I was selfish, earlier. When I was provoking you to come find me. I just wanted to know that you needed me. Now that I know you do”—his smile is big now. He’s very satisfied with himself—“well, I can let it go. I will see you soon enough. We will be together again and I don’t want to jeopardize our chance.”

“Our chance at what?”

He smiles here, and it’s not a smarmy one. It’s… diabolical. “At revenge, of course. What else is there?” These words come out low, and mean, and absolutely evil. Sending a chill down my spine that reverberates all the way out to the tips of my wings.

I just stare at him for a few moments, unable to speak.

He breaks the building silence. “I’m going to send you back now. You found the medicine I left for you?”

I have to shake my head a little to focus. “What?”

“The jars and vials in the root cellar?”

“Those were from you?”

“Who else?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.”

“Of course you don’t. I’ve kept you ignorant, Ryet. It’s all very need-to-know. And up until now, you didn’t need to know. But things are progressing nicely at the present. Your transformation has reached critical mass and Syrsee is just about there as well. Once she comes out of it, it will all go fast. She will need things, Ryet. Things only we can give her. And that is when you will need to meet your Maker.”

“She will need things? What does that even mean?”

“One step at a time. First, go into the root cellar and use those jars and vials. They are for the both of you to share.”

“Which ones? There are a lot of them.”

“I can’t tell you that because I’m not there. I cannot see her symptoms. You’ll have to figure that out yourself. But don’t worry. She’s safe, for now. Because she’s not in the purple, she’s in the gold.”

I make a face of what-the-fuck-does-that-mean.

“It’s a witch thing. Not a place for vampires. But if you can bring her out of it, just long enough for me to find her, then I will be able to prepare her for what’s coming.”

I should ask. I know I should ask. Prepare her for what ? But I’m almost certain he’s not gonna tell me, and to be honest, I’m really not sure I want to know. Not yet. One thing at a time.

This feels a little bit like giving up, but what else can I do? I am one hundred percent certain that we are moving forward with whatever plan he’s cooked up, so maybe letting him lead is the best course of action.

“Go now, Ryet. Get the jars and vials and take them inside.”

Suddenly everything around me is starting to fade. Including Paul. “Wait! Don’t leave yet! How do I use the stuff in the jars and vials to make her better?”

And just as everything goes black, I hear his voice, low and distant. “You’ll know what to do. Trust yourself.”

The next thing I know I’m waking up in the dirt, sitting up and letting it all fall off of me. It’s dark, but I can see just fine. And when I look over my shoulder, my wings are exactly as they were in the dream—complete and the bones are covered in a membrane. Except I don’t think it was a dream. I think Paul and I really did just have that conversation.

Then I remember the last thing he said and get up. I pick my way over the various dirt mounds I’ve accumulated in the tunnel over the past week and finally stumble into the root cellar. There’s an old produce basket on the ground, so I just start filling it up with the jars and vials.

Once that’s done, I make my way back through the tunnel and up into the house. I check Syrsee first—still sleeping. Her fever is back. Well, it never really went all the way down to normal, but she’s very hot again. So I take the basket of vials into the kitchen and use a dishcloth to clean the dirt and grime off the bottles, being careful not to get the labels too wet so I don’t smudge what’s left of the old ink.

Then I line them all up on the counter and take stock of what I have.

For jars I have ‘Thirst.’ ‘Hunger.’ ‘Gasping.’ ‘Purging.’ ‘Chills.’ ‘Sweats.’ ‘Fatigue.’

For vials I have ‘Despair.’ ‘Loneliness.’ ‘Regret.’ ‘Contempt.’ ‘Estrangement.’ ‘Fear.’ ‘Shame.’ ‘Guilt.’

The jars are for physical symptoms and the vials are for emotions.

Well, I can’t read Syrsee’s mind, so the vials will have to wait. I choose ‘Sweats,’ since she has a fever, and open the lid of the jar. I expect it to smell rancid—everything in the root cellar looks like it was made decades ago—but it actually smells sweet. A cross between ginger ale and honey. It looks like a pudding or custard and when I dip a finger into it and give it a taste, it is sweet.

There are no directions on any of the jars or vials, but at this point, I might as well trust Paul. It’s not like I have many choices. I’m not sure how I’m going to get her to eat the pudding since she’s unconscious, but then I get an idea—maybe I could mix the pudding with some of my blood and feed it to her that way? But then I get another idea—maybe I should eat the pudding and then just feed her my blood?

I’ve done dumber things in my life, that’s for sure. And for some reason, this feels right. The exchange of blood feels important. At least it’s familiar.

I go into the kitchen, grab a spoon, and then, without thinking too hard about what I’m actually putting in my mouth, I eat the whole thing.

Then I go back into the bedroom, sit down in the bed next to Syrsee, bite my palm, and put it up to her lips. Like every other time I’ve fed her since she fell sick, the blood stimulates some kind of involuntary instinct to suck. I give her a little more than I normally would—wanting to make sure she gets enough for the medicine to take hold—and then pull back and start thinking about my own hunger.

There’s another jar, one specifically called ‘Hunger,’ and my first idea is to eat it myself. But would it be better if I feed it to Syrsee and then take her blood the way she just took mine?

Unless she wakes up, that’s not possible.

But I could just bleed her out a little and mix it in, then eat it.

I decide to do this because while it would be much simpler to just bite her neck and take what I need, leaving the potions or whatever out of it, that is a temporary fix. What if this jar can make my hunger go away? Maybe not forever—it’s not likely that it’s a cure. But even if it’s just long enough for her to wake up and make informed decisions about being my food, wouldn’t it be worth it?

It would. Time. All I can do is buy myself time. Because whatever is happening to us, it’s coming no matter how many jars of pudding we eat. And I just want a little more time before I truly turn into something evil and take my girlfriend along for the ride.

I position Syrsee’s wrist over my mouth and then nick her vein with my teeth. Then I hold it over the open jar of ‘Hunger’ and fill it up to the top. When that’s done, I lick the wound on Syrsee’s wrist until it heals. Then I get a spoon, mix the blood into the pudding, and eat it. Again, like the first one, it doesn’t taste bad at all. Not like honey and ginger ale, more like… meat. Which is kinda gross. Should be gross enough to stop me, actually. But by the time I’m actually having this thought, the jar is empty.

I just stand there in the kitchen, waiting. For what? I’m not sure. Something has to happen.

A moan from the bedroom draws my attention and when I enter the bedroom, I find Syrsee covered in sweat.

“No.” I say this out loud, trying to give the word power. But I already know that I’ve made a big mistake. I go over to her, place my hand on her wet forehead, and find her cold.

My heart thumps inside my chest, ready to panic. But I force myself to stay calm. Cold is better than hot, isn’t it? Plus, she’s not dying. She’s not human, so she’s not dying. She’s going to live to be very old. This is not the end. Paul did not just tell me how to kill her—he needs her.

It’s this last thought that finally snaps me out of the urge to panic. Paul needs her. He would not have gone to all this trouble if all he wanted to do was kill her.

I go back out in the kitchen and read the labels in the jars again. Then pick up the one that says ‘Chills.’

I eat it as I’m walking back into the bedroom. Then I sit next to her, bite the palm of my hand, and put it over her lips.

She reaches up and grabs my arm, pulling it down to her mouth. And this reaction is so sudden and unexpected, and I am so on edge, that I nearly pull away. Especially when I realize that she’s not awake. Her eyes are still closed. But I calm down, get a hold of myself, and watch as she feeds on me like I’m food.

It’s kind of erotic. I can feel her pulling the blood out of my hand and it sends a weird sensation through my entire body. My mind swims and floats and I have a sudden urge to drink her dry. Not a sip, but all of her.

Then I nearly laugh out loud. Because of course I do! ‘Thirst’ is a label on a jar in my kitchen.

I grab it, milk the blood from Syrsee, mix it in, eat it.

Relief.

But then I hear gasping from the bedroom and at the same time, I’m looking at the jar on the counter that says ‘Gasping.’ I don’t even hesitate this time. I bite, I milk myself, I mix. I eat. I go back into the bedroom, teeth already puncturing the skin on my palm, and I hold my hand over Syrsee’s mouth. She’s too busy grabbing at her throat, trying to breathe—eyes still closed—to grab at me this time. But when I place my hand over her mouth the instincts kick in and she feeds.

A few moments later, she’s breathing normally again.

But this time, her feeding doesn’t elicit an unwanted erotic response. This time she sucks all the energy out of me. I barely have enough strength to pull my hand away and stand up. And it takes a real, concentrated effort to make my way back out to the kitchen and open the lid on the jar labeled ‘Fatigue.’

Only the understanding that this Black magic is going to help me makes it possible for me to bleed myself out yet another time and mix my blood into the pudding.

I eat it. And from the very first spoonful, I feel stronger. By the time I’m done, I feel like a brand-new man. Or, rather, a brand-new monster.

There is only one jar left. ‘Purging.’ And if the pattern holds, this one is for Syrsee. I prepare the pudding with my blood and then grab a bucket from the little kitchen closet, put some water in it, and take it into the bedroom.

Syrsee is sleeping, but it’s coming, so I’m ready.

And by the time she’s done with her purging, her fever is gone, her face is flushed pink with blood, and she is the most beautiful creature that ever lived.

But really, the point is that by the time she’s done I have eaten all the jars and she has eaten me.

I want to be pissed off about this. I want to hate Paul for what he just did to us—even though I don’t even understand what he just did to us. But I can’t be angry with him. Not anymore. I don’t feel it. I want to see him. I want to save him. I want…

“Ryet?”

I startle at the voice, because I’m looking down at Syrsee as this word appears. And it’s not coming from her.

“That’s what he calls you, right?”

I look up and find Jane standing at the end of the bed.

She leans forward a little. “Can you see me?”

I nod.

“Can you… talk?”

I nod again.

“So… are you going to?”

“Talk to you?” My words come out as a breath. “Am I going to talk to you ?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. So we can talk.”

I’m suddenly angry. No. Anger is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings towards Jane. I’m enraged. I feel a lot of hate for this woman.

It’s unreasonable and probably related to the guilt about the blood magic I just did on myself and my girlfriend, but I don’t care. I don’t even try to subdue the fury inside me. I send all that rage out towards the woman who used to be my wife.

“So we can talk ?” I am spitting words at her.

She smiles at me. That same angelic smile I remember from when she was my wife. “I know you’re angry.”

I stand up, walk to the end of the bed, loom over her, and growl right down into her face. “You have no idea what anger even is.”

She stares up at me with those innocent eyes of hers. So wide. So calm. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Well, you should be.” I sound evil. And if I wasn’t shaking with hostility, I would think a little harder about this new me. But I don’t have room for self-reflection right now. “Why are you here?”

Something has changed in the way I speak. My mouth has changed. And this is when I realize that I have fangs . Not the sharp and dainty points that were there when I woke up in Syrsee’s truck. But fucking fangs. Like I now possess the mouth of a lion, or a bear, or a… a fucking vampire .

That’s not the only change, either. I can feel the new heaviness of the wings. I want to look—I want this bitch to go away so I can figure out what the fuck just happened to me—but I don’t look. I stare straight down into her stupid, innocent eyes.

“I want to tell you,” she says, “that I loved you.”

“ Loved ?” I scoff. Not because I think she’s lying. I know she loved me. And I loved her too. I scoff because it’s past tense. She gave up on me. And all that time, when I didn’t remember—when Paul was hiding the memories from me—I never gave up on her. I always knew she was there, in my past, and I never stopped trying to find her in my head and I certainly never stopped loving her.

“You didn’t know, so I can’t blame you?—”

“Blame me?” Is this bitch for real? “ Blame . Me?”

The world around me changes and suddenly I’m in our kitchen. And my kids—Charlie, Nancy, and Susan—are all sitting at the dinner table. I’m holding Jane in my arms and she’s leaning back, her face pointed at the ceiling, happy and laughing.

I close my eyes and shake my head, forcing the memory to go away. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see what I lost.

“I don’t blame you, Ryet.”

“That’s not even my name. You know that’s not my name! Stop fucking calling me that!”

“We’re OK. That’s all I came to say. The children, they were saved.”

I shake my head and laugh. Looking up at the ceiling. Looking all around me. Looking at anything but this ghost in front of me. “Paul. This is you, isn’t you? You sick freak! You sick fuck! Come out—show yourself!”

“Goodbye, Ryet.”

I look back at Jane. “Go, then. Get the fuck away from me.”

“We’ll meet again one day.”

“I doubt that very much. Unless you’re planning a vacation to Hell.”

She smiles at me. But it’s a sad smile, something that conveys pity. “You’re not going to Hell, Ryet. You’ll be forgiven in the end because this isn’t about evil. But I guess you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”

And then she’s gone.

And I’m not standing at the end of the bed. I’m not in the cabin.

I’m not anywhere.

But everything around me is gold.