Page 24

The miraculous first breath.

T raveling through the dirt is like being in the only place you’ve ever known.

It’s like going home. And once you’re inside it again, it’s like you never left.

It’s an overwhelming feeling of belonging.

So it makes perfect sense that coming out of the dirt is the exact opposite. It feels like death and hopelessness. The Darkness wants us to remember where we come from and where we belong.

This time, when I appear inside my bunker cave, naked and covered in dirt, and as the hopelessness washes over me, wrapping around me like a cloak, I temper it with a secret that brings me a bit of compensation.

It’s just enough to keep me focused on what comes next.

Which is a whole list of things—the scions, the ritual, the burial—but before all that happens, I have one more thing to do down here.

I don’t bother washing myself before I set back down the tunnel that leads to the hole that will take me to the darkness. I just get to the hole in the ground as quick as I can and jump, unfurling my wings to slow down my descent. Still, my feet land hard, causing a rumble through the earth.

I pause here, taking in every detail with my vampire eyes.

Little Baby is a tattered mess. Bloody and almost nothing left of her. But not quite nothing.

I walk forward until I am standing over her body. She is unrecognizable and in pieces. But I bend down, slide my hands under what’s left of her spine, and pick her up.

A foot is left behind. A few ribs. And a hand.

But it won’t matter. What I have is enough.

I turn and go back, standing under the hole in the earth I just came down, and with one strong wingbeat, I am ascending again.

A minute later I’m walking back down the tunnel to my cavern and seconds after that I am walking into the pool of black water, Little Baby still in my arms.

I settle on a ledge of rock and breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s lonely being me and I’m tired of it.

Transforming the girl called Echo into the sacrifice named Little Baby is the only opportunity I will ever get to have a partner who is not Paul.

To have something that is all mine. Made by me, sacrificed by me, resurrected by me.

The scions are not loyal to me because I wasn’t the one who fed them as they grew. I wasn’t the one who had conversations with them, or took them to bed, or gave them the blood kiss. They don’t even know I exist.

Paul has them. And he can tell me all day long that they don’t mean anything to him, but he’s lying. Especially about Ryet.

I am not stupid. I know he’s going to try to save Ryet. He won’t betray me—not completely. He will sacrifice Ryet to complete our mission, but some way, somehow, he will find a way to work around his obligations to me in order to save Ryet.

He’s in the process of putting it all in motion right now. That’s why he wanted to be alone at the end.

But I don’t care.

Because I’m going to work the same magic with Little Baby.

And like Paul, I too have been planning.

I bite the palm of my hand, letting my fangs seep deep into the flesh. Then I drip my blood all over Little Baby’s remnants.

What happens next is just… a bit of science. As is most of what’s happening down here in the earth. Coulomb’s Law, which is unnecessarily wordy, can be broken into this: opposites attract. I gave her blood when I left her last. Just a little bit to get her through the pain. But it’s also a marker. One that will attract new blood. My new blood, specifically. Which is so charged with magic—from Paul, from Ryet, from Syrsee, and, of course, from the Darkness itself—that it can do wondrous things.

Even make a tattered halfbreed whole again.

I close my eyes and get comfortable in the pool of black water with only the sound of the trickling waterfall to keep me company. Time passes. It is not important how much time. This will take as long as it takes and I am prepared to wait for my reward.

Slowly the remnants of Little Baby in my arms become more solid. Muscles grow back. Bones mend. Skin reforms. And the parts of her that were missing—the foot, the ribs, the hand—are restored.

Then… the miraculous first breath. It comes out as a gasp and she sits up. Coughing, and sputtering, and crying.

She turns in my arms, then pushes off me, splashing backwards into the black water. Trying to get away from me.

I just smile. I smile, and smile, and smile as she grabs on to the ledge of rock and struggles to haul herself out of the pool. She gets one leg over, then one arm, then she’s out. But exhaustion takes over and she collapses into the loose dirt that lines the rocks.

I stand up in the water and wade over to her. She cries harder when I reach for her, but she has used up all her energy, so she must stay where she is.

My words are whispered right into her ear. “Rest now, Little Baby. I’ll be back for you soon. And then you’ll see, all the pain and trauma will be worth it. I promise.”

I kiss her head, then wade back over to the front of the pool and walk out of the water.

Clean and feeling more complete—more myself —than I have in two thousand years.

I make the journey back up to Paul’s bedroom alone, leaving Little Baby in the pool of water. And after I close the door, I program a new code into the keypad.

She will be safe down there.

She will go insane, but it’s nothing that I won’t be able to fix with a good long drink of blood once the New Darkness is born.

Then I go downstairs with heavy, drooping wings and skin the color of a fresh bruise to finish the job we started.