Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“But you see me as a highway. Something to be traversed.”
I don’t even bother scoffing. I just sigh, bored. Ready to die if none of this is going to work out in my favor.
“There is no death, Josep. This want of yours, this desire to evaporate into nothingness, it’s so irrational.”
I redirect my gaze to the girl on top of me and study her. Really see her. If she were Echo, it would be a reason to keep going. The two of us could hunt this Darkness together. We could subdue it, enslave it, drink its power, become a team, and rule the world as we built up the new American Vampires.
But I killed her. Not literally, she’s beyond that now. Because I gave her the blood we mixed during Ryet’s third birth and now she is part of It.
It is inside her. It has corrupted her. And I find that I’m truly sorry about that. I was too focused on Ryet and Paul. Too caught up in his plan.
“Yes,” Little Baby Darkness says. “Exactly. None of this is you, Josep.” She morphs back into Dark Me and I stare down at myself, suddenly able to see through his eyes.
“What do you know about me, Darkness?” I ask. But I’m watching myself say this as the words spill out of my mouth.
What a trip.
I lay my head on my own chest, then ask myself to hold me. “Hold me,” I say. But it comes out of both of my mouths at once. Like an echo.
My arms wrap around Dark Me, but this is when I realize I’m not the man lying in the ground, nor am I the man on top of me. I am both of us.
“Exactly,” Little Baby Darkness says, but only inside my head. “You are me, and I am you, and we are the same. This is why you’re insane, Josep. You’ve been touched by God. You’ve been touched by me because I am God. And your mind was never able to process it until now.”
“What’s so special about now?” I ask. There’s doubt in these words, but this insane dream is actually starting to make sense. In a small way, at least.
“Now, you can see yourself in me.”
Dark Me lifts his head up off my chest and we stare at each other. He’s pretty. That’s the word for him. He’s so fucking pretty. And the moment I think this, all the roots in the ground around me begin to glow the lightest of purples.
“I’m you,” he says. But I’m saying these words as well, at the very same time. So no matter which body I’m inside of at the moment, I’m saying this to myself.
“I’m you. You’re me. You are the Darkness. I am the Darkness. And if you want my power, you don’t have to work with Paul to steal it. It’s yours, blood lover. All you have to do is merge.”
Here it is. I mean, I’m many thousands of years old. Temptation and I? We’re old, old friends. The Darkness has been tempting me from my earliest days. Merge? I mean, come on. How fucking stupid do I look to this thing that it thinks I would fall for this simple trick?
“It’s not a trick.” But it is. Because these words come out of my mouth, and I’m looking down at myself as I say them. It’s always been a trick.
“Let me help,” Dark Me says as he sits up, displacing dirt all around his body so that it falls on me. He’s straddling me now, smirking. “Let me help you understand. Watch closely.”
And then his hand slips down to his cock and he fists it.
In this same moment, I feel this. I feel his grip on my own cock.
He begins to stroke himself and when I look down at myself I can see the indentation of his grip over my shaft. I feel him squeeze me.
“Because you’re not you,” Dark Me says. “You’re me. And if you want my power, it’s yours. I put it all inside Echo to keep it safe. Didn’t you wonder why you had an urge to save her at the last minute? Didn’t you wonder?”
“Because I wanted a partner.”
Dark Me nods, squeezing his cock tighter and pumping harder. His breath is heavy and hitching now as he jerks himself off. “She’s yours,” he says, eyes closing. “And we put all our power inside her to keep it safe from Paul. So if you want your power back, all you have to do is come and take it.”
I come. He didn’t even touch me, nor did I touch myself, and I come, spilling the Dark Seed all over my stomach. A sense of utter relief washes over my body and I close my eyes, relishing it.
“It’s proof.” I expect these words to be in my head, or come from his mouth. But they don’t. These words come out of my mouth. “I’m the Darkness.”