43. Bonus Epilogue Part 1

I don"t know how long I was lost in blackness. There was no sense of time in this place, but also no sense of anything. No up or down, no breeze or light, no body with which to feel.

Eventually sensation returned, but it was foreign, warped. As if I wasn"t a person any longer. Thoughts and feelings overlaid my own, showing me a tumbling confusion of experiences and memories. There was cold, so much cold. Darkness. A soul-stealing, painful hunger that never left, sated momentarily but the terror and death of those around me. I had no body. I was nothing but this darkness and this endless hunger for death and pain.

There was no color in my world, no warmth or emotion other than hungry or slightly less hungry, alone, or momentarily surrounded by the delicious flood of fear.

Then suddenly everything changed. I was ripped from my home, ripped from my very way of existing. I was trapped, dragged down from the aether and forced into someplace small and constricting. It hurt. I had never felt pain before—other than the pain of the aching hunger inside me. This pain was different—it was bright and sharp and too much. Too much.

No. That wasn"t right. That wasn"t me. I was a witch. My name was… my name was… I was…

Darkness and mist, and blood, and fear, and forever existing nowhere and everywhere all at once…

Dyre. I was Dyre. I was a witch. I was…

Wraith, my meals called me. Nightmare, death bringer. Haunt. Soul eater. Monster….

My eyes flew open, and I screamed as my mind tried to be two different people—two different creatures all at once. There was noise around me. I dimly registered the sound of people chanting. Maybe others screaming as I did. And the hunger. The hunger. The hunger.

My magic was stripped away, pulled inward like water swirling down a drain. Not flowing away from me, but toward something inside of me.

What is this? Rage. So much rage and confusion.

I tore my arms free of the bindings that had held me and sat up, cradling my head in my hands when it felt like it might split open. Rage. Fear. Confusion. Desperation.

I yanked my feet free of the stupid bindings holding them and sat up over the side of the stone altar. The altar my family had pinned me down on while they stuffed something unholy inside me.

Hunger. Feed. Run. Flee. Trapped.

An inhuman growl ripped from my throat, and I stood. My eyes landed on the man and woman who cowered near a topiary. The people who were supposed to love me. Who were supposed to protect me and cherish me. Who had instead chosen to torture and abuse me. Who had now damned me.

Time and awareness came and went in patchy bursts of bright and dark. My father"s screams were delicious. So much fear from such a coward. Blood, so much blood. I licked my fingers and let out a deep, unholy grumble of joy. I was no longer confined to the aether, no longer tethered to crypts and desecrated places. They had given me a living body, these stupid mortal animals. I would never be hungry again.

Blackness. Kneeling in the center of the garden while power, while souls swirled toward me, while I drank them in through my skin.

Blackness. My hands around my uncle"s throat, watching his face as I drained him of his life essence.

This one deserves pain nearly as much as the first one we killed, doesn"t it? Confusion. But glee. Was the monster inside of me actually talking to me right now? I was myself for an instant. And in that instant, my fingers tightened even harder around my uncle"s throat. His oily soul flowed from him to me, and I watched the life fade from his piggish little eyes. No. Goddess, how could I glory in this?

Blackness. Sobbing. A female. I looked around to find that I was no longer in the courtyard where the ritual had been performed. I was near a small shed tucked away near the edge of the back lawns. Something was familiar about this place. About that sound. I looked down at the woman who cowered at my feet.

"Dyre! Please, Dyre, please." Maureen. Her dress was splattered with blood, but it wasn"t her own. I could tell that thanks to my blood affinity, but also thanks to the other thoughts that slithered through my brain like poisonous snakes.

Bodies littered the ground. Humans. Had I… had I killed the servants as well? Something inside of me broke, my chest burned with buried emotion, but it was all so distant, muffled under the thoughts and feelings of something else—something that didn"t understand mortal pain.

"Maureen?" I reached down to help her to her feet, but she only let out a terrified sob and scrambled backward.

"Don"t touch me!" Her small hand clutched the necklace at her throat. A locket. My locket? Everything was so hazy and muddled. I reached for her again and she screamed in terror, her chest heaving and absolute horror twisting her features. She found her feet and the monster inside me surged to the forefront again. This one too? It makes you feel that thing in your center like the others. We should devour it.

"No!" I backed up a few steps as Maureen and I stared into each other"s eyes. The thing inside me insisted she had hurt me, too. That she was as valid a meal choice as all the others. It didn"t understand that this was a different kind of pain.

Tears coursed down my cheeks as I gazed at the one bright thing in my life. The girl I had almost murdered. The one who had held me when the entire world seemed hell-bent on hurting me. The girl who was now staring at me like I was a monster.

"Maureen," I whispered. "Please."

She shook her head, her face still painted with horror. "No. You"re not my Dyre. He"s gone. You"re a monster wearing his skin!"

I opened my mouth to say something, anything. Even though she was right. But she spun and took off running before I could figure out what pointless words to utter.

I wanted to chase her. I knew it was more satisfying when they ran. It amplified their fear and made their life force more potent when I devoured it. I clenched my hands into fists and sank to my knees, kneeling in the dirt as I watched Maureen disappear into the tree line. "No, no, no, no, no," I chanted under my breath, fighting the thing inside me with every ounce of willpower I possessed. "Anyone else. Not her. Not her. Not her."

Blackness.

I regained some semblance of awareness to find myself crouched like a gargoyle on the roof of the Blaisdell coven house as the sky turned purple near the horizon. I sent out feelers, knowing the skill would work before I even thought to try it. Previously, I could sense if others were in the room with me because of my blood affinity. But now… now I knew I could sense life force in a whole new way. And my reach was wide.

There was no one. Not a single living soul remained on the entire estate. We had drained killed them all. The entire Blaisdell coven was gone. Along with anyone here who could have run off to tell tales about my existence.

"They"ll sense the black magic all over the place and hunt us down," I said listlessly, for the benefit of the thing that lived inside me.

They will try.

"You killed her. Maureen." There was no life force anywhere.

The little female with the necklace you were fixated on? No. You said no. I don"t understand. She would have been delicious. Why would we not feed when given the chance?

I let out a gusty sigh as I dared hope that the monster was telling the truth. That somehow, Maureen had escaped the carnage.

The little female one ran into the woods. We did not stop her. The thing inside me didn"t sound happy about it. So I thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be true.

I didn"t ask questions about the thing that was now permanently bonded to my soul. We shared understanding the same way we shared a body. I seemed to just… know. The same way I knew I could reach out and control every corpse on the grounds if I wanted to.

Necromancer.

Abomination.

Evil.

There was a wraith possessing me. I would be lucky to live out the rest of the year as the parasite drained my life force, then cast off my empty husk like a well-used suit of clothing.

I did not choose this.

I snorted.

We should leave. Move. I want to run in this body and feel the earth beneath our feet.

"There"s one thing we need to do first," I said tiredly, resigned to my fate. If the monster inside me wanted to, I knew it could swamp my consciousness and push me aside, force me to do whatever it wanted. Why it wasn"t off murdering the whole town right now using my body was a mystery to me.

I felt petulance and confusion in the back of my mind. Not my emotions.

Straightening, I made my way down from the roof. The thing inside me said to jump. But I climbed through a window instead. Goddess only knew what would happen if I broke my body. Would the wraith repair the damage somehow? Or would I be permanently wounded until it finally finished draining me?

The house was silent as a crypt. Fitting, all things considered. And somehow it felt right. Because I was about to lay my family, my past, my whole cursed life, to rest tonight.

Half an hour later, I stood at the edge of the forest and watched the Blaisdell mansion burn with magic-enhanced speed. The showers of red sparks matched the orangish-pink color of the sky. The sun was rising as the remains of my past life burned to ashes.

I was so tired. I felt as if I could close my eyes and never wake.

The thing inside me was silent, and I got the sense of that startled kind of stillness you see in wild animals. Fear, wonder, and awe mingled in the back of my mind, and it took me a few moments to realize what had caused the sudden flood of emotions.

Everything is so bright. Color? Is that what this is? Is there always so much color in your world?

If I was less destroyed, I would have laughed at the way I was forced to stand and stare at the rising sun like it was the most fascinating thing I had ever witnessed in my life.

Daylight. This is daylight?

It seemed I wasn"t the only one who had been locked in the dark.