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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Drew Hayes
“He can turn into almost anything,” Richard said. “But he usually stays in that form.” “A child seems like a curious choice for a powerful dragon.”
Cats might always land on their feet. However, the same cannot be said for accountants.
let me just say that while I am not skilled in many things, I am a twentieth-degree black belt in running away.
“King of The West,” Richard said. “He is the highest parahuman authority in our part of the country, answerable only to the Agency. Various types of our kind will appoint their own regional leaders, people with positions like my own. However, they must all be confirmed by Gideon.” “Because he’s a dragon?” “Because he is incredibly powerful,
me, I don’t get why someone with all that clout wants to be a kid, or is crashing with one of his subjects,” I said. The shadow of some deep pain rippled over Richard’s face again, and I decided it was time to move the subject.
When I awoke, there was no note, no guide, no nothing. I’d been changed and cast aside, which, Krystal had eventually explained to me, meant my sire was a sick son of a bitch. In the vampire world, that was the equivalent of tossing a newborn baby in a dumpster.
I can sense a simmering bloodlust from across a country. Someone like you only needed the power to strike back against the world, power I provided. Given your spectacular failure, I must surmise that the element which kept you suppressed is this young woman right here.”
“The reason vampire mythology is so convoluted about what they can and can’t do is that your kind has an ability unique to their species. Vampires can actually take on the characteristics and powers of other supernatural creatures.”
My point is that, while I was definitely inconvenienced by being kidnapped from my boyfriend’s apartment, it was hardly my first rodeo as an abductee.
Somewhere along the line, people mixed up the mythology of ghouls and zombies. Zombies are like Albert—corpses reanimated for service. It’s the ghoul apocalypse people are actually stockpiling for and writing endless fiction about, though a lesser ghoul can’t turn a human with its bite.
I’d mouthed a message to Fred not to follow me, because I would be fine. Coupled with his own natural reticence, there was no way he was going to come try and save the day, so there would be no need to cast some stupid undead steroid spell.
He glared at me. I think he imagined I would have started begging for my life by now. I probably didn’t fit into his expectations for how this was supposed to work. Welcome to the Krystal Disappointment Club, asshole. Tell my father and ex-fiancé “hi” at the next meeting.
“This is not a threat to me. He is an inconvenience. He is a dinner-plan wrecker. He is an apartment smasher. But that’s all. He’s an annoyance. To the rest of you, he is a very deadly opponent. You should have let me handle my own business.”
He reached down and plucked me from the ground, holding me with the hand still caked in Krystal’s blood. The smell was nauseating, which was strange in itself. Even if I loved the woman it came from, blood should still smell like blood.
Her hands were now about half-claw—dark, twisting things that extended from her middle knuckle and stretched much further than her normal digits. Her skin seemed to be shifting, like something beneath it was rearranging itself. The blonde hair I’d come to know so well turned blood red midway down its length before ending with a fire red at the tips.
“It’s not a fire monster. It’s a devil. A being of Hell significantly more powerful than mere demons.
There’s not many of my kind, so we don’t get a lot of press. Sometimes, very rarely, a devil will break into our plane. When they do, it’s a horrific event, more damage than you can even imagine.
“There’s a ritual that can be used. Binds them, seals them, holds them. You need a virgin girl and a powerful mage to do it. It . . . well, it gets sort of technical here, and I don’t even have the magic chops to really understand it all, but the easiest way to say it is that the devil is sealed in a soul and bound by the blood.
One of my ancestors, waaaay back when. The curse, or duty, or whatever you call it, is passed down along the bloodline. When a woman has a daughter, the onus of the spell begins to transfer.
The devil that’s bound in me shares my fate. If I die, it will kill him too. So until I bear a child, it will always come out like that to revive me.”
“I won’t get old. I won’t get sick. I’ll be like this until I pass on the curse.”
“I just finished telling you I’m a flesh cage for a devil.” “I’m an undead blood-drinker,” I pointed out. “Being with me will put you in danger.” “Tonight tells us that vice versa could also be true.”
However, I have at least learned enough to no longer shy away from something that has made my world, while more dangerous, also impossibly more worth being in.”
But, as I’d admitted, I am not the sort to easily change. Perhaps suaveness will come to me in another hundred years.
