Page 41 of The Reveal
Then sucks on it.
“You bit me?” I manage to ask, though I’m not sure how. I feel raggedy. I feel torn apart.
I have no idea who I am or what just happened, or what I’m going to do with the knowledge that I could ever behave like this. That I did.
That, most shamefully, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I feel shamefully certain he knows this as well as I do.
“I didn’t bite you,” he says, and has the gall to sound amused. “Trust me when I tell you that you would know if I bit you. This is nothing but a little nick.”
“Thank you, that’s a great consolation to me. When will full sunlight start burning me? Should I invest in blackout shades and a coffin?”
“You don’t have to worry too much about the sun in this valley. Surely, you’ve noticed.”
“That’s not really comforting.”
“Winter.”
And he says my name gently, which sends that same sort of storm of sensation thundering through me, because he’s terrifying and somehow tonight I mixed up healthy terror with sex, and I can’t get those fantasies out of my head.Especiallywhen he says my name.
I can still see how hard he is. And how little he seems to care that I can see it. That cock of his, literally a monster cock, pushing out those soft pants of his like a whole stone ledge.
His gaze seems even more silver than before. “This is real life. There is very little comforting about it. I would expect you to know that already.”
“I really wish that you would just kill me and get it over with,” I blurt out.
It’s not true. I don’t have a death wish. I want to live, and I want it with a kind of fierce desperation that I don’t even know how to explain, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t keep fighting so hard. If I didn’t, there are so many ways to simply surrender to death coming for you, relentlessly, from every side.
I try not to think about it too much, because wanting to live in the wake of the Reveal is begging for trouble.
Begging for trouble, like what I’m doing now, seems suicidal.
My words hang between us like a death sentence, and I wait for him to do it. A flash of fangs, a snap of my neck, a push.
There are so very many ways to die.
“What makes you think I want to kill you?” Ariel asks. “You are so shiny and new and mortal. You have death stamped on your forehead the day you’re born. Why rush it?”
Then he smiles, wide enough this time that I can actually see his fangs. Not fully extended. Just enough. Maybe they come out when he’s turned on.
Something that shouldn’t turnmeon at all.
“Well,” I manage to say into the thick silence that follows. “If that’s all, maybe you can tell me why you wanted to talk to me about my brother. Do you know where he is?”
He shakes his head. “We’ll get to that. But don’t you want to know who the oracle is?”
“So I can go slap him upside the head for doing a terrible job at warning everyone?” I ask brightly. “Yes. Yes, I wouldloveto know who he is. Complete with a current address, please.”
But when his gaze settles on mine, gleaming intently, I go still. I understand that whatever he’s about to say is going to wreck my whole world.
Again.
And that’s exactly what he does.
10.
I don’t know how I make it home.
