Blood King (Spirit Seeker Book 1)

by Amber K. Bryant

  “I’ve done this before. Only once, a decade ago. And I had a good reason.” He stared down at his feet, imaging long blond hair whipping in the wind, a smile that always broke through his callused heart. It had been for her.

  “Out with it, Devin.” He raised his head and Sybille’s face softened. He must look pathetic.

  “It was my sister. Can’t you understand? I couldn’t stake her. I couldn’t do that.” He shrank back onto his chair, head down, no longer caring how Sybille would view him for what he was revealing, or what Elis thought about him going from badass slayer to basket case in under two minutes.

  His body stilled as he waited for Sybille’s response.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me about the demons in your past for a long time, Devin.” The steadiness of her voice called him back from the brink. “Now maybe we can get started on fixing this.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Devin studied a dime-sized stain of blood crusted onto the cuff of his shirt. He thought he’d have trouble speaking his story out loud. Until now, it had remained a silent tale told to himself in the confines of his mind, but now the dam had broken and the words flowed. His throat ached with the force of them.

  “It feels like I’ve known about bloodthirsters my whole life, but I was grown before I found out they were real.”

  “Most people never find out.” Sybille nodded.

  “I wish I hadn’t.”

  “You and me both.” She reached her hand out again, this time resting it on top of his knee for a moment before pulling it back to her lap. “How did you find out? What happened to you?”

  “It’s not what happened to me. It’s what happened to Raelyn. My little sister. When she was fifteen, she ran away from home and ended up bloodthirster food.”

  “Holy shit, that’s young. I’m so sorry.” She leaned in, trying to establish eye contact. He kept his focus on his blood-stained sleeve.

  “After searching for almost a year, a friend of hers told me Raelyn had contacted her. Raelyn had named the place she was living—Low Hollow. I’d never heard of the place and had no idea what I’d be walking into but that didn’t stop me from going there immediately. I was fearless in my ignorance.

  “From what her friend admitted to me, it was obvious she’d gotten mixed up in something bad. So it wasn’t a total shock finding her living in a rusty trailer in the middle of the backwoods, totally strung out on Crave. Of course, I didn’t know anything more about Crave than I did the Low at that point. She kept talking about blood. That’s what I remember most. And how she’d sniff the air like she was a coked-up hound dog.”

  Sybille groaned. “Some sick fuck turned her.”

  “Only I didn’t know that. How could I? I was naïve. ‘Raelyn,’ I said to her, ‘come home with me. We’ll get you in treatment. There’s hope.’ Only there was no hope and Raelyn knew it. She was with her kind now, so for her, she was already home.

  “That’s when she played me, convinced me that yes, she was an addict, and sure, maybe she’d leave with me, but not until I understood.”

  “Understood what?”

  “How she felt on Crave. Being a bloodthirster meant she preferred her Crave mixed into the veins of a human, but that was more information than I had at the time. She wanted me to sample her stash, understand—truly experience what she felt. Then she’d go with me. She promised.”

  “And so, you did it.”

  Devin finally looked up from his wrist. “In order to save my sister? Hell yeah, I did. Don’t look at me with those judgy eyes of yours.”

  “You took a highly addictive drug that you knew nothing about.”

  “If it was Zareen in Raelyn’s place, wouldn’t you do the same?”

  Sybille responded with silence and Devin continued.

  “That night, I got blitzed out of my mind and my sister got a Crave blood cocktail. In the morning, she thought I’d wake up ready for more. Brother blood mixed with Crave whenever she wanted.”

  “That’s one fucked-up family dynamic.”

  “Thing is, I didn’t wake up wanting more Crave. I woke up angry. Confused. My sister had pierced my skin with honest to God fangs and drank my blood. I pretended to be asleep until she slipped past me and went to take a shower, then I left as quickly as I could. I was still fucked up, but I had to get away from her. I sped down icy roads, my vision blurry as the Crave finally wore off. I couldn’t believe what had happened. I’d found my sister, but she was still lost.”

  “Something tells me that’s not the end of the story.”

  He hesitated for the first time. If he could spare them both this next part, he would. But Sybille deserved to know and now that his burden was half unloaded, he needed to finish the job.

  “I couldn’t go home until I’d understood what happened to Raelyn. What had happened to me. I rented a motel room in a town just east of the Low and then I researched. Blood lust. Blood sucking. Search terms I never thought I’d be using.

  “The search results all lead to the same place. My sister was a bloodthirster. She didn’t have a disease, she was the disease. None of the forums I scoured gave me hope, but there was a man, very active on several of the sites I joined. An expert of sorts. Said he was a scientist and claimed to have formulated a drug that could combat bloodthirsters. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I messaged him and he got back to me right away. He agreed to meet me the next morning at the café across the street from where I was staying.”

  “No way! Are you saying you met the guy who invented Strike?”

  Devin cringed. The guy.

  “On the forums, he went by the handle ag47vulpes.”

  Sybille snorted. “Ag47vulpes. Silver fox. He sounds like a proper nerd.”

  “In real life, he introduced himself to me as Peter Esmond.”

  The room fell so silent, Devin imagined he could hear his own eyelids blinking. Sybille slouched back in the couch, composing herself before daring to speak.

  “I’m surprised but somehow feel like I shouldn’t be. God dammit, Uncle Peter.”

  “I’m sorry I kept this from you, especially the part about him.”

  She shook her head. “It’s Peter who needs to apologize for involving you with Strike, but I don’t have the energy to unpack all of that right now. Finish your story.”

  Unfortunately, the rest of the story was going to do some of that unpacking for her. “First, Peter examined me for signs of Crave addiction. ‘I’m not sure why your withdrawal symptoms aren’t far more severe,’ he told me. ‘One time is usually all it takes.’

  “I couldn’t rely on that situation to hold. If I took Crave again, I’d probably be hooked. And hell, I wanted to do it again. Crave is like a present wrapped up under a tree just waiting to be opened. I wanted it to be Christmas morning every morning for the rest of my life.

  “That’s when Peter handed me a vial containing a pale-yellow fluid. Strike. It was meant to lessen the duration of Crave’s high. And it would decrease my desire to have the drug again.

  “‘You won’t crave Crave.’ He promised me that. And then followed up with the fact that he was only pretty sure because it hadn’t been tested yet.”

  “Great, so he made you a lab rat too.”

  “It was my choice. Blame him for lying and keeping things from you but don’t blame him for that. Or for what came next.”

  She sighed. “That doesn’t sound at all ominous.”

  “According to Peter, Crave and Strike would combine into a lethal cocktail within my bloodstream. He had the rationale all worked out, saying ‘remember, there is no salvation for that bloodthirster that inhabits your sister’s body. But there is hope for your sister herself. Kill the bloodthirster and your sister’s spirit goes free. Kill the bloodthirster and the curse is lifted.’

  “I took what Peter offered and I drove back to the Low. Only now, I knew better, like a child able to decipher lines on a page as letters and words and then whole sentences. I eyed e
veryone with suspicion. How many were bloodthirsters? How many were humans who willingly fed them? It was that day that I fully realized the Low was fucked to holy hell.

  “I found Raelyn and told her I couldn’t live my normal life knowing she was here without her family. I’d stay. I’d do what she wanted. I offered my wrist. She offered me a spoon.

  “Because of Strike, the high was different this time. Less intense, but the colors were still deeper than a Hawaiian sunset. Raelyn’s rundown trailer, its stained bed sheet curtains, its walls dotted with mold blooms—I might as well have been living in a watercolor painting.

  “My sister was part of my hallucination too. She was a monster hungering for her own brother’s blood but she was also a memory. She was a little girl with pigtails, making up pretend games up in our attic.”

  “Pretend games?”

  “We played them together when we were children, and even though I was only remembering that time when we were little kids, it played out as though it was happening in the present.

  “‘I’m a spy in this scene, Dev.’ She always called me Dev. ‘I’ve tracked a double agent to Russia. He thinks he’s gotten away with it, but he’s so wrong!’

  “I laughed. ‘Let me guess. I’m that double agent?’

  “Then the memory broke apart. I was back in her trailer, my wrist in her hands, her fangs out. ‘I’m sorry, Dev. It’s who I am. You’ll get used to the pain.’”

  Sybille breathed out, long and even. “Jesus.”

  “I was more of a double agent than Raelyn would ever know. It took a few minutes, and then she was gone. I’d killed her. Except, she was already dead. I had to remind myself of that.

  “As soon as I’d checked to make sure she was gone, I left. Strike made it easier for me to focus, but the drive out of the Low was still like winding my way through a nightmare. When I got back to the motel, I slept it off. In the morning, I called my parents to say Raelyn was still lost but that I’d reached a dead end.

  “It wasn’t a lie.”

  Sybille’s gift of foresight was patchy. Likewise, she had the least control over the ability to see into someone’s past. She had glimpsed unintentionally into Devin’s past many times—his memories somehow sucked into her consciousness. It was one of the reasons she’d kept her distance from him. Something of life-changing importance had happened to him before they’d met, something that connected him both to the Low and to Crave.

  Today’s confession from Devin confirmed everything she’d feared. The sister part was new, though. He’d never talked about her, nor could she relate any of his fragmented memories directly to her. She’d assumed Devin was an only child. He’d mentioned that his parents had sold their business a few years back and were now living abroad, but that was all he’d ever said regarding family.

  Devin had a heart that would never heal. If her mother’s heart was a giftwrapped steel cage, Devin’s was an open box, nothing but a flimsy sheet of paper tissue between himself and the world that taunted him.

  She fought the urge to question him more about her uncle’s involvement in all of this. What the actual fuck? She was certain Margot hadn’t a clue that Peter had helped manufacture Strike. Zareen she was less sure about.

  Peter’s closet of secrets was a lot deeper and darker than she’d imagined it to be. She would explore this more, but not now. Now, Devin was suffering. He needed to be met with kindness, not a game of twenty questions. She could give him that much—after she’d asked him one last thing.

  Devin closed his eyes as he ended his story and allowing Sybille to slide onto the couch next to him. He didn’t protest when she draped her arm around his shoulder, stroking his forehead. She waited, her question swirling around in her mind. Finally, he opened his eyes and glanced around the room.

  “Where’s Elis?”

  Sybille did her best to keep her hand gentle upon Devin’s head. He leaned into her touch.

  “Don’t you remember? I sent him to gather some supplies I need for my clairvoyance session.”

  “Right. I knew that. See, I was just kind of hoping he’d walk in right now.” He gave her a half-smile.

  She ignored his attempt to lighten the mood. “Devin, I have to ask you something. Please forgive me, but I need to know. When Raelyn died, did you stay until she ashed?”

  What a shit friend she was, making him dwell longer within the worst moment of his worst memory. She hoped he understood she was only trying to gather clues so she could understand the Blood King’s miraculous resurrection.

  “I lit the trailer she was living in on fire and I watched it burn to the ground.” He rubbed his eyes and pulled away from Sybille’s embrace. “Either way, she’s ash now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  What the hell had he gotten himself into with these people? Elis had done more head shaking today than he had in the last hundred years. Bloodthirster Crave addicts who couldn’t die, hierophants who spoke to dead spirits and glimpsed the future, heartbroken clods who got high and let thirsters drink from them. He should be hightailing it straight out of Port Everan. He could make a living in any city anywhere in the world. He didn’t need this, didn’t need any of them.

  Sure, Sybille appealed to him. More than that, she resonated with him in the same way Juliana had. This was new—being able to admit to himself that he wanted her. The crazy world she was part of, her strange and wonderful abilities…all of it should have been a turn off; instead he could barely think of anything else.

  Sybille was the one he had been searching for these past two years. He wouldn’t find her in another city. She was right here. If she wanted him to go grocery shopping for a bunch of items she claimed would help her see into the future, then he was going to pretend that didn’t sound ape-shit crazy and get her whatever the hell was on her list.

  This brought him to Food-n-More, where they had her brand of rainforest certified coffee beans but not the organic fair-trade eighty-five percent dark cocoa and chili bar she had specified. It took several more stops to find that. Then, steeling his resolve, he headed for The Psychic Palace, a woo-woo store run by clueless hippies.

  Elis hated these sorts of shops. Even though Sybille had assured him that the owner didn’t know about bloodthirsters, he was still hyper aware of her gaze as it followed him around the floor past rows of incense and tarot decks. He’d hoped he’d be able to find what he was looking for without her assistance, but Sybille wanted a chakra opening crystal and he had no idea how to identify the specific one.

  Finally, he resigned himself to asking the owner, a short, plump woman with long braids, wearing a salmon-colored shift and a necklace made from turquoise beads.

  After stumbling over the name of the crystal he needed, he showed her the shopping list Sybille had written out for him.

  “Oh, phenacite! Of course. You know, I felt it when you first came in the door—right in my heart center, I felt it. I said to myself ‘that man is touched with the spirit. I wonder if he realizes it.’”

  “You have no idea… So, about the crystal?”

  “I’ll show you.” She came around from behind the counter and walked him towards the back of the store, a cloud of patchouli-scented air trailing behind her. “I’d love to do a reading for you, if you have the time.”

  “I don’t actually. My friend sent me to get this and she—”

  “Say no more. If she’s asking for a phenacite then I have a feeling I already know who we’re talking about. Strange, though… I sold her one only a month or two ago.”

  “Maybe it was someone different.”

  The woman stopped abruptly in front of a table littered with rocks and gems of various colors and sizes. “Could be.”

  She laid her hands on the crystals, running probing fingers over the surface of each one as though she was petting a favorite cat. Finally, she picked up a clear white crystal about the size of a golf ball and handed it to Elis.

  “It will open that third eye of yours right up! Practically
jumps out of your hand when you hold it—all those vibrations. Can you feel them?”

  Not really. “Sure. How much?”

  They walked back to the register, where Elis handed over more than any rock should be worth.

  “Do you need a grounding stone? She really should have a grounding stone if she’s going to use a phenacite. Black tourmaline would work nicely. I can throw it in for ten percent off.”

  Not on the list, so not going to pay for it. “I think she already has one of those.”

  “Okay, well, if you’re sure.” She closed her register and began fiddling with the red laughing Buddha statues lined up in the case next to it. “I meant what I said about a reading. Do come back. There’s much you could learn about yourself.”

  Elis did his best not to narrow his eyes. He knew a charlatan when he saw one, possibly having some experience in that arena himself. “Maybe. See you.”

  He left before she could smudge him with sage as some kind of spiritual cleansing ritual. That, after all, had already been tried on him before.

  As worn out as she was from the previous night’s events, Sybille found it impossible to sleep. Instead she tucked Margot’s afghan around Devin’s sleeping form, chatted with Nate about early twentieth century logging practices, and then headed up to her bedroom. Instead of lying down, she sat against her headboard, legs crossed, following her breath in and out.

  She would need to concentrate to do what she was about to do. It was now or never. If she was going to get even a tiny glimpse of what was to come, she required a stretch of uninterrupted time. Margot, Peter, and Devin would sleep for hours. That left Elis. Elis, the king of distraction. If he remained out of the house on that psychic scavenger hunt she’d sent him on, she might be able to do this.

  The human mind contained a jumble of pathways. Some were well-worn routes walked every day. Some were less frequently traveled. The majority were hidden.