Read Online Nightlord: Sunset by Garon Whited - Free Book Online

had to be told.  I felt it.  I knew it.  It was a miniscule piece of what makes up a whole person, less even than one drop of blood to a body.  Yet he was both dead and alive; dead because I killed him, alive inside my soul.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or to weep.  He was dead… but he wasn’t, not really.  I’d killed him… and now he would never die, not as long as I lived.
    I turned to Sasha, and she looked both surprised and pleased.
    “Eric!” she exclaimed, delighted.  “You remember!”
    I took a few deep breaths—air requirements or no, I needed a few deep breaths.  I could smell the exhaust of the cars that had been in the lot.  I could smell the dirt at the roots of the tree beside us.  I could smell the faint traces of soap in Sasha’s hair—even the leaves of the tree.
    I could see!   To my eyes, it was a though darkness simply ceased to exist.  There were light places, and then there were places where there was no light—but the darkness rolled away from my gaze as though afraid.  The world was a crisp and sharp black-and-white, with the contrast control twisted up high.  Where light fell, things faded into ultra-sharp, vibrant color.  I could see the ribs in the leaves of the tree, count the blades of grass peeking up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
    All my senses went through the roof.  I could hear the whine of alarm systems on idle inside the cars!  There was the feeling of tension and energy, tickling me from above; the power lines to the club.
    With my tendrils out, I could feel the living energy of the tree next to me, the earthworms in the ground… and the packed mass of humanity inside the building, defended only by thin and fragile concrete and brick.
    “My lord?” Sasha asked, voice quivering.  She was staring.  I suppose that’s fair; I wasn’t looking at anything in particular.  Instead, I was looking at everything .
    I narrowed my focus down, came back from the all-encompassing awareness.  It was too much, too quickly.  Overwhelmed with awareness, I blocked most of it out by instinct.  Eyes can adjust to too-bright light; ears can adjust to loud, constant noise.  I adjusted, dimming my senses to something at least tolerable.
    I looked at Sasha.  She was beautiful and vulnerable and she loved me.  She was a dark energy, much like a normal person in negative, which quivered, feared, loved, and hoped.  I saw myself through her eyes in a flash of understanding, saw the power and the darkened majesty inherent in us.
    I leaned close to her and kissed her.
     
    It was morning, and I had my usual convulsion. Sasha was with me and took hers a lot better.  More practice, I suppose.  I oozed a nasty, icky sweat into the sheets for a few minutes; she just perspired a bit.
    “It does get better, right?” I asked, gasping.
    “Over time, my love. Your body will finish purging byproducts of your transformation soon, and you will have only a mild discomfort, as you did on the first morning of your transformation.  If you will think back, you will recall that it was hardly noticed and easily passed off as remnants of a hangover?”
    “Yes.  But the next one was worse.”
    “That is correct.  The dawn-change is always worse than the night-change, but the first is always mild.  The night-change is like dying quietly; the dawn-change is the struggle back to life.”
    I shivered a little, despite the heat under the blankets.  I don’t much care for the idea of being dead.  It makes me nervous.  I’m allergic to dying; I break out in screaming.  At least, I used to.
    “So the whole process takes a while to finish?  And gets worse as it goes?”
    “Exactly.  Now you are done with the initial change.  All that is left is to purge your body of some remnants of the process, or so I understand it, and your transformation is reasonably complete.  But have a care, I beg you; even so soon as the second day of the metamorphosis, you must be wary of dawn