.: Entry Seventy-One :.

My name is Elliot Parker, except I am not.

My parents chose that I should perform the marriage ritual, they want me to become a monster. I know the myth, the horror story, the cautionary tale, the reason why syphons are normally destroyed or kept from sight or knowledge. I don’t want to be a monster.

“You don’t want the power?” he asks so softly I forget why I remained quiet before. I shake my head no. He is trying to charm me to be quiet. “They scared you so badly that you never wanted marriage, to perform the ritual, to be turned.” I look away. “You know what a night child is?” I keep looking away. A faint echo of a voice says one thing, they are mistakes. “You know what a night walker is?” I keep looking away. They are the rulers of weaker kingdoms; the ones my parents show no concern of. I hear a small voice in my ear say, like a distant memory. “You know what a day walker is?” I search for the answer, I should know it, it’s like the word has been wiped from my memory. I look at him and shake my head, my confusion is clear. “We come from families that are day walkers. We are the more powerful kingdoms.” He says, and I nod, like it is an echo in my ear, a vaguely recognisable fact. “You know what a witch walker is?” My eyes widen, a feeling of fear bubbles up. The monster that they want to turn me into. “That’s what we will be, together, the first witch walkers in thousands of years, the most powerful beings on this earth.”

Does he not grasp the horror of his words? The danger he is willing to unleash upon the world. We come from day walkers, yes, that means that is what we would be, if we were normal. But we are not. I put my hand on his and look into his eyes. He is right I am a syphon. I begin to slowly pull away at his magic. The charm slowly fades as his face hardens, he can feel me pulling at his magic. He begins to fight it, to fight me pulling the magic from him. It won’t work, I have kept myself hungry for too long, my connection was pinched away from the magic for a while, long enough to create enough of a vacuum to weaken his. This is what I had been waiting for. The chance for his guard to be down enough to pull some truth from him, then some damn magic.

I could feel the magic flowing back, I no longer feel so weak. I can feel the warm buzzing filling me from head to toe. I feel my own essence, my magical signature flowing from him. So he is a syphon too. I didn’t believe the likelihood of his being a syphon too, we are rare, or at least we are supposed to be. But there we go. And here I am. I pulled my own signature entrancing magic back, it feels a familiar warmth. I keep pulling magic even as he fights it. I didn’t realise this had become a fight for the magic. Through gritted teeth I hear myself, I am angry, I can’t be blamed for being angry. “You syphoned my magic?”

“I was trying to get through to you, you put yourself in that damn bubble, until you couldn’t. Then you were just stubbornly ignoring me.” I can see the pain of the magic being pulled from him. I begin to taste his own magical signature; I can see how weak he is becoming. I stop. I let go and I watch him fall back, weak.

I stride to the door, no longer resisting the magic, no longer pinching myself away from it, I pull the spell from the door. He had magically locked me in this room, it took a lot of magic to do, and now, I am syphoning that into myself. The buzz and the warmth of the magic flowing through my veins. I touch the door handle and I hear him calling for me, I turn to look at him on the floor picking himself up. Look back at the door handle and before I have turned it he has pulled me back. “Don’t go out there, you can’t go out there.”

“Why?”

“I syphoned the magic from the boat to be able to stop you leaving, you can’t leave until I say, we are floating because I allow it.”

“You are alive because I allow it.” I hiss through gritted teeth as he pulls me further from the door handle turning the lock and resealing the room. I glare at him. He doesn’t syphon from me completely; I feel his magic leave me but no more. I hadn’t cared that he hadn’t thrown me from the door, that he had pinned me to the wall next to it. He had chosen the least painful retaking of power. A small part of me thanked him for that. But the rest of me was full of fire and fury. I could see the same temptation in his eyes. That weakness I recognised. I slowly soften the glare and bite my lip, just like I do when I am thinking, the habit I know he watches. I drop my gaze and then ever so softly let him watch as I trail my eyes up his arms and shoulders, pausing at his neck, his chin, his lips and then his eyes. I see how his observing of me has softened, it’s less focused. I feel his arms ease from being tense around me. Stopping me from running, he is granting me movement. Rather than let him step away, my hand has snaked around the back of his neck pulling him a little closer. I look up into his eyes again. This time when I pull him a fraction closer I meet him in that tiny distance and let our lips brush so softly, before he pulls me tightly to him and kisses me fiercely. Does he really think he is the one with the power in this moment?