Page 55 of Inception

“So you’re a...you’re one too?” I drew myself further back away from him. I wanted no part of him.

“Yes. I am a Revenant.”

“How is this possible then?” I asked shakily, referring to our face-to-face conversation. “Why aren’t you trying to attack me like the other ones? You’re not acting like a...”

“Like a monster? A predator?” His lips took a downturn.

“Well, yeah.”

“I assure you, those urges are always there,” he said, lowering his head. His dark hair sweeping over his soft, angelic eyes. “It’s a part of who I am now, but Icancontrol it.”

This didn’t make any sense. If there was one point my uncle drilled home harder than the rest, it was that Revenants did not control themselves. Ever. They had no semblance of humanity, they were predators created to kill. Was all of that a lie?

“Are you saying Revenants can control themselves?”

“No,” he said sternly. “They cannot.”

I felt my eyebrows furrow. “But you can?”

He nodded.

“Are you a different type of Revenant?”

“Not exactly,” he replied cryptically, studying my reaction. “It’s not what I am now that separates me from other Revenants. It’s what I was before.”

“What were you before?” I asked, beside myself with curiosity. I hadn’t realized I’d been inching closer to him.

“A Descendant.”

The room fell to silence as I sat back in my seat and let the weight of his words sink in.

“A Descendant,” I repeated. It was neither a statement nor a question, but something in the middle.

He dipped his head.

“And that’s why you’re different?”

He nodded again. “The Revenant infection doesn’t affect Descendants in the same way that it does a human being,” he explained. “Mortals are fragile. Their souls are vulnerable. They’re not built to withstand the reanimation process.”

“You mean the coming back to life part?”

“Yes,” he nodded once. “They come back warped— destabilized. They don’t have any natural defenses against what’s coming. Most of the time, it only takes a couple of days, sometimes just a few hours, before the infection takes over completely, overwriting their entire existence. Their humanity is always the first thing to go.”

A wave of nausea washed through me.

“But Descendants are stronger, we’re much more resilient,” he explained. “While we can’t stop the transformation, it doesn’t overtake us the way it does a human. The vessel changes, some of the mechanics change, but we’re still in control of the wheel.”

“That doesn’t sound like a vampire,” I noted. “Maybe you’re something else? Something new?” I was grasping at straws now.

“I knew my Maker. I am a Revenant,” he said definitively.

“So you drink blood?” My voice cracked at the tail end of the question.

“I do—never human though, and only because I need it to survive.” The sadness in his eyes was unmistakable. “My body will always react to the scent of blood, even in spite of me, but unlike other Revenants, I can decide whether or not to follow through with the urges—with the bloodlust,” he explained, visibly torn by his reality. “That is the perpetual war inside of me. Between my mind and my body.”

How could he live this way? How could anyone live this way? It was as though he were a conscious man trapped inside the body of a beast. It was the very definition of a living nightmare.

“What about Dominic?” I felt my throat constrict as my mind shifted to him. “If he can control this, why did he attack me?”

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