Page 104 of A Bond with the Dark

“Love you.”

And the line goes quiet.

When I see his black Mercedes pull up into the driveway, I feel like a constellation of lacerations held together by stitches of uneasiness and fear. It’s taking everything I have to hold those stitches of myself together.

In the time that I’d waited for him, so many things have gone through my mind.

More vampires. A siren. He’s been bitten by a formweaver.

What scares me the most is that he was bitten by a formweaver.

I run up to the car as he clambers out and check him for bites.

He’s wearing all black, so I can’t see well, but I can tell that he’s covered in blood. It’s all over his skin, his face, his neck. He hugs me, and I examine his neck, arms, and anywhere I can. Judging by the desolate look in his eyes, something beyond anything I know has gone wrong.

“Oh my gods,” I exclaim. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Let’s get inside,” he says, raking his hands through his hair. “I don’t want anyone to see us.”

“Who would see us?”

He doesn’t answer and pulls me by the hand.

When we’re safely inside, he shuts the door and deadbolts it.

“Dom, what?—”

“He’s dead. I drained his blood and two of his cronies that were with him.”

His eyes are green again, meaning he at least got his fill of human blood.

“Well, that’s good?—”

“They were trackers, Sayah.”

“Trackers? What are trackers?”

“They work for the warlocks that spell the grimspawn,” he says, and his tone is edged as sharply as a knife. “From what I know, grimspawns and warlocks need each other to thrive. When warlocks create more grimspawns, they create trackers who are marked, people who must go through a series of tests to be spelled by the warlock. They have to endure a life of unbelievable crime and murder to desiccate their soul enough for the warlock to become one with theirs. As they commit their crimes, their mark gets darker and darker until it’s all the way filled in. The more heinous the crime, the quicker the mark darkens.”

“Why would anyone want to be a grimspawn?”

“They don’t want it, Sayah. They are chosen by the warlocks and spelled to believe that’s what they want. It’s like our veilweaving spell, but much worse.”

“So, Chaco Dominguez was a tracker?”

“Worse. His mark was all the way dark. Meaning his next crime was going to turn him into one.”

“So? The world has one less grimspawn.”

“No, that’s not it, Sayah.”

There’s a terror in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. And to see terror in the eyes of a killer unnerves me more than anything I could have ever imagined.

“Because he was marked and I killed him, it means the mark was transferred to me. I am now marked.”

He pulls up his sleeve and shows me the crescent moon mark that looks like a branding, the skin raised from the surface of his flesh. I graze it with my fingertips, not comprehending what the mark truly means.

The disorientation must have been spilling out of my eyes, for he covers the mark up and turns to me.

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