Page 105 of A Bond with the Dark

“We can figure out a way to spell it off of you,” I say and go to the cabinet and grab a grimoire.

“Sayah.” He grabs my arm and leads me to the couch. “There’s no way to spell this off. It’s the magick of a warlock, a power unlike any you’ve ever seen. The warlock that spelled this mark will not stop until I am hers.”

“Hers? How do you know this warlock is a she?”

“As soon as the mark appeared, when Chaco was dead and drained, I saw her. In a flash of my mind. But I saw her as clear as day.”

“There has to be a way. What if we track the warlock and kill her?”

“I don’t know of a way to kill a warlock, Sayah.”

“Drain her of her blood!”

“They’re protected by magick.”

“So I’ll spell your blood and hide you from her.”

“I don’t think it works that way, my love.”

I assume an injured air. Anger is rising like bile in my throat.

What the hell are we supposed to do now?

“What does this mean?”

“Well,” he goes on blithely, his dark brows drawing together in contemplation as he looks at the blood on his pants. “Driving home, I had nothing but time to think. My entire life, when we had to fight these things, I have never come across one that was a vampire first. Yes, they drink blood and eat people, but they are driven by this mark to lose their minds to the warlock in control. They feed on people, and sometimes, they can become the people that they feed on if they?—”

“If they what?”

“If they eat enough of them.” His gaze remains anchored on me. “They were trying to get to us because they wanted vampire blood. Consuming the blood of a vampire would make them immortal and, therefore, make the warlock connected to the grimspawn immortal. It’s why they spell grimspawns in the first place—to do their dirty work so they can live forever and not have to do the killing.”

“So . . .”

“So whatever warlock spelled this mark now has a vampire who is marked; it’s basically like hitting the jackpot. She’s not gonna wanna let me go.”

“And what will happen to you?”

“I’ll be spelled to her forever. Doing her bidding. Basically, she’s my sire now, and whatever she wants me to do, I have to do. Be that killing people, eating them—whatever she desires. I’ll lose my mind and be a walking zombie. Living forever to eat and consume blood for her.”

“What are we going to do?” I waiver. I’m lost in a dizzy dissonance, a dark and nefarious maze, not knowing which way is out. “This is all my fault.”

A hot, raw pain plunges me into darkness. I just found him. I love him. And now I’m going to lose him forever.

“Shh, it’s not your fault,” he says softly, pulling me down to lay on his chest.

Tears seep from my eyes at all the broken possibilities that shatter at my feet. I don’t want to lose him. And because this is a world I know nothing about, I don’t know how much time I have left with him.

“If I hadn’t meddled and tried to find someone for you to kill, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

“You were only trying to help. You couldn’t have known, nobody could have.”

“How much time do we have until . . . “

“Until I become a mindless zombie?” He smiles limpidly, though fear laces his tone. “I have no idea. I have to call my mom.”

“Do you think she’ll know of anything to do?”

“She’s our best bet,” he replies. “It looks like we’ll be traveling to New York sooner than I had thought.”

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