Page 135 of A Bond with the Dark

When I catch a glimpse of Dom, his incisors, too, are fanged out and gleaming, his eyes blank and scary.

“Enough!” yells Everett with enough force in his voice that the house quakes. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? Get the fuck over it. It was two hundred years ago.”

The displacement of air in whooshing gusts lets me know the women are now in the room, no doubt speeding upstairs to the sounds of the commotion.

“Oh, for gods’ sake,” Adaline quips, the anger in her face like summer lightning. “It’s about a girl, you idiots. Get over it. You have women of your own already.”

Talora’s here too now, as is everyone else in the house.

Neither Bash nor Dom acknowledges this, but their fangs retract, and their eyes return to normal.

Dom walks toward me, grabs my hand, and pulls me up the stairs.

As we’re almost to our room, there’s a blood-curdling scream, a sound like bones breaking, and all the voices of the people at once in the room we just left.

When we run back into the room, we see Bash hovering over Joe, drinking his blood. His eyes have gone black; the warlock has obviously come for him and has taken over, commanding him to kill Joe. Jasantha is trying to tear him away, screaming, Adaline’s trying to keep her from intervening, and the entire room is in chaos.

“What the hell happened?” Dom asks, running to pull Bash from Joe.

“He killed him,” Jasantha cries, her voice a mixture of anger and unmitigated devastation. “He’s a monster. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

The red of her hair almost darkens, the medallion she wears around her neck glows, and she tilts her head back. Opening her mouth, unnaturally wide, the highest pitch and most ear-piercing wail accosts all my senses, rattling the windows—if they weren’t as tough as they are, they’d have shattered.

The sound that emits from her is unlike anything I’ve experienced. It’s like the worst sound I’ve ever heard—nails on a chalkboard terrible—but ten times worse, that crawls into my skin and sinks into my bones. I’m able to clutch my hands over my ears to muffle the sound. When I look around, all the vampires are doubled over with their hands on their ears or succumbed to their knees with the fatal litany.

Jasantha’s eyes turn a beautiful amethyst color, the fangs sprout from the top and bottom of her mouth, and she clambers onto Bash, clamping down on his neck, causing an awful crunching sound that rends through the air. He screams in pain, and his flesh begins to boil at the puncture wounds from the toxic bite, bubbling up all over.

The only one not nearly affected by the siren call is me.

Now’s a time more than ever to use the power Adaline gave me.

Extemporaneous rage courses through my veins, and as I think about all the things these people have caused me, I dive through my bones and find that power, scooping it up and thrusting it upon all of them. I don’t care. The carcinogenic rush of electrical current leaves my fingers in a fiery orange wave, hitting each vampire with a malignant rush.

A large black cloud flits to blot out the sun, and as it does, each vampire reacts differently to their own worst fears. Dom, Ollie, Allison, and Hattie are engulfed in angry red flames, and I can see them this time. Sounds of fire and flame and screaming cause me to bite back on relinquishing the power, but I do not lessen it. Wailing around, they try to put out the flames but cannot.

Scarlet’s body has flipped to a horizontal position in the air. It is frozen there; she's flailing her arms and legs violently and screaming like she’s falling to her death. Everett bleeds out of his ears and eyes, toppling to his knees as though struck by some imaginary axe. Jasantha’s clutching at her neck, a lariat pulling her from behind, causing her to fall to the floor and be ripped off Bash. Adaline’s cradling a baby in her arms, the blue blanket dirty and riddled with holes. She strokes the babe’s head as tears roll down her cheeks. Bash’s face and neck eschew; he suddenly sees someone lying dead next to him—though no one is there—ineffable sadness controlling his movements as his hands tamp down whoever’s hair he’s seeing.

Lightning flashes and lights up our dark, as though the universe tells me they’ve had enough. Calling my power back to me, it evaporates off them and seeps back into me.

Jasantha takes a deep breath and coughs, crawling back and collapsing onto Joe, commencing her mourning. “You killed him,” she sobs. “Oh, Joe. Oh, my sweet Joe. You monster!” she shouts at Bash.

Bash crouches on his knees before Joe, blankly looking at the ground.

Something tells me that he’s not here anymore. There’s a vacant look in his smoldering eyes, and I don’t know him well, but even I can tell he’s fighting a battle within himself.

He rises slowly from the ground, and I notice that the mark on his neck is a shade darker, his eyes turning as black as the darkest night.

As Bash keeps his slow, monotonous gait toward me, as though he’s not controlling his movements, Adaline rushes off toward the basement.

Dom, his eyes turning that vacant black as well, rises from the floor, his eyes locked on mine.

Fear paralyzes me.

Is he gone too now, then?

I summon the power again within me and urge it to come forth, but nothing is coming.

Maybe I used it all up the last time I did it.

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