Page 145 of A Bond with the Dark

Standing there before them, unharmed and unburned, I examine my hands, my arms, my legs. My skin is glowing, fissures of golden cracks slither all over me, and power is buzzing. It feels like I can shoot my hand out, send lightning into the crowd, and burn everyone within my gaze. I feel drunk, like I drank a hundred margaritas; my body is warm and tingly, my neck feels rubbery, and my head feels like it’s still floating above them all. Not only that, but there’s now clarity about my thoughts. All fog has been lifted. Memories of everything in my childhood come rushing back, released like birds from the protective cage my mother had placed over me in toddlerhood. Visions of my sister, my mother placing a protective shield on me, Laureya’s face, my aunts, and their magick instantly flash through my mind.

I am the phoenix, and power drips off me; I feel it in the molten marrow of my bones.

I know without any shadow of a doubt that I’m the most powerful being in that room.

No one moves, not even the warlock, as I’m more potent than her now.

It’s so clear what I have to do. It’s as though the thought of it has always lived in me; it was hiding this whole time.

Plunge a heated sword into water, and it’ll break, but drench it in blood and fire, and it hardens.

How had I not known before?

The fire that lives in my bones now extends outward from my being in wings of fire, and as I try to grasp this moment and wrap my mind around what this means, time simultaneously moves with urgency and stillness; everyone else in the room but me freezes in place.

It’s as though something else entirely is controlling my movements; the alliance I had with gravity to keep me grounded shatters, and I soar into the air, flying up above the fray in the high rafters of the ceiling. Fiery tendrils slither out from the depths of me and extend toward the warlock as the lassos of my fire wrap around her, binding her from the ground up. The ropes tether her arms and extend them outward while another wraps around her neck, pulling her face to the sky—the blackness of her eyes pointed directly at me as I fly above her. They are unfathomable, and yet I feel no fear, even though she stares at me as though she’d devour my soul and harvest every ounce of my being.

There’s a slight tingling in my mouth on my gums, and this razor-sharp stinging makes me wince, and yet I know that they are fangs as I feel them elongate from my mouth.

In a movement as fluid as water, I fall downward toward her, like a volcano incarnate, and submerge my new fangs into the warlock’s neck; the sound of skin breaking and feeling a crunch is almost satisfying. The taste of her black blood is acrid in my mouth, but I do not drink it. The moment I bite down, the fire in me rushes through me and spews into the warlock, turning her white body black with red fissures of lava. The lava grows so intense that the room’s dark is as bright as a forest fire, and the burning body looks like its metal is being melted until it detonates into flames. Ear-piercing screeches like some sort of banshee of the night make even me wince, and I float upward and watch the creature burn.

The flames that shoot out from her become bright doves made of fire; they explode outward and dive toward the grimspawns—hundreds of them piercing the rotting flesh of the terrible beings. They, too, burst into their own flames, emitting sounds of terror, smells of burning flesh, and tempered agony amongst the vampires floods me.

When time resumes and my feet find the ground again, I see one grimspawn remaining.

Why did he not burn?

He’s standing by the fireplace, and as though he knows his death is subsequent, he runs up to Scarlet and tackles her to the ground; they both implode into a murder of crows made of smoke as they fly away.

“No!” screams Dom, who goes after them, vamp flashing out of the door in their wake.

Bash’s eyes return to their standard, glorious blue, standing with his mouth agape at me as I stand over a pile of ash, nothing but black jewels twinkling from it.

Lights return to normal, the air in the mansion resumes its average temperatures, and I remain frozen, unable to fathom what the hell just occurred.

Allison’s dead, her eyes unmoving and blank; the gaping hole in her neck is thrashed open, bits of flesh frayed where the creature had been eating her. Beneath her head, her brown hair is matted and thick with the pool of blood she lies in. Talora is still as well, paler than she had been before, her neck bent at an incongruous angle, her eyes utterly white as though she had tried to turn her vampire on while fighting for her life against the man she came here with.

Dom returns without Scarlet, his face contorted in rage and fear. “She’s gone. They have her.”

“Who has her?” Adaline asks, coming up to stand beside Everett, who has blood covering him from head to foot. “Sayah killed the warlock that spelled them.”

“There has to be another one?” he asks ,or tells- I’m not sure.

“I need to sit down,” I say, blustering, examining my hand. My skin is still lightly glimmering, but it’s fading back to normal as I head over to the bar stools.

Dom is there beside me in an instant, hesitant to touch me.

“Does someone mind explaining what the hell just happened?” Jasantha says, eyeing all the bodies around.

“Ollie’s dead,” Bash murmurs, kneeling next to Ollie.

He’s lifeless and still by the fireplace, a stake laced with silver driven through his heart. His eyes are wide open, blood seeping from all points of his face. The irises of his eyes are completely white, his skin mirroring that same hue.

Bash is crouched over Ollie, a tender vulnerability in his hardened jawline. He’s touching the silver stake that’s protruding from his heart, the thing that rendered him lifeless. Violently, Bash rips it out and tosses it aside, where it flings with a force a wooden stake shouldn’t have and shatters into a million pieces on the wall.

Adaline flashes to Ollie’s side and scoops him up, shattering her hardened demeanor. “No, not my Ollie.”

I can’t move, can’t think. All that’s in my mind is what just happened.

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