Page 149 of A Bond with the Dark

“I can’t let you do that,” Bash counters, his mouth falling into a stern line.

“Why not? It’s to get the warlock here for Sayah to kill her,” Dom repeats.

“If it doesn’t work, then I don’t know what I’d do.” The seriousness instilled inside of his voice leaves his throat and seems to level the rest of the vampires in confusion.

Collective looks from around the room give dubious glares to Dom, gaping between him and Bash. The two brothers that hate each other.

“Look, I’m the reason that you became a vampire to begin with. I condemned you to vampirism. It’s my fault. And you taking this from me and taking a chance it doesn’t work and condemning your soul again…I don’t know if I can handle that.”

The monster façade in Bash seems to fade. Sensing that his monster mask is crumbling, he fidgets with his fingernails.

“I didn’t think you cared,” Dom sneers.

“He didn’t kill Sadie,” I interject sharply. Bash shoots me a glare that could have ended me. Again. “What? They need to know.”

“Need to know what?” Dom asks, anger raising his voice a few octaves.

“Tell them, Bash. They need to know,” I say again. I know this is the right thing to do.

Keeping it a secret from Dom is wrong, anyway. There’s no easy way to explain it, but they need to know Bash is not as much of a monster as he lets them believe.

He sighs and looks at Dom.

Retelling the tale he’d told me on the lake, I watch in rapt fascination as Dom’s expressions rearrange from confusion to anger to sorrow and back to confusion again. All attention is on Bash as he weaves his tale of Sadie and her suicide and confesses to the dreams, to not killing Sadie, to not being susceptible to Jasantha’s power—all of it.

“I let you all think I was a monster to keep my promise to Sadie,” he concludes, pouring himself a rocks-glass of bourbon.

“And you two have been having these dreams of each other?” Dom asks me, his eyes pinched.

“Yes,” I admit in a hushed voice. “I’ve been dreaming of him before I met you.”

“And what happens in these dreams?” The way he looks at me tells me he’s more concerned with the nature of the dreams rather than their message.

I look to Bash, who shrugs.

“He kisses me, okay? He kisses me, then he bites me. Then I burn.”

“I knew you knew him when he walked in last night. He wasn’t reading your mind when he called you by your nickname.”

Dom is agitated. And it’s pissing me off he’s more concerned about this than of his brother baring his soul to him.

What the fuck is wrong with you!I want to spew.

“Dom,” says Adaline, stealing my thoughts. “I think you’re missing the point here.”

Thank you, Mama Vampire.

“Right!” Hattie says. “I’m more interested in the fact that these phoenixes are being drawn to Bash and what that means.”

“That,” I say, “and Bash never killed Sadie. She killed herself. And she was being conditioned, but what does that mean? And am I Sadie reincarnated?”

“And that my blood arose you,” Dom says, seemingly over the dreams, for now.

“Your what?” Adaline asks, her aquiline eyes beseeching.

“My blood. It dropped onto her ashes, which pulled her back.”

“Well, that’s curious,” murmurs Adaline.

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