Page 152 of A Bond with the Dark

“How will we be ready?” Dom asks, crossing his arms.

“Let’s pick a room we control,” Everett says, his wavy hair clumping in parts from the blood. “Have weapons ready. Attack on the offense.”

“The spell room?” Jasantha asks, rising from the couch as well.

“I don’t know,” Adaline says, no doubt picturing all her jars and things breaking from the throes of war.

“The dungeon,” Everett offers, his hard eyes growing like stone.

“There’s a dungeon?” I ask, chills trickling down my spine, my ass puckering a smidge.

“Yes, well,” Hattie answers, shooting me a devilish grin, “when you’re a family of monsters, sometimes monsters come knocking at your door. When that happens, you need a place to put them.”

I can only imagine what this dungeon looks like, complete with barred cages and torture devices and things of agony and pain.

A darker shade of dark.

“Well, let’s get down there then,” Bash replies, grabbing the bottle of bourbon. “Grab your witchy device and let the murder and mayhem commence.”

“I need to grab the artifact,” Adaline utters, “and some salt and candles.”

We enter the spell room where Adaline gathers her things, and then we follow her to the far corner, where she quickly pushes aside her large bookcase and reveals a dark, damp-smelling staircase.

Descending, my mind is all but a wander, wondering what I will see in this dungeon.

Arriving at the landing, the stairway leads to a narrow hall crafted entirely of dark and weighty stone, reminiscent of a castle interior. The extensive hallway stretches across what appears to be the entire house, bars beholden to cells beyond them on either side. Walking the length of the corridor, I glance into each cell, seeing if there’s anyone—or anything—inside. All cells are vacant, holding only lonely cots with metal toilets and no windows, mirrors, or furnishings of any sort. Reaching the end of the hallway, a spacious room opens up, maintaining the stone motif with a large fireplace featuring a black cauldron. The walls of this room are adorned with double and triple arrays of every conceivable type of weapon. Among them are modern weapons, such as guns of every kind, and then medieval weaponry—axes, scythes, maces, crossbows, swords, flails, halberds, spears, caltrops, and battle axes—all neatly arranged on the walls within their pegs.

On the wall with the cauldron are the weapons for the monsters.

Stakes of every size and wood laced with silver, crossbows and bows and arrows laden with silver heads, bronze and silver daggers, dried herbs which can only be Nightshade . . . this list goes on and on.

I find it odd that they have weapons that could kill their own kind within the walls of their house. But, when dealing with monsters, one could only be so prepared.

Adaline walks around the room with the salt and spreads a circle around the boundaries, laying the candles out. And with one swoosh of her hand, all the candles and the fire beneath the cauldron come alight.

“I love it when she does that,” Bash says, picking out a few silver stakes from the wall. He tosses one to me. “Here, arm yourself. Just in case.”

I hold the stake in my hand, and suddenly that nervous danger catches at me and makes me a little nervous. That fire in my blood tries to singe back the doubt.

But what if I can’t kill this one?

Where’s that power I’d felt the first time the white warlock came? I feel it buzzing, but how do I turn into that glowing, fire fissure being I was before? Will it just happen, or do I have to do it now?

Maybe the panic is suppressing the strenuous zap I felt ten minutes ago.

Holding the artifact in her hand, Adaline takes her place in the middle of the room. Hattie, with the vials of blood in hand, meets her there.

“Since we don’t have Scarlet,” Adaline says, “Sayah, we’re gonna need you to chant with us. We must act like we’re trying to break the curse.”

I nod and meet them in the middle.

Everett pulls down a mace, handing Dom a silver stake, and Ollie takes up an axe.

They stand ready.

“All right. Make each other mad,” spits Jasantha. An evil look twists within her eyes which flash purple.

“Maybe, don’t use the weapons on each other, huh?” Adaline quips.

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