Page 3 of A Bond with the Dark

He reaches me.

My breath hitches.

He is more beautiful up close than he was far away. The smell of roses and violets swirls around me, reminding me of a wild menace. This has to be part of my protection spell, but what does this gorgeous man have to do with it?

“Am I in your dream, or are you in mine?” Even in the dim light, I feel myself pale two shades.

“Oh, love, you have been in many dreams of mine,” he laments. “Yet you have never spoken. Until now.”

The knowledge of what he means escapes me. English is the language he's speaking, but the meanings are foreign to me.

He leans in and my heart races, wanting those lips to press into mine more than I want to draw another breath into my lungs. His eyes sparkle with malevolence. He grabs my chin, and I brace myself for the kiss, letting the rushing warmth of love and lust consume every pore.

Who is this man, and why do I want to go to the ends of the Earth for him?

Suddenly, he turns my head, and out of the corner of my eye, I see fangs protrude from his cuspids.

He's a Vampire.

His breath lingers around the yielding hollow of my neck for a few seconds. His fangs puncture me, and warmth expands inside me. It begins at my toes and then enters my knees; the heat intensifies by the time it reaches my waist. When the feverish incalescence scorches my middle, the heat burns me. Crawling up my torso, it reaches my neck as flames burst from my skin, bubbling up from the inside, torturing me with the agonizing torridity.

I am burning alive, and the agony ripping through me is causing a pain I have never imagined I could ever feel.

Sebastian backs away; the hurt in the depth of his eyes is like watching someone falling off a cliff. Sorrowful, scared; his face contorted with a resonant grief.

It’s the last thing I see before the flames consume me.

2

SHADOWS I CARRY

DOM

The blanket of night devours the light down the dark alley we've ventured into, chasing our next meal. Sounds of the city pass by in an echo as we hunt our prey, careful to use our powers of stealth and speed to muffle our approaching footsteps.

As predators, being lithe and fast is almost as important as our alluring looks. Most of us get our meals by drawing people in with our haunting appeal, veilweaving them with magick to trust us, and then pulling them to the brink of death, only to let them go with mists of a memory. It's only those of us who are addicted to the high that comes with killing that do it. When someone's life perishes on our tongue, it delivers a chemical reaction that is like an opioid high.

The latter is not my style.

I avoid taking innocent human lives at all costs.

Killing is one of the things I detest about being a vampire, but it comes with the territory.I know I have to feed on humans to eat, as that is the only way to get sustenance, but ending a person's life is optional.

My sisters love to kill.

If Scarlet wasn't my twin, I'd be scared of her shoving a silver dagger into my heart without breaking a fingernail and using my lifeless eyes as a mirror to touch up her lipstick.

My sisters have resolves of steel; they can take human life and embrace their high. I have no such compunction. That first taste of their death on my lips makes me fly off the deep end, leaving trails of bodies in my wake without any mercy. It’s only after the high has subsided that I fall into the blackness of self-loathing, wanting to end my infernal life to redeem my soul for the horrors I’ve caused, the shadows I carry in my soul.

It’s not pretty for anyone, so I avoid it.

Ollie, our brother, doesn’t mind the high and can do with or without it, but he doesn’t like killing innocent people. He’d settle for a rapist or pedo. But killing innocents isn’t easily blended into his DNA.

Tonight's prey is a lonely, drunken hipster with khaki pants, a flannel shirt, and a man bun who stumbled down this back alley behind the city's bars.

Scarlet spotted him as we emerged from the Neverdusk Dominion—the dark fae realm—and followed him into the dimly lit and narrow street, us sailing behind her as a unit.

Always better to hunt in packs.

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