Page 81 of A Bond with the Dark

Letting this uneasy, tangled feeling wash over me, I say, “Grimspawn?” That word is flickering in my memory. I remember reading it in my grandmother and Mama’s grimoires.

“Fucked up creatures that are basically reanimated dead things, sorta like zombies,” Dom answers and almost shudders at their memory. He pulls me back to him so I’m leaning on his chest. “They eat people and take on youth and memories of those they eat, ultimately changing into the person they fed on. Eventually, though, those faces melt off, and they’re just like these faceless creatures with sharp-ass teeth.”

“That sounds awful.” Thinking of these awful things, knowing they’re out there lurking, sits uneasily in my bones. I don’t like thinking about evil monsters roaming the world my kid lives in. “Who the fuck makes these things?”

“Warlocks,” he says, playing with my hair, twirling a long tendril around his finger. “Dark warlocks. Behind every monster is a witch or warlock.”

“Why would anyone want to make something so evil and deranged?”

“I know it’s linked to an ancient curse. But I don’t know what that is. We’ve been fighting grimspawn all our lives. But we don’t know much more about them. We feel the warlocks use the grimspawns to live forever without having to do any of the killings. Their life forces are connected somehow.”

“How do you kill them?” I ask, unbuttoning another one of his buttons and feeling his soft skin.

“Grimspawns can be killed in the way you’d kill a vampire. But the warlocks keep making them and we don’t know how to killthemyet. They have magick too powerful to get near them,” he answers. His voice steels, frustration lingering in the inflections—as though he’s tried hundreds of ways to kill them before and has come up with nothing.

“And how do you kill vampires?” I don’t mean for the octaves in my throat to go up a few notches, like I need the information for nefarious reasons. But. I’m cuddling with a vampire. A girl needs to know how to defend herself.

He puffs his chest out to get a better look at my face and grins suspiciously, his perfect white teeth gleaming. “And why, pray tell, would I tell you that information?”

He tickles me, and I squirm.

“You know, in case you decide to get wild. Ya girl’s gotta know what to do in that situation.” I laugh as his tickles abate. “No, but for real. Just in case I run into another vampire that isn’t as charming and fucking sexy as you.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he says.

I lean my head on his chest again.

“Pretty much everything you heard is false—except the sun. Sunfire projectiles—weapons infused with sunlight can kill us. We can be killed by silver-laced anything because it fucks with our regenerative powers, and some vamps have lethal allergies to it. Cut off our heads, and we’re fucked. We can’t look into mirrors that aren’t spelled.”

“What?”

“Yeah, mirrors!” He laughs. “I don’t know why that’s a thing. But if we look into a mirror that isn’t spelled, we’ll see our actual age and become it.”

“No way!” I say back. “So, like, is there some vampire you made that didn’t know and is walking around all ancient and decrepit?”

His chest heaves with laughter. “I would imagine so, yes.”

“OMG, I would totally do that to someone who fucked with me. Like not tell them about the mirror thing and have them get all old and ugly!” I’m laughing so hard my stomach cramps.

“Next time some bitch crosses you, I’ll turn her into a vampire for you, and we won’t tell her!”

“What? I have a few people in mind right now.” We let our laughs hold us captive for a few seconds. “So what do you do to stop it? I mean, you look fine as hell for a two-hundred-and-eighty-six-year-old. I, myself, don’t feel a day older than thirty, and you’re over here making two hundred look good.”

The sly smile and stricken gaze he gives me flickers butterflies to life in my stomach. “Hattie. She can make people see what she wants them to see. So she spelled mirrors for each of us. In spelling these mirrors, we only see what she wants us to see when we look into any mirror—so long as our spellbound ones are near us.”

“Wow, that’s fascinating.”

He takes my neck gently and tugs my face toward his. “You’re fascinating,” he growls and lights me up inside.

Taking my lips into his own, my core tingles and his charisma floods me. He’s so fucking sexy, and being a killer, a predator who could end me with a flick of his wrist, excites me to no end. I feel his tongue slither onto mine, and I moan, his lovely mouth destroying me.

He’s still grasping my neck, and his other hand wanders down my shirt and pinches my nipple, sending charged little ripples right to my clit.

Arching my back, he finds his way into my pants and slides his finger from my opening to my clit, swirling his fingertip gently at its center.

The hand that was around my neck reaches into my shirt and pinches the other nipple, causing exquisite pain to send my vision to the stars.

Writhing in pleasure, he covers my breast with his mouth, biting and gripping firmer to get a better mouthful.

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