Page 143 of A Bond with the Dark

39

THE PHOENIX

SAYAH

Darkness.

That’s all there is.

So dark it’s as if all the light has been swallowed whole, and not a pinprick of it remains.

When I open my eyes again, I’m on the floor in the main room, still surrounded by vampires. Dom’s face has a painted look; pure agony and loss and grief shroud his features like a veil of darkness.

“What happened?” I ask, but I feel light-headed again when I try to sit up. There’s the taste of blood in my mouth, and I swallow hard, knowing that one of them fed me their blood to get me back to consciousness.

“The mark,” Adaline replies, her voice a quiet sliver of worry and doubt. “We think the mixture of adrenaline and your voice activated it. But Bash pulled him off you on time, and we got him sedated again with Jasantha.”

“We have to get this curse broken, now!” Bash seethes through clenched teeth, his face contorted with fury, pacing about the kitchen to my right.

“We’re there,” Adaline declares, regarding him with a calm interest. “We need your blood. And his. Then we think we can summon the warlock to get hers.”

Bash nods agreeably. “Okay,” he says, barring his teeth and ripping into his skin. “Where do you want it?”

“Here,” Scarlet offers, handing him a vial.

“Now you, Dom,” Jasantha demands, as her voice has to command him while he’s vexed by her.

Mindlessly, from where he sits on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest, he languorously opens his mouth, bares his fangs, and bites into his arm.

Scarlet hands him the vial. The brilliant crimson drips into it while the other vampires watch; some of their faces slack and fascinated, while others have the appearance of blissful unconcern.

As the blood pools into the vial, all the happiness I had felt before this trip has fled. This is bad. And it is only going to get worse.

“Okay, that should do,” Adaline states, taking the vial as Bash’s wound begins to sew itself up. “All right, girls, let’s go.”

Scarlet and Hattie, in a whisp of blurred colors, vanish to the basement.

Dom is still heavily sedated, but the look on his face tells me that he’s reeling from the guilt he feels in his heart for what he did. He won’t make eye contact with me.

Peeling myself off the floor, I go to the kitchen for water.

That’s when the dread sets in.

The sensation hits as if all the air has been vacuumed out of the house, leaving an overwhelming surge of despair and sorrow. The sky darkens, the lights flicker within the mansion, and an oppressive silence envelops everything.

We all feel it.

The incursion commences through a veil of clandestinity. I feel them slipping into the location using the artistry of magick; their entrance is silent and elusive. The lights extinguish, plunging the cabin into an eerie darkness that steals away all the warmth from the air. A sudden chill takes over me, evident in the frosty breaths I exhale. I shrink into a cowering position, grappling to make sense of the unfolding events.

There’s a harrowing sound of beings rushing into the cabin, displaced air as the nefarious entities void of souls enter—reanimated corpses veilweaved by magick—nine or ten of them at first. They’re grotesque looking; some have features, while others have no faces other than rows and rows of sharp fangs, shadows marking the gaunt hollows of their cheekbones. Those with faces have distended veins spiderwebbing across their cheeks and temples, glowing red eyes, and skin as gray as the sky before it snows.

Amidst the chaos, the vampires in the cabin snap to immediate attention. Their white eyes blaze, fangs fully exposed, as the scene transforms into a kaleidoscope of color and a clash of battles unfolds in the blink of an eye. The vampires move with lethal grace, starkly contrasting to the grotesque invaders, their predatory instincts on high alert as they prepare for the impending confrontation.

Allison’s subdued from the back of her, the grimspawn biting into her with a loud and sickening crunching sound, and cries of her anger and pain waft over me.

Ollie flashes to her side and seizes the being off her, pulling at the hood of the creature gnawing on her neck. Not only is the being hooked into her by way of its rows of sharp teeth, but it’s also ripping pieces and chunks out of her and eating them. Ollie tears it away from her, using his elemental power of air to heave the being to the other side of the room, where it collides with the wall and rumbles the house upon the impact.

As Adaline reenters the room, holding the still un-glowing artifact, the other two sisters crash into the commotion. Hattie collides with the creature about to return to Allison while Scarlet races toward one, closing in on Jasantha. It’s apparent that Adaline had vamp flashed away to retrieve the artifact from the spell room, her sudden reappearance marking a pivotal moment in the unfolding chaos.

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