Page 161 of A Bond with the Dark

“Yes?” he asks in a semi-mocked tone.

“I have a question for Sayah.”

“Yes?” I ask more nicely.

“Ollie and I were thinking—wondering, really—if you could bring both of us back, wouldn’t you be able to bring back Talora and Allison?”

I look to Dom questioningly. “I don’t see why not?”

“They’ve been dead a lot longer than you two were,” Dom offers, “but it’s worth a try for them, I’m sure.”

“We would be more than appreciative if you brought our girlfriends back from the dead,” Bash sneers.

“Sure. I can try.”

I rise from the bed and follow Bash back down the stairs to where Talora and Allison are.

The house is in complete disarray. Boughs are splintered, glass is shattered, and piles of ash where the grims burned lay savagely at our feet. Remnants of a battle.

Ollie’s crouched over Allison, stroking her face, tears falling from his eyes. When he looks up at me approaching, there’s a slight hope in his eyes, and I’m hoping too that I can revive their girls.

Arriving at Talora’s lifeless body, her skin a pale white, I kneel down to her and look for her wounds. Realizing she had been drained of blood by two puncture wounds in her neck, I summon the tears again. Then, biting into my arm, which had healed from last time, I wipe the tear from my eye, drag it through the new blood on my arm, and smudge the two holes with the mixture.

Waiting for what seems like minutes, Bash has that hopeful look in his eye that his woman would wretch and come back to life as he had.

But nothing happens.

“Why isn’t it working?” he asks desperately.

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I did the same thing for the two of you.”

“Maybe she’s been gone too long,” says Dom consolingly.

“But Ollie was gone for a while too, and she still got him to rise.”

“I don’t know, Bash. I’m sorry.”

“Please try it on, Allison,” Bash asks resignedly, so dejected my heart breaks for him.

Slowly walking over to Allison, I do the same thing.

Allison doesn’t stir, either.

Why could I save two male Vampires and not two female ones? Does it have anything to do with gender or something more profound?

Feeling that these are questions that my aunts may know, I push them down within me, wishing we could teleport to Washington.

Does Vampire power work like that?

42

EQUAL PARTS DARKNESS AND LIGHT

SAYAH

The flight here was long and dreary between the two brothers, who hated each other but showed astounding and conciliatory love for one another in a few fateful seconds. They had been companionable while driving to the airport and finding last-minute tickets to Washington.

I slept as much as I could but would wake easily with turbulence.

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