Page 71 of A Bond with the Dark

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VELVET MOONRISE

DOM

The residual effects of killing those cunts still hang over me like a veil. Though taking lives is a risk of me going dark and never coming back from it, the fact that those twats nearly raped that girl created an anger in me that mitigated the pull of darkness. If it wasn’t for that, killing three people damn near yanked me there. I took on that fuck-wads personality for an hour after I ended him and still feel his death being stitched into my soul.

Taking human life is often threefold.

When you diminish the life force of human beings, it produces toxins in their bloodstream that act as a drug to us. As their humanity drains from them, it melts into their blood and enters us, which coats our bones like honey. As their death evaporates into us, not only do we feel high, but everything about them enters us as well, making us become them for minutes, sometimes hours after they die.

Pieces of them never leave.

We are a walking jigsaw puzzle of all the people we’ve killed; little bits of our victims take up residence in our shallows, shifting and molding the personalities we own.

So not only do we get high, but we gain a new piece of our personality, and we get fed all in one fell swoop.

This is why most vampires love killing.

This is why I hate it.

I don’t like the high. I don’t like becoming someone else, and I don’t like the demise of a human settling into my existence. Each and every time it occurs, the agony I feel is inescapable. I drown in it.

I tried not to let Sayah see it, and I thought I was alone when I left the bed last night and crept out onto the balcony.

But she saw it.

That and when she bled I damn near came; the scent of her blood is so intoxicating, unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before.

There’s something different about her, something special, and I feel it thawing me, melting me down inside and coating my bones.

I’m going to have to tell her about me soon. I have to tell her my secret without revealing to her the fact that my family and, quite possibly, the warlocks all want her dead.

My trip into Never proved unsuccessful.

Everyone in the Neverdusk Dominion appears to be protecting the warlocks and the fae who create them.

I came up with nothing on them.

I am meeting with the Velvet Moonrise Coven today in their sanctuary below the city.

While going down to the tunnels, my phone vibrates with a call from my mom.

“Yeah?” I answer, quickly ducking under an awning to avoid the sunlight.

“Time’s running out, Dom. It’s getting worse here,” Mom says somberly. “Dad and I found the Nyktorim Syndicate. They’ve advised to end it.”

“End what?” I ask though I know her answer before she says it.

“The witch. They believe the prophecy is true and that she needs to die to regain control. They will send someone for her if you don’t get her powers to ignite by the next full moon.”

“Fuck,” I seethe, the walls feeling like they’re closing in on me.

Desperation is a hallowing feeling. Sometimes it feels like anger, but I know right now as the desperation hallows out every once of who I am, that this is what hopelessness feels like and it fucking pisses me off. I hate feeling this way.”

“I’m getting there,” I voice, trying to convince myself as much as her that I am, “I know she’s on the verge of awakening her fire. I’m meeting with a coven today to see if they can help. Did you come up with anything?”

“Dom, I know you are falling for this woman and don’t want her to die, but maybe you need to think about the greater good here?—”

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