Page 84 of A Bond with the Dark

“Yep. You guessed it. He killed her in a fit of rage. But she knew she had to feed to turn, so when she arose, she hit him over the head with a cast-iron skillet and ran again instead of feeding to turn.”

“What happens when you don’t feed?”

“You basically desiccate. Your body shrivels up, and you become stone. Still alive but not really.”

“So that is how she died? She desiccated?”

“No,” I laugh at this story's twists and turns. “Apparently, he found her and forced her to drink from him. When she did and changed, she hated him for what he did and left him once more. When he found her again, she was with someone else. So he drove a silver-laced wooden stake through her heart. And killed the man she was with as well.”

“Jesus fuck. What a psychopath.”

“Yeah, he can be.”

“And you haven’t talked to him since?

“I didn’t let a girl keep me hating him for centuries. We have an on-again-off-again relationship. I let him back in, and he does something monstrous; we fight, and then we don’t talk again. It’s a pattern.”

“I see.” She stops her questions for a second and looks at our interlaced fingers. “Didn’t you say you had three sisters? Not two?”

“Yes. Part of Bash’s evil ways,” I say, shifting our weight a bit so we’re more on the pillow. “After he killed Sadie, he lost his mind. He killed a dozen more people and made half of them new vampires. One of them happened to be a siren.”

“Oh, shit! A siren?” She sits up to look in my eyes.

“Yep. Half siren now. Half vampire.”

“I remember my grandma’s grimoires had a note about sirens. She mentioned someone who was ‘of the sea,’ but I hadn’t known what she meant until now. She must have met one.”

“Crazy, right! She’s pretty badass. She’s dangerous and moody but has gotten control over herself in the last one hundred and fifty years. I don’t trust her like I don’t trust Bash.”

Pulling out my phone, I scroll through my pictures until I find a picture of Jasantha.

My gorgeous sister, with midnight-black, smooth skin, blood-red hair, and bright green eyes, stares at us through the phone screen.

“She’s beautiful,” Sayah responds. “And what are her powers?”

“She has octaves in her voice, her siren’s song, that can lull anyone into a trance. She has done it to me a few times. You wake up not remembering anything that just happened. I woke up a few times in public in just my underwear after pissing her off. She finds that funny.”

Sayah laughs, picturing it. “How does that work then? The whole hybrid thing?”

“She can live either in the water or on land. Because of her hybrid blood, she can walk in the sunshine. She has offered her blood to me a few times to see if it would help me walk in the sun.”

“And it didn’t?”

“No,” I respond sadly, clicking my phone off and setting it on the arm of the chair. “Nothing has ever worked. The spell my mom put on us is powerful. The moon rules over the sun, every time.”

Lingering thoughts of sadness pull at me, remembering the last time I felt the sun warm my skin. Missing the sun is akin to missing a limb. You’re not the same without it.

“So, you haven’t seen the sun in over two hundred years?”

“Right. Only in movies. Gods, I miss it.”

Her eyes are reflective, as though she is trying to borrow my feelings of deprived sunlight to see how it feels in her skin. “I’m so sorry, Dom. That must be so awful. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t be in the sun. I wonder . . .” she trails off, as though her ideas are too big for words.

“What?” I ask, sliding to the side of her to see her face.

“I’m wondering if I should try something.”

“Like what?”

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