Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,39

with him.

“Alright. Give me two minutes,” he said and then zipped out of the room like a kid on Christmas morning.

Silence fell over the cellar as I leaned back against the cement wall (which also happened to be the only direction I could go) and waited for Ben to return. Without meaning to, I found my thoughts drifting to Dominic as I wondered what he was doing just then, and what vile thing he had planned for me tonight.

My face twisted with disgust as I imagined him clanking his blood-filled glass with Pricilla’s as they toasted to the stupid little Slayer that had been idiotic enough to bloodbond herself to a vampire. I imagined them inconsolably laughing at me as they drained their latest human sacrifice and then had dirty vampire-sex all over his living room floor.

Rage broiled through me as my stomach dropped simultaneously.

I really needed to figure out a way to get Dominic to turn his emotions back on, and I needed to get rid of that skanky Sire of his too. Okay, so I wasn’t actually sure she was a skank, but she definitely looked like one. Either way, I knew there was no chance of ever undoing the damage she’d done if she was still around, whispering little nothings into his ear like the twisted two-headed snake that she was.

I turned back to the sound of footfalls approaching and smiled as Ben rejoined me, laptop in hand.

“Man, I haven’t done this since…” His words tapered away as a sadness took hold of his expression. “Well, you know.”

Since Taylor.

My heart constricted as memories of my best friend came back to haunt me. Memories I’d worked fairly hard to bury. Not because I didn’t care or because I didn’t love and miss her, of course. But because it just hurt too damn much to think about her at all anymore. Lord knew she would have been right here with us if she were still alive. Cracking jokes and jabbing Ben about his questionable choices in tv shows.

Fuck, I missed her.

“Sorry,” he said, remarking my own gloomy expression. “I didn’t mean to bring the mood down.”

“You didn’t. Don’t worry about it.”

“Alright, so let me get this set up,” he said as he popped a squat on the floor and started typing away on the keyboard. “We’ll start from the first episode and then work our way up. You think we’ll be able to make it through the whole first season?” he asked, but for some reason, I couldn’t concentrate on his voice anymore.

It was as though it had been relegated to the back of my mind, a distant murmuring too insignificant to pay attention to. And then Dominic’s voice came into my mind, taking up the entirety of the space there as though every other thought had evacuated the premises to make room for his.

Lose the Reaper and come find me.

Come find me.

COME FIND ME.

His voice felt like nails scratching against the inside of my head. Painful. Incessant. Overbearing.

“Benjamin!” I yelled out his name, halting him in whatever it was he was going on about. “You need to get these chains off of me. RIGHT NOW!” I screamed and then started tugging uncontrollably at the chains. Apart from making a whole lot of noise with them, not much else was happening.

“Huh?” He straightened out and looked over at me in confusion. “What are you talking about, Jem? You just told me to chain you up?”

More scratching. More tearing at the inside of my head.

“I made a mistake, Ben. You have to get these things off me, please,” I begged as I continued yanking at the chains. “I need to go. Right now. I beg of you!”

He shook his head slowly as though he weren’t really sure of his answer. “I can’t do that, Jem. You told me not to cut you lose no matter what you say.”

My face contorted as the pain radiated from my skull into my eyeballs. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t know what I was talking about. Please! You’re my friend! Don’t do this to me,” I hissed as the clawing intensified. “I’m in so much pain, Ben. It hurts too much.”

“What hurts?” he asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

Sobs choked out of me as I rolled my neck, desperate for some sort of reprieve from the incessant scraping inside my mind. “He’s in my head, Ben! I can’t do this…it hurts too much. Please, take these things off me! Take them off! Take them off!”