Page 63 of Bound in Blood

Where even was Marco?

Mateo stiffened. Something was very, very wrong. He swayed again, catching himself on the cobblestone with his hands, and touched something wet. Sticky.

Slowly, too slowly, he looked down.

Blood. All around him.

And then he saw the body.

Thecorpse.

A middle-aged man, hair just starting to gray. His throat was gone. Torn open, shredded. Like an animal had gotten to it.

Mateo stared, the world narrowing to a ruined body too close to him for his liking. He lurched forward, retching, but knowing nothing would come up. Nothingcouldcome up. Because he already knew what was sitting in his gut. What was drying on his lips, thick and metallic and wrong. The taste still lingered.

Warmth. Decadence.

Perfect.

His hands shook, raising up to his mouth and scrubbing at his lips, his teeth, his tongue, but it didn’t go away. It seeped into his body, becoming a core part of him.

Fuck.Where was Marco?

Mateo’s head jerked up, breath strangled in his throat. His eyes scanned the alley, too sharp, too inhumanly clear, and then…

Marco.

He was sprawled a couple dozen feet from Mateo, deeper into the alley. He was motionless, lips parted, eyes closed. His throat and face and clothes were covered in blood, and it made Mateo a new kind of sick that he could differentiate between the smell of Marco’s blood and the smell of whoever’s blood was covering him.

Focusing a little closer, he could see the slight rise and fall of Marco’s breath, couldheara very faint heartbeat. Mateo scrambled toward his brother, slipping in the blood as he movedtoo fast for his brain to understand. He grabbed his brother’s face, and it’s cold. Too cold.

“Marco.”

No response.

Mateo shook him, a little too violently.

“Marco!”

The cold inside Mateo spread, threatening to suffocate. He couldn’t exist without Marco. They were two halves of one sane person. Hehadseen him breathe, hadn’t he? Had heard his heartbeat? Or was he making it up?

No, no no no. This was not happening. Marco was fine, of course he was fine. Just taking a nap. A nap covered in blood. As one did. Mateo pressed on his brother’s face, his chest. He shook him, even more violently than the last time. Anything to wake him up.

Mateo inhaled, breath breaking on a sob. For the first time since he woke up, his vision blurred. “Please,” he whimpered, leaning forward, forehead hitting his brother’s chest. Silently, he prayed to any god that might listen.

And then, beneath his forehead, a twitch.

A slow, unsteady inhale.

Mateo jerked back so fast he nearly fell again, just in time to watch Marco’s eyes snap open. Not gradual, like someone waking up from a casual nap, but all at once, like being revived from the dead.

Mateo gasped, body locking up as he stared at his brother. His entire body locked up as Marco pushed into a sitting position, because his fucking eyes… they werewrong.

They were not the same gold they had always been.

No, Marco’s eyes were pitch-black.

Mateo stared at Marco, and Marco stared back, and when Marco inhaled again, it was slow and shaky, like his lungs had completely forgotten to work. He moved like he was trying to re-learn how to, and the way he looked at Mateo was almost as if he’d looked directly through him.