Page 101 of This Blood That Binds Us

Zach and Luke searched around in the trees, but my feet were frozen. Blood spatter littered the ground. It confirmed what I had already known.

I attacked Kimberly. This was her blood, and it was everywhere.

The weight of those words hit me, and my knees buckled. Fear paralyzed me. My head was pounding, and my body ached all over again. It was too much.

“Hey, we didn’t find her. The trail of blood cuts off not far from here.” Zach’s voice was barely registering.

The ringing came back. I buried my head in my hands.

Their voices were blurring into a cacophony, and I couldn’t tell who was saying what anymore. I didn’t care to know.

“What does that mean?” a frantic voice called out.

“I don’t know . . . but we didn’t find her . . . you know, so that’s good.”

“How is that even remotely good?!”

“It means she’s alive.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Or something . . . or someone carried her off.”

“Or maybe she just got away on her own!”

I opened my eyes, and Presley was leaning in front of me.

His voice was far away. “A-Are you okay?”

The ringing was getting louder every second. I couldn’t hear the sounds of the breeze flowing through the trees or the crickets chirping. My vision was darkening, as if the moon was dimming.

A strange presence crept forward. Evil radiated from the dark figure that kneeled beside me in my peripheral view. White hair was falling down, almost touching the skin on my hands. It was an apparition of a woman. I refused to look in its direction. It put its face right next to mine, and smelled of rotten flesh. Her eyes were pure white.

“Are you ready to give up?” a dark, morphed voice spoke from the apparition next to me.

I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t. My fingers had no feeling as I laid my hands in my lap. The vision in my right eye blurred. Everything around me was cast in red, slowly fading to black.

My brothers’ voices were barely audible in the darkness.

“H-Hey, what are you doing?!”

“Stop! Stop!”

“Come on, get him off!”

“I can’t. He won’t let go!”

Deep rage bubbled within my stomach. I was about to explode. It was spreading to every cell in my body.

“Are you . . . trying to . . . kill me?”

The voice of my little brother soothed the flames of rage.

Everything snapped back into reality once again. I found myself leaning over him, my hands squeezing his throat. If he were human, he would have definitely been dead.

“Pres?” I said in barely a whisper.

He smiled as he coughed. “Hey, welcome back.”