Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  “The bites are more ragged this time. There’s more dismemberment and a higher body count,” I thought aloud, my heart racing. “Meredith needs a photo that captures that without revealing the missing hearts. I need to comb through the evidence.”

  Now that I was actually writing an article worthy of being written, I had a million things to accomplish tonight and only a few hours to get it done. Adrenaline, not unlike the side effects of drinking Dominic’s blood, honed my thoughts, focus, and senses. I met his gaze, and he had a strange expression on his face. I ignored it.

  “I need your statement,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “My what?”

  “You’re the expert witness covering this case, are you not, Dr. Nicholas Leander?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said tightly, but he didn’t seem angry. His expression was still strangely unreadable. After a moment, I could see his chest shaking, and I realized he was struggling not to laugh.

  I glared at him. “This is serious! You may have bumped Walker from the case for your own purposes, but his position has many responsibilities, one of which is relaying the facts of this case to the public.”

  “I could plead the fifth. The evidence is, after all, self-incriminating,” Dominic teased.

  “I have made grown men cry during interrogation without even trying,” I warned. “Don’t make me try.”

  Dominic threw his head back and laughed, letting loose the bellows he’d been so valiantly containing. He held up a hand before I lost my mind completely and hit him. “I don’t intend to be cooperative with the media, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”

  “Wonderful. Then, in your expert opinion, did the attack involve multiple animals or one?”

  “Multiple.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You have evidence to support that claim?”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “What have you determined about the animals based on evidence at the scene?”

  “They’re the same species. Massive strength and size. They don’t need finesse or grace to complete their kill. They likely don’t even need each other.”

  I cocked my head. “Expand on that. How don’t they need each other?”

  “Other animals—like chimpanzees, for example—hunt in packs. Each chimp has a role—to distract, give chase, lead astray, or kill. Our creatures didn’t do that. They chose individual targets, hunted them, and killed them without a strategic plan or cooperative effort. We are looking for multiple creatures who hunt, but they don’t hunt with a pack mentality.”

  “In your expert opinion,” I continued, “how should people prepare against such an attack?”

  “The kill occurred at night, so the creatures may be nocturnal. Stay indoors after dark. Travel in groups even during the day, and don’t travel at all if you already have an open wound.”

  “Nathan didn’t seem too picky about his prey when he was Damned. Whether we were in groups or alone didn’t matter. If he was hungry, he attacked,” I said skeptically.

  Dominic shot me a level look. “As if you’re going to tell people not to wander after dark with an open wound.”

  “If I do, I won’t word it like that,” I muttered, “but I have to try.”

  Dominic touched my cheek with his thumb. He smoothed it along the line of my cheekbone, but I could feel his touch heat parts of my body that had never seen sunlight. I held my breath.

  “Why is this so important to you?” Dominic asked.

  I blinked at him, surprised by his genuine interest. “I’ve built my entire career on exposing the truth. If people are aware of the world around them, if they’re informed, then maybe they have a chance to protect themselves and their families. Maybe they can learn from other people’s mistakes and live better lives.”

  “You want to inspire people to live better lives by reading your article on an animal attack,” Dominic said, and I got the distinct impression he was being deliberately obtuse.

  “I want to inform people about the world around them.”

  Dominic shrugged. “They’re strangers.”

  “They’re New Yorkers.” I sighed, trying to think on his terms to better explain myself. “Just like you protect your coven, I need to protect the people in my city. I can’t transform into a gargoyle-like beast to physically protect them, but I can keep them informed, so they have a chance to protect themselves.”

  “Gargoyle-like beast?”

  I froze, wondering how he’d take that, and more pointedly, wondering how I’d let myself become so glib in his presence. Not too long ago, I would have checked my every word, but astonishingly, despite my glibness, Dominic’s lips quirked. Maybe we’d come even further than I’d imagined.

  I shrugged. “I’m just calling it—”

  “Calling it as you see it. Everyone knows you’re a straight shooter. Your temperament wouldn’t have it any other way.” Dominic shook his head, but he didn’t lose the smile. “Other reporters write about ribbon cuttings, check donations, and bakery openings. Someone reading your article would think this city is nothing but doom and gloom.”

  “Now you sound like Carter.” I repressed the stab of grief and regret following his comment about bakery openings and shook my head. “Sure, this city is more than murders and rapes and animal attacks. The good things that occur in the city deserve coverage, too, but if people don’t know about the doom and gloom, they can’t guard against it. And if they can’t guard against it, they’re at risk of losing the little good that’s left, or even worse, they’re at risk of losing their lives. People deserve to know how to protect themselves, and if that means telling them to stay indoors after dark, especially if they have an open wound, it’s my job to figure out how to deliver that news so that they’ll not only bite, they’ll swallow it whole.”

  Dominic’s smile widened. “You love a challenge.”

  “Things certainly seem more valuable when you must fight to attain them.”

  Dominic snorted. “Now you sound like me.”

  I nodded. “We’ve been hanging out too much. It’s a problem.”

  “On that note, I bid you farewell, but only for tonight,” Dominic said softly. He cupped my face in both of his hands, and I realized that sometime between my cutting my tongue on his fang and now, we’d bridged the seemingly insurmountable distance between us.

  His lips brushed against mine, gentle, sure, lingering, and all too brief. I instinctively leaned closer as he pulled away and had to check myself. He was Dominic Lysander, the Master vampire of New York City, and I was Cassidy DiRocco, the unwilling night blood he’d coerced, using her missing brother as leverage, to play the part of his loyal day servant.

  Except lately, I wasn’t quite unwilling.

  Dominic looked deep into my eyes, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

  “Cassidy DiRocco,” he commanded, invoking the power of my full name to wrap my mind and will around his little finger, but this time, I didn’t feel the pull of his mind on mine. “You will forget my name.”

  I frowned, thinking Dominic, Dominic, Dominic, Dominic.

  He turned away, believing his name was entranced from my mind. I gaped. His powers had failed him. Even when I’d had the full power of my night blood running through my veins, I’d felt his power. My mind had always remained my own, but I’d been physically helpless against the force of his commands. Now, I didn’t even feel his presence invading the space in my mind.

  “Dominic, wait.”

  He halted in mid-motion, and the expression on his face made my throat clamp in a dry squeeze.

  “What did you just say?” His voice was nothing but a growl.

  I swallowed. “It didn’t work. I still remember your name.”

  His body was suddenly, unaccountably flush against mine. He trapped me in his embrace, buried his face in my neck, and inhaled deeply.

  “You still don’t smell like you,” he said, sounding resigned. “Did you feel the compulsion? Were you able to
resist my command?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Your command was just words without any power behind them.”

  “Two nights to go, and it’s already begun,” he growled softly.

  I shook my head. “What does that mean? Is my night blood returning?” I asked doubtfully.

  “I am still hopeful that your night blood will eventually return, given enough time for your blood to fully regenerate, but that’s not why you remembered my name. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “ ‘It’s not you, it’s me?’” I asked, jokingly.

  Dominic didn’t laugh this time. He didn’t even crack a grin. “Precisely.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll slowly lose my strength and abilities until I am completely powerless on the night of the Leveling. The first of many powers that I’ll lose this time, it seems, is the ability to entrance minds and alter memory.”

  I blinked, thinking of Ronnie and her subsequent feeding problems from that particular inability. “How will you eat if you can’t entrance a human to forget the attack?” I asked, but I already knew the answer before his eyes deadened. He would never risk exposing his coven by allowing someone to know about his existence. If he exposed himself by feeding and couldn’t alter the person’s memory, he would kill them to ensure their silence.

  Walker was radical in his efforts to kill vampires, willing to risk his life and the lives of his loved ones, willing to kill a human, in the name of killing a vampire. In his mind, nothing was beyond sacrifice if it meant furthering his cause. Gazing into Dominic’s eyes, I knew he would be just as radical in his efforts to protect his coven.

  I pulled away from his embrace.

  Dominic sighed. “I don’t have much of a choice. Would you rather I starve?”

  “You have loyal vampires in the coven who are willing to help you, willing to die for you, to keep you as their Master, or so you’ve said.”

  “Yes, the majority of my coven supports me in my position,” he said.

  “In all that majority of vampires, surely there’s one who can entrance your victims for you, so you don’t have to kill them.”

  “I no longer have a second in command. Jillian was my most trusted vampire, my right hand, and she betrayed me. She was the vampire I’d have trusted to admit my weakness to and ask for aid.” He snorted. “Obviously, that’s out of the question now.”

  I lifted my hands, exasperated. “There’s no one else?”

  “Yes, there’s someone else.” He swiped his thumb over my cheek. “But until you regain your night blood, I fear you’re not much help either.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it, at a loss.

  “I bid you good night, Cassidy.”

  Before I could recover, he launched from the rooftop and disappeared into the shadows of the night sky.

  Two Days before the Leveling

  You think it’s an acquired taste, like beer or coffee, that will become more palatable as your tongue adjusts to the nuances of its flavor and texture, but you’re wrong. Blood is universally delicious, like water, without adjustment needed. You simply need to be a vampire.

  —DOMINIC LYSANDER, on drinking blood

  Past experiences and future ambitions are only excuses to justify your present actions, but present actions define you for a lifetime. When your lifetime is as long as mine, you either learn great patience while deliberating your choice of action or you act by instinct and damn the consequences.

  —DOMINIC LYSANDER, on surviving an extended existence

  Chapter 9

  “You’re fired!”

  Only by the herculean strength of my will did I stop myself from rolling my eyes in the face of Carter’s outrage. He’d punctuated his outburst by slapping that morning’s newspaper on my desk and jabbing his forefinger at the headline, but I didn’t need to look at the front page to know what was plastered across it. I’d pulled an all-nighter to complete that very article and pulled every string I had at the printer to make sure it ran front page despite the late submission. Meredith’s photo was by far more graphic than the bite mark we’d attempted to print last time, but not the most graphic we could have chosen from last night. Through the blood and gore, you could clearly discern some body parts, which was more than could be said of her other photos. The shot should have made me cringe nonetheless, but I was so excited to finally print a kernel of truth about the danger overtaking this city, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “You’re punishing me,” Carter accused. “One retraction, DiRocco, I make you write one retraction, and this is how you thank me? Both you and Meredith are fired.”

  Smiling might have been worse than rolling my eyes. I sighed. “You didn’t ask me to write a retraction. You made Meredith write one behind my back.”

  “I knew it.” Carter narrowed his eyes. “You’re punishing me.”

  I shook my head. “You should be thanking me.”

  “In all the years you’ve worked for me, there’s only one topic I forbade you to write about, and that was another animal-attack story. We took a huge hit because of that article, and if anyone else had written it, they would have been fired on the spot. You put our credibility with the public and the NYPD on the line.”

  “That article strengthened our connections with the police. Greta credits me for helping her solve that case,” I said, more angry now than exasperated.

  “I’ll admit that you strengthened our connections, but it wasn’t because of that article. You risked everything on that story, and I’m not letting you get away with that unpunished again.”

  “I’d hardly say I got away unpunished. I got caught in the crossfire of a gang war and ended up in the hospital,” I snapped. “And I’m not getting away with anything again. This,” I said, pointing at today’s headline, “is a completely different article.”

  He picked up the paper and shook it at me. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again: no more animal attacks! No more bite marks! There are no animals on the streets of New York City!”

  “That’s debatable,” I muttered.

  “DiRocco—”

  “I didn’t write about an animal attack,” I interrupted.

  “No? Then what’s this?” he asked, pointing an accusing finger at the gore splattered across the front page.

  “Did I write ‘animal’ somewhere in the article?”

  Carter narrowed his eyes as he looked at me, his bushy eyebrows frowning so low over his eyes that they must have obstructed his vision.

  “Has Greta called to demand a retraction?”

  “You’re splitting hairs,” Carter said, warning plain in his voice.

  “I’d say there’s a big difference between having and not having Greta’s support,” I said calmly. “In fact, I’m meeting her at the ME’s office in half an hour. She invited me on the case. I’m getting inside scoop.” I popped the “p” at the end of “scoop,” and Carter’s eyes bugged from his skull. “You’re welcome.”

  “If I get one complaint from her department, just one, you’re finished here,” he warned, shaking his forefinger at me to punctuate “one.”

  I smiled. “Fine with me.”

  He stared at me hard, harder even than my stare from more years of practice, but what he saw in my expression must have convinced him of something my words hadn’t. He sat down across from me, letting the paper rest on my desk without poking or shaking it in my face. “You believe in this story.”

  I nodded. “Like nothing else I’ve ever believed in.”

  “So this wasn’t an animal attack?” he asked.

  “Greta doesn’t know what it is,” I evaded.

  “What or who?”

  I met his gaze, just as hard.

  “This story sounds a little too similar to that first one for my liking, whether you included the word ‘animal’ or not.”

  “It’s not—”

  Carter held up a hand, and I closed my mouth. I’d pushed his buttons f
or enough years to know when to keep pushing and when to just shut up and listen. I shut up.

  “Last time, you kept me out of the loop. Don’t make that same mistake. If you’re in over your head, let me know. I’ll help you in any way I can. Got it?”

  I blinked, surprised and uncommonly touched by Carter’s sincerity. “Got it.”

  He pointed his finger at me. “But don’t push me, DiRocco. No animal bites.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, looking at the paper between us. “I’ll stick to dismemberment.”

  He snorted.

  “Greta called in an environmental expert on this one,” I hedged.

  “So I read,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Just like last time.”

  I pursed my lips. “There’s bound to be more victims before this is all said and done.”

  “Good, then you’ll have more to write about.” He stood. “Do me a solid, DiRocco, and don’t be one of them this time.”

  “Careful, Carter, people might think you actually give a damn.” I grinned.

  “You’ve got my support, not my love, DiRocco, and that’s assuming no one calls,” he said, holding up a finger as he walked away. One finger. One call.

  I clutched my hand to my heart. “Break it to a girl gently next time,” I called after him.

  Carter raised his hand in acknowledgment, but he didn’t turn around.

  Meredith waited until his office door shut behind him before jumping from her desk and taking a seat in front of mine.

  She let loose a long whistle as she took in the headline. “Should I get a box for my office supplies?” Meredith asked. She didn’t seem particularly concerned at the prospect of being canned.