Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  Rowens didn’t say anything. He could rival Dominic with the discomfort caused by his silence.

  “Hello?”

  “I thought you turned him back. The last I saw, your brother was a man again.”

  I shut the door to my bedroom and hoped that Nathan wouldn’t hear our conversation through the wall. Supervisory Special Agent Harold Rowens had been the lead FBI agent investigating the serial murders in Erin, New York, while I was visiting Walker last week. After I’d transformed Nathan back from being Damned, Bex had wiped the witnesses’ memories, replaced them with memories of a rabid-bear attack, and the investigation had concluded, but Rowens was the only person who, despite Bex’s influence, had remembered the truth: my brother had been a twelve-foot-tall, indestructible, gargoyle-like monster who feasted on human hearts.

  Considering Rowens’ resistance to mind control, I had the sneaking suspicion that Nathan, Walker, and I weren’t the only night bloods in town.

  “Nathan is still himself.” Kind of, I thought with a wince.

  “Were the hearts missing?” Rowens asked.

  “You do realize that a leave of absence means actually being absent, right? How’s physical therapy coming along?”

  Silence.

  I sighed. “You know I can’t—”

  “Where’s your brother?” he asked, his voice hard and unwavering.

  “In his bedroom. The creatures are somewhere in the city, but this time, they’re not my brother.”

  “Creatures,” he said. “As in more than one?”

  “We believe so, yes.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, but I could hear him breathing, processing the fact that we were royally screwed. “We barely survived against just your brother,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Can you transform the creatures back into humans like you did Nathan?” he asked.

  I rubbed my forehead. “It’s more complicated than it sounds.”

  “It gets more complicated than creatures that eat your beating heart?”

  I smiled. “Was that humor I just heard from your mouth, Rowens?”

  “No, it was sarcasm. There’s a difference.”

  “Can’t be, because then no one would think me funny.”

  “No one does,” he said, but I could hear the smile behind his words.

  I took a deep breath. Maybe he was ready. “What do you think about visiting a friendly face? I have answers to your questions, and you just need to brave a city full of heart-eating monsters to get them.”

  “I’m already on my way. I just need your new address.”

  “As in here, to my apartment?” I blinked, taken aback. “I take it back. You didn’t waste any time after reading my article, did you?”

  “Nope, not a second,” he said. “I want to know why no one remembers the facts from last week’s investigation. I want to know why people are turning into these creatures and how we prevent more from turning. I want to know what the hell is going on, DiRocco.”

  “Once you know, you can’t unknow,” I warned him. “Life as you know it will never be the same, and your worst nightmares will be a reality.”

  “My nightmares are already a reality since the night your brother tore my arm off,” he said succinctly.

  “Nathan lives with me now,” I reminded him. “Can I trust you to play nice?”

  “Me playing nice with your brother is the least of your worries,” he said, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. “I wasn’t Nathan’s only victim, and so far, I haven’t said a word. Yet.”

  “Are you threatening me?” I asked, shocked.

  “I want answers, DiRocco, and, like you, I’ll do what needs to be done to get them.”

  “No one would believe you,” I said. “Those deaths were ruled a rabid bear attack.”

  “No one would believe me? Not even enough to make someone doubt you? Not even Greta?”

  I gave him my address.

  “See you soon,” he said and ended the call.

  I stared at my phone and thought of all the ways that having an FBI agent and newbie night blood here in the city—hell, here in my and Nathan’s apartment—would royally screw me. Then I looked at my pillow. Nope, not going there, I thought, and snuggled under the comforter to sleep the day away. Night would bring about an entire world of problems, but at the moment the sun was still shining. Sleeping in sunlight meant sleeping in safety, so I closed my eyes and let myself escape from reality, if only for a few hours.

  Chapter 12

  I opened my eyes, and a man was standing next to my bed in the pitch dark, watching me sleep.

  I screamed.

  A hand clamped over my mouth. “Chill out. It’s me,” he said.

  Panic flushed from my body at the sound of my brother’s voice. I expelled a heavy sigh, but that didn’t stop my heart from trying to beat out of my chest. Nathan removed his hand.

  “What the hell?” I hissed. “Why are you creeping in my room?”

  He snorted. “I’ve been trying to wake you for a full minute. We’ve got company.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, recalling my conversation with Rowens.

  “Who are you meeting with first?”

  I froze in the middle of smoothing crazy bed hair out of my face. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Meredith and Agent Rowens are in the living room, and Ronnie’s waiting on the roof.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “Fucking Ronnie. I can’t babysit her right now. Why is Mere here?”

  “Carter called. According to Meredith, you’re both already on scene.”

  I stilled. “Another animal attack?”

  He nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Wingate Park.”

  Nearly adjacent to the medical examiner’s office, I thought. I covered my face with my hands, trying with every fiber of my being not to scream in frustration.

  Nathan nudged my shoulder.

  I glanced between my fingers, and he offered me a mug of steaming fresh coffee.

  I cupped the mug between my hands, stunned. “What’s this?”

  “You drink it, and it makes the day more doable,” he said with a grin. “I’ll keep Rowens and Meredith busy while you deal with Ronnie. Meredith will run ahead to the scene like she always does, and Rowens will understand that the investigation comes first. Your conversation with him can wait until morning. After hours on the road, he looks beat anyway.”

  I sipped a slug of coffee and sighed. “Best brother ever,” I murmured.

  “You’re welcome. Now hurry up to the roof before Ronnie eats someone. I’ll tell the gang in the living room that you’re getting dressed.”

  Nathan slipped out of my room, shutting the door softly behind him as I held my coffee and stared, incredulous. Nathan had my back. He had brought me coffee, was distracting the mob, and was organizing my crazy. I chugged down all eight ounces, grateful for the caffeine, but the coffee wasn’t the only reason my stomach spread with warmth.

  I wasn’t in this alone anymore.

  As promised, when I had finally dressed, armed myself, and climbed the rooftop access, Ronnie was waiting for me, but she wasn’t the only vampire on my roof.

  Keagan, Jeremy, Theresa, and Logan were there too, looking just as skeletal and twitchy as Ronnie. A rattling growl swelled in the air as I climbed the final step onto the roof. They shifted closer.

  “Ronnie, you brought friends,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible while five pairs of glowing, otherworldly eyes trained on me.

  “I’m not a baby who needs a sitter,” Ronnie said, but her voice was rough and guttural.

  I frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Isn’t that what you said? ‘Fucking Ronnie. I can’t babysit her right now.’ Your annoyance tasted like grape cough syrup,” she said.

  Shit, I thought. Fucking Ronnie and her vampiric hearing. “Yes, that’s what I said, but that was before I had my coffee. I’m more optimistic now.”

&nbs
p; Keagan snorted.

  “Well, as optimistic as I ever get,” I amended. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  All five vampires just stared at me, watching me squirm, listening to my heart beating, probably fantasizing about ripping me apart. Despite their inhuman stillness, or maybe because of it, they seemed to draw closer.

  “I’m sorry you heard me say that,” I said. “It wasn’t kind of me.”

  “But you’re not sorry for saying it,” Jeremy pointed out.

  Keagan rolled his eyes. “She calls it how she sees it. That’s why we’re here.”

  “She’s sorry because we heard her,” Logan said. “And now she’s frightened.” His growl grew louder.

  I crossed my arms. “Did you come here to frighten me?”

  Ronnie pouted. “You know why we came.”

  “No, I know why you came,” I said, pointing at Ronnie. “I have no idea why everyone else is here. You never said anything about a night blood reunion.”

  Logan, Theresa, Jeremy, and Keagan swiveled their heads to stare at Ronnie. Their movements were jerky and unnatural, and I felt the relief of having their targeting gazes on someone else, anything else, besides me.

  “She didn’t know we were coming?” Keagan asked.

  Ronnie looked sheepish. “She agreed to help,” she said weakly.

  “Fucking figures,” Jeremy spat.

  Theresa looked near tears. “We’ll die if we don’t learn to control our powers enough to feed.”

  “No, we won’t,” Logan said grimly. “We’ll live in hunger until instinct wins and we murder someone.”

  “It won’t come to that, because Cassidy’s going to help,” Ronnie said, looking at me. “Right?”

  All five pairs of glowing vampire eyes turned to stare at me again.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You all want my help?”

  Ronnie looked down at the roof’s cement top for a moment, and when she finally met my eyes again, the pain in her expression made me ache for her. “We’re helpless and starving, and we need guidance. Without help, we’re not going to survive.”

  I groaned. Even if I didn’t have a heart, I couldn’t refuse her with all five vampires surrounding me and only a single silver knife in my pocket. But my heart was pounding a hard rap against my chest cavity, exactly where I wanted it to remain, and bleeding for the desperation in Ronnie’s eyes.

  “We need some ground rules,” I said.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Ronnie gushed.

  I held up a finger. “One, I’m sarcastic and ornery on a regular basis. You know that, and you came here for my help anyway. If I say something that rubs you the wrong way—like that you need a babysitter, for example—you need to deal with it nonviolently. No bites and no threats.”

  “Of course, no biting,” Ronnie agreed too quickly.

  I met their eyes individually, and everyone nodded in agreement, even Jeremy who typically made it a point to unconditionally disagree with everything.

  I sighed. “Two, we may need to entrance each other to practice, so this rule goes for everyone’s protection. While we are entrancing, we must respect the person being entranced. No commands that are dangerous or damaging, nothing that we wouldn’t be willing to do to ourselves. Okay?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Lastly, we’re allies. Our Masters have a tenuous truce, one that is in all our best interests not to break. Hurting one another, being disloyal to each other, or in any way risking the anonymity of your existence will sever that truce. We need to make sure these meetings to hone your powers—as I’m sure we’ll need several—are not only to strengthen yourselves, but to strengthen our bond as allies.”

  Jeremy crossed his arms. “I couldn’t care less about my coven. I just need to eat. Who gives a shit if we break the truce?”

  “Masters give a shit,” I said. “You’re not a night blood anymore—you’re a vampire—and your survival is dependent upon your Master. You care about surviving, don’t you?”

  Jeremy narrowed his eyes on me, obviously annoyed, but he nodded.

  I met each of their eyes again, their reflective, nocturnal gaze so different than the eyes I’d come to know last week. I knew them little better than acquaintances as night bloods, but looking into their eyes now, I didn’t know them at all. “And that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? Ensuring everyone’s safety and ultimate survival?”

  Jeremy still looked unconvinced, but once again, everyone nodded.

  Keagan raised a hand.

  I tamped down a groan, truly feeling like a babysitter. “Something to say?” I asked.

  “I just wanted to thank you. Had our positions been reversed, I don’t know how many of us would have the open-mindedness and courage to help like you’re helping us, and I appreciate the effort.”

  I nodded in silence, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Coming from Keagan, it was sure to be a doozy.

  “Suck-up,” Jeremy muttered.

  Keagan must have physically retaliated; although I didn’t actually see him move, Jeremy flinched and stepped away from him.

  Keagan didn’t bat a lash. “I have something for you to show our appreciation,” he said, glancing at Jeremy when he emphasized “our.” He swung a backpack off his shoulder onto the rooftop and unzipped the top. “These are for you.”

  I leaned infinitesimally closer to peer inside and narrowed my eyes at the contents of his bag. A few wristwatches, a handful of pens, stacks of tuna cans, pepper spray, and a pair of gloves were piled amid a few other random, innocuous-looking items that I didn’t recognize as weapons. But I knew better than to believe something wasn’t a weapon from looks alone.

  “What is all this?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I knew exactly what it was, and I struggled not to smile in glee.

  Keagan didn’t struggle against his smile. He shared a grin that, without the fangs and creepy, reflective eyes, could melt a girl’s heart. As it was, he melted mine. “It felt wrong to barge in on you empty-handed.”

  I stared at the weapons before me and gave into glee. “You are so clutch.”

  “I know.” His grin widened. “You’ve got a compartment here with some blood bags, so you can line the rest of your apartment and rooftop. I can feel some gaps in your fallout shelter at the bathroom window and dining room.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t have enough for the entire perimeter.”

  “Now you do. Also, we have the oldies here—pressurized silver spear, clicky wooden stake, silver nitrate spray,” he said, holding up a watch, pen, and pepper spray, “and some newbies. In particular, a few prototypes for the Damned and tracking devices Walker has been experimenting with.”

  I shook my head in wonder at his loot. “How did you get all this? I doubt Walker is giving away anything for free.”

  Keagan lost a little of his grin. “He’s not giving it away at all. Colin was worried that one of Walker’s new weapons would catch Dad and me off guard. We know what to expect from the watches and pens and such, but something like this,” he said, hefting what looked like a small bazooka out of his bag, “could be our undoing. It looks like a really big gun and fires like a really big gun, and the bullets that hit their target feel like bullets from a really big gun, but they’re actually silver-lined tracking devices. If he shot us with one of these, and we thought they were just silver bullets, we’d hide, wrongfully thinking we were safe inside the shadows or the coven. But wherever we hid, Walker would find us.”

  Logan didn’t say anything. He simply reached out and squeezed his son’s shoulder before letting his arm drop back down to his side. The grief and pride etched into the weathered planes of his face said it all.

  “Handy for Walker. Not so much for you,” I noted.

  Keagan nodded. “Exactly. So Colin sneaks me the weapons that Walker gives to him, so we can be as prepared as possible when Walker hunts us. And now,” he said, tossing me the bag, “they’re handy for you.”

  “Thank yo
u,” I said, feeling an elation and excitement I could only compare to a child’s on Christmas morning.

  “I can give you a lesson on those bad boys after you teach me how to entrance, so I don’t starve and kill someone,” he said, not-so-subtly reminding me of the purpose of our rooftop meeting.

  I laughed. “Now that is a deal worth taking.” I looked at each of my former night blood companions and then at the bag of toys Keagan had given me, feeling more optimistic than I could have imagined at the prospect of giving vampires entrancing lessons. “Let’s begin.”

  Chapter 13

  An hour later, every drop of hard-won optimism I’d had was sucked dry. Ronnie, Logan, Keagan, Theresa, and Jeremy weren’t any closer to mastering mind control, and I was very late to join Meredith at the crime scene after taking the time to fully line my apartment in human blood. Granted, I was now sporting a shiny, new Invicta skeleton watch, and my pockets were filled with goodies that could make even the most stalwart vampire drop to his knees. Overall, the night had started off on a promising note, but a mass murder scene could darken even the lightest of moods.

  Live victims were already en route to the hospital, and the mob of reporters and cameras was in full force, straining the perimeter. Roadblocks and yellow tape lined Winthrop Street, keeping civilians and media so far back from Wingate Park, I couldn’t see anything beyond the chain-link fence.

  Members of the media were becoming obviously impatient. Considering the article I’d written and the exclusives I’d managed to scoop, I would’ve been impatient, too, in their shoes. These murders were swiftly becoming national and international news; I could only imagine the fire their editors had lit under their desks. As it was, I just felt on edge. Meredith wasn’t throwing elbows in the mob, and I couldn’t find her scouting the perimeter; Greta must have pulled her on scene. Tardiness was a relatively new habit of mine, thanks to unwanted and unexpected midnight visitors, and a niggling unease turned my stomach.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Dominic purred from behind me.

  I suppressed an audible gasp and turned around. Posh and polished, Dominic gazed at me with that lopsided grin from behind the police barricade, decked out in full environmental-science-expert garb. A black duffle was slung over his shoulder, and a DLSR camera hung from his neck. Notepads and charts were shoved in the side pocket of the duffle, along with tape measures and rods. He was dressed a little more casually than I was accustomed to—a purple, striped, button-down shirt tucked into charcoal pants, no jacket—and I wondered if that was deliberate. He was working the investigation now, like Walker, and Walker was more casual. Although, to be fair, Dominic’s casual didn’t quite match the jeans and cowboy boots of Walker’s casual.