Her legs kicked and swung as she struggled a good three feet from the ground. The creature was snarling and slavering, literally drooling over her, and in the face of such ravenousness, she did the only thing she could; she tried to alleviate the pressure from her neck by pulling herself up on the very scarf choking her. She was obviously trying, but just as obviously failing.
As she dangled in midair from her own scarf, the creature drew back its massive claw in preparation for ripping out her heart.
“Dominic!” I shrieked, pointing at Meredith.
Dominic’s head whipped up to where I pointed, and then he was gone. I gasped, too afraid to hope anymore, too afraid to breathe. More afraid than I’d ever been for myself. The creature’s claws came down in a swift strike, and I screamed.
A black and blue blur of movement slashed Meredith’s scarf in half, and she dropped to the ground in a boneless heap. The creature’s claws missed Meredith by inches but caught Dominic instead. He materialized midair, no longer a blur of movement but a bleeding, very visible man being impaled in the ribs by one of the creature’s talons.
The creature slammed Dominic onto the ground, pinning him in place with an impaled claw. He raised his other claw high overhead.
My gut clenched. No. Please God, no, I thought.
Bex had nearly died from having her heart ripped from her chest. She’d only survived because I’d doused both the gaping wound of her chest cavity and her heart in Dominic’s healing blood and stuffed her heart back into place. I lifted my hand to my throat, fingering the chain around my neck. If Dominic couldn’t even heal the claw rakes on his back, he might not survive losing his heart, even after I returned it to his chest, and especially not without his healing blood.
The creature’s claw swiped through the air, aimed at Dominic’s chest.
I lifted my arm and aimed, hoping the silver nitrate spray would span the distance between us.
A burst of light flashed next to Dominic, dousing the field in garish, gory, Technicolor detail and just as quickly blinding me. I blinked, trying to see past the light spots dotting my vision, but just as my sight was clearing, another rapid burst of flashes blinded me again. The creature let loose a rumbling howl, and the flashes became more regular, almost a strobe, so in jerky, halting movements between flashes, I could see the creature, its head thrown back as it howled in rage and pain. The claws intended for Dominic’s chest were raised over its eyes, trying to block the light. Dominic was bleeding and prone on the ground, but no longer pinned by the creature’s claws, his heart still whole and unharmed inside his chest, where it belonged.
But no matter how I squinted through the darkness or scanned the scene between flashes, I couldn’t find Meredith.
With one arm covering its eyes, the creature reached out with its massive claws and batted the air blindly. Dominic crawled, hand over hand, beneath the whipping slashes. The creature lashed out desperately, blindly. Dominic must be crawling blind, too. That would be the only explanation for why he wasn’t crawling away from the creature. If anything, he was crawling closer, toward the source of the flashing.
Get out of range, you idiot, I thought, resisting the urge to shout. The creature swatted low and to the left, missing Dominic’s head by hairs. I covered my face with my hands, staring through my spread fingers. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t bear to watch, and I couldn’t for the life of me look away even though my own helplessness was killing me.
Dominic disappeared behind the flash. In the next instant, the flashes stopped, plunging the field back into impenetrable darkness.
Meredith screamed. I strained through my light-blinded eyes to find her, but her scream was fading, like she was inside a speeding car, being driven far away.
Eventually, my spotted vision began to clear, and in the semidarkness of glowing street lamps and what was left of our crime scene spotlights, I stared in gaping shock at the scene before me. Dominic was across the field, halfway between me and the ambulance at the edge of the park. Medical personnel were ducking out of the ambulance with a stretcher and army-crawling unobtrusively toward Meredith, who lay scarily still but otherwise not visibly injured on the sidewalk next to the ambulance. She clutched her camera to her chest, protecting her scoop even in unconsciousness, and I realized belatedly with the impact of a bulldozer that the flashing had been Meredith snapping photos with her camera.
With Meredith across the field and out of harm’s way for the moment, I took in the scene around me. The creature was closer than I’d imagined in the strobe of Meredith’s flash, closer than I preferred—but then, considering its single-minded consumption of human hearts, across the field would have been too close. And not only was the creature directly in front of me, it was enraged.
Its nocturnal eyes were still recovering from the camera flashes as it swung its massive head around, slashing its claws right and left, up and down and sideways, searching for its prey. It growled in snarling, unforgiving fury, realizing Dominic and Meredith were gone. And there I was, standing with my hands over my eyes and staring through my fingers—as if that would make me less visible—the perfect target for its anger and blame.
I took a small, careful step back.
The creature snapped its head forward and locked its eyes on me.
I froze, rooted by fear and horror. I tightened my grip on the silver nitrate spray, feeling woefully under-armed even with my new arsenal.
The creature charged for me.
I didn’t have time to move. I didn’t even have time to scream. One moment the creature was staring at me, slavering with accusation and rage, and the next moment, Dominic wrapped me in his arms, and we were airborne. The creature attacked the spot I’d stood the moment before, shredding the earth with its lethal talons, and I shuddered at the thought of how those talons would have shredded me.
It stared at the earth, suddenly stock-still, as if just realizing it had slashed dirt and grass to ribbons instead of flesh and bone, and looked up. Its eyes were luminous and haunting; I could choke on the hate suffocating that gaze. It locked its eyes with mine and let loose a gut-churning, hair-raising howl from the depths of its soul.
I reminded myself that two weeks ago, this creature was a night blood, just like Nathan, who’d known nothing of the nocturnal, blood-thirsty creatures that lived beneath our city and certainly nothing of the war that waged between them. I hated thinking that the only way to stop this madness was to kill them, but when the key to saving Nathan when he’d been Damned was love, how could I save dozens of people I didn’t even know?
We’d flown only a few yards when Dominic landed. We were still on the baseball field; no sooner had we landed than he did a backflip to avoid another charging creature.
“Thank you,” I gasped, once I’d found my breath. “For saving Meredith.”
“You’re welcome.”
“We need to find Greta and Harroway, too.”
Dominic dodged another attack, whipping me around in graceful arcs and inhuman somersaults. “We need to get us out of here,” he growled.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked. My split shoulder was still gushing blood and ached as he moved, avoiding the claws and teeth closing in around us. “Why did you land back in the field? I thought you were flying us the hell out of here.”
“I’m trying,” Dominic snapped. “What about Greta and Harroway?” he asked, but his tone was more sarcasm than question.
“You’re injured, and we’re outmanned. We need to heal, get help, gather reinforcements, and regroup. We need—”
Dominic lunged forward to avoid one creature’s snapping jaws from behind as another creature swiped at us from the front. He spun out of reach, dodging both creatures, but he was a millisecond too late. A claw sliced across my forearm, knocking the silver nitrate spray from my hand.
I cursed and clutched the wound as it gushed, joining the waterfall of blood from my shoulder.
The rattling hiss of Dominic’s growl vibrated agai
nst the back of my neck. “How bad is it?”
“Just get us out of here.”
Dominic’s arms tightened around me, and we launched into the air, for real this time, above the bloodbath beneath us, over the field and surrounding chain-link fence, past the screaming and crying of hundreds of people dying.
And then we were falling.
We crash-landed a few blocks from Wingate Park onto the concrete sidewalk. Dominic turned onto his back, his body cradled around mine to take the brunt of our fall. Even with his body as a makeshift toboggan, my head snapped back into his jaw, my hip gave out with a sickening crack, and my left leg scraped at fifty miles an hour into concrete as we slid across the sidewalk.
We lay still for several seconds after coming to a stop. The shouts and crunch of carnage were loud around us, but like a bug twitching and half dead on a windshield, I couldn’t move, no matter the surrounding danger. I tried to turn my head to brace against whoever had knocked us from flight, but the creature, wherever he was, wasn’t here now.
Dominic shifted beneath me, and something sharp stabbed through my leg.
I groaned.
“My apologies. Are you all right?” He sat up with me draped over him. The movement was dizzying and painful.
I held in a gasp. “No,” I gritted out between my teeth. “Where did it go?”
Dominic made a choked sound. I snapped my gaze up, searching for the creature he’d seen, but nothing dangerous was near at the moment. Or rather, nothing dangerous was near that I could see.
“Where is it?” I whispered.
“Keep still until I heal your leg,” Dominic replied. He was suddenly gone from beneath me, and my butt bit into the sidewalk.
“My leg?” I regrouped and looked down at my leg. And then I gagged. The skin had been completely de-gloved from the muscle, and blood was pouring onto the pavement. The white bone of my shin gleamed under the streetlights, and I could see it was broken. I could literally see the break. The world spun, and I had to look away before I passed out.
Dominic appeared in front of me, reaching for the flap of skin dangling by gravel-shredded strands.
I flinched back from his outstretched hand. “Don’t,” I gasped.
“I’ll work quickly,” he said grimly, and before I could protest a second time, he pressed the dangling skin against the wound and licked.
I could feel the quick swipes of his tongue’s intrusion beneath my skin, in and out and side to side, as he coated my wound in his saliva. I pressed my hand more firmly against my mouth to hold back both my screams and the contents of my stomach.
Any second now, my leg would start to burn from his healing, from blood vessels, muscle, bone, and skin fusing back into place. Being injured always hurt, but whether I healed human slow or vampire fast, recovering from injury always seemed to hurt so much worse.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Dominic snapped. “Give me the vial of my blood.”
“Of your what?”
“My blood on the necklace around your neck—give it to me.”
I struggled to sit up. “What? Why?” My head and stomach were already reeling from the pain and adrenaline, and now, as I stared at the mess of my injured leg, which was only more a mess with my blood coating Dominic’s mouth and cheeks, I couldn’t hold the contents of my stomach back any longer. I turned my head and vomited on the sidewalk.
I took a moment to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand before facing Dominic and his knowing, penetrating stare. “Why am I not healing?”
He swiped his hands through his hair, his eyes shifting frantically over my wound. I got the distinct impression that the ever cool and in control Master vampire of New York City was panicking. “Another ability lost to the coming Leveling.”
“Forget it for now. Whatever knocked us from the air is probably still nearby. We need to get Meredith, Greta, and Harroway and get out.”
Dominic stared at me with his luminescent, nocturnal gaze, his expression pain-filled and creepy, but otherwise unfathomable. “I can’t.”
His eyes pinned on the center of my chest where the vial of his blood usually hung from my neck.
I swallowed. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing knocked us from the air; I fell all on my own.”
I blinked, trying to focus on his words through the pain and dizziness and black starbursts beginning to dot my vision. “What?”
“I wasn’t strong enough to carry you. I’m not sure I have the strength to fly at all anymore,” Dominic’s jaw ticked as he spoke through clenched teeth. “And now, just when we need it most, I’ve lost the ability to heal human flesh.”
“You don’t know that for sure. It might not be you; it might be my lack of night blood,” I said, trying to be encouraging. It wasn’t in me to admit defeat, but even I could hear the false cheer in my voice.
“Night blood has nothing to do with my saliva’s ability to clot and heal human wounds,” Dominic spat, and I could hear more than frustration in his tone. His anger bordered on disgust.
I bit my lip against the hopelessness in his voice. “We knew this was coming.”
“It’s still two nights before the Leveling, and already I’ve lost the majority of my abilities,” Dominic said, shaking his head. “Without a Second, surviving the day in my coven is unlikely.”
“Hey!” I snapped, nudging him with my uninjured leg. “Get a grip. We’ll worry about you later. Right now, we need help. You might not have an official second in command, but you have peeps on your side.”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Peeps?”
“Neil, Rafe, and Sevris. They have my back, if you remember, to protect yours.”
“I don’t think—”
“You called?” Rafe and Sevris materialized from the shadows and darkness.
I blinked. “That was fast.”
Rafe grinned. “I’m not Beetlejuice. Say my name once, and I’ll appear.”
Dominic pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is Neil?”
“Feeding,” Sevris answered. “Once he’s healed, he’ll rejoin us.”
Dominic nodded.
“Healed?” I asked, looking between Dominic and Sevris and wondering if telepathy was helping him connect the dots. “He’s hurt?”
“Before this week is done, many will be injured, if not lost. Even the oldest, strongest vampires are no match for the Damned.” Dominic met my gaze, and memories of my brother ripping Bex’s heart from her chest slammed home.
“Right,” I murmured.
“We came immediately because we thought you needed aid, but if you have Lysander to help you, we should return,” Sevris said, jabbing a thumb toward Wingate Park.
I hesitated. Dominic was losing his strength and abilities—he needed help—but could we trust Sevris and Rafe enough to reveal Dominic’s weakness? Could we really trust them with our lives and the lives of the coven, the lives of everyone in this city?
Could we afford not to?
“I need your help,” Dominic said.
I sagged with relief. The starbursts had blanketed most of my vision, so Sevris and Rafe stood before me as if at the end of a long tunnel. I lay back on the sidewalk and groaned weakly. My head twisted and spun in somersaults.
“Cassidy?” Rafe’s voice sounded suddenly closer than it had a moment before.
“She’s losing a lot of blood,” Sevris commented.
“Hand me the vial of blood on a pendant around her neck, will you? Touch only the glass vial. The necklace is silver.”
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but before I could manage, I felt Sevris’ cool hand reach down the front of my shirt. “There’s no pendant.”
I froze, waiting on Dominic’s reaction.
“Of course not,” Dominic said coolly. His voice shook with frustration and fury and something deeper, something akin to fear. I understood the former—he was almost always frustrated and infuriated with me about something—but I couldn’t comprehend w
hat Dominic could possibly fear. “Why would she be wearing my necklace, the very necklace she wears every night, on the one night I can’t heal her?”
The silence after Dominic’s words was a palpable weight in the air.
“How advanced are your abilities to fly?” Dominic asked.
“Me?” Sevris sounded shocked.
“Yes, you. Both of you,” Dominic said.
“Master?” Rafe asked, his voice slow and deliberate.
Dominic sighed. “With the Leveling approaching, I no longer have the ability to fly or heal. I need to know here and now, do either of you have the strength to carry Cassidy to the hospital and guard her until I return?”
My heart jolted at the thought of being alone with not just one vampire, but potentially three, if Neil joined us. I swallowed and worked up the strength to speak. “No, I don’t think—”
“Where’s the necklace, Cassidy? Where’s the vial of my blood?” Dominic asked.
I sealed my lips shut.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, “so I’ll be thinking for the both of us going forward.”
Sevris stepped forward. “I can carry her, and together, Rafe and I will guard her. But is the hospital necessary? I can heal her.”
Rafe laughed. “You’ve never healed a night blood before. One lick, and you might lose complete control.”
“I will not lose control,” Sevris said, and the determination and confidence in his voice was unwavering. “She is your night blood, Master, and a future member of this coven. It would be a privilege to heal her on your behalf.”
Sevris’ sentiment would be heartwarming except for one pesky little detail: if Sevris were to heal me, he would taste my blood and know that I no longer had night blood. And with that unveiling, he would surely unravel Dominic’s secret—that despite my lack of night blood, Dominic had allowed me, a human, to retain my memories and knowledge of their existence, breaking the very principle that had initiated his battle with Jillian, the battle against revealing the existence of vampires to humankind. He would lose what little support, loyalty, and respect his coven still had for him. He’d be dead before the Leveling even began, and I wouldn’t be far behind.
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