All because I’d broken my promise.
I thought of the sample of Dominic’s blood at the lab, being DNA tested and subsequently compared to the samples of the Damned’s scales and their DNA, proving an impossible theory to Greta about the existence of vampires and the difference between them and the Damned, and I couldn’t regret my decision, not even as my blood was pouring out on the pavement. If given the choice, I’d break my promise all over again if it meant protecting Dominic and his coven. Eventually, I’d write my article and expose the existence of vampires, and when that day came and people realized that creatures roamed the shadows of this city, they’d also know who was to blame for these massacres, and it sure as shit wasn’t Dominic.
“May I have the honor, Master?” Sevris asked.
Dominic was silent. He met my gaze, and my breath caught. I bit my lip, feeling doom, like an impending thunderhead, shadow us.
“In another circumstance, yes, Sevris, you may have the honor, but not tonight. She knows better than to leave the safety of her home without the vial of my blood, and she must learn from those actions. She did not heed the advice of a vampire, so she will heal as a human. That is her punishment.”
I blew out a breath, relief sweeping through me in a dizzying rush.
“Harsh,” Rafe said, his grin saying otherwise.
Sevris nodded solemnly.
“I’ll meet you before sunrise,” Dominic said.
I blinked, caught off guard by the suddenness of his impending departure, and reached out to him before he could leave. “Where are you—”
“Greta, Meredith, and Harroway, remember? Or do you no longer care about their well-being?”
I opened my mouth and closed it, caught sideways by his abruptness. “Of course I do, but—”
Dominic placed a finger over my lips, interrupting me a third time, and I saw red. Sevris and Rafe were watching us; otherwise, I might have bitten his finger. Then again, knowing his propensity for mixing blood and foreplay, he might have liked that.
“I’m doing the thinking, remember? Greta and Meredith will meet you at the hospital shortly.”
“But you can’t heal anymore. What if they—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“But—”
“Cassidy—”
“Stop interrupting me!”
Dominic sighed and stared at me in silence, waiting.
I breathed a deep, cleansing breath as my head spun. I wouldn’t last much longer. “I’ll see you before sunrise?” I asked.
I felt his lips brush my forehead and realized my eyes had closed of their own accord. “Before sunrise,” he promised.
With every last ounce of will left in my body, I forced my eyelids open, but despite my effort, I was too late. He was gone.
Chapter 15
“They appeared out of nowhere, Cassidy. They literally materialized from the darkness and shadows. Did you see?” Meredith asked.
“Yeah, I saw,” I said.
She scanned through the dozens of photos she’d snagged while being attacked, the same batch of photos she’d been flipping through for the last hour—while getting X-rays, being stitched, and now, as we lay side by side on gurneys, waiting to be discharged. The beep of her sorting warred with the beeps of our heart monitors, and neither seemed inclined to stop anytime soon. The cast on my leg itched, and I couldn’t decide which would drive me over the cliff first: the throbbing swell of the stitches on my shoulder and forearm, the zing of my aggravated hip, the infernal itching of the cast on my leg, or Meredith’s enthusiasm.
I’d share her enthusiasm—God knew I would—if only I didn’t know how this would inevitably end.
“They were huge, at least twelve feet tall and nearly just as wide,” she continued, “with pointed ears and reflecting black eyes. And their teeth! Did you see their rows of jagged teeth?”
I glanced at the doorway, where Rafe, Sevris, and Neil were standing guard at my curtain. The ER was flooded with victims from Wingate Park, but most of them couldn’t recall any details. Dominic, or likely another vampire from his coven, considering his waning powers, had obviously already entranced them. I wondered how long they would wait before entrancing Meredith.
“Well, did you?” Meredith asked, her voice sharper than a moment before.
I focused on her. “Did I what?”
She gave me a look. “Why are you not freaking out right now? This is your story, isn’t it? This is why you gave Dr. Chunn the vial of blood to test. This will prove that these, these—” Meredith shook her camera at me, at a loss for words.
“Creatures?” I provided blandly, keeping a wary eye on my muscle at the curtain. They didn’t react to anything Meredith was saying, but they’d heard me mutter their names to Dominic from blocks away in the thick of battle. They could obviously hear Meredith’s ranting from five feet.
“Yes, creatures! You’re trying to prove that these creatures exist, aren’t you?”
“It’s more complicated than that. We have to be careful about who knows and how we report their existence. There’s so much that you don’t know, that you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“That I don’t know or understand—yet.” Meredith squinted at her camera’s screen, her thumb going crazy on the zoom.
“Knowing the truth is dangerous. People have been killed for knowing less.”
“I have it here somewhere,” she murmured. “I know I do.”
I frowned. “Have what?”
“When we were in the park, one of the creatures lunged right at me. Faster than I could even think to scream, its talons swiped down at my chest, but someone caught me around the waist and threw me—literally threw me through the air, Cassidy—at the ambulance and medics at the end of the block. I landed hard on the pavement and broke my arm.” She raised her casted arm as if in confirmation. “That person who threw me, he saved me from having my heart carved out by one of the creatures.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, feeling like I was playing catch-up over something I already knew. “And?”
“But before being thrown, I snapped a photo. I know I did.”
“Even if you did, don’t get too excited. We can’t just plaster monsters across the front page of the newspaper. Carter will have a coronary.”
“Good! Let Carter finally stroke out. Maybe you’ll get a promotion,” Meredith said, still clicking and zooming and searching through her memory chip. “People are being slaughtered. The world needs to know.”
I bit my lip, thinking of Dominic. They weren’t all monsters. People needed to know that, too.
“This will be better than what I found for Detective Wahl,” she murmured.
I raised my eyebrows. “You found something for Greta?”
She nodded. “I finished the first file of photography they sent me from the original crime scene and gave my findings to Dr. Chunn this evening. Guess what I found scattered in the gravel when I heightened the resolution?”
“You didn’t,” I said, smiling.
“Oh, I sure did. It’s raining scales all over this parade. It’s just one crime scene, but where there’s one, I’ll find more.”
“You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That I’m the best investigative photographer ever. Yeah, I know.”
“Well, sure, but this also means that we can finally tie the cases together with hard evidence.”
Meredith went completely still, staring at her camera.
I waited a moment, but she didn’t move. “Meredith?” I asked cautiously. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“Yes!” she erupted, shoving her camera at me and pointing at the screen. “I knew I had the shot! I knew it!”
I stared at her camera and blinked at the photo she’d captured, stunned. Seeing the creatures in person, being attacked and witnessing their kills, was horrific and stunning all on its own, but all I had of the creatures were memories and my belief that they existed. In Meredith’s hands was unde
niable proof. The pointed ears, the rows of sharp teeth, the reflective eyes, the flat nose and flared nostrils—all there in high resolution, digital clarity on Meredith’s camera.
And next to the creature was Dominic, rushing to her rescue.
A floorboard creaked. I looked up, and Sevris was standing over me between our gurneys. He plucked Meredith’s camera from my hands.
“Hey! Who the fuck are you?” Meredith snapped.
“Meredith Drake,” Neil intoned from the other side of her gurney. “Look into my eyes.”
I sighed, knowing what was coming next.
“I know who I am,” Meredith snapped, meeting Neil’s eyes. “I’m asking who the hell you are!”
“You don’t care who I am. In another minute, you won’t even remember we were here,” he said.
Meredith’s face suddenly went slack, and her eyes glazed over. “I won’t even remember you.”
“You won’t remember that you took a clear photo of the creatures. In fact, you won’t remember that you saw the creatures at all—not their pointed ears, not their jagged fangs, not anything. You’re not sure what you saw because it was so dark and everything happened so fast.”
“It was so dark. Everything happened so fast,” Meredith repeated dumbly.
Rafe leaned in. “That’s good. Being specific about the details helps the memories unstick. Keep eye contact and tell her that she’s okay with not having the shot. She’s lucky just to be alive.”
“Is that really necessary?” I asked, the beeps of Sevris’ thumb deleting Meredith’s photos like stabs through my heart. “It’s bad enough, controlling her memories, but you’re controlling her feelings, too?”
Sevris looked up from the camera. “Do you want her searching endlessly for answers that she’ll never find? Possibly asking the wrong people the right questions and putting herself in danger when she doesn’t have any clue about the creatures she’d be up against?”
“No, but—”
“It’s better this way. If she doesn’t want answers, she won’t search for them. We’re protecting her.”
I watched as Rafe helped Neil choose his words and erase not only Meredith’s memories but her drive to find the truth. I watched him erase everything about her that made her a damn good journalist. Most of me was horrified, but the rest of me, the part I tried not to look too hard at, was relieved. Sevris was right about one thing: Meredith didn’t understand what we were up against, and her enthusiasm and ambition would get her killed.
“I understand. I know the risks, and if the other witnesses are being entranced, it makes sense that you’re entrancing her, too,” I admitted. “But she’s my best friend. On that level, I’m not protecting her. I’m betraying her.”
Sevris dropped her camera back in my lap. “Lysander was right.”
I raised my eyebrows. “About what?”
“Everything concerning you,” he said.
Before I could reply, he turned to stand guard once more at my curtain.
I scanned through what was left of Meredith’s shots, feeling the clench and drop of bitter disappointment. Her proof was gone, and all that remained were shadows and blurs of blood in the darkness.
“When I break eye contact,” Neil said, “you won’t care that you don’t know us. We are Cassidy’s friends, and that is a good enough explanation of our presence.”
Rafe squeezed his shoulder. “That was great. You don’t need to specify about breaking eye contact, though. It’s kind of automatic; when you break eye contact, they’ll snap out of it, and your commands become their new memories.”
Neil nodded, watching Meredith expectantly, like a pet he’d just taught a new trick.
Meredith blinked her eyes into focus. She glanced at Neil, Rafe, and Sevris in passing, unperturbed, and then dropped her gaze to the camera on my lap.
She shook her head with a sigh. “There’s no point. I didn’t get anything worthwhile. It was too dark and everything happened so fast. We were just lucky to get out alive.” She gazed out over the ER. “Not everyone here can say that.”
“No, not everyone can.” I handed her back the camera, feeling disheartened and resigned. Telling myself that erasing Meredith’s memories was for her own protection might have been more convincing if I hadn’t fought so hard to keep my own.
When the doctor returned with Meredith’s discharge papers, I encouraged her to go home. I wasn’t as alone as she thought; hell, I was safer here with Sevris, Rafe, and Neil than I’d ever been—being safer with the vampires, how the tides had changed—and honestly, I couldn’t meet her eyes, knowing what had been taken from her.
Twenty minutes later, I was still waiting on my own discharge papers when Dominic strode through the emergency room’s sliding doors. My breath caught. No matter how many times I saw him, even knowing his appearance was nothing but a mask, his presence spiked an indescribable need in me. Part fear, part anticipation, part reservation, and all-consuming, my feelings for Dominic, whatever they were, were undeniable.
He was so gorgeous during the night that sometimes it seemed impossible that he was anything but a beautiful, surly, magnanimous man. Then he growled or grinned with those very real, very lethal fangs or looked at me in that disturbing way he had, like he was mesmerized by the movement and flow of my blood pulsing through my beating heart, and I was reminded in no uncertain terms of his true nature.
He didn’t have X-ray vision, but with his strangely heightened senses, I wouldn’t doubt that he was listening to the smell or tasting the texture of my blood. His senses were skewed in that way—I remember how confusing and debilitating the sensory collision had felt when I was high on Dominic’s blood—but for Dominic, the kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, textures, scents, and tastes was the version of the world that he lived and understood.
As much as he was mesmerized by my blood and potential, I was mesmerized by the man beneath the monster.
He grinned slyly, just enough that the tip of his fangs gleamed from between his lips. If I was truly honest with myself, I’d admit that I was mesmerized by the monster, too.
“We have a problem,” Greta said, and my heart hit the ceiling.
“Jesus,” I rasped, hand to my chest. She was perched on the chair next to my gurney, leaning forward on her elbows, clasping and wringing her hands, worrying her knuckles. “Where did you come from?” I tried to adjust myself on the bed to face her and winced. My newly stitched leg and my hip did not approve of the movement.
“You sit tight. I’ll move.” She stood and leaned against the side of the bed, her back to Dominic as he approached.
I glanced at the curtains separating me from the other patients on gurneys, but my guards were gone. The emergency room was still hopping, and my doctor was still bustling patient to patient, sans my release papers. Somehow, from one moment to the next while I’d been drooling over Dominic, Sevris, Rafe, and Neil had disappeared and been replaced by Greta.
I blew out a breath. Greta’s memories weren’t as easily wiped as Meredith’s, so maybe the boys knew to stay off her radar. I scanned the ER, hoping against hope that they’d made themselves scarce, but sure enough, far enough away that Greta wouldn’t notice them but close enough that they would still hear our conversation, Sevris, Rafe, and Neil congregated around a vending machine in the back corner of the ER. Rafe unwrapped a Twinkie, glanced over his shoulder at me, and bit it in half.
I must have looked as stunned as I felt, watching him eat whole, human, processed food, because he winked.
Greta snapped her fingers in my face. “Earth to DiRocco! We have a problem.” She eyed me warily. “Don’t tell me you’re one of them.”
I focused on Greta, despite the spectacle behind her. “One of who? What are you talking about?”
“What do you remember about tonight’s attack?” she asked.
I narrowed my eyes. “What do you remember?” I countered.
She crossed her arms. “Not what everyone else remembers. It’s
happening—the witnesses are forgetting everything they witnessed, damn it—and I don’t know how. I was right there with them in the fucking trenches, surrounded by their blood and death, and I couldn’t forget the image of those creatures severing limbs and eating hearts even if I tried.”
I nodded, reminding myself to play it cool. “It seems impossible, but this is exactly what happened upstate in Erin, New York,” I whispered. “People didn’t remember the investigation like it truly happened. You read the reports.”
“Yeah, I did,” she said, not looking happy about it.
“And you remember another case, about five weeks ago, that I wrote as an animal attack, but the department reported as gang violence, the wounds clean and caused by knives. You made Meredith write a retraction.”
Greta shook her head. “That was gang violence. The perps used sharpened brass knuckles on their victims to make their wounds appear like animal claw rakings.”
I raised my eyebrows.
She stared at me, and seeing my expression, cursed under her breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Dominic sidled up next to Greta. “Nothing tonight seems like a joke to me.”
Greta snapped her head back, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she looked relieved. “Dr. Nicholas Leander, it’s good to see you alive and on your feet. When I didn’t see you at triage, I had my doubts.”
Dominic unloosed his satchel from around his neck, wincing as he lifted his arms. “I had my doubts, too,” he said, placing his satchel down at the foot of my bed.
Greta lifted her eyebrows. “Are you injured? Were you treated on scene or here in the ER?”
“On scene,” he said.
Greta nodded. “How were you injured?” she asked, but I knew the real question behind her words. She wanted to know how much he remembered.
Dominic snorted. “The better question is how were you not? At least now we have some answers, witnesses, and solid proof, even if those answers only open a hot mess of more questions.”
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