Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  “No, Cassidy, he doesn’t have mental ties to me. He has a phone.”

  I stared at him, not comprehending the words coming out of his mouth.

  Nathan sighed. “He picked up a phone, dialed my number, and told me about the attack. He told me you were hurt and would need crutches, and we both knew what that meant.”

  “I—You—” I stammered, trying to catch up. The fact that Dominic had had a full-blown conversation about me with my brother over the phone was throwing me off my game. “He called you?”

  “I would have text-messaged him,” Dominic interjected. “But you once said that it’s more considerate to call someone with bad news.”

  “I, well, yes, that’s true,” I said, flabbergasted. “But normally you wouldn’t bother with a phone at all. You would just—” I waved my hands in the air, words failing me. “—appear from the darkness and talk to him in person.”

  “Normally, yes,” Dominic said. “But with the Leveling drawing nigh, I need to conserve my resources. I already can’t heal and fly. Who knows what ability I’ll lose next?”

  The man could text, but he still said phrases like “drawing nigh.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why would you call my brother to pick me up from the hospital if you wanted me to return with you to the coven? Without Nathan, I’d certainly need your help.” I indicated the scooter with a swipe of my hand. “Now, I just need to sign my release paperwork, and I’m ready to rock.”

  “Ah, Cassidy, when will you understand?” Dominic touched my cheek again, his face so weary that I wondered if his hard-won, everlasting patience wasn’t as everlasting as he’d like to believe. He leaned in close, so close that I could almost feel the whisper of his breath on my lips as he spoke. “I don’t want you to choose me because you have no other choice. Despite the many choices at your disposal, I want you to choose me because I’m what you want.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but I didn’t have the words. Five weeks ago, I would have said, “I’ll never want you,” but that was before he’d saved my life and preserved my humanity, before he’d helped me find Nathan and risked his own life to bring him back from the Damned, and long before I’d realized that, besides our dietary preferences and his physical and mental abilities, we actually had more in common than I’d ever thought imaginable. After five weeks, fighting one another had somehow transformed into fighting beside each other. Never was a long time, and as Dominic had reminded me multiple times, he was very patient.

  I couldn’t examine my feelings for Dominic too closely because, after five weeks, I feared I knew exactly what I wanted. But knowing something, especially something about myself, and admitting it were two very different things.

  Dominic swiped my cheek with the pad of his thumb one last time before letting his arm drop back down to his side. He turned away and walked out of the hospital at a human, very un-Dominic-like pace. I watched him leave, feeling oddly bereft considering I’d gotten exactly what I’d wanted. He’d left me with my brother, a scooter, and nowhere to go but back home to my vampire-proofed apartment. Except after all this time, the one thing I wanted might just be the very thing I’d proofed my apartment against.

  One Day before the Leveling

  Memory is necessary to our survival, as much as air is necessary to you and the consumption of blood is necessary to me. It composes our personality and mood, determines our capacity to learn from experience, and dictates our ability to function, to recognize objects and people. For something so essential to a person’s existence, it can be easily molded, tweaked, and for some, completely eradicated. Off the record, I respect the power of memory and the debilitation of losing it, but if the choice lies between an individual’s existence and my own, I choose mine every time. Besides, most people, when faced with the unexplainable, would prefer to forget.

  —DOMINIC LYSANDER, on wielding the power of mind control

  Chapter 16

  The sun rose over the horizon and flooded my southeast-facing, window-lined bedroom with light. I enjoyed its warmth and comforting safety from inside a blanket-wrapped burrito on my bed for a blissful moment before reality slammed home with the sudden, debilitating pain of my injuries. If the sun was up and I was still in bed, that meant only one thing.

  I was missing my meeting with Greta and Dr. Chunn.

  Despite the scooter, getting washed, dressed, and applying makeup—simple, daily tasks that would normally take half an hour if I couldn’t decide on an outfit—were made excruciating by the power-punch combination of my throbbing broken leg, the sting and pull of the stitches on my shoulder and forearm, and the ever-present and even more persistent ache in my hip.

  An hour later, I gave up on makeup and any hope of being on time. The only item of clothing that I could physically pull over my cast was a pair of loose yoga pants. I topped the pants with a baby-T and twisted my hair into a bun. The air was still cool this morning, but by ten, the unforgiving summer sun would beat down on the city, ratcheting up the heat and my temper. Leather and jeans were better protection against fangs and claws than yoga pants, but the weather was too sweltering for the first, and my cast wouldn’t fit into the latter. I stuffed the leather pants in my side satchel for later, along with several pens and silver sprays inside my cast. The damn thing was clunky and itchy as hell but ideal for hiding weapons.

  I left a voice mail for Greta, apologizing for being late and letting her know that I was on my way, just not moving as fast as usual. She’d been there last night. She’d understand.

  Supervisory Special Agent Harold Rowens, however, hadn’t been there, and honestly, after everything that had happened, I’d forgotten he was sleeping on my couch. I left my bedroom and tried to roll past him unnoticed on my scooter, but I couldn’t avoid the squeaky planks of my warped, hardwood living room floors. They groaned and shifted under my weight.

  Rowens’ face had sunk deep into one of my plush couch pillows, but half his face and one eye were visible. That one eye opened, and he pinned it on me. “What’s the rush? No time for hello before saying good-bye?”

  “You might be on medical leave, but some of us still have to bring home the bacon, despite our injuries,” I quipped.

  He sat up, and the blanket fell from his bare chest and pooled in his lap, exposing the stitches and scarred, swollen tissue where his arm used to be. Nathan had ripped Rowens’ right arm clean from the shoulder socket—one of the lesser nightmares that haunted Nathan from his time being Damned. Rowens didn’t have much of a residual limb, but I’m sure if he really wanted a prosthetic arm, the bureau would pick up the tab, considering he’d been injured in the line of duty. Judging by the hard lines and angles of Rowens’ expression, however, when his shoulder healed, he wouldn’t want one.

  Shoulder disartics needed a prosthesis with straps across their back; without a residual limb, he’d use the movement of his shoulder blades to control the movement of his prosthetic arm. The technology wasn’t bad, but the straps might interfere with his shoulder holster, the weight of an arm he couldn’t fully control might be a burden while running, and more important than learning to use a prosthesis, he needed to relearn to shoot with his non-dominant hand. The loss of his right arm, although devastating, wasn’t the nightmare that kept him awake at night.

  He’d lost weight since I’d seen him last week, but he still had that beefy, block-jawed, lumberjack look that made him so handsome—devastatingly handsome, with his clean-shaven cheeks, bright aquamarine eyes, and sharp features. He narrowed those aquamarine eyes on me now.

  “Give me five minutes. I’m coming with you,” he said succinctly.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

  “You’re working with Detective Wahl on the same case you were working on when we were upstate. The same case they covered up as a rabid-bear attack.”

  I sighed. Rowens knew just enough to be dangerous and more than enough to be in danger. “You don’t know who ‘they’ are,
and believe me, I’ve warned you once and I’ll warn you again, you don’t want to know.”

  “I didn’t come all the way here for a warning. I came for answers, and I’m not leaving without them. Hell, if what I think is happening is really happening, wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

  “Wild horses.” I shook my head. “I wish.”

  “Wherever you are today is exactly where I want to be,” Rowens pushed. “I’m glue, DiRocco; whether you want me or not, you’re stuck with me.”

  “It’s your funeral,” I muttered.

  “Looks like it was almost yours last night,” Rowens said softly, taking in my cast and the scooter.

  I squirmed uncomfortably and winced. “Just a flesh wound.”

  “Right. Me too.” He wiggled what little muscles he had left in his shoulder, and I wrinkled my nose.

  “Shouldn’t you be keeping that shoulder wrapped? Your flesh wound still has stitches.”

  “Yeah, I need to redress it. Thanks for the reminder, Mom. You gonna lend me a hand?” he quipped.

  I rolled my eyes. “Next question.”

  “Rabid-bear attacks are less common in the city. How are they, whoever they are, covering up serial murders here?” he asked.

  “Where did you pack the gauze and disinfectant?”

  “Nice try. I came here for answers, and I’m not leaving, even after I run out of questions. Somehow, though, I have a feeling I won’t run out of questions.”

  I sighed, knowing he wouldn’t. It had been five weeks since I’d discovered the existence of vampires, and I still had questions. “Before our case upstate, they used gang wars to cover their kills. Now, everything’s different. We’re actually solving this one. They’re still entrancing our witnesses, but they’re not tampering with evidence.”

  “What changed?”

  “It’s more like who changed,” I admitted. “I’ll explain on the way to the hospital. We’re meeting Greta and the medical examiner, so you might want to prepare yourself.”

  “For the dead bodies?” Rowens frowned. “I’ve seen worse in the field.”

  I shook my head. “For Greta. I doubt anyone at this meeting will thank me for bringing a federal agent into this investigation, especially the very agent who accused Greta and her team of withholding information and threatened her with obstruction of justice charges.”

  “I call it as I see it, and at the time, that’s how it appeared. Now, I don’t know what I see, but I know it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

  I snorted under my breath. “It’s nothing like anyone has ever seen before. What is the bureau making of all this?”

  Rowens raised his eyebrows. “How should I know what the bureau does these days? I’ve been stuffed behind a desk, remember?”

  “Which gives you more time to talk now that you’re not wasting time dodging bullets and being mauled by bears,” I said snarkily. “How much time do we have?”

  “Time before what?” he evaded.

  “Before your replacement pokes his nose into this case.” I sighed. “Don’t play dumb. You know how this works. You were the one who did the poking last time. This case has national and international coverage spotlighting it now. It’s only a matter of time before the FBI joins the party again.”

  His mouth turned down in a grim line. “Yes and no. Everyone believed the report on rabid bear attacks. The bureau took a hit on that one, so they won’t get involved in this case unless they uncover that the attacks are human-caused.”

  I smirked warily. “The attacks aren’t human-caused.”

  Rowens shrugged. “If they discover the true cause of these attacks, I don’t know what they’ll do, but it won’t be anything good, I can tell you that. Nothing good ever came from shit hitting a fan.”

  “Then we’d better solve this case and reveal the truth on our own terms before that happens.” I revved my scooter and, with an anticlimactic twist of my wrist, rolled slowly across the living room floor toward my front door. “You’ve got five minutes to redress that shoulder, but try making it three. Greta is not a patient woman, and we’re already late.”

  Rowens nodded. “My kind of morning.”

  Twenty minutes later, Rowens and I were sitting in Dr. Chunn’s cozy office, him on the couch and me on my scooter, waiting for Dominic, who wasn’t coming, Meredith, who wasn’t answering her phone, and Dr. Chunn, who should have been the first person there. Needless to say, Greta was not pleased, but at least she had other people higher on her shit list than me.

  Rowens shook her hand when I made the introductions, exuding the calm, stoic, professionalism I’d come to expect from him, despite the fact that he’d had his mind blown on the way here. I’d explained the difference between night blood, vampire, and the Damned, how the Master vampire of New York City was losing strength and power with the coming Leveling and a new leader was emerging and transforming night bloods into the Damned. I’d explained the benefits of night blood—resistance to mind control being the only reason he still remembered the true investigation in Erin, New York, unlike everyone else who’d been involved with the case—and the potential to become a vampire. I explained everything I could never outright admit to Meredith or Greta, or any other human for that matter, because Rowens was a night blood. Everyone deserved to know the truth, but he was the only one whom the vampires couldn’t entrance the truth from his mind.

  Five weeks ago, Walker had been the expert night blood explaining everything to me. Now, I was the one explaining everything to Rowens, but my five-week crash coarse didn’t make me an expert in anything except barely surviving. Rowens deserved a better mentor—Yoda, I was not—but my measly five-weeks worth of firsthand vampire survival skills was all I had to offer.

  Despite my newly reversed role as night blood mentor to Rowens, I hadn’t explained my specific and deepening involvement with said Master vampire of New York City; nor had I revealed that Dominic was more involved in this investigation than anyone realized. Rowens was still in shock and taking stock; coming to terms with the existence of vampires and his own existence as a night blood was enough to swallow for one day, and honestly, my relationship status with Dominic wasn’t something I could easily explain in a fifteen-minute taxi ride. Even if I flashed a spotlight on it, shoved it under a microscope, and dissected it, I’d never quite understand how Dominic, the most dangerous evil I’d ever encountered, had somehow become a trusted ally. I cared for Dominic, more deeply than I’d thought my scarred heart capable of. In some ways, this made Dominic more dangerous than I’d ever imagined.

  In protection of Dominic and his secrets, in protection of my heart and the fragile, uncertain bond growing between Dominic and me, I omitted Dominic’s specific involvement as our Master vampire completely from my explanations to Rowens. He was an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I had no illusions that he wouldn’t eventually piece the puzzle together, but eventually wasn’t this morning.

  Rowens had processed everything I divulged in silent, tight-lipped stoicism, met my eyes, and asked, “How do we stop the Damned from killing anyone else?”

  I couldn’t help but appreciate a man who could drill through the mess I’d given him to see the core of our problem. Unfortunately, I didn’t have an answer to that particular question, but that’s what we were here in Dr. Chunn’s office to figure out.

  Harroway shook Rowens’s hand, too, but he was less distracted than Greta by the absence of Dr. Chunn, Meredith, and Dominic, and more focused on in-person targets: us.

  “First Meredith, now Rowens. Anyone else you want to squeeze into this office? Carter? Nathan? A cousin, maybe?” Harroway glanced around the room, sizing up the interior of Dr. Chunn’s office. “The doc will need a second couch.”

  “Space isn’t a problem. I brought my own seating,” I reasoned, patting my scooter. “We could easily add a few more experts to the team.”

  “We can’t get the team we have to show for a meeting,” Greta groused. �
��I doubt adding more people to this circus is the solution. Maybe adding different people.”

  I sighed. “It was a long night for everyone.”

  “Meredith and Nicholas walked out of the hospital on their own two feet, but you’re the one who shows up.” Greta shook her head. “If you were able to attend this meeting, they have no excuse. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thank you. How are you?” I asked, being deliberately obtuse.

  Greta shot me a stern look. “You know what I mean.”

  “And I told you. I’m fine. Me being here is a testament to my severe lack of self-preservation and my obsession to out-scoop the competition. Points for me, not demerits for others.”

  Harroway snorted. “You’re the one who should be home, resting. Jesus Christ, you’re just the reporter and you’re here, but the environmental science expert flakes out. Twice.”

  I crossed my arms. “You couldn’t have just ended that statement with ‘should be home resting,’ could you?”

  “You’re more than ‘just a reporter’ to this investigation,” Greta said to me, her voice clipped. “And you have a point,” she conceded to Harroway.

  “I hate to be the one to ask the hard questions, but—” I interjected, and Harroway snorted. Greta raised her eyebrows, and even Rowens shot me a side-long glance of disbelief. “Okay, maybe ‘hate’ is a strong word, but just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I like doing it.” I took a deep breath and asked my hard question, determinedly unflinching in the face of truth. “Does anyone know the whereabouts of Dr. Chunn last night?”

  We all looked at each other in silence.

  Greta sighed. “Harroway, have you checked medical records from last night’s crime scene?”

  “Just our department’s. Not our partnering offices’.”

  She gave him a look. “Not the medical examiner? We could be waiting here, and she might not be coming?”