Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  Dominic must have thought so too, because he gargled a few mangled words through what remained of his vocal cords. “I can explain—”

  With one swipe of his hand, the Chancellor clawed open Dominic’s throat again, reopening the wound and silencing his feeble attempt to speak.

  “Explanation isn’t necessary,” the Chancellor said.

  “Henry Lynell Horrace DeWhitt,” I intoned, commanding the full strength of his name and hoping my mind would lock on his now that he’d ingested my blood. Last week, that might have been enough for me to jerk him like a puppet on the strings of my will, but last week, I’d had night blood.

  Now, nothing happened.

  “Lord High Chancellor Henry Lynell Horrace DeWhitt,” the Chancellor corrected. He sliced a look at Bex.

  “The more you insist, the more creatively she’ll find ways to annoy you,” she said, unconcerned. “Her sarcasm and grit are her strength and best defense.”

  He laughed. “I would never harm one of my own.”

  Bex’s eye looked away. She didn’t believe him. Or maybe she knew otherwise. There must have been a reason she’d hidden from him for decades.

  I glanced pointedly at Dominic and then back to the Lord High Chancellor, expressing my own disbelief.

  “He is not one of us.”

  “I’m not even a night blood. If Dominic, a Master vampire, isn’t one of you, then who the hell am I?”

  “You, Cassidy DiRocco, are a Day Reaper.”

  Chapter 20

  I looked back and forth between Lord High Chancellor Henry and Bex, but besides a sly little twist to Bex’s lips, they both remained deadly serious. The Chancellor didn’t have a sense of humor, but this was too much. I thought he’d kill me for not tasting my night blood, but no, he didn’t think I was human or night blood; he thought I was a Day Reaper. I couldn’t help it. I clutched my stomach, doubled over in my seat, and laughed.

  Despite having had his vocal cords ripped from his throat twice in the last fifteen minutes, Dominic emitted a painfully wet growl.

  “She’s insane,” the Chancellor said. “She can’t handle the facts. We broke her.”

  “Ha!” Bex barked. “You have a sense of humor after all, my Lord.”

  He cut a glance at her.

  Bex smiled, the curve of her lips a slash of red against her porcelain features. “Cassidy DiRocco lives and breathes by the facts. She can handle them, and if she can’t, she’ll adapt. No matter what must be done, Cassidy will do it to survive. Rene recognized that instantly in her,” she said, snapping her crimson-tipped claws. “She’s an unapologetic survivor.”

  That I was. I shook my head, wiped my eyes, and pulled myself together. “I’m sorry for the outburst, but you must be mistaken. I’m not a Day Reaper. I can live in the sun, sure, but that’s because I’m human . . . er, I mean, a night blood.”

  Dominic’s glare was like a laser target aimed at my back, but I ignored his heat.

  “You’d better hope I’m right about you. That is the only thing at this very moment preventing me from dismembering and disemboweling you in front of this captive audience.” The Chancellor gestured to the hundreds of vampires watching us from the catacombs, their eyes a thousand glowing pinpoints in the shrouded darkness as they cowered in their rooms, watching, waiting, analyzing. Making judgments. Choosing sides.

  And as far as I could see, with Dominic chained and bleeding and me in a veritable motorized wheelchair, our side wasn’t looking too hot.

  Their growls blended with Dominic’s, a low tide that, with the least provocation, could rise to drown us all.

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’d prefer you not do that. I like keeping my limbs attached and my innards inside my body, along with my blood, where they function best.”

  The Chancellor grinned. “And I’d prefer you didn’t expose our kind by giving samples of Dominic’s blood to the city’s medical examiner, but we can’t all have what we prefer, now can we?”

  I froze. Dominic’s growl cut off into sharp silence, and his stare, if I’d thought it laser-pointed before, sliced me in two.

  I swallowed, trying and failing not to let my heart race or my forehead break out in a cold sweat, when Bex’s words of praise echoed in my mind: Accept. Adapt. Survive.

  “I didn’t expose our kind,” I said, deliberately including myself in that category, so he’d think that I saw myself as one of them. I was part of the coven, not humanity, so exposing them would be exposing myself, too. And who in their right mind would expose themselves as a party to this insanity?

  “But you did give samples of Dominic’s blood to the city’s medical examiner?” Sevris asked, his voice a low growl.

  “We are in the middle of a serial-murder investigation, and our vampires aren’t responsible. But something is responsible, something not human,” I reasoned. “If the humans discover the Damned, they’ll discover us next, but in their fear of beings they don’t know or understand, they might not distinguish vampires from the Damned. They’ll think we are mindless, murdering animals, just like the Damned, and it’ll be war against us all.”

  “And yet, you’re helping them discover us,” the Chancellor accused.

  “No. I’m helping to exonerate you,” I explained. “The police took DNA evidence of the Damned from the scene, but without something to compare it against, we had no way to identify it. With Dominic’s blood as a baseline, now we can empirically separate vampires from the Damned. They know two separate creatures exist, one whose DNA matches evidence at the crime scene and one whose DNA doesn’t.”

  “That’s not how we do things here,” the Chancellor said, as if speaking to a child. “The humans don’t get to empirically categorize anything because they don’t get to remember anything. We are but shadows in the night they swore they saw but can’t place. We are but legends and nightmares. They get to forget, and we get to clean up the mess. That’s how it’s been done for centuries before your time, and that’s how it will continue to be done if you expect to live centuries from now.”

  Good thing I don’t expect to live that long, I thought, but there was no need to speak my mind on that subject. I did expect to live a few decades from now. Instead, I said, “I understand, and I see your point, but—”

  “If you truly understood, there would be no ‘but.’”

  Rafe shook his head. “Buts don’t bode well.”

  I sighed. “But vampires are rebelling, powerful vampires that may take control of this coven and tip the scales on what is and isn’t possible to hide. Are you willing to kill hundreds of vampires in this coven with the same unflinching stoicism with which you kill humans and alter their memories? Is keeping your existence a secret worth such destruction?”

  “Keeping our existence a secret is worth everything. It’s bigger than you or me or the hundreds of vampires in this coven. It’s worth millions of vampires.”

  The hundreds of vampires watching our conversation from their honeycomb-like rooms flinched back at his words. Their collective inhale was nearly an audible gasp followed by the low hum of their growling disapproval.

  I smiled to myself and continued. “But if you were to take the reins of exposure and lead it instead of fighting against it, you could control it. You could reveal yourselves on your own terms, as a separate entity from the Damned, not on the whim of a heartbroken vampire who—”

  “We won’t be revealing ourselves at all,” the Chancellor said calmly, so calmly it was creepy. But then, everything about the Chancellor was a little creepy.

  “I’m not saying you should reveal yourselves, but of the two, who would you rather have reveal your existence: Jillian or yourself?”

  “You took it upon yourself to give Dominic’s blood to be examined, and between you and Jillian, I want neither of you revealing our existence. Once I find her, she and the Damned she created will be eradicated. Unfortunately, you are a different matter entirely.”

  “Unfortunately?” I said warily.

/>   The Chancellor grinned. “I’d prefer to eradicate you as well, tying everything up nicely and tidily before I return home, but as rare as night bloods are to find, future Day Reapers are even more rare, nearly impossible to find. Despite your blood, however, your crimes against this coven and vampirity cannot go unpunished.” His eyes settled on Dominic. “I’ll have to make an example of someone else in your stead.”

  I opened my mouth to counter argue his logic, but the Chancellor was done talking. His arm was a blur of silver, his claws fully extended, his eyes sparkling with relish. Even if I could walk, which I couldn’t, I wasn’t fast enough to block the talons that bore down with invisible speed on Dominic’s prone body, that threatened to rip through his flesh and muscle and organs, that would spill his intestines across the stone floor. Dominic would be the example I was supposed to have been. He would pay the ultimate price for my misdeeds, for my betrayal. I’d never be able to live with myself.

  I may not have been fast enough, but Bex was not only faster than me, she was stronger. Without even a blur to reveal her movement, she was instantly, near magically, in front of Dominic, her hand catching the Chancellor’s wrist in midair.

  “If I may—” Bex said politely, almost cordially, as if they were having a conversation over tea.

  “You may not,” the Chancellor growled. His incisors had lengthened, along with his talons, so his mouth was crowded with too many too-sharp teeth. His lips curled back in anticipation.

  “Dominic is my ally, and Cassidy has proven beyond a doubt that—”

  “You waited over twenty years for Ian Walker only to lose Rene, your eye, and your heart—literally and figuratively. I don’t trust your judgment of others.”

  “Cassidy returned my physical heart to my body. She could have let me rot, but instead she—”

  “Release my wrist and step back,” the Chancellor growled, his voice grating.

  “—saved my life. She saved her brother at great personal risk, and though she is a handful, she is fiercely loyal once you’ve earned her trust. Dominic has earned—”

  “Move aside, or I will move you,” the Chancellor warned.

  “—that trust. Maiming him will make Cassidy DiRocco your permanent enemy. If you intend to earn her loyalty and have her stand beside you, as you now finally have me, you must show mercy. In this moment and toward Dominic Lysander, you must be merciful.”

  The Chancellor stilled.

  Bex didn’t release his wrist, and she didn’t step back.

  I didn’t dare even breathe. My heart was a desperate, caged creature inside my chest, pounding for escape.

  The Chancellor’s incisors shortened. His talons receded to fingernails, and he stepped back from Bex.

  “I will show mercy this once, in this moment, to Dominic Lysander.” The Chancellor enunciated very specifically, his words clipped. He met my gaze. “For you.”

  I wanted to argue that it didn’t matter if he showed Dominic mercy or not, I would never be loyal to him, but I swallowed my words. Bex had won. Dominic wasn’t going to be fileted in his own dining hall—at least not in this moment—and I wanted to keep it that way, even if it meant giving our dear High Lord Henry false hope.

  The Chancellor honed his gaze on Dominic. “I want the physical and forensic evidence of vampires and Damned eradicated. Memories must be erased or altered, witnesses who refuse to comply killed. Numerical data, photos, videos, social media—by this time tomorrow, it will no longer exist. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, my Lord,” Dominic said. His voice was a wheezing rasp, but this time, blood didn’t spray from the effort.

  “We play this like we always have: the right way, the way I thought you supported.”

  Dominic nodded deeply. “I will right the wrongs of this coven and restore order, I assure you.”

  The Chancellor leaned down until he was nose to nose with Dominic and patted his cheek. “Excellent. Because if you don’t, make no mistake, I will assume responsibility for this coven and everyone in it—” His eyes flicked to me. “—and restore order myself. Am I clear?”

  “Translucent,” Dominic said, his tone stoic and deadpan, but despite the delivery, even I could detect the fire of defiance in his word.

  I bit my lip to keep from smiling.

  The Chancellor narrowed his eyes, unsure if he was being mocked. Bex squeezed the Chancellor’s shoulder—similarly to the way I’d squeezed Dominic’s—and the Chancellor schooled his expression.

  “Until then.” The Chancellor straightened.

  Bex turned to us, her lips a dark slash of a grin. “Knowing you two, sooner rather than later.” She winked. At least, I think she winked with her remaining eye. “Have a good day rest.”

  The Chancellor, Bex, and their entourage disappeared in a veritable gust of wind, punctuated by the spring of Dominic’s wrist and ankle cuffs opening.

  Chapter 21

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Dominic said, not once breaking stride as I followed him through the coven. “I can’t even look at you!”

  He was walking humanly slow, but my scooter barely kept pace with his long stride. A soft, high-pitched whine came from its little motor; it needed a recharge, but as usual with everything in my life—my hip, my friends, and now even my appliances—I was pushing it to the breaking point.

  “I send my most trusted vampires to help you while I’m imprisoned by Day Reapers in my own coven, and this is the thanks I receive for my sacrifice,” he continued.

  There were so many wrongs I’d committed that Dominic could potentially be upset about—interrupting his proceedings with the Day Reapers, giving his blood to Dr. Chunn for DNA testing, being bitten and discovered as a fraud, although not the fraud we’d both thought I was—that I didn’t know how to respond. An “I told you so,” concerning Bex’s Day Reaper status didn’t seem appropriate at the moment no matter how badly I wanted to broach that particular subject, so for the second time in as many minutes, I swallowed my pride and kept my silence.

  Now that Dominic’s vocal cords had regenerated, he was saying enough for the both of us anyway.

  “Of all the ways to betray me, you use the gift I bestowed upon you, which was meant to protect you, to expose me.” Dominic stalked forward even faster, his voice a low, grinding snarl. “Unthinkable!”

  Ah ha, I thought. He’s most upset about my giving his blood to Dr. Chunn for DNA testing.

  “Expose you?” I asked, nearly shouting to project my voice down the hall. I tried to throttle faster to keep pace with his stride, but my efforts were wasted. If anything, the scooter was moving even slower. “I didn’t—”

  “You deliberately broke your promise to—” He whirled around to face me but sputtered to a halt when he realized how far back down the hall I was from him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I threw my hands in the air. “My scooter needs a recharge. I can’t move any faster, and I can’t walk, so unless you—”

  Dominic was suddenly beside me, scooping me from the scooter and into his arms.

  “Put me down!”

  “We don’t have time for this,” he said quietly, the underlying thunder in his growl more dangerous for its restraint. “My rooms are the only place safe enough from prying ears to continue this conversation, and I’d like to reach my rooms before nightfall.”

  “You can’t just—” I gasped, trembling from the pain shooting up my leg. “My leg—”

  He adjusted his hold, relieving some of the pressure. His wrists had healed enough that muscle and skin had formed over the bone, but the wounds were still freshly scabbed. I imagined his ankles were in much the same state. He was healing—slowly, but healing all the same.

  That was more than I could say about my leg.

  I sighed. “What’s happening at nightfall?”

  Dominic shot me a look. “If the pattern continues, another slaughter. We need to prepare ourselves, so when the Damned attack again, we can follow them back whence the
y came.”

  I bit my lip at his use of the word “whence.” Such formal vernacular didn’t bode well for his mood once we reached his rooms. “A stakeout?”

  “Precisely. It’s a better and more precise plan than revealing my DNA to the FBI,” Dominic hissed.

  “I didn’t—”

  Dominic covered my lips with his finger. “Whatever you are about to say, swallow it and regurgitate it when we reach my rooms.” He looked around. “Here is not the place.”

  I rolled my eyes but swallowed my words all the same. The coven was filled with beings whose extraordinary hearing could detect even the barest of whispers. Not to mention that we had absolutely no idea where Bex, the Chancellor, and their Day Reaper entourage were taking their day rest. They could still be somewhere in the coven, waiting. Watching.

  Listening.

  No matter how much I wanted to defend myself, I’d have to wait.

  We reached his rooms a few minutes later. Dominic knocked the door open with his elbow, strode in at a sharp clip, and promptly deposited me on the bed. Despite his fury, he took care to deposit me gently and prop my back and leg with various pillows. I tried to school my expression to hide the pain, but the set, pinched expression on his own face told me he knew exactly how much my leg and hip were killing me.

  Despite the pain, I was keenly aware of being back in his bed.

  I ignored the blush flaming my cheeks and asked cockily, “May I regurgitate now?”

  “No.” Dominic dropped to all fours and let loose a deep, pain-filled howl that shook the bed. His ears pointed, his teeth sharpened, his fangs lengthened, and his nails grew to talons. Both knees snapped back into hind legs with a wet double pop.

  I eased forward fractionally. “Dominic?”