Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  “Cassidy?” Ronnie asked tentatively.

  I pointed accusingly at Nathan. “I transformed him back into a night blood.”

  Ronnie nodded. “Yes, you did. For the most part.”

  “For the most part?” I asked, but my voice was more shriek than words. “What the hell does that mean? For the most part?”

  “No one could completely recover from the creature he became. There’s no going back. That’s what you told me, remember?” She tugged on my arm. “That and his maker is still alive. Dominic was supposed to kill Jillian, but she escaped before you could actually seal the transformation.”

  I turned my head and gaped at Ronnie. My jaw might never close again. “How do you—”

  She pulled harder on my arms when I didn’t budge. “He transformed. It happens. We need to move before more creatures come.”

  “It happens?” I asked, and even I could hear the hysteria in my voice. “It does not just happen. Did he transform at will? Did Jillian get to him again?” Ronnie yanked on my arm, violently this time, but I fisted my hand in her shirt and screamed, “What the fuck is going on with my brother?”

  “I don’t have any answers, Cassidy. You’re the one who lives with him.” She cocked her head as she watched him. He was looking back at us again and jerking his head to the side. If I didn’t know any better—which at this point it looked like I didn’t—he was telling us to run. “He seems cognizant now. When he’s finished with the creature, maybe you can ask him.”

  I let loose a noise, something between a laugh and a sob. “Sure, when he’s finished tearing out that creature’s throat, I’ll just ask him why he’s Damned again. Problem solved.”

  Ronnie shrugged. “Creature or not, he saved us. As long as he’s attacking them and not us, who cares?”

  “Me,” I whispered, but the outrage seeped out of me as I watched Nathan feed. “I care.”

  I hated to admit it, but if I put aside love and tender, maternal instinct, Ronnie was right: Nathan had saved us, and if he was on our side, we had other, more pressing problems to worry about than him being Damned again. But I couldn’t put those feelings aside. My little brother was once again in full, Damned vampire form, from the top of his shaggy black head to the tip of his taloned toes. Unlike last time, however, the recognition and love in his beautiful, Siberian Husky-blue eyes, were irrefutable.

  Nathan wasn’t completely Damned, but even that was a bitter pill to swallow. I thought I’d saved him, but here he was, saving me. I’d failed.

  I must have murmured as much under my breath, because Ronnie squeezed my shoulder. “That doesn’t look like failure to me.”

  I looked up again and blinked. Nathan was nearly back to normal, except for his claws. And the blood smeared across his mouth. And the creature dead on the road behind him, a neat, nearly surgical hole in its chest.

  I glanced between that hole and the blood smeared across Nathan’s mouth and gagged. He’d saved my life, protected me, and killed the creature trying to kill me. And then he’d eaten its heart.

  Nathan licked his lips, clearly savoring the taste like he’d been starved. Considering he hadn’t been able to keep anything, not even cereal, down for an entire week, he probably had been starving. Just not for cereal.

  I sighed hopelessly, and Nathan looked up sharply as if just realizing I was still there. He looked down at his claws, suddenly self-conscious, and wiped his mouth with his elbow, even though a moment before he’d wanted to lick his mouth clean.

  I didn’t know how to handle a half-Damned brother, but as with everything else, I’d fake it until I figured out how to fix it. “Good timing,” I said.

  He just stared at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, still trying for normal.

  His claws receded back into his very human hands. If it hadn’t been for the blood gloving his palms and smeared across his mouth, and the fact that he was completely naked in public, we might have passed as normal siblings.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ronnie gushed. “I tried to get here before they attacked, but by the time I reached her, they were already here and she—”

  Ronnie bit her lip, and I wondered if she was about to say, “—and she was falling from the top floor of a fifty-story building,” but couldn’t work up the nerve. It was a lot to admit to a man who had just killed a creature three times our size and devoured its heart.

  Nathan knelt next to me, eyeing me critically. “Are you okay?”

  Nothing about this was okay. “How did you know I needed you?” I asked.

  “I could hear them long before they actually attacked. I knew they were coming,” he said, his voice hesitant and uncertain.

  “Can you hear where they’re coming from and determine where they might be hiding during the day?”

  He shook his head and looked away.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you were still Damned?”

  “How could I tell you something I didn’t even know myself? I knew something was different. I was weak and starving, but food simply wasn’t appetizing. It made me sick. Then you came home with those vials of human blood, and suddenly I knew exactly what I was craving. And I hated myself. I don’t want to hurt more people. I don’t want to kill anyone else.” He looked down at his blood-gloved hands and shook his head. “But I don’t want to die either.”

  “You saved me, Nathan.” I reached out a hand to comfort him, but my hand shook. There was nowhere for me to touch—not his cheek, shoulder, arm, hand—that wasn’t drenched in blood. I let my hand fall to my side, the gesture forgotten.

  He jerked his thumb at the dead, unmoving creature behind him. “That creature was a night blood, just like you and me. He was a victim of Jillian’s lust for power, just like me, but unlike me, that creature didn’t have a sister to fight for him. He could have come back from that hell, just like you brought me back, but I didn’t give him that chance. I killed him, I ate his heart, and I loved every moment of it.”

  I shook my head. “There are too many of them now. Saving you was almost impossible, and you were just one Damned vampire. Now, there are at least a hundred Damned. We can’t possibly save them all, not when they’re all trying to kill us.”

  “Shouldn’t we try? You weren’t sure that you could save me, either, but I was worth the effort, wasn’t I?” Nathan looked out over the scene behind me. “Are they not all worth the effort?”

  I didn’t want to look, but God help me, I couldn’t help it. I craned my neck back, and sure enough, I regretted it the moment I did. The Damned were swarming the park and bathing in their victims’ blood. People were screaming and running and being dismembered. Their hearts were beating in their exposed chests, and I couldn’t bear to watch as one of the creatures nearest us severed its victim’s aorta with one clean slice of its claw, upended the artery into its mouth, and squeezed the heart until it burst in a gush of blood down its throat.

  Yet, I couldn’t bear to look away. Nathan was right on a philosophical level—all of the night bloods that Jillian had turned into the Damned were just victims who needed saving—but I couldn’t be everyone’s savior. I’d only been able to save Nathan because I’d known the man beneath the monster. Even then, I obviously hadn’t done a great job of it.

  It had taken Dominic, Bex, Rene, Jillian, and me to subdue and transform him, and every last one of us, including Nathan himself, nearly died that night. If saving Nathan had been nearly impossible, saving them all was unthinkable.

  “Before we plan how to save everybody, maybe we should just figure out how to save ourselves?” Ronnie asked. “I hate to point out the obvious, but the Damned are running out of living victims. At the rate they’re hunting, it won’t take them long to finish festival-goers and move on to fresh prey.” Ronnie gave me a look. “Us.”

  I cursed under my breath. Ronnie was right; we were sitting ducks, literally, since I couldn’t stand.

  Nathan and Ronnie started talking at the same time.

  “If you
found a way to save me, we can—”

  “If we move now, we can make it back to—”

  I ignored both of them as they fought for my attention. Dominic still hadn’t moved. His eyes were fixed on the night sky, his limbs limp, and his wounds still seeping blood in a slowly expanding puddle around him. At least the rate at which his wounds were bleeding had slowed. That wasn’t much comfort, but since I couldn’t determine his health by his breathing or heartbeat, I’d have to settle for his rate of blood loss.

  “Would both of you just shut up?” I snapped. I glanced at Nathan. “The night bloods who were transformed against their will into the Damned deserve to be saved. But that’s a fight for another night.” I turned my gaze on Ronnie. “Tonight, we survive.” I glanced at Dominic. “All of us.”

  “That’s a wonderful sentiment,” Nathan said drolly. “But how do you suppose we accomplish that?”

  “With a little help.” I took a deep breath. “Rafe! Sevris!”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You think if you just scream out their names, they’ll—”

  “You rang?” Rafe asked, appearing from the darkness directly behind Ronnie.

  Ronnie shrieked and ducked behind me.

  I grinned, but my smile was short lived. “Where’s Sevris? We need him, too. All hands on deck.”

  “Somewhere in the thick of things. It’s a losing battle,” he said, jabbing a thumb toward Prospect Park, “but we’d lose it faster with both of us gone.” Rafe’s eyes fell on Dominic as he spoke, and he froze. “No. It can’t be.”

  “It’s not,” I said dryly. Why was I the only one who believed in him? Granted, he looked like death—the hollows beneath his eyes and cheeks were sunken, his skin was stretched tight against the skeletal knobs of his temples and jawline, and the scar across his lips and chin was stark against the sickly, pale gray hue of his complexion—but that’s how he always looked until he fed. If he’d been truly dead, I’d be dead, too, thanks to the metaphysical bonds connecting us. Unless Dominic had found a way to sever those bonds without telling me—which, considering he’d created them without telling me, was a distinct possibility.

  I brushed aside that thought and its accompanying spike of panic and said, “Being injured this badly the night before the Leveling, he needs help healing.”

  Rafe rushed to him, scowling. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe—

  “He needs blood. Human blood,” Rafe said, locking eyes with me.

  Of course he does, I thought, cursing under my breath. My head was already swimming from my own injuries. “Can’t you just heal him? A few licks usually do the trick.”

  “A few licks usually do the trick for you. Vampire saliva heals human injuries,” Rafe corrected. “Lysander needs your blood to heal.”

  “Fine,” I said, reluctantly holding out my wrist. “If you puncture my skin, I’ll—”

  “No,” Dominic growled. His voice was nothing but a rattling rumble, but the command in his voice was undeniable. “Not Cassidy.”

  Rafe frowned and looked down on his Master. “You’re dying. You need blood to heal, and as your night blood it’s her duty to—”

  “She’s lost—” Dominic began, and then there was nothing but the swell of his growl. “—too much blood,” he finished.

  Rafe shook his head. “Cassidy is the only human here to heal you. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Cassidy!”

  I turned, dread punching through my stomach as Rowens ran toward us, Greta hot on his heels. I shook my head, but they were sprinting. There was no stopping them, and there was no stopping what I knew would happen.

  Rafe looked up, too, and smiled. “Never mind.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I warned, but I was too late.

  In the seconds between one precious heartbeat and the next, Rafe had disappeared from Dominic’s side and reappeared with Greta bound in his arms, her neck bared and inches from Dominic’s lips.

  “Dominic, don’t!” I screamed. He was injured and barely conscious, and considering his injuries and his weakened condition from the Leveling, he might not even know who he was about to bite. “It’s Greta! Please don’t, it’s Detective Greta Wahl.”

  Rowens had his gun up and aimed. “Freeze! Nobody move.”

  Greta’s eyes widened, but otherwise, she managed to keep her composure. “Dr. Nicholas Leander?”

  Dominic let loose a growl so loud it vibrated the insides of my own chest, but to his credit, he listened to Rowens. He didn’t move.

  “Dominic, take me instead,” I reasoned.

  “A little bite never killed anyone,” Rafe admonished. “Chill out.”

  “No one is biting anyone,” Rowens said, unflappable in the face of chaos. “Release Detective Wahl. Now.”

  “Don’t need the entire cow,” Dominic said breathlessly, “to make a hamburger.”

  “The cow dies nonetheless,” I reminded him.

  “Not this one,” he said.

  “Shoot him,” Greta said. Her eyes were locked on Rowens, her gaze just as cold and ready as his. “Don’t hesitate, Rowens. If you have it, take the damn shot.”

  “As if even silver bullets could stop us.” Rafe laughed under his breath.

  Dominic bared his fangs, about to strike.

  “The greater good,” I reminded him. “Greta has a sticky memory. She’ll never forget this, no matter how you twist it.”

  He hesitated.

  “She’s on our team, and we thought you were on ours,” I pleaded. “Don’t prove me wrong now.”

  Dominic released a thready growl. “Release her.”

  Rafe’s eyes widened. “You don’t want Cassidy. You don’t want this human.” He shook his head, shocked. “You were never this picky before.”

  Dominic met Rafe’s eyes. He didn’t have to ask twice. Rafe released her.

  I exhaled in shaky relief.

  Greta backed away from Rafe warily. She knew how quickly he could move. Keeping her distance wouldn’t save her, which was probably why Rowens hadn’t lowered his gun.

  Greta glanced at me. “What the fuck?”

  “I didn’t think you would believe me,” I said.

  Greta’s eyes darted toward the dead creature lying on the ground behind Rafe, then to Dominic lying on the ground at Rafe’s feet—the rumbling growl from his chest now a constant rattle—then to Ronnie next to me, propping me upright, looking more and more like a rotting corpse than a vampire, and shook her head. “After tonight, I’ll believe anything.”

  I swallowed. When baby birds get pushed from the nest, they either fall or fly. I’d been nursing this scoop for weeks—growing it slowly, laboring overtime in the long hours before sunrise, and nesting the facts and forensics in place as cushion for the hard truth. I’d done everything I could in preparation for this moment.

  Time to take the plunge.

  “There are some humans, myself included, with a rare blood condition capable of transforming rather than clotting when mixed with the blood of another species. This species appears human, but they have enhanced, animal-like senses, incredible strength and healing abilities, and they feed on blood,” I said, evading the truth in the smoothest, surest way I knew how: sticking to the facts. “But if our blood mixes with a creature too weak to complete a proper transformation, we become one of the Damned,” I said, gesturing to the ten-foot-tall, scaled, fanged creature for courage.

  Greta snorted. “Next, you’ll tell me they’re allergic to the sun.”

  My heart dropped. Even with everything in place—my facts and forensics, my ten-foot-tall proof lying at her feet—the truth was too large to swallow. She didn’t believe me.

  “Is this really happening right now?” Rafe asked. “Are we being exposed to humans by our own night blood?”

  Dominic growled.

  I bit my lip, knowing I’d gone too far. And yet, somehow, I’d not gone nearly far enough.

  I opened my mouth, the mix of anxiety and anticipation like a
wasp buzzing inside my heart, but Nathan placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, silencing me.

  “Maybe we should finish this conversation in private,” he murmured.

  I followed his gaze, and the buzzing in my heart turned to stings. I didn’t know which was worse: nearly a hundred Damned vampires flooding from Prospect Park—finished with the festival-goers, like Ronnie had predicted, they’d left the park grounds to hunt new prey—or Lord High Chancellor Henry descending from the night sky, Bex and their flock of Day Reapers in V formation behind them.

  The unyielding expression on Lord High Chancellor Henry’s face made my insides shrivel. I didn’t know how he knew, but with that one look, I had the sudden, horrific realization that he knew I’d planned to expose the vampires to the public, that I’d in fact planted my seeds, watered them fondly, and, with my admission to Greta, encouraged my first flower to bloom.

  Based on the chiseled tick of his clamped jaw and the growing length of his fisted talons, I gathered that he didn’t just intend to destroy the garden. He intended to destroy the gardener along with it, so the seeds I’d tended and sprouted would never grow again.

  Bex followed in his wake, her expression serene, nearly bored, until her gaze swept over our motley party of injured, half-starved, vampire and human rebels. If I wasn’t mistaken, she rolled her eye. The sequin-covered patch covering her other eye sparkled under the festival lights.

  Beneath the shadow of Day Reapers descending on us from above, the charging riot of Damned vampires drove toward us by land. We were the only beings stupid enough, or alive enough, to be left standing on the street, our hearts beating like a siren song within our chests, beckoning them.

  After everything I’d experienced with Nathan when he was Damned—after surviving the battle that had nearly killed all of us and saved him, or so I’d thought—and everything I’d witnessed from Jillian and her unyielding drive for power, I would have said that her army of Damned were nearly invincible. Five against one, we’d liked our odds against Nathan, yet Nathan had almost won, and Jillian had escaped in better health than she’d arrived in.