Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  The odds were not in our favor this time.

  Dominic was injured, Ronnie was still a liability despite being a vampire, Rafe was unpredictable, Sevris was still MIA, Harroway was gone, and Greta and Rowens were as fragile as I was, if more mobile. The only one of us physically capable of going head to head with the Damned was my little brother, but just because he could kill one Damned didn’t mean he could single-handedly protect us from the stampede of them raging toward us.

  The Day Reapers landed in front of the Damned, facing the swarm and blocking their charge. Like an unstoppable current meeting an unmovable dam, the Damned and the Day Reapers collided.

  We weren’t alone. And the Damned weren’t invincible.

  Lord High Chancellor Henry was a force of nature. His lethal claws ripped through the Damned’s front line, and his silver claws didn’t just scratch their scales. They gouged through them. The Damned shrieked and broke formation. The creatures behind them tripped and stumbled over their fellow Damned in the confusion as their front line fell.

  Bex took advantage of the break and clawed through their ranks. I’d witnessed Bex’s unimaginable speed and awe-inspiring power before, but I’d also witnessed her nearly die, her speed and strength no match for Nathan’s when he’d been Damned.

  Bex displayed no such weaknesses now. Her talons gouged their scales as easily as a hot knife slicing through butter. Her fangs drove deep into skin and muscle and tore through throats in a spatter of blood and gore and thicker things. Her speed and strength were unmatched. This time, with a hoard of strangers vying for our beating hearts instead of my brother, I couldn’t help but feel relief in the face of their suffering and deaths because it wasn’t our suffering. It wasn’t our deaths.

  “Tell me they’re on our team,” Greta muttered.

  If the Day Reapers had been led by Bex, perhaps. But they weren’t. My relief quickly soured. “No,” I said warily, “they’re not.”

  With the Day Reapers fighting our battle at the moment, we had a short reprieve, but eventually, the Day Reapers would force the Damned to retreat back to wherever they’d come from. And when they did, we needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else but here, still sitting ducks.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  Greta shook her head. “We can’t. We need to finish what we started here. The trackers didn’t work. Their skin simply repelled the devices.”

  “Not one tracker remained inside their host?” Rowens asked.

  “Not a one. A hell of a lot of good they’ll do us now, scattered across the field instead of tracking their monsters.”

  “What the hell happened?” Rowens snapped, turning on me. “I thought they were silver-plated. I thought you knew what you were doing!”

  “They are silver-plated,” I said calmly, trying to keep my cool as all eyes turned on me. “They should have worked. Silver-plated bullets worked on the Damned before, so I don’t know why silver-plated trackers didn’t work now.”

  Dominic opened his mouth to speak, but all that emerged at first was a low growl. Slowly, painfully, the gravel of his growl turned into words. “Jillian. Has my powers and strength now. Didn’t think. Damned have power and strength Nathan didn’t have.”

  “Whether they’re tracked or not, we need to move,” Nathan said. “Now.”

  “We risked our lives to track these things. I’ll be damned if all of this was done in vain.” Greta snapped. “Figure it out. We’re not leaving until we do.”

  “Then you’ll be the only one here to face the Day Reapers,” Nathan snapped right back. “’Cause I plan to live through tonight. We can figure out a new plan and fight them tomorrow. Tonight, we escape with our lives, and gratefully. Others weren’t so lucky.”

  “Day Reapers?” Greta asked warily.

  I didn’t like the feeling of pointless defeat any more than Greta did, especially considering that Harroway had given his life for this stakeout, but I agreed with Nathan wholeheartedly. If we didn’t survive today, who would fight them tomorrow?

  As I watched Lord High Chancellor Henry and Bex fight and win against the Damned, something snapped into place. The Day Reapers could penetrate the Damned’s scales. Their talons and teeth left permanent wounds, or at least wounds that didn’t heal instantaneously.

  And I was a potential Day Reaper.

  The idea probably wouldn’t work. We would likely be wasting our time, precious time better spent creating distance between us and the Day Reapers, but we wouldn’t have another opportunity like this. The Day Reapers were distracted, fighting the Damned, and the Damned were distracted, defending against the Day Reapers.

  I glanced at Rowens. “Do you have any trackers left?”

  He nodded. “When we realized how high they could jump, I stopped shooting. We were only giving away our position.”

  “Unload a round, please,” I said.

  Rowens glanced at Dominic, considering his options. To do as I asked, he’d have to put up his gun.

  “Dominic is too weak to attack, and Rafe won’t ignore a direct order,” I reasoned. I pointed at the Damned and the Day Reapers battling behind him. “It’s them we need to worry about.”

  I could see the indecision in Rowens’ gaze turn to reluctance. He put up his handgun and stepped forward as he unsnapped a round from the tracking device.

  “Coat the tracker in my blood and then shoot it.”

  Rowens lifted his eyebrows. “How will that help?”

  “It might not, but it’s worth a shot.” I smiled to myself. “One last shot, literally. My blood might keep the wound from healing and therefore from expelling the round, but whether it sticks or expels, we move out. Once you shoot, there’s no telling what the Damned will do. Last time, one of them jumped fifty floors to kill the shooter,” I said quietly.

  “Move out where?” Rafe asked. “Even if the Day Reapers beat back the Damned, they can follow us anywhere. There’s nowhere safe on this earth to hide from them if they want us found.”

  “There may be one place,” Nathan said, meeting my gaze.

  My apartment, I thought, my hopes rising momentarily.

  I squashed that hope before it could take root, because no matter how much it chafed to admit it, Rafe was right. Even Walker’s house, impenetrable by Dominic and supposedly the safest place against vampires, had fallen to Bex. I’d fortified my apartment against vampires, hoping to create a measure of safety and privacy, but even Walker’s house, which had been fortified over two generations of night bloods to become a veritable fortress, couldn’t withstand the onslaught of a Day Reaper.

  “My coven,” Dominic rasped.

  I snorted. “The Day Reapers can enter your coven. They’ve proven that.”

  “They enter everywhere,” he said, breathily. “Safest in numbers. With coven. Show of strength.”

  I pursed my lips, unconvinced, but we didn’t have time to argue. The Day Reapers were herding the Damned back steadily, which was good, but when they won, there would be nothing to distract the Day Reapers from turning on us.

  I thought of Lord High Chancellor Henry’s thunderous expression as he’d descended on us and shuddered.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said. I lifted my shirt to expose the wounds on my side for Rowens.

  “There’s not much blood there to work with,” Rowens commented blandly.

  “What are you talking about? I—” I glanced down at my side and stared, shocked into silence. My wounds were healed.

  I narrowed my eyes at the growing puddle of blood around Dominic. He wasn’t bleeding from his injuries alone. He’d used our metaphysical connection to take mine into himself, too.

  I cursed. “I need a knife.” I looked around in the telling silence. “Anyone?”

  Rafe smiled. “You can have my fangs, but you must heal Dominic if I help you coat the tracker.”

  Dominic growled, and the noise sounded painful, like his insides were tearing apart. “Don’t—”

  �
��Agreed,” I said, holding my wrist out for his bite. I’d planned to help heal Dominic anyway, so agreeing for Rafe’s cooperation wasn’t much of a concession.

  Rafe smiled, not unlike the Cheshire Cat—all fangs and anticipatory pleasure—and before I could even blink, his fangs were buried gum deep in my wrist.

  I swallowed back a scream, more startled at the suddenness of his strike than in pain, until he didn’t let go.

  “Rafe?” Blood was running down my wrist—precious blood that I could use to heal Dominic, coat the bullet, or keep inside my body. “You have to let go,” I reminded him.

  His tongue flicked out to catch the stream of blood before it could drip on the asphalt.

  Dominic growled.

  “Back off,” Nathan said. As he stepped forward to confront Rafe, I noticed his ears had pointed and his nose had flattened at the front and flared at the tip.

  Rafe ignored both Dominic and Nathan, his eyes lost in my wound. “You smell like cinnamon and sweet spice. Like home,” he growled.

  Shit, I thought, but before I could warn Rowens to re-aim his handgun, Rafe sealed his lips over the wound and sucked a long pull of my blood into his mouth.

  The world tilted and my vision blurred into a million starbursts.

  Nathan tackled Rafe away from me, forcing his fangs, still embedded in my skin, to tear my wrist.

  Dominic bellowed, “Ssssevrisss!” in a hissing rattle.

  Sevris was beside Nathan in an instant, helping to dislodge Rafe from my wrist before he could take a second swallow.

  Rafe thrashed, trying to fight past him to reclaim my wrist even as Sevris’ claws gouged deep into his arms, holding him back.

  “Control yourself, Rafe Devereaux,” Sevris commanded in a cold voice.

  Rafe blinked several times and, after a moment, regained his head. He looked away nearly apologetically. “I’ve never tasted anything like her. None of the other night bloods smell that tempting, that irresistible,” he said, and by the end of his sentence, his tone had transformed from contrite to accusatory.

  I ignored him, and before I lost any more blood than necessary, offered my wrist to Rowens.

  “Coat the tracker,” I said.

  “Won’t work,” Dominic said, his voice a frail thread.

  Rowens stepped forward, tracker in hand, and dipped the tracker’s projectile in my wound, coating it from top to tail in my blood.

  “Well, we’re about to find out.” When Rowens was done, I squeezed my wrist to help staunch the flow of my bleeding.

  As Rowens reloaded his weapon, I looked out over Prospect Park. The Day Reapers had won against the Damned, and those who still remained were tucking tail and fleeing, disappearing into the night even as we spoke. They leapt into the air, soaring through the night sky—more flying than jumping, even if their size and stature belied that ability. Rowens would only have moments to aim and fire.

  “They’ll be gone in another minute,” I warned.

  “I’ve got it,” Rowens said, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. He was breathing, deep and even, and then he exhaled slowly. Just as I was about to tell him to pull the damn trigger, he fired.

  The projectile was too fast for me to track its flight, but I saw one of the last Damned still standing wince as the round hit behind its shoulder blade. Rowens had aimed at one of the Damned’s already existing claw rakings from the Day Reapers, which was good forethought on his part, but before we could determine whether the tracker would stick or expel itself from the wound, the Damned leapt from the ground and soared through the midnight sky, following its brethren high over the cityscape and disappearing to wherever it is they hid the day away.

  As the last of the Damned fled, Lord High Chancellor Henry turned toward us. His expression hadn’t changed. He’d arrived, fought for his life, and killed several dozen Damned vampires, but his chiseled jaw was still clamped and the growing length of his fisted talons still showed his displeasure. But now, enhancing the appearance of unyielding anger, was the spatter of blood and gore from his kills. His left cheek was dotted with blood spray, and his right was painted with it. His clothes were ruined and soaked with thicker things. I didn’t want to look at those things too closely, but neither could I look away from his expression. In his eyes, we were already dead as punishment for our transgressions; it was simply his duty to carry out the sentence.

  Bex was suddenly at Lord High Chancellor Henry’s side, her lips moving against his ear.

  Something in his expression changed. It stiffened slightly. I froze, too scared and too resigned to dare hope that whatever Bex was whispering to him would make him reconsider the horrors he’d had in store for us. What could possibly make a man as infallible and unyielding as Lord High Chancellor Henry Lynell Horrace DeWhitt change his mind?

  He nodded in response to whatever Bex had whispered—a curt, barely discernable incline of his head. He never untrained his eyes from the target slightly behind me and to my left. His eyes blazed with that same unyielding promise of retribution, and I knew that whatever Lord High Chancellor Henry had just agreed to, it hadn’t pertained to whomever his eyes were fixed on with the heat of a thousand suns.

  I turned my head to see the target of his wrath and caught my breath.

  Dominic.

  When I turned back to face the Chancellor and Bex, they were gone.

  Chapter 27

  Nathan was watching the empty night sky, the same as me, waiting for the thunder and lightning from Lord High Chancellor Henry’s unfathomable power to strike us all dead. But the longer we waited, the longer the silence stretched, and the more I felt like we were standing in the eye of the storm.

  “I said it before, and I’ll say it again,” Nathan whispered to me under his breath, “we need to get out of here.”

  I nodded. “You read my mind.”

  “No one is going anywhere,” Greta said. “Ambulances are on their way, and I have questions. So many damn questions my head is spinning.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, but I had the distinct impression it was to cover the fact that she was trembling. “Everyone better get damn comfortable.”

  “Cassidy and I,” Dominic said, his voice brittle and biting, “must return to the coven.”

  “And where might that be?” Greta asked, her voice saccharine sweet.

  Dominic growled.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “You can’t just disappear into the night like everyone else. I have questions, and you’d better have answers. Lots of answers.”

  Sevris stepped up next to Dominic. “Your will is my command, Master,” he said, and he wasn’t talking to Greta.

  Rafe joined Sevris at Dominic’s side, eyeing Rowens and Greta thoughtfully. “There’s been so much slaughter tonight, we might not even need to entrance the medics when they arrive if we match the injuries the Damned inflicted on their victims.”

  It took me a moment to understand the line of Rafe’s reasoning, but when it hit me, I froze. Greta and Rowens wouldn’t forget what they’d witnessed tonight. The only way to silence them would be to kill them, and everyone would think their loss was just part of tonight’s slaughter if their hearts were ripped from their chests, too.

  Nathan stepped in front of Rowens and Greta without me having to ask. He met Rafe’s eyes squarely, his features already shifting in preparation. “You can try.”

  I turned to Dominic, knowing that Rafe and Sevris would act on his command, and found Dominic staring at me, his expression inscrutable. He’d warned me over and over again that Greta’s stubbornness and sticky memory would get her killed, but he also knew that if he killed her, no matter the provocation, our relationship—partnership, whatever crazy bond that had inexplicably grown between us—would be permanently severed.

  “Convince her,” Dominic said.

  My breath caught. He was giving me a chance. He was giving us a chance.

  I didn’t know how to convince Greta, but meeting Dominic’s gaze in that mome
nt, looking into the piercing depths of his icy eyes, over his proud, protruding brow and across the sneer of his scarred lips, I felt like I could do anything.

  I turned to Greta and took a deep breath. “Dominic’s right.”

  Greta raised an eyebrow. “And I’m sure you’re about to tell me why.”

  I nodded. “Until you and I have time to talk, to plan how best to release this—” I waved my hand at the ten-foot-tall, fanged, scaled monster lying dead on the ground behind me, “—to the public, I think it’s best we let Dominic and his coven do what they do best.”

  Greta raised her eyebrows. “And what do they do, exactly?”

  “They alter the evidence to make it look like something plausible, something the public can digest and understand.” I gave her a look. “Something besides Damned monsters, Day Reapers, and vamp—” I swallowed my tongue, but when Greta narrowed her eyes on me, I finished, “—and nocturnal creatures that drink human blood.”

  Greta digested my reasoning for a moment. “Like animal bites that suddenly look like clean slices from knives?” she asked.

  I bit my lip. “Yes, exactly like that.”

  “You knew about all this five weeks ago,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s crazy. How is any of this even possible?”

  “Show her,” Dominic said.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Sevris, will you please demonstrate your healing abilities for Detective Wahl? Cassidy has suffered her injuries as punishment long enough.”

  “Really?” I asked. The jubilant possibility of being healed made my voice squeak.

  The lines bracketing Dominic’s mouth tightened, and I remembered what Dominic had once said about never willingly or unnecessarily allowing me to suffer. He was accustomed to healing me. Leaving me immobile for so long may have actually hurt him more than it did me.

  “Yes, really.”

  Sevris stared at Dominic blankly. “Master?”

  “I’ll do it,” Rafe interrupted enthusiastically.

  Dominic ignored Rafe and continued to stare at Sevris. “Heal her.”

  “In front of humans,” Sevris said, the flat tone of his voice speaking volumes.