Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  “Fuck.” I ran my hands through my hair and paced my rooftop, feeling desperate. I’d thought that giving people knowledge would help them protect themselves, but I was wrong. Greta knew enough to fight but not enough to win, and we would all pay the price. The ultimate price.

  Unless I got to Jillian first.

  Chapter 33

  I sat in a cab at the base of 432 Park Avenue, looking up the enormous height of the tallest residential building in New York City, and trembled. Pedestrians hustled down the sidewalk, bustling around parked cars, cabs, and each other; cabbies honked, people whistled and waved for rides, and food vendors shouted “order up!” to hungry buyers. My cabbie smoked a cigarette, the stink of his smoke wafting to me in the backseat despite his open window. He tapped a finger against the steering wheel as I hesitated. People were living their lives as if today was any other day instead of their last, their hustle and bustle uninterrupted by the creatures hiding on the rooftop above where they stood. I watched dozens of people pass by, completely unaware of the destruction this city was about to face.

  Completely unaware of the danger I was about to face for them.

  I needed a damn good reason to approach Jillian, but I didn’t have to look far to find dozens of good reasons.

  The cabbie finished his smoke and flicked its butt out the window. “You’re going on twenty dollars, ma’am. Should we continue to park?” he asked. “I am running the meter.”

  I glanced at the meter and then back at the cabbie through the rearview mirror and sighed. I was only delaying the inevitable. The Damned might be hiding on 432 Park Avenue’s roof, but Jillian wasn’t, and it was Jillian that I needed to confront. If I hesitated too long, Greta would be here with her SWAT team and tear gas before I could find Jillian, and I’d have missed my window of opportunity.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing the cabbie twenty-five. “I appreciate you waiting.”

  The cabbie nodded and took the cash.

  I stepped out of the cab, waited with envy as the cabbie turned the corner, driving away from me and 432 Park Avenue, driving away from destruction and danger and the insanity of the world as I’d come to know it, and I walked under the building’s overhang toward the front entrance.

  No sooner had I crossed into the shade of the overhang than something with the speed and strength of a Mack truck slammed into my body, drove me back into the shadowed alley beside the building, and pinned me up against the wall.

  The back of my head cracked on the brick, and a sense of déjà vu coupled with the blow to my head was disorienting. I blinked slowly, trying to find my bearings. I was dangling a foot off the ground, and the being who had slammed into me was holding me there by my upper arms.

  I kicked out. My blows landed against something solid, unmovable, and unbreakable. I may as well have been kicking the brick wall behind me. Its claws dug deep into my arms as I struggled, and no matter how I kicked and writhed and fought, I remained pinned up against the brick, my arms aching.

  My vision finally focused enough that the double blur in front of me solidified into one image, but I must have hit my head harder than I’d thought. I laughed at my own foolishness. I never should have wasted time worrying how I would find Jillian. I should have known that, the instant I stepped into the shadows, she would find me.

  Jillian’s blue-and-ice eyes were identical to Dominic’s nocturnal gaze, and the memories of how I’d met Dominic all those weeks ago flooded through my mind: I’d been hit by the force of a Mack truck and pressed up against the wall of an alley just like this one, and he’d compelled me with his gaze and irresistible will to forget I’d ever met him.

  But I hadn’t forgotten, and now he was as vitally a part of me as my own beating heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Jillian whispered. “In another time, in another life, we would have been allies. Friends even.”

  Without further ado, small talk, or warning, Jillian dipped her face into the bend of my neck, pierced my skin with her fangs, and drank a long pull of my blood.

  I gritted my teeth against the sudden, sharp pain.

  “Don’t,” I said. “We can come to terms. That’s why I’m here. Dominic agrees that the public should know that vampires exist. You don’t have to kill more people to get what you want.”

  Jillian pulled back to meet my gaze. Her bite had been neat and precise, and only a small smear of blood stained the right corner of her mouth. She licked it clean with a quick flick of her tongue. Her hair hadn’t grown much since we’d last met. It was still thick and healthy, but pixie short. Her bold, angular facial features and big, doe eyes suited the hairstyle. Just last week, she’d been a skeleton, literally, when we’d unearthed her from her imprisonment. Now she was back to full strength, more powerful and more beautiful than ever. We’d released her to save my brother, and here I was, confronting her in the attempt to save us all.

  “You can get exactly what you want—freedom from the darkness—without killing more people. Call off your Damned, Jillian. You win,” I said, and with the saying of her first name, I felt a tiny thread I hadn’t felt all week pull taut inside my mind. If my night blood was finally, truly replenished, I might have enough power to entrance her.

  Jillian shook her head. “Even if that were true, Dominic would only agree to expose vampires to the public because he lacks the power necessary to stop me. And if that’s the case, why would I stop now when I’ve already won?”

  “It is true. I’m writing an article. We can hold an international press conference. You can officially come out of the closet,” I insisted. “Why continue fighting when you’ve already won?” I countered.

  She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, I realized that I’d convinced her, but by the strained tone in her voice, I wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing. “He’d rather break the very vow of secrecy that turned me against him rather than risk losing you.”

  I blinked. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “It has everything to do with you. He couldn’t convince you to stop writing your article, could he?”

  “No,” I said, not liking where this conversation was heading.

  “He could stop you, if he really wanted to. He couldn’t kill you because of the bonds he’s created with you, but if he really wanted to, he could imprison you.”

  I snorted. “Dominic wouldn’t imprison me.”

  Jillian stared at me, the emotion in her gaze unfathomable. “He imprisoned me.”

  “You betrayed him. You led an uprising against his rule, attacked him, and left him to burn in the sun. You deserved imprisonment,” I said.

  “All I ever wanted was for him to release us from the prison of our secret existence. I wanted him to lead us to freedom, and if he had, I would have followed him to the ends of the earth. I loved him. But he turned his back on me when I tried to expose our existence. If he wouldn’t lead the coven into the light, someone had to rise to the occasion, and who better than his second?” She tightened her grip on my upper arms, embedding her talons deeper into my flesh. I inhaled sharply. “But you,” she continued, “you plan to write an article exposing our secret existence—the very secret that pounded a permanent wedge between him and me—and did he punish you? Did he lock you in a box for you to rot?”

  “It isn’t that simple. It took some convincing for him to—”

  “Convincing?” Jillian laughed. The bitterness in her laugh was piercing. “I had decades to convince him. You bent him to your will in mere weeks.”

  “I didn’t bend anything. If you’ve known him for decades, you know that Dominic’s will is unbendable.”

  Jillian nodded. “I know, and as I suspected, the difference is you. He would lock me away to rot, risk losing his coven, endure the Leveling without the support of his second, and face his final death rather than break the secret of our existence, but he won’t risk losing you.” She shook her head, the sorrow in her gaze shattering.

  “I’m sorry for ev
erything you suffered,” I whispered. “But we can do right by this city. There won’t be anything left for you to rule if you don’t stop.”

  “Dominic is allowing you to expose the existence of vampires as a last-ditch effort to save you, himself, and this city from me, unwillingly giving me exactly what I wanted in the first place: the secret of our existence exposed. But if I stop the Damned, alleviating the risk to you and this city, what guarantee do I have that Dominic will still allow our existence to be exposed?” Jillian smiled, and her teeth were stained with my blood. “Quite the conundrum.”

  “You have my guarantee,” I said. “I promise, no matter what, that I will write my article and expose the existence of vampires.”

  Jillian’s expression softened. “I believe you. No matter what, you would write your article. But I know Dominic, and without the physical risk of losing you, he would prevent you from publishing that article or, at the very least, prevent anyone from remembering that you published it. If I stop now, Dominic will go back on his word, and I’ll be right back where I began, hiding and suffocating in secrets and darkness.”

  “That’s not true. Dominic wouldn’t—”

  “It’s a possibility, and that’s enough for me. After everything I’ve done and how far I’ve come and everything I’ve endured and suffered and strived for to come this close to becoming Master vampire of New York City, I can’t turn back now. No matter what you say or promise, I will stay the course.”

  My temper snapped. “If you’re willing to destroy New York City just to rule it, you don’t deserve that power.”

  “Fortunately for me, it doesn’t matter what you think I deserve. It only matters what I can take.”

  “Fortunately for me, you can’t take shit. You need to kill Dominic to permanently usurp his power, and Dominic is safely tucked away where no one can hurt him—not the Damned, not the Day Reapers, not even you.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cassidy, but I don’t need to hurt Dominic to kill him,” Jillian said, and the genuine sadness in her expression and tone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Thanks to your metaphysical bond with him, I just need to kill you.”

  Jillian struck, embedding her fangs in my neck before I could even sense her movement. I screamed and fought back, but I was no match for her strength. She sucked on the wound, guzzling swallow after swallow of my blood. My head spun as I tried to sort my options: she wouldn’t listen or see reason; the silver nitrate spray and pen stakes in my pocket were out of reach; and the watch on my wrist was trapped to my side by her unyielding grip on my arms. Without backup to help me, I only had one last weapon with which to stop her.

  “Jillian Allister,” I intoned, using the full command of my voice and the power of my blood coursing through my veins, a part of me now inside her, to take back control. “Stop feeding from me, and—”

  Jillian stopped feeding, compelled by my direct command, but I never finished my sentence. She bit into the front of my throat and sank her fangs deep into my esophagus. In one smooth, backward rip, Jillian tore out my throat.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but a geyser of blood sprayed from my throat instead. I tried to cover the wound with my hands, instinctively wanting to staunch the bleeding, but Jillian was still holding me off the ground by my upper arms, preventing my movement, and her hold was unbreakable. She watched as I struggled, my screams nothing more than the opening and closing of my mouth and horrible, wrenching coughs that spewed blood across her porcelain features. My struggles quickly became twitches, and her grip on my arms finally loosened as my movements became sloppy and uncoordinated. My body wilted in her embrace.

  She eased my body carefully from the wall and laid me gently on the ground, taking care with the back of my head. Between the metaphysical bonds tying my life to Dominic and my own ability as a night blood to survive catastrophic blood loss, there was no telling how long I could hang on to my last thread, assuming Jillian didn’t go so far as to rip my heart out. I doubted even my bonds with Dominic could help me survive wounds that catastrophic.

  Jillian leaned over me, the talons of her thumb and forefinger raised over my face mere millimeters from my open, exposed eyes.

  If I could have moved, I would have flinched away. If I could have breathed, I would have held my breath, but I couldn’t do anything as the razor-sharp, pointed blades of her talons passed over my face. Miracle of all miracles, she used the soft pads of her fingers to tenderly close my eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Cassidy,” she whispered, and I could feel the soft breeze of her breath against my cheek. “In another life, we could have been sisters in this coven, but circumstances being what they are, my heart is too hardened for sisters. I must look beyond the now to the future, a future in which I am Master.”

  I couldn’t breathe through what was left of my throat. My lungs were drowning in more blood than I could cough up, and my brain, which wanted to fight and scream and flee until my last breath, couldn’t get my body to move, not one muscle. Maybe because this was my last breath.

  “We are all just extensions of our Masters,” she continued, “forced to bend to their will as surely as their own limbs. I learned early on that if I didn’t agree with my Master, the only way to attain what I wanted was to become Master myself.”

  Jillian’s voice was strangely soft, almost choked. Something warm and wet dripped onto my cheek, and I realized that Jillian was crying over me.

  “I know my uprising seems like betrayal because I was Dominic’s second. All those decades ago, he saved my life, but just as surely as he saved me, he stole everything from me: my love, my freedom, and my dreams of a better existence. I finally have a chance to claim my right to his power and regain the life I dreamed of having. That’s what the Leveling is for, to equal the playing field between Master and coven, so a Master whose reign should end can end.” Jillian took a deep, trembling breath, her voice wobbly and wet as she struggled to speak past her emotion. “I actually feel something I’d never thought to feel again, Cassidy. I feel hope. But I’m so sorry that reclaiming my life means taking yours.”

  Jillian swiped the soft pad of her thumb across my cheek. I couldn’t see because she’d closed my eyes, but I knew how long and lethal her claws were, bare millimeters from my face. Maybe she knew I was still clinging to a thread of life. Maybe now that she’d spilled her soul and confessed her sobbed sorrys, she’d flay open my chest and rip out my heart to finish me, and Dominic by proxy, and seal her position as Master of New York City.

  “Be at peace, little night blood. No more pain.”

  Her hand left my cheek, and she was suddenly gone.

  A long time passed before I finally opened my eyes. I’d like to think I was being cautious, that I knew she might double back to check the permanence of my demise or that her Damned might report my movement from their watch atop 432 Park Avenue, but the truth was that the sun had shifted considerably higher in the sky in the moment I’d closed my eyes: I’d lost consciousness.

  I drifted in and out; my phone vibrating in my pocket jogged me awake several times as I watched the sun move steadily across the sky and the buildings’ shadows turn and lengthen. Someone must have discovered my absence, or maybe Greta was just pissed that I hadn’t followed her orders; my phone seemed to vibrate every five minutes, and eventually, it became a constant vibration.

  The sun was past noon when I could no longer feel my phone’s vibrations. I could hear it shake against the sidewalk, but my body was numb. Without the feel of my phone, my drifts into unconsciousness became longer, and my vision, though the sun was directly overhead, became darker. I imagined the Damned staring down the height of 432 Park Avenue into the crevice of the alley with their honed, sharp, focused vision, grimacing in glee at my death. I didn’t know if it was my lack of strength to keep my eyes open or the lack of blood to remain conscious, but either way, darkness swallowed me in an unfeeling, unseeing, inescapable wave.

  Chapter 34

&nbs
p; “Cassidy!”

  I heard the shout of his voice before I smelled the Christmas pine of his scent, but it was his scent that pulled me from the darkness. That and the smell of roasting meat.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the bright blue sky in confusion. Maybe Jillian had won; maybe we were both dead, and in our heaven, Dominic could live in sunshine.

  I tried to sit up, but my numb body didn’t recognize how to move. I tried to speak, and although I swear I could feel the movement of my neck muscles, nothing came out but a squirt of blood. If Dominic’s heaven included sunlight, mine surely included being whole and healthy.

  I was still lying broken in the alley beside 432 Park Avenue. Either I was hallucinating or Dominic was searching for me in daylight.

  “Cassidy!”

  His shout was louder this time, closer than it had been a moment before.

  I opened my mouth, instinctively wanting to respond to his call, but again, I couldn’t produce anything but wet gurgles and vertical spurts of blood.

  Someone coughed, someone besides me, but the noises were just as wet and gurgling as the coughs coming from my own throat.

  “Oh, Cassidy,” Dominic said, his voice no longer shouting and desperate. He sounded grave.

  I opened my eyes, not sure when they’d closed, and stared up at Dominic. Although the alley was in shadow, the glow of the sun rippled the air around him, giving him a halo. That effect, coupled with the fierce, rage-filled expression darkening his features, made him look like an avenging angel hovering over me. Or maybe I was just that relieved to see him.

  Dominic’s expression was frantic as his eyes scanned over me, taking stock of my injury. I tried to speak, desperate to explain, but without a throat, without vocal cords, my muscles contracted, and my throat gurgled with blood instead of words.

  Dominic coughed, and blood spewed in an arc over me. Some of the spray dotted my shirt. “Stop trying to speak. Preserve your strength. Our strength. Christ, if I had more time, more blood, maybe I could—” He shook his head, his eyes frantically searching our surroundings, but there was nothing at his disposal.