“Cassidy DiRocco, tell me what you were thinking when you heard my name.”
What is your full vampire name? The words filled my mind and oozed from every pore. My tongue shaped the words inside my mouth and strained against my teeth and lips to speak them; I kept my mouth clenched tightly against their release and against Jillian’s will.
“Is something the matter, Jillian darling?” Rafe asked, laughing. “I don’t hear her speaking.”
Jillian whirled on Rafe. She simply extended her hand, and Rafe was yanked off his feet. He rushed neck first through the air as if she’d hooked him with fishing line. His neck hit her hand, and she pounded him into the ground.
Rafe gasped a gurgling, protesting noise from between his teeth.
“I don’t hear you speaking now, either,” Jillian whispered. She jabbed her sharp, claw-like fingers into his neck, fisted her hand, and tore out his throat.
Rafe fell to the ground on his knees. His eyes were frantic and his mouth opened and closed, but without a throat, he couldn’t scream.
Jillian tossed the meat of Rafe’s throat on the stone floor, like someone else would discard a wet paper towel.
She slowly turned around to face me again. I focused on her, trying not to stare at the heavy, glistening chunk of blood and tissue strewn across the stone.
“Cassidy,” she murmured.
My brain tuned to the timbre of her voice, and I realized that I had met her eyes. “No,” I whispered.
“Ah,” Jillian sighed. Her exhale trembled. “Lovely. No wonder he wants to claim you.”
“Why would he want me at all?” I asked from between my clenched teeth. I remembered what Dominic had said about feeling my thoughts and desires, and I realized that Jillian was likely feeling mine right now.
“Did you prefer the fate my brothers had in store for you?” Jillian spread her arms wide to indicate the semicircle of vampires still lining the room.
I shook my head. “Isn’t that what lies in store for me anyway, just delayed?”
Jillian leaned closer. She wasn’t even near the cage, and I flinched away from her. “How did it feel when Dominic tasted you?”
I felt the scorch of my blush through to my hairline.
“Death is inevitable; whether Kaden had drained you earlier tonight or young Neil had feasted on you today or time decays your body’s ability to sustain life fifty years from now, the end will come for you. Life is a delay of death. The beautiful parting moment of Dominic’s bite is what lies in store for you now, and I can guarantee that one last moment with Dominic is more life than years of living could give you.”
“What do you know of Dominic’s bite?” I snapped, still tingling from the heat of my blush.
“Everything you do.” Jillian grinned. “He is ravenous.”
“Then you can keep it. I’ll take my years of living, thank you very much.” I tore my gaze away from hers with the force of my rage. I stared at the slop of Rafe’s neck and felt my temper harden. Rafe had healed. His neck was once again smooth and perfect, but the evidence of his former neck still lying on the ground sickened me. “If you’re so loyally devoted to your Master, why did you leave Dominic to die?”
Jillian’s smile wiped clean off her face. “Excuse me?”
“You left him outside the coven to fry in the sunlight, allowed police to find the remains of your hunt before you could hide the evidence—”
“That was not my hunt,” Jillian growled.
“—and you allowed his gasping, dying, crispy body to be found by me. A human.”
“I didn’t know that Dominic had left the coven the night before,” Jillian said, shaking. “I didn’t realize how weak he was becoming nor how strong the rebellion had grown. I didn’t think they would be able to incapacitate him and—”
“I found him, Jillian. I saved him. Is that why he’s checking your work at the crime scene? After you let his fate rest in the hands of a human, he doesn’t trust you anymore. You didn’t have his back when he needed you most, and now he doesn’t trust you to cover it.”
Jillian’s face contorted in anger, and her fangs elongated. “That’s not true,” she said, her voice grave.
“Where were you when they attacked him? Why didn’t he have any warning or help? Why didn’t you come to his rescue?”
Jillian was suddenly inches from the cage. I jerked back.
“That silver may keep the younger vampires at bay,” Jillian whispered. “But I assure you that it will not deter me.”
“I’d rather die under you, knowing I’d struggled and lost, than under Dominic, with his orgasmic bite, knowing I hadn’t struggled at all.”
Jillian slowly narrowed her eyes on me, and I could feel their weight, like an anchor, settle deep in my mind. She hissed. “That can be arranged.”
“But not tonight,” Dominic’s deep bass vibrated from somewhere within the darkness.
Jillian straightened away from the cage and actually took a step back. All the other vampires in the room shifted in a slow-turning wave to face the side corridor, where presumably they could see Dominic. I couldn’t see more than six feet beyond the cage because of the surrounding darkness, but I could still decipher the glowing luminescence of the vampires’ eyes. Once they turned in the direction of Dominic’s voice, they bowed their heads—some obediently and others grudgingly, but all without question.
Jillian was the only one to bow her head and then straighten to face Dominic squarely. “Master,” she acknowledged.
Dominic stepped out from the corridor’s pitch-blackness and into the room. I could just barely distinguish the shadow of his outline in the darkness. “Perhaps antagonizing the second most powerful vampire in this coven while surrounded by her allies isn’t the wisest course of action.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. He was right, of course, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge that.
“And as for you, Jillian,” he continued.
Jillian’s face was stoic.
“Your arrangement of the scene was impeccable. Witnesses won’t report the scene until tomorrow afternoon, correct?”
Jillian’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. She nodded.
“Perfect, as usual. Yet I return, and the coven is a wreck,” Dominic commented blandly.
“You exaggerate, Master,” Jillian said tightly.
He tipped his head slightly. “I doubt Neil and Rafe would agree.”
“Rafe’s punishment was well deserved, as you can see by Neil’s appearance,” Jillian replied smoothly, indicating Neil’s still-smoldering injuries.
“That’s debatable,” Rafe grumbled.
Jillian growled softly.
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps his lesson could have been better learned outside my rooms.”
“Of course,” Jillian replied with a nod.
“You are dismissed.”
Jillian bowed her head once more, and all the vampires filed out, losing most of their formality. She followed their retreat, ignoring my presence as she passed. Neil hissed at me as he left. His wounds had stopped bleeding but were still gaping and blistered and grotesque. Rafe was the last to leave, winking at me as he passed. I frowned at their retreat, not sure how to compartmentalize the animals who had attacked me with these creatures who had order, personality, and conversations. I shuddered to think of an encounter with any of them here in the coven without the cage between us.
Rafe’s body blended into the inky blackness, leaving me alone with Dominic. He stepped closer to the cage in slow, measured movements. “Neil hasn’t learned to control his cravings yet. He’s still very young.”
My first impulse was to snap that I couldn’t care less about Neil’s cravings or his age. Dominic was staring at me with a certain look on his cold, angular face, as if he anticipated such a response, but before I could oblige him, my reporter’s instinct kicked in. Death was the most likely outcome in this twisted place, but if escape or rescue were even remote possibilities, I’d
need to know more about my environment and company.
“Are his wounds permanent?” I asked.
Dominic paused midstep. “No, he’ll heal with sleep and blood,” he replied, “but his regeneration will take longer than most.”
“Why?”
He resumed walking toward me. “He’s the youngest of our coven, only two years old.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, afraid of the answer to my next question: “How old are you?”
Dominic smiled, the same terrifying flash of fangs that he’d shown me from the beginning, not the more palatable, lying curve of lips that Jillian could express. “I was created approximately five hundred years ago, in 1537.”
“You’re mocking me,” I accused. I don’t know why I was offended or how I could feel anything besides loathing and fear in his presence, but his claim to have lived for five hundred years put my teeth on edge. If I died here, I wanted the truth.
Dominic was inches from my cage now. “I am the furthest thing from mocking you. In my coven, here in my rooms, with only me present, I assure you that you will receive my honesty and protection.”
Dominic spread his palm across the bars of the cage. I gaped, anticipating the melting and scorching burns I’d witnessed when Neil touched the cage, but nothing happened.
“Patience,” Dominic murmured.
After a moment, I smelled it: burning flesh. I leaned closer to Dominic’s hand and watched, amazed, as what had happened instantaneously to Neil transpired at a nearly infinitesimal pace with Dominic. Minutes passed, and finally the outer layers of his skin were ravaged by blisters. The skin eventually enveloped the bar like liquid, and began to boil around it.
“Enough,” I said, helpless to look away even while the sight of his boiling skin sickened me. “Please stop.”
Dominic scraped at the liquefied skin of his hand and yanked free of the bar where it had suctioned into his palm. He held out the wreckage of his palm toward me. I leaned closer again. The same exact wounds I’d witnessed minutes before on Neil healed on Dominic before I could even blink.
“Unbelievable,” I whispered.
Dominic smiled, keeping his mouth closed, so the expression was less grotesque. “A testament to my age and accumulated power.”
I frowned. “That display was for my benefit, so I’d believe you?”
He laughed again. “It certainly wasn’t for mine.”
My temper burst in a white-hot backdraft. “Why do you care what I believe? I don’t care if a cow enjoyed its time on the pasture. I just enjoy the damn hamburger! You said so yourself that I’m just food to you.” I pounded the bars of the cage with the flat of my hand. “So why didn’t you just enjoy me? Why are you keeping me here? Why are you answering my questions like they matter?”
“I was wondering where your anger had gone. Never far from the surface, I see,” Dominic murmured like he knew me, which chafed because he was right. “Your questions matter because you matter. You are food, but unlike most, you aren’t just food. You are also a night blood, one of the rare humans who possess the blood type that can survive the change.”
“I don’t, I—” I took a deep breath. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything,” Dominic said succinctly. “I’m telling you that you are a night blood.”
“Survive the change,” I repeated numbly. “What change? How do you know what I am?”
“Everyone’s blood tastes recognizably human, similar to how one hamburger tastes relatively the same as another hamburger to you,” Dominic said, smirking, “but just because you can recognize the taste of two hamburgers as being hamburgers, doesn’t necessarily mean their quality tastes the same. A fast-food hamburger tastes mediocre compared to a steak-house hamburger. Although they’re considered the same food, they’re certainly not the same dish.
Night bloods have a scorching, smoky quality to their blood that tingles at the back of my throat when I swallow. The taste is unmistakable, and I’ve tasted you, Cassidy. You are a rare dish.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m a steak-house hamburger?”
“With bacon and onions and a signature sauce,” Dominic added. “You possess the blood necessary to perform a successful transformation from human to vampire. There aren’t many of you left, and there are even fewer who display resistance to mind control—let alone to my level of power—while still human. It’s impressive, and I intend to make you my night blood.”
I didn’t like or quite believe anything he’d just uttered—although I didn’t quite believe anything else I was living or witnessing at the moment, either—but one statement in particular disturbed me profoundly. “Your night blood?”
“Yes, my night blood. I will serve as your protector and mentor while you serve as an added fuel for my power. Your blood actually weakens vampires when ingested—the opposite of human blood—but you can assist me in many, many other ways,” Dominic said, seeming to enjoy the thought. “We’d be what your law enforcement considers partners, for lack of a better word, but the relationship between a vampire and his night blood is extremely intimate—” Dominic grinned broadly. “And I don’t share.”
I would have laughed if what he was saying wasn’t so completely, insanely terrifying, and if he hadn’t been so utterly serious. “So you don’t intend to keep me locked here as a source of food to sustain you?”
Dominic blinked at me like I was insane. “I have an entire city of humans from which to hunt and feed. Why would I need one readily caged?”
I crossed my arms. “Yes, I’ve witnessed the massacre of your hunt.”
“No, you haven’t.” Dominic sighed. His exhale rasped at the end in that vibrating rattle that pricked the hairs at the back of my neck to attention.
I shivered.
“Neither you nor any human have ever witnessed my hunt. I ensure our coven’s secrecy to ensure our safety, as do all coven Masters throughout the world.”
My mind spun at his words: coven Masters throughout the world.
“But there are vampires within all covens, and a growing minority within my own, who believe that secrecy is no longer essential to our survival,” Dominic continued. “It’s their feedings you have witnessed. It’s their hunts you have been victim to, and it’s those vampires I must prevent from exposing our kind to the human population. If another Master realizes how close my coven is to exposing us all, they may challenge my rule or report us to the Council. With the Solstice approaching, I’m in no condition for such an attack on the coven.”
I shook my head, feeling overwhelmed. “Who are the Council? And why are the vampire attacks escalating so rapidly? I didn’t even notice their kills until last night.”
“Of course you have,” Dominic said mildly. “You’ve reported about them numerous times. In fact, most of the murders you’ve written about within the last three weeks have been caused by vampires. The Council is our governing body. If I fail to rein in my coven, the Council’s Day Reapers will most certainly intervene.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I sputtered, stuck on his claim that most of the past month’s murders were vampire-caused. “None of the other murders had bite marks.”
“No, they didn’t, not after I arranged the scene and persuaded the witnesses.”
“Why didn’t you arrange the scene to hide the bite marks at Paerdegat Park?”
Dominic’s lips thinned over his teeth, exposing fangs, “I never made it back to the coven Sunday night. The rebels ambushed me before I fed, and they left me to die by sunlight.”
I wanted him to continue, and when my silence only met silence, I nudged. “That must have been excruciating. How did you survive?”
“I nearly didn’t. The alley I crawled into offered mediocre protection, except from the midday sunlight. Another hour, and I would have been ash. You saw my condition Monday night. I didn’t have the strength to arrange a scene, and Jillian didn’t realize our predicament until the bodies had already been discovered by human a
uthorities. We never had time to properly prepare it.”
I frowned. “You seemed more than capable against the rebels today.”
Dominic sighed. “They were unprepared tonight. After drinking from you, they couldn’t defend against me. Sunday night, however, I was the one unprepared. The rebels never challenged me before. Our politics may differ, but I thought they were loyal to the coven.” Dominic looked weary. “I thought they were loyal to me.”
“You were overconfident.”
Dominic hissed through his fangs, and I shrank back slightly. “I was betrayed. My power will steadily weaken until I’m near human strength, and the rebels will undoubtedly attempt to overthrow my rule. These feedings—‘massacres,’ as you’ve referred to them—are their attempts to amass followers to their new culture. Their final drive to usurp my power will be much, much worse.”
“How much worse can it get?” I whispered, thinking of their piranha-like frenzy on the street tonight.
Dominic shrugged. “From experience, I can assure you that this is only the beginning.”
I blinked. “This has happened before?”
“Yes, it’s known as the Leveling. Like all Masters, my power wanes and regenerates on a seven-year cyclical cycle.” Dominic raised his palms in a helpless gesture. “Members of my coven have always wanted to hunt indiscriminately, but until recently, they didn’t have a vampire to lead them. Now they not only have a leader, they have a vampire who, for the first time in my rule as Master of New York City, may challenge me on the Leveling and may actually win.”
I massaged a pointed, throbbing pressure in my right temple. “How long do you have before your next Leveling?”
“Four weeks, two days, and thirty-four minutes. June 20th, to be exact. The longest day of the year: the summer Solstice. When I rise at sunset after the Leveling without having met the final death, my power will be restored, and I’ll reclaim my rightful position as Master of this coven. If I fail to rise, vampires of this coven will no longer remain simply fictional nightmares. They’ll become your reality, and they’ll kill indiscriminately.”
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