Sweet Last Drop

by Melody Johnson

  This was never supposed to be the end, not for any of us.

  I dug my elbows into the dirt and struggled over the stones, twigs, and blood-soaked earth to crawl next to my brother. He needed someone’s blood to transform. Dominic wasn’t here anymore to uphold his end of our deal, and Bex was as good as gone without any shadows to hide beneath. I was all Nathan had—vampire or not, healing blood or not—but whether this worked or not, we would both die anyway. The chance of holding on to breathe another breath, no matter how infinitesimal, was still a chance and worth the fight.

  Nathan was unmoving and unresponsive when I reached him. In repose, he was just as monstrous and unreachable as he had been while tearing through limbs and ripping out hearts. His black hair was a matted mess of knots, grease, blood, and fouler things. His face, tipped to the side and slack with unconsciousness, didn’t resemble anything I knew as my brother. This creature’s face was a scaly gleam of scratches and hunger and ferocity. His brow was jutted in a thick frown, and his teeth, too large and too many for his mouth, protruded from his lips, each tooth a razor, shark-bladed point, except for his fangs, longer than the rest, that curled down like sabers.

  His nose, flat and pointed and pinched at the corners, glittered from the diamond pierced though the left nostril. I stared at his nose stud for a long moment, reminding myself of who he was, who we were, and that if this worked, everything we’d sacrificed for this moment wouldn’t have been an empty accomplishment. It would be the very accomplishment I was willing to die to achieve.

  In a gesture that was becoming all too familiar, I bared my wrist and lifted it, trembling, to Nathan’s lips. His mouth was slack, so I braced the tender inner flesh of my wrist against the sharp point of his fang and sliced in deep.

  Blood poured from my wrist into Nathan’s mouth.

  Almost immediately, a low, vibrating rattle growled from Nathan’s chest. I sighed, wondering if I was transforming him or feeding him, and honestly, at this point, wondering if it really mattered. With Jillian on the loose, she would reign over Dominic’s coven, and God only knew the monstrosities she would create while in power. I closed my eyes. Nothing could be worse than the monster she’d created in Nathan.

  Exhausted and helpless and nearly hopeless, I collapsed next to him, resting my wrist over his mouth so my blood could drain down his throat. I’d be Damned if I didn’t see this through to the end.

  The tremors were minute at first—a twitch against my wrist, a tremble that could have been the vibrations of his growl—but they deepened violently into convulsions within a matter of seconds. He was seizing. Or having a stroke. Or maybe his blood was clotting, like Walker had once described, and he was suffocating.

  Or maybe—even if the chance was infinitesimal, it was still a chance—maybe he was transforming.

  Minutes passed. Nathan’s convulsions didn’t ease, and the blood loss was too much for my body. I drifted into a swirling numbness and felt myself being gently lifted from the ground. Nathan was somehow rising with me; I could still feel his seizing shivers and convulsions next to me, closer to me somehow and yet further away. The sun was a brightening brightness over my vision as I squinted into the full morning rays of sunlight, and I wondered if this was more than sunlight, if we were rising to the final light.

  Arms tightened around me as my vision darkened in pulsing, black bursts. The voice was a soft, southern twang, her words like feathers as she spoke.

  “Hang on just a little longer, Cassidy. Your strength for his strength. His life for your life, remember? If not for yourself, hang on just a little longer for him.”

  Bex’s soft waves of bronze hair glittered like a halo of fire around her head as she looked down on me, her expression serene and encouraging and hopeful. She stood with us in the rays of morning light, gathered us tightly in the strength of her arms and carried us as she took flight through the clear, crisp morning air, not a shadow of protection between her porcelain skin and the sunlight.

  Chapter 19

  The scratchy scent of antiseptic, the ache of an IV in the bend of my elbow, and the steady beep from the machine monitoring my heart were becoming unfortunate familiarities.

  Someone was in the room with me, two someones actually: a patient and a visitor. I knew not because of a colored aura surrounding the room or the pump of their heartbeats or the smell of their perspiration or the heat of their focused gazes. I knew because I could hear them with my very human hearing. The steady beep of the patient’s heart monitor was competing with mine, and the visitor was speaking softly.

  I was alive. The grateful relief of simply surviving was becoming overly familiar as well, but each time was like the previous. It didn’t matter if this was the first time opening my eyes after facing death, and it didn’t matter if it was my last, although I’m sure it wouldn’t be considering my proclivity for doom and gloom. I took a deep breath despite the sting of antiseptic and enjoyed the simple pleasure of feeling my lungs expand, knowing I would open my eyes to see another day.

  I opened my eyes, but the person looking back at me wasn’t anyone I could have anticipated; my newfound feelings of grateful relief plummeted.

  “Special Agent Rowens?” My voice cracked, not entirely from disuse.

  “Please, it’s Harold.” He walked to me at a brisk clip, picked up a plastic cup from the bedside table, and tipped the straw toward my lips. “Here, take a sip. I’m sure you’re parched,” he said. “I know I was.”

  I licked my lips, but my tongue was dry. I could feel the flakes of cracked skin on my lips from dehydration, so I strained forward, took the straw in my mouth, and drank.

  The water was cool, if not entirely fresh, and moistened the sand and hair from the back of my throat enough that I could use my voice and not feel like coughing.

  I eased back and cleared my throat. “Thanks.”

  Rowens nodded. He set the cup back on the bedside table and sat on the chair nearest my bed.

  I eyed him warily, too many emotions constricting my throat to really speak, despite the water. He was still wearing his hospital gown along with a pair of green gym shorts, so he was decent if not technically dressed. The room was cool, even for me with my own gown and wrapped in blankets, but after the exertion of walking and standing, sweat slicked over Rowens’ brow. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his left shoulder, shrugging.

  He was missing his right arm at the shoulder, and in its place were wads of gauze and padding held by a sling around his neck and upper chest.

  He noticed where my gaze had wandered and the corner of his lips tipped in a self-deprecating grin.

  “My supervisor wants me to take leave for physical therapy. He knows better than to broach the topic of leaving the field, but I could hear the order loud and clear even if he didn’t voice it. A fucking desk job.” Rowens shuddered. “Rip off both my arms, why don’t they?”

  I didn’t know what to say. My empathy for him and guilt for my part in his injury were overwhelming and poignant, but my uncertainty over what he remembered, what Bex had allowed him to remember, choked my response.

  He held up a hand, letting me off the hook. “Sorry, I’m not here to grouse. I just wanted to thank you.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Me? The last time we spoke, you were the furthest thing from thanking me.”

  “Your tip on Colin was instrumental in his rescue. He might not have survived much longer, and the search party found him relatively quickly, thanks to you.”

  I nodded, waiting on the catch. “You’re welcome.”

  Rowens’ hand curled into a fist. “And I thought you’d like to know, for everyone’s peace of mind, that Walker was able to track and put down that bear.”

  I blinked, hating that I was playing catch-up with the one person capable of exposing everything and endangering all of us. “Bear?” I asked.

  “Rabid bear. Not particularly common, apparently, but not unheard of, either.”

>   “Right. Good,” I said, trying to drum up some necessary enthusiasm. “That’s great to hear. I knew Walker would come through for us.”

  “There were other reports that I’d read concerning the deaths of Lydia Bowser, John and Priscilla Dunbar, and William and Douglas McDunnell, that did not support a bear attack,” Rowens leaned forward, his gaze more intense than any other man I’d known, except for maybe Dominic. The focus and intent in his eyes made me hold my breath. “But no one remembers writing those reports.”

  I opened my mouth, not wanting to gape at the familiarity of his frustration and at the implication of what that meant for him, but I gaped anyway.

  “And the few people who were stupid enough to open their mouths about it decided to take a sudden vacation or leave of absence. I haven’t seen them since, and their phones are either disconnected or they haven’t returned my voicemails.”

  I closed my mouth and swallowed. “You’ll have to remember that while you’re taking leave. No work for you while you’re off duty,” I said lightly, trying to feign ignorance of what he was implying.

  Rowens shook his head. “My reports reflect that Officer Riley Montgomery and I were attacked by a rabid bear, so I won’t be going anywhere, off duty or otherwise.”

  He knows, I thought, and I could hear my heart racing a double crescendo from the increased beeping on the monitor and the pounding, like punches, pumping inside my chest. I didn’t know if he knew everything—who would come to the true conclusion, vampires, after facing the creature that Nathan had been, assuming he remembered—but he knew something. He knew enough.

  “Rowens,” I whispered, “There’s some things about this case that you don’t know—”

  “No, there isn’t,” he said. “I’m telling you this because you sat across from me in that interrogation room without any real answers to my questions when I knew you had them, and now I know why. So I don’t care what it is I don’t know, I’ll figure it out on my own terms, like I’ve done my whole life, but I’m telling you that whatever it is that you think I don’t know, you don’t know either. You didn’t know anything about this case when you were in my interrogation room, and you still don’t know. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Rowens was a survivor. He wasn’t going to be one of the people to disappear, and he didn’t want me disappearing on him, either. “I haven’t taken a vacation in years, and I wasn’t planning on taking one anytime soon.”

  “So if I call you in the next few weeks, you’d better answer your damn phone.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  “Good.” He stood. “Just one last question, DiRocco. How common are rabid bear attacks in the city? All this time off and leave of absence nonsense, it might be nice to get away, to see a friendly face.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’m a friendly face?”

  “You’re not bad on the eyes. Not bad at all.”

  I laughed, and then I met his eyes squarely. “Rabid bear attacks are more common in the city than you’d think, but when I write my article next week on city versus country crime rates, that’s not what you’re going to read.”

  Rowens inclined his head. “That’s what I thought. Take care, DiRocco.”

  “You too,” I said softly.

  “And take care of that brother of yours. It’s not every day that a family visit goes so awry. Nothing like a bear hunt for brotherly bonding.”

  “What do you know about my brother?” My voice cracked, nothing to do with disuse this time.

  Rowens nodded, indicating the bed next to mine.

  I turned my head, not daring to breath, barely daring to look, but like synapses that had already fired, turning my head was an inevitability that I couldn’t fight even if I’d wanted to.

  Nathan was the patient next to me.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed on a harsh exhale. “Nathan.”

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” Rowens murmured. I heard the door click shut behind him, but I didn’t turn to look or bid him goodbye. I couldn’t look away from my brother’s beautiful face.

  His skin was soft and tan and glowing. The scratches that had reflected like metallic scrapes against his scales were now thin, scabbed paper cuts, crisscrossing his cheeks and nose and chin. His lips were pink and plump. His hair, though still matted and greasy, was now framed by rounded ears and thick raven eyebrows. No protruding brow. No shark-pointed teeth crowding his mouth. The sun was streaming through the cracked window panes, casting rows of horizontal light over his bed, arms, and face, that beautiful face that I could recognize as Nathan.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt my throat constrict even as I tried to breathe calmly and slow my heart, but the telling beep from the monitor betrayed my efforts. Remaining calm was impossible.

  Nathan was my brother again.

  I struggled upright and out of bed, careful not to jar the IV or machines or other various clamps and stickies they had monitoring my body. I didn’t want anyone rushing into the room because they thought I was coding.

  The few steps to the side of his bed were dizzying, but seeing wasn’t believing. I sat on the edge of Nathan’s bed and cupped his face in my hands. I couldn’t look away. He was here, and he was himself, and more than any relief I could have felt at having found myself alive, I felt the relief of guilt and grief and heartache that I’d carried for three long weeks suddenly shower over my body, like a burst dam, and I broke along with it.

  I doubled over, rested my forehead against his chest, and sobbed.

  “Cassidy?”

  My cries choked in the back of my throat, and I froze. I sniffed, wiped my face on the blankets, and slowly, disbelievingly, I peeked up at his face.

  Nathan’s aqua-colored eyes, the very reflection of my own, stared back at me. We held each other’s gaze, lost in the wonder that he was here, that we were finally together, and that the feelings of joy and grateful relief that everything was right in the world was our reality. After living a nightmare for so long, I didn’t dare move or breath or speak, fearing that the moment would shatter.

  “Nathan,” I finally whispered. “I don’t know what you remember. Or the last thing you might—”

  “Everything. I can still smell their fear, and I still remember my hunger, like unslakable flames, fueling my hunt. I can still taste their—” He stopped, unable to continue, and he turned his head from me. “I can still taste you.”

  And there it was, our reality in shards and splinters around us. Just when we thought to find our footing, reality embeds swift and deep in tender places where we never would have thought to take care with our step.

  “It’s all right. It’s over. You’re back now, and it’s all over,” I murmured.

  I wrapped my arms around him, needing to feel the give and warmth of his skin to comfort myself, but the arms he wrapped around me trembled. They clutched me to him, digging his hands into my back and crushing the breath from my lungs as he struggled to find an anchor in the nightmare he was just waking into. It wasn’t over. But for the moment, with Nathan in my arms and his arms, not talons, holding me back, I could accept that most everything—everything I could want and stand to live without—was indeed all right.

  * * * *

  With the possible exception of doing your own taxes, recovering from injury is the most physically and mentally draining achievement. I’ve done it—both the taxes and the recovery—and no matter how many times I swear it’s the last, the second, third, and forth time prove me wrong over and over again.

  According to my chart, I had good reason to feel fatigued. Nathan and I were discovered collapsed and unconscious at the emergency room entrance. Apparently, I’d driven us there. Walker’s truck was found in the parking garage, and our human-shaped bloodstains were soaked into the fabric. Nathan suffered minor lacerations and blood loss, but otherwise, the bear hadn’t mauled him as much as it had me.

  I’d suffered from severe blood loss, internal bl
eeding, irregular heart palpitations, and severe sunburn. My nurses said I’d been invited to observe and report on the bear hunt as thanks for my tip to the police about Colin. The hunt had gone well but not without a few injuries to Rowens, my brother, and myself. No one commented on the fact that Rowens had been admitted to the hospital the day before, nor that with the exception of my torn wrist, none of my injuries were consistent with a bear attack. I suppose anyone who might have questioned those inconsistencies were already on permanent vacation like Rowens had warned.

  Although I was recovering remarkably well for someone who had flirted with death, my doctor decided to keep me overnight. I’d developed a slight fever after receiving a blood transfusion, and until that fever settled, he didn’t recommend discharging me. Since the next bus to New York City didn’t leave until tomorrow evening anyway, I decided to comply with doctor’s orders for once.

  Sunset came and went, blanketing my room and the entire hospital in a silent, beep-filled hush. Despite my exhaustion, I rested with one eye open all night, waiting. I was on the fifth floor. My window was closed and locked, but Dominic had proven himself adept at entering locked fifth-story windows.

  I waited and continued waiting until the first rays of dawn broke the horizon and flooded through my window, bathing the room with light. Nathan didn’t comment on our undisturbed night—he had his own demons to fight—and I certainly didn’t mention it, but Dominic’s absence left an unexpected hollow inside me. I’d expected him to visit. I’d anticipated and braced myself for him—every gust of wind against the windowpane, every floorboard creak, every long stride down the hall—and until last night, he’d never been one to disappoint.

  I ate a toasted bagel with cream cheese and rubbery eggs for breakfast, dragged my IV into the bathroom with me before the nurse returned to take my temperature, and laid on my back in bed, waiting for lunch. Otherwise, Nathan and I sat in uncomfortable, tension-filled silence for the majority of the day. Our bus departed at nine o’clock, but until then, there was too much to say and feel and do between us to express it all at once, and too many people to overhear what we might say. At least, that’s what I told myself as my thoughts strayed all day to Dominic.