I leaned away from the glass and shook my head. “Unappetizing,” I said, but the few drops of Dominic’s blood that had wet my throat had already dried; my voice was nothing but a rattling growl again.
By the frustrated lines between Dominic’s eyes as he glared patronizingly down on me, he could understand my words just fine through the growl. “You need to drink now, here in privacy, before you come into contact with anyone. You don’t know it yet, but you’re ravenous, and once you realize it, it’ll be too late.”
I considered the blood-rimmed glass in Dominic’s hand thoughtfully, but I didn’t reach out to take it from him. “Shouldn’t I crave it?”
“If it was fresh blood pumping through a human’s veins, yes. And the first time the hunger hits, you will be overwhelmed by the inescapable urge to drink. I don’t want that urge to strike in public while others are watching, while you may be near someone like Greta, who won’t forget, or someone like Meredith, whose death you’d never forgive.”
“Don’t need the full cow to eat a hamburger,” I grumbled, throwing the logic he’d used on me multiple times in the past back in his face.
“No, you don’t, but the first time the hunger hits, it’s all-consuming. You won’t know restraint. You might not need the whole cow, but the cow will die anyway,” Dominic explained.
He lifted the glass minutely closer. I wrinkled my nose.
Dominic rolled his eyes, grabbed my arm, and forced the blood into my hands. My claws clinked against the glass as I cradled the bowl carefully. I didn’t trust myself to hold the stem and not snap it in half.
When it became obvious that holding the wineglass didn’t necessarily portend drinking its contents, Dominic tried a different tactic. “I’ll give you a mirror if you drink.”
I narrowed my eyes. Two could play that game. “I’ll drink if you give me a mirror.”
Dominic sighed heavily, my stubbornness one of the only forces of nature strong enough to test his iron patience.
“I have been a vampire for nearly five hundred years, and within that time, I’ve transformed dozens of night bloods, perfecting my technique with each vampire.”
“I don’t see how—”
Dominic held up a hand. “In all that time, after all those transformations, I know a thing or two about raising a healthy, contributing member of my coven. Drinking blood upon waking is essential. You must drink before coming into contact with your first human and before gazing upon your reflection.”
“I don’t think that—”
“This is important, Cassidy. I’ve learned from past transformations. I’ve learned from past mistakes. This is one pool you cannot simply dive headfirst into. You must acclimate your body to the temperature of this habitat in order to thrive in it.” His expression was imploring when he met my eyes. “Please, Cassidy.”
I considered his words, I really did, but I didn’t consider what he was describing as acclimation. It was a delusion. I could see my hands and imagine the face that matched those hands. Waiting until after I’d fed to look at myself was more than acclimation; it was a lie.
I lifted the wineglass carefully to my lips and swallowed one sip. The blood was still warm and fresh; I shuddered to think where he’d procured it.
“Happy? I drank,” I said. “Now let me see myself.”
He stared at me, his expression unreadable.
“You didn’t specify how much I was required to drink,” I defended.
Dominic’s expression didn’t change. Without taking his eyes from me, he strode to the bedside table, opened its drawer, and pulled out a hand mirror. He strode back to me, flashed the mirror with an imperceptible flick of his wrist, and just as quickly, hid the mirror behind his back.
I held out my hand.
Dominic shook his head. “I just showed you your reflection.”
I glared at him.
“You never specified how long you wished to gaze upon yourself.”
I snorted. “I couldn’t see anything. You moved so fast, I was nothing but a blur.”
“You drank so little, I can barely perceive an improvement in your complexion.”
“If you gave me the mirror, I could determine the improvement for myself.”
Dominic didn’t move, he didn’t even breathe. The only indication of his fraying patience was a low, nearly imperceptible rattle deep within his chest that I might not have even perceived without such acute hearing.
“I’ve never been physically strong before, but I’ve always been a strong person, Dominic, and that strength is based on a foundation of truth. Waiting until after I’ve fed to see myself is a lie, and someone once told me that I’m in the business of revealing the truth. And that applies to myself too. I need to face reality, Dominic, literally. I need to see my face.”
Dominic shook his head. “Seeing yourself now will not reveal the truth to you. After having transformed over a period of seven days without nourishment, you don’t look well. You will never look as poorly as you do in this moment ever again. Tomorrow morning will be a more accurate representation of your day form, and at that time, I will gladly give you a mirror before you feed.”
I stared at him, shocked into silence. “How many days without nourishment?” I asked.
He pursed his lips as if having bit into something sour.
But my perfect hearing didn’t need him to repeat anything. “Seven days? You don’t think you could have led with that instead of the blood? Seven days,” I repeated, shaking my head. “What’s happening out there? Did you defeat Jillian? Did you regain control of the coven? What about your strength and abilities? What about the Damned? What about the Day Reapers? I missed seven days?”
Dominic closed his eyes and rubbed his temple methodically.“You had the potential to transform into a Day Reaper. What did you expect?”
“I—well, I—” I stuttered, baffled. “I don’t know what I expected! I was dying, not thinking,” I snapped.
“Granted, seven days is exceptional,” he said, ignoring my outburst. He looked me up and down, from the top of my greasy, unwashed head to my clawed feet and grinned. “I expected nothing less.”
“Exceptional?” My voice couldn’t possibly squeal any higher. “How is losing seven days exceptional?”
“The longer the transformation, the more powerful the vampire. An average transformation occurs over three days. Day Reapers, considering their increased speed, strength, mental acuity, and natural resistance to silver and sunlight—all necessary skills to enforce Council law and execute those who break it—typically transform in five days. I transformed in four. But you…” he shook his head at me, and with my heightened senses, I could literally feel the prick of his thoughts graze the fine hairs of my skin. I’d always known he’d had grand plans for me, plans I’d worked doggedly to ignore, but now those plans were coming to fruition, and by the calculation in his eyes as he looked me over, they were unfolding better than he’d ever imagined. “Seven days. You could rival the Lord High Chancellor himself.”
I opened my mouth to wipe the awe-filled anticipation from his expression, but he pointed at my wineglass before I found an appropriately cutting response and said, “But no matter how powerful you will become, you are not that powerful now. You need to drink.”
I took another measured sip, more than the first time, but not nearly as much as I knew he wanted.
Dominic held up his hand in surrender. “Compromise. Drink half your glass and I’ll give you the mirror, assuming you promise to finish every drop afterward.”
I didn’t like it—half a lie was still a lie—but that was the best deal I’d probably get from him without physically fighting him for the mirror.
That thought actually gave me pause. I could physically fight him for the mirror and potentially win. The option to fight was no longer a paltry option, but one open for serious consid
eration. With my newfound strength and enhanced senses, I didn’t have to just roll over and compromise. I could take what I really wanted by force.
I stared at Dominic’s scarred, nearly deformed lip. The physical wound I’d inflicted by accident only a few minutes ago was completely healed, but I could still recall the shock and choking need to apologize. That wound had been an accident. Was I willing to battle him, to slice him open on purpose? Over a mirror?
I relented and drank half the blood, holding my breath against its tepid, clinging texture. It wasn’t unpalatable, but like stale bread compared to a fresh loaf, lukewarm blood from the glass was unpleasant at best.
No sooner had the wineglass left my lips than Dominic held the mirror between us. I nearly spat the blood out of my mouth in shock—the image in the mirror was the most frightening, horrific creature I’d ever seen. The creature swallowed something, something unpleasant by the expression of disgust wrinkling its grotesque face—as I choked down the remaining swallow of blood in my mouth. I watched it swallow as I swallowed. It shook its head in disgust as I shook my head, and I realized belatedly, even knowing I was looking in a mirror, that the creature was, in fact, my own reflection.
I gasped as the creature gasped, its shark-like, solid blue eyes widening. Its fang-filled mouth gaped, and its long ears elongated to sharp points. I stared at myself and the stranger that was my reflection stared back with equal revulsion.
I’d anticipated the eyes and fangs. I’d even expected the ears and the emaciated sallowness of having a day form—I’d seen enough of Dominic in every form to know exactly what to expect from my new body—but I hadn’t considered the fact that newly transformed vampires didn’t drink while they transformed. I hadn’t received nourishment in an entire week; if I were human, I’d be dead, but I wasn’t human anymore. I was a vampire, so I only looked like death.
My skin was gray and shriveled like spandex around my skull, highlighting the sunken corners of my eye sockets, the divots of my temples, and the sharp cut of my jaw. My cheekbones were painfully prominent, my skin so tight around them they might actually split from the tension, made only more painful-looking by the scooped hollows of my cheeks beneath them. How could Dominic even look at me, let alone touch me, hold me, and comfort me? He’d stroked the prominence of that emaciated cheek and looked at me with warmth and affection as if I was more than an animate, skin-wrapped skeleton. He’d kissed me, and looking at the thin, shriveled skin around my fangs, it wasn’t any wonder my fangs had sliced into Dominic’s lips. I didn’t have lips to kiss. I didn’t have a complexion. I didn’t have anything that would resemble a living creature, except the fact that I walked and talked and growled. I barely had any hair, but one wrong move—a sneeze, a breeze, a blink—and I wouldn’t have that either.
Even as I stared at a stranger, I could see the blood’s effect on my appearance. My complexion did pinken slightly from just the half-glass I’d already swallowed. My skin smoothed the edges and divots of my scalp, my lips darkened and plumped, my hair thickened, and my ears and talons retracted slightly. The blood didn’t make much of a difference to my overall reflection, but considering I hadn’t swallowed much, the immediate and visible improvements to my appearance was riveting. I still looked like death but more newly dead instead of years of being six feet under.
“Your eyes will change in sunlight,” Dominic said softly. “Like the other Day Reapers, you will have irises and sclera even in your day form. You are not considered fully transformed until your first bath in sunlight.”
“You kissed this,” I said, touching the thin, cracked skin of my barely-there lips.
“I tried,” Dominic murmured coldly.
I snapped upright, not realizing I’d hunched in on myself, but when my gaze met his, I narrowed my eyes. His eyes were anything but cold. His eyes were blazing and barely restrained.
“You promised. Every last drop,” he reminded me.
The anticipation in his eyes crackled like a wood-burning hearth. Watching me drink blood obviously pleased him. The last time I’d seen that focused anticipation in his expression I hadn’t been drinking blood, and seeing that expression now stoked an answering blaze in me.
Even if I hadn’t promised, even if he wasn’t looking at me like I was something he intended to devour, I would have drunk the blood anyway. This wasn’t a day form, the true face of a vampire before its evening meal. This was Ronnie starving herself for fear of killing someone. This was Jillian serving a life sentence in a silver prison in the Underneath. This was the face of death, not my face, not even as a vampire.
I didn’t tell Dominic he was right. He knew it, and if I acknowledged every time he was right, his head wouldn’t physically fit through a threshold, permission or not. Besides, my willing consumption of the rest of the blood, every last drop, was acknowledgment enough.
Dominic took the glass from me when I’d finished, set it on the bedside table, and slanted his mouth over mine. My fangs didn’t slice into his lip this time—I had lips again!—but I only had that one moment of clarity to revel in my improved appearance before the insistence and distraction of Dominic’s tongue stole my lucid mind. I became the taste of cinnamon, the scrape of his calluses down my stomach, and the smell of pine and spice of Christmas and chai. The bite of his insistent desire against my thigh as his lips left my lips and kissed down the side of my neck blazed a trail of goose bumps lower and lower, until my thigh felt a different bite followed by the accompanying heat of his breath, the pressure of his tongue, and I—
Someone took a jackhammer to my temple.
I flinched away from Dominic’s lips. Pain split through my skull, but when I touched my fingers to my head, the skin was smooth and dry. My brain wasn’t bleeding from a hemorrhaging head wound, no matter the insistent pounding that claimed otherwise.
Dominic glared at the door over my shoulder, and I realized that the sudden, vicious physical pain inside my head wasn’t a physical injury but an auditory stimulant manifesting as one. Someone was knocking on the door, and the rap of knuckles on wood interrupting our kiss felt like someone driving rusted nails into my skull with a power tool.
Jesus Christ.
“Lysander? Cassidy? Are you okay in there?” Ronnie asked, her hesitant, little-girl voice like a cheese grater scraping my eyeballs.
The bird in the adjacent room squawked again, one shrill, impatient bleat.
I pressed my palms forcefully over my eyes. Every sound had a feeling and every feeling had a smell and every smell had a taste, and the strange combinations of everything I could sense was suddenly unbearable. She knocked again, and even knowing the jackhammer against my temple was just the feeling of a knock, I winced anyway.
I couldn’t breathe.
I reminded myself that I didn’t need to breathe to live, but that didn’t loosen the vise suddenly constricting my chest again.
I felt Dominic lift his head from my thigh. Otherwise, his hands and body didn’t move. They nearly vibrated in their complete stillness, and I squirmed uncomfortably under him.
My movement seemed to penetrate his awareness, but when he spoke, his words were clearly for Ronnie.
“Now you interrupt? Not when she was alone and hurting and frightened, newly transformed and needing you, but now, when I am with her? When I am nearly one with her?”
My face flamed, and I squirmed more insistently. Dominic’s arms still did not budge, but my squirming was stronger than his stillness. I wiggled free, and Dominic transferred his glare from the door to me.
Ronnie cleared her throat. I could feel the vibration of her embarrassment like a muscle spasm, visibly uncontrollable and painful to watch. “It got so quiet, I wanted to make sure you were both okay,” she said, her voice very small.
Dominic growled. “We were not being quiet.”
I pulled down my bra and twisted my shirt back into place, mortifi
ed. When had I become half dressed? When had I forgotten we weren’t alone in…well, wherever the hell we were?
“You were, compared to how loud you were before,” Ronnie insisted, but even her insistence sounded like a question. The bird’s squawking bleats returned in full force.
“I think what Ronnie is trying to ask—” Keagan began, and the confidence in voice was solid and sure. Despite the bleating bird, I could imagine him placing his arm around Ronnie’s shoulders to share in his strength and sureness. “—is if Cassidy is all right. We’re all worried, we’ve been worried for seven days, and we’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting on an update.”
Keagan didn’t say it, but I could hear the implication all the same. They were worried, on the edge of their seats for an update, and here we were on the floor like animals, not even having made it to the bed.
I looked over at Dominic. He met my gaze, and the heat in that one look incinerated my embarrassment. He brought out every base instinct inside me. We were on the floor like animals because together we were animals; I’d never felt anything more primal and passionate and confusing in my life.
“Cassidy?” Keagan asked, pounding on the door again.
I winced from the jackhammer. “I’m here,” I said, my voice clear. The glassful of blood had done the trick, and my voice, if not completely back to normal, wasn’t just a rattling growl. My voice was deeper than I remembered, but not in tone; it was deeper in depth, as if I had more vocal cords and although they were striking the same pitch they’d always played, the many tones that vibrated to create that pitch were richer and more alluring a sound any human throat could produce.
“And are you okay?” Ronnie insisted, obviously not convinced.
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