Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

“And look what happened to you.” Greta’s voice cracked. She didn’t put up her gun, and her hands never wavered, but the stone-cold shield of her expression faltered. “Jesus, Cassidy, look at you.”

  I caught myself before I could wince from the disgust in her expression. Regret was there too; I could taste its bitterness and swallowed the knee-jerk urge to apologize for the creature I’d become, as if I’d willingly chosen to switch teams. As if I was even playing for a different team.

  Never apologize for surviving, I reminded myself, and lifted my chin up a notch.

  “I think you look great, sis,” Nathan interrupted from behind his bars. “Better than you’d look if Lysander hadn’t saved you.”

  Behind me, Dominic snorted.

  “Thanks, bro. It’s always a comfort to know I look better than death.”

  “Anytime.” Nathan smiled, and his grin was all fangs.

  Dr. Chunn gasped. As if Nathan had pressed a reset button, she unfroze from her fright, pounced on the nearest pen and paper scattered on the floor, and jotted a note.

  I eyed Dr. Chunn pointedly before settling my gaze warily on Greta. “I don’t need to look in a mirror to know who I am, but seeing how you’re treating Nathan, I’m not sure I know who I’m looking at.”

  “He’s dangerous. Until we know what we’re dealing with—”

  “He went with you willingly,” I reminded her.

  Greta winced.

  “He agreed to help you find an advantage over the Damned, to discover his weaknesses and find the chink in his strengths. He came here to lay bare his darkest secret for your scrutiny, to give you the ultimate power over him, and this is how you repay him, caging him like an animal?” By the end of my sentence, my words were all growls, but I didn’t care. Now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. “Where did you even get a silver cage on such short notice? I doubt you had one in storage next to the spare test tubes and eyedroppers.”

  Greta sighed. “The cage is just a precaution.”

  “An unnecessary precaution. An insulting precaution, considering he came here of his own volition. I let him go with you because I trusted you.” I pointed at the cage. “This is a betrayal, Greta, and you know it.”

  “What I know is that I don’t know. I don’t know shit about the creatures we’re up against, and that ignorance got hundreds of people killed.” Greta swallowed, and for the first time since she had entered the room, her rock-solid aim slipped slightly. “My raid failed, just like you said it would, because we didn’t have adequate weapons to use against them.”

  I glanced at the cage. “Well, it looks like you’re well on your way.”

  Greta pursed her lips and with one last, long hard look, she put up her gun. “Look, Nathan is safe here. The cage aside, we’re caring for him, feeding him, and guarding him.”

  Dominic made a strange noise behind me. “Even lambs are cared for, guarded, and fed before the slaughter.”

  Greta blushed. “It’s just a precaution.”

  “Just a precaution,” I muttered. “Hitler’s Jewish ghettos were just a precaution, and look how that ended. Next, you’ll have me in there, but unlike with Nathan, you won’t have the excuse of science to back you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Greta scoffed.

  “We could probably learn a great deal from you too,” Dr. Chunn chimed in, only listening enough to know when a scientific opportunity might be presenting itself.

  Dominic growled.

  “Sounds like an excellent idea to me,” a male voice drawled, deep and lazy. Ian Walker stepped out from behind the swinging door. He was tall and lanky, his height all in his legs, and his head was topped by commas of golden curls. His brown, velvet eyes—a gaze that had once looked at me with the heat and devastation of molten lava—now spread chills down my spine. Everything had spiraled so out of control so quickly the last time we’d been together. We’d gone from friends—near-lovers—to enemies in less than thirty-six hours. Meredith thought he was the man who had attacked and nearly killed her last week in her apartment, and considering how we’d left off, I honestly wouldn’t put it past him to maim or kill anyone in his path if it meant subsequently hurting me.

  We’d parted on horrendous terms, at the end of his crossbow, and I didn’t know what slayed me more: the things we’d said to each other or the things I’d allowed to go unsaid. And all of that would remain unsaid, since it seemed we were picking up almost exactly where we’d left off, with a gun aimed between my eyes.

  “How many more people do you think Greta has stowed away back there?” Dominic muttered.

  “Hello, Walker,” I said, ignoring Dominic. My voice sounded as flat and dead as Walker’s gaze. He smelled like mint, as always, but beneath the mint, I could smell the heat and spice and everything Dominic and every vampire I’d ever met had said smelled so damn nice. The smell of his night blood was intoxicating. I swallowed, and the walls of my throat scraped like sandpaper. “Nice to see that, even after all this time, we can pick up right where we left off.”

  Greta’s gaze never left mine, but she wasn’t talking to me when she said, “We’re just talking here. Stand down.”

  “We don’t talk to vampires,” Walker said. “We kill them.”

  “That’s not just any vampire. That’s DiRocco.”

  Walker shook his head. “That was DiRocco.”

  “I can attest that I’m still me,” I said, warily. “Not that anything I could do or say would convince you otherwise.”

  “He turned you against me long before he turned you into a vampire. I should have killed you then.”

  “As if leaving me for dead wasn’t the same damn thing,” I snapped.

  “And yet, here you are, mission unaccomplished.” Walker’s expression twisted painfully. “We were friends once. More than friends. We were—” His voice broke, and whatever he’d been about to say, he dismissed it with a quick shake of his head. “I was wrong about you. And I was wrong to let you live.”

  I heard the strain of his trigger finger contracting, and I realized that dodging a single bullet as a vampire would be as easy as avoiding oncoming traffic while crossing the street as a human—I simply needed to keep my eyes open for danger and side-step accordingly. I felt a sudden sorrow for Walker. He’d been fighting this battle his entire adult life since losing his fiancé and blaming Bex for her death. He’d sacrificed a great deal in his personal war against Bex: a normal life and our friendship. He’d even killed other humans in the effort to kill vampires, all because he thought no sacrifice was too great in the effort to win his personal war against Bex. But what Walker didn’t realize, what his passion and vengeance would never allow him to truly grasp, was that his efforts were futile and self-destructive, tantamount to a fly waging war against the hand swatting at it.

  Walker’s finger muscles were still contracting on his trigger and I was still debating my next move in our conversation after I dodged his bullet when someone slammed into me, knocking me back a step into Dominic and shielding the two of us from Walker, as if we needed shielding.

  Walker’s finger muscles froze and every other muscle in his body began to tremble.

  “Ian,” Ronnie whispered, her voice a soft plea. “Please, don’t shoot.”

  Chapter 6

  A few strands of what was left of Ronnie’s tinsel-thin hair fell from her emaciated scalp in her haste to shield my body with her own. I winced at both the sick straggles of her hair and at her misguided attempt to protect me. I could dodge Walker’s bullet, and if I was wrong about the power and capabilities of my new body or overconfident against Walker’s weaponry, I could probably survive being shot. Dominic most definitely could survive a bullet. I’d witnessed dozens of bullets turn his body to Swiss cheese, and the injuries, which would have killed a man on impact, had only pissed him off. But somehow, we’d ended up in the opposite order—
me in front of Dominic and Ronnie in front of me—so the weakest person was the front-row target of Walker’s shot.

  But he didn’t shoot.

  Walker’s jaw clenched, his hands physically shook, and I’d never smelled a more aromatic scent than the cinnamon-mint effervescence wafting from his pores—unadulterated horror, I realized. A little part of me hated that I salivated at the scent of his suffering.

  Considering he was still aiming a gun at me, a very little part.

  A rattling growl swelled the room. I opened my mouth to admonish Dominic; the growl became louder, and I realized the noise was coming from me. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Ronnie, stand down.”

  Ronnie didn’t move. Walker’s trembling worsened as he studied her, from the dead strands of her tinsel hair to the bony knobs of her ankles and every emaciated feature in-between. Walker shook his head in denial.

  Ronnie nodded back and took a step toward him.

  Dominic and I simultaneously lunged forward to drag her back.

  Our movement snapped Walker out of his shock, and he re-aimed his drooping gun wildly, targeting me and Dominic and even Ronnie before settling back on me.

  Ronnie sidestepped into his crosshairs.

  “Stop it, Ronnie,” I said. “You can’t—”

  Ronnie held up her hand, but when she spoke, it wasn’t to me. “I know this is hard.”

  Walker wasn’t looking at her. He was still aiming at me, but he was also still shaking his head.

  “I never wanted this. I never could have imagined in my wildest nightmares that we would come to this, that you could ever point a gun at me, and that I—” Ronnie’s voice broke. She cleared her throat and started again. “I’ve loved you my entire life, and I always thought that despite the vampires, despite everything, we would marry and live happily ever after.”

  Walker shook his head, more insistent now than in denial, and I tried to stave off the inevitable.

  “Ronnie,” I pleaded, “maybe we should—”

  “Even when you were engaged to Julia-Marie,” Ronnie forged ahead, ignoring me, “I was thrilled for you, but a part of me still dreamed. Even after everything with Bex, and you turned so cold and distant, even after you brought home Cassidy, I still remained hopeful that maybe one day it would all work out for us. We were good people, and good people deserve to be happy. And the years just flew by, and I just kept hoping, maybe one day.”

  Walker’s head stopped moving. In fact, even with my enhanced senses, the only movement coming from him was the involuntary contraction of his heart. He’d even stopped breathing.

  Ronnie took a step toward him, and this time, Dominic and I let her go.

  “It wasn’t until I woke after Bex’s attack and realized that I wasn’t dead, that I was a vampire, that I knew one day would never come. Maybe we never would have been happy even if I’d grown old and died human, but suddenly, even the hope of happiness was gone. Completely, utterly gone. I looked at my claws that were once hands, cut my tongue on the fangs that were once my eyeteeth, and felt bloodlust burn the back of my throat, and greater than the fear of the creature I’d become was the dawning horror over the fact that there was no hope for you and me. Your love for me was just a foolish girl’s dream, but there was nothing questionable about your love of killing vampires.”

  Ronnie took another step forward, an arm’s-length away from Walker now, close enough that, depending on the size of the bullet he had loaded, the exit wound might blow apart the back of her skull.

  Walker didn’t move a muscle, not even to blink, but tears filled his eyes and spilled over his cheeks.

  “Nothing about this is easy, Ian. Realizing that we were over was the hardest moment of my life. I still can’t come to terms with it. Looking at you now, finally seeing you again, your face…God, your face—” Ronnie reached out a shaking hand. Walker finally moved, just one twitch of his eyes to Ronnie’s raised claws, and she froze. She sighed and let her hand drop down to her side. He met her eyes. “I missed you,” she said. “More than my whole human life, the one thing I miss most is you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Walker said, and his voice was nothing but gravel. I didn’t know what he was sorry for. Was he offering an apology for ignoring Ronnie’s feelings for most of her life? For not being there for her when she was attacked and transformed? Or preemptively for killing her? Really, I didn’t think it mattered anymore.

  “I know,” Ronnie said, “because this is the hardest moment of your life. The day you face not one vampire, but three, and you don’t kill any of them.”

  Walker was back to shaking his head, but when he spoke this time, he wasn’t looking at Ronnie. “What’s wrong with her?”

  I blinked. “There isn’t a clinical term, but I believe they refer to what Ronnie is suffering from as heartbreak.”

  “Are you depriving her of blood? Are you punishing her to get to me?” Walker asked, and the tears kept flowing.

  I gaped, taken aback. “Of course not. We’re vampires, not monsters, Walker. Oh, that’s right, you could never tell the difference.”

  “Cassidy,” Dominic growled. “Not that long ago, neither could you.”

  I sighed and tried again. “Ronnie’s transformation only took a few hours. She’s been struggling with basic vampire skills, like feeding and entrancing, and although we’ve tried to teach her those skills, it’s not going well for her.”

  Walker looked back at Ronnie, waiting for her response.

  Her smile was small and so, so sad. “What does it matter if you’re just going to kill me anyway?”

  Walker froze again, nothing but heartbeat.

  Ronnie took one last step forward, close enough that the handgun’s barrel pressed against her chest. I glanced at Dominic to gauge his reaction, but the expression on his face was resigned. We should do something, I thought, but we’d already warned her. We’d already tried to stop this from happening, but no effort would be enough to get this derailed train back on its tracks, with or without casualties. And there were sure to be casualties.

  Ronnie raised her hands and wrapped her bone-thin fingers around Walker’s fist. Her claw-tipped thumb threaded through the trigger guard and over his index finger. “What does it matter, since I’m already dead?”

  Ronnie tensed to pull the trigger.

  Walker flicked the safety on with his thumb.

  They stared at each other for a long moment, the gun and the safety between them like a life preserver neither could find the heart to let go of.

  “I thought Bex had killed you,” Walker whispered.

  “Didn’t she?” Ronnie murmured back. “Isn’t that what you always said, that being transformed into a vampire was as good as being dead?”

  Walker’s expression hardened. “I searched for you. As much as I could while caring for Colin, I searched for all of you.” He blinked, nearly startled by his own thoughts. “What of the others? Are Logan, Keagan, Jeremy, and—”

  “We were all attacked and transformed.”

  Walker nodded, his expression still unyielding. “What are you doing here?”

  Ronnie blinked. “Seriously?”

  Walker frowned, as much as he could frown while already wearing such a somber expression.

  “Why is anyone here in New York City right now? Sightseeing?” Ronnie snorted derisively, and I had to bite back a smile. I’d never heard her speak like that to Walker—I couldn’t remember hearing her be anything but meek and tender toward him—and if his gaping jaw was any indication, he couldn’t either. “I’m here to help take down Jillian and stop the Damned from taking over the world,” she said.

  “Taking over the world might be a bit of an exaggeration,” Walker said drily.

  “They took over New York City easily enough,” Ronnie reasoned. “Who’s here to stop them from taking over the next city and the next
and the next one after that?” She looked around at our little group, Dr. Chunn and Greta on one side of the room, with Nathan caged behind them and Dominic and I on the other side of the room, tensed for action. “If we’re the only hope the world has against these creatures, the world is doomed.”

  “Only because we’re divided,” I interjected.

  Walker’s eyes flicked to me, and Dominic flinched beside me. Walker’s gaze was filled with so much anger and revulsion, I was reminded just how close his thumb still was to the safety.

  “Cassidy’s correct,” Dr. Chunn said.

  Silence stretched, and I could feel the heavy weight of doubt settle on Dr. Chunn from everyone’s collective, unresponsive stare.

  “She is,” she insisted. “Detective Wahl and her raid might not have failed if the Day Reapers hadn’t shown up and tried to save the day on their own.”

  “They’d won against the Damned once,” Nathan said. “I’m sure they thought they could do it again.”

  “They probably could have, but not with dozens of entranced humans in their way.” Dr. Chunn shook her head. “We were an ill-equipped, divided front, and Jillian used that to her advantage and won.”

  Walker snorted, and I realized where Ronnie had learned to sound so derisive. “And having an army of nearly a hundred ten-foot-tall creatures with talons like sabers and scales like armor didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “It did, of course,” Dr. Chunn said, frowning at his tone. “But we didn’t help ourselves either. We didn’t stand against them with our best, united front. We didn’t punch back with planning and precision. We were desperate, and the Day Reapers were overconfident, and that, in combination with our lack of solidarity, was a disaster. The Damned are stronger and taller and more lethal, but we have intelligence where they only have instinct and orders. We could have won against them—but we didn’t—and Cassidy is right when she says that one of the main reasons we didn’t is because we were divided.”

  “One of the reasons?” Walker raised his eyebrows. “As in, there’s more than one?”