“We all have our problems to solve,” I murmured, “and yours isn’t any more impossible than us finding you a spare Day Reaper to conduct your experiments on.”
“Or finding the families of the Damned and breaking it to them that their loved ones are ravenous, heart-eating creatures slaughtering the city—assuming their loved ones are still alive.” Greta said. She waved a hand dismissively. “But no worries, I can tell them it’s just an oxygen deficiency we can’t treat yet.”
“Or having said oxygen deficiency,” Nathan interjected.
“All right, okay, enough with the pity party; we all have our impossible problems to solve,” Walker said. “And anyway, hunting Day Reapers takes the cake.”
I raised my eyebrows. “No one is hunting Day Reapers. We’re saving them.”
“We’re saving one.” Dominic clamped a hand on my shoulder and moved me gently aside, so he could confront Walker. “And you are not the face Bex will want to see upon her rescue.”
I’d never seen a grimmer smile than the one on Walker’s face in that moment. “It’s not a matter of want, but a matter of need. I’m your best bet to infiltrate the underground of your coven undetected.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t a good idea.”
Dominic crossed his arms. “I’m more than capable of infiltrating my own coven.”
“Not undetected. Jillian was your Second—she knows every secret passage and unmapped tunnel in the coven that you know of,” Walker reasoned. “I have forged passages to infiltrate your coven without your knowledge, and therefore without her knowledge. With me, you’ll have the element of surprise.”
“Bullshit,” Dominic snapped. “I know all passages in and out of that coven; it holds many secrets, but none from me.”
“Let me prove you wrong. If I show you a passage that you already know of, by all means, leave me behind,” Walker said, his expression somehow cruel despite the helpfulness of his offer. “But if it’s a passage I’ve kept secret, even from you, then I get to come along.”
I squeezed Dominic’s shoulder, digging my talons into his flesh. “I don’t care what he knows; this is a bad idea,” I insisted.
“This is a rescue mission, not a staking,” Dominic reminded him. “Why do you even want to attend? When has saving a vampire ever interested you?”
“Bex saved my life once. Maybe I want to return the favor.” Walker shrugged noncommittally.
I squeezed my talons in deeper. “And maybe he wants to lead us deep into a secret passage where no one will ever find the ash of our bodies.”
“I would kill him before he could even twitch a finger,” Dominic said drily.
Walker snorted. “You would try.”
Dominic’s ears elongated. “Should I try now?”
Walker aimed his handgun.
“Stop! Please, stop.” Ronnie lunged between the two of them. “We all agreed that being divided allowed Jillian and the Damned to win last time. If we have any hope of winning a fight against them this time, we have to find a way to work together.” She eyed the two of them speculatively. “Which means not killing each other.”
Dominic sighed, but he took a step back.
“Even if some of us are vampires,” Ronnie finished.
Walker looked away, unable to hold her gaze, but he did finally holster his gun.
Dominic must have seen something more in Walker’s gaze than grief and guilt—or perhaps, that was enough to convince him—because the next words out of his mouth made me nauseated with dread. “I accept your offer. You may show me the secret passageway to infiltrate my own coven, and if it is indeed secret to me, you may join us in our endeavor to free Bex from her confinement in the Underneath.” Dominic’s eyes narrowed slightly. “But I will have your word that you will not use this opportunity to kill or otherwise incapacitate, inflict pain on, maim, or in any way physically harm Cassidy, Bex, myself, or any vampire, with the exception of Jillian and the Damned, or in self-defense.”
“Agreed, assuming I have your word as well,” Walker said.
“If we must sign verbal contracts not to kill each other, we shouldn’t be working together,” I grumbled.
Dominic nodded to Walker, ignoring me. “You have my word. I will not harm you in any capacity unless in self-defense or in defense of Cassidy, Bex, or one of my coven.”
Walker nodded curtly, and then fixed his velvet-brown gaze on me.
I blinked. “What?”
“Your word,” Walker answered tightly.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Walker stared at me, deadly serious.
“I would never harm you except in self-defense,” I said, bitterly. “And until recently, I never thought I’d need that exception.”
“You never would have, until recently,” Walker said coldly. “But I was wrong about everything concerning you.”
I smiled sadly. “It’s hard to be right about someone you never really knew.”
Chapter 8
Dominic, Walker, and I working together was a bad idea. I’d recognized it as a bad idea from the moment the words “hunting Day Reapers” had uttered from Walker’s mouth, and I continued to believe it as Walker led us through the familiar sewer drains beneath New York City to an underground passageway that had indeed been secret from Dominic, and as Dominic upheld his end of their bargain and allowed Walker to join us in our mission to release Bex from the Underneath.
After hours of navigating the damp labyrinth of old sewer drains, we came to a passage that expanded into tunnels carved into the hard, porous rock that composed Dominic’s coven. Dominic took the lead, and eventually, after what felt like an eternity of navigating winding passages and crumbling fissures, we stared down into the silver-lined Underneath.
The Underneath was an unfurnished, mildew-ridden series of chambers at the bottom of a four-foot-wide, twenty-foot deep chasm. The crevice would have been unremarkable in the porous cavern, where spider web cracks commonly snaked to wide fissures, but with my enhanced senses and sensitivity to silver, I could feel the heat billowing from this particular fissure with the energy of a furnace. Emanating from the Underneath along with the sweltering heat was the noxious scent of steaming flesh.
Bex’s flesh.
Even though I was standing ten feet away from the Underneath’s opening, the beating burn of its heat made my eyes water. I wiped the tears from my cheeks distractedly, imagining Jillian in that hell for the three weeks before we’d released her in the desperate attempt to save Nathan. Her body had been nothing but bone and charred sinew and tendons; feeling the blistering intensity of the Underneath’s entrance from several feet away, I couldn’t imagine how Jillian had been anything but ash. I pulled my hand away from my cheek and stared, somewhat unsurprised, to find blood, not tears, smeared on my fingertips.
Of the three of us, Walker was the only one capable of infiltrating the Underneath without being physically affected, and that realization only pounded home the fact that working together was not just a bad idea, but the worst idea I’d ever agreed to. Considering all the times I’d agreed to play bait for Dominic in his endeavors to save his coven and my brother, I’d agreed to some terrible ideas.
“We’re sending Walker down there to rescue Bex alone,” I said. It wasn’t a question but a matter of common sense. Our eyes were bleeding, for heaven’s sake.
“Since he’s here, we may as well take advantage of his indifference to silver,” Dominic said reasonably.
“What would we have done without him here?” I shook my head in wonder. “How do you imprison people down there without enduring the effects of silver exposure yourself?”
Dominic laughed. “I suck it up.”
I wiped my eyes again and held up my bloodstained fingertip for his inspection. “If these are the effects of silver exposure from outside the Underneath, I can’t imagine going inside. I ca
n’t imagine surviving.”
“Bex is stronger than even Jillian,” Dominic said, “and she’s only been imprisoned for seven days. She will be starved and wasted nearly to bone, but she will recover with a simple feeding. She’ll have survived.”
Dominic’s voice sounded certain, but I wasn’t completely convinced. I glanced at Walker as he edged toward the crevice, unaffected by silver and therefore exempt from its burns—but not from the smell of other people’s burns. He pulled the ropes, anchors, and harnesses of his rappelling equipment from his pack, his nose tucked into the front of his shirt.
I turned back to Dominic, my eyebrows raised. “Simple feeding?”
Dominic glanced at Walker, his brows furrowed, but as my implication dawned, his expression showed something akin to astonished incredulity. “My intention is not to feed Walker to Bex. I daresay he would consider that an attack, a break of our promise, and permission to—how did you so eloquently state—” Dominic tapped his forefinger to his lips twice in thought before holding it aloft in exclamation. “—hide the ash of our bodies where no one will ever find it.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“After seven days in the Underneath, Bex’s flesh may or may not still be intact, but she will most certainly be unconscious. Walker will lift her out of the crevice, carry her to safety, and be gone from this place before anyone is wise to our presence or her absence. Only then will I procure a meal for her.” Dominic grazed the hollow of my cheek with the knuckles. “And for you.”
I swallowed the cinnamon burn of Walker’s scent, a heady reminder of my own unsavory appetite. One day, I would have to procure my own meal, as Dominic so delicately phrased it, but lucky me, today was not that day. I had other, more pressing dilemmas at the moment. “This was too easy.”
Dominic shrugged, but I wasn’t fooled by his nonchalance. He felt as uneasy at our uncontested entrance into the coven as I did. “Ian Walker’s passage was secret even to me, so Jillian would not have prepared a defense against that entrance.”
“But she should have felt our presence when we officially entered the coven. At the very least, she would have felt someone’s presence. As Master, you would have—or so you have claimed,” I pointed out.
Dominic nodded. “It’s true; to me, the coven is a living being, as animate and susceptible to invasion as my own body, but even microscopic parasites and germs may enter my body undetected.”
I grinned. “In this analogy, are we germs or parasites?”
Dominic returned my grin. “Our visit tonight may go undetected.”
“Or she is waiting for Walker to rappel into the Underneath before attacking, so we are torn between fleeing and fighting? In our hesitation, her Damned will tear us to shreds and devour the hearts from our chests.”
“That, too, is a possibility, but the less likely scenario, I think.”
I snorted softly. “How less likely?”
Dominic gave that serious thought. “Seventy/thirty, give or take a percentage.”
I turned toward Walker and raised my voice slightly. “You need any help with that gear?”
Walker didn’t look up from where he had secured his rigging into the rock. “I’m about ready here. I’ve prepared a fifty-foot line.”
“That should be plenty,” Dominic said. “Once you reach the bottom, you’ll face a series of chambers, each containing several cells. Each cell is silver-lined and unwelcome to vampires, but being a night blood, you shouldn’t feel any resistance crossing the threshold.”
Walker’s grin wasn’t humorous in the least. “Lucky me.”
“The doors are thick oak reinforced with silver,” Dominic continued, unhampered by Walker’s sarcasm. “They close flush against the surrounding rock, so you won’t be able to determine if a cell is occupied, let alone who may be occupying it.”
I frowned. “There’s no window? Not even a peephole?”
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not?” I asked, shocked. “I’d think a window would be necessary. Even solitary confinement cells in maximum-security prisons have peepholes. It would have been helpful specifically for this purpose, to see who’s inside the room and how they’re doing.”
Dominic bristled. “The Underneath is reserved as a final resting place for vampires sentenced to death. You do not put windows or peepholes in human coffins to check who’s inside and how they’re doing, do you? Do you find it necessary to check the state of decay of your loved ones?”
I recoiled. “Of course not. Such a thing would be obscene.”
Dominic nodded. “Precisely. The Underneath may resemble jail cells, but for all intents and purposes, they are graves.”
I frowned. “Well, we have the forethought to mark our graves, so we know who occupies each one. We keep records of such things, so if a body does need to be exhumed, it’s not a guessing game.”
“As do we. But I can only account for my records and the actions of the coven while under my rule. I have no idea if Jillian has continued such record keeping.” Dominic turned to address Walker once more. “Best-case scenario, Bex will be in the first sealed cell you open, and she will be the only vampire in that cell. She will be burned nearly to bone and unconscious—so you must take care not to lose any parts—but she won’t be a danger to you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You think Jillian would dump all the Day Reapers in one cell, like a mass grave?”
“I cannot presume to know what Jillian has and has not done. I can only guess at the likely scenarios that Walker may encounter.”
“You’re not responsible for Jillian. I get the drift,” Walker interrupted. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”
“Worst-case scenario, the Day Reapers were imprisoned together in one cell and have somehow devised a means to use each other’s power to delay the effects of silver exposure, so when you open the cell, they attack and drain you to regain their strength.”
Walker blinked in silence and then burst out laughing. “Oh, is that all?” He shook his head with continued mirth.
“Most-likely scenario is that the Day Reapers are in separate cells and unconscious. You should be able to open each cell, determine its inhabitants, and either extract Bex from her cell or move on to the next. Be sure to close and lock each cell securely behind you if you open one that does not contain Bex, even if the cell appears empty.” Dominic looked deep into Walker’s eyes, his voice grim. “None are empty. They all contain the ashes of at least one vampire, and at the time of their existence, they were the worst of our kind. There’s good reason for each of vampires I’ve sentenced to the Underneath to be there.”
I frowned. “If they’re nothing but ash, what does it matter if the door remains open? How could they possibly escape now?”
Dominic shuddered. “Never ask that question. I would prefer not to tempt fate when fate is already so far from our side.”
Walker shook his rigging impatiently. “If Bex’s body is nothing but bone, how will I recognize her?”
Dominic frowned, thinking.
“She only has one eye.” I said softly. “Her skull, if that’s all that remains, will be wearing an eye patch.”
Walker pursed his lips. “Anything else?”
“Good luck,” Dominic said.
“Here.” Walker ruffled through his pack and dug out two walkie-talkies, one of which he strapped to a harness on his hip. He handed the second to Dominic. “I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Turn it on and dial to frequency four.”
“Got it,” Dominic said, handing the walkie-talkie to me.
I rolled my eyes. “Got it,” I said, turning the switch and setting the dial. “And like he said, good luck.”
Walker didn’t look up at me, or acknowledge my words. He settled his grip on his rigging, leaned back in his harness, and dropped ass-first through the crevice to the Underneath
. Dominic and I waited, staring at the taut line of Walker’s rigging in silence, the only sound between us the zip of Walker’s descent and the scrape of his boots on rock.
Until there was only silence.
The walkie-talkie crackled to life. “Walker to DiRocco, do you copy? Over.”
Dominic smirked at the walkie-talkie. “No greeting or salutation? Does Ian Walker not know the fine points of phone etiquette?”
“He does, but this is walkie-talkie etiquette,” I explained. I pressed the talk button. “Copy that,” I said into the walkie-talkie, and then remembered. “Over.”
Dominic cocked his head questioningly. “Why does this device need different etiquette?”
“This technology is different than phones in that only one person can speak at a time, so you tell the person on the other end when you’re done speaking by saying ‘over.’”
He eyed said technology uncertainly. “We have phones. Why not simply use the technology we already have?”
“We are deep beneath the city, under God only knows how many feet of solid rock, not to mention the steel of sewer drains and the cement of the subway. We don’t have service down here.”
“How do the walkie-talkies have service if our cell phones do not?”
“Walkie-talkies don’t use cellular service. They—”
“I’ve hit rock bottom. Literally,” Walker said. Even through the crackle and mechanical monotone of his voice coming from the walkie-talkie, I could detect his sarcasm. “I’m unhooking my rigging now and about to explore the Underneath. Over.”
“Roger that. Over,” I answered.
“Who’s Roger?” Dominic asked.
I shook my head. “Roger is an expression. It means that I heard and understood what he said,” I explained. I gazed at the confused doubt in the beautiful, icy depths of his eyes and smiled. The rare moments in which he needed the finer points of cell phones, texting, the internet, and walkie-talkies explained to him were so adorably grounding.
“What?” Dominic asked, and I realized I was staring.
“Nothing.” I pressed talk. “DiRocco to Walker, do you copy? What’s going on down there?”
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