“She was dying! I tried to transform her—for you!” Bex said. “I wish I could have seen then what I see now: the man I loved—the person I saved from the fire that killed his parents—died with Julia-Marie.”
“Such pretty words of regret and love lost,” Walker spat, “but you were the one who set that fire.”
Bex shook her head sadly. “Your parents died in a fire set by the Lord High Chancellor and his Day Reapers, not me. They set that fire to kill you because I wouldn’t join them, not while there was still a chance of you becoming my night blood.”
I tried not to look. I tried keeping my gaze locked on that final bend fifty yards ahead to give them a modicum of privacy in the confines of the tunnel, but my eyes seemed to move independently of my will, and I stared at Bex and her resigned, granite-like expression.
Walker shrugged. “Looks like High Lord Henry and his Day Reapers got what they wanted after all.”
“Yes, they did,” Bex said. “They always do. I didn’t start that fire, but I never should have saved you from it. I won’t make a similar mistake ever again.”
We walked in silence. Walker had won the argument, but judging by his pinched, sour expression, even he—as hardheaded and stubborn as he was—knew that the conversation hadn’t ended in his favor. Those last forty yards were some of the longest few minutes of my entire life, the silence yawning wider than the distance we walked.
We turned the corner, and suddenly the silence was the least of our concerns. A Damned was standing at the entrance of the tunnel and staring right at us.
I halted mid-step, stunned dumb. Walker stumbled into my back, and Dominic cursed under his breath.
The Damned opened its mouth and inhaled. It was going to alert Jillian and the others. We were so close, only yards away, and it was going to ruin everything.
I rushed forward, not thinking about its five-inch talons or jutting, razor-tipped fangs or its overwhelming height and strength and dozens of monstrous attributes that should have made me hesitate. Before the creature could let loose the roar that would give away our position—give away our lives—I slashed my claws across its throat.
The creature crumpled dead at my feet, silent.
“Nice work,” Bex complimented, the first positive words from her mouth since we’d saved her from the Underneath. “Effective. But not much flair.”
I flicked a glob of bloody fat from under my fingernail. “I’ll work on that.”
Bex glanced at Dominic from under her lashes. “Even at my most powerful, I didn’t possess the speed or strength to rival the Damned until after bathing in sunlight to complete my transformation into a Day Reaper. My claws couldn’t even penetrate their scales,” she said, her voice softening with wonder. “Her abilities without having fully transformed are already incredible.”
“Her abilities have always been incredible,” Dominic agreed, “even as a night blood.”
Bex nodded, and a wistful smile blossomed across her grotesque, blistered face.
I grimaced, uncomfortable with their strange, almost parental praise.
“We need to move,” Walker said. “Now. Where there’s one, you can damn well guarantee there’ll be—”
A line of Damned flooded through our exit, slavering and ravenous despite having freshly returned from a hunt. Blood gloved their hands from the tips of their talons to their elbows and smeared across their muzzles like macabre barbeque sauce. I’d witnessed their kind kill. When my own brother had been fully Damned, I’d watched as he’d pounded his arm elbow-deep into his victim’s chest, ripped out his heart, and eaten it. He’d subsequently slashed and torn and dismembered his victim to pieces—literally pieces—reducing a person to scraps of flesh and organs. The inferno of their rage-filled thirst was all-consuming. One heart was never enough. Ten was never enough. Nothing would ever be enough to ease their suffering.
I paused in awe-filled horror for just a moment, and in that moment they laid eyes on me, the only living thing in front of them in that narrow tunnel, the only thing between them and home with the dead body of their brethren lying at my feet. They roared—a deep, chest-vibrating roar—and they charged.
“This was your personal, secret entrance into the coven, was it not?” I snapped.
“Secret from Dominic, yes,” Walker snapped back.
“A secret only from Dominic, apparently,” Dominic said between gritted teeth.
“Referring to yourself in the third person doesn’t become you,” Bex quipped.
Dominic gestured to the riot of Damned barreling toward us. “Ignorance doesn’t become me, either, yet here we are.”
Their movements, which had appeared only a blur to my eyes when I was human, were an unsynchronized disaster. Unlike bees, which choreograph their individual movements perfectly in a swarm, the Damned didn’t care about anyone or anything besides themselves and their relentless drive for blood. The faster, more powerful Damned trampled over the others, slicing them aside with their claws and crushing them underfoot in their mad rush to reach me. I watched the minutiae of their movements—their muscles contracting, the stringy spray of saliva as they growled, the focused rage in their eyes—braced my weight on the balls of my feet, and allowed my claws to fully extend into talons. All five-foot-two, one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds of me was all that stood between Dominic, Bex, and Walker and a stampede of Damned, dozens upon dozens of them, returning from their nightly hunt. Yesterday, I would have screamed for Dominic, even knowing that he was no match for the Damned. No one was, except for the Day Reapers.
And me.
I charged forward, meeting the Damned halfway and keeping them a healthy distance from the others. One of the Damned swiped at me with its claws. I jumped over its shoulder, wrapped my arm around its head, and with a quick twist, broke its neck. Another Damned came at me with its talons. I juked to the side, and gutted him from groin to gullet with my claws. He fell and another Damned charged. Damned after Damned, they attacked, and Damned after Damned, they fell at my feet, their dead or dying bodies crushed by the next in line, which were in turn felled and trampled themselves. And I defended our position in the cramped confines of the tunnel, a one-sided fight I couldn’t lose, but because of their sheer numbers, I couldn’t end.
“Er, DiRocco?” Walker’s voice behind me sounded hesitant; nearly embarrassed, even, as he drew his gun from its holster. “We have company at six o’clock.”
I incapacitated the Damned nearest me with a quick slice to its jugular and glanced over my shoulder. A second stampede of Damned was charging toward us from the back of the tunnel.
I cursed under my breath. “Duck down! Give me room to maneuver!” I shouted.
Dominic instantly complied, flattening himself and Bex to the ground. He tugged Walker unwillingly with him by yanking the collar of his shirt down with his fist.
I hurdled over their crouched bodies and met the second stampede head-on. We collided in a spray of arterial blood and thicker things as my talons pounded through muscle and organs and scraped against bone, but I couldn’t hold them off for more than a second before the first crowd of Damned closed in. I was inhumanly strong, imperceptibly fast, and could sense the twitch of their muscles before they even truly moved, making me most possibly the biggest badass this city had ever seen, night or day—never mind my petite stature—but I was only one person. Everyone, even the biggest of badasses, needed backup.
I strained to move faster and strike harder, but they just kept coming. A Damned behind me raised its claws against Dominic. I could feel its excitement charge the air like a feather tickling my spine. I impaled a Damned in front of me and turned to block the strike against Dominic. A second Damned swiped at Walker. Dominic curled around Bex, protecting her with his body, but Walker didn’t have anything but air between his soft skin and the razor edge of the Damned’s lethal talons.
Lunging forwar
d, I covered Dominic with my body and ripped my claws through the Damned threatening Walker. The Damned collapsed over Walker, dead before even hitting the ground, but the creature attacking Dominic skewered its five-inch talons deep into my stomach.
“Cassidy!” Dominic roared, abandoning Bex for me and reaching to stanch the hemorrhage. His hands pressed firmly against my wound, and the pressure felt like being stabbed a second time.
The Damned raised its claw again. I didn’t have time to scream, not in frustration or fear, and certainly not in pain. I pushed Dominic and his hovering hands aside and swiped at the Damned with my talons, ripping its throat out to expose the neat stacks of its vertebrae. Blood showered over us in a hot splash. The creature dropped to the ground, limp and dead, but there was a Damned behind that one, and another, and another.
My hand trembled as I pulled it away from my bleeding stomach to check the wound.
I blinked in shock. The wound was starting to heal. Before I could even scream from the injury or at our fate, my stomach knitted closed and began to scab. Within another few seconds, the scab might scar and the scar might smooth over as if I’d never been injured.
But there was no time to gape in awe of my own healing power—an ability to rival even Dominic’s. The next two Damned in line attacked.
I shoved Dominic behind me and lunged to block the next strike against Walker. The Damned were relentless. I took hits one after another—a jab to the ribs, a claw to the neck, a bite on my arm—but trusting the wounds would heal, I used my body as a shield, gritted my teeth against the pain, and struck back between blows with jabs and claws and bites of my own. No matter how fast I could heal, however, the wounds were excruciating; after enduring and healing wound upon wound, I quickly reached the limits of my abilities and energy.
Walker tried to help, but even the weapons he’d perfected over the years to defend against vampires were nothing but sticks and stones against the Damned. He’d already gone through several rounds of ammunition with nothing more to show for his efforts than a sore trigger finger and wasted bullets. His silver-nitrate spray burned their scales—the steam that sizzled from their hide stank—but the pain didn’t slow their attack. His skeleton-watch spears couldn’t penetrate their hide, and they were coming too fast for him to properly aim for their eyes. The most effective of his weapons was a new addition to his arsenal: a flashlight that beamed artificial sunlight, but even that weapon backfired. The Damned shielded their eyes against the light and roared, cowed for about the second it took for them to become completely enraged—as if they weren’t already whipped into a homicidal frenzy—and then they attacked with renewed, brutal force.
“We need a plan,” I screamed, taking a bone-deep blow to the shoulder. The creature’s talon caught and tugged on my joint. When it ripped clean, my arm split wide open, exposing the bone and joint in a spray of blood and searing pain. I choked back a cry, reminding myself that it would heal—it was fine, I was fine. I struck down the Damned, but another sliced its talons down my back. “I can’t keep up!”
Walker whipped his sunbeam flashlight at a Damned over Dominic’s shoulder. “We’re fucked.”
“We’re not!” I snapped. “I just need help.”
“I’m trying to help!” Walker snapped back, taking his eyes off his aim to glare at me.
“Careful there.” Dominic muttered, ducking down away from the wild sweeps of Walker’s sunbeam. “You’re all we’ve got, Cassidy.”
“Not true,” Bex said curtly, just loud enough to be heard above the sounds of combat.
Dominic shook his head. “Not happening.”
Bex held her wrists up to me, her emaciated fingers elongated to three-inch silver talons. “Please!”
The cuffs around her wrists had melted her skin down to nearly bone. I turned away to disembowel the next Damned bearing down on us.
“You’re not strong enough.” Dominic grunted as he ducked under the Damned’s claws.
“Then let me feed,” Bex growled.
Walker laughed. “Nice try.”
“We need a plan, people!” I yelled.
“I can help you,” Bex pleaded.
I blocked a Damned from eviscerating Walker, and while I had my arm raised, another Damned punched its talons into my side. Pain, sudden and debilitating, raked across my back before the wound at my side could heal. I fell to my knees, my legs going out from under me without permission, but I used the momentum of my weight to roll and avoid the jackhammer jab of claws trying to impale my chest. My side and back healed, but the distraction had been enough. In rolling to avoid the Damned’s claws, I’d separated myself from Dominic.
A Damned cocked its fist in preparation for puncturing his sternum. I wouldn’t make it in time to block the strike, but Bex was within arm’s reach of both of us.
She thought she could help? I thought, desperately. Fine—let’s see her prove it.
I stretched back with one hand and severed the cuffs around Bex’s wrists and ankles with my talons.
Bex lunged between Dominic and the Damned and blocked the strike for me. I bounded in front of Walker, ignoring his sputtering, cursing protests, and Bex and I fought the Damned, back-to-back, protecting my lover and the man who had killed hers. She didn’t attack Walker, not even for a quick nip to regain some of her strength; she didn’t have time.
“On your right!” I shouted.
She dodged the Damned and impaled his chest with her claws.
Pain raked up my torso, from thigh to rib. I tore my eyes from Bex to face the Damned who’d struck me, but my knees buckled before I could land a solid blow. Bex back-flipped and roundhouse-kicked the creature in the face, midair. By the time I’d healed and stood, she’d already landed, decapitated it with a swipe of her claw, and moved on to the next Damned.
“Eyes front!” Bex chided. “I got this.” And to prove her point, as if she hadn’t already, she launched into the air, her claws outstretched as she spun, and decapitated the front line of Damned surrounding us. She landed on her feet, bounced into a little flip, and roundhouse-kicked the nearest Damned. It flew back from the force and took eight Damned behind it down, like bowling pins.
I grinned. “Effective. But too much flair.”
“Efficient.” She jumped into the air, swooped down on their heads in a flying, graceful flip of fangs and talons, and before she’d even landed, five Damned hit the ground. “You try.”
I swiped out with my claw and neatly decapitated the Damned in front of me while dodging the two others that swiped for my heart. “Not…the…time!”
“Don’t dodge! Strike!” Bex shouted. Another flip-twirl move and more heads rolled.
“I can’t!”
“Try!” Bex said, killing four Damned.
I dodged a claw as it raked toward my face. “But—”
“Envision what you want to do. And just do it!”
From the corner of my eye, I watched as she fought with grace and flair and steel in every move, and I wanted it. I could feel the want inside me, begging me to try. Just try.
I glanced at Dominic, and the excitement and pride in his eyes filled me with something I might not have found within myself: the confidence to tap my potential.
One of the Damned who’d dropped from Bex’s last roundhouse kick regained his feet and charged. I watched its clunky movements, smelled the electric twitch of muscles as his legs ran and his arms pumped and his jaw opened on another raging roar that shook the tunnel’s foundation. I could easily duck under the arm that would slash at my head, lunge forward and take him out, but there was another Damned behind him, and another behind that, and Bex had her own unending line of Damned to face.
And a large part of me—a selfish, shallow, competitive part—resented that Bex was better.
I took Bex’s advice. I waited for the creature to come to me instead of lunging
to meet it, and with that extra moment to my advantage, I envisioned my movements: my knees bending, my thighs flexing, springing into the air, tucking my body into a ball, slashing out with propeller-like talons. Their necks giving way under my claws, and my foot connecting with satisfying accuracy into its chest.
Suddenly, the Damned was upon me. I sprang into the air, flipping with grace and power, just like I’d envisioned. The Damned’s head rolled and its body catapulted back, knocking down the five Damned behind it before its head even hit the stone floor.
And I landed with a bone-jarring thud on my back.
“Good!” Bex said, but she’d already turned away to face more oncoming Damned.
I flipped back to my feet and killed another Damned, catching a barely suppressed smirk at my mishap from Dominic. I just had enough time to narrow my eyes at him before the fight was upon me again.
The end of the tunnels was only a few hundred feet away, but the space between us and freedom may as well have been miles. Even with the two of us fighting back, we were losing ground by inches, not gaining it. And time was not on our side: dawn broke over New York City.
A drainage grate over our heads scattered slivers of light into the tunnel, but even without the visual reminder, I could smell the sensitive, allergic surface of Dominic’s skin beginning a slow bake. Cold, hard dread throbbed through my chest.
Bex glanced at me over her shoulder consideringly.
“What?” I yelled, not liking the knowing look in her shrewd gaze.
“Dominic, find a shadow,” Bex replied. And without further warning, she reached up with her talons, tore the grate above us from its hinges, and doused the entire tunnel in sunlight.
Chapter 11
I couldn’t see. Even more debilitating and terrifying than Dominic’s spontaneous combustion, than Walker’s shrieks as he jerked away from the flames, than the inferno raging beneath my own skin—not physical flames like those engulfing Dominic but burning all the same—was my sudden and complete blindness. I could smell the roasting char of Dominic’s flesh. It mingled with the taste of rotting excrement from the Damned’s breath as they panted in slavering, lusting anticipation, and I gagged. I could hear the fluttering wings of Dominic’s panic, feel the smooth lick of Bex’s self-satisfaction, and taste the biting bile of Walker’s dread; the riptide of their emotions was drowning.
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