And I couldn’t see any of it, not even a hint of shadow or movement, nothing beyond a blinding, bright light.
My throat clamped in panic at everything I could smell and taste and hear—everything I couldn’t save us from—until I realized everything I could feel. Calm settled over me, a stillness that went beyond my body and took root deep inside my being. I could feel everyone and everything connected to me as if by the tuned strings of a violin: Dominic low on my left, collapsed and writhing; Bex standing at my side, slightly behind me; Walker to my right, and dozens upon dozens of strangers surrounding us on all sides. If I focused on each individual being, I could taste the spice of their desires, the savory heat of their hunger, the sour chill of their fear; all the varying nuances of their emotions were taut beneath my fingertips, laid bare to stroke, pluck, or sever at my will. If I released the minds surrounding me and expanded my awareness, I could feel my ties to the former members of Dominic’s coven, their fear and confusion and reluctant acquiescence to the shifting tide of power. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, both the Damned and the coven surrounded us, and at its center, connecting them all like the spokes of an ever-turning wheel, was Jillian.
The boiling, flaming tar of her rage was suffocating.
Despite my heightened awareness, I couldn’t determine if the string between us connected my mind to hers or hers to mine. Should I attempt to play that string, the resulting melody might not be mine to create.
I might save us and all of New York City with just the right command. And she could as easily deflect my command and destroy us all.
Dominic was dying. Walker was defenseless, and Bex couldn’t save them on her own any more than I could on my own. I pulled away from Jillian and refocused on the world directly surrounding me. To entrance a vampire as a night blood, I’d required two simple ingredients: the vampire’s full name and the taste of my blood on their lips. Now, the strings between our minds were connected without these prerequisites; I could command them with a simple flex of my will.
“Stop,” I said, but the words were superfluous. My will was their will, and I wanted them to halt their attack. The absolute, sudden silence was nearly as disorienting as being blind.
I enforced my will over Dominic, and the flames consuming him instantly extinguished. The ravages of his burns cooled, healed, and smoothed. He went limp, exhausted by his injuries even if no longer physically wounded; his relief felt like a brisk breeze against my fevered cheeks.
Minutely, the light blinding my eyes dimmed. My vision returned in flashes, clouded by a kaleidoscope of blue, green, purple, and red polka dots. Eventually even the polka dots dissipated, and I could finally see: Dominic unconscious at my feet; Walker desperately aiming his ineffective wristwatch at the Damned; Bex watching me, a knowing curl to her lips. And surrounding us on all sides, dozens upon dozens of Damned, their eyes blank, their expressions slack, completely still even as their scales steamed from sun exposure, waiting on my next command.
Walker lowered his arm slowly, glanced down at Dominic, and then settled his eyes on me, just as warily as he’d been facing the Damned.
“Not even you could entrance the Damned,” he whispered. “Their minds don’t understand language, and they can’t obey commands they don’t understand.”
“No one can entrance the Damned,” Bex agreed. “One can create them and wield them, but never truly control them.”
Walker snorted and waved his hand at the slack-jawed Damned surrounding us. “Then what the hell do you call this?”
Bex’s smile widened. “Our greatest weapon,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at the Damned.
She was looking at me.
I considered diving back into the tunnels, finding Jillian, and ending this once and for all, but we were still outnumbered, and as powerful as I felt with everyone’s mind connected to mine, I didn’t know if I was powerful enough to defeat Jillian and her army. The reward of overthrowing her, however, would have been worth the risk. With Dominic at my side to bolster my confidence and fuel my courage, I probably would have at least tried, because some things—fighting for freedom and against injustice, tyranny, slavery, and mass murder—were worth dying for. But more moving than causes worth dying for were the people who made the risk worth that sacrifice. Specifically, the one person lying unconscious at my feet.
The difference between what I was willing to die for and what I was willing to live without was minute, but it was everything.
I bent down, gathered Dominic’s limp body tight against my chest, glanced up through the grate Bex had ripped wide open, and eyed the daylight outside the tunnels. Self-doubt swamped me. Had our positions been reversed, Dominic would have flown me back to the bunker, back to safety, but I wasn’t Dominic. I couldn’t even land a simple somersault on my feet.
“Just envision it, Cassidy.”
I glanced down and blinked at Dominic, breathless.
He nodded encouragingly. “Feel the movements and make it happen. You can—”
Whatever Dominic had been about to say was interrupted by wracking, wet coughs and a full-body shiver.
Self-doubt or no, I’d never learn to land if I didn’t leap.
“DiRocco?” Walker asked.
“Don’t you dare even think about leaving me here with him,” Bex growled.
Ignoring Bex’s outrage and Walker’s dumbstruck stare, I tensed. I’d watched Dominic fly through the night like a shooting star from the vantage of being wrapped in his arms more times now than I could count. Sometimes I’d been injured, sometimes we’d been running from the creatures trying to injure us, and more often than not, we’d ended our flight in a crash landing. But every time started the same, and I could envision that just fine.
The ground buckled beneath the weight of my power as I braced my legs for the coming leap—the longest, highest leap of my brief life—and I launched out of the tunnels, soaring high across the bright morning sky. I might not land on my feet, but wherever we fell, Dominic was secure in the safety of my arms.
Chapter 12
I laid Dominic on our bed in his underground bunker, safe from the sun and Jillian and her army of the Damned, but that hard-earned, newfound safety didn’t stop my heart from clenching in unadulterated fear as I watched Dominic writhe in agony.
I’d saved us from the Damned. I’d entered their minds and entranced, en masse, dozens upon dozens of ravenous, raging, psychotic creatures that hitherto couldn’t comprehend the English language or human emotion enough to understand or obey commands. I’m not sure that boded well for me, the fact that my commands were suddenly being given on a level they could comprehend. I’d survived being doused in sunlight, had, in fact, basked in its rays and perhaps blossomed into my full power as a Day Reaper. I’d accomplished more than I’d ever thought myself capable of, more than I’d thought anyone capable of, in the last eighteen hours, but even I couldn’t do anything to save Dominic.
“You need to return for Ian Walker and B-B-Beatrix,” Dominic said roughly, his teeth chattering in shock.
His body was smoldering. I’d healed him from being a Dominic-shaped blowtorch, but now that we were ensconced underground, meters of earth and thick concrete between us and the rays of the sun, his skin was still blackened, blistering, and flaking apart. Noxious steam sizzled from his body, as if embers of sunlight were still aglow in his clothing, still burning his skin.
I tore his clothes from his body, ripping his cotton T-shirt clean down the middle from neck to hem.
“Cassidy, love,” Dominic murmured, a teasing glint lighting his gaze even through the pain, “as much as I hunger for you, this isn’t the t-t-time for—”
“Shut. Up.” I enunciated each word through gritted teeth as I stared.
My hands hovered over his chest, wanting to help but hesitating, knowing that to touch him would only cause him more pain. He was still smolder
ing. Somehow, even hidden from direct sunlight, without flames or even the tiniest spark of an ember, he was still physically and excruciatingly burning alive.
“You must return for Walker and Bex,” he repeated, more insistently this time.
“They’re fine,” I snapped. “Be quiet and let me think!”
“The Damned—”
“Weren’t attacking when we left,” I bit off.
“Left to their own devices, they may j-j-just kill each other,” Dominic pointed out.
“If they can’t pull their shit together enough to get out while the going is good, then they deserve whatever happens.”
Dominic leveled a knowing look on me. “Cassidy—” he began.
“I don’t care,” I said, shocked to realize the truth in that statement as it left my lips. We may have just risked our lives to save Bex only to lose her again, but in this moment, the only person who mattered was incinerating in the bed in front of me. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
I ran to the refrigerator, swiped his emergency store of bagged blood from the door, and tore a bag open with my fangs.
Dominic narrowed his eyes. “That’s your blood.”
“There’s no time to find a willing donor, and I won’t hunt and attack an unsuspecting person for you when we have bagged blood readily available.”
“Never asked you to,” he panted.
Gripping the back of his neck in my hand, I tipped his mouth back, and placed the opened bag of blood to his lips.“Shut up and drink.”
He caught my wrist. “No. You drink,” he growled. Had I still been human, his grip on my wrist might have fractured bone. But I wasn’t human, and he was gravely injured. His entire body trembled violently.
“You’re going into shock,” I argued. “Stop fighting me and just—”
“You drink and heal m-me,” he interrupted, chattering even more violently than mere minutes ago. “Your f-f-fault I’m burning. You must learn c-c-control.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, incredulous. “It’s my fault you’re burning? Was I the one who tore open the cavern? Was I the one who flooded us in sunlight with less than a second of warning?”
“We are c-c-connected metaphysically. Your wounds are my w-w-wounds. Your strength is my strength and vice v-v-versa, but when I was the stronger vampire, the one who created our bond, I controlled them. I could hide from you when I was injured and take the worst of our combined injuries into my b-b-body to heal them.” He gave me a pointed look. “But I am unable to heal this injury.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying?”
“It would seem that since you came into your full p-p-powers, of the two of us, I am no longer the stronger vampire.” Dominic’s face pinched sourly. “You’re in control of our b-b-bond.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I scoffed. “You’re hundreds of years older than me. How can I be stronger than—”
“I am out of sunlight, yet still b-b-burning from the inside out,” Dominic thundered. “D-d-drink the blood to fuel your strength, determine why I’m not healing, and f-f-fix it.”
“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “I’ve never healed a metaphysical wound before. Maybe I should go back and get Bex. Maybe she can—”
“You didn’t know how to entrance me,” Dominic interrupted. “When you were a n-n-night blood and no night blood had ever in the history of my knowledge before entranced a vampire, you entranced m-m-me, the Master vampire of New York City.”
I closed my mouth, realizing that I was gaping. I felt as if I was teetering on the ledge of a very high cavern, peeking over the edge and down into the dark, unscaled depths below.
“You d-d-didn’t know how to transform your brother back from being Damned, but you did. You didn’t know how to transform into a vampire, or a Day Reaper, for that matter, but you did.” Dominic hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure of himself or whatever else he’d been about to say. Then his jaw stiffened, and he said it anyway. “You d-d-didn’t know how to trust a man with your body and heart again, but you did.”
I froze, from the hair follicles on the very top of my head to the soles of my feet rooted to the floor, and in the very next moment, heat flooded my entire body in a near, full-body blush.
“You, my dear Cassidy DiRocco, can do absolutely anything you want to, whether or not you’ve done it before or think you don’t know how.” The look in Dominic’s eyes was inscrutable as he regarded me. Even with my newfound, enhanced senses, I could only dream what the intensity in his gaze could possibly mean. “Anything.”
It felt fundamentally wrong to drink the last reserves of our bagged blood when Dominic was so injured, but looking into the depth of his eyes was very much like gazing down into the depths of that dark cavern, foreign and unknown, and by its very mystery, irresistible.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I raised the blood to my lips and drank.
The blood was cool and thick, not as viscous as Dominic’s blood, but thicker than liquids like water, juice, and Coke—liquids I was accustomed to drinking for a lifetime. The blood chilled my esophagus all the way down to my stomach, but unlike human food and drink, the sensation didn’t stop there. It spread in an uncomfortable, electric snap sensation through my chest, arms, and legs, but where the sensation spread, my flagging strength restored. My aches disappeared, and my body, which had grown thin and cold from the overuse of my abilities, warmed. We were underground, but the blood’s chilling heat—like menthol—spread through my body, radiating health, wholeness, and well-being, not unlike the sensation of basking with my head upturned to the shining sun on a crisp, clear winter morning.
Except now, the sun came from within.
I’d always had a strong connection with Dominic, even before he’d forged our metaphysical bonds. I remembered entrancing him that first time in the bullpen at the Sun Accord directly following our first kiss. Although I hadn’t been able to hear his exact thoughts, I had felt the very foreign nuance of his strange, kaleidoscope emotions.
Our metaphysical bonds weren’t much different now than they’d been then, but instead of just a mental connection forced by my will, our very life forces were connected now, a connection that not even death could sever.
I followed the dozens of threads connecting us—all the promises we’d made to each other on the certainty and permanence of death between his life and mine. I stepped lightly over the tightrope of our connection until I found his body, weakened from the newfound strength in mine. With my mind’s eye, I could see the warmth and glow of the sun’s rays inside of me, protecting me from daylight and stoking my Day Reaper strength and abilities, but Dominic’s body on the opposite end of our metaphysical thread was roasting, being charred slowly but meticulously into ash by my inner sun.
The light that made me strong was incinerating Dominic from the inside out.
I inhaled sharply, understanding like dawning horror shining light on his wounds. “It is my fault you’re burning.”
“How so?” he asked. Although his body was physically inches from mine, his voice echoed as if from a great distance.
“You’re allergic to sunlight. Your skin is highly flammable to the sun’s rays.”
“We know this,” he said.
“I absorbed the sun’s rays into my body to awaken my dormant Day Reaper abilities. It’s a light inside me, protecting my body from daylight and burning yours.”
“I could hide in shadow all d-d-day and still not escape the burning of the sun now,” Dominic said, not sounding near as horrified as I felt. “What can you do about it?”
“What can I do about what?” I snapped. “I’m burning you. The light inside my own body is killing you!”
He shrugged. “So give me sunscreen,” he said, as if slathering some SPF 50 onto his skin was a viable solution.
I opened my mouth to say as much when a sim
ilar thought, but one with merit, struck and stuck in my mind: sunscreen wouldn’t help, obviously, but maybe I could erect a metaphysical screen between us.
I envisioned a mirror, similar to the one Dominic had given me to protect my mind from being entranced, but instead of reflecting his commands, I reflected my inner sun back onto myself. Without my light blazing his body like an industrial blowtorch, I could see the destructive effects my power had on his body: charred organs, boiled blood, his wise, ferocious, four-hundred-and-seventy-seven-year-old soul nearly incinerated to ash.
I’d suffered the physical effects of Dominic’s injuries through our metaphysical connection before—burned wrists when he’d been cuffed by silver restraints and a pierced heart when he’d been staked by Walker’s crossbow—but for the first time, I wasn’t victim to his injuries. I could actually envision them, and with that same enhanced inner eye that allowed me to see each burn and blister, like a half finished puzzle, I could finally see the missing pieces in my own hands: I couldn’t heal his wounds any more than I could anyone else’s without my blood or saliva as a catalyst, but through our metaphysical connection, I could take the wounds as my own.
I embraced the burns. My skin bubbled and oozed, my insides cramped, and the agony of his injuries engulfed my body until every incinerated cell was mine and mine alone, and with the nourishment of the blood I’d just consumed and the healing light of my Day Reaper abilities giving me strength, I healed myself.
I opened my eyes slowly. Doubt and fear made my heart throb as much as hope.
Dominic wasn’t smoldering anymore. He still lay on his back in our bed just as I’d placed him, his shirt split down the middle just as I’d torn it moments ago, but unlike moments ago, his skin was smooth and unblemished by burns and weeping blisters. His body was more than just something to fix; the firm planes of his chest, the symmetrical ridges of his abdomen, the cords of oblique muscles—I drank in the sculpted, healthy perfection of his body.
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