Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  He could feel my pain. He knew I was injured, and screw the sun, he was coming for me.

  I closed my eyes, ignoring Walker, the man impaling me with a stake mere inches from my heart, to concentrate on banking Dominic’s inferno. I soothed the physical burns and tried to project thoughts of calm and safety to him. I’m fine, I lied. I can hold my own without you.

  Walker pulled the stake out of my chest, and it hurt nearly as much being yanked out as it had going in.

  I groaned weakly, my connection with Dominic slipping.

  “You figure out how to transform Ronnie back, or next time I won’t miss,” Walker snarled.

  Dominic’s roar vibrated inside my skull. I had to ground myself and remember that I was the one who controlled our connection now. I could hide my pain from him, heal his injuries, and know his mind better than he did. Which was why I knew that Walker would be dead when Dominic arrived.

  “I get it, Walker,” I whispered, panting in pain through my locked jaw. “Your anger, your drive for revenge, even your drive to kill—no matter the blowback or bystanders—I get it. I hate it, but I get it. I even understand you attacking me. Your loyalty to Ronnie is commendable, especially considering she’s one of the very creatures you hate so much. I wish you’d had that same loyalty to me.”

  Walker winced, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “She hasn’t killed anyone. Even as a vampire, she’d rather starve than attack a human.”

  “Who have I killed?”

  Walker scowled. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve remained loyal to Ronnie even though she’s a vampire because she hasn’t killed anyone? You think she’s still worth saving.”

  “She is still worth saving.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t killed anyone. Why am I not worth saving?”

  He pressed the stake hard against my chest, directly over my heart again. “You don’t look starved to me.”

  I laughed, the sound more growl than anything, and blood sprayed from one of the bullet wounds in my neck. “I’ve drunk blood, if that’s what you’re implying, but I haven’t killed anyone to get it. More than I can say about you.”

  “Ronnie didn’t choose this life. She was attacked and—”

  “So was I!”

  Walker leaned close, his face spotted with my blood. “You should have been there for her.”

  “And who the hell was there for me?” I asked. “When Jillian attacked me and tore out my throat, did you have my back?”

  Walker just stared at me, the stake trembling between us.

  “I was dying, and when the time came to choose between life as a vampire or death, I chose life.” I leaned forward, inches from Walker’s face, embedding the stake deeper into my skin. “I won’t apologize for surviving.”

  “You’re twisting the truth to fit your agenda, but that’s not reality,” Walker snapped. “The reality is that you’re a monster now, like all the rest, and need to be put down.”

  “The reality is that you can’t accept the truth. Would Julia-Marie have been a monster had her transformation been successful?”

  “Don’t drag her into this,” he spat. “Don’t even fucking breathe her name!”

  “The answer to that is, no. Julia wouldn’t have been a monster, and neither is Ronnie and neither am I. There are men and women who are monsters, and there are vampires who are nothing but men and women allergic to sunlight. We are more than our physical being. We are who we choose to be. When you shove that stake through my heart and kill me or I succumb to mindless bloodlust and kill the nearest person with a pulse, it doesn’t matter who’s vampire and who’s human. In that moment, we’re the same person: a murderer.

  Walker was shaking so badly, the stake inadvertently lodged even deeper into my skin, nicking bone. I could feel its scrape vibrate my collarbone and gritted my teeth.

  “I don’t believe your lies,” he hissed.

  “I haven’t killed anyone, Walker. I’m not a monster. But if you kill me now, in this moment, you will be.”

  Walker’s expression hardened. The stake suddenly stilled. “I’ll do whatever is necessary, even become a monster, to save Ronnie.”

  I nodded, resigned. I understood and even respected his devotion to Ronnie. I’d done the same for Meredith, Nathan, and Dominic; nothing—not morals, laws, or the risk of death—would stop me from attempting to save a loved one. I’d expect nothing less from Walker.

  “I don’t know why I waste my breath,” I murmured resentfully, slumping back against the floor.

  “Excuse me?”

  I shook my head. “This isn’t the first time you’ve ambushed someone in their apartment. First Dominic, then Meredith, and now—”

  “I’ve never attacked a woman in my life, let alone Meredith,” Walker snapped. “Why the hell would I ambush Meredith?”

  “Never attacked a woman in your life,” I mocked bitterly. “You just attacked me!”

  Walker scoffed. “You’re a vampire.”

  “And you shot out Bex’s eye,” I reminded him.

  He gave me a look. “Also a vampire.”

  “You held me at gunpoint. You abandoned me when I was dying. You killed Jolene, an innocent woman caught in the crossfire!”

  “I held you at gunpoint to convince the vampires to release Ronnie after they’d attacked and kidnapped her. I left you in the woods because saving you would have saved Dominic—once again, a vampire. I killed Jolene to save you from Kaden, another vampire,” Walker said, exasperated. “You see a pattern here?”

  “Cut the bullshit, Walker,” I said warily. There was no talking sense into someone as stubborn and fanatical as Walker, but Dominic was nearly here, and I wanted answers before he skewered Walker on his talons. “Meredith saw you. She was half dead, but she remembers your golden hair and brown eyes.” I shook my head sadly. “I know you hate vampires. I know you hate me. Attack me if you must, but I never thought you’d attack Meredith to get to me.”

  “I wouldn’t. I didn’t,” Walker insisted. “When did this happen?”

  “Last week, right before the Leveling.”

  Walker pursed his lips. “You know she is susceptible to being entranced.”

  “You think a vampire would deliberately leave the memory of you attacking her?” I asked skeptically.

  He shrugged. “It’s the only explanation, if that’s what she remembers.”

  I shook my head. “It’d be easier to simply fog her memory and make her forget that she saw her attacker at all than create new ones.”

  “Easier, sure, but maybe the person who attacked Meredith didn’t need easy. Maybe they needed you to doubt me,” he said pointedly.

  I met Walker’s gaze sadly. “By the time Meredith was attacked, you’d already created enough doubt all on your own.”

  Walker and I glared at each other, both of us so alike in our anger and stubbornness, it was nearly like looking into a mirror.

  “Well,” I said on a sigh, breaking the silence. “Go ahead, then. Let’s finish this.”

  Walker blinked. “Come again?”

  I sat up slightly, and the stake embedded even deeper, scraping past bone and farther into flesh and organ. Walker eased the pressure on his end, careful not to pierce my heart even as I pressed unheedingly forward. “I can’t do anything about Ronnie. She is the creature she is now, and whether she chooses to starve or survive or become a monster is her choice and hers alone. So either finish this now or let me go. That’s your choice.”

  Walker stared at me, debating his options as if I hadn’t just laid them out for him. Seconds ticked by, our eyes locked in silent battle, and I willed with every atom of my being for him to see past my fangs, talons, and other monstrous physical attributes to the friend he’d known and trusted; to the person beneath I’d been all along.

  I smelled more than saw
the moment when Walker decided not to murder me. The clean, fresh mint I’d come to recognize as uniquely him overrode the fear and anger driving him. The scent reminded me of a time when we’d had much more in common and the excitement of learning all there was to know about this man overrode common sense. A time before I’d known he was living with Ronnie and building a veritable army of night bloods, before he’d held me hostage against Dominic, when right and wrong was still black-and-white. Before I could see Dominic in all his kaleidoscope colors, and when the potential in Walker’s kiss had felt like a benediction.

  Maybe Walker could still remember that time, too. Maybe humans and the creatures who fed on them could be allies against the monsters who wanted to kill us all.

  Walker pulled the stake from my chest and dropped his arm to the side.

  I winced. A river of blood flowed toward my stomach and then to the floor, joining the pool from the right side of my chest. “You don’t have much time. Dominic will be here any moment.”

  “Dominic can’t venture into daylight,” he scoffed

  I quirked an eyebrow. “You’d be shocked at what Dominic shouldn’t do and will anyway.”

  Walker narrowed his eyes. “Why are you warning me? You could have let him catch me off guard. We could have ended this”—he gestured between us—“whatever twisted triangle this is, once and for all.”

  “Whatever this is, it isn’t a triangle, I assure you,” I said, glancing at the stake. “Despite what you think, Walker, I’m not your enemy.”

  Walker tightened his grip on the stake, his jaw muscles flexing. I froze, wondering if that had been exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “When I look at you, I see everything I’ve spent a lifetime fighting against,” he said, his voice low and rumbling. Had he been a vampire, his chest would have rattled. “I’ve killed people, innocent people, in the name of killing vampires, because I knew beyond a doubt that they were unequivocally evil. They would have killed more than the few I killed to get to them, so I was actually saving lives.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I don’t agree with you, but I understand you better than you think.”

  “Words don’t mean much; they can be just as deceiving as looks—God knows Bex blinded me for years.”

  I tried to bite my tongue. Until he actually dropped the stake entirely, I needed to mind my words, but I’d never been one to sugar-coat the truth. “Bex saved you and Ronnie from burning in the fire that killed your parents. That has to count for something.”

  I braced myself for a stake through the heart, but Walker just calmly nodded. “Bex saved us over twenty years ago, and since that time, she killed Julia-Marie and attacked and transformed Ronnie. She’s shown her true colors.”

  I actually bit my tongue and managed not to respond this time.

  “But you,” Walker said, filling my silence with a heavy, frustrated sigh. “You risk your life for everyone around you: vampires, humans, and night bloods alike. And even though I’ve spent a lifetime fighting against the very creature you’ve become, your actions match your words. It makes me question where I’ve marked my lines, who the monsters are, and whether, after all these years, I’m already a murderer.”

  I gaped, struck dumb by his honesty and sudden, self-clarity.

  “That doesn’t mean I trust you,” Walker said. He stepped back, careful not to give me his back as he retreated. “It just means I don’t trust myself.”

  “Everything I understood about life and humanity and New York City has been shoved through a shredder and fed to a tornado. Given a human lifetime, no one could pick up the pieces, let alone reconstruct the picture. But the one thing nothing can tear apart is true friendship.”

  —Meredith Drake

  Chapter 19

  Part of me worried that Walker’s insightful self-revelation had been a grand performance to lull me into a false sense of safety, so he could finish what he started all those weeks ago, use me as bait a second time, and kill Dominic once and for all. I struggled to break the binds around my wrists and ankles, but either the material of the binds was stronger than me (unlikely) or the material of the bullets still lodged in my skin had somehow significantly weakened my body. I should have been able to expel regular and silver bullets from my skin, so whatever special ammunition Walker had used must be specifically designed to take out Day Reapers.

  He was holding out on Greta and Dr. Chunn big-time. Either that, or Greta and Dr. Chunn were holding out on me.

  The living-room wall exploded.

  The glass in my floor-to-ceiling bay window shattered. Shards, brick, and drywall blasted across the room like hot shrapnel, embedding themselves in my furniture, scraping across my hardwood, and raining over my body. I winced, instinctively wanting to shield my face and eyes from the debris, even as my body healed near-instantly from those superficial nicks and slices. The rest of my apartment, however, didn’t survive the fallout as well.

  My coffee table flattened, its legs snapped outward and its frame fractured in spider webbed splinters. My purple, gauzy living-room curtain fluttered in the air, hovering over the wreckage like a frayed, torn shroud, and over everything—the couch, recliner, love seat, television, area rug, and ruined coffee table—a fine layer of powered brick and drywall dust settled in the resounding silence.

  My heart plummeted. I tried to rationalize that even if Walker blasted Dominic with the same ammunition as he had me, I could heal him. I was in control of our metaphysical connection now, and I could take the wounds into myself. But irrational or not, I strained to face the living room wall, desperate to catch a glimpse of them—had Walker doubled backed somehow? Was he binding Dominic? Had Dominic been caught as unaware as me and knocked unconscious by the blast? But my living room was empty.

  A floorboard creaked behind me; I sensed the displacement of air, the flare of Dominic’s fury, and the clean scent of Christmas pine.

  Dominic stepped out from behind the wall, his expression thunderous. His eyes moved over my bullet-sprayed face, neck, arms, and chest; flashed between my bound wrists and ankles; and narrowed on the lake of blood expanding around me on the living room floor.

  “I liked that wall,” I commented, nodding my head at the shattered bay windows.

  Dominic knelt next to me, heedless of the blood, reaching for my bound wrists. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Careful, they’re—”

  Dominic hissed, jerking back as the binds around my wrists burned his hands.

  “—something more than silver,” I finished lamely. “I can’t break them or expel the bullets from my skin. Does Greta know he’s developed these weapons, or are they hers?”

  He fingered one of the bullet wounds in my arm. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice grim.

  “Obviously you didn’t know he’d developed this kind of ammunition,” I murmured, more thinking than questioning.

  “Obviously,” Dominic said drily, “Ian Walker needs to be put down.”

  “We came to a truce.”

  Dominic’s eyes blazed. “This is no truce. This is the gauntlet being thrown down.”

  “A stalemate then. I—”

  The sun peeked out from behind a cloud and washed over us. My words were ripped away by the sudden, overwhelming heat that engulfed my body from head to toe. I refocused on healing Dominic, which only served to worsen my own injuries, since I was healing him instead of myself.

  “Cassidy?” Dominic cupped my cheek in his palm. “You’re trembling.”

  “L-l-leave me,” I ground out from behind clenched teeth.

  “Shut up,” he snapped. “Let me think.”

  “It’s mid-d-d-day and I won’t have the strength to p-p-protect you from the sun for much longer.” I struggled to speak.

  “You need blood. Fresh, human blood.”

  “No,” I said.

  “
This is not the time to remain steadfast to your diet. Stale blood will not be enough to undo this damage.” He cupped both my cheeks in his hands and forced my gaze to meet his. “You’re ready, Cassidy. You can do this.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but then I met the blazing certainty in his icy-blue eyes. I shut up. He believed in me, and maybe, just maybe, it was time for me to believe in myself.

  I nodded.

  “That’s my girl.” Dominic leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be back,” he murmured, his lips and breath warm on my skin.

  “I’ll b-b-be waiting,” I said, but he was already gone.

  Time was indeterminate, marked by waves of pain: my own stinging wounds were swept under the feeling of Dominic’s burns only to resurface with a vengeance until I was as battered by the pain as I was the actual injuries. My vision began to tunnel and darken. I fought it; with everything inside of me I fought it, but when a drowning woman fights to breathe, all she finds inside her lungs is water.

  “Cassidy?”

  I wrenched my eyes open at the sound of Meredith’s voice, unsure when I’d closed them or why focusing on her face was so difficult. Or why she had three faces, and they were all spinning in dizzying circles above me.

  The spinning made me nauseated, so I closed my eyes again. Someone moaned, and the noise sounded like it had come from a dying animal.

  “Cassidy!”

  I opened my mouth instead of my eyes this time, but another moan escaped. Huh, I thought, somewhat detached from the urgency of the moment, considering how desperate Meredith sounded. I’m the dying animal.

  Something warm and thick and sweet and spiced and absolutely, irresistibly, unfathomably delicious coated my tongue and poured down my esophagus. My throat swallowed convulsively. Warmth spread outward from my stomach, and a sudden, searing heat, not unlike the sting of the healing enzyme in Dominic’s saliva, speared through my entire body.