Walker sighed. “You can’t just transform into a vampire, into a Day Reaper for fuck’s sake, and expect everyone to just blindly jump on board the support train. I don’t agree with your decision and what you’ve become, and knowing my stance on vampires, which I’ve never been shy about sharing, it’s not fair of you to expect my blessing.”
I nodded slowly, careful to let my anger simmer and expel before speaking. Walker wasn’t the enemy I needed to fight right now. He was the enemy I could fight tomorrow, assuming we survived today.
“Thank you for carrying out your part of the plan,” I said, wringing every last drop of graciousness from my body. “You really pulled through, and I appreciate your efforts.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, nodding. “I guess this is goodbye, then.”
I nodded back, and we stood there for an awkward minute, just nodding at each other. Dominic watched us with his arms folded over his chest, like a nightclub bouncer. I didn’t need protection—I could take down an army of Damned vampires, for heaven’s sake—but my defenses never seemed adequate where Walker was concerned.
“Good luck,” he said. He didn’t offer his hand, even knowing we were entering into a battle from which we might not return. Without another word, he picked up his gun, his movements slow and deliberate with Dominic looming over him, and turned his back on me without a second glance. I watched him leave, every inch of him armed—his shoulders draped with silver ammunition, wooden stakes in holsters tucked into his boots, coil-spring projectile watches at his wrists, silver-nitrate sprays clipped to his hip, and a bulletproof vest wrapping the entire package—and somehow, I worried that he was leaving alone. We had been friends once—very good friends that had saved each other’s lives—even if I was the only one of the two of us who remembered that friendship fondly.
But fond memories of friendship or not, I wasn’t here to mend the past. I turned my back on Walker and stood beside Dominic with more to lose now than I’d ever risked while waging and losing the battle behind me. As surely as Walker was my past, the only thing certain about my future was that I’d have to fight for it.
Chapter 27
Five hours later, I’d bitten all ten of my nails down to the quick, again, had regrown them, and was working on round three while watching Jillian from the vantage of the highest tier of honeycombs. She had finally ceased one-on-one meetings with her vampires and was alone in the great hall. The sun was due to rise in four minutes, thirty-two seconds and counting. I was starving—literally, I could feel my skin shriveling like shrink-wrap around my muscles as I slowly but surely devolved into my day form—and not one Damned had returned to the coven.
Not one.
“Her big move is bigger than ours,” I grumbled.
Dominic shook his head. “It’s not a move at all,” he said, his words precise and perfectly enunciated around his elongated fangs.
He hadn’t completely transformed into his gargoyle-like day form yet, but without a ready food source—the humans were for the Damned and Day Reapers, not us, no matter that I could hear all thirty-seven of their hearts beating inside their chests like a siren song—he might as well just give up on the pretense of civility and embrace the change sooner rather than later. I had.
“We can’t fight her and her army if her army isn’t here to fight,” I pointed out.
Dominic grinned. “Good thing, then, that we have the leverage to make her order them back.”
Kaden growled, its deep rattle sounding more broken than menacing.
I repressed a wince and met Dominic’s eyes. “Stay here and follow my lead. You’ll know when to join me.”
“I remember the plan.” Dominic grinned ruefully. “You rehashed it a dozen times. I couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to.” He reached for me with his four-inch talons, wrapped his long fingers around the back of my neck, and pulled me close. “Good luck,” he whispered against my mouth before pressing his lips to mine.
Kissing is not part of the plan, I thought, and would have said as much except my lips were otherwise occupied. We’d been waiting over nine hours for the ripe moment to confront Jillian, and after all that time together, now he decided to linger in sentimentality. But I wanted to want this kiss, to embrace what little time we still had and not let nerves or grudges or anything ruin this memory, so I pushed aside my anxiety and frustration and let my eyes flutter closed. I let go of where we were and why to savor this moment and this man, because the last nine hours together, spent in worry, might have been our last.
I opened my mouth, and the sound of his satisfaction, like thunder, vibrated down my spine. He tasted like honey and smelled like Christmas pine, and the chill of his powerful arms around me was like aloe on sun-chapped skin. The shock of his touch nearly hurt, but only at first. My body, starved for him no matter what my mind thought, thrilled at his touch, drowned in his smell, and became drunk on his taste.
I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him to me just for the feel of his body pressed against mine, but when we collided, the rough edges of Walker’s borrowed bulletproof vest blocked our embrace. The reminder of the danger Dominic would soon face simultaneously stoked my urgency for him and forced my hands, now fully transformed to claws, to release him. We had a mission to carry out, and that mission started now and ended in either our victory or our deaths. But no matter the ending, I could take courage in the knowledge that we’d face it together.
“Good luck to you, too,” I whispered hoarsely.
He nodded and stepped back, but the rigidity in his movements betrayed him. The last thing either of us wanted was to let go.
I stole a final look into his icy-blue eyes—now achingly dear—and braced myself on the top story of the honeycomb’s ledge. Against everything sane and normal, I jumped.
The feeling of helpless, breathless freefall was one I’d become intimately acquainted with several times in the past few weeks. When we were visiting Walker in upstate New York, I’d been pushed down a mining shaft—the entrance to Bex’s coven—as a joke. I’d fallen from the top branches of a very high tree, twice, while being chased by my Damned brother, and just last week, I’d been thrown from the top of a fifty floor apartment building by a Damned vampire after witnessing it eat my friend. All four times, I’d been caught and saved by a nearby friendly vampire before smashing into the ground below. This time, I was in control. I was the vampire. And unfortunately for Jillian, I wasn’t friendly.
I had assumed Jillian was aware of our moves even before we’d made them. But when I landed behind her with a loud thud, she didn’t twirl around and lunge at me with her claws. Hidden Damned didn’t descend from the rafters to protect her. None of the various scenarios I’d prepared and braced for happened.
Instead, she screamed.
The high note of her shriek echoed through the cavernous honeycombs even after I caught her neck in my hand and choked it off. Unused to my own strength, I felt the bones of her spinal column buckle and crack under my hand, but I didn’t ease my grip. The whites of her wide eyes and the desperation of her trembling hands clawing at my wrist spoke volumes without words. She was frightened. I could smell the rich cinnamon of her shock and fear, and God help me, the creature I’d become felt empowered by it.
“Miss me?” I asked.
Jillian blinked rapidly, obviously taken aback by my presence. “You’re alive,” she recovered enough to choke out. “How?”
“You seriously underestimated my drive to survive. I’m not a ‘little night blood’ anymore,” I snarled. “I’m the big, bad wolf.”
“Come to blow down my house?” she wheezed, somehow managing to infuse the barely audible words with droll sarcasm.
“Close.” I grinned. “Come to blow you out of it.” I held up my free hand and wiggled my four-inch talons in her face. “Do you recognize the color of my nails? They’re all natural.”
Jillian’s face
blanched. She nodded.
“I’m told that if I were to slice your throat, like you sliced mine, you might not regenerate. It’s a perk of being a Day Reaper, one I’ve only put to the test on the Damned.” I scraped my thumb talon lightly across her cheek. “Should we test it on a vampire now?”
Jillian shook her head minutely, careful of the claws at her throat, but I could almost smell the electric connections of her synapses firing as she calculated her options, their risks, and her advantages, just like I would in her position.
I needed to play a card before she drew an ace.
“I’m going to release your throat, and you’re not going to scream,” I said. “If you do, I’ll remove your throat, just like you did to Rafe all those months ago,” I growled. “Just like you did to me. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
I eased my grip on her neck. She coughed and cleared her throat several times, excessively, in my opinion, for someone who didn’t need to breathe to live, but maybe I’d damaged her esophagus. I gave her a moment to collect herself.
“Where are the Damned?” I asked.
She smiled, beaming as bright as the first rays of dawn from behind a mountainous horizon. “They’re out at the moment. Did you want to leave a message for one of them?”
I’d known she wouldn’t make this easy, not on either of us. I forced myself to smile back. “Cheeky.” I leaned close, nose-to-nose. “I don’t like cheeky.”
I sliced my thumb talon across her cheek, splitting it to the bone. A waterfall of blood erupted from the wound and bathed the side of her face.
She shrieked, more reaction than a call for help, but I choked it off, just like I promised I would.
“No screaming,” I reminded her. “Last warning.”
She glared at me, a fine mix of hate and fear and bold, righteous desperation in her eyes. I recognized that look. I knew it like the taste of bile in the back of my throat. I’d lived and breathed that look since I’d discovered the existence of vampires, from the night Dominic had attacked me on the street to the day Jillian had torn out my throat. When a person is backed into a corner by her worst fears and certain death, she’ll either wilt and die, fight and die, or kill to survive.
I had no intentions of dying. Not today.
Judging by the determination in Jillian’s eyes, neither did she.
“I’m going to ask again, and you’re going to give me a real answer this time,” I said calmly. I eased the pressure from her throat so she could speak, but kept my talons poised over her neck, caressing her carotid, so she wouldn’t move. “Where are the Damned?”
“I don’t track their every movement, and they don’t necessarily all stay together,” Jillian snapped, her indignant tone at odds with her stiff, upturned jaw, attempting to create more than a mere hairbreadth between her throat and my talons. “Who could say, really, where creatures like that go during the day?”
I leaned closer. “The creatures are mindless, but you created them. You know exactly where they go. Wherever they are, you’re going to command them back to the coven.”
“No, I’m not.”
I stabbed a talon into her other cheek and carved a chunk of muscle and flesh from her face. The sinew and fat was sticky yet slick under my talon. I flicked it off, and a glob of her cheek fell with a wet splat at our feet.
I forced myself to snarl, to meet her eye to eye even as I wanted to wash my hands and vomit. Jillian had done worse to me, I reminded myself. She’d betrayed Dominic, attempted to murder me multiple times, broken human and vampire law, and created an army of mindless, ravenous creatures that destroyed New York City. All in all, she’d earned every cut and scar I inflicted, but all the reasons in the world didn’t curb my gag reflex.
Before Jillian could sense my crisis of conscience, I refocused my thoughts on other memories and emotions. I thought of the worst moments of my life—my parents’ deaths, Nathan being Damned, nearly losing Meredith, dying from Dominic’s wounds—and alternately, the best moments of my life—retransforming Nathan, saving Meredith, making love with Dominic—just like Dominic had taught me, so Jillian would sense only the kaleidoscope of my emotions and not the truth.
To her credit, Jillian didn’t scream this time. She gasped, composed herself, and met my eyes, fury roiling in hers. “You can slice and dice me from head to toe, but you will never have my Damned, and you will never regain power of this coven under his name. We are released from Dominic’s rule and the chains that bound us to darkness. We are free!”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, Jillian, but I had a feeling that slicing and dicing you wouldn’t be enough incentive.” I smiled, making sure my fangs gleamed. “So I’ll slice and dice someone else.”
Kaden’s body fell from the highest honeycomb and slammed into the floor at my well-phrased words. He landed like a ragdoll, his limp limbs unbound and flopping. His left leg bent beneath his back at an unnatural angle, the bone exposed.
I focused on Jillian and continued to think my kaleidoscope thoughts.
Jillian raised her eyebrows, but otherwise, she remained calm and unmoved. Not the reaction I’d anticipated her having upon seeing Kaden.
“Stealing back the coven by torturing its members won’t endear you to them,” she said. “Seems counterproductive to me.”
“We won’t need to torture everyone. Just that one.”
Her eyes flicked to Kaden, but when her gaze met mine again, it was still indifferent. In fact, she smiled. “Oh? And what is so special about ‘that one’?”
I could feel the glass shards of Kaden’s breath as he struggled to speak through his shredded vocal cords, and it occurred to me that Jillian couldn’t look at Kaden, her Second, in this state and not be moved. She simply couldn’t. Jillian wasn’t evil, and only the devil herself could see a person she cared about in such pain and not be pained. But there wasn’t any strong emotion wafting from Jillian—not even the kaleidoscope confusion of an attempt to mask her emotions and hide the truth.
Which was when the truth hit me: she didn’t recognize him.
I cocked my head, and for the first time, even as I prepared the killing blow, I felt every inch the monster I’d become. “I don’t know. I never saw the potential that drew you to him. You tell me: what makes Kaden so special?”
Jillian’s gaze snapped back to Kaden and narrowed on him for a long moment. She took a deep breath, confirming to me that she hadn’t recognized him by sight; she needed smell to determine his identity. She probably hadn’t even cared about his identity until now, until the realization that the lump of raw meat and broken bones that had just fallen ten stories and slammed to the floor like overripe fruit might actually be the one person in the coven she cared most about.
The damage to his face and body and the odors that came with those injuries were pungent, but I could still smell Kaden’s subtle, earthy scent beneath the carnage, like grass after a shower.
And so could Jillian.
Her knees buckled, and I had to adjust my hold on her neck so my talons, poised at her carotid, didn’t accidentally decapitate her.
“No,” she gasped. Her mask of calm indifference shattered, and she shrieked. “No!”
“I tried to reason with you. I came to you last week in a last-ditch effort to convince you to pull back your Damned, but you ripped out my throat instead,” I said. “Maybe now you’ll listen.”
She shook her head slowly back and forth. Her eyes were all for Kaden, but her words were all for me. “You fucking bitch. How could you—”
“Call back the Damned, now, or I finish him off.”
“You can’t simultaneously hold me and kill him, and the moment you move, my vampires will tear you to shreds. You might be stronger and faster than any one of us but not all of us.”
I felt a slight, uncertain movement in my periphery—the shiftin
g of weight from one foot to another, the creeping lean of someone thinking about stepping forward, the hardening of a muscle in anticipation of an attack—just the anticipation of attack, but there all the same.
Luckily, my backup wasn’t slight or uncertain.
I bared my fangs in a hard grin. “I’d love to put my strength and speed to the test, but that’s not necessary. Is it, Lysander?”
I didn’t need to turn my head to know that the light touchdown beside me was Dominic landing at Kaden’s side. Jillian’s expression was telling enough.
“Not necessary at all,” Dominic murmured.
Jillian stared and blinked and shook her head side to side in stunned silence.
“Tell me you missed me at least,” he said drily.
Jillian’s words emerged in a croak. “But I have the Master’s power.”
Dominic chuckled darkly. “You think the little strength you stole from me was the comprehensive scope of my powers?” he tsked.
“I killed you through your connection with Cassidy. I killed both of you!” Jillian sputtered.
“Surprise,” Dominic said with relish. “We survived the Leveling. We survived the Damned’s attack, and we will survive you. This coven is rightfully mine.”
“Bullshit,” Jillian spat.
Dominic bent over Kaden, yanked back his head, and poised his claws over Kaden’s throat. “Command back the Damned, or I tear out his esophagus. It’s your call.”
An eerie sense of déjà vu slammed into me. The last time the four of us were together in this coven and Dominic had threatened Kaden’s life, Jillian had impaled me on her talons. This time, Jillian was the one being impaled, albeit metaphorically, but our switched roles suddenly filled me with trepidation.
“Don’t,” Kaden said. His voice rattled wetly in his chest.
“Yes, Jillian, don’t,” Dominic taunted. He flexed a claw, and a pearl of blood bloomed on a tiny patch of hitherto undamaged flesh on Kaden’s neck. “I dare you.”
“To think, all the decades I stood by your side, and we’ve come to this,” Jillian said, her voice despondent.
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