Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  I opened my mouth—unsure what to say but knowing I needed to find the words to turn their rage and despair toward Jillian to our advantage—when an unholy cacophony of roars shook the coven.

  Chapter 29

  Eight-dozen Damned against two vampires. The odds weren’t great to begin with, but factor in the liability of three hundred vampires to protect, and our odds were shit. Unless I packed some serious punch into this plan before the Damned arrived in the next minute, people were going to die—the very people we’d just unexpectedly gained on our side—and that was unacceptable.

  We needed more Day Reapers, and if Bex needed help finding them, by God, she’d get that help.

  “Nathan and I will hold off the Damned. Dominic will guard Jillian and Kaden,” I commanded. “Sevris, I need you to lead everyone to the Underneath, and help Bex find the Day Reapers.”

  Everyone had turned to Dominic after realizing the Damned were descending on us, but when I spoke, they jerked their heads to face me and in nearly choreographed befuddlement, gave me a slow blink.

  “It’s hot down there,” the female vampire spoke up between the hiccups of her tears.

  The man beside her nodded. “Scalding.”

  “Suck it up.” I stomped on the ground in frustration, cracking the stone floor. “Now!” I shouted.

  They jumped to do my bidding without a second glance at Sevris or Dominic. Sevris neatly tossed Jillian back to the ground next to Kaden and led the masses fleeing the great hall to the Underneath.

  With the exception of Rafe and Neil. Rafe glanced at the tidal wave of approaching Damned and back at me. He knew his fate should he stay. “We’re in this together,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Take Neil and go with Sevris.”

  “You need us,” he insisted.

  “I can’t simultaneously protect you and hold off the Damned, and you better believe my priority will be holding off the Damned.”

  “But—”

  “Go!” I roared, and my voice was a physical force that actually pushed Rafe back and to his knees. He recovered quickly and escaped with Neil exactly as I’d ordered.

  I stared at his retreat, taken aback by myself. I’d only ever seen one vampire’s roar detonate in physical compulsion.

  I turned to Dominic.

  He stared back at me, wonder and worry warring in his gaze.

  But neither of us had time to voice our thoughts. The Damned poured from the honeycombs—not one, not two or three, but dozens of them—each blindly following the one before it, to rain over us. I gaped as the first few Damned leading the charge soared through the air and landed in the great hall. They shook the coven on impact like an avalanche. The cacophony of their stampede was only rivaled by their slavering, rage-filled roars, and from one moment to the next, nothing else filled my mind but the grace and speed needed to survive.

  Nathan and I fought in an orbit around Dominic, Kaden, and Jillian to create what probably looked, to the human eye, like a veritable tornado of slashing claws, fists, and fangs. The Damned were relentless, but their onslaught was unplanned and disjointed. They fought each other as readily as they fought us, clawing and biting their way to the front of the horde, and the Damned who did fight us only had one, predictable move; they jabbed at my chest for my heart every time.

  As a human, I had thought their speed and strength unimaginable and undefeatable, but now, Nathan and I easily blocked their strikes, dodged their claws, and landed jabs of our own. The one chink in our armor, as the Damned attempted to disembowel and dismember us, was that we wanted to take them down alive. Our moves were faster but theirs were more lethal. We were stronger, but they were more brutal. Even pitted against our superior skill, their savagery was unstoppable. Their drive was endless, and superior skill or not, we couldn’t fight forever. And I had a sinking suspicion that by sheer numbers and the insanity of their rage, they could.

  We were in the middle of a paranormal battle in which my brother was a vampire-Damned hybrid and I was a gargoyle-like creature in my day form, yet I was suddenly struck by the absurd notion that our parents would be proud. Obviously not in the traditional sense, but our combined strength and power, and most of all, our indelible bond was undeniable. The iron of our loyalty and fierce love, even challenged by fire—many fires over the course of this past year—had strengthened into something even more unbreakable than it already was.

  As the Damned pounded relentlessly forward, undaunted by their wounds and fallen brethren before them, I channeled the pride and love for my family into every slash, every block, and jab. We were two against dozens, but our two had the heart of hundreds.

  Beneath the grunts and screams of battle, I heard Dominic arguing with Jillian, demanding she control the Damned and stop their attack, but he wasn’t making much headway, no matter how he threatened or reasoned with her.

  “You’re their creator,” he insisted. “You brought them here, so you can damn well halt their assault. Call them off.”

  “I can no more control them than you can control Cassidy,” Jillian said. “Sometimes the birth of our creation takes a life of its own far beyond what you thought possible. I doubt you intended for Cassidy to be more powerful than you, but here she is, a force of nature more devastating than you’ll ever be again.”

  A Damned jabbed at my chest as another swiped at my head; I dodged the first, ducked the second, and sliced the tendons in both their wrists with a double downward swipe of my talons. Blood erupted like a geyser into the air, but even hemorrhaging and slack-wristed, they pressed their attack, snapping at me with their jaws.

  Jillian was panting; between shaking breaths, she let loose a desperate, maniacal laugh. Dominic must have followed through on one of his threats; I could smell the cinnamon effervescence of her fresh blood.

  “Command them to stop,” Dominic growled.

  That laughter grated on my nerves. I sliced harder than I’d intended and severed an arm.

  “Careful,” Nathan said.

  I growled, low and rattling, under my breath. Even knowing he was right, curbing my strength and skills was difficult when they had no such qualms. Given the opportunity, they would not only sever my arm, they’d sever every limb from my body before ripping a hole in my chest and eating my heart. And once I was out of the way, they’d do the same to Dominic.

  But I needed to be careful.

  Jillian’s laughter cut short on a sudden gasp. Dominic must have choked her. Hopefully, he’d only choked her; we needed her timely death to seal the transformation.

  I glanced over my shoulder and hesitated. Dominic hadn’t choked her. He hadn’t slit her throat or ripped out her esophagus or torn out her heart. She was just staring at him, touching his cheek; tears rolling silently down her face.

  “Don’t you think I would command them if I could? This entire army of ferocity under my trigger finger would be the ultimate weapon, but look around you, Dominic. They can’t be contained.”

  Dominic frowned. “You commanded them here.”

  She shook her head. “I called to them, like a ringmaster tugging on her lion’s leash, but a leash only keeps the lion tethered; it does nothing to protect her or anyone else from the lion’s attack.”

  Dominic blinked at her. “You created an army of ravenous, murdering monsters that you can’t command,” he said flatly.

  “You think I wanted New York City in ruin?” she asked, desperate for him to understand. “I wanted us free. But this,” she said, looking around her, “this is just another prison.”

  “Why did you keep creating them?” Dominic said, disgusted. “If you knew from the first, with Nathan, that they couldn’t be controlled, why did you make another hundred?”

  “I didn’t know that, not for certain,” she said, insistent now. “Nathan was more cognizant than anything Desirius had created in his first attempts at tran
sformation. I couldn’t control him, but I improved with practice. Now when I call for them, they all come.”

  “They come and attack,” Dominic hissed. “What is the point of having a lion on a leash if all it wants is to eat you? And no, you didn’t just leash one lion, you had to leash a hundred lions!”

  “With more practice and time, I could—”

  Dominic slapped her across the face.

  And a claw slashed across mine. For a moment I thought I was vicariously feeling the pain of Dominic’s hand on Jillian’s cheek, but then the force of the Damned’s blow rocketed me through the air and across the great hall. I crashed in a tumbling heap. My leg snapped and my head slammed back hard into the stone floor, and although I could already feel those injuries along with the ragged edges of my torn cheek healing, the damage was done. I’d been distracted, and now I was across the room, leaving Nathan to protect Dominic, Jillian, and Kaden on his own.

  The Damned swarmed me, which at least relieved some of the pressure on Nathan, but their massive bodies blocked my view of everything except their slathering, ravenous rage. I fought back—slash for slash, dodging their claws and swiping with my own—but protecting myself was all I could do. I couldn’t make any forward progress back to Nathan, and for all I could see of him, he might have already succumbed to the Damned’s overwhelming numbers without me. For all I knew, Nathan and Dominic were already dead.

  I tore my talons across the Damned in front of me in a helicopter spin to create some space to maneuver; if I couldn’t fight through them, I’d jump over them.

  I envisioned the spring in my legs as my strength launched me high over their heads. I felt the curl of my stomach as I tucked my body into a somersault, and I remembered to lock my eyes on the ground where I wanted my feet to land, not my ass. But the Damned had sardined themselves shoulder to shoulder surrounding Nathan, so there wasn’t a spare square of floor space.

  I landed with my right foot on a Damned’s stomach and my left on a thigh; I turned my ankle, tripped, and the ground rushed up to meet my face.

  Nathan caught me by the shoulders before I could eat stone and hauled me up next to him. I turned, braced to fight the Damned, and froze. There were no more Damned, not attacking us, anyway. The Damned who were in front of me—that I’d gracelessly landed on—were all writhing on the ground, roaring in pain. They were hobbled—their legs visibly broken in some cases and reduced to nearly bloody stumps in others. I opened my mouth, about to ask what had happened to being careful, when an approaching Damned’s legs were shot out from under him. He dropped on top of his already-wounded brethren and rolled to the ground to writhe next to them.

  A metal casing caught my eye. I picked it up—one of many, now that I was seeing it—and I remembered the person I’d sensed shifting in the rafters of the honeycombs. Considering the stampede of Damned descending on us at the time, I hadn’t bothered to pay much attention to the man, but now, with my senses focused in that direction, I smelled him. And his minty scent was indisputable. It was Walker. He was picking off the Damned one by one, sniper-style, protecting Nathan and Dominic while I’d been preoccupied.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one to deduce the cause or location of his assault. The Damned indiscriminately tracked and killed anyone in their way. Three Damned vaulted into the air, soaring toward the far-right corner of the rafters.

  My instinct was to give chase, but I hesitated, glancing back at Nathan. He couldn’t hold the Damned off on his own.

  Before I could decide, the Damned were shot in midair, and all three crashed to the ground like bowling balls, knocking down five others below. The inconvenienced Damned tossed the bodies of the fallen aside, then looked up at the rafters, searching for the source of the disruption. Their eyes swept the ceiling left to right as they sniffed the air, growling. Hunting.

  Five Damned leaped into the air this time, soaring toward the rafters, and once again, they flew about halfway before five shots rang through the coven and all five Damned crashed back to the ground. Eight enraged Damned leaped to attack the source of the gunfire, and when they fell, twelve more gave chase. The cycle continued and escalated as more and more Damned discarded their fight with Nathan and me to pursue Walker. The uncomplicated stink of their anger was like the musk of a skunk. Anger, not grief. They were affronted that they’d been knocked down by their dead bodies and determined to kill the source of that affront.

  I might have laughed at their logic if the sight of their determination wasn’t paralyzing.

  Faster than I would have imagined, the waves of Damned leaping toward the rafters became a constant stream, and that stream grew into a tidal force. Walker’s shots were well aimed, but relentless now. Sooner or later, there would be more Damned than he could shoot. It would only take was one Damned to dodge his bullets, and distracted by all the others in the swarm, he wouldn’t be able to protect himself.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” Nathan asked, looking bemused.

  I held the shell casing up for Nathan’s inspection. “They’re taking out the person shooting them.”

  “Who the hell is shooting them?” Nathan asked, sniffing the air.

  I threw the casing down, frustrated. “Who the hell do you think?”

  “Walker wasn’t included in this part of the plan.”

  “Was any of this?” I asked, nearly laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement, but one look at Nathan’s face and I swallowed the reaction.

  “Is he killing them?” he asked grimly.

  “You’re seeing what I’m seeing,” I said, swiping my hand at the pile of dispatched Damned in front of us, some unconscious, some dismembered, some roaring their anger, some dying and dead, but all too wounded to seek revenge.

  “We promised to take them out alive. He’s gunning them down like dogs.”

  I sighed. “Can you blame him? Look at them, Nathan. They’re not swarming him to make his acquaintance.”

  He cursed. “What now?”

  “Maybe this is just the distraction we need. If Walker can keep them more focused on him than us, maybe we can—”

  The gun stopped firing.

  “Maybe he’s reloading,” Nathan offered.

  The silence, filled now by the crescendo of the Damned’s collective roar, stretched.

  “Maybe his gun jammed,” Nathan said. “He must have more than one gun.”

  Dominic snorted. “Maybe he ran out of ammunition.”

  I waited, and as the seconds ticked by and the Damned drew closer, the absence of return fire was deafening.

  “Maybe he ran,” Jillian hissed, “and left you to deal with me and my army of murderers all on your own.”

  I cursed under my breath, the ultimate truth undeniable. It didn’t matter whether or not Walker had run, if he was reloading, his gun had jammed, or he’d run out of ammunition. He was being swarmed by our enemy because he’d provided us with cover. My transformation into a vampire, and subsequently a Day Reaper, had undeniably changed me in many ways—physically, emotionally, mentally—but I was essentially the same person at heart. No matter the personal risk, I wouldn’t let someone else fight my battles.

  And I’d certainly never let someone who had my back face a battle alone.

  “The woman I knew five years ago who took a bullet for Harroway is the same woman who used herself as bait to solve a case last month, and she’s the same damn fool today that she was back then. People don’t change. I don’t care if the heart inside her chest still beats or not. It’s still the biggest heart I’ve ever had the privilege to know.”

  —Greta Wahl

  Chapter 30

  I vaulted into the air, past the Damned, and landed in the rafters moments before the first Damned reached the landing. Walker was tensed with his pen-stake raised, his watch dart aimed, his sunbeam flashlight lit, and several empty guns at his feet.
For a moment, I wondered if he would see me as an enemy or ally.

  But the Damned were only a heartbeat behind; I didn’t have another moment to second-guess myself. I turned my back on Walker and his weapons—no matter how woefully inadequate, they were raised against me—to face the swarm.

  I slashed my talons at the front line, spilling blood and organs in my haste. Be careful, I reminded myself, but even with Nathan’s words ringing in my mind, when the second line of Damned attacked, as fierce and relentless as the first, my instinct was to fight back, matching deadly ferocity with deadly ferocity.

  I didn’t have the space to maneuver on the rafters like I’d had on the ground, but we weren’t open to 360 degrees of attack either. We were in the corner of the ceiling, and even though that trapped us on three sides, the Damned only had one side on which to attack. Walker’s bullets had been a decent deterrent, but now, they had to get through me.

  Walker stepped up beside me, aiming over my shoulder with what was left of his weapons. His older weapons didn’t penetrate the thick, scaly hides of the Damned as effectively as his newer, modified firepower, but an attempt to help was better than an attempt to harm.

  “Well, you were right. I should have just left while I had the chance,” Walker said, trying and failing to be funny. Still, trying.

  I cursed, blocking another Damned and saving Walker from losing his head by inches. “I didn’t want to be right. I wanted to win.”

  He pursed his lips. “Now would be a good time to make our big move.”

  I twirled, slashing a Damned with my left talon and blocking the strike of another with my right. “Yeah, about that—”

  “I know, I know, no Wi-Fi. Here.” Walker slapped a walkie-talkie into my hand. “Have at it.”

  I blinked, so caught off guard by Walker slapping anything into my hand—besides maybe a grenade—that I almost missed a Damned as it lunged for his chest. Walker pegged it square in the face with the sunbeam of his flashlight. It reared back, blinded, and I roundhouse kicked it off the rafter. It fell to the ground with a thundering shudder ten stories below.