Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  Everyone stared at me and then in unison at our surroundings in the honeycombs, the deepest, most subterranean section of the coven where the vampires safely took their day rest hidden from sunlight.

  “Fuck,” Nathan said, generally speaking for everyone.

  “Well, I hate to state the obvious,” Bex said drolly, “but we’re in the one room in this entire coven specifically fortified against letting in sunlight.”

  The Chancellor growled, “Whose bloody brilliant plan was this?”

  Everyone looked at me.

  I bit my tongue. “If the sun can’t get to me, there’s got to be a way to get me to the sun.”

  “I can help with that,” Walker said smugly.

  I jerked around at his voice behind me. “How did you—” and then I noticed the rappelling harness still hooked around his hips. Sure enough, one glance over his shoulder revealed the telltale cable hanging from the rafters. “I told you to stay put.”

  “I don’t even like you,” Walker said genially. “Why would I listen to you?”

  I threw my hands up, gesturing to the many Damned attacking around us. “Why, indeed.”

  Without any more warning than a sly little grin, which really, I suppose should have been warning enough, Walker unstrapped his sunbeam flashlight from his hip and bathed me in artificial sunlight.

  Chapter 31

  Sunlight flooded over and through my body, its effect as potent as the actual sun. Warmth, light, and calm settled over me, like the comfort and weight of a down blanket on a chilly morning. I could hear the hisses and screams to “watch your aim” and the putrid stench of someone—hopefully Kaden, but likely Dominic, damn it—catching fire, but the people around me and their movements and panic were suddenly a world away. In this moment, a second that stretched to infinity, I wasn’t Cassidy DiRocco, former night blood now Second to Dominic Lysander, former Master vampire of New York City; I was reduced to light and blood and the electric snap of synapses—the essential elements of my entire being.

  The sunlight felt different than last time and not because of the light source. This time, the light wasn’t a catalyst to my transformation; it was a rejuvenation of everything I already possessed: strength, power, light, and insight. Everything I already was and had learned over a lifetime combined with everything I’d become, beaming down on me like a mirror, reflecting a reminder of true self.

  A person who had diligently trained for a marathon and had successfully run one before wouldn’t be able to run one again without drinking water and eating properly for the days leading up to the big event. No matter the person’s skill and determination and commitment, failure was inevitable if the person wasn’t properly fueled.

  I basked in the light, shutting out the fighting and screaming and flames around me, and within that illuminating luminescence, I rediscovered the strings connecting us—hundreds upon thousands of strings linking me to each individual Damned and to Dominic, and interwoven between me and everyone. I could feel the frayed bonds between Dominic and his vampires. I could feel Jillian and the broken bonds between her and her followers, her leash on the Damned, Bex’s tenuous bond on her own coven, and the Chancellor and his iron-clad bonds with everyone. And in its infancy, I could feel the fragile, inadvertent bonds I’d created with Dominic’s coven. Now, my coven, too.

  I reached out with the metaphysical fingers of my mind and severed the leash between Jillian and the Damned. With the swift, practiced precision of a cellist, I plucked all nine-dozen strings connecting each individual Damned to me.

  “Stop,” I thought, and the timbre of the command vibrated down each string and through each of the Damned, halting their movements and minds.

  “Fuck, she really did it.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “I told you she’d done it before.”

  “She saved me when I was one. She can do anything.”

  “There’s a difference between being told that someone has the ability to perform miracles and actually witnessing it for oneself.”

  “Cassidy.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, warm and rough and trembling.

  I touched the hand but kept my eyes closed. Dominic was struggling to remain conscious. His burns were severe, head to toe, and to the bone. I didn’t need his touch to know he was suffering. Although he was attempting to hide his pain, he couldn’t successfully hide anything from me anymore. Never mind the trumpeting fanfare of Walker’s joy as indication of Dominic’s egregious injuries. I could feel them as my own. I took Dominic’s wounds into myself, made them physically mine, and healed them.

  His hand relaxed on my shoulder for a moment—in relief, I suspected—but then his grip became steel.

  “Cassidy!”

  I opened my eyes.

  I’d been so consumed by the sun, literally, and the echoing cords of the strings I’d plucked that I hadn’t realized that utter and complete silence had blanketed the great hall. Walker had flicked off his flashlight some time ago, but I hadn’t registered that either because the warmth and light were still radiating under my skin. The Damned were no longer snarling, the Day Reapers were no longer battling, and Dominic was no longer screaming. He was staring at me, his body healed and his eyes proud. I sank into that gaze like a warm bath at the end of a long, hard day, and it cleansed me, body and soul.

  Someone growled.

  I glanced past Dominic and started. Everyone was staring at me with varying degrees of awe and nervous apprehension.

  “What are you waiting for?” I snapped. “We don’t have all day, and there’s nearly a hundred Damned. Start draining them!”

  My exclamation was more than words; they packed a physical punch equal to my raw emotions. Every Day Reaper, including Bex, but excluding High Lord Henry, jumped to my command. They flew out into the crowd, latched onto the nearest Damned, and one by one, severed their carotids. The Damned remained complacent throughout the onslaught, theirs eyes glazed and for all intents and purposes, seemingly unaware as the Day Reapers bled them dry.

  The underlying growl grew louder. I could feel its vibration under my feet. The source was nearby and likely against the floor for the vibrations to be so tactile.

  “Call them back to action. Command them to attack,” Kaden hissed.

  I peered behind Dominic where Kaden and Jillian lay, and sure enough, found the source of the growling. Kaden and Jillian were charred around the edges, having been shadowed from the majority of Walker’s light by Dominic’s body, but the burns may have actually cauterized some of their wounds. Neither Kaden nor Jillian’s injuries were actually bleeding anymore. They didn’t even look fresh. And although Kaden’s wounds were still devastating and debilitating, he was now healed enough to enunciate words and string them into full sentences.

  And those sentences were clearly not happy.

  “Call them back to you,” Kaden insisted. He squeezed Jillian’s shoulder, much like Dominic was still squeezing mine. “Now, before it’s too late!”

  Jillian shook her head, her morose resignation a stark contrast to Kaden’s urgency. “I can’t,” she muttered, her voice deadpan.

  “What do you mean, you can’t? You created the creatures! You’ve called to them before,” Kaden growled.

  “They’re no longer mine to call,” she said, staring at me. Her expression never shifted, but tears gushed down her cheeks. “I can’t feel my connection to them anymore.”

  “After everything we sacrificed, everything we worked so hard to achieve, after how far we’ve climbed, scraping and killing and fighting our way to the top—just when we’ve finally won, you’re going to let it all just slip away,” Kaden said, his voice a grating growl. “Fight for it, damn it! Fight for us!”

  “No one wants the future we created. I don’t even want it,” Jillian said. “There’s nothing left to fight for. It’s done. We’re d
one.”

  Kaden shook his head, an expression of disgust and rage like I’d never seen before wrinkling his handsome face. “I’m not done.”

  Considering my newly heightened senses, I should have been able to anticipate his next move, but I hadn’t really thought Kaden capable of movement. Kaden’s wounds, although cauterized, weren’t the least bit healed. Both his left leg and arm were visibly broken. The bones had torn through his flesh and protruded from his skin, a startling white in contrast to all the blood. Only his right arm, although bruised and sliced to ribbons by shrapnel spray, didn’t appear broken, and apparently that, and rage, was all Kaden needed.

  Fangs fully extended, Kaden tore open Jillian’s throat to her glistening spinal column. She pitched forward, hands clutching her neck, and impaled herself on Kaden’s waiting talons.

  I watched him catch the waterfall of blood from her neck in his mouth. I watched him rip his fist from her chest, hold her heart in his hand in front of her face, and smile. His movements weren’t even really that fast, but for the life of me—or I suppose, really, for the life of Jillian—I could only stare in shock as Kaden tipped back his head and squeezed the blood from her upended heart into his mouth.

  Chapter 32

  Some moments are so devastating and cataclysmically life-altering that a person becomes paralyzed—physically and mentally—as if the brain and body create a shield against the pain, and all that’s left is a vague feeling of numb denial. I’d felt that way seven, nearly eight years ago now, when Nathan had called to tell me that our parents’ New York apartment had been engulfed by flames, and that no one on their floor—not even Bonnie Boo, the neighbor’s temperamental calico—had survived.

  His words, “engulfed by flames,” had echoed around me, separate somehow from the phone in my hand, Adam stroking my leg, and my own cat, Whiskers, flicking her tail agitatedly under my chin. My phone, Adam, and Whiskers lived in another reality, one in which those words, “engulfed by flames,” didn’t exist. And for a long while after I’d ended that call, neither had I.

  One would think that seeing Jillian’s exposed heart in Kaden’s hand would be one of those moments that paralyzed reality, but it wasn’t. It was the moment before.

  Jillian looked down at her chest, Kaden’s arm nearly elbow-deep inside it, and her gaze traveled up from his elbow to his face. Her eyes were wide and her mouth gaped, and despite my heightened vampire senses that could hear the squawk of Keagan’s annoyance, smell the sriracha bite of Walker’s rage, and taste the nutty crunch of Ronnie’s longing, I couldn’t sense anything from Jillian in that moment. She’d been utterly stunned stupid by Kaden’s betrayal. One moment, she’d been lying beside a trusted loved one, battling for the right to rule the city—a battle she’d been arguably winning, until recently—and in the very next second, she faced her own death at the hands of that loved one.

  And then Kaden held her heart, was actually drinking from it. Dominic recovered faster than I did. He launched himself at Kaden; the two of them streaked across the room in a black-and-blue blur, and Jillian collapsed face-first into the hard stone of the coven floor.

  I knelt down, keeping my eye on Dominic even as I reached to roll Jillian onto her back. Dominic had fought against Kaden and overpowered him once before, and I had no doubt that he could overpower him now, especially considering the uncountable broken bones and blood loss Kaden had suffered at Walker’s hands. Dominic should have easily pinned him to the ground and twisted off his head or slashed his throat or ripped out his heart tit for tat, or whatever Dominic deemed a fit punishment—banishment to the Underneath, more than likely, if history was anything to go by—but what Dominic should have easily done and what he was actually accomplishing were two different things. I watched, confused at first and then with growing unease, as I realized that somehow, whether he’d been faking his weakness before (unlikely) or had somehow been imbued with sudden and overwhelming strength, Kaden was fighting back. And he wasn’t losing.

  I tensed to join Dominic in battle against Kaden, but Jillian made a strange noise as she rolled onto her back, a sort of wet splat like the pop and gush of a water balloon. The hole in her chest where her heart used to be was gushing blood, and yet she weakly, but persistently, attempted to reach for her heart. Kaden had dropped it a few feet away after having been tackled by Dominic. It lay on the stone floor, bruised and a little torn, just out of arm’s reach.

  Jesus, not again, I thought, remembering how I’d shoved Bex’s heart back into her chest after Nathan, Damned at the time, had ripped it out. From that experience, I knew that Jillian’s injury wasn’t fatal, assuming the heart was placed back where it belonged.

  Moving on instinct more than logic—because, had I thought through my actions, I might not have acted at all—I snatched Jillian’s heart in my bare hand and shoved it and my entire fist into the gaping wound of her chest. The wound was much wider than my arm, perhaps because Kaden’s claws were much bigger than mine, so I held the heart in place, unsure if the heart would remain in the right position without me holding it—assuming I was even replacing it in the proper position. I’d been equally uncertain concerning the placement of Bex’s heart, and hers had healed just fine. Granted, I’d had the power of Dominic’s blood in a handy pendant around my neck to help heal her wound. All I had now was grit and a prayer.

  With my hand inside Jillian’s chest, heart in place if not necessarily in position, my eyes drifted back to Dominic.

  Kaden was indisputably winning. He lashed out with his claws, and Dominic dodged to the side but not out of range. Blood bloomed across his stomach as he lifted his arm to counterstrike. Dominic’s claws slashed at nothing but air, and the momentum of his missed swing unbalanced him. Kaden seized the advantage and lunged at him, taking the fight to the ground. Dominic tried to kick him back, trap him between his thighs, and pin him to the ground, but although Dominic was strong—nearly the strongest creature I knew besides my Damned brother—Kaden was somehow stronger. He pinned Dominic back, and the stone floor fractured under the force of Kaden’s grip. If the floor buckled under his strength, no doubt so would Dominic’s bones.

  Dominic was faster and stronger than this. He might not have the full Master’s power anymore, but Kaden had been teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, if not death, for the last several hours. How was he suddenly stronger than the former Master vampire of New York City?

  “Because he’s my Second,” Jillian rasped.

  I tore my gaze away from Dominic and glanced down at Jillian, stunned. My hand was still buried inside her chest, her wound still hemorrhaging around my arm, and she was looking up at me, not looking the least bit stunned. In fact, given the dull certainty in her eyes and the deflated ache I could feel in her chest—a separate pain from the gaping physical wound, but just as fatal—she was resigned.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Kaden. He—” Jillian coughed, and I could feel her muscles contract around my fist. A fresh spurt of blood and thicker things seeped from her organs and spilled out around my arm.

  “Hush,” I said. “You’ll be fine. It’s just a flesh wound for someone like you. You’ve healed much worse.”

  “He’s my Second,” Jillian persisted between gurgles. “His blow,” she coughed, “is a death blow.”

  “It’s not the Leveling,” I argued. “This isn’t the end for you.”

  “He’s becoming Master vampire of New York City.”

  “No,” I denied.

  Jillian breathed to gain enough air to speak, and her lungs trembled against my hand as they inhaled more blood than air. She coughed, and I turned my face away from the spray. “Lysander should have regained all his powers after surviving the Leveling and didn’t. What little I retained is transferring to Kaden as we speak.”

  I glanced up and watched as Kaden dodged another of Dominic’s powerful punches and punched him back with more
speed and force and precision than Dominic could hope to evade. Dominic took the strike square in the face and ate stone.

  “Kill me.”

  I tore my gaze from Dominic and stared. Every time Jillian spoke, I became more dumbstruck. “What?”

  “Kaden would not be a good Master for this city,” Jillian said, and the certainty in that statement seemed to predate the last few moments of his sudden betrayal.

  I blinked, equally certain. “No, he would not.”

  “Dominic was a wonderful Master, but he never listened to his coven and their needs. I told him over and over again throughout the decades that we yearned to break free from the confines of living in secrecy, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He thought he knew what was best, even if it killed him. Even if it killed us.” Jillian lifted her hand and gripped my arm in her chest. “But he listens to you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think—”

  “In all my hundreds of years serving as Second by his side, he never once, ever, opposed the Council, not even at the risk of losing his own coven.” Her grip on my arm tightened. “But when faced with the risk of losing you, he didn’t just oppose the Council; he flat-out betrayed them.” She tried to inhale again, but her lungs seized. Her next words came out with more blood than sound. “Together, you can accomplish what I never could.”

  I was still shaking my head. “We can’t—”

  “Finish killing me. Prevent Kaden from adopting the Master’s power, and take it for yourself. Save the city.”

  “Damn it,” I cursed, still shaking my head as if denying everything would rewind time to the version of reality that made sense. In that reality, we were good, she was evil, and killing her would right the injustices in the world. Everything she was saying was everything I wanted—hell, it fit perfectly in place with our original plan to take back the coven—except for one thing. “But if I kill you, I will adopt the Master’s power.”

  “Only what little I had of it,” Jillian said, but we both knew she contained more than just a little. She contained enough to rule the damn coven.