Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  “I don’t want to be Master,” I growled.

  She lifted an eyebrow. Either you or Kaden, she mouthed, her words no longer audible.

  I glanced up at Dominic, torn. He could kill Jillian and take back the Master’s power himself, but he was a little preoccupied. Dominic was now battling Kaden from the impossible position of being pinned on his back with Kaden astride his waist. Jillian would die in the next few moments, giving Kaden the last bit of power he needed to kill Dominic once and for all.

  Luckily for me, Kaden was preoccupied, too.

  I leaned over Jillian, my lips so close they brushed her ear as I spoke. “You once said that in another life, we would have been allies. Friends, even.”

  Jillian exhaled on a sob.

  “But in this life, we’re so much more than friends or allies. In this moment, for this city and for our coven, we are sisters, and I am so very sorry for what I’m about to do to you.”

  I know, Jillian mouthed, blood now pouring from her mouth nearly as steadily as it poured from her chest, it’s how I felt when I killed you.

  “Be at peace,” I said, stealing the words she had once whispered to me. I let the bitterness of this inevitability pour from me—in sight, sound, smell, and stabbing pain—so she could sense the truth and depth of my regret. “No more pain.”

  No more pain.

  I squeezed the hand still inside her chest into a fist and punctured her heart with my silver talons.

  Black fissures, like poisoned veins, erupted over her chest and spread outward over her neck and shoulders, snaked down her arms, and swept across her face. I remembered those fissures. They had looked exactly the same when Rene had died.

  Something suddenly occupied the air behind me. Her eyes shifted from my face to over my shoulder, and that one small movement was enough to break her body apart into a million microscopic pieces. Skin flaked from muscle and muscle from bone; nothing remained but dust.

  I stared into the empty air where Jillian had lain just a moment before. Her ashes alight on the air. My fist was in front of me, now empty, but still gloved in blood. I watched my fingers move as I opened my palm, and I had the sudden, strange sensation that it wasn’t just my hand that I opened. Even though I could see that my palm was empty, it felt as if I were somehow still holding her heart. But that wasn’t quite right, either. Jillian was gone, consigned to ash by my own hand, but in her passing, she’d gifted me with something far greater than the weight of one heart. She’d gifted me with many hearts. Hundreds of hearts.

  The heart of the entire coven.

  I could feel them like I couldn’t feel anything before, not even as a Day Reaper. I was tied to them, each of them, and their dreams were suddenly my dreams. Their secrets were my secrets. Their unuttered hopes, unrealized desires, darkest fears, deepest scars—everything a person keeps locked in a padlocked box inside themselves because to reveal it to the scrutiny of light would be worse than death—were suddenly my hopes and desires and fears and scars. Like I was bound to Dominic and Dominic was bound to me, the coven was suddenly bound to me and I to it.

  I opened my eyes, struggling not to buckle under the staggering sensation of being splintered into hundreds of beings at once, and then blinked at the sight in front of me.

  Walker was there, his crossbow raised, cocked and aimed directly at my heart.

  Chapter 33

  Less than a second passed between the moment that I met Walker’s eyes and the moment he squeezed the trigger of his crossbow, but it felt like years. Time enough for me to notice both the rage and the pleasure flushing his cheeks but, distracted as I was by my new connection to the coven, not enough time for me to physically react and dodge his aim. I recognized the expression on his face, the fanatical relish in his eyes tempered by the tight, grim set of his mouth. It was the very same expression he’d worn while aiming at Nathan to save Bex back when my brother had been Damned. He had aimed, but he hadn’t fired, hadn’t been able to bring himself to pull the trigger to save her—not even as the mindless, ravenous monster that was my brother thrust his claws into Bex’s chest and ripped out her heart—because after all the years of resentment between them, Walker had realized that my brother was his best chance to be rid of her.

  Now Walker gazed upon me, and I doubt he saw a former girlfriend and night blood. He didn’t see a crime reporter who could squeeze the truth from any witness or a sister who had saved her brother from being Damned. And he certainly didn’t see a friend who would willingly die to protect this city, including the stubborn, insufferable man aiming at her heart.

  He saw a target and an opportunity.

  Walker squeezed the trigger.

  And the broadhead grazed my shoulder and soared behind me. I blinked, shocked that Walker’s aim had been anything less than true, and then heard the swift whoosh-thud of the arrow hitting flesh, someone losing their breath, and a body’s hard impact with stone.

  Walker grinned, lowering his crossbow. He hadn’t been aiming at me after all.

  I whirled around and caught sight of the arrow protruding from Kaden’s chest. Black fissures spread outward from the wound, over his neck, and up his face, just before his body crumbled to dust.

  Dominic staggered back and fell to the ground.

  I rushed to his side, my hands fluttering over the gaping wound above his right eye, his split lip, the ribbons of torn flesh across his abdomen, and the hole in his sternum where Kaden had attempted to reach his heart.

  Attempted and failed, because I’d stolen his power, and Walker had delivered the deathblow that had saved Dominic.

  I chuckled to myself at the irony.

  Dominic glanced down at the hole in his chest, looking almost puzzled. He fingered the edge of the wound. “He was becoming a Master. I couldn’t match his strength and speed because, as Jillian’s Second, he was adopting her power.”

  I sobered. “I know.”

  “An arrow—even tipped by a silver broadhead—shouldn’t have killed him. As a Master, he’d have been injured, but it shouldn’t have been a mortal wound.”

  I opened my mouth, but the words jammed in my throat. How could I bring myself to admit that I’d killed his sister-in-law—albeit our enemy—and invariably stolen the Master power from Jillian before Kaden could receive it? He’d never forgive me, and knowing how much the coven meant to him—as much as New York City meant to me—I didn’t expect him to.

  Instead, I took Dominic’s wounds into myself and healed him. I didn’t have the words, nor the courage to speak them, so I let him feel the truth within me. Through our metaphysical connection, the dozens of promises sworn by the certainty of death, I shared my power and strength. I mended the hole over his exposed heart, rejuvenating the torn muscle and knitting the split flesh. I felt the bone-deep fire of his wounds across my chest and stomach, the ache over my brow where his eye had swelled, and the throbbing of internal bruises and fractures I couldn’t see. They were mine and then they were gone, and without the distraction of pain between us, Dominic could feel me through our connection as easily as I could feel him.

  I could feel his emotions as he saw life through my eyes. The sensation was disturbing, but only slightly—I’d experienced stranger things, like Jillian’s blood cravings. At least, this time, I was feeling emotions I could understand. I felt his awe at my power and control. I felt his pride in my strength and how grateful he was that I’d found him that night nearly six weeks ago, a lifetime ago, and unwittingly saved him from the sun. That even after I understood who and what he was, I’d chosen to stand by his side.

  And then he felt something more inside me, something he hadn’t anticipated. I sensed his tentative query and then instant denial as he saw the hundreds of threads connecting me to the vampires in our coven.

  When I opened my eyes and met Dominic’s gaze again, I knew that he knew. He didn’t ask after Jillian�
��s body, and I didn’t present him with my bloody talons still dripping with her aortic blood as proof. We were beyond words.

  And I knew that our relationship, so newly blossomed, was beyond repair. I’d betrayed him as surely as Jillian had, and look how their relationship had ended: in nothing but soiled memories and ash.

  “The Damned are drained and ready for transformation,” the Chancellor said, his haughty voice impatient. “Who is transforming them?”

  “The humans, I believe,” Bex said drolly.

  “Humans transforming vampires. Who would have thought?” the Chancellor murmured. “Where are they?”

  There was an extended pause. I knew that was my cue, but I was beyond speech. It took all my concentration to keep my mouth shut, because I knew once I opened it I’d vomit my emotions all over Dominic, humiliate myself, and make everything worse between us.

  As if there was anything worse than this.

  “I’ll radio them,” Walker offered.

  “Tell them to run,” Nathan said. “The Damned are bleeding out as we speak.”

  The crackle of the walkie-talkie blended with a low growl.

  “What, pray tell, is he doing here?” The Chancellor’s voice was low, but even so, I could taste the electric anger of his words biting the air.

  “Walker to Wahl, do you copy? Over.”

  “How should I know?” Bex asked blithely.

  “Wahl here. Over.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled again. “The Damned are down and ready for transformation. Over.”

  “On our way. Over and out.”

  “All of this was your plan, was it not?” the Chancellor’s voice rumbled like the warning of a coming storm.

  “Cassidy DiRocco was the mastermind behind tonight, including your release from the Underneath,” Bex said. I could have kissed her until she added, “His part in her plan ended ages ago.”

  Dominic broke our gaze, his eyes shifting on the scene unfolding behind me. “The Chancellor is about to murder Walker.”

  “We’re on the same team now,” Walker said. “Tell him, Bex.”

  “You want me to defend you? To come to your aid at just the right moment and prevent your demise?” Bex’s voice was the ugliest I’d ever heard a voice sound. It tasted like hot tar. I nearly gagged at the sound of it. “But this may be my only chance to be rid of you.”

  Bex’s callousness—Walker’s own words coming back to haunt him—filled the air with silence.

  “I just saved Dominic’s life,” Walker said. “That must be worth something.”

  “I will appreciate being able to kill Lysander myself, but I hardly think that one commendation worthy of expunging your own sins,” the Chancellor said, his voice flat and dooming.

  I took a tiny, terrible satisfaction in the note of near-panic wafting from Walker. He was a good man who had done a few very horrible things in the effort to survive; if I could understand one thing in this mess of a life, it was the drive to survive. I couldn’t completely forgive him, not yet—some of those very horrible things, he’d recently done to me—but I could understand.

  But I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, stand for the Chancellor threatening Dominic. Becoming Master of New York City might kill everything between us, but the extra power, combined with my already incredible Day Reaper strength, had some benefits, one of which was the certainty that I could defend us against anyone who meant us harm, even the Chancellor.

  I turned to face the Day Reapers closing in around Walker and hesitated, stunned into immobility. The scene unfolding before me was unbelievable. Dozens upon dozens of Damned, the entire horde of Jillian’s army, were bleeding and unconscious across every inch of the great hall, even piled atop each other in some places. The humans were running to save them, and the sight would have been nearly comical—humans running to, instead of away from, the Damned—if it hadn’t constricted my throat.

  The humans, by everything right and ordered in the universe, should have either run screaming from the Damned or rejoiced in their deaths. They were directly responsible for destroying and terrorizing New York City, but they were also parents and siblings, friends and loved ones, and they were not themselves and not completely in control of their actions any more than Nathan had been completely responsible for the people he had murdered. I knew how it had felt when I’d realized that Nathan and the monster we were hunting were one and the same. I’d recognized the man within the monster, and I’d wanted to die, knowing that he’d killed all those people, knowing that to protect more people from dying, I’d have to kill him.

  And I remembered the agonizing fear that accompanied the realization that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to kill him to stop him. Maybe I could save him.

  Daring to hope for a happy ending had been nearly more painful than accepting the necessity of his death, but when we’d lain in adjacent hospital beds and I’d gazed upon the smooth lines of his human face, I remembered the aching bliss of realizing that I’d attained that happy ending. Maybe not completely happy—not for Nathan as he struggled under the weight of his sins—but Nathan was alive, and after everything we’d suffered through, that was enough.

  Surviving was more than enough. It was everything.

  As I watched the humans running toward the Damned, I understood their hope-filled fears, their tangled emotions of recognition and horror and relief. They’d found their brothers, their wives or dear friends, and they embraced them. They bled for them. They came together against fear and anger and doubt, against overwhelming, seemingly insurmountable odds, and saved them.

  The Chancellor advanced on Walker. I blocked his strike with one smooth sidestep between them.

  We stared at each other; he measured the likelihood of being able to juke my stand as I dared him to try. No one had ever survived an attempt to defy the Chancellor. He still thought he could win against me—he had the confidence of someone who had never lost—but I had scraped my way back from the dregs of hell, both emotionally and physically, so I knew exactly what I was capable of. And if he forced my hand, I was more than willing to prove it.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, like I was a bug that could be crushed beneath his boot, but he wasn’t sure whether the effort was worth staining the leather sole with my insides. “You developed this plan to overtake Jillian and save the Damned.”

  I nodded.

  “And part of your plan was to save me and the other Day Reapers,” he said. His tone didn’t rise on a question, but his words hung between us all the same.

  Again, I nodded.

  “I’m not your maker. You knew that, when you released me, I would kill Lysander, your Master, and in doing so, kill you as well,” he said.

  “I knew you would try.”

  The Chancellor blinked, unaccustomed to such confidence when facing…well, anyone. “Knowing I would try to kill Lysander, and inadvertently you, you released me anyway.”

  I nodded, still not hearing a question in any of this.

  He growled, and the sound reverberated throughout the honeycombs. “Do you have so little care concerning Lysander’s life? So little care for your own?”

  I smiled. “On the contrary, I knew that Dominic and I could hardly survive without you. Now that the world knows about vampires, we’re going to need a strong, fearless leader more than ever. We need you,” I said, making sure my smile was firmly affixed in place as I added the cherry on top of the whipped cream, “my Lord.”

  The Chancellor’s incredulous blink turned nearly twitchy. “The world?”

  I nodded. “The government nearly bombed New York City to kill the Damned, but we managed to communicate with them just in time. Once I’m done writing this story—” I waved my hand at the scene behind him. “—the world will know that, with the help of the humans and night bloods, the Day Reapers saved New York City.”

  “You�
��ve always wanted to expose the existence of vampires,” the Chancellor murmured, his voice all the more dangerous for its softness. “You’re getting exactly what you wanted, and you’re enjoying every moment.”

  “And aren’t you?” I countered. “Don’t you want what’s best for the continued survival of vampire-kind?”

  “This is not what’s best,” the Chancellor scoffed, “but for the time being, it is what’s necessary, thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me, you’re here and alive to point fingers,” I reminded him.

  “I could fight you,” he said after a long pause, his voice dropping an octave when it had already been impossibly deep. “I could kill you, and then Lysander and Walker after you, all your supporters and sympathizers, your brother, all the humans who know of our existence, force that bomb you mentioned, and cover up the entire incident as a terrorist attack. With mass casualties and heavy entrancement, I could still preserve the anonymity of vampire-kind.”

  “You could,” I said sadly. “But knowing everything you would lose, do you really want to?”

  He laughed. With the balance of my world in his hands, he laughed in my face. “You’re the one with everything on the line. What, pray tell, do I possibly have to lose?”

  “Me,” Bex said. She had been watching our conversation with nearly a bored expression, but she stepped up now to stand in front of Walker and face the Chancellor by my side.

  The Chancellor stopped laughing. “Bex?” he asked, blinking rapidly as if he could blink away the confusion of Bex standing with me against him.

  “I abandoned my coven to finally take my rightful place at your side when I transformed into a Day Reaper,” Bex said, her voice gentle but firm, “but I cannot abandon the side of the person who saved me and you and all our fellow Day Reapers. That is wrong, and even you can recognize that.”

  “You would stand against me?” the Chancellor asked, incredulous. “I waited for you for decades, patiently indulging your wish to rule your own coven before ruling the world by my side, and this is how you repay me. In favor of them, in defense of him,” the Chancellor said, glaring at Walker, “you would stand against me?” He looked stricken, and for the first time, I wondered at the Chancellor’s feelings toward Bex. How long could a man really wait for someone who fell in love with and pined and nearly died for another man? How could his pride survive, knowing she would defend the man who had, literally, broken her heart?