Eternal Reign

by Melody Johnson

  My limp, my reputation at the precinct—hell, my very presence—were all reminders of that fateful Mars Killington stakeout five years ago. It should have been the breakout of all our careers, Greta’s and Harroway’s as well as my own, but my source had set us up. When we’d been caught in the cross fire, I’d covered his back with mine and took the bullet meant for him. The precinct would never forget my heroism for saving one of their own, but Harroway, the bastard, had never forgiven me for it.

  Despite his bruised ego and survivor’s guilt, or maybe because of it, Harroway gave me the inside scoop on cases when the rest of the police in his department were being tight-lipped. His way of saying thank you, since he suffered from the inability to express his gratitude directly, but given the choice between the two, I’d take the scoop.

  His sappy baby blues stared down at me now, sparking with delight, and I waited for whatever ridiculous statement was about to crawl out of his mouth. I wasn’t a patient person, but when it came to Harroway, I preferred not to encourage his antics.

  “Will you come with me? Detective Wahl needs to speak with you,” Harroway said, his voice the epitome of professionalism.

  I frowned. The teasing gleam in his eyes was unmistakable, but for the first time in the five years I’d known and loved-hated him, Harroway refrained from stabbing me between the ribs with his wit.

  “Greta needs to speak with me?” I said, trying to act like he hadn’t thrown me a curve ball. “Now?”

  “That’s what I just said,” Harroway replied. He stepped toward the scene, assuming I’d follow. “Hard of hearing tonight, DiRocco?”

  Of course, he’d assumed right. I followed fast on his heels, or at least as fast as my grinding hip allowed. “Why does Greta want me on her crime scene? Shouldn’t she be processing the evidence, interviewing witnesses, and chasing down suspects?”

  Harroway shrugged. “She sent me here to chase you down this time.”

  “I’m not a witness or a suspect, am I?” I asked.

  “No, you’re a pain in my ass,” Harroway said, but his grin took the sting from his words. “What’s gotten into you? If Detective Wahl wants to talk to you, that means you get to talk to her. You can shake her or squeeze her or whatever it is you reporters do to get information. It’s a win-win.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “It doesn’t look like the other reporters are getting one-on-one time.”

  “Nope, but the other reporters aren’t you.” He held up the yellow police tape for me to duck under. “Ladies first.”

  The other reporters glared at me as he escorted me on scene, the combination of jealousy and respect coloring their expressions. Some of them were more jealous than others. A few looked downright pissed, but the attention, no matter how unwanted or unwarranted, wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to.

  “…environmental science expert.”

  I’d only caught the tail end of his sentence, distracted by the crowd and chaos. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “You really might want to have your hearing checked, DiRocco.” Harroway snapped his fingers next to my ear.

  I backslapped his hand away. “Hands off, Harroway.”

  “The environmental science expert Greta called to consult on this case is here,” he said, chuckling. “This scene is messier than any case we’ve seen in a while, and, as unlikely as it seems, we might be looking at an animal attack.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Animal attack?”

  Harroway held up a hand. “I know it seems impossible here in the middle of Brooklyn, but animal bites don’t lie. Whatever killed these people certainly isn’t human. Unless humans are evolving claws and very sharp canines,” he said, shaking his head.

  Vampires, I thought, but Dominic usually altered the evidence before the police arrived to ensure the safety of his coven and the continued secrecy of their existence. The last time he’d allowed a scene to remain unaltered and everyone had suspected an animal attack—everyone, that is, until Dominic had entranced them all the next day—he’d been betrayed by Jillian and her rebels, attacked, and left exposed to sunlight, incapacitated and unable to alter the evidence.

  I just saw Dominic tonight, I reminded myself. He’s fine. But that didn’t stop a knot from tightening in the pit of my gut.

  Then the other ball dropped as I realized the full extent of what Harroway had just said. Greta had called in the advice of an environmental science expert for animal-bite victims. Regret and anxiety doused my worry for Dominic.

  Walker was here.

  Forcing one foot in front of the other was always physically painful, but continuing to follow Harroway to the crime scene, knowing he was also leading me to Walker, was excruciating. The thought of facing Walker after everything we’d said to each other—and left unsaid—was unthinkable. He didn’t even know about Ronnie.

  Harroway turned at the fence corner to enter the playground, and I gaped at the scene in front of us. I should have prepared myself. He’d warned me that the scene was gruesome, but actually seeing the mess of bloody victims scattered over the wood chips with my own eyes was something else entirely.

  Some of the victims were still moaning and trembling in pain, waiting for medical treatment. Most were splayed across the ground, their wounds embedded with dirt and wood chips, but a few were bent back over teeter-totters and lying at odd angles across slides. One man was hanging halfway from the bottom monkey bar, his upper back on the ground, his lower body raised upside down, and his broken leg jammed between two of the bars.

  Other victims were already bandaged and wore yellow tags around their wrists, waiting for transport to the hospital. A medic wrapped a red tag around the wrist of a young woman whose stomach had been impaled on a metal fence post. Miraculously, she was still conscious and responding to the medic’s questions. Several other medics joined them, one with a power saw, and they prepared to cut the post from its cement casing.

  As many victims as there were waiting on medical treatment, the majority of the bodies were still and silent, many with missing arms and legs, some with missing heads, and those detached appendages were also scattered across the wood chips among the dead and still-suffering victims.

  I took a deep breath, glad we were outside—the air was crisp and clean despite the carnage—and tried to collect myself.

  “How many?” I asked, gazing over the scene as a whole and trying to not focus too closely on any one person or injury.

  “At our most recent count, forty-two people were injured. More people were here than usual at this time of night because of a Night Owl fund-raising event, something about raising money for kids and literacy. A few survived with only minor lacerations, but the majority of the victims were mauled. Some were obviously dismembered.” Harroway wiped his hand down his face. “It’s grisly here, DiRocco. Old hamburger meat.”

  I winced at his description. “You had to go there,” I muttered.

  “Squeamish, DiRocco?”

  I shook my head. “Tired. Just so damn tired of covering the same scenes over and over again.”

  Harroway raised his eyebrows. “You’ve covered an animal attack in Brooklyn before?”

  I can’t get away from them, I thought.

  The last “animal attack” in Brooklyn had been attributed to gang violence, and the “animal attack” I’d covered while visiting Walker upstate had been officially deemed a rabid-bear attack, but I was one of the few people who knew the unofficial truth about both cases.

  And thanks to my recent promise to Dominic to keep the existence of vampires a secret, I thought bitterly, the truth would remain unofficial.

  “If you can’t handle this, DiRocco, maybe you shouldn’t be on scene.”

  I met his eyes. “Can’t get rid of me that easily, Harroway.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he said and turned to forge a path through the mess of pain, blood, and death to find Detective Greta Wahl.

  She was speaking to a tall, dark-haired man when we approached. Greta
was average height, but the man next to her made her look petite in comparison. Her curves were hidden beneath a bulky, secondhand blazer, and she’d slicked back her thick, curly hair into her usual tight, no-nonsense bun. Greta exercised that no-nonsense attitude with more than just her hairstyle; her pragmatic, direct approach to life had been a catapult to her career and our friendship. The jut of her chin and her wide stance telegraphed that she wasn’t letting anyone, no matter their height, gender, or position, stand in the way of solving this case. If he wasn’t helping, he was hurting, but luckily for this man, he was nodding his agreement to whatever Greta was saying, the epitome of team work.

  The dark-haired giant looked familiar, but I’d worked my fair share of crime scenes in Brooklyn; I knew almost every detective, officer, and forensic scientist by face if not by name. I dismissed the man and kept a wary eye out for golden-blond, curly hair and a pair of velvet brown eyes. If Harroway was right about Greta calling in an environmental science expert, Walker was working this crime scene somewhere, measuring bite radii, snapping pictures, and pretending to be just as dumbfounded by an animal attack in the middle of Brooklyn as everyone else.

  The shared secret of being night bloods and knowing that vampires existed had bonded us more quickly and tightly than I’d ever experienced with another person, but the last time we’d seen each other, Walker had killed Rene, turned his back on me, and left me to die, effectively severing that bond.

  I wasn’t in any rush for a reunion.

  “I found DiRocco wandering the perimeter,” Harroway said, gaining Greta’s attention. “She was last on scene, as usual.”

  I glared at him. “It doesn’t matter when I start the race as long as I finish first.”

  Harroway snorted. “With that bum hip, I’d say you need the furthest head start you can get.”

  And there was the Harroway I knew and couldn’t stand to be around, slipping the knife quick and dirty between the ribs.

  “Thank you for finding DiRocco. I can take it from here,” Greta said, turning to face me and effectively dismissing him. “I need you back on blood spatter. Janson needs help transporting samples.”

  Harroway’s face reddened slightly, but if he disagreed with her assignment, he wouldn’t disrespect Greta, not directly and not in public. Without another word, he nodded and walked away.

  I turned to Greta, shaking my head. “I’ll take a dose of whatever mind-control powers you have over Harroway, please.”

  Greta laughed. “It’s called pulling rank. But I’m not fooled, DiRocco. You might not enjoy Harroway’s sense of humor, but you do like biting him back with it.”

  “Well, yes, there is that,” I admitted. I held out my hand. “Always a pleasure, G, despite the circumstances.”

  She took my hand and pumped it once. “I thought you’d take a special interest in this case, considering the evidence.”

  I cocked my head. “What evidence is that?”

  Greta held up her hand. “We’ll get there. I was just explaining the history and sensitivity of this case to our environmental science expert. Nicholas Leander, meet Cassidy DiRocco. She’s the investigative journalist I’ve been bragging about, and my personal friend. DiRocco, this is our expert witness, Dr. Leander.”

  Dominic gazed down at me, his scarred lips quirking into a smile as I stared, dumbfounded. He was the tall, dark-haired man who had been conversing with Greta when I’d approached. The implications were slow to seep into my shocked brain, but when they did, they fired like a rocket launcher.

  I wouldn’t be working with Walker on this case, but God help me, the only thing worse than working with Walker was working with the devil grinning down at me.

  Chapter 5

  “Dr. Leander,” I said numbly. He’d had the nerve not only to forge a degree, but a doctorate.

  “Nicholas is just fine,” Dominic said, holding out his hand. I resisted the urge to smack the smirk from his face.

  I’d never imagined Dominic having a career, let alone posing as having one. I’d envisioned his nights being spent as a creature of darkness—whatever that entailed—but never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to have to interact with him in a professional setting. I’d never interacted with Dominic in front of anyone besides other vampires. Our brief conversation tonight with Meredith had been the first time that I’d witnessed him speak with a human and not mind-wipe the conversation from her memory.

  Every time I thought I’d come to grips with reality, some new discovery reared its ugly head and tore the life I’d come to accept from my numb grasp. I’d accepted the improbable existence of vampires only to discover my night blood. I’d embraced my night blood only to discover the existence of Damned vampires and my brother as one. I’d transformed Nathan back from being Damned only to lose the protection of my night blood.

  And now, Dominic had allowed me to keep my memory of the existence of vampires despite my lack of night blood only for him to pose as a human, and not just any human but an environmental science expert investigating vampire attacks, of all things.

  He’d gone too far. As usual, he expected much more from me than I was ever willing to give.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I burst out.

  Dominic’s grin widened, but I noticed that he didn’t allow himself to part his lips entirely. No flashing fangs in front of Greta. I glared at him.

  Greta looked back and forth between us. “Are you two already acquainted?”

  I sighed in defeat. As much as I abhorred lying to Greta, telling her the truth was out of the question. If I told her that a coven of vampires was living beneath the city and was responsible for several of the murder cases she’d already closed, that said vampires were likely responsible for tonight’s murders, that Dominic was not only one of them but was their leader, she would think I’d lost my mind. Dominic knew I was bound to silence by the risk of tarnishing my reputation as well as by my promise to him, and he was using that knowledge to his advantage.

  I crossed my arms and settled on what might be the next best thing to exposing the truth: taking advantage of his secret. This investigation was my playing field. For once, we weren’t in his coven or deep within a coal-mining shaft or in the middle of an upstate New York wilderness. We were in the city, surrounded by humans—and not just any humans, but my close, personal friends—and at a crime scene. This was my turf, and he’d be playing my game for once.

  I smiled coyly and took Dominic’s proffered hand. “No previous acquaintance, and I’m sorry for the outburst. To be honest, I was expecting someone else.”

  “That makes two of us,” he said.

  Dominic pumped firmly and released my hand, but I could feel the tingling of his skin against mine even after he let go. Working together was going to be torture.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Who were you expecting?”

  “Certainly not this,” Dominic said, waffling his hand between Greta and me. “According to Detective Wahl, you are quite extraordinary. I’m looking forward to witnessing the magic of your investigative skills for myself.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you mocking me?”

  “Not in the least. If anything, I’m mocking Detective Wahl.” He nodded at Greta, and she grinned back, obviously on good terms with a fraud, a fraud I’d brought into our lives. I could spit. “I was just telling her how rare it is for a detective to admire and trust a reporter as highly as she regards you,” he finished.

  “I assure you, the feeling is mutual,” I said, turning to Greta. “It’s never a good sign when we need an environmental science expert on the case. What are we dealing with this time?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you can tell me,” Greta said. She jerked her head toward the opposite end of the playground. “Come on, let me show you. Both of you.”

  Greta stepped forward to lead the way. With her back turned, I glared at Dominic, trying to express the depth of my annoyance in a glance. He grinned at me, open-lipped and flashing those long, s
harp, pearly fangs at me in amusement. I wasn’t amused. I didn’t know if he or his vampires were responsible for this scene or how he’d obtained the credentials to pose as an expert witness, but no matter how he’d done it, he was here. I’d have to deal with it.

  But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “This isn’t funny,” I said, indicating the carnage and suffering around us.

  “No, it’s not,” Dominic said, “but the look on your face when you saw me certainly was.”

  “This investigation is important to me—you know how important my work is to me—and I don’t appreciate you being here. These people are suffering; they deserve a team of people dedicated to finding the monster responsible for their suffering and bringing that person to justice.”

  “That’s precisely why I’m here. If you find that vampires are responsible, you can’t bring them to justice.” His smile widened. “But I can.”

  “And you usually do so without interjecting yourself into the investigation.” I narrowed my eyes on him. “Why introduce yourself to Greta and pose as an environmental science expert?”

  “Is it wrong for me to better acquaint myself with the facts of this case? My insight and perception might be helpful, considering the evidence. We both know an animal isn’t loose in the middle of Brooklyn.”

  I crossed my arms, not budging. “You can acquaint yourself with the facts of this case without lying to Greta, and without forcing me to lie to Greta.”

  Dominic sighed, the world’s troubles, evils, and uncertainties apparent in the weight of his gaze. “You’re not a night blood anymore, and without those few abilities you once had, you’re more vulnerable than most humans. You have a reputation among the vampires now, but you no longer have the muscle to back it up. I’ll be your muscle.”

  I shook my head, still unconvinced. “Nope, that’s not it either.”