“Cassidy?” Walker’s voice turned sharp, but all I could see was Jolene’s face. “Open your eyes. We’re almost at the apartment, damn it!”
The whirling streetlights winked and extinguished in a swallowing tide, abandoning me, Jolene, and her haunting pleas to complete darkness.
Chapter 8
An unendurable, relentless pain pounded through my neck. I squirmed away from the pressure, but large, steady hands held my head immobile. I was lying on my back on what felt like my own bed, but that was wrong. No one but me had ever been in my bedroom, and besides a few wishful thoughts about Walker recently, I didn’t have any intention of breaking that streak. The pressure worsened until I felt strangled by the pain. I heard myself moan. I bit my lip.
“I know it hurts, but it’s all right, darlin’. I’m just wrapping your neck. Can you hear me?”
“Walker?” I licked my lips. “We’re at my apartment?”
“Yes,” he breathed, sounding relieved. “Your neck needs stitches, but this will do for now. Dominic will be here any moment, and I still need to get that IV in you.”
“You know he’ll come because of me. We’re not safe here.”
Walker exhaled loudly, nervously. “That’s the plan.”
He really is using me as bait for Dominic, I thought, my heart sinking. This is really happening.
Something sharp suddenly dug into the bend of my elbow. I winced and jerked back.
“Fuck,” Walker whispered hotly. I felt him clamp a hand around my forearm, immobilizing my arm against the bed. The sharpness suddenly stabbed even deeper. “Keep still. It’s just the IV.”
“You could’ve warned me,” I muttered. My voice sounded sluggish and thready, even to me.
“I did,” he said, sliding the needle out of my skin and stabbing it in again. “Shit,” he breathed vehemently, wriggling the needle under my skin.
“Walker,” I gasped, overwhelmed by the pain.
He withdrew the needle again. “I know. I’m sorry. Your blood pressure’s too low. I can’t . . . your veins ain’t, well, they just ain’t cooperating.”
“Hospital,” I whispered.
“I know. We will,” Walker said, and then he stabbed me again.
I struggled not to lash out. “Just leave it,” I ground out.
“Almost,” he said, concentrating.
A shadow moved in the corner of my vision. I felt the hairs on my neck rise to attention and knew only one creature who made me this aware of the nuances of fear, trepidation, and undeniable heat in my body. Even though I knew who would be outside my window, I held my breath as I shifted my eyes to look. Despite all our interaction, his existence still seemed like a nightmare, but the glowing eyes and snarling face of the vampire outside my window was very much, very terrifyingly real. Dominic met my gaze and bared his teeth. Gone was the polished, handsome façade I’d interacted with earlier this evening. He wasn’t even pretending to smile.
“Walker,” I panted. “He’s—”
“Just. One. Second,” Walker whispered. He frowned in concentration, and this time, the needle slid nearly painlessly through my skin into the vein. “Got it.”
Dominic slammed open the window and was inside the apartment before I could utter another word, but just as fast as Dominic blurred through the window, an explosion of machine-gun fire erupted from a mechanism on the far wall. I gaped as Dominic dropped to a complete halt in midair and crumpled on the floor in a heap.
Walker looked up from my arm, a calculating expression on his formerly boyish face. A slow, creeping smile widened his lips, not unlike the smile on the Grinch as he got his awful idea to steal Christmas, and I realized that the situation had been planned and the plan had worked.
“You planned all this,” I whispered aloud. I stared at Dominic’s motionless body.
“Of course. I would never deliberately put you in danger. I knew he’d fall.”
I shook my head. “You set this trap for Dominic while I was passed out. You took the time to use me as bait instead of getting me help!”
“Who else would you have me call? I am your help.” Walker ducked away from view and emerged from behind the bed a second later with a short wooden javelin, undoubtedly the stake needed to finish the job.
Jesus, I thought. The man’s going to stake a vampire through the heart in my bedroom.
The room was still and quiet for a hushed moment, me staring nervously at Walker, Walker glaring triumphantly at Dominic, and Dominic’s glassy and vacant gaze focused on my ceiling. Stake in hand, Walker knelt next to his body. Dominic was still wearing the sharp suit from earlier this evening, but now the fabric was ravaged by bullet holes. Like Jolene, I thought bitterly, except his blood seeped out slowly—a steady, streaming leak rather than a pulsing flow.
Walker placed the stake on Dominic’s chest, over his heart.
I blinked, and Dominic’s hand was suddenly wrapped around Walker’s wrist. I hadn’t seen him move. I hadn’t even seen him flinch. One moment, Walker was preparing to stake him, and the very next moment, Dominic was restraining him with one hand.
“SHIT!” Walker shouted.
Dominic’s wounds ejected the bullets and healed as we watched. Steam cracked from his skin, and I heard the metallic clatter of the bullets hit, bounce, and roll around on my hardwood floors.
Walker attempted to pull away, but Dominic’s single handhold around his wrist held him immobile. “Impossible. Those are silver bullets. His wounds should heal nearly human-slow.”
“Dominic is only slightly allergic to silver,” I whispered, horrified.
The last bullet clattered to the floor, leaving us in suspended, breathless, pounding silence.
Dominic’s eyes snapped open.
Walker struggled in earnest, attempting to break Dominic’s hold. He struck out with his elbow and the flat of his hand in crushing pressure-point punches.
Dominic laughed, but it was a horrible, grating noise. “This was your plan to kill me? A spray of silver and a simple staking? I expected better. Bex has been exaggerating your reputation.”
“You’re just like all the rest. You think you’re a god, but I’ve seen your kind burst into flames. I’ve seen you erupt into ash, and I’ve seen an entire body boil and melt from silver exposure. You can die,” Walker snarled.
“I most certainly can, but you brought an umbrella to protect yourself against a hurricane,” Dominic said coolly. “So I won’t be dying tonight.”
Walker adjusted his grip slightly on the stake and tensed to strike.
“Be still,” Dominic intoned, staring deep into Walker’s eyes.
Walker fell deep into Dominic’s gaze, and his arm dropped to the side.
“Hand me the stake,” Dominic said, his voice mild and soft and more dangerous than I’d ever heard.
I could see the fire in Walker’s eyes, but his body obeyed without hesitation. He handed Dominic his own wooden stake.
“Thank you,” Dominic said.
Dominic was suddenly a blur of speed and motion. He drove Walker backward by his neck, slammed him up against my bedroom wall, and stabbed him through the shoulder with his own stake, pinning him like an insect on display. Walker’s throat made strangled, coughing noises through Dominic’s choke hold, but otherwise, he didn’t so much as blink.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Dominic murmured, ripping the stake from Walker’s shoulder and testing its weight in his hand, “I’m not the only creature in this room who can die by a stake through the heart.”
Dominic tightened his grip on the stake and cocked his arm to strike.
“No!” I shouted, but my damaged throat only expelled a tight squeal. “Please don’t.”
His body remained poised and ready, but Dominic turned his head to stare at me. “Are you begging for his life?”
I bit my lip, unsure whether the truth or bargaining would best convince Dominic. I wasn’t getting any guidance from Walker. His expression was looking increasingly like
dripping paint. “Yes,” I whispered, deciding on honesty. “Please don’t kill him.”
Dominic tilted his head slightly, looking calm and thoughtful, as if considering one lump or two. Maybe for him, the gravity of sparing someone’s life wasn’t particularly grave at all. A chittering buzzed from his nose with every exhale as he breathed. It sounded vaguely like the high, sharp vibration of cicadas, and I realized that he was struggling to contain the rattling in his chest. He was struggling and failing, as I failed most of the time, to control his anger. I struggled not to look away.
“You didn’t beg for mine.”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
Dominic released his choke hold on Walker, turned on his heel, and strode toward me. My heart quickened. I glanced between Dominic and Walker, but Walker was still mesmerized and worse than useless, even without Dominic’s direct gaze on him. He remained motionless against the wall, unblinking, unseeing, and seemingly mindless. I knew the opposite was true, that he was screaming inside, but that didn’t help us now.
Dominic took his time walking to me. His skin was flawless beneath the tatters of his torn black dress shirt, healed to smooth, healthy perfection after the damage he’d sustained. Despite his body and the strength I knew he possessed, the expression on his face made my gut turn sour and tremble. His face wasn’t the sculpted, jaw-dropping beauty that had visited my office just a few hours ago. Healing must have taken its toll because his mask of humanity was slipping. His cheeks were sallow. His eyes glowed from the sunken depths of overprominent cheekbones. The tips of his fangs extended out of his thinned lips even without snarling. As he approached, he did snarl, and when his lips lifted farther away from his fangs, his teeth seemed longer and more lethal.
Before he could reach the bed, an idea struck me. I took a shuddering breath against the fear, nausea, and pulsing darkness, looked into Dominic’s eyes, and said, “Dominic Lysander, I revoke your invitation. You are not welcome in my apartment.”
Dominic grinned. “That’s the funny thing about invitations. You can revoke them all you want, but the boundaries here that protected you from me are already shattered. There’s no going back.”
One moment Dominic was adjacent to the bed, grinning down at me with his sharp fangs, and the next, he was straddling me, his talons clamping onto my shoulders and holding me up from the bed, centimeters from his face.
I screamed, but my voice was hoarse and weak, and it sounded more like a moan. It sounded awful and pathetic, and I hated that a noise like that came from me.
“You beg me to spare his life,” Dominic growled, our noses nearly touching. I could hear the bones and muscles and tissues snapping and shifting under his skin as his jaw prepared to extend. “But you didn’t beg him to spare mine.”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I didn’t know how to respond. Of course I didn’t beg him to spare you, I thought, but a response like that wouldn’t bode well for my survival. I snapped my mouth shut.
“I have saved you as he has saved you. He has used you to bait me as I long to use you to bait Kaden, but I had the decency to ask your permission, to include you in my plans. If you’re his friend, why, too, can’t you be mine?”
I opened my mouth again, thinking that I knew exactly what to say this time. You’re a murderer, I thought, but then I snapped my mouth shut again. I never actually witnessed Dominic murder anyone, but I still couldn’t forget Jolene’s fear-filled face or the fact that Walker had killed her.
“You seemed perfectly able to take care of yourself without my assistance,” I settled on as a response. “Walker wasn’t doing well on his own.”
“You flee from me, leave another scene for me to prepare along with at least a hundred witnesses and over a dozen police officers to entrance, and then you watch as that boy attempts to stake me without so much as a peep from those lips of yours. And after all that, after everything you’ve done to slight me, you actually have the audacity to beg me for his life.” Dominic shook me violently. “What have you done for me that I should consider doing this favor for you?”
Something warm oozed down my shoulder. Dominic must have torn open the wound on my neck again. Starbursts of darkness swamped my vision. “I could have taken her place,” I muttered, and the entire room winked out.
The sharp, crisp scent of pine was thick on the air and brought back the memories of Christmas, the most precious days of my childhood. Mom and Dad would sip eggnog and pass gifts and take pictures, and I hadn’t appreciated any of it at the time. I was appreciative of their love and their gifts, but I hadn’t appreciated the simple blessing of their presence. I suppose most children don’t until they’re older, but Nathan and I had never been given that necessary time. After our parents died, we let go of the formalities of Christmas traditions in favor of our careers. For better or for worse, the eggnog, gifts, pictures, and joys of the holiday died along with our parents.
Inexplicably, after five years of bare walls, leftovers, and solitude on Christmas, I suddenly had the scent of pine.
Something slick and warm was inside my neck. I winced away from it, but it pressed deeper, sliding between tendons and the grooves of torn flesh. I breathed in sharply, catching another hit of pine, and reality punctured through my memories of childhood. Dominic was on top of me. The pressure and movement of his tongue was sharp and needle-like as he healed my neck. Heat radiated in pulsing pleasure as the flesh mended, creating a strange tightrope sensation between pain and achy need.
Healing hadn’t felt like this before. Although his bite had felt like an explosion of pleasure, instant and nearly unendurable, the heat from his healing had never been more than simple heat. Now, a surging wave of pleasure was arching over us, the threat of its impending crest and crash daunting.
A noise escaped my lips, a worse noise than pathetic wimpering. The noise was embarrassing and inappropriate, but I couldn’t contain the overwhelming sensations brewing under my skin. I shivered and twitched and fisted the sheets in my hands, desperate to hold on to something solid as I drowned in his undertow.
Dominic placed a hand firmly on the other side of my face to immobilize my neck while he worked, and I squirmed beneath him. His shoulders were hard and ridged with beautifully smooth muscle under his torn dress shirt. I vaguely realized that I wasn’t fisting the sheets but rather his shirt in my hands. I should have told him to stop, that I was healed enough to survive and would get stitches if necessary. I should have at least struggled to finish the staking that Walker had attempted. I should have done a lot of things, but instead of doing what I should, I slipped my hands through the tears of his tattered dress shirt. I scraped my nails down the smooth ridges of back muscle. I reveled in the rattling, tormented vibrations that rumbled from Dominic’s chest, and the twitch of his own muscles beneath my hands.
I felt Dominic’s tongue lick over the healed wound on my neck and realized that my skin was mended. He was simply licking and sucking at the scar. Something touched the back of my hand. He detached my grip from his shirt, lifted my palm to his lips, and licked over that wound until it healed, as well. I’d been so consumed by his touch that I’d forgotten the cut on my palm. I’d likely smeared blood on the sheets, his shirt, and myself, and I hadn’t noticed or cared.
The sensations eventually dulled until only the faint pulse of unsatisfied, lingering desire remained. I trembled from wanting him, feeling desperate for more of his touch and ashamed for feeling that way. If I was honest with myself, if I felt past the expected emotions of shame and disgust and fear, I could admit that I wanted him, all of him, inside of me to finish what he’d started.
I took a deep, shuddering breath as he pulled away. His face was fully elongated into the muzzle he wore when he fed, his mouth coated from cheek to cheek in my blood. I felt sickened by him and by my own feelings.
“I can feel it, too,” he murmured, his voice strangely civilized despite the animal-like distortion of his mouth.
I looked away.
“Why did you heal me like that?”
Dominic took my chin in his hand and forced me to face him. “I will always be there to heal you.”
“This was different,” I said, ignoring the disturbing infinite in that sentence. “You took pleasure in healing me this time.”
“Healing you is always my pleasure,” Dominic said, a wide grin spreading across his animal-like features. “But I healed you the way I have always healed you. Nothing changed, except perhaps your feelings toward me. You desire me now.”
“You did something different,” I insisted.
“Tell yourself whatever lies allow you to face yourself in the mirror, but the truth is that I did nothing more than heal you. Whatever you felt—whatever I felt—during the healing, was entirely our own feelings.”
“I don’t believe you.” My body was trembling. I could feel the shiver of my shoulder against the cold, unmovable stillness of his body.
He shook his head, looking vaguely disappointed. “Believe what you want. I thought you were in the business of finding and spreading truth, but maybe I was wrong.”
My temper burst through my shock and doused the trembling. “My business is news. To keep people aware of—”
“And yet, you are not aware of your own feelings.”
“I—”
Dominic placed a finger over my lips. The strength evidenced in the pressure of that single finger stopped me midbreath. “I’ll leave you tonight, whole and healthy and otherwise untouched despite all you’ve done, if you grant me a favor.”
“A favor?” I asked.
“I want you to look into my eyes, and control my mind like you did earlier tonight. Entrance me like I’ve entranced you.”
I blinked. “Why would you want me to do that? I thought you were furious with me for controlling your mind.”
“I’m delighted that you have that ability. In all my long life, I’ve never crossed a night blood who displayed such power. You are a wonder, Cassidy, an absolute wonder, and the more I come to know you, the more convinced I am of your purpose and of your place with me in my coven. I was only furious that you were able to use this power on me.” He smirked mirthlessly, and with the extended muzzle, his mouth looked even more feral. “So think of this as a self-evaluation. Humor me, and entrance me one more time. If you can.”
The City Beneath Page 16
