The City Beneath

by Melody Johnson

  The sensations waned slightly when Dominic swallowed. His suction on my neck loosened, and I could vaguely feel the tug and sharpness of Kaden at my arm. Dominic sucked another fresh mouthful of blood from my neck, and I was lost again. My hand twitched in his, but the support of Dominic’s hand never wavered. His grip remained firm and unchanging whether I arched in pleasure, faded into unconsciousness, or flinched back into reality for the second it took for Dominic to suck me back into the heat of soaring, blinding bliss.

  Their thirsts were insatiable. The waves of unconsciousness were becoming more frequent, and the difference between their bites was beginning to blur into a haze of numbness. I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing escaped from my lips except air. My words were lost.

  Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and slipped down my temples. Dominic released his suction on my neck suddenly, and his face hovered over mine. Blood coated his chin and dripped down his neck, but his mouth hadn’t extended into a muzzle. His face was still handsome and human-like. One of my tears glistened on the side of his cheek.

  “Don’t leave me,” he whispered, but his lips parted in a lopsided smirk. His teeth were stained with my blood. “Unless you want me to turn you now.”

  The fierce boil of my temper swept over me. I opened my mouth to snap something snide, but Dominic dropped me onto the ground. He disappeared into a spiraling wind and then with a final tear of ligament and flesh, Kaden disappeared, too. For a moment I stared at the sky, the same sky I’d stared at only hours ago with such different intentions for the night. The stars weren’t visible in the city, but I’d always believed in our New York lights more than the lights shining from billions upon billions of miles away. I hadn’t actually seen the stars in years, since childhood. The sky hadn’t changed, but it certainly didn’t look the same to me.

  A massive pound shook the asphalt. Someone hissed and someone else growled back with that familiar, vibrating rattle. I craned my neck down and saw that Dominic’s claw-like hand was buried nearly elbow-deep in Kaden’s chest. With a sharp jerk of Dominic’s wrist, Kaden dropped like a broken doll to the ground.

  I blinked at the sight, astonished. How had Kaden weakened so drastically? Dominic hadn’t resisted my blood, either. He should have been equally weakened, but he stood over a crumpled, defeated Kaden, looking more massive and powerful and dangerous than ever.

  Without even a backward glance, Dominic hauled Kaden off the ground, stooped on one knee with him in his arms, and launched off the pavement into the air in a swirl of dust and stones. His blur winked out into the night, leaving the buckled pavement from the force of his launch as the only evidence of his presence. No one would suspect that just over their heads, hidden by the shadows of our own city lights and backdropped by the pitch-black sky, vampires flew overhead.

  I stared at the empty space where they’d stood, not entirely surprised that he’d left me to die. Time passed, only catalogued by the faint strain of my breathing. Everything had failed. The silver nitrate spray, the crossbow, the retractable stake pen, the silver gloves, Dominic’s promises, and Walker’s plan had all failed, and the only thing I had left, which I’d had all along, was my stubborn refusal to let go.

  My cell phone had survived the vampires’ attack better than me; I could see it lying in the grass next to my shoulder where it had slipped from my bra. I only had to move my hand a few inches to touch its screen.

  My finger twitched. I focused all my effort on my hand and those last few inches of movement. The twitch increased to a tremor and under what felt like an impossible, immovable weight, my hand struggled toward the phone. My fingers brushed its edge. I could see that I was touching it, but I couldn’t feel it.

  I swiped the screen to unlock it. The screen didn’t recognize the pressure of my finger. I pressed harder and tried to stop shaking, but the blanket of starbursts still clouded my vision. I was going to die like Walker had predicted. Maybe I wasn’t in an alley, but I was alone and abandoned. I couldn’t see my phone and I couldn’t feel the screen, but I kept swiping my finger, hoping against hope and trying against the odds that I could survive because it might be the last thing I’d ever try to do.

  The snap of my phone unlocking startled me awake. My vision sharpened slightly, so I could see the illumination of the phone’s screen at what looked like the end of a long, dark tunnel. I tapped the Call icon and tried to scroll down to W for Walker, but my numb, trembling fingers couldn’t swipe. The phone was suddenly dialing and ringing someone else.

  The call clicked through. “This better be damn good, DiRocco.”

  I recognized that smooth, honeyed voice. My heart ached, thinking about our last conversation. I’d been so worried about my reputation and credibility, but whether I finished and published “The City Beneath: Vampires Bite in the Big Apple” or not, my credibility was tarnished with Greta and the police department anyway. They were whose opinion actually mattered, and of course, they were the ones whose high opinion I’d lost.

  “Hello?” she snapped. “The next words out of your mouth better be an apology. Better yet, skip the damn apology. I better hear the name of who’s responsible for these murders or I’m hanging up.”

  I swallowed and tried to speak, but it was more a moan than a word. “Help.”

  I didn’t hear anything from Greta for a long moment. When she spoke again, her tone was urgent. “How hurt are you?”

  “Dying,” I rasped. “I’m sorry.”

  “No damn apologies.” Her voice seemed distant suddenly as she shouted, “She’s at Paerdegat Park! Get a squad and an ambulance there stat! Cass? Are you there? Speak to me.”

  “Here,” I murmured.

  “Hang on. We tracked your cell, and we’re on our way. Help is coming soon, Cass. Are you alone?”

  “Yes.” The light at the end of my tunnel winked out, and darkness blanketed my vision. “Alone.”

  “Alright,” Greta said. I could hear her breathe long and deeply over the phone. Her voice was sweet again when she said, “Tell me who did this, Cass. What else can they take from you now? Don’t let them get away.”

  I smiled at Greta’s persistence, even at the end. I would have done the same. And she was right; what else could they take from me? What else did I have to lose?

  “Cass? Stay with me! Who’s responsible for the murders? Who attacked you?”

  “Vampires,” I said.

  “What?” Greta whispered.

  “Vampires.”

  I didn’t hear or see Dominic’s return, but I could smell it.

  “The patrol car is almost there, Cass. Just hang on for a—”

  I ended the call.

  The scent of pine sharpened as Dominic approached. His steps were slow and deliberate as he walked through the puddle of blood around my body. After my few encounters with Kaden, I was beginning to understand Dominic’s careful restraint. I imagined that the carnage probably made being in my presence irresistible, but he knelt next to me, in the puddle of my blood—I could sense the shiver of his presence—and he resisted.

  I couldn’t feel the pressure of his hands, but I could sense my body being moved and a distancing from the ground, like floating, as he lifted me into his arms. I couldn’t feel much of anything, but the movement must have further injured my leg; my body spasmed slightly.

  “Easy, Cassidy,” Dominic murmured. He shifted me in his arms gently, obviously taking care not to jostle my injuries, but there were just too many to manage them all.

  I choked from the sharp angle of my neck as I draped limply in his arms. My body spasmed again.

  “Damn it,” Dominic hissed. He shifted his elbow to better accommodate my head, and I could breathe again.

  He knelt on the ground. Dust and pebbles kicked up around us, and suddenly, we were soaring. Wind rushed over me, cool and whipping. Dominic’s arms were icy around me, as well, and I shivered as the wind and Dominic’s body stole what little heat I had left. His arms tightened around me as I
shook, but his coolness pressing closer only made me colder.

  We dipped down sharply into the subway systems, curved crazily through the tunnels, and jetted into the sewer until we finally reached his rooms in the coven. Dominic slowed to a walk. His bed was set by the far wall, and the caged bedroom was positioned at the opposite end. He bypassed the cage this time and settled me gently on the bedspread. The mattress was thick and soft. My weight dipped into its downy softness, and my mind finally released from reality. It leapt to another time and place, to my first apartment with Adam where we’d shared a bed equally soft.

  His smooth, handsome baby face stared down at me as his body pressed me deeper into the bed, forming a cocoon of mattress and sheets and man around me. The warm, beefy weight of Adam’s muscles shifted in my arms as I nibbled up his neck to his ear. I felt him tremble from my touch. I bit his earlobe and squeezed him intimately, and he kissed me deeper into the mattress, blind to everything except our love and desperate lust, touching me until I was just as desperate as him. We’d only lived together for three months, but those first two months before my parents had died had been unimaginably beautiful.

  Adam had always tasted heady and smooth, like strong coffee on a frosty morning. My eyes opened drowsily, and I realized that Adam was gone. My depression and anger and sarcasm hadn’t been a part of the person he’d fallen in love with, and he hadn’t loved the person I’d become after my parents’ deaths. We parted, both equally heartbroken and hopeless and miserable with each other.

  The love and joy and connection I’d shared with Adam had been real at the time, but I’d drifted in a tide of grief in those horrible months following the fire. By the time he’d realized how far the distance had grown between us, he hadn’t stood a prayer’s chance of breaching the gap. He still lived in a bright world, ripe with excitement and anticipation for the future, but I knew the truth. Adam didn’t exist in the world I knew. I would never again open my eyes after a kiss, and see his smooth baby face smiling back.

  Dominic was the man smiling back at me now, and he certainly did exist in the world I knew. His lips were sliced and bleeding from his own fangs.

  “You came back for me,” I whispered hoarsely, reality still feeling like a dream.

  “I didn’t want to leave you,” Dominic said deeply. “But I feared that Kaden would escape if I tended to you first.”

  My heart skipped. “Where—”

  “Shhh,” Dominic murmured. “He is chained and imprisoned until his sentencing. He betrayed me. He betrayed the coven, and that is punishable by his final death. You don’t need to worry about him any longer. We’ve succeeded, Cassidy. Thanks to you, we’ve won.”

  He leaned over me, and we were suddenly kissing. The blood oozing from the cuts on his lips flowed into my mouth. It pooled at the back of my throat. I resisted swallowing but without swallowing, I couldn’t breathe. More blood poured from his mouth into mine as his lips parted and urged and nipped my lips.

  I strained against him. Dominic sensed my resistance and halted my struggle with a hand on either side of my face. I tried to pull away, but the more I struggled, the more he kissed me, and the more blood poured into my mouth. I let myself choke rather than swallow. The blood spat between us as I coughed and gagged in Dominic’s face.

  He finally stopped kissing me.

  Blood spattered over his handsome features, and he really was handsome. His face hadn’t contorted into the vicious, animal-like muzzle he usually displayed when he fed. Before I’d coughed, he’d taken a moment to wash his face clean from his battle with Kaden. Now, the blood and spit I’d choked on spotted his forehead, cheeks, nose, and chin. He stared at me, unblinking after my sudden outburst, and I couldn’t decipher his reaction.

  “I said no,” I whispered in defense. “Numerous times, I’ve told you that I don’t want to be transformed.”

  Dominic blinked. “Yes, you’ve made that clear.”

  “And you knew I was choking. You deliberately held my head still, hoping I’d panic and swallow your blood rather than choke,” I accused softly.

  “It’s usually an effective technique,” he admitted.

  I glared at him. “You use it often, I suppose.”

  Dominic shrugged. “When necessary. My night bloods have always been willing, but sometimes, the physical act of swallowing blood as a human is distasteful. My last night blood wanted to be transformed, but she rebuked my advances at the critical moment.”

  “Jillian?” I asked, remembering her speech about Dominic’s bite.

  “Jillian isn’t my night blood. I adopted her into the coven after her Master met his final death. My last night blood was Sylvia.” Dominic’s gaze unfocused as he remembered her. “Sylvia Lamb.”

  “She changed her mind at the last moment, so you forced her?” I accused quietly, hoping to keep my voice neutral and not excite him with my anger.

  He frowned. “She didn’t change her mind. She simply refused me in the moment. I ensured that what she truly desired was accomplished.”

  I pursed my lips, unimpressed. “Maybe that was true for her, but I’m not Sylvia. I’m not simply refusing you in the moment. I’m refusing you entirely.”

  “No, you’re certainly not Sylvia Lamb.”

  I waited in silence, unsure what else to say in response.

  He smiled. I could tell that the smile was reluctant, but he smiled anyway. The smile wasn’t a baring of fangs to frighten me, it wasn’t a sneer of disgust, and it wasn’t sardonic or derisive. Although his fangs did gleam in the candlelight, their threat wasn’t his intent. He had a beautiful smile.

  I smiled back, helpless not to, and asked, “Why am I not like your Sylvia Lamb?”

  “In a dangerous situation, Sylvia wouldn’t have questioned whether to run or stand her ground. She would have run every time. She wouldn’t have chosen to willingly endure sustained, debilitating pain in the hopes of gaining a favorable result, like you have for me. Transforming into a vampire didn’t change any of those qualities,” Dominic said. “Her own survival was her priority, and in the end, it had unfortunately been her undoing despite my efforts to teach her otherwise.”

  “You expect too much from people. You expect too much from me. I’m not going through this again,” I said, holding up my arm to show him my snapped thumb, but the bone was straight. I wiggled it, amazed. I checked my arm, moved my leg, and breathed air deep and heartily into my lungs, but my ribs expanded and exhaled without one twinge of pain.

  Dominic grinned, looking extremely pleased with himself.

  “Why did you heal me?” I asked in a hushed whisper. “If you were going to transform me anyway, why bother?”

  “Your body was broken and unfit for anything besides medical attention, so I gave it the attention it needed. You still need more blood to fully recover, so if you won’t accept mine, you must rest until your blood regenerates on its own. When I do transform you—”

  “I don’t want—”

  Dominic covered my mouth with his fingers. “When I do, you’ll enjoy my bite. You’ll beg me to taste you. I’ll give you all of me, and when you taste me, you’ll be mine. Forever.”

  I shook my head at him.

  He nodded at me, smirking.

  My anger skyrocketed. “Thank you very much for healing me,” I snapped. “But I’m never playing your sacrifice again. I suffered, Dominic.”

  “Our plan was a success.”

  “Our plan nearly killed me!”

  “Only nearly,” Dominic dismissed. “I’ve healed you. With time, the memories of pain will fade, and all that will remain is the advantage we gained.”

  “The advantage you gained,” I reminded him.

  “This was for the city, as well,” Dominic growled. “You wouldn’t have agreed to my plan otherwise, and I certainly didn’t force you.” He narrowed his eyes on me. “You’ve sacrificed and suffered for others in the past, and you’ll sacrifice and suffer for me again if necessary.” His face softened slight
ly. “You bear the evidence of that on your body.”

  His hand stroked down to caress the scar at my lower back.

  I squirmed uncomfortably. “That’s different.”

  “Why is this scar different from the others you’ve endured?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  A rattling growl vibrated low and menacing from his chest. “Try me,” Dominic rasped.

  I sighed, wanting to avoid his anger, but more than that, needing to keep him distracted. Despite the wrong turn our plan had taken, I had nevertheless still infiltrated the coven, achieving my half of the plan. If Walker was going to achieve his half, I needed to keep Dominic talking while Walker entered the coven after me.

  I took another deep, fortifying breath. “I was on a stakeout with Greta, er, Detective Wahl—Officer Wahl at the time—and Officer Harroway as backup. I thought it’d be a big story, the breakout for my career, but my source set me up.”

  Dominic nodded with grave understanding. “Betrayal is the most bitter truth to swallow.”

  “Wahl and Harroway had the duty to watch my back, and I had the duty to watch theirs because that’s what backups do. When shots were fired at us, I literally covered Officer Harroway’s back with my own.” I looked away. “That kind of backup isn’t something you can demand of someone. It isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a gift and something they would have given me had our roles been reversed. I deserved this scar. I’m proud of it.” My voice caught as I thought of everything I’d irrevocably lost with Greta and my career tonight. “I don’t expect you to understand that.”

  Dominic sighed. “I understand more than you know, probably more than you’d care to discover. I’ve endured many hardships in my time, some that have left visible scars and some that have not.”

  I glanced back at him, and my eyes dropped automatically to the deep groove that pulled down his lower lip. I opened my mouth to ask about his scar, as he had asked about mine, but his lips suddenly twisted. He’d caught me staring. I blushed, embarrassed, and it took me an extra moment to gather enough courage to ask the question.