The City Beneath

by Melody Johnson

  Walker shot me another sideways look. “We already knew that. And anyway, you distracted him enough that I was able to enter the coven, so good job. We’ll find their resting place together.”

  The restraint around my wrist snapped. I pulled my hands to my chest and rubbed them as blood returned in a swift, tingling rush to my fingers. I could recognize that it hurt, but on morphine, I really didn’t care. I rubbed the heel of my palm into my eyes, enjoying the floating, carefree sensation, and wishing it would dissipate so I could focus.

  “Did you have any trouble getting into the coven?” I asked, cautiously.

  Walker snorted. “Less trouble than last time,” he said, stooping over my elbow. He slid the IV from my skin, and without gauze or tissues or anything remotely sterile on hand, pressed his own shirt against the puncture to stop the bleeding.

  I cringed. “You’re not sneaking in, Walker. The vampires know exactly who’s coming in and out of the coven. Dominic can feel it.”

  “Did Dominic tell you that?” Walker asked.

  “It makes sense that they know. They haven’t survived for hundreds of years by letting people waltz in and out. Another night blood would have snuck in and killed them by now.”

  “I’ve told you before, you can’t believe what Dominic tells you.”

  I sighed and dropped my point in favor of a more pressing issue. “Fine, you snuck in, but riddle me this. How are we going to navigate these tunnels? They’re massive. We might not even find the vampires until dusk.”

  “We’ll find them,” Walker said. The conviction in his voice was strong and certain. “Their resting place will be immense. Other rooms will branch out from its center, like an open lobby.”

  “How many rooms will there be?” I asked, chilled to think how many vampires were beneath the city and how many we could potentially face in order to accomplish Walker’s plan.

  “Hundreds, to accommodate the coven as it grows. My coven back home has fifteen, but being under the city, I wouldn’t be surprised to find up to fifty vampires here.”

  “Fifty vampires,” I whispered. I envisioned them closing in around us and shivered. “How do you know what their resting place looks like or how many vampires are here?”

  “Bex described it to me before I left home,” Walker admitted.

  I frowned. “A Master vampire gave you inside information about another coven? Why? What does she have to gain by helping a human track and kill another vampire?”

  His face hardened. “What does Dominic have to gain by fighting his own to protect you? They want to turn us, DiRocco, and they’ll do anything, absolutely anything, even seemingly turn on their own kind, to ensure that they get what they want. ”

  I blinked. “Dominic will certainly not get what he wants.”

  “He might,” Walker whispered.

  “Excuse me? I think I know my own—”

  “Everyone has a pressure point that makes them willingly step over their line. Dominic is still searching for yours.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it before choosing my words carefully. “But you’re not a vampire, so Bex is still searching for your pressure point, too.”

  “No, she found mine.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s been a long time, five years and two months since Julia and I—” Walker’s voice broke. He glared at me before continuing. “—I agreed to the transformation.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it, stunned. “But you hate vampires,” I whispered.

  Walker’s eyes flattened. “Bex drained me, but when she should have given me her own blood to drink, she—” Walker’s voice broke again. “—She didn’t have the opportunity to give me her blood. After I recovered, I changed my mind about the transformation, but her failure only honed her determination to have me.” Walker shook his head, his expression pinched. “But it honed my determination, too. They all need to be eliminated, Cassidy. Every last one.”

  “How many can you eliminate, Walker, before Bex gets over you, and it’s you she eliminates?” I asked softly, taken aback by the vehemence in his expression.

  Walker shook his head. “Vampires have long memories, and in all that time, I don’t think Bex ever forgave herself for being unable to complete the transformation. Guilt and lust are powerful things, and if the one thing that Bex wanted was my consent, it’s the one thing she can’t get over losing. It seems the more I kill vampires, the more she feels me slipping away from that moment I was almost hers, and the more she tries to win me back. If in all this time she hasn’t stopped trying to win me back, I don’t think she’s going to get over me anytime soon.”

  “Why did you agree to the transformation?” I asked carefully. “Who’s Julia?”

  Walker peeked at my arm from under his shirt, ignoring me. “I think you’re good here. We need to start searching the tunnels before we lose more time.”

  Walker offered me a hand to help me down from the bed. His jaw flexed stubbornly, daring me to push the subject, but I let it pass without comment. I’d only known him for three days; what right did I have to push him if he didn’t want to be pushed? I took his hands, and his fingers closed firmly around my palm as he helped me stand.

  My head swam and my body felt like it was balancing on limp noodles. The floor listed from side to front to side to back, and I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead in an attempt to ground myself. Walker took hold of my waist while I swayed. After a long moment, my head settled, and I stepped away, able to balance on my feet without his support. The floor still wobbled and dipped, like I was floating over it rather than standing on it, but at least I was standing.

  “Well?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Let’s just find the coven and put this entire night behind us.”

  “Where are your gloves and crossbow and stake? Do you still have them on you?”

  “No, not that they were much help.” I touched the necklace that Dominic gave me, my last weapon. “You’ve got weapons, right?”

  Walker looked offended. “Of course.”

  “Then lead the way.”

  Walker nodded, and despite all of our setbacks, he smiled with anticipation. It wasn’t much different from Dominic’s smile before he bit me, as if he was getting exactly what he wanted after a very long wait.

  The tunnels were damp from the underground, but I could tell by the kept walls and floor and the personalized rooms branching from the main hallways that the space was occupied. This wasn’t just a place to hide during the day; the vampires had made these underground tunnels a city of their own.

  The rooms branching off from the main tunnel were all living quarters with personal items and furniture. One of the doorways had two scraps of wood tied together above its entrance, like a cross. We also passed smaller rooms furnished with chairs and a stage or platform. Another was much larger than the other sitting rooms and was actually furnished with couches, pillows, end tables, and rugs.

  That room gave me pause. A room like that was made for creatures who needed comfort, who enjoyed rest after a hard day and enjoyed relaxing in the company of others. It resembled a family room without the electronics, back when people gathered to talk to one another instead of to watch television. The room implied that the vampires valued more in their society than just hunting and killing. Such a room certainly fit the Armani-wearing, loquacious, well-fed version of Dominic. I couldn’t imagine Dominic’s true form resting in this room, with his talons and extended snout and razor-pointed teeth.

  The more we searched, the more my heart ached with dread and a little panic. There were a lot of rooms, and Dominic was self-admittedly ambitious. I bit my lip, thinking about how many vampires could potentially fit in all these rooms, and if I knew anything about Dominic, and I think I was learning more than I’d ever want to know, he’d want to fill every room.

  We didn’t cross one vampire while we searched, a fact that didn’t surprise Walker but made me a nervous
wreck. They knew we were here. They probably heard our footsteps and breathing. Hell, Dominic probably heard the blood pumping though my veins, but no one confronted us. Walker reminded me that vampires were nocturnal, that they were all heavily sleeping, but despite their nocturnal nature, Dominic had refuted this myth. They could wake and function during the day, out of sunlight, if they wanted. As usual, Walker didn’t want to hear what Dominic had to say, but I walked on eggshells.

  Eventually, we found the coven’s resting place. As I gazed at the honeycomb-like dome, I realized with a sickening, stunned drop of horror that Walker was both exactly right and horribly wrong. The resting place was a centralized location for the vampires to sleep throughout the day as Walker had expected, with bedrooms lining the walls and stacked a couple dozen stories above our heads. Unlike what Walker had expected, every room in the coven was occupied. Dominic wasn’t intending to fill every room; he already had. Hundreds upon hundreds of vampires were sleeping in their beds within their honeycomb-like rooms.

  “There are hundreds,” I whispered, feeling equally astounded, horrified, and daunted. I took a step back, shaking my head.

  Walker slid a bullet into the chamber of his sawed-off shotgun with a harsh, sliding cock.

  “How do they reach the very top rooms?” I asked, needing something concrete to grasp on to. “There must be stairs from the back.”

  “They don’t need stairs like us, Cassidy. They can jump that height.”

  I was fully aware of their abilities. Dominic could soar through the sky like he had an engine and wings. He’d jumped five stories to my apartment window with me in his arms. I stared at the very top rooms in the honeycombs, three times the height of my apartment building, and awe still blanketed over me.

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  Walker took a step forward. “We’d best get to work.”

  I snapped my gaze from their resting place to stare at Walker. “You’re not serious,” I said, surprised.

  “We came here to do a job, and I’ll be damned if we came all this way, came this close to killing them, and just left with our tails tucked,” Walker snapped.

  “This is impossible.” I swept my hand through the air to encompass the metropolis behind us. “We can’t distinguish the rebels from this many vampires and kill them all in a single day. There’s simply too many and not enough time before sunset. We either do the job right, or we don’t do it at all, and we can’t possibly hope to do it right, Walker. Not today.”

  His expression tightened. “I’m not leaving. I came to the city to track and kill the animals responsible for the attacks at Paerdegat Park, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ve tracked them to their resting place, and I’ll be damned if I’m leaving without killing them.”

  “Then you’ll be killing them alone,” I hissed. “There’s too many of them, much more than you anticipated.”

  “Cassidy, don’t—”

  “We can come back another day when we’re better prepared,” I pleaded. “This isn’t completing the job. This is suicide.”

  “Not if we kill them all.”

  Rage exploded through the haze of morphine. “That wasn’t our agreement.”

  Walker crossed his arms. “It’s an option.”

  “No, it’s not. You’d never be able to kill the entire coven before sunset. When Dominic wakes and sees half his coven demolished, who do you think he’ll come after? He’ll know I’m the one who betrayed him.”

  “You’re right.” Walker stepped toward me and enveloped me gently in his embrace. His arms were warm and strong and secure as he held me, exactly like last time, and I wrapped my arms around his waist, relieved.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking. When Dominic wakes, you’ll be his first target. You should go,” Walker agreed, but it wasn’t the agreement I’d anticipated.

  I pushed against his chest to meet his eyes. “You’re coming with me.”

  Walker shook his head. “Dominic will know that I helped you escape whether I leave now or later, and I’d rather take as many vampires down with me as I can. Get out of the coven and escape the city today. I’ve heard the country isn’t a bad place to settle,” he said, and he had the nerve to wink at me. “I’ve already told my partner about you. The first person you see, ask for Ronnie. It’s a small town, and she’ll be expecting you.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not leaving New York City. It’s my home. And I’m certainly not leaving you here tod—”

  Walker tightened his grip around my body and lifted me off my feet. His lips pressed against mine, fierce at first, but as I opened my mouth to his and he swept his tongue against mine, I let myself melt into his embrace. The kiss became softer, more languid and yielding instead of taking, and for a fraction of a second, I lost time and place and all concern for everything other than this man and his lips. I touched his cheek. His hand grazed my neck to cup the back of my head. I shifted the angle of my head to kiss him more deeply, and his arm tightened around my hips.

  All too soon, Walker pulled away and set my feet back on the ground. “Take care, Cassidy DiRocco.”

  I watched, dumbfounded and incensed as Walker turned on his heel and left me standing at the entrance of the honeycombs. He had the nerve to kiss me like that and then walk away to implement his stupid, stubborn suicide mission. I clenched my teeth as the familiar rage inside me incinerated the remaining shock. I suppose the difference between being human and vampire didn’t matter; men were simply impossible.

  Walker entered the first honeycomb, shotgun cocked and covering his corners when a blur of black and glowing violet eyes scorched through the darkness. A gunshot sounded. I hit the ground and took cover behind the entryway. The violet blur disappeared to avoid the bullet spray and reappeared behind Walker. He couldn’t recover in time. His shotgun was ripped from his grasp and tossed aside. The vampire, having disarmed Walker, slowed to human-pace, and I could finally discern his features.

  I might not have recognized him if I hadn’t seen him so intimately the night before, but even then he hadn’t been this beastly. Maybe during the day vampires took another form, one even more haggard than the one they displayed when they hadn’t fed. Maybe without the concealing darkness, they revealed their true nature, or maybe he was just ravenous and couldn’t control his form. Whatever the reason for his complete transformation, Kaden was just barely recognizable as a vampire. He’d left the form of a man in favor of a form that more closely resembled a gargoyle or bat. The glow of his violet eyes, however, was unmistakable.

  Kaden stood not twenty-five meters away, alive and well and free from his imprisonment. His jaw and muzzle were extended. His nose was flattened at the front and pinched upward at its edges. His teeth were elongated past his grinning lips, the round tips of his ears had pointed, and his irises were glowing wide over the whites in one bottomless color. His hands had transformed to full claws, not just his nails, and his feet had enlarged into talon-like appendages, as well. As he closed in on Walker, his toes clicked across the stone floor. I watched in horror, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Kaden because of my sick fascination with his legs. They weren’t bending in the correct direction anymore. The joints had twisted, so his knees bent back instead of forward.

  I scuttled behind the doorway as fast and as silently as I could manage on my hands and knees. Kaden had escaped. Either he was more powerful than Dominic had anticipated, or someone besides myself, likely a vampire from his own coven, had betrayed Dominic, too. I didn’t want to leave Walker behind, but neither of us could battle against Kaden and survive. We needed help, and there was only one vampire here who I knew might save us.

  I swallowed my nerve, used the wall to help me stand despite the pitch and dip of the stone beneath my feet, and I stumbled down the tunnel back toward Dominic’s rooms. I only made it another few steps, however, before a silent draft of air rushed overhead and pounded into the ground in front of me. I reared back to avoid walking smack into it.
My head spun from the startled movement. The floor dipped and the walls wobbled out of reach and the world suddenly spun off its axis. The ground rushed up to meet my face.

  Strong hands gripped into my shoulders. They stopped my fall and twisted me around. My breath caught. Maybe I didn’t need to find Dominic. Maybe I could find help right here.

  “Jillian,” I said, gazing at the vampire holding me.

  Jillian was just barely holding on to her human form. The tips of her ears had pointed through the long locks of golden hair, the outer corners of her nose were beginning to flare, and the tip of her nose was starting to flatten. I could see the battle waging across her face as she struggled to maintain her composure. More questions than I could possibly ever utter boiled on my tongue as I witnessed the beauty struggle not to transform into the beast, but no matter the answers I needed, there was only one at the moment that mattered.

  “Can you take me to Dominic?”

  “Our Master doesn’t take visitors during his day rest.” Jillian cocked an eyebrow. “How did you escape his rooms?”

  I shook my head frantically. “It’s urgent. Kaden has escaped.”

  Jillian’s gaze flattened. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, of course. I saw him myself.”

  “What exactly did you see?”

  “I saw Kaden, like a man-sized bat, in the center room of the coven,” I said pointing.

  I realized afterward that if she looked to corroborate my story, she would also see Walker. My heart clenched.

  “You’re positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the being you saw was Kaden? In our most primal form, it can be difficult to differentiate—”

  “I’m positive,” I insisted. “Granted, I’ve never seen him that completely transformed, but I know what I saw. It was Kaden.”

  “I see,” she said coolly. Jillian reached out, her arm an indecipherable blur, hooked me around the waist, and tucked me under her arm. The walls were a sudden blur around us as we flew.

  I shrieked, I couldn’t help it. In Dominic’s arms, I’d always faced his chest, but Jillian had simply grabbed me like a sack, my front facing outward. We zipped through tunnels, dodged around light fixtures, and cut corners by running up along the walls. Each turn and jump was harrowing, made worse by the fact that everything seemed to slip past my face by mere inches.