Sweet Last Drop

by Melody Johnson

  “How did you know I needed you?” I whispered. “Why did you leave the city? Tonight of all nights, why did you come for me?”

  Dominic heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Would you believe me if I told you that I heard your screams all the way from New York City?”

  I grinned despite our situation. “I might have if you’d hid the sarcasm.”

  “I must remember that.” Dominic stared at me a moment, but I couldn’t read his expression any better than I could the thoughts of a wild animal. Both were beyond my comprehension, more instinct than logic, and sometimes—less often now than when we’d first met—I swore Dominic could turn on me as easily as he could save me.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “Honestly?”

  “Is there a better policy?”

  “Several that I can think of,” Dominic muttered.

  I pursed my lips and waited.

  “I didn’t know you needed me.”

  I frowned. “Then how—”

  “You didn’t call me at sunset. I told you that I would damn the truce with Bex and come here if you didn’t call.” Dominic gave me a look. “So I did.”

  I blinked. “I forgot.” I shook my head at our luck. “Thank God I forgot.”

  Dominic shrugged. “Or thank me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve mended things between you and Bex, so you didn’t break the truce. Not that that matters now.”

  “Why wouldn’t the truce matter? What’s happened?”

  I bit my lip.

  Dominic narrowed his eyes. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything! The creature tore out her heart. Walker had a gun with silver shot, but he wouldn’t—” I gasped, wincing as something painful shot through my rib. “—and I couldn’t—”

  He placed a finger over my lips, cutting me off. “Don’t distress yourself. And lower your voice before Nathan hears us. Whatever you did or didn’t do is OK. I’ve seen her look worse.”

  I stared at him. “What’s worse than dead?”

  Dominic looked down and raised an eyebrow. “I could think of several things worse than death, but Bex is not dead.”

  I struggled to turn my head to see what Dominic was seeing.

  “Just remain still. Is that too much to ask?” Dominic hissed. He adjusted his grip, so I could see more easily.

  Bex was moving. She had dragged herself to the cave’s mouth, inch by excruciating inch, while the creature was distracted over losing me. A trail of blood had soaked the moss in a bloody path behind her, but she was healing.

  Bex wasn’t dead.

  I sagged with relief in Dominic’s arms. “It worked,” I murmured to myself. “It really worked.”

  “What worked?”

  “Her injuries were so extensive—” I shuddered, thinking of her heart in my hand. “—I didn’t think it was possible for her to heal, but I used your blood to save her, and it worked.”

  “Of course you did.” Dominic narrowed his eyes. “Why didn’t you try saving yourself?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I gave you that vial of my blood so you’d have it when you needed it, the subject of its healing being you, not me, not Walker, and certainly not Bex.”

  I snorted. “As if Walker would ever let me heal him with your blood. He’d rather die.”

  Dominic nodded. “Then let him, and you will use my blood to survive, as it was intended.”

  “I couldn’t just leave her.” My voice caught, and Dominic looked down to meet my eyes. “She sacrificed herself to save me.”

  Dominic raised both his eyebrows. “She probably feared the risk of another war.”

  Another? I thought, and then I realized that “truces” were often formed after wars. I sighed. “I doubt she had time to weigh the pros and cons of her actions. If you haven’t noticed, that thing is fast, faster even than you.”

  Dominic shook his head. “I know Bex. She weighed her options.”

  “Fine, let me try in terms you might understand.” I sighed, exasperated. “We wouldn’t be very good allies if I let her die from injuries she sustained while protecting me when I had the means and the opportunity to help.”

  “Now that’s an acceptable excuse for your actions,” Dominic said, grinning. “But I know you, and you did not weigh your options before acting on them. That’s what makes you such a risk and a reward.” He brought his hand to his mouth and bit into his own wrist. I winced. “Next time, use my blood to heal no one but yourself. Promise me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I promise.”

  Dominic shook his head. “You know what I want to hear. Swear by the certain passage of time.”

  Bex’s warning about promises resonated within me, and I hesitated. I hadn’t thought much of my promises to Dominic other than the fact that I always keep my word, so it didn’t matter if I swore by the passage of time or certainty of the sun or whatever garbage Dominic invented because I’d keep my promise no matter the circumstances. But Bex’s fearful refusal to swear by the sun made me wonder if Dominic’s formalities were more than just words.

  He leaned in close, forehead to forehead, until his bloody lips were inches away from mine. The blood had stained the divots and wrinkles of his scar, highlighting his natural sneer.

  I cringed back, but he held my face immobile against him.

  “You’ve been talking to people about us,” Dominic narrowed his eyes. “Walker or Bex?”

  Despite the fact that Dominic had just saved me, I felt cornered by danger from all sides: the creature below me and Dominic surrounding me. At least I knew the creature would drain me dry and rip out my heart. Three weeks ago, I’d have thought the same of Dominic, sans the heart, but now I believed his motives. He wanted more from me than just my blood, and sometimes, that was even more terrifying.

  “I’m not asking you a second time,” he growled.

  “Bex,” I confessed.

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His smile was all fangs. “I see.”

  “I doubt that,” I muttered.

  “Remain still.” Dominic adjusted his hold so that his bleeding wrist pressed against the wound along my ribs. When his blood made contact with my wound, it sizzled, not necessarily burning but not pleasurable, either, like the overwhelming sensation of not stopping after climax. I clenched my teeth together to keep from crying out.

  The creature stopped its tantrum.

  I froze in Dominic’s arms and opened my mouth to warn him, but Dominic covered my lips with his fingers.

  The creature was still in the shadows below us. Without movement or sound, I couldn’t pinpoint its exact location, but I could still smell the faint reek of its breath as it panted. Dominic and I waited in the stretching silence—the pound of my heart roaring in my ears—until my skin felt stretched thin.

  If we couldn’t see it than maybe it couldn’t see us.

  Faintly, nearly imperceptibly, I heard the underlying rattle of the creature’s growl.

  Dominic’s answering growl rattled instinctively, deep from his chest. Pressed against him, I felt the vibration more than I heard it.

  The creature heard it.

  It turned its head, and I saw the glassy sheen of its eyes searching the trees and darkness. I froze, my heart a frantic, caged thing trying to beat out of my chest.

  The creature didn’t move. It waited, just as still and silent as us.

  After a moment, it released another soft growl.

  I closed my eyes, dread pouring through me. Dominic’s answering growl would undo us.

  Something growled in the tree next to us, and the creature launched itself at it.

  Dominic braced his arms around me in an unbreakable hold, and we were suddenly a missile, launching from the tree and soaring. Through the whipping wind whistling over my ears, I heard the creature shriek and pound after us.

  Dominic paused next to the cave entrance. We did
n’t have time to pause; the creature was in fast forward, gaining on us, but Dominic took the time to link arms with something cold and wet behind me. The sharp scent of cinnamon wafted from it, and the scent made my throat instantly, burningly parched.

  Bex, I thought, recognizing the smell of her blood. He’s taking the time to save Bex.

  The creature swiped out with its claw, a hairsbreadth behind us. Dominic turned to give the creature his back, sheltering Bex and me with his body, before diving into the cave. Dominic stiffened in midair, and a wash of blood soaked between us.

  We dropped headlong into the cave, more falling than flying. I looked up at the cave’s entrance and the creature’s outline, a darker shadow against the other night shadows. I expected it to dive in after us, like it had with Walker, but it didn’t. It just watched from above, poised and waiting, as we fell out of reach.

  * * * *

  We crash-landed into the cave’s bottom. Dominic tried to take the brunt of the landing, but Bex’s injuries had crippled her strength and I was little better than dead weight. We hit hard. The impact jarred my hip. Pain seared through my leg. Dominic released Bex and tightened his grip on me as we bounced. Without Dominic to steady her, Bex hit the ground a second time, rolled a dozen feet, and slammed into a stalagmite.

  Dominic skidded a few feet in the same direction as Bex with me riding on his stomach like a sled. The moment we slowed to a stop, I struggled away from him.

  “Your back,” I said, frantic. I tried to lift his shoulder to inspect his injuries, but my arms were as useful as limp noodles. He batted me away easily in my weakened condition, not that he couldn’t bat me away easily otherwise.

  “I’m fine.”

  “The creature flayed your back with its claws. I saw it. I felt you bleed.” I said, glancing down at my stained shirt, although honestly, I couldn’t distinguish his blood from Bex’s and my own. My shirt was completely soaked through. “And now you’ve got dirt and gravel and cave grime embedded in the wounds,” I continued. “You’re not fine.”

  Dominic sat up with me in his lap and leaned forward to show me his back. I peered over his shoulder. Flickering light from the kerosene lamps illuminated the cavern just enough for me to see, but even knowing Dominic’s penchant for healing, seeing wasn’t believing. His button-up dress shirt was shredded—it was stained beyond repair by dirt and blood—but his skin was flawless.

  “You’re not hurt,” I whispered. I grazed my fingers over his smooth flesh to reassure myself.

  His growl was very soft, like velvet. I checked myself and pulled my hand away.

  “I told you, I’m fine,” he said gruffly. “I healed.”

  Bex groaned.

  “Why hasn’t Bex healed? She’s more powerful than you. She should have—”

  “How do you know who’s more powerful?” Dominic interrupted, sounding offended. “My Leveling is approaching, if you remember. You’ve never actually witnessed my full strength.”

  “Yet even in your reduced state of strength, your wounds healed almost instantly. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since I replaced her heart.”

  Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Replaced her heart?”

  “Yes, Lysander, let’s rip out your heart for twenty minutes or so and see how long it takes for you to recover after it’s shoved back into your bleeding chest cavity,” Bex moaned from her prone position next to the stalagmite. She hadn’t moved since our fall. “It’ll be a good test of strength for you, and the perfect comparison for me to see how you measure up, assuming you recover at all.”

  I craned my neck to the side, trying to get a better look at Bex in the light coming from the mineshaft. “I don’t think that’s necessar—”

  “You said dinner with Bex went well. That you enforced our truce,” Dominic interrupted me, his voice more a growl than words, as he caressed my collarbone.

  I blinked. “It went better than expected,” I hedged, unsure of his sudden mood swing.

  “Who touched you?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Your neck is black with bruises, Cassidy DiRocco,” he purred, and I felt the caress of my name on his lips, like a pull on my tongue, urging me to speak the truth. “Someone’s fingertips squeezed around your neck, here.” He poked a thumb into a bruise on my throat, and I winced. “Here.” He poked another bruise with his other hand so both his thumbs were at my windpipe where Bex had squeezed. “And here.” He wrapped his fingers around the back of my neck.

  I swallowed. “It’s complicated.”

  “Unravel it for me, then.”

  “The other person looks much worse.” I winced, the pain in my hip becoming unbearable from sitting sideways on his lap. “The truce was solidified, and that’s what matters. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Who?” Dominic growled. His grip around my neck tightened, but I could tell he was being careful with me. He was trying to rattle me, but he wasn’t actually hurting me.

  I kept my lips sealed.

  “Me,” Bex said from her shadow under the stalagmite. “It was me. I choked your precious Cassidy DiRocco, the perfect fucking little night blood. She deserved it. Or at least she did at the time.”

  Dominic released my neck and settled me on the cave floor. I sighed, relieved from the pressure on my hip for the moment. With a sudden flurry of wind and dirt, Dominic was gone.

  He reappeared next to Bex and hauled her up in front of him by her upper arms.

  “No!” I shouted, “Dominic, don’t! I—”

  “You want a truce, and you dare to touch my night bl—”

  The light from the lamps crossed Bex’s face. Dominic stopped mid-sentence, staring.

  He glanced back at me before narrowing his gaze on Bex again. “The truce was solidified, despite Cassidy’s neck and your…?” Dominic’s voice faded, and that I could recall, it might have been the first time I’d ever seen him at a loss for the appropriate words.

  Bex raised the eyebrow over her hollow eye socket. “And my what?”

  She was going to make him say it.

  “The loss of your eye.”

  Bex nodded. “Yes, although even if the truce hadn’t been solidified then, after what Cassidy has done for me, it certainly would be solidified now.”

  I shook my head. “You saved me first. I couldn’t do any less.” I bit my lip. “I wish I could have done more.”

  “You did more than enough, unlike someone else we both know.” Bex’s voice ended on a warning growl.

  The door to the mining shaft creaked open and flooded the cave with light. I winced away from the brightness, unable to lift my arms to shadow my face.

  “DiRocco? Is that you?” Walker’s deep bass vibrated through the cave.

  “Shut the door, you idiot,” Dominic hissed. Despite his threats, he instinctively turned his body, shielding Bex from the light. “Are you trying to spotlight us for Nathan?”

  The door slammed shut. I opened my eyes, blinded by darkness after the loss of the light.

  “I wouldn’t be spotlighting anything if you weren’t spread out like a buffet.” I felt Walker’s hand on my cheek. “I doubt the creature would risk diving back into the cavern, but better safe than sorry. Let’s get you inside, darlin’”

  I stared at him until my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could finally see the bold planes of his face, his bent nose, and curly-cue hair. I shook my head, feeling weak with denial and relief. “Walker, you’re alive? You’re OK?”

  “It’d take a lot more than that creature to get rid of me,” he said smugly.

  “But how?” I said, stunned. “I saw you fall into the cave. I thought—”

  “Rene caught me,” he said, losing the smile.

  I looked behind him, expecting Rene to make an appearance as well, to interject with an equally smug comment, but he wasn’t there. “Where is he?”

  “Didn’t you hear his growl in the tree next to you
?” Bex snapped.

  I looked back at her, shocked. “I heard a growl, but I didn’t realize that….” my voice trailed off, stunned. “That was Rene?”

  “Who else would it be?” she said, her voice harsh and grating. And then she did something incomprehensible to me, something I’d never seen from a vampire. She dropped her face into her hands and wept.

  Dominic adjusted his grip so he was holding her instead of man-handling her. Without his support, I think she would have collapsed.

  “He’ll return, Bex,” he murmured. “And we can heal him if he doesn’t.”

  Bex pursed her lips. “We can’t heal him if it eats his heart,” she murmured.

  I looked up at the cave’s entrance high above us, the size of a thumbprint from our view at the bottom. There might have been a shadow of the creature still peering over the cave’s edge, watching us, but I couldn’t say for certain.

  “I should be out there,” I said, more to myself than to anyone in particular. “It needs to be stopped.”

  The cavern’s silence was a tangible, breathable heaviness in the air. I glanced back at Walker and realized that he and everyone else were staring at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We only just narrowly escaped,” Dominic said slowly, as if to the mentally deranged. “You’re still bleeding.”

  I understood their hesitation but couldn’t shake the frantic urgency clutching my heart. The creature was out there. That creature was Nathan, and he was eating people’s hearts. He was likely eating Rene’s heart as we spoke.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to stab something.

  I contained myself to not falling over. It took more energy than I’d like to admit just to remain sitting upright.

  “We can’t hide down here and ignore what’s happening outside this cavern. That thing is killing people right now!”

  “And if we go out there, we will be the people that thing is killing,” Walker said flatly. “We’re going inside the coven. Now.”

  “I haven’t extended you an invitation to my home,” Bex growled.

  “Unlike you, I don’t need an invitation to cross a threshold,” Walker snapped.