Sweet Last Drop

by Melody Johnson

  “Can you feel Jillian inside your mind?”

  I nodded. “She wants me to drink. She’s insisting, actually.”

  Dominic moved his wrist closer to me, undaunted by my efforts to stop him. “Comply with her, and let’s see what happens.”

  Yes, Jillian purred. Let’s see what happens.

  I shook my head. “This isn’t good. She’s anticipating your blood.”

  “Of course she is. She’s starving.” Dominic stopped moving his arm closer, but he didn’t pull back, either. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You aren’t drained, so drinking from me won’t transform you nor harm you in any way. This is just an experiment.”

  “Nothing is ‘just’ an experiment.”

  “I need you to trust me.”

  I stared at Dominic’s wrist, his blood thick like honey, and at that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to lick his blood-slicked flesh. Desire and thirst incinerated my throat.

  I shook my head.

  Dominic sighed in frustration. “Why are you resisting? I know you trust me enough for this. You’ve risked much more for me than a simple lick. You’ve licked Bex’s blood and nothing extraordinary occurred. Why not lick mine?”

  “It’s not about your blood. It’s not about trusting you,” I whispered, terrified.

  “I know you want to help your brother. Your devotion to save him in undeniable.”

  I nodded.

  “Determining Jillian’s strength is our first step toward saving him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” Dominic insisted.

  I breathed in sharply from his tone. The icy heat of peppermint flooded my nose. A backdraft blazed down my throat to my stomach, and the truth burst through my lips before I even knew I was speaking. “I don’t trust myself!”

  Dominic stared for a moment, surprised by my outburst. “In what way don’t you trust yourself?” he asked calmly, as if this were a normal conversation.

  Tears streamed down my face, and it took every molecule of my control not to pounce on his arm and lap at the blood like an animal. Like him.

  “I want it too much,” I admitted. “I know better than to give into cravings when I want something this badly, when it feels like I’ll literally die without it. It usually means I’ll die having it.”

  Dominic narrowed his gaze on me. “These aren’t your cravings, Cassidy. They’re Jillian’s. The few times you’ve tasted my blood, you were revolted. I had to force my blood into your mouth, and even then, instead of swallowing, you spat it back in my face, remember?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yes, I remember, but these cravings feel like my cravings.”

  “I trust you,” he said, his voice low and serious. “Drink.”

  I swallowed, and my saliva scraped like sand down my throat. His arm was suddenly closer. His blood smelled sweeter, and the scent stung my nose hairs in an icy burn. My mouth flooded with his blood before I even realized I’d moved. My hands on his arms, which were supposed to be resisting, had betrayed me and pulled his wrist to my mouth.

  YES! Jillian shouted, her voice a breathy exhale of pleasure. MORE!

  I swallowed and sucked in another mouthful of blood. The more I drank, the more I wanted, and the more I wanted, the more I drank. I was drowning in thirst and burning with need and without an anchor to steady me, I couldn’t stop.

  Dominic tried to pry my mouth from his arm gently, but I bit into his flesh and refused to budge.

  “Cassidy DiRocco, you will stop drinking my blood, you will release your hold on my wrist, and look into my eyes.”

  Dominic’s voice resonated in my head, turning my mind to putty and my will to his own. I stopped drinking his blood, released his wrist, and looked into his eyes instantly.

  “No,” I whispered. “You promised. You swore by the sun that you would never entrance me again.”

  “So did you, and when necessary, you broke that promise. As am I.” Dominic looked deep into my eyes. “I can feel her in you.” He didn’t look away, but from the strain in his voice, it pained him not to. “I can feel your struggle. Why would you think you were addicted to blood?”

  I tried not to think of that time, but not thinking about it was like someone telling you not to think about elephants. You were instantly and uncontrollably thinking about elephants.

  I thought about my painful recovery from being shot, of my addition to Percocets and of my subsequent struggle to detox. I thought of my fight with Nathan and of my promise to never slip down that path ever again. I’d promised him that family would always come first.

  “Ah,” Dominic said, and that one noise said everything. He understood.

  Dominic looked even deeper into my eyes, searching. “Jillian Allister, look into my eyes.”

  Impossible, Jillian thought.

  Dominic released his hold on my mind, but the single thread that still linked my mind to Jillian’s sparked to attention. I felt her look up through my eyes and stare into Dominic’s gaze.

  He was able to entrance Jillian through me.

  “Oh, it’s possible,” Dominic said, his expression smug. “You made Cassidy drink my blood, which means you drank my blood, opening your mind to me. You know the consequences of drinking from another vampire, Jillian. And you know the consequences of hurting Cassidy.”

  I didn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do, Jillian denied. Release me.

  “I intend to, and when I do, you’ll wish I had left you to rot in your imprisonment where you belong,” Dominic hissed.

  I felt Jillian’s sudden, chilling fear.

  “Did you attempt to turn the night blood, Nathan DiRocco, into a vampire?”

  Who? Jillian asked, but a vision of Nathan flashed through my mind. His lifeless body was bent back over Jillian’s embrace, his neck exposed, and the sweet cinnamon taste of his blood flooded her senses as she drank him dry.

  “Did you give him your blood?” Dominic urged.

  No, I did not, Jillian denied, but her memory of him sucking and swallowing her blood was all the answer we needed. Jillian had turned Nathan into the Damned.

  Dominic looked away. His connection with Jillian severed, and almost instantly, Jillian severed the last remaining thread between us, so all that remained in her absence was a nauseating black void.

  I could feel the sticky tack of Dominic’s blood on my lips and chin, in my mouth and coating the back of my throat, and instead of the burning crave and unquenchable thirst I’d been struggling to stifle, I was revolted.

  I gagged.

  “She’s gone?” Dominic asked.

  I nodded. “Oh, God.” I gagged again, fighting not to vomit. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Dominic’s arms were around me in an instant, and with a rush of wind and a dizzying displacement in space, I was suddenly sitting on a shaggy rug on the tiled bathroom floor of our guest suite, draped over the toilet.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, and a moment later, my stomach convulsed. I closed my eyes, trying not to look at the contents of my stomach coming from my mouth, but I knew from the stench what it was and gagged even harder. I was throwing up blood.

  “The blood you drank was nourishing her,” Dominic said, sitting on the ledge of the shower beside me. “She might be strong enough to help with your brother after all.”

  “Great,” I said. Although my words were true, sincerity was difficult to convey while hugging a toilet. I needed a shower. God knew I didn’t have the strength to bathe on my own, but more than a shower, I wanted to hug the toilet without an audience. “Can I have some privacy?”

  “You’ll need help to clean yourself if you want a bath,” Dominic said, his voice level and reasonable despite the words. “Let me help you.”

  My anger erupted in a hot blaze. “Get out of my head! You broke your promise! You swore by the sun that you would never entrance me, and you broke that trust.”

  “We swore that w
e would never entrance each other, but you broke that promise weeks ago.”

  “To save your life!”

  “Which I accepted as an appropriate circumstance to break such a promise. I, in turn, was faced with a situation in which I felt it necessary to break that promise, and now, you’re free from Jillian’s hold on your mind. Also, we’ve confirmed that Jillian is your brother’s maker. I apologize for the intrusion, for what it’s worth, but it was necessary.”

  “Fine,” I conceded between gags. Anything to make him leave. “Will you please go?”

  Dominic stared at me in silence for a long moment. I attempted to ignore him and calm my stomach, but with the metallic stickiness of blood coating the back of my throat, I couldn’t stop gagging.

  The sink ran for a few seconds and then cut off.

  “Here.” Dominic leaned down and offered me a small paper cup filled with water.

  I took a sip, gargled, and spat pink, diluted blood into the toilet. After a few more rinses my stomach settled, and I flushed.

  “Thank you,” I said, handing him the cup. “I suppose mind reading has its advantages.”

  “You know I can’t read your mind unless you’re entranced, and even then, I can only see your thoughts if I try very, very hard. Your defenses against me are better even than Jillian’s,” Dominic said, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he sounded almost proud of me. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t anticipate your needs.”

  “And I appreciate that,” I lied. “But at the moment, what I really need is some privacy.” He still didn’t look convinced, so I added, “Please.”

  “You will call for me if you need anything,” Dominic said sternly. “I don’t think you have the strength to bathe on your own, but I’ll respect your wishes if you promise to ask for help if necessary.”

  “I promise,” I said, thinking not a chance in hell will I ask for your help bathing.

  Dominic’s penetrating look pierced through my eyes and seemed to will my soul for more. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn’t willing to give it to him.

  “I’m not expanding on that promise, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

  Dominic crossed his arms. He looked very comfortable leaning back against the side of the shower. Too comfortable. It didn’t look like he was about to give me privacy any time soon. “Why are you refusing me now?” he asked. “You didn’t before.”

  “Before, I didn’t realize I was giving more than my word. I wouldn’t have broken my word anyway, but now I’m wondering what else I’m giving you when I swear by the passage of time.”

  “Nothing more than what I’m giving you when I swear by the sun.” Dominic grinned. “If you don’t intend to break your word anyway, than what does it matter?”

  “It matters,” I said flatly. “When I asked Bex to swear by the sun, she refused. She told me that I didn’t understand what I was asking of her, and she’s right. What exactly was I asking of her, Dominic, that was more than a formal promise? What exactly have you been asking of me?”

  “Nothing that I haven’t given you. If you recall, I also swore promises to you.”

  I pursed my lips. “And what is it that we’ve given each other, Dominic? If I’m not aware of what I’ve sworn to you, does it even count as having been given?”

  For the first time in our acquaintance, Dominic looked uncomfortable.

  “After your experience with Jillian, I thought you wanted my loyalty of my own free will. It doesn’t count as free will if you trick me along the way.”

  “You are very right.” He stood. “Enjoy your privacy, Cassidy.”

  He shut the door behind him, leaving me to wash the blood and grime and memories of death from my body without him watching, without him near to confuse my thoughts and feelings. I’d won the battle for my privacy, but in terms of life as I once knew it, life as I preferred to live it, I was losing the war.

  Chapter 14

  Blood washed off my skin and out of my hair, some spots needing a little more scrubbing than others, until it all swirled down the drain. I let the water turn scalding. Steam filled the bathroom and my skin pruned as I boiled myself under the spray. Dominic’s story about Jillian and how he had brought her back from the Damned and transformed her into a vampire was supposed to give me hope, but I couldn’t quite accept his story as the beacon of hope he’d intended. Jillian had been saved from the Damned only to become a vampire.

  Even if we saved Nathan, he wouldn’t be himself again. He would be a vampire.

  A week ago, I’d thought he was either dead or a vampire, and I hadn’t known which would be worse. I’d never imagined that he would be the creature he is now, and I’d never thought that attempting to transform him into a vampire would be his salvation. Vampires were worse than death: they were undead, but dead or undead, anything was better than being Damned.

  I dunked my head under the water, knowing that despite my healthy fear of vampires and placing my aversion to becoming one aside, being undead wasn’t entirely the case.

  After my continued experiences with Dominic, “undead” wasn’t quite the term for his existence. “Mutated” was probably a better description. Night bloods transform into vampires by morphing their DNA with vampire blood. Dominic was once a night blood, too, just like Walker and me, with human worries and fears about disease, death, and his own mortality, but whether by force or by choice, he’d transformed into a vampire instead of dying.

  I’d been so sure of right and wrong and good and evil. The distinction between vampire and human was black and white, but when I thought about Dominic and his stories—his attempts to comfort me, give me hope, and his plans to save my brother—everything was gray. Dominic wasn’t pure evil, but did that mean I could trust him? Even if his motivations were selfish and self-serving, would he still pull through when I needed him most? When my brother needed him most? If everything was shades of gray, how could I find my way?

  I turned my face into the scalding spray and let it all go. The suffocating uncertainties—whether Nathan was better off dead than a vampire, whether resisting Dominic was futile, whether facing my own mortality was really the preferable option—I let it wash over me and swirl down the drain along with the horrors of last night. I was alive. I was human. In this moment I was still me, and in that clarity, I could still breathe.

  * * * *

  Tendrils of steam followed me from the bathroom when I opened the door and walked into the bedroom. It hadn’t occurred to me until after my shower that I didn’t have anything to wear. The rags of my shirt and jeans that hadn’t been torn were unmercifully stained with blood. My leather jacket, which had made me feel and look so badass, hadn’t fared much better against Nathan’s fangs and claws than the cloth of my fitted t-shirt. Even my phone was crusted with blood. At least the case had proven its worth and protected it from being damaged by Nathan’s abuse.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same of my body. The shower had helped both my mood and my sore muscles, but I still ached in places deeper than a shower could reach.

  I found a turquoise terrycloth robe hanging in the bathroom closet amidst the towels, so I wrapped that around myself, double knotted the cord around my waist, and held the lapels at my neck closed with my hands. For the first time in my entire adult life, my height came to my advantage. On a woman of average height, the robe likely cut off mid-thigh, but on me, it reached my knees.

  I was still unsteady on my feet, battling the dizziness of blood loss and the usual grind of my hip. It took me eight excruciating steps, but with one foot in front of the other, I managed to cross the room without collapsing.

  Dominic didn’t move. He didn’t turn to help me nor rebuke me for struggling on my own. He waited until I reached the bed, and then he walked into the bathroom, shutting the door with a soft click behind him.

  It took me aback for a second, watching him enter the bathroom. I supposed he needed a shower, too—he’d been
nearly as encrusted with blood and dirt as I was—but I never imagined him using a bathroom. The transformations between his many forms—his gaunt, emaciated body before feeding, the model perfection after, and the grotesque horror of his true, gargoyle-like form—were so unnervingly sudden that I’d somehow imagined that his hygiene and immaculately styled hair were simply products of that transformation rather than something he achieved by hand.

  My preconceptions seemed silly now—I could hear the shower running and his belt hitting the tile floor—but that realization exposed an entire host of questions: did he cut his hair as well as style it? Did vampires’ hair grow despite other bodily functions having stilled? Considering his liquid diet, did he need the bathroom for other, more basic necessities?

  I took out my earings and placed them and my phone on the nightstand, but as I stared at the bed—more pointedly, as I stared at the soiled sheets on the bed—I banished those questions for tonight. I was exhausted. The more pertinent question, more imminent than my musings over Dominic’s hygine, was where Bex kept clean sheets. Dominic was right, as usual—damn him—because I found a freshly laundered comforter in the linen closet.

  Making the bed properly was beyond my current energy capacity, so I tore off the dirty, bloody sheets, left them in a twisted heap on the floor, and crawled into bed with the comforter burritoed around my body.

  Despite the fact that sunrise was approaching and a new day was beginning, mine was finally ending. The guest bedchamber of Bex’s coven wasn’t the ideal place to sleep, but strangely enough, I felt safer here than I had in Walker’s house. Walker had a safe room against the vampires, but here with the vampires, Dominic was the safe room.

  Although, I had no real guarantee who would keep me safe from him.

  I thought about the opulence of Bex’s coven and the time it must have taken to establish her place here. I thought about Dominic’s coven and the many vampires hidden under New York City, an entire city of vampires beneath our own, and I wondered at the other covens throughout the United States, hell, throughout the world, and how the Day Reapers thought to maintain and enforce such a widespread secret. If Dominic was having trouble convincing powerful and intelligent vampires like Jillian that secrecy was the best policy, I was willing to bet that in all the hundreds of covens in the world, Dominic wasn’t the only Master struggling. It was only just a matter of time before someone powerful rose to Master with the opportunity and will to reveal their existence.