Sweet Last Drop

by Melody Johnson

  “They transformed someone mid-day, someone who never should have been turned.”

  Bex raised her eyebrows, her gaze darting between Dominic and me.

  “Ronnie,” I said finally, unable to stand the tension. “She was a human this morning, but sometime between then and sunset, she was attacked and transformed.”

  Bex frowned. “And you found her body?”

  I shook my head. “No, she found me. Her transformation was already completed. She’s a vampire.”

  Bex gaped at me. “She should still be transforming if she was just turned.”

  I nodded. “Yes, she should, but she’s not. She attacked me.”

  “You saw her?” Bex asked sharply. “With your own eyes, you saw her?”

  I frowned. “Yes, I saw her. She drank from me.”

  Bex’s mouth opened and closed several times before she snapped it shut.

  “More importantly than Ronnie’s unfortunate transformation,” Dominic interrupted, eyeing Bex intently, “is the fact that a Day Reaper transformed her. They’re here.”

  Bex cleared her throat. “Right. Please continue, Lysander. If they’re already here, then as you’ve already stated, we don’t have much time.”

  Dominic’s gaze lingered on Bex a moment longer before looking back at me. “If Walker won’t help, than Rene will be your only guard.”

  “I’m better than Walker anyway,” Rene said. He winked at me. “No worries there.”

  Dominic ignored him and continued. “Once we’re outside the coven, Rene will bite you.” He cut his eyes on Rene. “A small bite.”

  Rene smiled. “My pleasure.”

  “And you, Cassidy, will smear your blood on the ground and surrounding trees to draw Nathan to you. He’s been searching for you and tracking your every move: to the first scene where you dropped your spray, to Ronnie’s abandoned house where you cut your knees, and outside Bex’s coven, where Walker smeared your blood on the ground. Considering he followed you all the way here from the city, I see no reason why he wouldn’t continue to do so now.”

  I swallowed. “And when he shows up? Then what?”

  “Then we subdue him,” Bex said flatly.

  I glanced askance at Bex. “And exactly how are we going to do that? He beat us to a pulp last night.”

  “You were taken by surprise last night. And now we have Jillian,” Dominic said, gesturing to the skeleton.

  Jillian looked at me, but what I saw in her didn’t inspire much confidence.

  I turned back to Dominic and raised my eyebrows.

  Dominic pursed his lips. “Once Jillian drinks from Nathan, taking all of her blood back from him into herself, I will replenish him with my blood. The healthy blood of a full Master should revive him enough to complete a full transformation.”

  I took a deep breath. It was the plan Dominic had proposed when we spoke last night, but now that Jillian was here and staring at me with those icy blue-ringed eyes in that grotesque skull, it seemed impossible.

  I leaned into Dominic and whispered, “Nathan’s skin is different from yours. He has—” I swallowed, reluctant to admit, “He has scales, and from the firepower Walker blasted at him—silver firepower, mind you—those scales are pretty much impenetrable.”

  “Jillian is Nathan’s maker. If there’s anything that can wound him, the blow must come from her,” Dominic assured.

  I sighed. “What if she drinks too much? She’s starved. What if she drains him?”

  “You’re lucky I’m not draining you for an appetizer,” Jillian said coolly.

  I straightened away from Dominic, chagrined. No sharing secrets with vampires around.

  “Control yourself,” Dominic growled, and the walls shuddered under the thunder in his voice.

  “That is my very point,” Jillian said, her voice still collected and measured. “I could drain her right now if I chose to, but I am controlling myself.” She looked into my eyes, and this time I knew, even without lips or muscles to express herself, that she was smiling at me. “So if I do drain him, you’ll know I did it on purpose.”

  I opened my mouth—God only knew what would have flown from my tongue—but Dominic lifted his hand in a halting motion. I swallowed the words and closed my mouth. I knew that look. I’d been on the receiving end of that look a time or two and it never boded well for me. I doubt it boded well for Jillian now.

  Dominic cocked his head to the left, and Jillian stiffened, if a skeleton could become stiffer. Her bones, most of which I could see through the tatters of charred skin and muscle, seemed to vibrate.

  “You couldn’t drain Cassidy now because I won’t allow it. You couldn’t exist if it wasn’t my wish for you to do so,” Dominic said. Although his words were low and softly spoken, Jillian cringed away from them like they’d scalded what little remained of her flesh.

  “I exist because you couldn’t find it within yourself to kill me,” Jillian whispered between gasps. “And I’m here now because Cassidy has you wrapped around her little finger. The man I knew and respected and trusted to lead our coven would have let her brother rot and transformed her, whether he had her permission or not. The man I knew wouldn’t have wasted time on the whims of another.”

  Dominic shook his head sadly. “You didn’t trust the man you knew to lead our coven. You tried to take it from me. Despite Cassidy’s whims and my motives, you turned against me, your Master, and attempted to transform a night blood. And you failed. You created this mess, and I’ll be damned if you don’t clean it up.”

  Jillian laughed, and the sound was a shredding grate against my skull. “I’m here because you need me here. You can’t retransform Nathan without me.”

  Dominic cocked his head again and Jillian’s laughter cut short. Her limbs started vibrating again, but this time, he didn’t let go. She shook so badly I feared that she might fall apart in a heap of bones and crumbled ash.

  “Dominic,” I said softly.

  He let go. Jillian crumpled to her knees on the stone floor, gasping.

  “You would do well to remember that you exist because I allow it. When this is over I may not be so generous,” Dominic said, his voice shaking at the end.

  “Yes, Master,” she murmured, but even I could hear the sarcasm in her voice.

  Bex sighed. “She can’t be trusted. This plan is dangerous enough without relying on the very vampire who betrayed you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she can be trusted or not. She can be controlled,” Dominic said. “Night is dwindling. We’re running out of time.”

  “If you want to wait one more night, that’s fine with me,” Rene said jovially.

  Dominic glanced at him, and his look could slice a lesser person in half.

  Rene just smiled. “Or not. That’s fine with me, too.”

  Bex rolled her eye, but otherwise let Rene’s sass go unchecked.

  “Well,” I said, gathering my nerves. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Something hard, pointy, and warm jabbed into my side. An arm yanked me back against a tall man wearing Kevlar.

  “Don’t. Fucking. Move. Any of you,” Walker said, and I realized, somewhat belatedly and incredulously, that the object jabbing into my side was his sawed-off shotgun.

  * * * *

  It took a moment for his voice to register because I’d never heard it so cold and without its usual twang. My head instinctively swiveled up to see, but even seeing, I couldn’t believe. Walker was splattered head to toe in a thick, sticky, dark crimson—nearly purple—liquid, and against everything I believed he was capable of doing, he was holding me hostage.

  “Walker? Are you kidding me?” I asked.

  He dug the gun deeper into my side when I moved. “I was talkin’ to you, too, darlin’.”

  I winced, but with a weapon that could essentially blast me in half at this range, I did as I was told. I remembered all too well what happened to hostages when Walker aimed hi
s sawed-off at them. I didn’t dare move.

  Rene raised his eyebrows. “I guess you really did have a falling out.”

  “Ian,” Bex said, her voice soft and soothing and slow, very slow, like the way you shape your tone for someone balancing on the edge of a fifty-story building. “What have you done?”

  Dominic’s expression was unfathomable. He didn’t so much as blink at Walker. It wasn’t until I heard the low rattle and insect-like clicks of his growl that I knew how he felt. He was enraged.

  “You can growl all you want,” Walker snapped. “I’m pissed, too. Where are they, Bex?”

  Bex blinked, her face transforming from worried to bland in an instant. “Where are who, Ian?”

  “Don’t fuck with me. You know exactly who I’m talking about,” Walker backed up a step, dragging me with him. “I said, don’t fucking move!”

  “Calm down, Ian Walker,” Dominic said, his voice low and on edge. He was minutely closer than he’d been standing a moment before. “You don’t want to hurt Cassidy. You fancy yourself in love with her.”

  “You don’t want me to hurt Cassidy,” Walker snapped snidely. “You fancy yourself another vampire. But I’d rather see her dead than a member of your coven, and you know that’s damn true.”

  Dominic sighed heavily. I knew that what he’d said was true, too, but hearing the words, “I’d rather see her dead,” from Walker hardened a part of me I hadn’t imagined could feel much of anything anymore.

  “What do you want?” Dominic said, resigned.

  “I want Bex to show me where she’s keeping them.”

  “Where she’s keeping who?” Rene said, exasperated.

  “My night bloods. You have Ronnie, Logan, Keagan, Jeremy, and Theresa, and I want them back. Now.”

  Bex narrowed her eye. “Your night bloods?”

  Rene glanced at Bex.

  Dominic’s gaze bore fiercely and fixatedly at Walker. “Bex?”

  “Lysander?” she answered, nonplussed.

  “Answer the man’s question. We’re losing moonlight as we speak. Nathan won’t wait for us to get our shit straight. He’ll attack someone tonight, and we want that person to be Cassidy.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  “You said so yourself that a Day Reaper transformed Veronica,” Bex said. “If I don’t know where she is, how should I know where the rest of them are?”

  “I know that,” Dominic gritted, “So tell him.”

  “Where’s Ronnie?” Walker insisted.

  “Don’t you listen?” Bex asked Walker, her voice turning ugly. “I. Don’t. Know.”

  The gun jerked painfully into my side. I gasped.

  Dominic’s low growl reverberated through the cavern. “Careful, Walker.”

  “Where is she?!”

  “At home!” I shouted. The dam inside of me burst at the sound of Walker’s tears. I could hear their hollow keening as they squeezed from his tear ducts, thanks to my amplified senses, but that didn’t make his pain any less real. I knew the tearing, helpless, hopeless pain of not knowing whether a loved one was dead or alive. I knew the ache of questioning when to let them go. Nathan’s disappearance had consumed my mind every day since the moment I realized he was missing, but even had I tried to move on, the emptiness of his absence would have never left my heart.

  I could only hope that Walker’s love for Ronnie would never leave his, even after he knew the truth.

  “What?” Walker asked, his voice soft, like a razorblade against the throat is soft, but still lethal.

  I swallowed. “The last time I saw Ronnie, she was at home. But she was already a vampire.”

  The gun dug sharply into my rib. “You saw her? When?”

  I breathed in sharply. “After our fight. After you left,” I said quickly. I wasn’t about to say otherwise while he jabbed me with the business end of his gun. “She came back to the house after she was transformed. She considers it her house, too, you know.”

  Walker shook his head. “Ronnie is not a vampire.”

  “I saw her, Walker. She drank my blood. She—”

  “Shut up,” Walker snapped. “I don’t need to listen to your lies! Bex is pissed at me because of her eye, so she took Ronnie.”

  Bex laughed. Looking at him dead in the face, at his anguish and fanatic hope, she burst out laughing. “I’m not pissed at you about my eye. You were defending Cassidy, and you have impeccable aim. I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

  The gun disappeared from my side. One moment there, its pressure bruising my ribs, and the next moment, simply gone.

  I blinked, and amid rips of Velcro and snapping noises, a clatter rained over the stone floor around us. Walker’s weapons—several knifes, multiple guns and their extra clips, various pens, pepper spray containers, a watch, and four aluminum tuna cans I’d assume no longer contained tuna—scattered across the stone floor around us.

  Walker’s arm bent back from the elbow, releasing me.

  I felt the crack of his bone like ice on my wisdom teeth before I heard the high shriek of his scream. Something knocked me forward. Dominic caught me before I hit the floor. He tucked me behind him, and I couldn’t see around his back. I squirmed to the side to peek over his shoulder and stared, shocked.

  I don’t know why I was surprised. Who else could have attacked us if Dominic, Rene, and Jillian were standing here, watching?

  Walker had hit the floor, and by the looks of his twisted arm, busted knee, and a swelling bruise on his forehead, he’d hit hard. He was still struggling to move, fighting to sit up and defend himself, but Bex had a finger on the center of his chest. I could see the strain in the bulging veins at his neck and forearms, but all the effort Bex needed to put forth to keep him down was one little finger.

  “What I am is furious,” she growled, and her fangs seemed to grow longer as she spoke. Her nose flattened slightly, and the very tips of her ears poked through the sides of her bronze hair. “You would have let me die and been relieved to have me gone.”

  “You’re a monster,” Walker spat. “You deserve to die.”

  “I may be a monster of the flesh, but you, my dear, lovely Ian Walker, are a monster of the heart.”

  Bex sharpened her gaze on him, and her otherworldly, reflective, yellow-green eye bore into Walker in a blaze of inner light. He screamed.

  “Finally,” Rene muttered under his breath. “She’s going to kill him.”

  “She is not,” I snapped, but honestly, I wasn’t sure. “Right, Dominic?”

  “She’s going to do what she should have done years ago, when he first tried to kill her,” Rene muttered. The emphatic joy in his voice grated on my nerves. “She’s going to kill him.”

  “Dominic?”

  “Hush, both of you.” Dominic hissed. “This is why I don’t have newborn vampires.”

  “I thought it was because I refused you,” I whispered.

  Dominic looked down at me, his expression stern, but I could see the hint of amusement tip the corner of his lips.

  “Do something,” I said softly.

  He shook his head slowly. “He just held you hostage and threatened to kill you, yet you want me to do something.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Dominic leaned in close, nose to nose. His fangs bared and his ears suddenly pointed. My argument choked in the back of my throat.

  “He’s lucky I’m letting Bex have him. If it was up to me, I’d tear out his throat,” Dominic growled. “If he touches you again, he’s dead.”

  I swallowed. There was no arguing with that.

  I stared directly into Dominic’s unnerving, otherworldly icy blue eyes, and I could feel the fuel of his rage. I could see it in the tightening of his muscles. I could feel it vibrating from his chest like the steady, constant heartbeat he didn’t have. He didn’t try to entrance my mind, to cloud my senses from seeing and feeling and knowing his mind like I’d never known before, and I wondered if
he even knew it himself: more than my usefulness as a night blood and more than my potential as a vampire, Dominic Lysander cared about me, just for me.

  Walker’s scream cut short.

  I tore my gaze from Dominic. Bex was standing over Walker, a strange, bitter, pain-filled resentment clouding her petite features. Walker was lying on the ground, struggling to move. I worried the pain was too much, that he’d seize, but slowly and shakily, he struggled to his knees. Eventually, he stood.

  “Get out of my home,” Bex growled. “And stay out.”

  “Damn,” Rene said, obviously disappointed.

  I blew out a shaky, uncertain breath.

  “You can’t keep me out, not until I find Ronnie.” Walker panted, defiantly. “You have her somewhere, you have them all, and I won’t stop searching until I get them back, even if that means killing every last one of you.”

  “You can try, and as always, I’m sure you will,” Bex said, “And as always, you will fail. Goodbye, Ian. Let me show you the door.”

  The dining room hall door exploded outward in a mess of splinters, and they were gone.

  I blinked a few times. “Where?” I stammered, unable to form complete sentences, “But how…”

  “She’ll be back,” Rene said, his smile radiant. “Like she said, she’s just showing him the door.”

  “I thought you said she liked that door,” I muttered.

  “She did, but she likes the flair for drama more. We needed a new door, anyway. That squeak was unforgivable.”

  I shook my head, in awe. “Bex is faster and stronger than you,” I said to Dominic.

  Dominic was still staring at the remains of the door when he said, “That’s why she’s our ally and not our enemy.”

  I shook my head. “She never displayed her power like this before.”

  “She’s not one for bragging, but just because she doesn’t show it off doesn’t mean she doesn’t have it.”

  I bit my lower lip. “Walker has considered her an enemy for years, but until now, Bex considered him her night blood.”

  Dominic lost his grin slightly. “Until now. I risked quite a lot to ensure that Bex remained my ally. Ian Walker risked everything to solidify Bex as his enemy. He has a long road ahead of him, one that I don’t envy, but he paved the way himself.”