I screamed.
“Hold still, Cassidy.” Meredith’s voice was soft but firm. I felt her lock my head in a choke hold, minus the choking, and pour more of that heavenly, hellfire liquid into my mouth.
I swallowed and choked and was forced to swallow more until, eventually, the burning wasn’t a full-body blaze but contained to my wrists, ankles, face, upper chest, forehead, and kneecap. My injuries were healing.
And I was drinking Meredith’s blood.
I pulled back, turning my face away.
“You’re doing well,” Meredith encouraged. “Don’t stop now. You need your full strength.”
“You are so strong, Cassidy. Stronger than me. Stronger than I could have ever imagined,” Dominic said, his voice hoarse. He coughed several times before saying, “You can do this.”
I struggled against Meredith’s grip and turned my face toward Dominic’s voice. Opening my eyes this time and keeping them open didn’t take force of will, but accepting what was in front of me did. I blinked, but the image of Meredith hovering over me, her forearm sliced to the bone, didn’t go away, and neither did the horror of Dominic next to her, peeling and oozing from head to toe with third-degree burns.
Of course Dominic had burst into flames; I’d lost consciousness. And of course, becoming a human-shaped torch hadn’t stopped him; he’d managed to find Meredith and convinced her to bleed for me.
“Drink,” Meredith encouraged.
I shook my head. Given the ravenous, burning urge to drink and the sight of Dominic’s suffering, resisting Meredith’s blood was nearly the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my entire life.
Suddenly, Dominic’s ravaged, red, blistered face took up my entire field of vision. “You think the blood I keep in our emergency stash doesn’t come from humans?” he asked, his voice harsh.
I glared at him.
“A hamburger is delicious, but it’s less appetizing after watching the cow being slaughtered and ground and cooked into patties, hmm?” He pushed.
“I. Will not kill. Meredith,” I said, my voice stilted and gasping.
His glare softened slightly. “You won’t,” he said. “And if you try to, I won’t let you. I promise.”
“Practice makes perfect,” Meredith added, wiggling her arm in front of my face temptingly. Blood spattered on my cheeks; I could feel its hot sprinkles like a brand on my soul. “And there’s no time like the present. Plus, Dominic looks like shit. You might want to do something about that.”
I laughed, barely a match for Meredith and Dominic separately; their combined encouragement was irresistible. When Meredith pressed her sliced forearm against my mouth, I sealed my lips over the wound and drank.
“Sense past the taste of her blood and the heat of its healing,” Dominic said. “Focus on the wound and hear the pressure of her pulse. Feel its strength and life with every swallow. Envision that life strengthening you. Can you feel it?”
I nodded, still swallowing, still latched like a freaking leech onto Meredith’s arm, but I couldn’t feel shame in that—or rather, I probably could if I wasn’t so full of so many other feelings. The taste of her blood was exquisite, and its healing was hot and uncomfortable, the way a man inside me was hot and uncomfortable. I wanted more, even if it didn’t feel entirely good. Beyond the confusing pleasure-pain of drinking Meredith’s blood, I could hear and feel Meredith, too, her pulse and her life, just as Dominic had said.
I refocused on her wound and realized her pulse wasn’t quite as strong. Her heart was slowing as mine was glowing, and I wanted more.
I should stop. I was healed. I took Dominic’s wounds into myself and healed them, too. We were healthy and whole, and all that was left was the taste of Meredith’s blood, now that I could hardly hear her pulse and barely feel her life.
And still, I wanted more.
In the end, it was actually my own want that stopped me. I remembered that feeling, that all-consuming need to have more even if that meant risking my personal health, well-being, happiness, and risking the health, happiness, and well-being of everyone around me. That was addiction, and there was nothing on this earth, absolutely nothing, that could force me down that rabbit hole back into hell, especially not my own selfish want.
I detached myself from Meredith’s arm and dared to meet her gaze. She was smiling. The corners of her mouth were pinched and her complexion was perhaps a bit paler than her usual peaches-and-cream, but she was alert, upright, and gazing back at me. She was very much alive.
I sagged against her, my bones suddenly made of noodles, and I realized by the overwhelming extent of my relief that I’d expected to open my eyes and see her vacantly staring at the ceiling. I’d seen her like that once before, and to see her like that again, knowing that I’d been the monster to kill her this time, would have been more than I could have borne.
“Cassidy, are you okay?” she asked, her voice tinged with alarm.
I snorted and then laughed, a sad, wailing noise that would easily turn into a sob if I wasn’t careful. I pulled back from her and met her eyes. “That’s my line,” I said.
“Oh, thank God,” she gasped, and she flung her arms around me, pressing me tight against her chest. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I wrapped my arms around her, minding my strength, claws, and hunger as the proximity to her carotid did strange things to my salivary glands. Hearing the blood pulsing through her neck was sweet torture, but I buried my face in her shoulder and savored the sound of her pulse and the feel of her life inside her, just for her.
“I scared me too,” I murmured.
“You’re a natural.”
I glanced sideways at Dominic at the sound of his voice. He was healed. I knew I’d healed him, but seeing the evidence of my power—his smooth, healthy skin where there’d been weeping blisters covering him from head to toe only moments ago—was still startling.
I opened my mouth.
He spread his arms out as if for my inspection. “I, too, am fine. I believe we all are,” he said, smiling. And then a naughty gleam entered his eyes. “As soon as you close Meredith’s wound, that is.”
“Oh!” I pulled from her embrace, and sure enough, her wounded forearm was still pouring blood.
I glared at Meredith, as if any of this was her fault, and took her arm in both of my hands.
And hesitated.
“What do I—” I began.
“You know what to do,” Dominic said. “You’ve watched me heal dozens of times.”
I eyed Meredith’s wound skeptically. Blood trickled down her arm to her elbow, and I imagined licking it clean the way I once anticipated licking clean the cookie dough from a whisk. Her blood would, of course, taste delicious, but licking the drippings instead of the cut itself wouldn’t actually heal her.
I shifted my gaze from her elbow to the wound itself. If her dripping blood was the cookie dough, the source of her bleed was without a doubt the freshly baked, double-chocolate-chip cookies hot from the oven. I’d have my regrets the moment I finished half the cookie sheet, but my God, they’d taste divine. From the moment the first cookie passed my lips and hit my tongue, the other half-dozen cookies on the sheet were just sitting ducks.
I was still hungry. Ravenous, really. I suspected that I could never really get enough—I had a never-ending hunger that would result in never-ending regrets.
My grip on her wrist must have tightened uncomfortably. Meredith made a pained noise in the back of her throat.
“Don’t hold back, Meredith,” Dominic said, his voice both encouraging and deadly serious. “Be honest. Cassidy won’t know what she’s doing if you don’t tell her.”
Meredith cleared her throat, obviously uncomfortable with honesty, but just as obviously in pain. “You’re hurting me.”
Dominic looked at me, waiting on me to loosen my grip.
/> “I can’t do this,” I murmured.
“Yes. You. Can,” Dominic growled. “Look at her.”
“I am,” I said, staring at her bleeding arm.
Dominic’s growl turned exasperated. “Look at her face.”
I forced my eyes up to meet her gaze.
“This is Meredith. Your best friend. Your sister—how do you always…”
I pursed my lips. “My sister-in-love if not in law or by blood.”
“Yes, and you prefer her alive, do you not?”
I turned to Dominic, my turn to be exasperated. “Of course I—”
“No, not of course! Look at her.” Dominic reached out and with an iron grip on my chin, physically forced me to look back at Meredith. “Look at her! She is in pain. She is wounded. And you are no longer in need of more blood. In fact, to take more from her now when she is clearly injured would be an attack on her person. Would you attack her? Would you further injure her?”
I inhaled sharply. “I would never hurt Meredith.”
“Then stick your tongue in her wound and heal her without feeding from her, because to do anything else wouldn’t just hurt her, it would kill her,” Dominic said, his voice stern.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until tears rolled twin, scalding paths down my cheeks. I didn’t think. I didn’t taste or feel. I held my breath so I couldn’t smell the delicious scent of her, licked Meredith’s wound closed, and lapped at the cut until it sealed, then scarred and smoothed. When I was done, I pulled back, and the exhaustion that bore down on me from my restraint was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Maybe if I’d been an athlete in my human years, I’d have something to compare to this full-body, trembling, aching lethargy. But I’d never been athletic, and if this was any indication of its aftereffects, I didn’t know why anyone would want to be.
Meredith cupped my face in both of hers. “You did it,” she whispered.
I blinked, and suddenly, I could see Meredith, really see her now that the wound was closed and I wasn’t gripped by the insane, insistent need to kill her. And I was horrified. Her skin was pale and clammy, her expression pinched and slightly dazed.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We need to get you to a hospital. You need—”
She gave me a look. “What hospital? The one that’s deserted and Greta turned into her investigative headquarters?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and then cursed.
Meredith giggled. She giggled! “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You—”
“I’ve been better,” she admitted, “but I’ve been worse too. I’ll be fine.”
I narrowed my eyes on her, not satisfied in the least. “You’re going to the hospital and seeing Dr. Chunn. She—”
Meredith laughed, a fully-blown belly laugh. “Seriously? Dr. Susanna Chunn, forensic pathologist? She’s a doctor for dead people.” She gave me a look, and I knew whatever was about to come out of her mouth would be outlandish. “She can be your primary-care doctor.”
I sighed, but it sounded frighteningly like a growl. I obviously wasn’t getting anywhere with Meredith. Nothing could penetrate the loyalty of our friendship, apparently not even my razor-sharp fangs buried in her forearm, so I turned on Dominic.
“How could you bring her here?” I asked, but the words were more accusation than question.
“How could I not?” he shot back, and I had the distinct feeling that he’d somehow anticipated this reaction, my turning on him, and had prepared for it. “You were gravely injured. You needed to feed.”
“I understand that,” I ground out. “But of all people, you had to bring my best friend?”
“Yes,” he said unequivocally. “It had to be Meredith. It had to be someone you cared about to make you strong enough to do the right thing.”
“I wanted to be here,” Meredith interjected. I turned back to her and realized to my surprise that she was angry. “Of all people, I’m your best friend, and I should be here.”
“Meredith—”
She pointed at me with her finger. “No, you listen to me. You were there for me when I needed you most. When you had the law and the odds of my survival against you, you damned the consequences, did what needed doing, and saved my life. You risked your career and your life just for me. Do you regret that decision?”
I blinked. “Of course not. I’d do anything for you.”
“Exactly. And I’d do the same for you. How dare you try to take that from me, as if you love me so much more than I love you, as if you have more right to give and sacrifice for our friendship than me.”
I shook my head, unsure when the conversation had spun so off its axis. “No, I wouldn’t. I—”
“I know you’re different now, but everything is different now. The world, this city, my life—” She shook her head, nearly at a loss for words. “Everything has changed more than I could have ever imagined it changing just a couple weeks ago. I won’t lie to you; when I saw you that first time after your transformation, I was terrified.”
“Meredith—”
She held up her hand. “No, this needs to be said. I was terrified. You were terrifying. Your claws and fangs and pointed ears, your strength, your eyes, I-I—” Meredith stuttered for a moment, but she took a deep breath and regained her composure. “I needed time to come to grips with reality, because what’s real is so far off the spectrum of what I’d ever imagined possible. I look at you, sometimes, like just now when you were drinking my blood, and I know there will be some things that I just won’t understand about you. You hear things I can’t hear, and feel and see and smell the world in ways I don’t even want to know. Your thoughts are simply beyond my comprehension because your brain doesn’t fire quite the same as mine anymore.”
Tears burned in my eyes. They were brimming the edge of my lashes when Meredith grasped my shoulders.
“But then I realized: when the hell had our brains ever really fired quite the same?”
I laughed, and the tears spilled down my cheeks.
“Some things will never change, no matter who we become or what becomes of this world. You and I are best friends, Cassidy DiRocco. I love you. You are the sister of my heart, and nothing on this earth—not even your transformation into something not human—will ever change that.”
“Oh.” The sound was more noise than an intelligible word, but it was all I could manage through my constricted throat.
She embraced me, her arms fierce and warm and strong around me.
I wrapped my arms around her a beat later, careful not to crush her in overwhelmed, soaring joy.
Chapter 20
I woke to the smell of banana-nut pancakes and the sound of Keagan’s bleating bird, and no matter the pleasant, aromatic scent permeating our room, groaned warily. A sense of déjà vu blindsided me; Dominic and I had never slept together two nights in a row, and now here we were, rising from bed in his underground bunker to greet a second night. Ronnie was once again wasting her time and our meager food supplies, and everyone was holding their collective breath in anticipation of a meltdown. Again. After the insanity of the last few weeks and the freeing serenity of my moment with Meredith yesterday, I did crave the solid surety of routine, but not this routine.
Dominic stirred at my groan. “Something amiss?”
“Don’t you smell that?” I asked.
“Breakfast?” Dominic asked, his voice still muffled. He hadn’t moved his face from the pillow.
“That’s not the smell of breakfast.”
“Really? Because if I’m not mistaken, not only do I smell pancakes, I also smell potatoes, onions, and bacon. Definitely bacon.”
I shook my head. “That’s the smell of disaster.”
“Ah, my mistake,” Dominic said, but his voice didn’t sound as grave as it should. In fact, his voice didn’t sound grave at a
ll. If I wasn’t mistaken, and I knew I wasn’t, his voice was shaking with repressed laughter. “They smell so similar lately.”
“Nothing about the dysfunction of our motley little family is funny,” I grumbled, covering my ears. “God, the sound of Keagan’s annoyance is annoying.”
“I’ll find time to work with him, as well.”
I shook my head. “Better yet, let’s get our own place. Either that or the children need to move out.”
Dominic turned to face me at that. “I’d check the paper for available listings, but the paperboy hasn’t been reliable lately.”
I snorted. “You’ll have to give him a talking-to. Until then, I guess we’re stuck with them until they grow up and build their own underground bunker. Damn it.”
Dominic smiled at that, a true smile; his lower lip stretched down slightly from the pull of his scar. “This is what leading a coven means: living with other people’s problems as your own and finding ways to solve them. And hopefully, if you’re lucky, they don’t kill you for it.”
I sobered suddenly. His words, though teasing, were irrevocably true. As Dominic’s lover and the right hand of the Master vampire of New York City, I couldn’t have my own apartment separate from the coven. I would wake every morning from now until eternity surrounded by the sounds and smells and tastes of everyone else’s problems.
More than the prospect of drinking blood or being unable to control the disruption of my senses for years to come, that thought was terrifying.
Dominic chuckled. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“A ghost is nothing; I discovered the existence of vampires.”
“I hardly think you stumbling upon me in an alley can be considered a discovery of my entire race,” Dominic argued. “People have known of our existence before you; you’re just the only one who couldn’t keep it quiet.”
I blinked, and the horror in my expression must not have subsided, because Dominic sobered on a long-suffering sigh.
“Just nine nights ago you were a night blood, and before that, you had only just barely come to terms with the existence of vampires and your potential to become one. Now, you’re not only a vampire, you’re a Day Reaper and my Second and the entirety of our coven’s troubles is suddenly on your shoulders. It will take time for you to adjust to those responsibilities and everything they entail, but your shoulders are not the only pair to bear that weight. I am in this with you every step of the way.”
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