Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  Dominic laughed in the face of her despair, and Jillian jerked back, stung.

  “My words exactly when I discovered that you had betrayed me and planned my murder. After I saved you from my brother and trusted you with my coven, trusted you with my very life for decades as my Second, you repaid me by betraying me. You were my closest, most trusted companion. So please, look at what we’ve become, and let it cut deep, as deeply as you’ve cut me. You created this,” Dominic said, words ending in a snarl. “Don’t attempt to pull my heartstrings now, my dear. I have none concerning you, which should come as no surprise since you’re the one who severed them.”

  “I didn’t want this. I never wanted your place as Master,” Jillian said, her voice a sob. “Until recently, I couldn’t imagine this coven without you, but it doesn’t matter how much I love you. You left me no choice.”

  “Which is exactly what you have left me,” Dominic said coldly. “Make your choice before my hand slips. I have a twitchy trigger finger. This one right here.” He pressed his talon deeper, hooking it beneath Kaden’s chin.

  Kaden twitched in pain. Considering his injuries, I was surprised he could manage even that much movement.

  “Stop, please,” Jillian pleaded. Kaden’s agony reflected in her eyes.“Dominic Lysander, I command you to stop!”

  Dominic gave her a bored look and pressed his talon knuckle-deep into Kaden’s neck.

  Jillian turned to me. “Cassidy DiRocco, I command you to release me!”

  To my surprise, mirrors weren’t even necessary anymore. Her command was like a single gnat, annoying but harmless. I tightened my grip on her neck. “Nice try.”

  Jillian screamed her frustration. She was losing this battle and she knew it. Her guttural sobs were heart-wrenching; no matter how Dominic claimed otherwise, I knew this was killing him. It had to be. I barely cared for Jillian, and the raw, desperate noises coming from her stirred compassion even in me.

  “I’ll call them back. Stop, and I’ll call back the Damned!” she shouted.

  “No!” Kaden roared. He didn’t have much of a mouth or throat to speak with, but that single word and the rage behind it were unmistakable.

  Dominic slit his throat. Blood poured from the wound, thick and viscous, like lava.

  “Stop hurting him! Didn’t you hear me? I said I’d call them back!” Jillian slashed her talons across my face.

  I ducked, dodging her attack easily, and slashed back in one smooth motion. “You call them back, and he’ll stop,” I growled.

  “Dominic, please. I beg you,” Jillian pleaded. “Have mercy, brother.”

  I retightened my grip on her neck even as my heart bled for her.

  “You are no longer family,” Dominic said, his voice cold and certain. “You ripped whatever mercy I once had out along with my heart when you betrayed me. Command the Damned to return, Jillian. Now.”

  Jillian laughed, high and hysterical. “Fine. Let them come. Let them massacre us all.”

  Chapter 28

  For a moment, nothing happened. The grating cackle of Jillian’s maniacal laugher echoed off the high ceiling of the honeycombs, and I hesitated, wondering who was more crazy: Jillian backed into a corner, or Dominic and me, uncertain whether we’d won this round or were being played. Dominic’s arm tensed to finish off Kaden, and although I didn’t quite agree with such a premature, drastic measure—he was our only leverage over Jillian, after all—I wasn’t certain enough to stop him.

  Until I felt the tremor beneath my feet.

  The vibration was rhythmic at first and became increasingly constant as their pounding stampede drew closer.

  The Damned were approaching.

  Dominic dropped Kaden’s limp body and stepped over him to stand at my side. “They’re coming.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I quipped. “What was your first clue?”

  “The vibration of their approach beneath our feet,” Dominic answered, straight-faced.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Ah, sarcasm,” Dominic said ruefully. “You’re more difficult to read now that I can’t sense your every shift in emotion and thought.”

  “Good,” I said flatly.

  I released Jillian to Dominic’s tender care and stepped back from the wall to concentrate. I closed my eyes and opened my awareness to the coven’s tunnels and secret passages. Its labyrinth snaked outward from the honeycombs, some passages winding and twisting and splitting off into passages that also winded and twisted, some leading to dead ends, some leading to hidden entrances, and others descending to the Underneath. I could feel the different energies and emotions of everyone within those passages, and of the hundreds upon hundreds of vampires within the coven, the few people I recognized made the fine hairs on my skin stand alert.

  Rafe and Neil were making their way toward the great hall, Bex was flying around the Underneath instead of guarding her position with the Day Reapers, and Nathan had left her and was running through the tunnels toward us. The dozen or so vampires surrounding the great hall were edging closer, spurred by the impending wave of approaching Damned, and leading them was a vampire whose widow’s peak was as undeniable as my warring relief and apprehension at recognizing him: Sevris.

  There were others at the outskirts of my periphery: Greta, Rowens, and Meredith with the humans; someone shifting in the rafters of the honeycombs; and hundreds of coven watching and waiting, knowing another power shift was erupting beneath them and wondering if they’d survive the fallout this time. I pushed the uncertainty and distraction of everyone from my mind and honed my concentration on the approaching bloodthirsty, stampede of death barreling toward us.

  The connection between me and the Damned—between me and everyone, if I was honest with myself—wasn’t the same taut bowstring I remembered from last time. Even as I concentrated on the world around me and the people in it, I felt more like a passive observer than a force to influence their actions. I couldn’t feel their intent in my bones like my own. I couldn’t even sense a dull impression of their thoughts, and I realized that, unlike every other time I’d entranced someone, even as a night blood, I didn’t have a metaphysical string connecting me to their minds.

  I tried to form a connection with the Damned, but I couldn’t create something from nothing. When I was a night blood, I’d connected with others through the consumption of blood. As a Day Reaper, however, the connection had been as present and unmistakable as my claws and fangs; it had seemed to simply occur as a result of my transformation.

  Except now, when I needed it most, of course, the connection wasn’t there.

  I came back into myself and met the intensity of Dominic’s glacier gaze.

  “I still feel the acceleration of their approach,” Dominic said. As dramatic as his words were, his voice was calm and collected.

  “That’s because they’re still approaching and accelerating,” I said.

  “You’ve entranced them before,” he reminded me.

  “I know, but it’s not working now.”

  “What you’ve done once, you can do again,” he encouraged me, still so fucking calm and collected, I wanted to shake the reality into him that now might be the time to panic.

  “In theory,” I ground out between my clenched teeth, “but in reality, I’m telling you that we have a big problem. I need to form a connection somehow. Maybe they need to drink my blood.”

  “Is that what you did last time when you entranced the Damned? You formed a blood connection?”

  “No, but I don’t know how I formed the connection last time. It was just there. Now, it’s just not,” I said.

  “What’s different this time compared to last time?” Dominic pondered as if he were posing the question over tea and crumpets.

  I suppressed the urge to scream. “I don’t know, but I don’t think we have time to—”

  As
if to prove how little time we really had, a single Damned burst from one of the honeycombs and soared through the air with an incredible, soul-shaking roar. I held my breath, spellbound in horror by its power and menace, until it turned its head and the sparkling stud of its nose ring winked in the light from the candelabra.

  He landed a few feet from me, shaking the entire coven with the force of his landing. Dominic tossed Jillian on the ground next to Kaden and tensed to fight.

  I squeezed Dominic’s arm to hold him off, but Nathan’s words—barely discernable in the rumbling rattle of his growl—spoke volumes. “We have a problem.”

  Dominic eased back. No other Damned had the ability to talk but my brother.

  I sighed. “Tell me about it.”

  He took me literally. “I can’t, not in front of our present company.” He flicked his eyes at Jillian.

  “I don’t think subtlety and surprise will win the day anymore,” Dominic said drily. “With the Damned coming, we’re past that now.”

  “Our ‘big move’ won’t work,” Nathan said. “We can’t find them.”

  I cursed. “What do you mean, you can’t find them?”

  “They’re not where Bex had anticipated. She’s still searching for them, but the Underneath is massive. It’s very possible that the Damned will be here before she finds them, assuming she finds them at all.”

  “Jillian must have moved them after we broke out Bex,” Dominic hissed.

  Nathan glanced at Kaden and Jillian on the floor beside us. “At least our leverage worked as planned.”

  “About the only thing that’s gone as planned,” I grumbled.

  He shrugged. “We have you. It’ll take longer to drain all the Damned without the other Day Reapers, but once you entrance them, who cares how long it takes?”

  I sighed. “About that. I can’t entrance them.”

  Nathan blinked at me. Confusion on his scaly, monstrous face was nearly a comical expression. I suppressed the insane urge to burst out laughing.

  “You’ve done it before,” Nathan said. “What’s stopping you from doing it again?”

  Dominic lifted his palms and gestured them at Nathan. “Thank you.”

  “I haven’t figured it out yet, and until I do, we’d better prepare for plan B.”

  “I don’t remember planning a plan B,” Nathan said doubtfully.

  “We’re planning it now. Any ideas?” I asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “I know you need me here, but Bex needs help finding the Day Reapers. There’s a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time.”

  I turned to Dominic, about to suggest he join Bex instead.

  “No,” he said before I could even open my mouth.

  “You don’t know what I was going to say. You can’t read me anymore, remember?”

  He gave me a flat look. “Splitting up is a mistake.”

  “You can’t fight the Damned, and Nathan can. We’ll hold them off until you and Bex find the Day Reapers,” I reasoned.

  Dominic shook his head. “You can’t simultaneously fight the Damned and babysit Kaden and Jillian.”

  “So take them with you.”

  “That wasn’t part of the plan,” he argued. “You need them here. She created the Damned, and you need her to retransform them.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I snapped. “None of this was part of the plan, but the plan is fucked and so are we if we don’t adapt to survive.”

  Jillian’s cackling laughter interrupted the conversation. “Too late,” she murmured.

  It took a moment for me to realize why she was gloating, a testament to how emotion could cloud even the most enhanced senses. We were surrounded, not by Damned—the impact tremors of their impending arrival still vibrated the ground beneath our feet—but by the silent approach of the coven’s rebel vampires.

  They were still hiding in the far corners of the great hall, but close enough now that the double glow of their eyes glinted from the darkness. Hundreds of eyes, probably the majority of the coven, surrounded us. They stepped out from the shadows in one smooth, nearly choreographed movement, and at their lead, one step ahead of all the rest, was Sevris. Behind him on either side were two vampires holding Rafe and Neil in front of their bodies as hostages, their talons poised over their throats.

  Dominic’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. “Sevris,” he inclined his head. “It’s a relief to see you alive and well.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Sevris said coolly. “You as well.”

  The two of them might be able to hone their anger into formal frigidity, but I’d never been known for my restraint. My anger ran red, boiling and loud. “You motherfucking bastard,” I spat. “How dare you?”

  I could take them out. Maybe not all of them, but without a doubt I could take out Sevris and steal back Neil and Rafe before anyone landed a killing blow.

  Some of my intentions must have leaked because Dominic placed a staying hand on my shoulder and squeezed, hard. “It’s all right, Cassidy. Sevris made his loyalties to the coven known from the very beginning. I knew he’d support the strongest Master despite personal preference. One must adapt to survive—isn’t that what you just said, Cassidy?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then how can we begrudge Sevris his survival?” Dominic asked, his posed question more philosophical than practical.

  I blinked at him. Was he kidding? “But what about Rafe and Neil and—”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Rafe growled. “Just take the bastard down.”

  Neil’s hearty agreement wasn’t forthcoming. His eyes darted between Sevris, Rafe, and us, just watching and waiting and hoping for a loophole out of an impending slit throat.

  The Damned’s approach was getting louder. A few of the framed canvases on the walls had tilted and figurines were jumping from their mantels and smashing on the stone floor. Sevris’s boots crunched over the shattered remains of a porcelain vase as he stepped forward. The swarm of vampires closed in around us, following Sevris’s lead until he reached Jillian and knelt down in front of her.

  She smiled, and the symmetrical slashes across both her cheeks widened grotesquely to reveal her molars.

  “Sevris,” she breathed in relief. “I always knew I could rely on you.”

  For the briefest, barest of moments, I swore I saw something akin to regret surface as he looked at Jillian. “For years, you were the only hope this coven had at convincing Dominic to release us from a prison of darkness,” he said.

  He offered his hand to help her stand.

  I shrugged Dominic’s grip off my shoulder. With the coven against us, the Damned approaching, all our leverage played out, and the Day Reapers MIA, Jillian was all we had left. If Sevris took her now, we could kiss transforming the Damned goodbye.

  I tensed to attack.

  “You understood that to build a better future, we couldn’t allow the mistakes of our history to repeat themselves,” Sevris said to Jillian, but his words echoed a conversation we’d had weeks ago regarding the care of vampires and the protection of the coven.

  Jillian placed her hand in his. “Thank you.”

  I inhaled sharply and let his words stay my hand.

  “It’s up to us to break the cycle,” Dominic murmured.

  Sevris nodded. Whether he was responding to Jillian’s thanks or Dominic’s words was an imperceptible distinction. Every muscle in my body hummed in uncertain anticipation.

  Sevris helped Jillian to her feet, and when she stood in front of him, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and poised his talons across her throat.

  “Sevris?” Jillian asked, shocked.

  “For years, you were right about the wants of this coven,” Sevris said, “but for the past week, you’ve been dead wrong.”

  He cut his head to the side, and the
vampires behind him released Neil and Rafe.

  The relief that flooded through my body nearly took me out at the knees.

  “I did what Dominic was too afraid to do,” Jillian growled. “I defied the Day Reapers and their tyranny and gave us our freedom!”

  “You went too far, Jillian, and you know it,” Sevris said.

  Jillian looked around at the vampires that had been surrounding us, now surrounding her on all sides. “Jacqueline? Daria? Are you going to let him betray us like this?” No one moved, and Jillian’s eyes became frantic, looking for one friendly face in the crowd. I tried to harden my heart against her, but even after everything she’d done to me and mine, I couldn’t help but ache for her as she realized that they were all betraying her.

  “Nikko? Lorna? K-K-Kip?” Tears streamed from her eyes and dripped into her sliced cheeks. I could feel the press of her desperation like the struggle against suffocation.

  One of the vampires stepped forward, obviously torn with guilt, but she folded her arms, resolute. “You transformed our friends, potential night bloods, and future family into abominations that wiped out our food source. The humans, what little are left, are scarce and in hiding. I haven’t eaten in days!”

  Another vampire stepped forward in support of the first and squeezed her shoulder. “We liked being at the top of the food chain,” he said, his voice less frantic and more resigned than the woman sobbing angrily next to him. “Now the Damned are ravaging everything, murdering the humans and ruining our homes. We wanted to live in New York City, not destroy it!”

  All the vampires surrounding us were nodding their agreement, and I stared in awe at them. This was the same coven that only a few, short months ago had challenged Dominic as their Master as I lay broken and bleeding beneath him. Dominic had had to force their obedience, but here they were now, willing and ready to stand with us against Jillian. If we stood with them and offered to champion the very goals they’d wanted all along, maybe we had a real shot at taking back the coven, not only in name but in heart, too.