Authors: Melody Johnson
I frowned. “He is. I stared at him face to face, and I’m telling you, that thing down there, whatever it is, was originally Nathan DiRocco.”
Dominic stared at the creature a moment longer. It was still screaming and stomping in what was only comparable to a massive hissy fit.
“How long do you think he’ll continue to freak before he tries tracking me again?”
Dominic shook his head. “We’ll deal with him later. Where’s Walker?”
“I, er, I don’t know,” I stuttered, thrown by the subject change and by the very realization that I wasn’t sure if Walker had survived. “The last I saw, he’d fallen into the cave.”
Dominic’s strange, blue and ice eyes widened. “Fell? As in without any rappelling equipment?”
I nodded. “With nothing but the creature to break his fall. The creature came back out. Walker didn’t.” I narrowed my eyes on him. “How do you know about rappelling?”
Dominic waved away my question. “I’ve told you, I know everything.”
The creature pounded its claws into the tree we were hiding in.
The tree swayed dangerously. We jerked forward and then suddenly swung backward, and Dominic lost his grip on me. I felt his hands slip from around my waist, and my stomach plummeted. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t have time to do more than think—
NO!—
and then I was out of reach.
Dominic was faster than gravity. Before my thoughts could burst into a real scream, he dropped to a lower branch and caught me in his arms. I felt a warm rush of liquid gush from my side as he tightened his grip on my waist, and I remembered the creature’s claws catching my ribs. I trembled from the pain and from enduring it in silence.
Dominic leaned in close. “You’re injured worse than I first thought. It’s more than just the bite on your neck.”
I nodded.
“We need to find Bex’s coven and seek shelter. Now.”
I swallowed, trying to speak without screaming from the pain. “You don’t know the location of her coven? I thought you knew everything.”
“Cassidy—” Dominic growled, obviously not in the mood to deal with my attitude.
“It’s the cave.” The tree jerked again from the creature’s beating, and Dominic’s arm tightened around my ribs like a vise. I gasped. “The cave is the entrance to the coven.”
“Ah,” Dominic murmured, glancing at the cave. “Then I’m sure Walker fell into good hands.”
I couldn’t focus through the stabbing in my ribs. The pressure of Dominic’s arm was relentless, and without any relief, I felt myself fade. The shadows of the woods and trees and leaves and Dominic all bled together into an inky landscape across my vision until nothing remained but the scraping wheeze of my breathing and the steady pound of my heart. And then even that faded to the demands of darkness.
* * * *
“Cassidy, don’t make me command you to open your eyes.”
The tree’s swaying had stopped, and Dominic’s grip was gentler than a moment before. I breathed a deep inhale of air, and although my side still twinged, the pain was bearable now.
I opened my eyes.
We were still in the damn tree, and the creature was still throwing a conniption below us.
I frowned. “How long was I—”
“Only a moment. I’ll have to mind your injuries until I can heal them.”
He sounded shaken. After existing for five hundred year, nothing could shake Dominic, but despite his extended existence, I’d heard the tremor in his voice.
I knew better than to stare into Dominic’s strangely reflective eyes—he could turn the parts of my mind that controlled my body to putty—but I was breaking all the rules tonight. I stared deep into his eyes now, trying to decipher how he’d done it. If it hadn’t been for his uncanny timing, if he hadn’t arrived just when the creature was about to feast, I would have died tonight.
“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 didn’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.”