Authors: Melody Johnson
Bex groaned.
“Why hasn’t Bex healed? She’s more powerful than you. She should have—”
“How do you know who’s more powerful?” Dominic interrupted, sounding offended. “My Leveling is approaching, if you remember. You’ve never actually witnessed my full strength.”
“Yet even in your reduced state of strength, your wounds healed almost instantly. It’s been at least fifteen minutes since I replaced her heart.”
Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Replaced her heart?”
“Yes, Lysander, let’s rip out your heart for twenty minutes or so and see how long it takes for you to recover after it’s shoved back into your bleeding chest cavity,” Bex moaned from her prone position next to the stalagmite. She hadn’t moved since our fall. “It’ll be a good test of strength for you, and the perfect comparison for me to see how you measure up, assuming you recover at all.”
I craned my neck to the side, trying to get a better look at Bex in the light coming from the mineshaft. “I don’t think that’s necessar—”
“You said dinner with Bex went well. That you enforced our truce,” Dominic interrupted me, his voice more a growl than words, as he caressed my collarbone.
I blinked. “It went better than expected,” I hedged, unsure of his sudden mood swing.
“Who touched you?”
“I don’t know what—”
“Your neck is black with bruises, Cassidy DiRocco,” he purred, and I felt the caress of my name on his lips, like a pull on my tongue, urging me to speak the truth. “Someone’s fingertips squeezed around your neck, here.” He poked a thumb into a bruise on my throat, and I winced. “Here.” He poked another bruise with his other hand so both his thumbs were at my windpipe where Bex had squeezed. “And here.” He wrapped his fingers around the back of my neck.
I swallowed. “It’s complicated.”
“Unravel it for me, then.”
“The other person looks much worse.” I winced, the pain in my hip becoming unbearable from sitting sideways on his lap. “The truce was solidified, and that’s what matters. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Who?” Dominic growled. His grip around my neck tightened, but I could tell he was being careful with me. He was trying to rattle me, but he wasn’t actually hurting me.
I kept my lips sealed.
“Me,” Bex said from her shadow under the stalagmite. “It was me. I choked your precious Cassidy DiRocco, the perfect fucking little night blood. She deserved it. Or at least she did at the time.”
Dominic released my neck and settled me on the cave floor. I sighed, relieved from the pressure on my hip for the moment. With a sudden flurry of wind and dirt, Dominic was gone.
He reappeared next to Bex and hauled her up in front of him by her upper arms.
“No!” I shouted, “Dominic, don’t! I—”
“You want a truce, and you dare to touch my night bl—”
The light from the lamps crossed Bex’s face. Dominic stopped mid-sentence, staring.
He glanced back at me before narrowing his gaze on Bex again. “The truce was solidified, despite Cassidy’s neck and your…?” Dominic’s voice faded, and that I could recall, it might have been the first time I’d ever seen him at a loss for the appropriate words.
Bex raised the eyebrow over her hollow eye socket. “And my what?”
She was going to make him say it.
“The loss of your eye.”
Bex nodded. “Yes, although even if the truce hadn’t been solidified then, after what Cassidy has done for me, it certainly would be solidified now.”
I shook my head. “You saved me first. I couldn’t do any less.” I bit my lip. “I wish I could have done more.”
“You did more than enough, unlike someone else we both know.” Bex’s voice ended on a warning growl.
The door to the mining shaft creaked open and flooded the cave with light. I winced away from the brightness, unable to lift my arms to shadow my face.
“DiRocco? Is that you?” Walker’s deep bass vibrated through the cave.
“Shut the door, you idiot,” Dominic hissed. Despite his threats, he instinctively turned his body, shielding Bex from the light. “Are you trying to spotlight us for Nathan?”
The door slammed shut. I opened my eyes, blinded by darkness after the loss of the light.
“I wouldn’t be spotlighting anything if you weren’t spread out like a buffet.” I felt Walker’s hand on my cheek. “I doubt the creature would risk diving back into the cavern, but better safe than sorry. Let’s get you inside, darlin’”
I stared at him until my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could finally see the bold planes of his face, his bent nose, and curly-cue hair. I shook my head, feeling weak with denial and relief. “Walker, you’re alive? You’re OK?”
“It’d take a lot more than that creature to get rid of me,” he said smugly.
“But how?” I said, stunned. “I saw you fall into the cave. I thought—”
“Rene caught me,” he said, losing the smile.
I looked behind him, expecting Rene to make an appearance as well, to interject with an equally smug comment, but he wasn’t there. “Where is he?”
“Didn’t you hear his growl in the tree next to you?” Bex snapped.
I looked back at her, shocked. “I heard a growl, but I didn’t realize that….” my voice trailed off, stunned. “That was Rene?”
“Who else would it be?” she said, her voice harsh and grating. And then she did something incomprehensible to me, something I’d never seen from a vampire. She dropped her face into her hands and wept.
Dominic adjusted his grip so he was holding her instead of man-handling her. Without his support, I think she would have collapsed.
“He’ll return, Bex,” he murmured. “And we can heal him if he doesn’t.”
Bex pursed her lips. “We can’t heal him if it eats his heart,” she murmured.
I looked up at the cave’s entrance high above us, the size of a thumbprint from our view at the bottom. There might have been a shadow of the creature still peering over the cave’s edge, watching us, but I couldn’t say for certain.
“I should be out there,” I said, more to myself than to anyone in particular. “It needs to be stopped.”
The cavern’s silence was a tangible, breathable heaviness in the air. I glanced back at Walker and realized that he and everyone else were staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
“What?” I asked.
“We only just narrowly escaped,” Dominic said slowly, as if to the mentally deranged. “You’re still bleeding.”
I understood their hesitation but couldn’t shake the frantic urgency clutching my heart. The creature was out there. That creature was Nathan, and he was eating people’s hearts. He was likely eating Rene’s heart as we spoke.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to stab something.
I contained myself to not falling over. It took more energy than I’d like to admit just to remain sitting upright.
“We can’t hide down here and ignore what’s happening outside this cavern. That thing is killing people right now!”
“And if we go out there, we will be the people that thing is killing,” Walker said flatly. “We’re going inside the coven. Now.”
“I haven’t extended you an invitation to my home,” Bex growled.
“Unlike you, I don’t need an invitation to cross a threshold,” Walker snapped.
“On this, I must unfortunately agree with Ian Walker,” Dominic interjected. “We should move this argument inside. Everyone. Now.”
Bex ignored him to focus on Walker. “You’re not welcome here anymore.”
Walker snorted. “All these years I’ve refused you, but now that I’m here of my own free will, I’m not welcome. Typical.”
“All these years I’ve held onto the
delusion
that you would see me and the life we could have together in the light you used to see me, before Julia-Marie died.” Bex shook her head. “I was wrong to hold out for you.”
Walker laughed. “And after all these damn years, what finally brought you to your senses?”
“You would have let me die. You had the opportunity to pull the trigger and help me, but you chose to let me die.”
Walker shook his head in disgust. “Had I pulled the trigger, the creature would’ve attacked us.”
“But you weren’t torn by the decision. Staying your hand to protect yourself didn’t cost you anything. You were
glad
to do it. I felt your relief and your hope that you would ‘finally be rid of me.’ Isn’t that how you worded it?”
“My contempt for you is no secret,
darlin’
. Never has been.”
The silence was thick and rotted the air between us.
“We can continue this conversation just as easily from the privacy of your coven, Bex. We are still open targets here,” Dominic warned.
Bex didn’t say a word. She nodded regally, and Dominic lowered her carefully to her feet. She didn’t sway or flinch; by her movement and lithe grace as she walked forward, she had finally fully healed from her injuries. Or at least, she’d healed enough that she could mask the pain.
I, on the other hand, could barely crawl. My breath caught as I attempted to stand, and it was a small attempt.
Dominic was suddenly beside me on my left. Walker crouched to steady me on my right.
A low growl rattled from Dominic’s chest.
“Play nice,” I hissed. I glanced up at the cave’s mouth, wondering if the creature was still there. “We don’t want to encourage its attack.”
“Nathan,” Dominic said softly. “We don’t want to encourage
Nathan’s
attack.”
I pursed my lips. “Just get me inside so we can figure out how to save him, and barring that—” I swallowed, not wanting to give voice to the inevitability of my brother’s fate, but unable to deny the horror of everything I’d witnessed. “—how to stop him.”
The first time Nathan noticed I was high on Percocets, he didn’t say anything. I’d known that he knew by his distant, disgusted expression. He’d never looked at me like that before, and that first time, it slayed me.
The second time I was high, he didn’t keep it to himself. He asked me if my hip was still in pain. I’d told him the truth: I’d been prescribed Percs for the bullet wound to my hip, and although physical therapy was progressing, the pain was still there. I needed them to ease the edge off while I relearned to walk.
Slowly, painfully, I struggled through crutches and walkers until I was mobile with a cane, and with each progression at physical therapy, I earned back a measure of control in my life. Soon, I wouldn’t even need the cane, and then life would finally return to normal.
Nathan waited several weeks before he brought up my addiction again. He waited until I could walk without a cane. He waited until I no longer limped, no longer needed physical therapy, and my only fear was the future threat of arthritis.
At the time, arthritis seemed a distant threat, one the doctors claimed would likely occur but may or may not be a serious concern. My recovery had been a success. Had I known how little time I’d have to enjoy life before arthritis did develop, maybe I would have lived a little differently. Maybe I would have set goals for marathon runs or rock climbing. Maybe I would have learned to rappel. But marathons and rock climbing weren’t important to me back then. The only thing that was important was my career, which ironically enough, had sky-rocketed, not because of a breakout story like I’d hoped, but because I’d taken that bullet for my friend and fellow officer who’d been on the stakeout with me that night, Officer Harroway.
The police department was in love with me, and I planned on cashing in every last favor to climb and claw my way to the top of my career, just like I’d climbed and clawed my life back from the grave. I was determined and single-mindedly focused, but I was also undeniably addicted to Percocets.
When Nathan confronted me about my addiction, I denied it.
I didn’t need Percs anymore for my hip, but I was terrified. I’d used Percs as a crutch to survive physical therapy, and I feared that if I stopped taking them the pain would return. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to walk again, I wouldn’t be able to work again, and I’d slide right back down the ladder where I’d started this mess, a lonely nobody, desperate for a breakout story.
I took Percs in the morning, throughout the day, and before bed. I was high at home, at the office, at crime scenes, and while I interviewed witnesses. I was high when I talked to Carter, Harroway, and Greta, but I wasn’t the only one in denial. Everyone was happy I’d survived. Everyone was excited for my recovery and my return to work, and no one accused me of being anything less than a hero and a damn good investigative reporter.
No one, except Nathan.
He knew the truth and refused to look the other way. He flushed the Percs down the toilet, and when I bought more, he flushed those down the toilet, too. We screamed and fought and threatened each other, but nothing he said made an impact on my life because I knew he wouldn’t rat me out to the police. He wouldn’t flush my career down the toilet. No matter what he threatened, I knew he had a steel trap for a mouth, just like me, and he’d let me flush my own life down the toilet before breaking a secret when it mattered.
Eventually, he gave up. He stopped the interventions and the arguments. He stopped visiting altogether. His absence in my life was like a festering wound, worse than losing my parents and relearning to walk, because this time, the pain of losing him was entirely my own fault.
I visited his apartment to apologize, but one look through the peephole and he knew. I was high. He wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t even crack the door to talk to me. His voice was measured and calm and devoid of expression when he spoke through the door.
“You chose drugs over me. Over family. I don’t want to see you. As far as I’m concerned, you died from that gunshot wound. Get the hell away from me and stay away. You’re not welcome here anymore.”
His words were harsh and cruel and tore my heart to pieces. And they were just what I needed. I requested a week vacation from work, flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet myself and never looked back.
After my parents died, family was everything to me, and Nathan was all I had left. I couldn’t lose him, too, no matter the sacrifice, and although detox was the best thing for me anyway, it still felt like a sacrifice. It felt like dying all over again, but at the end of the week, I was reborn.