Sweet Last Drop (46 page)

“Command her to drink, Cassidy!” Dominic shouted through my mind. “She needs to drain him enough for the transformation!”

“Jillian Allister,” I continued, struggling to focus. The triple personality of Dominic, Jillian, and myself inside my mind was like wading through molasses—my thoughts were slow and sticky and opaque. “I command you to drink from Nathan until he’s drained enough to transform. But don’t kill him,” I added.

Dominic released my mind. I snapped back into myself, the twine between Jillian and myself still binding. I gaped at the scene in front of me.

Bex had joined the swarm, and all three of them—Dominic, Bex and Rene—were jabbing, twirling, slashing, and dodging around Nathan’s head in Rene’s rush and retreat technique. The scales along Nathan’s face, neck, and chest were a mess of scratches, nothing deep or debilitating, not even bloody, but enough to have further enraged him. Enough to distract him.

Nathan slashed his arms through the air wildly, growling and hissing and roaring at them, but just when he reached out for Dominic, Rene scratched his chest. When he turned to backhand Rene, Bex ripped her claws up his back. When he whirled around to smack Bex, Dominic tore a line across his cheek. I watched their dance, fascinated and frightened by their movements, hoping against hope that they could hold him off, that this plan—if you could even call this failure of a plan a plan—would work.

A glowing black and blue blur rocketed into the air from one of the nearby trees next to me in a spray of leaves and raining twigs.

Jillian.

She cut through the blurred swarm of Dominic, Bex, and Rene surrounding Nathan and latched onto Nathan’s back in full gargoyle form. Her fingers, still skeleton-like without the nourishment of skin or muscle, extended into thick, four-foot-long talons and pierced knuckle-deep into Nathan’s shoulders.

Unlike anything else that couldn’t penetrate his scales, Jillian’s talons imbedded deep. Blood sprayed from both wounds and showered Jillian’s face.

Dominic was right again, double damn him. As his creator, his Master, Jillian had the power to kill him.

Nathan roared and bucked at her, but Dominic, Bex, and Rene increased their onslaught, slashing and biting him, swarming his entire body, so he was blinded by pain and rage. His screams reverberated through the trees and choked my heart.

You can do this
, I encouraged him, but really, the encouragement was equally for myself. I could survive witnessing my brother’s death if it meant giving him back his life.

In one ferocious bite, Jillian clamped her jaws around Nathan’s carotid and tore open his neck. She spat the meat of his flesh on the ground, and I gagged. The thick, bloody chunk of skin and muscle gleamed in the subtle glow of morning light

My stomach bottomed out as I realized that somehow in the time between finding Nathan and now, the sun was rising. In another few minutes we would still be outside, fighting Nathan and struggling to control Jillian, and it would be dawn.

Blood squirted in a vertical geyser from Nathan’s neck. I stared, transfixed, too horrified to look away. Jillian let the spray settle to a steady pulse before extending her jaw, wrapping her lips over the wound, and sucking a long pull of blood into her mouth. There was so much blood, more blood than I could conceive of a body containing, and it gushed out faster than Jillian could swallow. It poured in a thick waterfall down Nathan’s back. It coated Jillian’s scalp, cheeks, and chin and dripped down the front of her body. It spattered on the ground as Nathan bucked and twirled, trying to dislodge Jillian and simultaneously fight Dominic, Bex, and Rene.

Jillian swallowed mouthful after mouthful of Nathan’s blood, and I watched her transformation as she savored every sweet last drop. The straggles of Jillian’s hair thickened and grew, pixie short but healthy. Muscle expanded and plumped over her bones, and the threads of skin that hung from her thin frame melded together, contoured over bone and new muscle, and revitalized into a glowing complexion.

Nathan fell to his knees. Dominic, Bex, and Rene were still swarming around him, still scratching and biting and stinging, but Nathan wasn’t fighting them anymore. His hands remained limp at his sides, his face expressionless and yet somehow, maybe imagined from my own guilt, he seemed to look deep into my soul. I could see the devastating disappointment in his gaze.

Nathan collapsed onto the ground in front of me.

“She’s had enough,” I said, feeling my panic overwhelm my fear. I wanted Jillian to stop drinking. “She’s going to kill him.”

“You commanded her to drink until Nathan could be transformed, did you not? You commanded her not to kill him,” Dominic said, suddenly solidly in front of me.

I opened my mouth to argue, but when I saw his appearance, I stared speechless. Dominic was a wreck. His cheek was split open, and a flap of skin hung loose from the bone. His clothes were in tatters. His shirt was blood soaked, and his chest and arms were a mess of jagged slashes and scratches. I swallowed, wanting to help in some way but too scared to touch him without causing further damage.

“Didn’t you?” Dominic insisted.

I nodded numbly. “I, well, yes, I commanded her not to kill him.”

“Then she can’t kill him. She’ll stop when he’s ready to transform, not before and certainly not after,” Dominic stated, and his confidence was like a balm soaking through the sting of my panic.

Jillian dislodged her talons from Nathan’s shoulders but continued to swallow long pulls of his blood. Rene and Bex stopped their flurry of flight. Despite their injuries—they were just as slashed and scraped and bloody as Dominic—they stood shoulder to shoulder in a wall between me and Nathan, watching Jillian feed.

Nathan hadn’t moved since collapsing. I bit my lip, waiting.

A minute passed. Jillian continued drinking, swallow after swallow, and with each second that passed, her eyes brightened shades brighter, her skin glowed more luminescent, and her power, like a pulsing, living swell in the air, expanded outward from her and snapped against my skin.

“I won’t be able to give Nathan my blood,” Dominic said.

I blinked, not sure I’d heard him correctly. He hadn’t turned to speak to me. He was still watching Jillian, or rather, stalking Jillian with that unwavering, honed gaze.

“What are you saying?” I asked. “After Jillian drains him, you fill him back up. That’s the plan, right?”

“That was the plan,” Dominic said, his voice grave. “But when Jillian’s finished, she’ll have regained her full strength. She was my equal three weeks ago when we fought, and my powers have weakened since then. In order to contain her, I’ll need as much of my strength as possible.” Dominic sighed. “Which means I won’t be able to give Nathan my blood.”

“But you have to,” I hissed. “You promised me. You swore by the sun. We had a deal!” I shouted, near hysterics. “I upheld my end of our bargain, and now it’s time for you to uphold yours!”

“It’s too risky. If I were unable to contain Jillian, she’d continue her mad cause, gain control of my coven, and life as we know it in New York would be irrevocably destroyed. I can’t risk all of that. I can’t risk my entire coven and your city for one man. I’m sorry, Cassidy. Not for your brother, not even for you, will I risk everything.”

“I’ll do it,” Bex said. “I’ll give Nathan my blood, so you can control Jillian and still uphold your promise to Cassidy.”

Rene coughed. “If you don’t remember, he tore out your heart and tried to eat it.”

“You would do that?” Dominic asked, surprised.

Bex sighed. “Nathan may have torn out my heart, but Cassidy put it back in. We’re allies, are we not?”

Dominic nodded. “Of course.”

“Then one of yours is as welcome as one of mine.”

“Thank you, Bex. That’s exceedingly generous,” Dominic said graciously.

“No, that wasn’t the deal,” I said.

Dominic turned to face me. “Bex is offering to save your brother. Take it and say thank you.”

“I thank you, Bex, I really do, but I can’t accept. This was
your
deal, Dominic. You promised that he would be a member of
your
coven.”

Bex raised an eyebrow. “Dominic’s coven is in tatters with the approaching Leveling. Nathan would be safer with me anyway.”

“This isn’t your deal to finish,” I insisted. I knew I was being stubborn, but I didn’t care. Nathan was my brother, and if he had to be a vampire, he would be Dominic’s vampire in New York City, home with me. “It’s Dominic’s promise, and he’s bound by it.”

Sunlight crested on the horizon and glowed through the woods in streaks between trees. All three vampires in front of me jerked back. Bex and Rene actually ducked behind me to stand in my shadow. Only Dominic remained in front of me, blocking Jillian from view. The air above his skin started to ripple, like the mirage of heat on asphalt.

“Honestly, DiRocco, if I were you, I’d take what I could get,” Rene said.

I shot him a glare.

“I’m serious! Compared to the creature he is now, anything is a step up, no matter the coven he joins.”

“That’s not the point. I—”

Rene’s face stiffened and then contorted in pain. He pitched forward blindly toward a ray of sunlight. Bex was on him in an instant, knocking him to the side and dragging him back into the shadows away from the light, but she was too late. Although she’d saved him from the sun, I could see the silver broadhead of the wooden arrow protruding from the front of his chest. Black cracks, like poisoned veins, fissured from the wound and spread outward over his chest, neck, and shoulders, snaking down his arms and across his face.

An audible hiss passed over my shoulder. Before I could even register the flash of another silver broadhead or the streak of its wooden shaft, I heard Dominic’s harsh exhale from the impact.

Dominic was shot through the heart with a wooden stake.

* * * *

Debilitating pain shot through my own chest, directly over my heart, and Dominic and I collapsed to our knees simultaneously. He gripped my upper arms before we both pitched headfirst to the ground, and we faced one another, nose to nose, the long wooden stake of one of Walker’s arrows embedded deep into his chest.

I coughed, and blood poured from my mouth. The arrow had pierced his heart, not mine, but it was mine that was bursting.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy,” Dominic whispered. “The bonds between us were supposed to strengthen you, too; it works both ways. My strength for your strength. But also, your life for my life.”

“Bonds?” I whispered, but the gurgle of blood clogging my throat drowned the words.

“The promises. Sworn by the certainty of the sun and the passage of time, by the certainty of our deaths.” Dominic shook his head. He lifted his hand to cup my cheek. His other hand fingered the arrow’s shaft where it met his chest. “It’s a death blow. I’m so sorry.”

The sun rose fractionally higher in the pre-dawn sky, and a beam of pure, unhampered light pierced through the trees and poured over both of us.

Dominic instantly burst into flames.

The hands gripping my upper arms, now licking fire, scorched me. I screamed and instinctively wrenched away from him. Dominic threw himself back into the trees’ shadows.

I looked around, desperate for something, anything, to help Dominic and smother the flames, but I didn’t have anything on me except weapons to kill vampires. Nothing to save them. My own skin was starting to redden and blister, a slow, delayed version of Dominic’s inferno, and I wondered if he was trying to take all the pain and injury and death into himself. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t feel the heat of the flames over his skin like I could the arrow through his heart, but my clothes were starting to blacken and split from the heat of his flames. I suspected that when he lost consciousness I would burst into flames, too.

I clutched my chest as my heart stuttered, and I wondered dismally which would kill us first: the arrow or the flames.

I turned my head toward Bex, trying to remain upright as my knees trembled. “Dominic. He’s dying. I—”

Bex was openly sobbing. Her hands were outstretched, her trembling fingers clutching fistfuls of ash, and I remembered that Rene had been shot through the heart, too.

I stared, stunned. Rene was gone. The little that was left of him was in Bex’s hands, flaking from between her fingers and floating like dust, away on the morning air.

My heart gave a last squish, trying and failing to pump, and I fell forward into the dirt.

Laughter, like nails across my eyelids, lit the air.

Trembling and wheezing, I looked up.

Jillian had dislodged her fangs from Nathan’s neck. They were still in shadow, hidden from the sun under a large oak. She was watching Dominic burn, Rene float away on the breeze, Bex’s grief, and my own struggle, and she was laughing.

I narrowed my eyes. She was laughing, but her throat—fully quenched from draining Nathan—still burned. Tears were streaming down her face, and I realized that she was hysterical.

“You think this is what I wanted? You think this was the path I’d envisioned for our coven?” she shrieked.

“You would have let Dominic burn in that alley when you betrayed him. This was the path you set for us,” I reminded her. I didn’t know if she could hear me or not. My words were nothing but the movement of my lips and a soft rasp.

She flew to him in a zig-zag, keeping to what little remained of the shadows. I twitched, trying to move toward him, to meet her there and protect him, but I couldn’t move more than a few inches.

With a violent, powerful kick, Jillian knocked Dominic down the ravine, toward the bottom of the grove. The fireball of his body left a charred trail through the woods as he tumbled headlong over logs and boulders and finally plummeted into the meandering stream below.

I stared, stunned, as his body splashed into the water, dousing the flames.

Jillian was suddenly standing over me, her face a mask of blood. Tears exposed clean stripes of skin down her cheeks.

“He saved me once, a lifetime ago. When I was lost and my love had nearly given up hope of ever finding me, he brought me back to myself.”