The City Beneath (24 page)

“No,” I managed to spit out, panicked.

The twisting pressure on my finger tightened.

“Please, d—”

A gust of incredible wind tore over us, and Kaden was suddenly gone. I stared at the night sky overhead for a baffled moment until I heard the classic sounds of scuffling and flesh pounding against flesh, sounds that I recognized as a bar brawl. I dragged myself by my elbows over the pavement and craned my neck to see what was happening, but even seeing it, I couldn't quite process the reality of it.

Dominic had attacked. For reasons I preferred not to consider, he had attacked Kaden before he drank from me, and the two of them were literally tearing each other apart. Both of their muzzles were extended. Their eyes glowed with that inhuman iridescence, and their fangs were bared as they spit and snarled and snapped like rabid animals clawing at each other's throats.

Kaden tore out Dominic's esophagus with his own fangs. A bloody, pearl-white clump of flesh soared through the air as Kaden spat it from his jaws, but before the meat and muscle even hit the ground, Dominic's throat had healed to smooth, untarnished perfection. Dominic pounded his gargoyle talons into Kaden's stomach, and jerked his hand up, obviously searching for his heart, but Kaden took another chunk out of Dominic's neck. Dominic only managed to snap a few arteries before stumbling back. He tripped over my crossbow. Kaden faltered, too, but with his heart still intact, he managed to take advantage of Dominic's imbalance. Kaden was suddenly over Dominic, ravaging his newly healed esophagus.

Dominic rolled back and bucked him off using his feet. His movement knocked my crossbow to the side, and my cell phone slid across the grass, within arm's reach. I eased toward it slowly, terrified that my movement would bring their attention, but they were too focused on their fight to notice me. They both staggered to their feet, struggling upright in spite of their devastating injuries.

A second later, they were both fully regenerated and tearing at each other again.

Dominic and Kaden were so evenly matched that it wouldn't be the stronger vampire who won. Unless one of them pulled out their clever card—which didn't seem likely as they were both more concerned with biting out chunks of the other—the vampire with the most stamina would win.

I wasn't willing to wait with my fingers crossed, hoping that Dominic would outlast Kaden. I needed to make sure of it. Taking a deep breath, I snatched my cell phone and stuffed it into my bra for safekeeping, clenched my teeth against what I was about to do, and jerked the wooden stake from my arm.

Blood gushed over my arm, my hand, and pooled around me on the pavement. The scuffling and snarling and sounds of flesh beating on flesh stopped instantly; Kaden and Dominic halted midstrike and slowly turned away from one another to face me. I swallowed, nervous now that my blood was the focus of both their unwavering predator's gazes.

I hadn't considered that Dominic would be just as tempted as Kaden. I hoped that despite the temptation, Dominic would remember our plan and let Kaden drink. A deep, rattling growl emanated from both of them, further amplified by the contrasting reverberations of their throats. I stared back at Dominic, willing him to meet my eyes, to confirm that we were still a team. Dominic's gaze remained just as riveted on my blood as Kaden's, and I stiffened my nerve in anticipation that they might both attack.

K
aden and Dominic panted from their battle, exhausted and excited. Blood dripped from their chins in thick, rope-like paths down their throats. Talon scrapes and bite wounds visibly mended themselves and healed as they stared at me. Kaden's violet eyes and Dominic's arctic thirsty gaze glowed like laser scopes, their beads focused on my arm as it pumped blood liberally across the pavement.

Kaden stepped forward and Dominic matched him, step for synchronized step, as they closed in on either side of me. I instinctively scooted away from them, but my arm buckled. My leg jarred from the movement, and I collapsed in a writhing ball on the pavement.

Dominic and Kaden became sudden blurs of speed. One moment they were midstep and walking closer, and the next, their fangs scraped over the delicate skin of my carotid and brachial arteries, their breaths hot and ravenous. I shrieked, and my heart lurched into fifth gear.

Dominic groaned with his fangs against my neck. Kaden stroked my inner arm from wrist to elbow with his fingertip. He pressed forward with his fangs, testing the elasticity of my skin before it might break under their razor pressure. I trembled from the pain and fear and cold and unspeakable sensations their fangs and claws made me feel. Goose bumps rose over my skin from Kaden's claw as it scraped over the inner elbow. My nipples tightened in anticipation.

My face flushed with shame at my body's response. I knew what was coming. I knew how I would feel when they bit me, and I couldn't help but look forward to it, anything to escape this hell.

The pressure of Kaden's fangs finally slipped smoothly into the artery like two needle-pointed knives. His bite was a slashing, sharp, unbearable pressure, and when he suckled at the wound, it didn't tug at my groin or spiral through my blood like lava, like Dominic's bite. It felt exactly like it was, a creature biting into my flesh and sucking out my blood through the wound. I could feel the warm flow of it suction from my body as he sucked. I noticed vaguely that the stab wound on my forearm had stopped gushing. It barely trickled now, and my fingertips were starting to tingle.

I grimaced and struggled away from his mouth, but Kaden only clamped his jaws tighter around my arm. He jerked my body closer to him. I felt my cell phone slip from my bra and land somewhere in the grass. I tried to find it, but Kaden gnawed at my humerus with a wild shake of his head. My vision splintered in black starbursts.

“Easy,” Dominic whispered. He was kneeling on my other side, his face still buried in my neck. He lifted me from the pavement. My head lolled back, baring my neck as he gathered me to his chest. The movement was intimate and exposed, even as Kaden continued to feed from my outstretched arm. I could barely decipher Dominic's words, they were so hushed.

“I'll take it all away in a moment,” Dominic said, “but I want you to remember this, like I've asked you to remember other moments. You may not want to be transformed, but transformation aside, Kaden still can't provide you with the life that I can. His bite is a painful, savage attack.”

Senseless from his bloodlust, Kaden gnawed back and forth in a frenzy—tearing my skin, veins, and muscle in his jaws—before sucking deeply again. My scream cracked, and I choked on its pieces. The dark starbursts melded together into a black blanket over my vision.

“Never doubt the exclusivity of the life I'm offering you. Promise me,” Dominic demanded.

I opened my mouth, but Kaden ripped at my arm, jostling my shattered knee, and my mind floated further away. My lips might have moved and I might have blinked, but I couldn't see or feel parts of my body anymore. I was dying in agony, like I'd dreaded, but at the very end there wasn't much strength for anything, not even promises.

“Promise me,
Cassidy DiRocco
.”

My lips moved and my throat vibrated independent from my will. “By the final, certain passage of time,” I whispered, but even I could hear the sarcasm in my tone.

Dominic didn't care about sarcasm. I'd said the words, and he struck my neck fiercely. The sharp bite of his fangs clamped into my carotid. I tried to reach out my hand to find an anchor against my own overwhelming helplessness, but even as I strained with the very last inch of myself, I felt my wrist lift only briefly before dropping weakly back onto the pavement.

Kaden must have sensed my struggle. His chest rattled deeply, and he tore out a piece of muscle in his excitement.

My body spasmed, the best defense I could manage.

Dominic reached down and squeezed my hand gently.

“Easy,” he repeated in a strained, almost desperate growl against my throat.

His fingers were long and cool and strong, so very strong and unyielding, as he wrapped them around mine. I felt the solid pressure of his grip and the tide eased slightly. I could breathe again. My lungs expanded deeply in a desperate gasp, and my heart pounded hard against my sternum to catch up.

Dominic's chest vibrated in that deep, aching rattle, identical to Kaden. He held me firmly against his chest, suspended with my neck exposed to him and his breath hot in my hairline.

“No,” I gasped. If he drank, he would weaken as much as Kaden, and my suffering and risk and possibly my death would have been for nothing. “You can't. I didn't do this for noth—”

“I will not abandon you,” he whispered. “But neither will I pretend to be a less dangerous, volatile creature than I am for your peace of mind.”

I trembled, and he held me tighter.

“No.” I insisted. “Please, I—”

Dominic sealed his lips around the puncture wounds on my neck and sucked a sharp, swift rush of blood into his mouth.

I arched against him, gasping. The argument that poised on my lips incinerated on my tongue as fire and spiraling need sang through my veins. My eyes rolled back and fluttered closed. My toes curled. My hips bucked, and all the pain, panic, and anger were overwhelmed by twitching waves of ebbing and flowing pleasure. It didn't matter that my shattered knee might never walk again or that my arm was a mess of exposed raw meat. My mind flooded with sizzling, throbbing, colliding urgency, and I trembled.

The sensations waned slightly when Dominic swallowed. His suction on my neck loosened, and I could vaguely feel the tug and sharpness of Kaden at my arm. Dominic sucked another fresh mouthful of blood from my neck, and I was lost again. My hand twitched in his, but the support of Dominic's hand never wavered. His grip remained firm and unchanging whether I arched in pleasure, faded into unconsciousness, or flinched back into reality for the second it took for Dominic to suck me back into the heat of soaring, blinding bliss.

Their thirsts were insatiable. The waves of unconsciousness were becoming more frequent, and the difference between their bites was beginning to blur into a haze of numbness. I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing escaped from my lips except air. My words were lost.

Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and slipped down my temples. Dominic released his suction on my neck suddenly, and his face hovered over mine. Blood coated his chin and dripped down his neck, but his mouth hadn't extended into a muzzle. His face was still handsome and human-like. One of my tears glistened on the side of his cheek.

“Don't leave me,” he whispered, but his lips parted in a lopsided smirk. His teeth were stained with my blood. “Unless you want me to turn you now.”

The fierce boil of my temper swept over me. I opened my mouth to snap something snide, but Dominic dropped me onto the ground. He disappeared into a spiraling wind and then with a final tear of ligament and flesh, Kaden disappeared, too. For a moment I stared at the sky, the same sky I'd stared at only hours ago with such different intentions for the night. The stars weren't visible in the city, but I'd always believed in our New York lights more than the lights shining from billions upon billions of miles away. I hadn't actually seen the stars in years, since childhood. The sky hadn't changed, but it certainly didn't look the same to me.

A massive pound shook the asphalt. Someone hissed and someone else growled back with that familiar, vibrating rattle. I craned my neck down and saw that Dominic's claw-like hand was buried nearly elbow-deep in Kaden's chest. With a sharp jerk of Dominic's wrist, Kaden dropped like a broken doll to the ground.

I blinked at the sight, astonished. How had Kaden weakened so drastically? Dominic hadn't resisted my blood, either. He should have been equally weakened, but he stood over a crumpled, defeated Kaden, looking more massive and powerful and dangerous than ever.

Without even a backward glance, Dominic hauled Kaden off the ground, stooped on one knee with him in his arms, and launched off the pavement into the air in a swirl of dust and stones. His blur winked out into the night, leaving the buckled pavement from the force of his launch as the only evidence of his presence. No one would suspect that just over their heads, hidden by the shadows of our own city lights and backdropped by the pitch-black sky, vampires flew overhead.

 

I stared at the empty space where they'd stood, not entirely surprised that he'd left me to die. Time passed, only catalogued by the faint strain of my breathing. Everything had failed. The silver nitrate spray, the crossbow, the retractable stake pen, the silver gloves, Dominic's promises, and Walker's plan had all failed, and the only thing I had left, which I'd had all along, was my stubborn refusal to let go.

My cell phone had survived the vampires' attack better than me; I could see it lying in the grass next to my shoulder where it had slipped from my bra. I only had to move my hand a few inches to touch its screen.

My finger twitched. I focused all my effort on my hand and those last few inches of movement. The twitch increased to a tremor and under what felt like an impossible, immovable weight, my hand struggled toward the phone. My fingers brushed its edge. I could see that I was touching it, but I couldn't feel it.

I swiped the screen to unlock it. The screen didn't recognize the pressure of my finger. I pressed harder and tried to stop shaking, but the blanket of starbursts still clouded my vision. I was going to die like Walker had predicted. Maybe I wasn't in an alley, but I was alone and abandoned. I couldn't see my phone and I couldn't feel the screen, but I kept swiping my finger, hoping against hope and trying against the odds that I could survive because it might be the last thing I'd ever try to do.

The
snap
of my phone unlocking startled me awake. My vision sharpened slightly, so I could see the illumination of the phone's screen at what looked like the end of a long, dark tunnel. I tapped the Call icon and tried to scroll down to
W
for Walker, but my numb, trembling fingers couldn't swipe. The phone was suddenly dialing and ringing someone else.

The call clicked through. “This better be damn good, DiRocco.”

I recognized that smooth, honeyed voice. My heart ached, thinking about our last conversation. I'd been so worried about my reputation and credibility, but whether I finished and published “The City Beneath: Vampires Bite in the Big Apple” or not, my credibility was tarnished with Greta and the police department anyway. They were whose opinion actually mattered, and of course, they were the ones whose high opinion I'd lost.

“Hello?” she snapped. “The next words out of your mouth better be an apology. Better yet, skip the damn apology. I better hear the name of who's responsible for these murders or I'm hanging up.”

I swallowed and tried to speak, but it was more a moan than a word. “Help.”

I didn't hear anything from Greta for a long moment. When she spoke again, her tone was urgent. “How hurt are you?”

“Dying,” I rasped. “I'm sorry.”

“No damn apologies.” Her voice seemed distant suddenly as she shouted, “She's at Paerdegat Park! Get a squad and an ambulance there stat! Cass? Are you there? Speak to me.”

“Here,” I murmured.

“Hang on. We tracked your cell, and we're on our way. Help is coming soon, Cass. Are you alone?”

“Yes.” The light at the end of my tunnel winked out, and darkness blanketed my vision. “Alone.”

“Alright,” Greta said. I could hear her breathe long and deeply over the phone. Her voice was sweet again when she said, “Tell me who did this, Cass. What else can they take from you now? Don't let them get away.”

I smiled at Greta's persistence, even at the end. I would have done the same. And she was right; what else could they take from me? What else did I have to lose?

“Cass? Stay with me! Who's responsible for the murders? Who attacked you?”

“Vampires,” I said.

“What?” Greta whispered.

“Vampires.”

I didn't hear or see Dominic's return, but I could smell it.

“The patrol car is almost there, Cass. Just hang on for a—”

I ended the call.

The scent of pine sharpened as Dominic approached. His steps were slow and deliberate as he walked through the puddle of blood around my body. After my few encounters with Kaden, I was beginning to understand Dominic's careful restraint. I imagined that the carnage probably made being in my presence irresistible, but he knelt next to me, in the puddle of my blood—I could sense the shiver of his presence—and he resisted.

I couldn't feel the pressure of his hands, but I could sense my body being moved and a distancing from the ground, like floating, as he lifted me into his arms. I couldn't feel much of anything, but the movement must have further injured my leg; my body spasmed slightly.

“Easy, Cassidy,” Dominic murmured. He shifted me in his arms gently, obviously taking care not to jostle my injuries, but there were just too many to manage them all.