The City Beneath (16 page)

I felt an instant link between us, my mind to his. Dominic's gaze snapped down to meet mine, and I could feel his shock, horror, and rage tingle over our invisible connection. It was like a metaphysical twine connected us, but only I could pull at the string.

I grinned. “Release your hold on me, Dominic, and take a step back.”

His hand dropped away from my chin, the arm around my back eased its pressure, and he shifted back one millimeter.

“Nice try. Dominic, please take five full steps backward.”

He did. I could both see and feel his struggle, his desperation to break the mental straitjacket I'd forced around him. I bit my lip, terrified—now that I'd played my hand—of what he would do in retaliation once I broke my gaze.

“I'm sorry, I didn't really think this would even work,” I admitted. “But while I have your undivided attention, let me just say this. I'll think about your request to help subdue Kaden. I need time to consider what's best for me, and maybe, in the meantime, you can earn my trust.”
Doubtful,
I thought, but he didn't need to know that. “If I decide to help you, however, it'll be because I want to protect myself and Brooklyn from further harm. I don't want to become a vampire. I don't want you to turn me or remake me or regenerate me or whatever the hell you call it. I don't want immortality with you. Part of earning my trust will be understanding this and respecting my choice.” I felt like I was talking to a lobotomized corpse, so I added, “Nod if you understand everything I've just said.”

He nodded.

“Wonderful,” I said on a sigh. Keeping my eyes locked on Dominic, I bent to retrieve my leather shoulder bag, stood, and edged around my desk toward the door. “I'm leaving now, and I'm asking you as a first test of trust, if you truly want my help, to please allow me to leave.”

I opened the office door, stood in the open entryway, and held his captured will in my mind for a long moment. Another emotion besides surprise and anger crept from him on the mental twine between us. I'd felt the emotion before, but I couldn't identify it, as if I couldn't name it because
he
couldn't. He'd forgotten the feeling. The emotion was warm and sharp and spread from the center of his chest. It felt good, almost hopeful, but I wasn't sure if inspiring such strong feelings in him boded well for me.

“Good-bye, Dominic,” I murmured.

I slammed the door between us, felt the snap of our severed connection as I bolted the door, and ran.

I
made it three full blocks before he attacked me. He swooped from thin air, hit my back like a semi, and pinned me up against the nearest building. My cheek scraped against the brick. I don't know how far I'd realistically expected to run, but I hadn't expected him to create a public scene. We were still out on the main drag, in full public view, and the public was certainly viewing. Several people had taken out their cell phones, and a few flashes burst. One woman in particular scooped up her kid and hustled off the street. She glanced back at Dominic as she turned the corner, murmuring into her phone. He could talk a grand talk about protecting the anonymity of his coven, but he was revealing the existence of vampires all on his own without the help of the rebel vampires.

Dominic buried his face in the hollow of my neck and breathed deeply. His chest vibrated against my back with that telltale, rattling hiss, and my body instinctively froze in caution, like a wide-eyed deer facing fast-approaching headlights. Deer at least had the option to run. The vibration brought me his scent, but instead of warmed pine and Christmas, the smell was more subtle and earthy, like grass after the rain. A warning tingle crept over my skin in a slow tide. His scent was different. His height and breadth were wrong, too. He pulled back from my neck with a snarl, and his mouth was already extending into a muzzle. His eyes glowed a luminous violet as I peered over my shoulder at him, under the darkness of his own shadow.

I shook my head in denial, but there was no denying the locks of long, auburn hair where I'd expected black hair and a short, styled cut; the smooth, unblemished curve of his soft lips; his slightly shorter, slightly bulkier stature; and the pull of his beautiful violet eyes.

“Kaden?” I asked.

He rubbed his extended muzzle and those gleaming fangs carefully over the side of my face. I was trembling, trying desperately to remain still, and in my desperation, only trembling more violently.

“Dominic beat me to you. I can smell his scent everywhere,” Kaden growled.

I edged away from him, and he switched sides, rubbing his face against the back of my neck to my other cheek. I realized that he was marking me, placing his scent over Dominic's on my body.

“Was it a race?” I whispered shakily. I'd meant it as a sort of joke—although not particularly funny, considering that it
was
a race—but my voice didn't deliver.

Kaden laughed anyway. “Of a sort. He may have won, but somehow, I still landed the prize.”

“Lucky you,” I murmured. Kaden licked my neck. I closed my eyes against the clammy path his tongue traced.

Maybe I can control his mind, too, like Dominic's
, I thought. Even as the thought passed, I realized that he would need to drink my blood to spark the connection.

He pressed me flat against the brick, and I lost my breath.

Waiting for him to drink my blood would probably be just a matter of time.

“Lucky
you
,” Kaden countered. “I was wrong. Lysander's powers are certainly deteriorating, but you remember us because you're a night blood. To think, you might have been turned by a dying Master.” He shook his head as if in awe of my unbelievable luck. “With me, you'll have everything: immortality and freedom. You won't ever be confined to hunt in the shadows. You won't need to contain your true nature or hide in the sewers,” he growled. “You'll be born into an emerging society of predators who rule the night.”

“With you?” I asked dismally. He was more psychotic than Dominic. Why did all the vampires assume that, just because I could become one of them, I actually
wanted
to be one of them?

His chest vibrated, and hollow, reptilian clicks punctuated through the growl. I leaned sideways, easing away from his muzzle. He leaned closer. The exhale of his growl was hot against my cheek. I cringed, but there was nowhere else to turn. The rattling in his chest heightened. I couldn't hear anything past it.

Kaden bit into the side of my neck, ripped out an entire mouthful of flesh, and flung it to the ground. I screamed, I must have, but I couldn't hear past his hissing, clicking growls. I couldn't feel past the pain. The unbearable pressure of his mouth clamped over my neck, and he guzzled my blood as it waterfalled over my shoulder. I kicked and fought and bucked against his hard, unyielding body. He crushed his body into mine, grinding my wrists hard into the brick above my head.

He wasn't drinking nearly as much blood as I was losing, and that pissed me off. Dominic was right. He was choosing to kill me, not out of necessity or hunger, but simply because he could.

My temper sizzled beneath my skin. I could feel the tingle of it over my whole body, through each fingertip, and blazing from my eyes. Kaden detached from my neck. He rubbed his cheek over mine, inhaling deeply, almost drunkenly, and slowly pulled away. His lips grazed my lips and the tip of his nose rubbed along the side of mine until we were forehead to forehead, staring at each other. I buried my gaze deep into his eyes—the blazing, furious anger I'd built drilled into him—and I opened my mouth to order him to step back.

Kaden's eyes widened as he felt my connection take root. “Impossible.”

Headlights suddenly burst from behind, silhouetting us in spotlight. I flinched away from the unexpected brightness and lost my concentration. The connection between our minds disintegrated.

“Stop where you are,” crackled a voice through a bullhorn. “Place your hands on your head, and turn around.”

Kaden laughed. He cupped the unravaged side of my throat in his palm and pressed deeper into the wound at my neck. He inhaled slowly, as if he could suck the life out of me and into him through my scent alone. I tried to find that connection between us and lock into his mind again, but I couldn't think. My head spun. My vision dimmed in pulses, and I realized that in a moment, I would likely pass out and die. Night bloods were supposed to be resilient to catastrophic blood loss, but I didn't want to test Walker's theories.

“This is your last warning,” the voice behind the bullhorn repeated. “Step away from the woman. Place your hands on your head.”

Kaden flicked his tongue into my neck. I couldn't feel anything at first, but then a spark of searingly sharp heat burned the wound. I cringed away from him, but he held me immobile, forced my head to the side, and licked a long line over my neck to my ear. “Mmm, Cassidy,” he murmured. His lips grazed my lobe. “Pardon me a moment.”

Suddenly, he was gone. I crumpled to my hands and knees on the ground. Shots fired. I could just discern the faint outline of cops aiming over their car doors. Their headlights were blinding. I couldn't distinguish anyone in particular or exactly how many were firing at Kaden, but the gunfire was deafening and continuous. I shielded my eyes with my hands and blinked into the headlights. I wanted to know for certain that he was dead. I wanted to see his limp body jerk back midmotion and drop. The hand at my forehead was shaking.

Instead, a high scream burst through the gunfire. The scream cut short with a wet, meaty sound, more shots fired, and another scream pierced the air. My eyes finally began adjusting to the light. The police were aiming carefully now, more mindful of their shots to avoid hitting their fellow officers as Kaden fed. One by one, Kaden plucked an officer from behind his car, ripped out his throat, and tossed him aside for the next one, all the while undeterred by bullets. I watched, feeling horrified and sickened, as the officers fought and screamed and died for me.

I couldn't help the officers against Kaden, so I did the only thing I could do: remove myself as a potential hostage and try to survive. I crawled into the nearest alley and away from the carnage on my hands and knees. My leather shoulder bag dragged along the asphalt next to me. Kaden would probably hear it scraping, but I didn't have the strength to lift it.

My neck still felt singed from Kaden's last lick. I fingered the wound tentatively, and although I couldn't feel the pressure of my own touch, an artery wasn't squirting. Kaden's saliva must have healed the pulsing flow. I pulled my hand away from my neck and cringed at my blood-slicked palm. He might have healed the artery, but he hadn't healed the wound. I needed medical attention, and I needed it five minutes ago.

The streetlights couldn't penetrate into the center of the alley. Blinding darkness steadily closed in around me, so the sharp staccato of gunfire and the cutting pitch of the officer's shrieks from behind were my only sense of direction. Broken glass, soda cans, and bottle caps littered the asphalt. I tried to avoid anything sharp, but I was sweating and shaking and nauseous. The end of the alley was only a few hundred feet away, so I focused on my goal and forged forward over the debris.

I wondered if more officers would respond to the call to help the fallen . . . to help me, and I wondered how long Kaden would continue the bloodbath. Until sunrise? My hand crunched over something jagged, and my weight pressed it deep into my palm. I couldn't see the debris, whether it was glass or metal or stone, but no matter the material, I felt the tacky slide of blood slip between my fingers. I felt its pulsing, unrelenting, bone-ache, and it didn't matter what had caused it so much as I couldn't even see clearly enough to treat it.

I finally crawled out of the darkness on the other side of the alley. Using the side of the building as leverage, I clawed to my feet. The ground and building and sky all wobbled in and out of focus. The streetlights alternately faded and brightened as I attempted to keep my footing. I waited a moment, hoping my balance would steady and my awareness would sharpen, but I'd lost too much blood. My vision was darkening, not improving. My life was leaking away. I'd been here before—maybe not in this exact circumstance and certainly never with vampires—but I'd taken a bullet for Harroway and clung on to life long enough to survive. I could survive again. Gritting my teeth against the pain and dizziness, I pushed away from the building and stepped out of the alley.

The sky swept under me before I could take a second step. My foot never found the ground, and the night was suddenly still and quiet and calm. The building circled overhead and everything blurred into the dark night sky; I couldn't see or move or think beyond the facts that I was going to die in this disgusting alley, Kaden was likely still tearing through the line of officers, and Dominic, damn him, might have been right.

 

“DiRocco!”

I squinted against the glow of streetlights shining outside the alley. It took a moment, but my eyes adjusted. I groaned at the sight. Walker was jogging toward me, and I was still slumped against the brick siding where I'd passed out. He stopped at the alley, stepped into the darkness with me, and knelt by my side. The silhouette of his spiral curls and broad shoulders were haloed by the light behind him.

“Jesus Christ,” Walker spat.

“We've got to stop meeting like this,” I croaked. “Worse than lobby conversation.”

He looked over his shoulder for a moment before facing me again. “There's a swarm out there, like bloodsucking, murdering locusts. Killing humans. Killing each other. I should've known you'd be in the thick of it. You probably caused it.”

“Did not,” I grunted. The buildings and ground and Walker were all spinning and swirling. Keeping my eyes open was nauseating. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Stay with me, DiRocco,” Walker urged, sounding a little frantic.

I forced my eyes open and tensed to stand, but my arms weren't working properly. I couldn't leverage to my feet. People were still screaming and shouting and shrieking on the other side of the alley, and I couldn't even stand.

“How did you find me?”

“No one was at your brother's apartment, and when you didn't answer my calls, I assumed the worst.” Walker shook his head at me. “I assumed right.”

Gunshots fired, closer than the others, and someone let out a high, long, chilling shriek. The scream cut off abruptly and more shots fired.

“Get me out of here, Walker?” I squeaked.

“As if you even need to ask, darlin'.”

He stood, leaned over me, and scooped me up from under my armpits. I doubted my legs could hold my weight, and Walker must have doubted it, too, because he gathered me to his chest, his arms tight around my waist. My body felt boneless and weak and useless. The streetlights seemed starry as they swirled and flashed across my vision, and my head lolled to the side, resting heavily on Walker's right shoulder.

“Shit!” He clamped his palm firmly over my neck.

I winced. “How bad is it? I can't really feel it anymore.”

“Bad,” he said tightly.

“Did you bring sushi?” I asked, trying to lighten the air between us.

He didn't respond.

“I'm not having a good week. Sushi would've been nice.”

Walker sighed deeply. “Your body still needed to regenerate from last night. You need stitches and you need them now before you completely bleed out.”

“But I can lose more blood than most and still live, right?” I asked doubtfully. “Because I'm a night blood?”

“Sure,” Walker said. “But nearly all your blood is on the pavement. You may not need as much to survive as most people, but you still need
some
.”

I felt my feet drag as Walker jogged us down the sidewalk. His arms felt very secure around me, creating the illusion of warmth and safety, and my dimming mind melted deep into the feeling.

“DiRocco?”

I could hear his voice, but the reality of us running as open prey on the street was far away. My world honed down to the feeling of his steady hand around my waist, his hard shoulder against my cheek, and fresh mint.