The City Beneath (23 page)

I crouched next to a strip of police tape, automatically moving my hand to keep my leather shoulder bag behind my back, and I remembered for the fourth time, as if it was the first, that I'd left my bag at home. Used to its presence, I kept reaching to touch it, open it, or move it out of the way. However convenient it usually was, the bag was cumbersome. If my experience with Kaden tonight was anything like my previous experiences, I didn't want it weighing me down or getting lost, like it had in the past.

Without my bag, I tucked my phone into my pocket and continued my faux investigation. While inspecting another boot print in a long line of similar boot prints, the glow from the streetlight reflected off something in the grass. The brief flash gave me pause. Actual evidence should have been photographed, tagged, bagged, and taken to the station. If this had been any other scene, I wouldn't have given the flash much thought because Greta was thorough and competent, but since I was the only one who'd remembered the bite marks, it stood to reason that Greta could've potentially missed something else, something equally as important.

I strained to see the reflective object without crossing the police tape. My heart dropped into my gut when I recognized its shape. Heedless of the damn police tape, I ducked under the parameter and swiped the metal off the ground.
No, no, no, no,
I thought, but I couldn't speak. I stared at the initials “ND” on the silver cuff link and felt a scream sear the back of my throat.

Something slammed into my body, like being sideswiped by a silent eighteen-wheeler, and I dropped the cuff link. The impact was gut-punching, unexpected, and debilitating. I heard the crunch of my ribs snap with the hit. My feet slammed out from under me, and I hovered for a suspended moment over the grass, my ribs crushed, my breath shot, and my brain in hyper-drive.

A million thoughts crashed through my mind as I fell, mostly about work and Nathan and a little about Walker, but the most prevalent thought was of Dominic and his promise to heal me
.
The protection offered by the crossbow on my wrist, the retractable stake, Walker's silver-woven gloves, and Dominic's cold, silver chain was only a mirage. My head snapped back as I hit the ground. Kaden pounded me into the earth with his crushing weight and ground home the certainty that with or without my weapons, Dominic would have to keep his promise if I hoped to survive the night.

Kaden disappeared as quickly and silently as he'd appeared. I was smashed on my back in the grass like a twitching bug. The sky overhead was vast and matte black, blending with the bursts of black that speckled my vision. I tried to cope with the ache in my side, but I couldn't breathe. I could barely think.

Dominic and I should have better defined “incapacitated.”

I braced myself for Kaden's return. My stomach knotted with fear and pain and trembling anticipation, but even after several minutes of tense silence, he didn't attack.

I struggled to sit up, and my ribs screamed in stabbing, white agony. Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. Remaining still hurt. I panted from the pain, but my desperate, popcorn-gasps weren't inhaling much oxygen. My head spun. I'd have to calm my breathing or risk hyperventilating, so I pushed past the pain and took slower, shallower breaths.

The vial of Dominic's blood suddenly seemed prominent against my skin, but I eased the silver nitrate spray from my pocket instead and slowly rolled onto my hands and knees. I told myself that I'd survived worse. I told myself that after tonight, I would listen to Walker and take a sick day. I told myself a lot of things, but in the end, the only thing that got me standing was to grit my teeth against the pain and stand anyway.

I took an unsteady, listing step forward, and stumbled into a jog. My legs threatened to buckle, so I stiffened my resolve and hobbled on, building a slow momentum. I was nearly at the gate when Kaden took me out again. He appeared from thin air, and before I even knew he was there, I heard the wet
pop
of my left knee shatter.

Hot, sickening pain shot through my leg. I screamed and aimed the silver spray as I fell, but Kaden reached through the spray and wrenched the can from my hand. I hit the ground hard on my side. A sharp stab tore through my ribs. I opened my mouth, intending to scream or breathe or wield another weapon, intending to do
something,
but I couldn't inhale enough to do anything. A high squeak leaked from my lungs as they tried and failed to find air. Kaden looked down at me, watching me struggle. I couldn't read his expression. His hand still holding the silver spray was burned. Welts had boiled on his charred skin, but he just stared, stoically ignoring his burns to focus on me.

My lungs finally adjusted from having the wind knocked out of them, and I screamed.

Kaden smiled a small, strange sort of smile. He watched me scream and cower from him, and his smile widened. I angled my wrist, so the crossbow was aimed even as I rocked in agony. I braced for his attack.

He disappeared suddenly, taking the silver spray with him.

I cradled my knee and continued screaming. I couldn't stop. My screams escaped in wheezing, rhythmic exhales as I tried to bear the pain. I'd lied to myself. Gritting my teeth wasn't going to help this time, and I'd never survived anything worse. Kaden was taking me out limb by limb, wearing me down like a hyena would its prey.

I reached for my cell phone tucked into the back right pocket of my jeans. Moving was excruciating. I bit my lip and tasted the warm, metallic salt of blood as I struggled. My gloved fingertips brushed the smooth plastic phone cover, and finally, my phone slipped free of my pocket.

I tore the silver-woven glove off, unlocked the screen with my thumb, and tried to calm my trembling enough to find Walker's number. Thinking past the throbbing, electric pain was impossible. I was scrolling through my contacts, their names and numbers dancing and spinning across my vision, when a shadow darted out from the darkness. One moment my thumb was hovering over the screen, and the next, it bent back at an impossible angle with a twig-like
crack
.

I shrieked.

Kaden grabbed the phone from my numb hand. I leveled my other arm to aim the wrist crossbow, and he dropped the phone to grip my forearm. I pulled the trigger. Kaden crushed the bow in his hand before the arrow could launch and ripped the entire mechanism, arrow and all, from my arm. He tossed it behind him. I stared at it, next to where my phone had landed only two arm lengths away, but it might as well have been miles.

Kaden didn't evaporate back into the shadows this time. The stench of burning flesh steamed between us, and I realized the silver glove still covering my left hand was touching his chest. He should have leapt back from the burn of silver—my hand was scorched from its heat—but his gaze honed unwaveringly on my bleeding lower lip. His violet eyes widened and turned to lust. I eased back slightly, but Kaden leaned closer. He flicked his tongue over my bottom lip to lap the blood that had beaded there—his saliva burned—and just as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared once again back into the surrounding darkness.

I lay on my back and bit my lip, trying not to scream. I screamed anyway. I couldn't move my hand. I couldn't move my leg. I couldn't do anything except scream and choke on the blood from my lip, and in that moment, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Walker had been right about vampires. They had the ability to create a moment in which you'd agree to the transformation. Kaden was cutting me down, one bone at a time, while he waited for his real fight, the fight he was eager for with Dominic, but I would agree to just about anything to stop the pain.

“Help me,” I whispered.

Nothing but the distant bustle of car horns, engines, and curses answered my plea, and I knew with grave, dismal certainty that no one would come. Dominic wouldn't come because he was waiting for Kaden to drink, and Walker wouldn't come because he was waiting for Dominic to return with me to the coven. I was going to die here tonight, alone and broken and forsaken.

A sob broke through my gasping screams, and blood from my lip spattered on the pavement in front of me. Movement shifted in the darkness, and I quieted, bracing myself for another strike from Kaden. Moments turned into minutes. I fought a sweep of unconsciousness as the darkness in my mind ebbed and flowed and begged for me to escape, but Kaden didn't strike. I'd seen his movement in the shadows ahead, but he didn't attack again.

Shivering and waiting and dipping in and out of consciousness, I lost some of the urgency I'd felt in a haze of pain. Dominic was watching all of this unfold. He was letting me struggle and scream. He was letting Kaden torture me. Turning my head slightly, I tried to see if Kaden was still watching me, too, and I choked on the blood that had pooled in my mouth. Not all of it was from my lip.

I gagged and spat out the blood, adding to the fan of blood already formed around me. That was when I noticed Kaden's movement again, a nearly invisible, frustrated pace. Sudden realization hit: my blood was tempting him. Knowing that this was a trap and knowing that Dominic was using my blood as bait, Kaden was deliberately breaking my bones, so my injuries, although debilitating, wouldn't bleed. Even just the spatter from my lip was distracting; he probably couldn't trust himself to enjoy more than a lick. If I was going to gain any sort of leverage, I needed to bleed, and I needed to bleed a lot.

The retractable stake was still tucked into my jacket pocket. I struggled to ease my body off the ground to access it, but scorching, bone-deep pain tore through my knee when I moved. After a few failed, gentle attempts, I screwed my eyes shut against any remaining sanity and plunged my hand into my pocket in a quick, tearing snatch.

I held the retractable stake in my palm, trembling and sweating and breathless. I waited a moment for the pain to wane, but if anything, the pain intensified. It focused with time, like sledgehammers pounding over my body, so I focused my mind on something else. The pen was smooth under my trembling fingertips and warmed from the body heat inside my pocket. Before I could reconsider, and before Kaden could realize my intent, I pounded on the pen's click top. The five-inch wooden stake sprang out, and I jammed its sharpened point into my forearm.

Kaden suddenly, seemingly magically, materialized over me. He sandwiched his hands roughly over mine to hold the stake in place when I would have torn it out, its thick point still embedded in my arm. A little blood welled around the stake, but nothing substantial. The pen itself kept the blood from pouring out, like a plug holding back a geyser, but with Kaden bearing down over me, I couldn't tear it from my arm.

Kaden leaned closer, and his weight drove the stake even deeper.

I groaned.

“So intelligent,” he hissed. His breath was so close to my face that I could actually feel the movement of his breath as he inhaled my scent. “And so frightened, but you can survive tonight. You can survive with me.”

“I'll pass,” I gritted through my clenched teeth, stubborn to the end, even as my mind shrieked at me to take his offer.

Kaden's expression tightened. He leaned even closer, and the stake wedged another millimeter deeper. My body jerked involuntarily from the pain. The movement scraped my broken leg over the pavement, and I choked on a scream. Darkness pulsed at the edges of my vision.

“You've chosen a maker who won't survive the month. He won't be present to protect you through the transformation or induct you into the coven. He won't be alive to help you hunt.” A low growl vibrated from his chest, rattling into the warm caramel of his voice. “You've chosen a present course that doesn't have a future in this city. Let me be your future, Cassidy. If you want to survive, you must choose me.”

“I don't have to choose anything,” I spat.

His cool, smooth cheek rubbed against mine, like he was scent-marking me again. I tried to move my hand, to ward him off or turn my face away, but I couldn't move. I couldn't even feel my body or focus beyond the tiny pinpoint of clarity left in my vision. He breathed in my scent, and when our eyes met, I recognized the glint in his gaze. He was turned on, but not by my body or wit. He was turned on by my agony.

I shuddered. “No one is turning me,” I insisted. “Ever.”

Kaden laughed. “That's where you're wrong. Once Dominic is dead, whether he's unable to complete your transformation or chooses not to, I certainly will.”

I sneered. “You certainly will not.”

“Who will stop me? You?” He laughed again. His lips caressed the shell of my ear as he spoke. “My dear, dear Cassidy DiRocco, you can't stop me from taking anything I want from you. And I want everything.” He hissed that last sentence, and goose bumps broke out over my neck and down my spine from the cold rush of his breath.

Without warning, his hand snatched mine and lifted it into the air. His fingers caressed over my fingers. I couldn't stop shaking.

“Beautiful fingers,” Kaden whispered smoothly. As if we were lovers on a picnic, he kissed each fingertip, starting with my pinkie. He took his time, nipping gently at the skin and enjoying long, smooth licks over each pad until he reached my broken, twisted thumb.

I shook my head frantically.

He looked up, so although he was talking to me, the words were obviously meant for someone else. “A shame if they all looked like this before you finally faced me. Now or nine more fingers from now, we'll have the same battle.” Kaden paused as if waiting for a response. When nothing but the chilled night air and distant buzz of city life answered him, Kaden looked down at me again. He shook his head. “You're right. You don't have to choose. He's left you to me.”

Kaden gripped my index finger tightly between two of his fingers, poised to snap.