Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ good. The rage reminded me that despite the claws sprouting from each fingertip, despite the fact that I might look like the devil and have the strength of God, I was the same flawed person I’d always been.

      I was still me, and despite his flaws, I loved Dominic.

      I jerked my hand from his back, ripping fabric with my movement but not skin, and fell to my knees.

      Dominic somersaulted over me. He landed at my back, but I didn’t turn to face him. He knew I’d resisted the opportunity to kill him. Our battle was over, but mine had just begun.

      He fell to his knees behind me, wrapped his arms around me, holding my hands, cradling my body, and it was only then, with the steady press of his cheek against mine, that I realized by the solid stillness of his arms holding me that I was shaking.

      I burst out weeping. The sobs wracked my body and tears bathed my cheeks.

      Dominic’s arms tightened. He stroked my hands and murmured promises into my ear that I knew better than to believe, promises that no one could keep, but having him hold me, his lips moving against my ear and the familiar tone of his voice resonating like a blanket cocooned around my body, was comforting anyway. I sobbed harder at first, relieved that he was here, that I wasn’t alone, that he’d experienced this, too, and had survived and eventually thrived. Buoyed by the knowledge that I, too, could survive and eventually thrive, I calmed. My weeping slowed, the sobs wracking my body lessened, and my tears eventually dried.

      I relaxed into Dominic’s embrace—my back flush against his chest, his arms cradling my arms, our fingers entwined. His breath fluttering my hair wasn’t winded, and I noted with a detached sort of astonishment, that neither was mine. I was suddenly struck by a wary sort of certainty that my new, debatably improved physical form would continue to astonish for a very long time. I stared at our entwined fingers—his perfectly formed human hands still larger than my emaciated fingers, but not nearly longer than my elongated claws—and I pulled into myself, embarrassed that he was touching them.

      “Don’t,” he murmured, tightening his hold. “Some aspects of the transformation might take some getting used to. You’re already becoming accustomed to your heightened senses and increased strength, which is impressive. In a few days, you’ll land that somersault, I assure you. And eventually, you’ll look into a mirror and recognize yourself, but for tonight, let me be your mirror.” He raised his hand and urged my face to the side to meet his gaze. “Let me show you how beautiful you are.”

      My physical appearance wasn’t the only aspect of the transformation that shook me, but when he cupped my cheek in his palm and ducked his head, pressing his lips to mine, I kissed him back. My lips felt foreign against the long protrusions of my fangs, but his lips were soft and the texture of his scar familiar. His Christmas-pine scent enveloped us, and with my enhanced senses, I felt its chilled effervescence simultaneously heat and create goose bumps over my body. I turned in his arms, angling for more access, and a rush of blood filled my mouth.

      Dominic stiffened.

      I jerked back, startled by the blood coating my tongue, a taste that wasn’t entirely unpleasant—was, in fact, not unpleasant at all. The blood was absolutely delicious, which was also startling, not to mention disturbing. Dominic had a gash across his lower lip, and I realized that I’d cut him.

      I swallowed the blood in my haste to apologize and choked.

      Dominic covered my lips with a finger and shook his head. His thumb swiped back and forth over my cheekbone as we stared at each other, and before my very acute eyes, I watched the intricacy of Dominic’s body heal. The split sides of his lip filled with blood, and that blood pooled in the crevice of his cut, coagulated, scabbed, and flaked to reveal new, shiny pink skin. That skin darkened to a faint thread, and if he’d still been human, the healing might have stopped there, but his body healed the scar, too, until his lips bore not one sliver of evidence of my clumsy lust. What had once seemed to occur instantaneously and magically was now a simple bodily function, but I suppose that in itself was a kind of magic.

      I touched his lips, grazing my fingertips carefully over the perfection of his newly healed skin to the divots and pucker of the permanent scar gouging through the other side of his lower lip and chin, a reminder of his human lifetime and for me, a reminder of the few things we had in common. Although looking at the skeletal, talon-tipped hand touching him—the hand that I controlled but didn’t resemble anything I recognized as mine—we had much more in common now than I’d ever anticipated having.

      He touched my lips with his fingertips, mimicking my movements with the human-looking version of his hand, and I couldn’t help it. Regardless of the impossibility of this situation and the state of my hands and what I could only imagine was the state of my face, I smiled.

      “Sorry,” I murmured. Dominic’s blood had moistened the scratch in my throat, so it didn’t feel like my vocal cords were raking my esophagus with razor blades anymore. “I’m not myself this morning.”

      Dominic grinned—full and genuine and lopsided from the pull of his scar—and the warmth and affection in his expression widened my own smile. I let that warmth soak into me, filling my unfamiliar body with hope, reminding me that I could survive. That I wanted to survive.

      “No one looks or acts their best upon waking, not even you when you were human,” Dominic reminded me. “Not even me.”

      I sighed. “I will miss working on my tan, though,” I said, only half-jokingly. The feel of the sun’s warmth on my skin had become a safe haven after discovering the existence of vampires. Having become one, I supposed the necessity was moot, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t miss it.

      Dominic grunted. “Many things about you will never change despite the transformation, including your ability to enjoy the sun—and your stubbornness, it seems.”

      I raised my eyebrows. “My stubbornness won’t cure a fatal sun allergy.”

      “Look at the color of your claws,” Dominic said drily.

      Ignoring the urge to resist looking at my claws just to defy him, I looked. The skeletal appendages coming from my body were long and knobby and honestly grotesque, a monster’s hands with four-inch, lethal talons sprouting from their tips.

      And those talons were silver.

      Dominic was right, as usual, and unfortunately, so was our dear friend, High Lord Henry. I was a vampire, but I wasn’t allergic to the sun.

      I was a Day Reaper.

      Chapter 2

      The blood that Dominic raised in my direction wasn’t any more appetizing for having been poured into a wineglass. I couldn’t pretend it was anything but blood; besides its general crimson color, it didn’t resemble any red wine I’d ever enjoyed. I envisioned its sticky thickness clinging to the walls of my throat the way it clung to the sides of the glass and gagged at the thought of having to swallow it.

      I leaned away from the glass and shook my head. “Unappetizing,” I said, but the few drops of Dominic’s blood that had wet my throat had already dried; my voice was nothing but a rattling growl again.

      By the frustrated lines between Dominic’s eyes as he glared patronizingly down on me, he could understand my words just fine through the growl. “You need to drink now, here in privacy, before you come into contact with anyone. You don’t know it yet, but you’re ravenous, and once you realize it, it’ll be too late.”

      I СКАЧАТЬ