Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ the best deal I’d probably get from him without physically fighting him for the mirror.

      That thought actually gave me pause. I could physically fight him for the mirror and potentially win. The option to fight was no longer a paltry option, but one open for serious consideration. With my newfound strength and enhanced senses, I didn’t have to just roll over and compromise. I could take what I really wanted by force.

      I stared at Dominic’s scarred, nearly deformed lip. The physical wound I’d inflicted by accident only a few minutes ago was completely healed, but I could still recall the shock and choking need to apologize. That wound had been an accident. Was I willing to battle him, to slice him open on purpose? Over a mirror?

      I relented and drank half the blood, holding my breath against its tepid, clinging texture. It wasn’t unpalatable, but like stale bread compared to a fresh loaf, lukewarm blood from the glass was unpleasant at best.

      No sooner had the wineglass left my lips than Dominic held the mirror between us. I nearly spat the blood out of my mouth in shock—the image in the mirror was the most frightening, horrific creature I’d ever seen. The creature swallowed something, something unpleasant by the expression of disgust wrinkling its grotesque face—as I choked down the remaining swallow of blood in my mouth. I watched it swallow as I swallowed. It shook its head in disgust as I shook my head, and I realized belatedly, even knowing I was looking in a mirror, that the creature was, in fact, my own reflection.

      I gasped as the creature gasped, its shark-like, solid blue eyes widening. Its fang-filled mouth gaped, and its long ears elongated to sharp points. I stared at myself and the stranger that was my reflection stared back with equal revulsion.

      I’d anticipated the eyes and fangs. I’d even expected the ears and the emaciated sallowness of having a day form—I’d seen enough of Dominic in every form to know exactly what to expect from my new body—but I hadn’t considered the fact that newly transformed vampires didn’t drink while they transformed. I hadn’t received nourishment in an entire week; if I were human, I’d be dead, but I wasn’t human anymore. I was a vampire, so I only looked like death.

      My skin was gray and shriveled like spandex around my skull, highlighting the sunken corners of my eye sockets, the divots of my temples, and the sharp cut of my jaw. My cheekbones were painfully prominent, my skin so tight around them they might actually split from the tension, made only more painful-looking by the scooped hollows of my cheeks beneath them. How could Dominic even look at me, let alone touch me, hold me, and comfort me? He’d stroked the prominence of that emaciated cheek and looked at me with warmth and affection as if I was more than an animate, skin-wrapped skeleton. He’d kissed me, and looking at the thin, shriveled skin around my fangs, it wasn’t any wonder my fangs had sliced into Dominic’s lips. I didn’t have lips to kiss. I didn’t have a complexion. I didn’t have anything that would resemble a living creature, except the fact that I walked and talked and growled. I barely had any hair, but one wrong move—a sneeze, a breeze, a blink—and I wouldn’t have that either.

      Even as I stared at a stranger, I could see the blood’s effect on my appearance. My complexion did pinken slightly from just the half-glass I’d already swallowed. My skin smoothed the edges and divots of my scalp, my lips darkened and plumped, my hair thickened, and my ears and talons retracted slightly. The blood didn’t make much of a difference to my overall reflection, but considering I hadn’t swallowed much, the immediate and visible improvements to my appearance was riveting. I still looked like death but more newly dead instead of years of being six feet under.

      “Your eyes will change in sunlight,” Dominic said softly. “Like the other Day Reapers, you will have irises and sclera even in your day form. You are not considered fully transformed until your first bath in sunlight.”

      “You kissed this,” I said, touching the thin, cracked skin of my barely-there lips.

      “I tried,” Dominic murmured coldly.

      I snapped upright, not realizing I’d hunched in on myself, but when my gaze met his, I narrowed my eyes. His eyes were anything but cold. His eyes were blazing and barely restrained.

      “You promised. Every last drop,” he reminded me.

      The anticipation in his eyes crackled like a wood-burning hearth. Watching me drink blood obviously pleased him. The last time I’d seen that focused anticipation in his expression I hadn’t been drinking blood, and seeing that expression now stoked an answering blaze in me.

      Even if I hadn’t promised, even if he wasn’t looking at me like I was something he intended to devour, I would have drunk the blood anyway. This wasn’t a day form, the true face of a vampire before its evening meal. This was Ronnie starving herself for fear of killing someone. This was Jillian serving a life sentence in a silver prison in the Underneath. This was the face of death, not my face, not even as a vampire.

      I didn’t tell Dominic he was right. He knew it, and if I acknowledged every time he was right, his head wouldn’t physically fit through a threshold, permission or not. Besides, my willing consumption of the rest of the blood, every last drop, was acknowledgment enough.

      Dominic took the glass from me when I’d finished, set it on the bedside table, and slanted his mouth over mine. My fangs didn’t slice into his lip this time—I had lips again!—but I only had that one moment of clarity to revel in my improved appearance before the insistence and distraction of Dominic’s tongue stole my lucid mind. I became the taste of cinnamon, the scrape of his calluses down my stomach, and the smell of pine and spice of Christmas and chai. The bite of his insistent desire against my thigh as his lips left my lips and kissed down the side of my neck blazed a trail of goose bumps lower and lower, until my thigh felt a different bite followed by the accompanying heat of his breath, the pressure of his tongue, and I—

      Someone took a jackhammer to my temple.

      I flinched away from Dominic’s lips. Pain split through my skull, but when I touched my fingers to my head, the skin was smooth and dry. My brain wasn’t bleeding from a hemorrhaging head wound, no matter the insistent pounding that claimed otherwise.

      Dominic glared at the door over my shoulder, and I realized that the sudden, vicious physical pain inside my head wasn’t a physical injury but an auditory stimulant manifesting as one. Someone was knocking on the door, and the rap of knuckles on wood interrupting our kiss felt like someone driving rusted nails into my skull with a power tool.

      Jesus Christ.

      “Lysander? Cassidy? Are you okay in there?” Ronnie asked, her hesitant, little-girl voice like a cheese grater scraping my eyeballs.

      The bird in the adjacent room squawked again, one shrill, impatient bleat.

      I pressed my palms forcefully over my eyes. Every sound had a feeling and every feeling had a smell and every smell had a taste, and the strange combinations of everything I could sense was suddenly unbearable. She knocked again, and even knowing the jackhammer against my temple was just the feeling of a knock, I winced anyway.

      I couldn’t breathe.

      I reminded myself that I didn’t need to breathe to live, but that didn’t loosen the vise suddenly constricting my chest again.

      I felt Dominic lift his head from my thigh. Otherwise, his hands and body didn’t move. They nearly vibrated in their complete stillness, and I squirmed uncomfortably under him.

      My movement seemed to penetrate his awareness, but when he spoke, his words were clearly for Ronnie.

      “Now СКАЧАТЬ