Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ grinned cheekily. “It’s his name.”

      “He prefers being addressed by his full name and title, and you know it.”

      “He’s not here to care how I address him, now, is he?”

      Dominic glared at me, but even his stern expression couldn’t hide the rush of Christmas pine that suddenly filled the room.

      I shook my head, taken aback. “You’re scared.”

      “No, I’m terrified. And if you fully understood our predicament, you would be too. The Day Reapers are the Chancellor’s coven, and I stole his right as Master of that coven to transform you. Do you think he’ll allow such a slight to go unpunished?”

      “That’s more than just a ‘slight,’” Rafe said on a snort. “You broke Council law, and a crime of that magnitude—” he finished his sentence on a high whistle.

      “What?” Neil asked, wringing his hands. “A crime of that magnitude what?”

      Dominic met Neil’s worried eyes with a steady, uncompromising gaze. “A crime of that magnitude is punishable by death.”

      “So it’s true,” Ronnie breathed, her words more air than voice. “Cassidy is a Day Reaper?”

      Keagan’s bird let loose a loud bleat.

      “Of course it’s true,” Jeremy snapped. “Can’t you see the color of her talons?”

      “We’ll have to paint them. I have polish,” Ronnie said, sounding excited to help. She gasped suddenly, and I could hear the cogs of her mind fit some unfathomable piece into the puzzle. Literally, I heard it. “Is that why Bex paints hers?”

      Keagan’s bird let loose a loud string of bleats.

      “What did I say?” Ronnie asked, her voice a high whine.

      The bird bleated louder.

      I ignored Ronnie and the telltale bleat of Keagan’s bird in favor of facing Dominic. “Maybe if I avoid sunlight and paint my nails, the Chancellor won’t discover the truth,” I suggested.

      “You will hide your existence as a Day Reaper from one of the greatest, most powerful entities of this world with nail polish?” Dominic leveled me with a look. “Like how Bex hid her true self? Are you willing to build an underground fortress and avoid sunlight for millennia?”

      “It worked very well for Bex,” Keagan murmured. “Until Cassidy came along.”

      Dominic snorted. “It worked so well she lost her Second, her night blood, and her coven.”

      “She didn’t lose her coven. She left it,” Ronnie said, her voice very small. “She left us.”

      For once, Keagan’s bird remained silent.

      “Can we focus? I’m seven days behind here and not getting any younger,” I said, attempting to lighten the mood.

      “Technically, neither are you getting any older,” Keagan said, grinning. He’d always understood my dark humor—hence our friendship despite the age difference.

      “Jokes,” Logan whispered to Theresa, as if with our heightened senses we couldn’t hear him. “Two of his brothers are dead, one is being raised by the man hunting us, we are vampires, the life I built for him is being trod underfoot like fucking crumbs, and he’s making jokes.”

      Some kind of sound expelled from Keagan, but it wasn’t a bird this time. Maybe the sound of a bird being strangled.

      “You don’t need nail polish,” Jeremy said, interrupting my eavesdropping. “Locked away as they are, the Day Reapers aren’t our biggest problem at the moment.”

      I blinked. “Locked away? What are you talking about?”

      “Maybe we should all sit for this conversation,” Dominic suggested. His hand was suddenly at my waist, leading me to the nearest couch before I’d even conceded to sitting. I pulled away from Dominic just to be obstinate and sat of my own volition next to Keagan and across a coffee table from Jeremy and Ronnie. Rafe and Neil shifted to flank Dominic.

      “Happy? I’m sitting.” I said, primly. “Now, start talking.”

      Dominic nodded. “We needed a safe haven, somewhere that Jillian, the Damned, and daylight couldn’t touch you. I briefly considered your apartment, but I needed to remain at your side for the transformation, and your apartment was designed beautifully to keep vampires out, not safeguard them once inside. So I brought you and everyone here,” he said, waving a hand to encompass our little dysfunctional family, “to wait out the remaining hours of the Leveling. Jillian had amassed too much of my power and strength for me to fight her and win, and combined with her army of Damned, the threat of Day Reapers, and your vulnerability as you transformed, I had no choice. My one advantage was that Jillian thought that killing you had killed me. Once the Leveling passed, I anticipated regaining my abilities and power as Master vampire of New York City, and Jillian would realize too late that I still lived.”

      “But you didn’t regain your abilities and power?” I asked.

      “No, I did. I regained all my strength, power, and abilities just like I thought I would.”

      “But?” I pressed.

      Dominic’s expression hardened. “But I didn’t regain my coven.”

      I frowned. “You regained your abilities and power, but you’re no longer Master?”

      “I regained the abilities and power of a Master, but not of New York City,” he specified.

      “I don’t understand. You lived. She lost, so just march over there and take back what’s yours. She doesn’t have the abilities and powers of a Master anymore. You do, so what’s stopping you?”

      “An army of the Damned and a coven of vampires who no longer want me as their Master.”

      I shook my head. “You don’t know that. They could be missing you. They could feel held hostage by Jillian and the Damned. They—”

      “They opened their hearts to her,” Dominic said, and the words scraped from his throat, each syllable taking its own slice. “It’s why I can’t feel their presence like the ebb and crash of an ocean tide around me, pulling me in multiple and often conflicting directions, sometimes buoying me up and just as often dragging me under, but always moving, ever changing, and constant. I am not linked to them anymore, not like I once was as their Master. And the few of us,” he said, gesturing at everyone in the room, “are no match against them.”

      I bit my lip, the synapses in my brain firing, dismissing, and generating new thoughts faster than I’d ever imagined possible. “We’re no match against them,” I agreed after a moment, “but we’re not alone. We have Greta and her police force, Meredith, Dr. Chunn, and Rowens. We have more allies than just ‘the few of us.’”

      “They’re human and nothing but a liability.”

      “In a fight, sure, they’re a liability. So was I, yet you kept me around. Just because СКАЧАТЬ