Authors: Melody Johnson
“Yeah, I got it.” Rowens was a survivor. He wasn’t going to be one of the people to disappear, and he didn’t want me disappearing on him, either. “I haven’t taken a vacation in years, and I wasn’t planning on taking one anytime soon.”
“So if I call you in the next few weeks, you’d better answer your damn phone.”
I nodded. “I will.”
“Good.” He stood. “Just one last question, DiRocco. How common are rabid bear attacks in the city? All this time off and leave of absence nonsense, it might be nice to get away, to see a friendly face.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m a friendly face?”
“You’re not bad on the eyes. Not bad at all.”
I laughed, and then I met his eyes squarely. “Rabid bear attacks are more common in the city than you’d think, but when I write my article next week on city versus country crime rates, that’s not what you’re going to read.”
Rowens inclined his head. “That’s what I thought. Take care, DiRocco.”
“You too,” I said softly.
“And take care of that brother of yours. It’s not every day that a family visit goes so awry. Nothing like a bear hunt for brotherly bonding.”
“What do you know about my brother?” My voice cracked, nothing to do with disuse this time.
Rowens nodded, indicating the bed next to mine.
I turned my head, not daring to breath, barely daring to look, but like synapses that had already fired, turning my head was an inevitability that I couldn’t fight even if I’d wanted to.
Nathan was the patient next to me.
“Oh my God,” I breathed on a harsh exhale. “Nathan.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Rowens murmured. I heard the door click shut behind him, but I didn’t turn to look or bid him goodbye. I couldn’t look away from my brother’s beautiful face.
His skin was soft and tan and glowing. The scratches that had reflected like metallic scrapes against his scales were now thin, scabbed paper cuts, crisscrossing his cheeks and nose and chin. His lips were pink and plump. His hair, though still matted and greasy, was now framed by rounded ears and thick raven eyebrows. No protruding brow. No shark-pointed teeth crowding his mouth. The sun was streaming through the cracked window panes, casting rows of horizontal light over his bed, arms, and face, that beautiful face that I could recognize as Nathan.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I felt my throat constrict even as I tried to breathe calmly and slow my heart, but the telling beep from the monitor betrayed my efforts. Remaining calm was impossible.
Nathan was my brother again.
I struggled upright and out of bed, careful not to jar the IV or machines or other various clamps and stickies they had monitoring my body. I didn’t want anyone rushing into the room because they thought I was coding.
The few steps to the side of his bed were dizzying, but seeing wasn’t believing. I sat on the edge of Nathan’s bed and cupped his face in my hands. I couldn’t look away. He was here, and he was himself, and more than any relief I could have felt at having found myself alive, I felt the relief of guilt and grief and heartache that I’d carried for three long weeks suddenly shower over my body, like a burst dam, and I broke along with it.
I doubled over, rested my forehead against his chest, and sobbed.
“Cassidy?”
My cries choked in the back of my throat, and I froze. I sniffed, wiped my face on the blankets, and slowly, disbelievingly, I peeked up at his face.
Nathan’s aqua-colored eyes, the very reflection of my own, stared back at me. We held each other’s gaze, lost in the wonder that he was here, that we were finally together, and that the feelings of joy and grateful relief that everything was right in the world was our reality. After living a nightmare for so long, I didn’t dare move or breath or speak, fearing that the moment would shatter.
“Nathan,” I finally whispered. “I don’t know what you remember. Or the last thing you might—”
“Everything. I can still smell their fear, and I still remember my hunger, like unslakable flames, fueling my hunt. I can still taste their—” He stopped, unable to continue, and he turned his head from me. “I can still taste you.”
And there it was, our reality in shards and splinters around us. Just when we thought to find our footing, reality embeds swift and deep in tender places where we never would have thought to take care with our step.
“It’s all right. It’s over. You’re back now, and it’s all over,” I murmured.
I wrapped my arms around him, needing to feel the give and warmth of his skin to comfort myself, but the arms he wrapped around me trembled. They clutched me to him, digging his hands into my back and crushing the breath from my lungs as he struggled to find an anchor in the nightmare he was just waking into. It wasn’t over. But for the moment, with Nathan in my arms and his arms, not talons, holding me back, I could accept that most everything—everything I could want and stand to live without—was indeed all right.
* * * *
With the possible exception of doing your own taxes, recovering from injury is the most physically and mentally draining achievement. I’ve done it—both the taxes and the recovery—and no matter how many times I swear it’s the last, the second, third, and forth time prove me wrong over and over again.
According to my chart, I had good reason to feel fatigued. Nathan and I were discovered collapsed and unconscious at the emergency room entrance. Apparently, I’d driven us there. Walker’s truck was found in the parking garage, and our human-shaped bloodstains were soaked into the fabric. Nathan suffered minor lacerations and blood loss, but otherwise, the bear hadn’t mauled him as much as it had me.
I’d suffered from severe blood loss, internal bleeding, irregular heart palpitations, and severe sunburn. My nurses said I’d been invited to observe and report on the bear hunt as thanks for my tip to the police about Colin. The hunt had gone well but not without a few injuries to Rowens, my brother, and myself. No one commented on the fact that Rowens had been admitted to the hospital the day before, nor that with the exception of my torn wrist, none of my injuries were consistent with a bear attack. I suppose anyone who might have questioned those inconsistencies were already on permanent vacation like Rowens had warned.
Although I was recovering remarkably well for someone who had flirted with death, my doctor decided to keep me overnight. I’d developed a slight fever after receiving a blood transfusion, and until that fever settled, he didn’t recommend discharging me. Since the next bus to New York City didn’t leave until tomorrow evening anyway, I decided to comply with doctor’s orders for once.
Sunset came and went, blanketing my room and the entire hospital in a silent, beep-filled hush. Despite my exhaustion, I rested with one eye open all night, waiting. I was on the fifth floor. My window was closed and locked, but Dominic had proven himself adept at entering locked fifth-story windows.
I waited and continued waiting until the first rays of dawn broke the horizon and flooded through my window, bathing the room with light. Nathan didn’t comment on our undisturbed night—he had his own demons to fight—and I certainly didn’t mention it, but Dominic’s absence left an unexpected hollow inside me. I’d expected him to visit. I’d anticipated and braced myself for him—every gust of wind against the windowpane, every floorboard creak, every long stride down the hall—and until last night, he’d never been one to disappoint.
I ate a toasted bagel with cream cheese and rubbery eggs for breakfast, dragged my IV into the bathroom with me before the nurse returned to take my temperature, and laid on my back in bed, waiting for lunch. Otherwise, Nathan and I sat in uncomfortable, tension-filled silence for the majority of the day. Our bus departed at nine o’clock, but until then, there was too much to say and feel and do between us to express it all at once, and too many people to overhear what we might say. At least, that’s what I told myself as my thoughts strayed all day to Dominic.
The last I’d seen him, he’d been a ball of flames. I’d assumed that if I’d survived, he’d obviously survived, but what if he hadn’t? He’d created bonds between us with our shared promises, but what if when the moment came, he couldn’t bring himself to use them to keep himself alive if it meant killing me?
Nathan was being discharged just in time to make our evening bus into the city, and God help anyone who said otherwise, so was I. Despite a persistent, mild fever, I felt fine, and I was not staying out of the city for one moment longer than necessary. I’d had my fill of trees and cows and cavern covens, and if one more nurse referred to me as
ma’am
, I was going to physically maim someone.
By eight o’clock, I was sink-showered, dressed, and if not presentable, at least decent for public display. The few things I had here at the hospital—my phone, recorder, and inexplicably, Walker’s truck keys—had been enough to corroborate my story as a bear-attack victim; I cringed at the mounting lies, but I suppose I should have felt grateful that Bex had chosen bear attack over serial murderer. Before I left for good, however, I’d need to swing by Walker’s house to pick up my luggage. My stomach cramped, thinking about that potential confrontation.
Nathan left the room to bring the truck around front for me. I’d insisted that bringing the truck to the entrance was unnecessary, that despite a mild fever and the usual grind of my hip, I was perfectly capable of walking an extra seventy feet to the parking garage. Nathan had been adamant, and if there was one person as stubbornly single-minded as I was, it was my brother. I didn’t like having him out of my sight. Even in the short interims of using the bathroom, washing, and dressing, I felt on edge having walls between us, but I was getting the impression that the very opposite was true for Nathan.
The scent of Christmas filled the room, seemingly more prominent than in the city, where pine is scarcer, but nonetheless unmistakable even here. I didn’t need to turn around to know who was behind me.
“I was wondering if you would visit. You did last time,” I said, continuing to make and smooth the covers on the bed. The nurses would likely strip and change the sheets anyway, but I needed to do something to hide how my heart tripped and stuttered at the mere smell of his presence. Not that I could physically hide anything from him, anyway. If he hadn’t already heard it, he undoubtedly smelled it on me. I was relieved and grateful to see him.
“I was wondering if I’d ever catch you alone,” Dominic said, his voice deep and somehow cautious. “Congratulations on transforming Nathan. I couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Thank you,” I laughed, but the sound was harsh and grating. “It’s strange now that he’s himself again. When he’s out of my sight, I’m worried he’ll turn back.” I knew how unreasonable that sounded, but I couldn’t help how I felt. “After having just found him, I’m terrified of losing him again.”
“I know the feeling,” Dominic murmured.
The bed was smooth and crisp and completely wrinkle-free. If I smoothed it out any further, I’d create wrinkles. I sighed deeply, gathered my fortitude, and turned to face him.
Dominic stood against the far wall next to the now open window, his shoulder leaning against the windowpane, his legs crossed at the ankles. He’d recently fed. His skin glowed in a warm, healthy complexion over his sculpted face, his scar a slightly less prominent shade of pink against the radiance of his skin. He wore navy dress pants, brown wingtip shoes, and a brown and navy checked button down tucked into a brown belt. I’d never seen him in a patterned shirt. He still looked posh and very New York City. If he thought the checkered shirt would help him blend with the country folk, he was seriously mistaken.
I frowned at him, a sudden realization wrinkling my thoughts. I hadn’t invited him in.
Dominic looked down at himself, mistaking my frown for disapproval. “Solids are typically my mainstay, but I thought you might appreciate some variety. Compared to our last encounter, I think there’s little risk of you ruining this shirt like you did the last.”
I laughed. “Me?
I
ruined your shirt?”
“That’s how I remember it, yes,” Dominic said, but his lips smirked in that crooked, self-deprecating half-smile.
I crossed my arms. “I don’t suppose being impaled through the heart or engulfed by flames contributed to the destruction of said shirt.”
“Nonsense,” he said, truly smiling now. “You’d ruined that shirt long before I caught fire.”
I nodded, wanting to remain apprehensive in his presence, but after everything we survived, my caution seemed false. He was still dangerous. He was still a creature I couldn’t implicitly trust, a creature who schemed and bent me to his will on command, but unfortunately for my sanity, he wasn’t the monster I’d labeled him. He was just as complexly good and evil, selfless and selfish, and open and guarded as everyone else. I couldn’t categorize him on a high shelf and ignore his actions because of who or what he was; besides being a vampire, he was a man who had helped me save my brother at the risk and expense of his own safety and the safety of his coven, the very coven he feared losing. I wouldn’t forget that sacrifice.
“The shooter was Walker,” I said, and even after I’d hardened my heart against him, or at least I thought I had, the wounds, still so fresh and raw, bled inside. I had to swallow before I could continue. “He saw me there, dying right in front of his eyes, and he walked away.” I shook my head. “He left me to die.”
“I’m truly sorry, Cassidy. I know how much Ian Walker meant to you, as a man and as a fellow night blood,” Dominic said, and God help me, he sounded sincere. “I wish I could ease your suffering. I’d kill him if I thought that would make you happy, but even now, I know that would only worsen the situation. Unlike Ian, I know when to hold my fire.”
I looked up sharply at the words “kill him.” Dominic’s smirk was contagious. “Not funny,” I murmured.
“On the contrary. I find myself hilarious.”
I sighed deeply. “And I’m glad you’re all right,” I whispered, finally voicing the fear that had burdened me all day.
Dominic inclined his head. “I know.”