Day Reaper
Also by Melody Johnson
Eternal Reign
Sweet Last Drop
The City Beneath
Day Reaper
A Night Blood Novel
Melody Johnson
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Copyright © 2018 by Melody Johnson
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Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: April 2018
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-427-0
eISBN-10: 1-60183-427-6
First Print Edition: April 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-428-7
ISBN-10: 1-60183-428-4
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
I’ve been writing Cassidy DiRocco and Dominic Lysander’s story for over five years. They’ve become an integral part of my life, and it’s with a bittersweet excitement that I’ve reached the fourth and final installment in the Night Blood series. Day Reaper is especially dear to me as it’s my first series finale, and as I write Cassidy and Dominic’s last pages, I’m reminded that every journey’s end is really just a new beginning.
Acknowledging everyone who impacted my life and my writing during this five year journey would be impossible, but I’d like to give a special thank you to the people who put their time, effort, and talent into my work and whose generous contributions helped shape my story, the one I was writing as well as the one I was living:
My fellow members of First Coast Romance Writers, for sharing your experience, encouragement, advice, and enthusiasm. Our guest speakers are invaluable, but they are nothing compared to the bond of our community, which I appreciate more deeply than words can describe.
Nicole Klungle and Margaret Johnston, for reading it rough and giving it to me straight. Your feedback was, as always, on point and priceless.
Carl Drake, for your creativity and continued friendship. Your fabulous bookmark and postcard designs are only rivaled in my affections by your Netflix account.
Nancy and Leonard Johnson, for your unwavering support, constant love, and the uncountable hours you’ve listened to me blab on the phone about everything and nothing.
Derek Bradley, for filling my heart with laughter and love.
Prologue
Transform me into a vampire.
The words had just left my lips, more shape than sound since I still couldn’t speak without vocal cords, and Dominic Lysander, Master vampire of New York City—who had supposedly seen all, knew all, and wasn’t impressed by any of it in his four hundred and seventy-seven-year-long-life—stared at me like I was an alien, like I was an otherworldly creature he’d always known probably existed, but was wholly unprepared to confront. I knew that horror-filled, struck-dumb look all too well; I’d been wearing it pretty consistently over the past several weeks, ever since Dominic had shoved me against the brick exterior of my apartment building and commanded me to look into his eyes, and my body had unwillingly obeyed. I knew that sometimes events were so devastating, both physically and mentally, that all you could do was stare blankly at the destruction and hope to God you didn’t lose your shit.
But in all his four hundred and seventy-seven years, this was not the time nor the place to lose his shit.
Use my necklace, I mouthed, both encouraging him and reminding him not to use the blood in his veins, weakened by the Leveling. I would have ripped the pendant from my necklace and raised the precious drops of his formerly powerful blood to my lips myself, but I’d lost the use of my arms. My body was numb, my awareness drifting, my vision a starburst blanket of blackness covering my face, and still, Dominic just stared.
What are you waiting for? I snapped, as much as I could snap under the circumstances.
“Another solution to present itself,” he finally admitted, looking over my injuries, the movement of his eyes darting and frantic.
I raised my eyebrows, or at least, I tried to. Cold feet?
Dominic let loose a long-suffering sigh. Some of the horror left his expression, but not all of it, and what little did leave was replaced by weary resignation. I didn’t understand his reaction—I didn’t understand him and maybe never really would, not as a human anyway. After weeks of attempting to seduce me, not only into his bed but into his coven, this should be his golden, shining moment, the pot of gold at the end of this violent, blood-soaked rainbow, but by the sick, nearly choked expression on his face, instead of bathing in his good fortune, he was drowning in it.
“The temperature of my feet has little to do with this decision,” he said blandly.
I opened my mouth to correct his misunderstanding, to explain that “cold feet” was just an expression, not a literal physical discomfort, when I noticed the tilt to the scarred half of his lips. He was teasing. I was exsanguinating in an alley between East Fifty-Seventh Street and 432 Park Avenue, my vocal cords in shreds, breathing more blood than air into my lungs, and fading fast. And he was teasing.
I laughed and blood sprayed like a geyser from my esophagus.
Dominic choked, coughing up physical blood from his metaphysical injuries. My injuries.
The blanket over my vision thickened, filling the gaps between starbursts. I didn’t have time to doubt my decision and consider why Dominic would hesitate—which wasn’t so much a decision as it was a last resort, and perhaps therein lay Dominic’s hesitation. I didn’t have time to convince him that my decision was more choice than he’d been given for his transformation, and if my decision was more about living than it was about a life with him, he’d have to suck up his pride and be grateful I was making this choice at all: the right choice, according to him, under different circumstances. I didn’t even have time to catch my breath.
One moment, blood was spraying from my torn throat, soaking Dominic’s shirt front and mixing with his own blood spray, and the next, I was opening my eyes without even having realized I’d ever closed them.
I wasn’t in the gore-spattered alley anymore. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I wasn’t on the corner of Fifty-Seventh and Park Avenue—I wasn’t even outside—and my body