“There’s something else you don’t know.” Dominic reached for my knee again, his thumb stroking gently, and I knew that whatever he was about to say would cut deeper than anything else he’d told me so far.
“What more could there possibly be?” I asked, warily.
“Jillian is in power, Cassidy. What has she always wanted? What was her ultimate goal?”
I blinked. “To take control of the coven and rise to Master vampire of New York City.”
Dominic shook his head. “No, that was just the means necessary to get what she really wanted. Had I given her what she wanted when I was Master, she never would have betrayed me.”
I gaped as realization dawned. “She was sick of living in secrecy. She wanted humans to know about the existence of vampires.”
Dominic nodded deeply. “It’s why the Day Reapers attacked, but Jillian was victorious. The Day Reapers are no longer in power to enforce our most sacred law, and Jillian has revealed our existence, and that of the Damned, to the world.”
“And I’m sure she didn’t hold a press conference for her big reveal,” I said testily.
Dominic snorted. “Press conference or no, there were cameras and the footage went viral. The hunt, the blood, the destruction and massacre—all of it just a click, a like, and a share away.”
“What do you know about social media?”
“I know that the undeniable evidence you sought to prove that vampires existed beyond a shadow of a doubt wasn’t found in a laboratory. The public saw the Damned and their slaughter online, and that was all they needed in order to believe.”
“Jesus,” I whispered. “What the hell is Jillian’s endgame in all this?” I raised my hand against Dominic’s opening mouth. “I know, I know; she wanted freedom from your secret existence, but what about afterward? What’s the point of freedom if we’re living in the middle of World War III?”
Dominic shook his head sadly. “I am no longer in a position to know her mind. Even when I thought I did, I obviously didn’t know her well enough.”
I grunted my agreement. “Fine. It doesn’t signify anyway; we need to focus on our endgame. Does the government realize this is homegrown or are they pointing the finger at terrorists?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s the press coverage? Are they planning a counterattack? Will they be sending in troops or just bomb the problem away?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do Greta and Rowens have to say?” I asked. “Surely they know.”
Dominic just stared at me.
“You haven’t talked to Greta and Rowens,” I said, deadpan.
“I couldn’t leave you.”
I flung my arm out at our ragtag little coven. “What about them?” I turned to face Ronnie, Keagan, Jeremy, Logan, and Theresa, eyeing them each in turn, but no one could meet my eyes, not even Keagan. “Not one of you could leave me? We have friends on the inside, people who might know what we’re up against, and you didn’t ask? The United States’ military might be minutes away from nuking this entire island, and all you can say is I don’t know?”
Silence.
Pain sliced through my palms, and I realized that I’d fisted my hands. I was impaling myself on my talons again. Shit.
Dominic’s hand was suddenly heavy on my shoulder, but the movement of his thumb against my neck was a feather’s flutter. “Greta and Rowens are your friends, not theirs, and barely mine. They only tolerated me and my expertise because of you. Considering who you are now, you must consider the possibility that they may not be your friends anymore either.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t they—”
Dominic’s hand left my shoulder to cup my cheek. “You are a vampire, and vampires are not their friends.”
I shook my head, dislodging his touch. “A vampire is what I am. Who I am is Cassidy DiRocco, and not even you can change that.”
Dominic let his hand drop, but his lips curled in a lopsided grin. “Nor would I want to.”
“What about Nathan?” I asked. “In the last seven days, you must have at the very least talked to Nathan.”
Silence. Damning silence.
“Damn it, you didn’t even tell him I was okay? That I survived?”
“Your brother is still with Greta,” Dominic said, a miserable mockery of his previous smile from a moment before twisting his scarred lips. “I couldn’t talk to him without risking a confrontation with her.”
“You could have called him,” I said, and then I froze. “Could you have called him? Are cell phone towers still working?”
Dominic stared at me strangely for a moment. “The Damned have been hunting in Brooklyn for seven days, not seven years. Cell phones work. Wi-Fi works. Electricity works… well, it works in neighborhoods where the power lines are underground. The Damned did knock down a few power poles and a transformer.”
I blinked, regrouping. “Great. Then you could have called Nathan.”
Dominic hesitated for a moment, and I could tell he was hedging the truth when he said, “He didn’t answer the phone.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled. “I’ll tell him I’m alive myself when I talk to Greta.”
“I don’t know if leaving the confines of this bunker is a good idea,” Theresa interjected, her voice quiet and steady and as raspy in death as it ever was in life. She wrung her hands. “The city isn’t the same as you remember it. Nothing is.”
I nodded. “All the more reason to leave. I’ve got to see for myself what we’re facing.”
Jeremy snorted. “So you can look upon the wreckage and see how far we’ve fallen. So you can see with your own eyes how badly we failed?”
I unclenched my hands, carefully unsheathing my claws from my palms. “This isn’t about failure or blame. I need to see the city and what’s left of it for myself, so I can see how fiercely we need to fight to get it back.”
Chapter 4
Travelling from Dominic’s underground safe house near the far side of Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Kings County Hospital Center should have been a fifteen-minute taxi ride, sans traffic—but even then, twenty tops, assuming, of course, there were taxis to hail and traffic to contend with. There weren’t. Cars sat gridlocked in the streets, but they didn’t move when the lights turned green. Drivers didn’t honk their horn, scream obscenities, or flip the bird when the cars in front of them remained motionless. There weren’t any drivers. The sidewalks were deserted, too, except for the scattering of purses, pumps, and briefcases that people had left behind in their haste to run. Their lives had been more important to them than their belongings, but they hadn’t escaped with either.
Bodies littered the streets and sidewalk. Some still had their hearts intact. Some had a crater in their chest cavity where their heart had been, and some didn’t even have anything resembling a chest, just blood and the spill of internal organs. As reluctant as I’d been to choke down the additional three glasses of blood that Dominic had forced down my throat before I showered and travelled to meet with Greta, I was unaccountably grateful for his foresight and insistence. I grieved for my city and her lost lives, but that didn’t prevent me from salivating over the smell.
I remembered having a similar reaction when Jillian had leached onto my mind; I’d felt her physical reaction to the sight and smell of blood as my own. Her cravings