As inconvenient as not having public transportation might have been, walking through the unmoving traffic and around bodies and debris wasn’t really what made an hour walk stretch into three. Had I left by day, I could have traveled much faster under the protection of the sun where not even Jillian and her army of the Damned could touch me, but that would have meant not only facing my final transformation into a Day Reaper, which I wasn’t wholly ready to confront—I was just barely holding it together as a regular vampire—but also traveling alone, which was equally unacceptable. If I barely recognized my new self, how could I expect anyone else to see the creature I’d become and accept it? I wasn’t ready to confront Greta and Meredith and Rowens and Nathan as a vampire on my best day; although this was decidedly not that day, I suspected that that day wouldn’t dawn anytime soon, and if the state of the city was any indication, we didn’t have the luxury to wait.
With that logic in mind, we’d only waited until the sun had set before leaving the safe house, and even then, we’d slunk shadow to shadow, human-slow to avoid detection. Jillian hadn’t attacked Dominic’s safe house, perhaps because the rooms were well hidden, but maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t found us because she wasn’t looking. After slitting my throat and gaining the coven’s favor, she might think us well and truly dead, and far be it for us to correct her. So instead of tapping into my new abilities and strength, the only vampire super-skills I employed throughout our three-hour, ten-block nocturnal journey downtown were patience and stealth, which in and of themselves really were super-skills. What I’d thought was Dominic’s ability to materialize from the shadows was simply the ability to move really fast from shadow to shadow and remain stone-still within their concealing darkness. Such an ability didn’t seem particularly impressive, not compared to magically materializing from thin air, until a group of Damned converged on a café a half block ahead of us.
There were five of them. Three rained from the sky like missiles, breaking through the roof of the café headfirst. The other two landed on either side of the building and waited. Dominic and I waited, too, unmoving, unblinking, and unseen in the shadows of the alley across the street. A scream pierced the silence, punctuated by a round of gunfire, both of which abruptly stopped before their echoes had even really begun. Another minute passed in silence.
The whining scrape of plastic on plastic shifted the air. If not for my enhanced hearing, the night would have remained silent, but I wasn’t the only one with superhuman hearing who could detect the second-floor window of the café open. A young girl slipped through the crack. I wasn’t the only one who could hear the accelerated beats of her heart. I wasn’t the only one who could taste the brown sugar, vanilla scent of her shampoo, or smell the cloying, burned-hair scent of her grief and fear.
I stepped forward, unsure exactly what I was about to do but needing to do something. Dominic wrapped his hands around my waist and yanked me back into shadow. I opened my mouth to argue—we could help this girl and still make our meeting with Greta. Someone needed to do something—and in those two seconds, one to open my mouth and the second to inhale in preparation to speak, one of the Damned waiting on the street jumped up onto the window ledge, punched its clawed fist into that little girl’s chest, and ripped out her heart. She didn’t even scream.
The creature tipped its head back, upending the heart whole into its mouth, and the little girl tumbled from the roof like a limp doll, landing with a hard crunch on the pavement. I wasn’t the only one who heard her skull crack against the sidewalk on impact. I wasn’t the only one who choked on the release of her bowels or felt the shudder of her last breath after she’d already been butchered and fallen, but I was the only one who cared.
I glared back over my shoulder at Dominic, sickened and needing a target.
Dominic wouldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, he pulled my body flush against his with one hand around my waist and cupped his other hand around my ear. I felt the movement of his lips against my cheek as he whispered, “They haven’t noticed us yet because they’re distracted by the hunt, but once they finish, they’ll hear your outrage like the police siren it is. We must remain under the radar. Calm yourself. Anchor your emotions.”
I don’t know how, I thought, but then, Dominic knew that and continued without me having to admit my ignorance.
“Focus on the brush of my breath against your ear, and when you start to feel desire, focus on the thought of me not speaking to your brother, and when you start to feel anger, focus on being reunited with Greta and Meredith, and when you start to feel nervous—”
I squeezed his arm where my hand was resting on his bicep, understanding the gist of it. Learning how to hone my vampire senses would be more enlightening than I’d imagined with Dominic as my teacher. All the times that I couldn’t quite discern Dominic’s kaleidoscope emotions, all the times I’d thought him conflicted or cold—maybe he’d just been hiding one, strong, very unconflicted emotion.
I rotated my emotional kaleidoscope as Dominic instructed while the Damned dismembered the girl and thrashed her body to shreds right there on the sidewalk. Presumably, the three Damned butchered whoever remained inside the café, too, but there were no more screams, there was no more gunfire, and no one else attempted an escape. Five years passed in the span of five minutes while I held my silence and felt everything it was possible to feel about life except for the outrageous tragedy in front of me. Eventually, there were no more beating hearts for the Damned to eat, no more flesh on which to beat out their rage, and Dominic’s emotional kaleidoscope worked. They didn’t sense our presence and moved on.
I again opened my mouth and inhaled to speak, but this time, Dominic spoke before I could voice my complaint. “If you had interfered with their hunt, we would have lost all advantage of Jillian believing us dead,” he said, his voice infuriatingly calm, like a parent lecturing a small child on why they couldn’t have dessert before dinner.
“How could you stand by and watch that thing eat her heart and do nothing? She was just a little girl!” I kept my voice to a whisper, not wanting to attract the attention of the Damned, because Dominic was right. If the Damned discovered us it would blow our advantage, but just because Dominic was right didn’t mean it felt right.
“What I want to do and what I must do are two separate things. Of course I wanted to prevent the Damned from killing a child, but I must protect our anonymity. If Jillian were to discover us now, we may very well lead her directly to Greta, Rowens, Meredith, Dr. Chunn, and Nathan, whose anonymity is their only protection.”
I shook my head. “We are their protection. Who was there to protect her?” I said, gesturing at what remained of the girl’s tiny, broken body.
“There are dozens, if not hundreds of little girls in this city needing protection. Are you willing to protect that one only to forsake all the rest?” Dominic said, his voice so calm and reasonable, I could have happily strangled him. “One life is not worth losing the entire city.”
“Really? Not one life?” I asked, spreading my arms out like a target. We were in this mess because he’d willingly risked losing the entire city, his entire coven, his own life to save one life: mine.
His expression darkened. “That’s different, and you know it.”
“I fail to see how—”
“One stranger is not worth losing the entire city. One loved one is worth everything.” Dominic sandwiched my face in his palms, his voice no longer quite so calm and collected. “You are worth everything.”
I wanted to continue arguing my point—that little girl, although a stranger, was worth just as much as any other life—but I couldn’t, not after he’d just qualified me as a “loved one,” not while his hands cupped my face and his eyes bore into mine with the intensity, heat, and destructive power of an incinerator. My words turned to ash before ever leaving my mouth because I felt the same way about him—he was worth everything—and I couldn’t in truth say otherwise.
I pulled away from Dominic and continued walking shadow to shadow down the