“I know,” Ronnie said, “because this is the hardest moment of your life. The day you face not one vampire, but three, and you don’t kill any of them.”
Walker was back to shaking his head, but when he spoke this time, he wasn’t looking at Ronnie. “What’s wrong with her?”
I blinked. “There isn’t a clinical term, but I believe they refer to what Ronnie is suffering from as heartbreak.”
“Are you depriving her of blood? Are you punishing her to get to me?” Walker asked, and the tears kept flowing.
I gaped, taken aback. “Of course not. We’re vampires, not monsters, Walker. Oh, that’s right, you could never tell the difference.”
“Cassidy,” Dominic growled. “Not that long ago, neither could you.”
I sighed and tried again. “Ronnie’s transformation only took a few hours. She’s been struggling with basic vampire skills, like feeding and entrancing, and although we’ve tried to teach her those skills, it’s not going well for her.”
Walker looked back at Ronnie, waiting for her response.
Her smile was small and so, so sad. “What does it matter if you’re just going to kill me anyway?”
Walker froze again, nothing but heartbeat.
Ronnie took one last step forward, close enough that the handgun’s barrel pressed against her chest. I glanced at Dominic to gauge his reaction, but the expression on his face was resigned. We should do something, I thought, but we’d already warned her. We’d already tried to stop this from happening, but no effort would be enough to get this derailed train back on its tracks, with or without casualties. And there were sure to be casualties.
Ronnie raised her hands and wrapped her bone-thin fingers around Walker’s fist. Her claw-tipped thumb threaded through the trigger guard and over his index finger. “What does it matter, since I’m already dead?”
Ronnie tensed to pull the trigger.
Walker flicked the safety on with his thumb.
They stared at each other for a long moment, the gun and the safety between them like a life preserver neither could find the heart to let go of.
“I thought Bex had killed you,” Walker whispered.
“Didn’t she?” Ronnie murmured back. “Isn’t that what you always said, that being transformed into a vampire was as good as being dead?”
Walker’s expression hardened. “I searched for you. As much as I could while caring for Colin, I searched for all of you.” He blinked, nearly startled by his own thoughts. “What of the others? Are Logan, Keagan, Jeremy, and—”
“We were all attacked and transformed.”
Walker nodded, his expression still unyielding. “What are you doing here?”
Ronnie blinked. “Seriously?”
Walker frowned, as much as he could frown while already wearing such a somber expression.
“Why is anyone here in New York City right now? Sightseeing?” Ronnie snorted derisively, and I had to bite back a smile. I’d never heard her speak like that to Walker—I couldn’t remember hearing her be anything but meek and tender toward him—and if his gaping jaw was any indication, he couldn’t either. “I’m here to help take down Jillian and stop the Damned from taking over the world,” she said.
“Taking over the world might be a bit of an exaggeration,” Walker said drily.
“They took over New York City easily enough,” Ronnie reasoned. “Who’s here to stop them from taking over the next city and the next and the next one after that?” She looked around at our little group, Dr. Chunn and Greta on one side of the room, with Nathan caged behind them and Dominic and I on the other side of the room, tensed for action. “If we’re the only hope the world has against these creatures, the world is doomed.”
“Only because we’re divided,” I interjected.
Walker’s eyes flicked to me, and Dominic flinched beside me. Walker’s gaze was filled with so much anger and revulsion, I was reminded just how close his thumb still was to the safety.
“Cassidy’s correct,” Dr. Chunn said.
Silence stretched, and I could feel the heavy weight of doubt settle on Dr. Chunn from everyone’s collective, unresponsive stare.
“She is,” she insisted. “Detective Wahl and her raid might not have failed if the Day Reapers hadn’t shown up and tried to save the day on their own.”
“They’d won against the Damned once,” Nathan said. “I’m sure they thought they could do it again.”
“They probably could have, but not with dozens of entranced humans in their way.” Dr. Chunn shook her head. “We were an ill-equipped, divided front, and Jillian used that to her advantage and won.”
Walker snorted, and I realized where Ronnie had learned to sound so derisive. “And having an army of nearly a hundred ten-foot-tall creatures with talons like sabers and scales like armor didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“It did, of course,” Dr. Chunn said, frowning at his tone. “But we didn’t help ourselves either. We didn’t stand against them with our best, united front. We didn’t punch back with planning and precision. We were desperate, and the Day Reapers were overconfident, and that, in combination with our lack of solidarity, was a disaster. The Damned are stronger and taller and more lethal, but we have intelligence where they only have instinct and orders. We could have won against them—but we didn’t—and Cassidy is right when she says that one of the main reasons we didn’t is because we were divided.”
“One of the reasons?” Walker raised his eyebrows. “As in, there’s more than one?”
“Yes, and I’d like to show all of you.” Her eyes shifted to the gun in Walker’s hands and pressed flush against Ronnie’s chest.
Walker looked down at his gun as if just realizing he was still holding it, and then he lifted his gaze back to Ronnie. “I’m not okay with this,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
“And I am?” Ronnie shook her head, and her expression said very plainly that she thought he was an idiot. “You think that I’m okay with being the very creature I’ve feared my entire life? You think I’m okay with attacking people to drink their blood and entrancing them to survive and being the weakest, most pathetic vampire because I can’t do either of those things? You think I’m okay with losing my hair and looking like death?” she shrieked.
Walker’s mouth opened and closed without uttering a word.
Ronnie let go of the gun. “I’m not any more okay with this than you are, but I can’t just wiggle my nose and fix it. I can’t do anything except live with it, assuming I get to keep living,” she said, eyeing Walker’s trigger finger.
Walker didn’t move; not even his thumb hovering over the safety so much as twitched. And then he put up his gun.
I sighed in relief, releasing the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “All right, doc, let’s see what you’ve got.”
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