The City Beneath Page 5

  Another tearing slash cut through my lower back. I fell to the ground from the impact, and my knees pounded hard into the asphalt. I focused on inhaling and exhaling, taking long, deep breaths, but it hurt to breathe. It hurt to remain upright on my knees. The pain didn’t recede or ebb, and through its constant, sharpening ache, I became aware of a sparking charge in the air. The air was electric, almost snapping.

  I glanced up. The men, creatures—whatever the hell was attacking me—were closing in, and the frequency of their rattling was a tangible, expanding, vibrating swell on the air. Their glowing eyes surrounded me. Luminescent shades of blue, green, and purple were gliding out of the darkness and enclosing me in their ranks. I crawled to the side of the building and leveraged to my feet.

  A fire escape hung above me. If I jumped high enough, I might be able to reach it and climb away from the creatures. I might still be able to escape and survive. Gathering what remained of my strength and hope, I bent my knees, held my breath, and leapt to reach the handle of the fire escape. The handle was close, and I stretched as high and long and tall as I could. The tips of my fingers grazed the rough, rusted metal handle.

  One of the creatures jumped in front of me, crossing an insurmountable distance in a single bound. He clamped onto my left wrist with his teeth like a rabid, growling animal. We faced one another, eye to eye, in the single instant suspended between jumping and falling. This one had icy violet irises that bled to white toward the pupil. His mouth suddenly re-formed and elongated, like bones were shifting position beneath his skin, into a snarling muzzle. He tore the flesh and muscles and tendons from my wrist.

  I jerked back, screaming, and my fingertip slipped from the fire escape. I crumpled to the ground against the building. Blood poured down my arm. At least a dozen more of the creatures peeled from the darkness to surround me. They all resembled the man who wasn’t quite a man who had attacked me last night, all flashing the same luminous eyes and bearing a nearly skeleton-like leanness. Although they all had individual facial features, like siblings have differing features, they were all impossibly tall and strong and male. And hunting me.

  I eased my hand into my shoulder bag slowly, trying not to trigger their attack. My cell phone was buried amid my recorder, notepad, wallet, and pens. If, like animals, they couldn’t reason, maybe they wouldn’t know that I was calling for help. If they were anything like the creature from last night, however, they might look like animals, but they could think. They’d know my intent.

  I looked at them, one by one, as they surrounded me. The feral hunger and anticipation lighting their eyes convinced me that whether or not they could reason, whether or not I made a sudden move or called for help, they were going to attack anyway.

  I swept aside a few pens in my bag, frantic to find my phone.

  The man with icy violet eyes broke formation and crouched directly in front of me. “You didn’t want us to remain a secret,” he hissed. “And neither do we. We plan to show the world exactly who we are, but you can help us do that without writing a single word.”

  I blinked, thrown by his articulacy. The creature from last night had been well-spoken, too. I’d nearly forgotten his voice, overwhelmed by the lasting impression of his fangs, strength, and ferocity. This violet-eyed version of him had all of those traits, as well. I stared at him and knew that the daily life I’d grown accustomed to living would never be the life I’d live again.

  “Nothing to say now, without the anonymity of your paper to stand behind?” the creature growled.

  I shook my head. “I, um.” I swallowed. “This is about my article?”

  The creature stared at me, a slow smile widening his muzzle-like, protruding mouth.

  “A retraction was written,” I whispered. “I haven’t told anyone about your kind, I swear.”

  The creature cocked his head. “You remember seeing us last night?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I assured him. “Just one of you. And I did everything he asked.”

  “Liar,” he murmured. He brushed a matted, blood-spattered lock of hair away from my cheek. “Lysander wouldn’t have let you live with your memories, yet here you are, and you still remember him.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How could I possibly forget?”

  The creature cocked his head to the right. “Easily.”

  One of the other creatures growled behind him. “Lysander’s power must be deteriorating faster than we thought if he can’t even link his mind to a human.”

  All of the creatures growled in a sudden, shrieking discord. The sound was uncomfortable, like a squirming pressure against my chest, nuzzling beneath my skin. The back of my neck prickled. I fought not to plug my ears and to keep my hand inside my purse, searching for my phone.

  The line of creatures hadn’t moved, but they were suddenly noticeably closer.

  “Please,” I begged. My hand had finally found my phone. I tried to unlock the screen saver without breaking eye contact with the creature. “Whatever you’re planning, don’t. I—”

  Like birds that fly in tandem, they descended on me. My shoulder bag was torn over my head. I reached out to fight for it and my phone, but they bit into my wrists and neck. I fell back onto the pavement, screaming. Another creature shucked my skirt up around my waist and tore into my inner thighs with his fangs. The pain was immediate and unbearable. I shrieked and struggled and tried to buck them off, but their weight and grinding, relentless teeth crushed me in place.

  The creature at my left wrist reached bone. He clamped his jaws on it and shook his head like a dog. My skin tore in his mouth. I heard the snap of my wrist, and the shock of the break sang through my shoulder. I shuddered. I didn’t have breath left to scream.

  There were too many of them for me to have a real chance. I struggled against them anyway, but they held me down and fed on me from all points—neck, arms, wrists, and thighs—and I lay, sprawled and exposed on the sidewalk in the tatters of my pencil skirt, bleeding and broken and dying. Had I known everything was going to hell anyway, I should have taken the damn Percocet last night.

  One of the creatures jerked my body sideways and sucked at the cut on my back. I felt it widen as a tongue licked into my spine.

  “Help!” I shrieked as long and as loud as I could manage. “Someone help me!”

  The creature at my hip was suddenly torn away. I felt him take a chunk of my flesh with him, and I screamed again, although it didn’t sound like a scream anymore. It felt like screaming, but the only noise I could produce through my damaged throat was a whimpering squeal.

  Another creature, the zealous one at my wrist, was suddenly yanked back, too. His body soared through the air and smashed into the brick side of a building. The building crushed inward, and the creature crumpled to the ground amid broken brick powder.

  One by one, each feasting creature was ripped from my body—from the pulsing wound at my right thigh, from the neat punctures at my right wrist, from the flapping flesh at my collarbone—and when the last creature was gone, I saw him. The man from last night, with his strange, glowing midnight eyes and that perpetual sneer scarring his mouth, was struggling with the articulate, violet-eyed creature who had been feeding from my thigh. The man stabbed his bare hand through the creature’s chest. He severed something inside the chest cavity with a flick of his wrist, and the creature suddenly dropped, writhing on the ground alongside the dozen others that were strewn across the pavement, incapacitated.

  I tried to drag myself away while the man was preoccupied with the others of his kind. Maybe he wouldn’t notice my retreat. I squirmed down the sidewalk in a slow struggle, desperate to contain the gasps and wheezing whimpers of my effort, but my back scraped against a few loose stones as I moved. The man’s gaze jerked to mine immediately. Our eyes locked, and I froze. I didn’t even breathe.

  The man swooped over me, wrapped a firm arm around my midsection, and bent low over the ground on one knee. He was still for a moment, with me gathered in his arms
. My body trembled against his unnatural, inhuman stillness. He suddenly, slowly, moved his cheek against my cheek.

  “Be calm,” he murmured. “It’s nearly over.”

  His body tensed and in the next moment, in the space between an inhale and an exhale, we were flying through the air. The rushing wind of our speed whistled across my ears, and its pressure ached through my injuries. I whimpered and keened against the pain—the agonized sounds that remained of my screams.

  As quickly as we launched, we landed. For a moment, I thought that the attack or perhaps his flight had damaged my hearing. The cacophony of voices, honking horns, and the bustle of city life and construction was dampened. I turned my face away from the man’s chest and gaped at the view. The street noise wasn’t dampened, and my hearing wasn’t damaged; the street was simply farther away. We’d landed on a flat, brick rooftop, and across the expanse of thousands of buildings to the horizon, the light-scattered city skyline stretched for miles.

  The man dropped to his knees and bent over me almost protectively. Last night, he had gouged his talons deep into my shoulders to keep me restrained, but tonight, he cradled me gently in his arms. It took a moment to tear my eyes away from the view and refocus on the nightmare holding me.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked, visibly shaken.

  “Of course.” I muttered. “I found you burned in the alley on the corner of Farragut Road and East 40th. Last night, you attacked me behind my own building. You have fangs and talons, and you flew me to my fifth-floor apartment. Believe me, you made an impression.”

  His hold on me was suffocating. I could feel the pressure increase on my wounds, and I tried to squirm away. His grip only tightened. “Do you remember the bite marks on the victims? Do you remember me demanding that you write the retraction?”

  I thought about lying, wondering what more he would do to me if I told the truth, but the blood from the bite on my inner thigh was squirting in little pulses against my other thigh. What more could he do to me that hadn’t already been irrevocably done? I laughed at the fear pumping through my heart and out of my thigh. I was dying.

  The man shook me. “Cassidy DiRocco, what exactly do you remember?”

  “Everything,” I murmured. “I remember all of it.”

  “I had more time.” The man shook his head. A severe frown wrinkled his brow. “I know I had another month at least before my strength waned completely, but if you still remember, the rebellion must be stronger than I’d ever imagined and quickening the process. I can only hope that I have enough for you now. My final gift.”

  The man lifted me to him with one hand around my waist and swept my hair aside with the other. He cupped my cheek. I protested weakly against his embrace as it turned suddenly intimate, but the most I could manage was a tiny body jerk, a flinch as I winced away from his nearness.

  “No,” I whispered. “Please.”

  He sighed in a throaty moan, seeming to enjoy my fear and struggles. Keeping his hold, he licked the wounds on my neck in long, thorough glides. I squirmed, disgusted. He licked with ardor, becoming more excited the more he licked and the more I pulled away.

  Suddenly, I felt a hot, almost burning sensation radiate from my neck. It would have been painful if it didn’t feel so right and healing and wonderful. A moment later, the burning faded, and my neck no longer ached from the creatures’ bone-deep bites.

  “How?” I whispered, trembling. My entire body began to shake, and I couldn’t stop.

  The man pulled back from my neck slightly, the rattling hiss from his chest vibrating constantly now. He bore his teeth at me in a semblance of a smile. His left fang grazed the side of my cheek as he moved, and I felt a drop of blood lick over my face to my earlobe.

  “I need unbitten flesh for this to work. If I still have power enough for it to work.”

  “For what to work?” I asked.

  The man sighed deeply, regretfully this time. “I apologize for your suffering. If times were different, if members of my coven would agree to hunt in secret and anonymity, perhaps our paths would never have crossed, but now you know of our existence. I can’t allow you to live with those memories intact, but I am unable to erase those memories. Your very existence now jeopardizes mine,” he said gravely. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” I managed to say through my chattering. My body’s shivering was turning violent. “Please.”

  “Hush. It’ll be all right, Cassidy. It’ll be all right.”

  Suddenly, the man bound me to him with the steel muscle of his arms around my body. I gasped, and his mouth clamped on the meat of my neck. His teeth pierced the skin he’d just healed a moment ago, and I felt the blood pull from my body and into his mouth in a swift jerk of suction.

  I came.

  Hard.

  I gasped again, but for an entirely different reason. The man sucked my blood and my life from my torn and ravaged body, but all I could feel was the spiraling ebb and swell of unbearable, throbbing, electric pleasure. My toes curled, and I ached to press closer, though I could barely move. Physically, I knew I was dying, but as another wave broke through me, I simply could not feel or think beyond the rushing pulse of heat surging through me from his bite.

  The man jerked me away from his mouth, dropping me like I’d scorched him. I fell back onto the hard, scraping brick, too overcome by blood loss and twitching pleasure to move. His muzzle had extended slightly and was drenched scarlet with my blood. I watched with a nearly impartial fascination as his face re-formed to that of a man, except for the anomalies of his eyes and fangs.

  “It wasn’t me. I’m still at my full strength,” he whispered in what I could only interpret as awe. “It’s you. I can’t control your mind because you’re a night blood.” As if suddenly seeing me, the man’s gaze jerked from my face to scan the ravaged meat of my wrist, my sliced arm and stomach, the gashes over my sides and legs, and the slow pump of blood squirting from my inner thigh. His gaze snapped up to meet mine again.

  I didn’t have the strength to do more than stare back.

  The man’s chest rattled. “Fuck!”

  He tore his own wrist open with his teeth. Gathering me to him with one hand at the back of my neck, he pressed his pulsing, wounded wrist against my lips. I turned away, gagging. He forced my mouth over the wound with a jerk of my neck.

  “Drink,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  He pressed his wrist painfully against my mouth, so my own teeth cut the inside of my lips. “Cassidy DiRocco, look into my eyes,” he whispered harshly.

  I closed my eyes against the yearning his voice stirred, remembering how my will had evaporated the last time I’d listened to him.

  His grip on my neck turned bruising. “Cassidy DiRocco, you will drink from my wrist now!”

  I screwed my eyes tighter.

  The man changed his hold, so my head was clamped in the crook of his arm while his hands pried my mouth open. I struggled, trying to squirm out of his grip and close my mouth, but my battle was short-lived. He was simply too strong and too fast. I was at his mercy.

  I screamed, and the sound tore through my already raw throat. My voice was hoarse and bloody, but I was desperate. I didn’t want his hands on me. I didn’t want his blood in my mouth. I didn’t want a part in whatever the hell he had planned for me, but apparently, my wants were not being considered.

  With my mouth finally wedged open, he flexed his wrist over my lips. A rush of blood bathed my tongue. I held it in my mouth; its warm and sticky viscosity made me nauseated. The man hesitated, trying to flex his wrist harder to produce a better flow, and I spat his blood from my mouth. Its spray arced over his shirt and across his face in bright speckles.

  He blinked for a moment, looking startled.

  “Idiot,” he growled, and dropped me back onto the pavement. He doubled over and wedged his head between my thighs.

  I screamed and tried to crawl away.

  The man clamped his hands on my knees
, pried them open, and ducked his head down to lick my thigh. The wound squirted into his mouth. He closed his eyes, shuddering with pleasure.

  My stomach rolled.

  His grip on my knees turned painful, but he continued to only lick at the wound. The heat started again, like it had at my neck. Sitting up on my elbows, I watched as the blood’s squirting flow slowed to a trickle, as the wound clotted and closed, and as the man finally licked away the scar until all that remained was smooth, milky, healthy flesh.

  “Impossible,” I whispered.

  The man turned his head to lick the open fang marks on my other thigh. Within only a few short licks, those punctures were healed, as well, and he moved on to the gaping wound at my left hip. One of the creatures had ripped an entire chunk of flesh away. The man buried his mouth inside of the cut, and I felt the slide of his tongue under my skin. I gagged. The feel of his mouth on me and watching his obvious enjoyment sickened me, but I couldn’t argue with the result.

  More heat built under the skin of my hip. The cold night breeze against my heated flesh puckered goose bumps across my skin. I shivered, feeling hot and cold and terrified and amazed all in one breathless moment. The man pinched the torn edges of my skin together and licked over the seam to close the wound. The skin fused together as he licked, and I didn’t know what to say or think or do beyond simply gape in pure astonishment.

  He healed my fresh, bleeding wounds one after another—my right wrist, my left wrist, and the tears on my stomach and forearms. He shifted my body and slid the waist of my skirt down to bare the puncture at the small of my back. He hesitated after healing that particular wound. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what could give the man pause after all the gore he’d seen and touched and ingested. Nothing was on my back except for healthy, smooth skin.

  Even as I thought it, I realized I was wrong. My skin wasn’t smooth, although he’d healed it. He was studying the puckered, star-shaped scar on my hip from the bullet I’d taken for Officer Harroway. He traced it with his finger. I held my breath, trying not to feel, but tingling shivers stole up my spine. He lingered there a long moment before adjusting my skirt back into place. Finally, he leaned over my body and licked the twin punctures from his own fangs on my neck. The warmth of their healing and his tongue trailed goose bumps down my shoulder.