Page 120 of Dark Reign of Forever

Dazed, she took hold of the vampire carcass with both hands. Together, they tugged and shoved him into the back. Thug vamp slouched in the passenger seat. Cassidy pulled the hoodie over his head to hide the hideous effects of the silver oil from casual glances.

Putting the car into gear and remembering to politely use the directional signals like anyone else who hadn’t just zig-zagged across a highway with two dead vampires, Cassidy slotted them back into traffic. Belatedly, she realized she wasn’t seat-belted and reached to remedy that. All very normal. Just out for an evening ride. Nothing to see here. A sign going by announced the next exit in five kilometers. With a little luck, they might slip off the highway and disappear before anyone came looking for them.

“What happened?” Francesca asked.

Cassidy swallowed the immediate “You almost killed us,” and offered a more restrained, “They weren’t going to kill us, you know. Once we got to Dominique, we would have been okay.”

“I did not think we were…okay.”

Cassidy bit back another retort.

“You said silver could only hurt them. Not kill them.”

The words pulled a chill up her spine when she grasped what had really happened here. The vampires had died—permanently died—from…silver?

“It doesn’t,” she said, trying to think past the chaos in her head. “Something else killed them.” And then it hit her. Hard. “Their sire is dead. Esteban is dead.”

She reached out to Dominique. He was still there, alive and humming with frenzied activity. A wave of relief echoed across the distance. Almost missing the exit, she had to swerve abruptly to make it onto the ramp. Luckily, no one was there to protest or get hit, but in the rearview mirror, far behind them, a patrol car activated its flashers.

Cassidy was about to go straight at the first light when a siren blared nearby. Mouth dry and hands gripping the wheel, she followed the car in front of her to a stop on the side of the road. Moments later, a fire truck howled past. The police escort in its wake gave her a fresh start, but took no note of them.

Not until they had traveled several more miles and made a number of casual turns without flashing lights or sirens erupting, did Cassidy allow herself a shaky breath of relief. She checked on Francesca in the rearview mirror. The woman studied the corpse propped up beside her as she dabbed at her forehead with the sleeve of her cardigan. The shock was fading from her eyes. “I think you saved our lives, Francesca. If they had died like that while we were in traffic, we would have crashed.”

She remained silent, and Cassidy could only imagine what was going on in her head. In the last hour, she had been taken hostage and physically assaulted, witnessed terrifying transformations and callous disregard for human life, and seen vampires drop dead of what must seem like magical processes. In other words, everything Dominique had tried to protect her from had happened to her. This was the world of night at its worst, the world of loveless monsters.

The world ruled by her son.

“See if you can find a phone on him,” Cassidy suggested, and not just to give Francesca something to do and stop thinking. “We need to talk to someone who knows how to hide bodies.”

53

Abyss

Dead.EveryoneofEsteban’s immortal elites was dead—from the single stroke of a sword.

Dominique stared down at the gray husks of blood-drinkers scattered across the clearing. Their empty eye sockets stared back. More than these had died tonight. All of Esteban’s younglings and all of theirs and so on, all littered the dark places of the world.

How many? How many had he spawned over four and a half centuries? Or did it matter? His ability and that of his younglings to remain conscious long into the day was an aberration that threatened all vampires everywhere and could well have undermined the peace Dominique envisioned. In a way, he was glad the scheming blood-drinker who had so prided himself on being the true power behind Adilla’s throne had refused to submit. It made it possible to live with the decision to allow Jackson his revenge.

“Why the fuck am I still alive?” Lyle sat up among the corpses. He was splattered in blood and his limbs spasmed a little. Wailing, he staggered to his feet. “Why am I still alive?”

Dominique, too, was mystified, but seeing the light in Lyle’s eyes, he realized there was only one reason that made any sense. “Because you belong to me now.”

“But…but Ifelthim die. I felt his mind disappear. The blood bond…it’s gone.” He sounded borderline frantic.

“The blood bond is not what tied your life to his. It never was,” Dominique explained, thinking out loud. He looked to where Isao crouched over Kostya’s body, his head hanging low. Makoto knelt by his side, one comforting arm around his shoulders. “Your lives are linked through the serum that infected you and altered your genetic code,” Dominique continued, speaking to Isao and Makoto as much as to Lyle. “That code altered again when you were re-sired.”

Makoto met his eyes. Isao raised his head. Dominique saw the moment the samurai understood that his existence no longer depended on Adilla’s. Thoughts of murder followed hard and fast.

We cannot, Dominique cautioned. His own thoughts swung from wondering how much longer they had before Adilla came charging out of that cavern to… “Geneviève.”

At Dominique’s command, Douglas had carried her away when the fighting began. Now it took him somewhat longer to return. When he stepped into the clearing, Geneviève hung in his arms—still and gray.

“Oh, no,” Jackson moaned before Dominique even allowed himself to comprehend the truth.

The sister who had been like a second mother and closest friend, whom he had cherished and cared for and laughed with—that sister had been reduced to an empty, lifeless husk.

“I’m so sorry, my lord,” Douglas murmured.

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