Eternal Reign by Melody Johnson

Author:Melody Johnson [Johnson, Melody]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“Dominic!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs, hoarse now from screaming his name in a litany, like a prayer.

A prayer that had gone unanswered.

The cab had weaved and cut through the traffic in New York City style, beating the ambulance downtown. I’d waited until the cabbie had driven off—smiling, with an exorbitant tip in hand for helping me and my scooter in and out of his cab—before beginning my search. Typically, I’d go out of my way to avoid this seedy, secluded section of the city, but this was a likely neighborhood to find a manhole with a missing cover. With metal prices on the rise, people would steal the covers and resell them for scrap, but their greed was my godsend. A few minutes into my search, I found exactly what I needed: access to the sewer and Dominic’s coven.

After messaging Nathan a pin to my location, I dropped painfully to my knees beside the open manhole. I’d been screaming Dominic’s name through said sewer system for a full minute, but my efforts, though herculean, had been ignored.

Something was wrong.

Dominic could sense when my hip ached over the phone from three hundred miles away. Certainly he could hear me screaming for him when we were in the same city, less than three miles apart.

I gripped the edge of the manhole, inhaling and about to let loose another bellow, when a sharp, stabbing pain encircled my wrists and ankles. The pain was electric. I gasped and looked down at my hands, but in the time it took for me to react, the pain was already gone.

The injury wasn’t my own. Considering my metaphysical bonds with Dominic and what that implied, something was definitely very wrong.

“Cassidy?”

That timid, nervous voice was not Dominic. I squinted into the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything but shadows within shadows.

“Cassidy DiRocco?”

Something shifted, I heard the suction of a boot lifting from slimy sewer muck, and the glint of deep, plum-colored eyes blinked in the darkness.

Of all the vampires to respond to my call, I thought, anyone but Neil.

“Yes, it’s me. Where’s Dominic?”

“This had better be important, Cassidy,” a deep, confident voice replied. Neil wasn’t alone, but neither was Dominic with him.

“It’s more than important, Sevris. It’s urgent,” I said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Good. Those are the only matters I care about,” Sevris said. “Come down.”

I blinked, staring down into the sewer pipe. “I can’t. You come up.”

“I can’t. It’s still daylight. I’d burst into flames. In this, even if I wanted to, I can’t compromise. You must come to me.”

I blew out a long breath. There was a time when willingly crossing the threshold into darkness was unthinkable. They’d dragged me—sometimes kicking and screaming and oftentimes bleeding, broken, and unconscious—but I’d never gone willingly. I squinted into the sewer, their silence as damning as the approaching siren. Now, remaining in sunlight was the unthinkable option.

I crawled around the manhole on my hands and knees, and using the utility ladder, I tried to lower myself into the sewer.

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