Day Reaper
Night Blood#4
Melody Johnson
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Kensington/ Lyrical Press
Date of Publication: April, 2018
Number of pages: 414
Cover Artist: Kensington/ Lyrical Press
A dangerous choice for the chance to live.
On the brink of death, Cassidy DiRocco demands that New York City’s master of the supernatural, Dominic Lysander, transform her—reporter, Night Blood, sister, human—into the very creature she’s feared and fought against for months: a vampire. The pain is brutal, she'll risk the career she’s worked so hard to achieve, and her world will never be the same. But surviving is worth any risk, especially when it means gaining the strength to fight against Jillian Allister, the sister who betrayed Dominic, attacked Cassidy, and is leading a vampire uprising that will destroy all of New York City. . .
When she awakens, however, Cassidy realizes the cost of being transformed might be more than she was willing to sacrifice. The overwhelming senses, the foreign appearance of her new body, and the lethal craving for blood are unrecognizable and unacceptable. But if Cassidy hopes to right the irrevocable wrongs that Jillian and her army of the Damned have wrought on New York City, she’ll need to not only accept her new senses, body and cravings, but wield them in her favor.
Irresistible and enigmatic as Dominic is, he no longer has command over the city or its vampires. Only Cassidy has the connections to convince the humans, Day Reapers, and the few vampires still loyal to Dominic to join forces, and maybe, if Dominic can accept her rising power over the coven he once commanded for the past several hundred years, the two of them together might forge a bond more potent than history has ever known. . .
Excerpt:
A bird was squawking, and after
several minutes of attempting to ignore its repetitive,
shrill, bleating, I
came to grips with the fact that it didn’t seem inclined
to stop on its own. I
snapped open my eyes, prepared to reach out the
window and stop it myself, with
my bare hands if necessary—I’d never heard such
an obnoxious bird in my life,
not in the city, not on the west coast, not even
on my one excursion to visit
Walker upstate—and froze. There was no window.
And if the vents Bex used to
filter fresh air into her underground coven were
any indication, there was no
bird. Despite the similarity of the vents to Bex’s coven,
however, I didn’t
recognize the room as the inviting, well-decorated
step-back in time that Bex
had created, either: no extra furniture for lounging,
no scented candles, no
Gerbera daisies, and no kerosene lamps pulsing in
a hypnotic, romantic beat.
This room contained only sparse
necessities: vents for underground air filtration,
a bare bulb for light, a
door for privacy, and of course, a bed. I was in a
strange room in a stranger’s
bed, its dimensions and décor familiar only by
its unfamiliarity, and suddenly,
the last moments of my memory smashed into
my brain like a semi.
Jillian tearing out my throat. Dominic healing me.
The blood and burning. The transformation.
Someone was speaking in the room
outside this bedroom’s door, and despite the distance,
the scarred door, the
cement wall, and my
disorientation, I could hear every word
being said, and I
recognized the voice speaking:
Ronnie Carmichael.
“Lysander said he would. There’s
no reason to think he won’t, so I don’t think—”
And following Ronnie’s voice was
the squawking of that damn bird.
“Exactly. You don’t think,” Jeremy snapped.
“Lysander said that he would
try,” Keagan said patiently, his voice nearly drowned
out by the bleat of that
insufferable bird. “His priority is Cassidy and our
safety. He won’t take
unnecessary risks, like remaining above ground,
away from Cassidy longer than absolutely
necessary.”
“Yes, he said he would try,” Ronnie insisted,
but her voice was faint now. “Lysander doesn’t
say anything lightly.”
he bird squawked even louder, in
time with Jeremy’s audible groan, triggering a
memory of Ronnie’s little girl
voice and something she had confided in me:
I never even knew he thought of my
voice as grating. I never knew someone’s annoyance
had a sound let alone that
it sounded like a squawking bird.
I was right about the bird not
being underground, but unlike anything I’d ever
heard, the sound wasn’t a bird
at all. The squawking was the sound of Keagan’s
annoyance at the grate of
Ronnie’s whining voice. Unlike Jeremy, Keagan
was too well-mannered to audibly
express his frustration with Ronnie, but among
other vampires, he could no
longer hide his true feelings. His unspoken annoyance
had a sound—as loud,
obnoxious and obvious as Jeremy’s audible
hostility—and Ronnie could no doubt
hear it, too, despite the calm, reasonable tone of
his words. I could hear it.
I could hear the sound of
Keagan’s annoyance.
The weight of the sheets covering
my body was suddenly suffocating. I raised my
hand to tear them from my body,
but someone else’s hand whipped into the air.
I gasped at the skeleton-skinny
joints of each finger, the knobby protrusion of
its wrist and the elongated
talons sprouting from each fingertip instead of
nails. I ducked under the hand,
trying to avoid its attack and swallow the scream
that tore up my throat, but
the hand moved with me, moving with my intensions,
attached to my body. I froze
again, for the second time in as many seconds,
and raised the hand in front of
my face. It looked lethal. With one wrong move,
it could eviscerate me. As I
ticked each finger, the long talons swept the air
as I counted—one, two, three,
four, five—and each moved on my command.
Like the inevitability of a pending
dawn with the rising sun, I realized that the
hand was mine. Fear of that hand
turned to horror and then to a kind of giddy
resignation. Hysteria, more
likely.
I had ducked against the attack
of my own hand. A swift peal of laughter
burst from my mouth.
I stopped laughing just as abruptly.
Even my voice was different: guttural and
sharp, like shards of glass scraping against asphalt.
The voices outside my door and the
squawking bird had abruptly stopped, too,
and in the sudden silence
following my outburst,
an uncomfortable, aching vise circled
my chest. The pain wasn’t physical, but its
presence triggered a dull burn in
the back of my throat. I had the immediate
urge to destroy everything, to pound
the cement walls into crumbs with my fists and
tear the sheets into ribbons
with my nails—my talons—and fight my way
free from this prison. I held myself
motionless, resisting the urge, and I realized with
a belated sort of curiosity
that the aching vise
was panic. Without a beating heart to pound
and without a
circulatory system to hyperventilate,
I hadn’t recognized the emotion without
its physical symptoms, but even so,
it felt the same in one way.
It felt
horrible.
I took a deep breath to dispel the panic,
purely from habit, but the action
wasn’t calming. My heart that wasn’t pounding
didn’t slow, and I couldn’t catch
a breath that I hadn’t lost. The vise around my
chest tightened. I squeezed my
hands into fists, trembling from the force of my
will to remain still and
silent. Something sharp pierced my hands,
and I gasped, the raging panic
stuttering until I looked down at my bleeding fists.
My talons were embedded in
my own palms. A
door slammed somewhere outside this room,
further away than the voices directly
behind the door, but I didn’t hear it slam with
my ears. I felt it slam from
its flat slap against my skin. Never mind that the
door wasn’t near enough for
me to see, nor in this room, nor the impossibility
that I could feel its sound
waves, my entire body felt its sting as if I’d been
smacked from all sides.
“Why are you just staring?” Despite
the impatience and aggravation in those words,
hearing his voice made the aching around my
chest both loosen and worsen.
The clip of his tread across the cement floor
stung like the warning barbs of a
wasp. I knew the physical pain on my skin was
only the tactile manifestation of
sounds— first, the door slam, and now, his
walking—but that didn’t change the
fact that the sounds really did hurt my skin. I tried
to rub away the lingering
sting and realized my hands were still fisted,
my talons still embedded in my
palms, so I just sat on the bed, motionless and
bleeding, like someone trapped
without an EpiPen, waiting for the inevitable
swelling, choking and death:
trapped within a body that had betrayed me.
“Did you have time to—” Ronnie began, but
her voice was too small and too fragile
not to crumble under the weight of his will.
“You heard her waken,” he accused.
“Don’t you smell the blood?”
I could actually taste the pungent, freshly sliced,
onion musk of their silence.
The door swung open, and suddenly, inevitably,
Dominic entered the room. He didn’t
need permission to cross my threshold, not anymore,
and he didn’t bother with the perfunctory
acts of knocking or requesting my consent to enter.
He simply strode inside and slammed the door
behind him with a final, fatal bee sting.
He’d recently fed. I could tell, as I’d always
been able to tell, by the bloom of
health on his cheeks, his strong, sculpted figure,
and the careful calm of his
countenance, but my heightened senses could
now also smell the lingering spice
of blood on his breath and hear the crackle of
it nourishing his muscles. From
the top of his carefully tousled black hair to the
soles of his wing-tipped,
dress shoes, Dominic was insatiably sexy, but
his physique was an illusion of
his last meal. I knew his true form. Upon waking,
before feeding, he appeared
more monster than man. Although not many people
look their best in the morning,
Dominic by far looked his worst.
The way I looked now.
That thought made my fists tighten, embedding
my talons deeper into my own flesh.
Despite his grievance with
Ronnie, Keagan, and Jeremy for their inaction,
he too just stared, immobile
after entering the room, but his gaze absorbed
everything. I felt the slash of
his eyes slice across my face, down my body,
and eventually, settle with dark
finality on my fisted palms.
He didn’t move, and that I could
tell by the stillness of his throat, he didn’t
make a sound, but despite his
still, silent stare, I heard the unmistakable
rush of wind. There were no
windows underground, and in the stagnant
stillness of the room—the tension
between our bodies like an electric current
stretching to complete its
circuit—no relief from the heat of his presence.
The sound wasn’t wind, it only
sounded like wind, but whatever it was the
sound of, it was emanating from the
only other person in the room.
I blinked and Dominic was
suddenly, but no longer impossibly, beside
the bed. His movements were just as
inhumanly fast as ever, but with my enhanced vision,
I could track his
movement, see his grace and
fluidity. I heard the slide of air molecules
parting for him, felt the electric snap of his muscles
flexing, and smelled an
emotion he wouldn’t
allow me to interpret on his carefully neutral expression.
Whatever he was feeling was spiced, sweet,
strong, and dangerous with overuse,
like ginger.
He reached out and carefully wrapped
his palms around mine to cup my fists.
His voice was steady when he spoke, but I
knew better. The rush of wind emanating
from him heightened, the smell of ginger
became chokingly poignant, and his
heart that didn’t need to beat to keep him alive,
contracted just once. I could
both hear the swoosh of his blood being
pumped through each chamber and taste
the silky spice of that sound.
My hands were injured yet his trembled.
“Relax,” Dominic murmured. “I’m here.
I should have been here when you first awakened,
but I’m here now.”
I blinked at him. With him here, everything
was somehow simultaneous better and
horribly worse.
“Mirror,” I growled. I tried to form a complete
sentence, to demand, Get me a mirror, so
I can see the horror of a face that matches these
hands! but my throat was too
dry. Even that one word rattled from my
vocal cords like flint scraping across
steel, and the resulting sparks flamed the back of
my throat. I sounded
dangerous and angry and
monstrous. If I had stumbled upon me in an
alley, I would have run.
Then again, I’d stumbled upon Dominic in
an alley, and look how that had played out.
Whether Dominic saw my anger or thought me
a dangerous monster now wasn’t revealed by
his carefully masked countenance. He stroked the
back of my hand with the soft
pad of his human-feeling thumb.
“You need to calm down.”
Calm down? I thought. I jerked my hands
free from his gentle hold and shook my fists
between us, in front of his face. All things
considered, this is calm!
Dominic sighed. “I can’t see your claws from
inside your palms, but did you happen to
notice their color before stabbing
yourself with them?”
I frowned. I had claws, for Christ sake. Claws.
No, I didn’t take note of their color.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, still gentle,
still careful, and so fucking infuriating.
A comforting flood of hot anger blast-dried my
shock and sorrow. I spread my
fingers, tearing said claws from my palms and ripping
wide my self inflicted
wounds, but I didn’t take the time
to note their color. I swiped at Dominic.
My movements were lightning. Dominic’s
movements were just as fast; he leapt back,
dodging my claws. I lunged off the bed after him.
A familiar sound rattled from
deep inside my chest, a sound I’d heard emanate
from Ronnie, Jillian, Kaden,
and Dominic, a sound that coming from them had
raised the fine hairs on the
back of my neck.
Now, that sound came from my throat. I was growling.
Dominic somersaulted out of reach. I
watched his movements, fascinated by the strength
of his muscles as he leapt into the air,
his coordination as his legs tucked
and his arms caught his knees, and his athleticism as
he stuck the landing and
raised his hands to block my advance.
He was the epitome of power and grace
under pressure, and with the enhanced ability of
my heightened senses, I could
actually see it. He wasn’t just a blur of movement
but a perfectly
choreographed symphony of muscle,
control, and honed skill. I watched, and
unlike the jaw-dropping awe of impossibility that
Dominic’s physical feats
would normally inspire in me, I was
just inspired.
I attempted to mimic Dominic’s movements with a matching forward somersault of
my own, but instead of landing on my feet, like
I’d intended, like Dominic had
stuck so effortlessly, I landed in an awkward,
bone-jarring, heap, flat on my back.
Dominic leaned over me, his mouth opened
with concern, surely about to ask me if I was
all right. My pride was more injured than my body,
and the hot embarrassment
fueled my anger, as every strong emotion
could fuel my easily provoked temper.
Taking advantage of his concern and close proximity,
I raked my claws down the
front of his shirt.
Buttons severed from their threads, but
before the pops of their little plastic heads
hit the floor, Dominic was airborne again, back
flipping away from me before my
claws could do any real damage. I lunged after
his leaps and twists and rolls,
milliseconds behind his acrobatics, but even
without the advantage of his fancy
gymnastics, my body’s newfound abilities were
astonishing. Each muscle contraction burned
beneath my skin, but not like human muscles
burning with fatigue. Mine sparked to life,
twitching with power and reveling in unleashed
speed and strength.
I’d never been particularly athletic; my entire life,
even before being shot in the hip, my skills were
better served in an intellectual capacity—
interviewing witnesses and writing
articles. After being shot, my physical abilities had
shriveled to the point where I could hardly walk.
Now, I could not only walk, I had the
potential to fly.
I was a force in both body and mind, and the
limitlessness of those abilities
after being physically limited for so long was intoxicating.
Time suspended. Our battle raged in the
timespan of a blink, but within that blink,
we fought and danced and completely trashed the
little utilitarian room in what
felt like years—a lifetime of limitations revealed
and obliterated with every
movement and newly discovered capability.
Our movements were lighting, the
evidence of our devastation scattered across the room
—Dominic’s torn clothing,
upended and smashed furniture, pillows gutted
and their insides fluffed over
the rumpled comforter and upended mattress—
the cause unseen.
I made a move of my own instead
of following Dominic, cutting him mid-leap and
smashing him face-down into the
box spring. He was vulnerable for the split
of a millisecond, me at his back,
my razor claws splayed across his shoulder blades,
his neck bared as he craned
to look over his shoulder at me, and I had him.
If I chose to, with a swipe of
my hand, I could sever his head from his body.
My claws were sharp, his skin
was soft, and unlike any other physical battle
I’d waged in my life, I had the
advantage.
My body’s speed and strength were new to me,
but the feelings of rage and
intoxicating addiction were not. I knew those
emotions intimately; they had
been the very core of my personality and shaped
a person who, despite my former
physical limitations, had unbeatable mental
strength, evidenced by my winning
battle against Percocet addition and an ability
to entrance vampires as a night
blood. Memories of addiction and the bone-deep
reasons I’d fought to overcome
it, kept me grounded when I would have taken advantage of Dominic’s weakness. I nearly let the
strength and power overwhelm reason,
but I knew when to stop. I
knew when the need and heat felt too good to be
good. The rage reminded me that
good. The rage reminded me that
despite the claws sprouting from each fingertip,
despite the fact that I might
despite the fact that I might
look like the devil and have the strength of God,
I was the same flawed person
I was the same flawed person
I’d always been.
I was still me, and despite his
flaws, I loved Dominic.
I jerked my hand from his back, ripping fabric with
my movement but not skin, and fell to my knees.
my movement but not skin, and fell to my knees.
Dominic somersaulted over me. He
landed at my back, but I didn’t turn to face him.
He knew I’d resisted the opportunity to
He knew I’d resisted the opportunity to
kill him. Our battle was over, but mine had just begun.
He fell to his knees behind me,
wrapped his arms around me, holding my hands,
cradling my body, and it was only
cradling my body, and it was only
then, with the steady press of his cheek against mine,
that I realized by the
that I realized by the
solid stillness of his arms holding me that I was shaking.
I burst out weeping. The sobs
wracked my body and bathed my cheeks.
Dominic’s arms tightened. He stroked my hands
and murmured promises into my ear that I knew
better than to believe, promises
and murmured promises into my ear that I knew
better than to believe, promises
that no one could keep, but having him hold me, his lips
moving against my ear and the familiar tone of his voice resonating like a blanket cocooned around
my body, was comforting anyway. I sobbed harder at
first, relieved that he was here, that I wasn’t alone,
that he’d experienced this, too, and had
survived and eventually thrived. Buoyed by the knowledge
that I, too, could survive and eventually thrive, I calmed.
My weeping slowed, the sobs wrecking
my body lessened, and my tears eventually dried.
I relaxed into Dominic’s embrace—my back flush
against his chest, his arms cradling my arms, our fingers
against his chest, his arms cradling my arms, our fingers
entwined. His breath fluttering my hair wasn’t winded,
and I noted with a detached sort of astonishment,
that neither was mine. I was suddenly struck by
a wary sort of certainty that my new, debatably
improved physical form would
improved physical form would
continue to astonish for a very long time. I stared
at our entwined fingers—his
at our entwined fingers—his
perfectly formed human hands still larger than
my emaciated fingers but not
my emaciated fingers but not
nearly longer than my elongated claws—and I
pulled into myself, embarrassed
pulled into myself, embarrassed
that he was touching them.
“Don’t,” he murmured, tightening his hold.
“Some aspects of the transformation might take
some getting used to. You're already
“Some aspects of the transformation might take
some getting used to. You're already
becoming accustomed to your heightened senses
and increased strength, which is impressive.
In a few days, you’ll land that somersault, I
assure you. And eventually, you’ll look into a mirror
and recognize yourself,
and recognize yourself,
but for tonight, let me be your mirror.” He raised
his hand and urged my face
his hand and urged my face
to the side to meet his gaze. “Let me show you
how beautiful you are.”
how beautiful you are.”
My physical appearance wasn’t the
only aspect of the transformation that shook me,
but when he cupped my cheek in
but when he cupped my cheek in
his palm and ducked his head, pressing his lips to mine,
I kissed him back. My lips felt foreign against
the long protrusions of my fangs, but his lips were
soft and the texture of his scar familiar. His Christmas
pine scent enveloped us, and with my enhanced
senses, I felt its chilled effervescence simultaneous
heat and create goose bumps over my body.
I turned in his arms, angling for
I turned in his arms, angling for
more access, and a rush of blood filled my mouth.
Dominic stiffened. I jerked back, startled by the
blood coating my tongue, a taste which wasn’t entirely unpleasant, was in fact, not unpleasant at all.
The blood was absolutely delicious, which was also
startling, not to mention disturbing. Dominic had a
gash across his lower lip,
gash across his lower lip,
and I realized that I’d cut him.
I swallowed the blood in my haste
to apologize and choked.
Dominic covered my lips with a
finger and shook his head. His thumb swiped back
and forth over my cheekbone as
and forth over my cheekbone as
we stared at each other, and before my very
acute eyes, I watched the intricacy
acute eyes, I watched the intricacy
of Dominic’s body heal. The split sides of his lip
filled with blood, and that
filled with blood, and that
blood pooled in the crevice of his cut, coagulated,
scabbed, and flaked to reveal new, shiny, pink
skin. That skin darkened to a faint thread, and if he’d
still been human, the healing might have stopped there,
but his body healed the scar, too, until his lips
bore not one sliver of evidence of my clumsy lust.
What had once seemed to occur instantaneously and magically was now a simple bodily function, but I suppose,
that in itself was a kind of magic.
I touched his lips, grazing my fingertips
carefully over the perfection of his newly healed skin
to the divots and pucker of the permanent
to the divots and pucker of the permanent
scar gouging through the other side of his lower lip
and chin, a reminder of his human lifetime
and for me, a reminder of the few things we
had in common. Although looking at the skeletal,
talon-tipped hand touching
talon-tipped hand touching
him—the hand that I controlled but didn’t resemble
anything I recognized as mine-we had much
more in common now than I’d ever anticipated having.
He touched my lips with his
fingertips, mimicking my movements with the
human-looking version of his hand,
human-looking version of his hand,
and I couldn’t help it. Despite the impossibility of
this situation and the state of my hands and
what I could only imagine was the state of my face, I smiked.
“Sorry,” I murmured. Dominic’s
blood had moistened the scratch in my throat, so it
didn’t feel like my vocal chords were
didn’t feel like my vocal chords were
raking my esophagus with razor blades anymore.
“I’m not myself this morning."
Dominic grinned—full and genuine
and lopsided from the pull of his scar—and the
warmth and affection in his
warmth and affection in his
expression widened my own smile. I let that warmth
soak into me, filling my
soak into me, filling my
unfamiliar body with hope, reminding me that I
could survive. That I wanted to survive.
“No one looks or acts their best
upon waking, not even you when you were human.”
Dominic reminded me. “Not even me."
Dominic reminded me. “Not even me."
I sighed. “I will miss working on
my tan though,” I said, only half-jokingly. The feel
of the sun’s warmth on my
of the sun’s warmth on my
skin had become a safe haven after discovering the
existence of vampires. Having become one,
I supposed the necessity was moot, but that didn’t mean I
wouldn’t miss it.
Dominic grunted. “Many things
about you will never change despite the
transformation, including your ability
transformation, including your ability
to enjoy the sun and your stubbornness it seems.”
I raised my eyebrows. “My
stubbornness won’t cure a fatal sun allergy.”
“Look at the color of your
claws,” Dominic said dryly.
Despite my said stubbornness and
the urge to resist looking at my claws just to
defy him, I looked. The skeletal appendages
defy him, I looked. The skeletal appendages
coming from my body were long and knobby
and honestly grotesque, a monster's hands
and honestly grotesque, a monster's hands
with four-inch, lethal talons sprouting from their tips.
And those talons were silver.
Dominic was right, as per usual,
and unfortunately, so was our dear friend, High
Lord Henry. I was a vampire, but
Lord Henry. I was a vampire, but
I wasn’t allergic to the sun.
I was a Day Reaper.
Melody Johnson is the author of the gritty, paranormal romance Night Blood series set in New York City. The first installment, The City Beneath, was a finalist in several Romance Writers of America contests, including the “Cleveland Rocks” and “Fool For Love” contests.
Melody graduated magna cum laude from Lycoming College with her B.A. in creative writing and psychology, and after moving from her northeast Pennsylvania hometown for some much needed Southern sunshine, she now works as a digital media coordinator for Southeast Georgia Health System’s marketing department. When she isn’t working or writing, Melody can be found swimming at the beach, honing her newfound volleyball skills, and exploring her new home in southeast Georgia.
Website: http://authormelodyjohnson.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MelodyMJohnson
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