Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

I guessed.

      He nodded again. “When he gazed upon me, I was naught but a demon, returned from hell to torment him. I’d known better than to seek him out as the creature I’d become—I’d thought myself a demon at first, too, and wasn’t wholly convinced even at that time that I wasn’t—but in those first few years following my transformation, I couldn’t accept what I’d become, let alone accept everything I’d lost.”

      I reached out to hold his hand and stroked my thumb across his knuckles. I knew that feeling all too well, long before I’d ever been transformed.

      “Revealing myself was a grave error in judgment. I did it to assuage my own feelings of grief for the life I’d lost, not thinking of my father’s grief, nor how seeing me in such a state would affect him. My Master entranced the memory from his mind, and I never again revealed my existence to another human.” He gave me a weary grin. “Until recently.”

      “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I really am, but if your story was meant to convince me that my relationship with Nathan will survive this”—I indicated myself with a sweep of my hand—“it fell short.”

      “Your brother is a very different man than my father, separated by five hundred years and awareness of the reality of these circumstances. Nathan will not think you a demon.”

      I snorted. “Not in the traditional sense, but I’m not human anymore either.”

      “Neither is he.”

      That thought gave me pause. Nathan was half-Damned now, but I’d seen him fully-Damned—an eleven-foot-tall, fanged, ferocious monster. At least I was still my general size and shape. I’d retained my memory, and I wasn’t hunting the beating heart in his chest. I’d never thought the memory of discovering Nathan as one of the Damned would bring me comfort, but I could look in the mirror and know that Nathan had survived worse. I looked terrible, but seeing me like this was nothing compared to seeing him Damned.

      “Despite the creature that Nathan has become, you accepted him,” Dominic insisted.

      I nodded.

      “Give him the chance to accept you.”

      I nodded again and stilled the quiver of my non-beating heart. Just because it no longer kept me alive didn’t mean that breaking it wouldn’t kill me.

      I stepped past Dominic, crossed the threshold into the morgue to face Nathan squarely, and gaped, fears for myself forgotten.

      Nathan looked as whole and hearty as his voice indicated, but Dominic’s word choice, describing him as being “kept” here, was a gross understatement.

      Nathan was inside a cage.

      And not just any cage, if his pinkened complexion and the noxious steam wafting from his skin was any indication: he was locked inside a silver cage.

      I growled, low and deep and menacing in the barrel of my chest, and any attempt to come into this room with my emotions and vampiric features in check was blown to hell on the explosion of my rage.

      “Cassidy?” Nathan’s low, suddenly guarded voice brought me back to myself, but only slightly.

      “Who did this?” I asked. I suspected that I knew the answer to that question, but the answer was so unacceptable, I needed to hear it out loud.

      “Calm down.” His eyes darted to the right. “I’m fine.”

      “Like hell,” I spat. “You’re caged, like an animal.”

      “I am an animal,” he said, and the matter-of-fact way he said the words was just as infuriating as the words themselves.

      “Bullshit,” I snapped. “Who did this?”

      “I really am fine. See?” He grabbed the bars with both hands, and after a darting glance to the right again, bent the bars like they were Play-Doh. He stepped through the hole and outside the cage, lifted his arms in the air at me like he was performing a magic trick—ta-da!—jumped back into the cage, and bent the bars back into position with a final, darting glance to the right. He met my gaze and grinned. “I’m fine.”

      I stopped growling, shocked. “You’re allowing yourself to be caged?”

      His eyes darted to the right again. “Shhh,” he hissed. “Keep your voice down, or they’ll hear you.”

      I narrowed my eyes. “Who is ‘they’?”

      “If it gives them peace of mind while they run their tests, it’s worth it. If I were them, I’d fear me too.”

      Run their tests, he said, and that was admission enough for me. “If I were them, I’d fear me more.”

      The high squeal and slap of a swinging door opened, and the subject of our conversation strode into the room. Dr. Susanna Chunn was a petite woman, fine-boned and delicate, but strong enough to balance the five binders, countless manila files, laptop, cell phone, and variety of pens and markers piled in her arms. Her thick, yellow hipster glasses rode low on the tip on her nose as she stared over them at Nathan, eyeing him critically and without fear. Her heartbeat increased slightly and the lilac of her body lotion blended with a natural, nutty scent, but the scent and increased heart rhythm stemmed from excitement. She was enjoying the mystery that Nathan presented. She wasn’t frightened of it.

      She wasn’t frightened of him.

      I checked myself before my thoughts became too hopeful. She didn’t know he could bend the bars, because if she did, she would run screaming from him, from this hospital, and smack into another Damned, just like the young girl in the café. She didn’t know that he was allowing her to run the tests. She couldn’t see past what he was to the truth of who he was; otherwise, she would see that she didn’t need a cage around Nathan to keep herself safe. She would see that he was on her side, that we were all on the same side.

      Until everyone figured that out, we were all just screaming blind.

      Greta stepped into the room behind Dr. Chunn, but unlike the good doctor, whose attention was focused solely on science and Nathan, Greta noticed the uncaged threat in the room.

      Greta’s eyes locked on me, and she pulled her gun.

      I didn’t bother raising my hands. The four-inch talons that had erupted through my fingertips upon seeing Nathan in a cage hadn’t retracted; raising my hands would only look threatening. I smiled instead.

      Greta paled, and the high, sharp, whistle of her fear pierced the air.

      Fangs, I realized belatedly. They probably weren’t any more reassuring than my talons.

      Dominic growled softly and moved to step in front of me. I shook my head, not daring to take my eyes from the barrel of Greta’s gun. If I didn’t do this myself, she would never see me in the vampire I’d become.

      Even though I was mostly still me, I couldn’t deny that Greta’s instinct to defend herself was dead-on accurate. The urge to tear her throat out and guzzle her blood was there—I couldn’t deny that as a passing thought. It had merit, especially when the savory flavor of her fear, like wafting grill smoke, made me salivate—but like with any addiction, I could simultaneously crave it and know I’d regret it. Choosing to resist that craving was just that, a choice, and one I’d probably have had more difficulty making had I never previously experienced and overcome addiction. I knew what the bottom of the gutter looked and smelled and felt like. I knew the hell of being completely abandoned by my last loved one and knowing it was all my own fault. No matter how irresistible a craving seemed, I knew it for the illusion it was, and no matter what form it took—pills or blood—I would never make the wrong choice again.

      Although, looking at Nathan trapped in that cage, I had to strongly remind myself that he could escape of his own free will if he really wanted to. We were all on the same side: I was just the only one who knew it.

      “Hey G,” I said, overlooking the sight of her gun, the smell of her fear, my brother in a cage, and Dr. Chunn’s