Day Reaper. Melody Johnson

glared at him.

      “You never specified how long you wished to gaze upon yourself.”

      I snorted. “I couldn’t see anything. You moved so fast, I was nothing but a blur.”

      “You drank so little, I can barely perceive an improvement in your complexion.”

      “If you gave me the mirror, I could determine the improvement for myself.”

      Dominic didn’t move, he didn’t even breathe. The only indication of his fraying patience was a low, nearly imperceptible rattle deep within his chest that I might not have even perceived without such acute hearing.

      “I’ve never been physically strong before, but I’ve always been a strong person, Dominic, and that strength is based on a foundation of truth. Waiting until after I’ve fed to see myself is a lie, and someone once told me that I’m in the business of revealing the truth. And that applies to myself too. I need to face reality, Dominic, literally. I need to see my face.”

      Dominic shook his head. “Seeing yourself now will not reveal the truth to you. After having transformed over a period of seven days without nourishment, you don’t look well. You will never look as poorly as you do in this moment ever again. Tomorrow morning will be a more accurate representation of your day form, and at that time, I will gladly give you a mirror before you feed.”

      I stared at him, shocked into silence. “How many days without nourishment?” I asked.

      He pursed his lips as if having bit into something sour.

      But my perfect hearing didn’t need him to repeat anything. “Seven days? You don’t think you could have led with that instead of the blood? Seven days,” I repeated, shaking my head. “What’s happening out there? Did you defeat Jillian? Did you regain control of the coven? What about your strength and abilities? What about the Damned? What about the Day Reapers? I missed seven days?”

      Dominic closed his eyes and rubbed his temple methodically.“You had the potential to transform into a Day Reaper. What did you expect?”

      “I—well, I—” I stuttered, baffled. “I don’t know what I expected! I was dying, not thinking,” I snapped.

      “Granted, seven days is exceptional,” he said, ignoring my outburst. He looked me up and down, from the top of my greasy, unwashed head to my clawed feet and grinned. “I expected nothing less.”

      “Exceptional?” My voice couldn’t possibly squeal any higher. “How is losing seven days exceptional?”

      “The longer the transformation, the more powerful the vampire. An average transformation occurs over three days. Day Reapers, considering their increased speed, strength, mental acuity, and natural resistance to silver and sunlight—all necessary skills to enforce Council law and execute those who break it—typically transform in five days. I transformed in four. But you…” he shook his head at me, and with my heightened senses, I could literally feel the prick of his thoughts graze the fine hairs of my skin. I’d always known he’d had grand plans for me, plans I’d worked doggedly to ignore, but now those plans were coming to fruition, and by the calculation in his eyes as he looked me over, they were unfolding better than he’d ever imagined. “Seven days. You could rival the Lord High Chancellor himself.”

      I opened my mouth to wipe the awe-filled anticipation from his expression, but he pointed at my wineglass before I found an appropriately cutting response and said, “But no matter how powerful you will become, you are not that powerful now. You need to drink.”

      I took another measured sip, more than the first time, but not nearly as much as I knew he wanted.

      Dominic held up his hand in surrender. “Compromise. Drink half your glass and I’ll give you the mirror, assuming you promise to finish every drop afterward.”

      I didn’t like it—half a lie was still a lie—but that was the best deal I’d probably get from him without physically fighting him for the mirror.

      That thought actually gave me pause. I could physically fight him for the mirror and potentially win. The option to fight was no longer a paltry option, but one open for serious consideration. With my newfound strength and enhanced senses, I didn’t have to just roll over and compromise. I could take what I really wanted by force.

      I stared at Dominic’s scarred, nearly deformed lip. The physical wound I’d inflicted by accident only a few minutes ago was completely healed, but I could still recall the shock and choking need to apologize. That wound had been an accident. Was I willing to battle him, to slice him open on purpose? Over a mirror?

      I relented and drank half the blood, holding my breath against its tepid, clinging texture. It wasn’t unpalatable, but like stale bread compared to a fresh loaf, lukewarm blood from the glass was unpleasant at best.

      No sooner had the wineglass left my lips than Dominic held the mirror between us. I nearly spat the blood out of my mouth in shock—the image in the mirror was the most frightening, horrific creature I’d ever seen. The creature swallowed something, something unpleasant by the expression of disgust wrinkling its grotesque face—as I choked down the remaining swallow of blood in my mouth. I watched it swallow as I swallowed. It shook its head in disgust as I shook my head, and I realized belatedly, even knowing I was looking in a mirror, that the creature was, in fact, my own reflection.

      I gasped as the creature gasped, its shark-like, solid blue eyes widening. Its fang-filled mouth gaped, and its long ears elongated to sharp points. I stared at myself and the stranger that was my reflection stared back with equal revulsion.

      I’d anticipated the eyes and fangs. I’d even expected the ears and the emaciated sallowness of having a day form—I’d seen enough of Dominic in every form to know exactly what to expect from my new body—but I hadn’t considered the fact that newly transformed vampires didn’t drink while they transformed. I hadn’t received nourishment in an entire week; if I were human, I’d be dead, but I wasn’t human anymore. I was a vampire, so I only looked like death.

      My skin was gray and shriveled like spandex around my skull, highlighting the sunken corners of my eye sockets, the divots of my temples, and the sharp cut of my jaw. My cheekbones were painfully prominent, my skin so tight around them they might actually split from the tension, made only more painful-looking by the scooped hollows of my cheeks beneath them. How could Dominic even look at me, let alone touch me, hold me, and comfort me? He’d stroked the prominence of that emaciated cheek and looked at me with warmth and affection as if I was more than an animate, skin-wrapped skeleton. He’d kissed me, and looking at the thin, shriveled skin around my fangs, it wasn’t any wonder my fangs had sliced into Dominic’s lips. I didn’t have lips to kiss. I didn’t have a complexion. I didn’t have anything that would resemble a living creature, except the fact that I walked and talked and growled. I barely had any hair, but one wrong move—a sneeze, a breeze, a blink—and I wouldn’t have that either.

      Even as I stared at a stranger, I could see the blood’s effect on my appearance. My complexion did pinken slightly from just the half-glass I’d already swallowed. My skin smoothed the edges and divots of my scalp, my lips darkened and plumped, my hair thickened, and my ears and talons retracted slightly. The blood didn’t make much of a difference to my overall reflection, but considering I hadn’t swallowed much, the immediate and visible improvements to my appearance was riveting. I still looked like death but more newly dead instead of years of being six feet under.

      “Your eyes will change in sunlight,” Dominic said softly. “Like the other Day Reapers, you will have irises and sclera even in your day form. You are not considered fully transformed until your first bath in sunlight.”

      “You kissed this,” I said, touching the thin, cracked skin of my barely-there lips.

      “I tried,” Dominic murmured coldly.

      I snapped upright, not realizing I’d hunched in on myself, but when my gaze met his, I narrowed my eyes. His eyes were anything but cold. His eyes were blazing and barely restrained.

      “You