Daysider

Chapter 21

Damon listened for the first sound of a finger pressing a trigger, ready to throw himself on Alexia and take every bullet that came until there was nothing left of him to shelter her.

But no one fired. He saw Theron’s face turn toward him and Alexia, his mouth opening as if to warn them away. Two of the Council troops broke from the others and edged in their direction, keeping close to the wall.

“Stop where you are!” a human voice shouted across the field.

The Opiri swung their rifles to face the new threat. In the brief silence that followed, all of Damon’s senses began firing up at once, and he knew the chance of stopping this idiocy from spreading to engulf the entire West Coast was almost gone.

“More troops,” he whispered to Alexia. “Coming west over the mountains.”

Not just a handful this time, but hundreds, headed for the valley like army ants that would devour everything in their path. From the opposite direction came the thrum of helicopter engines. Enclave choppers.

Damon didn’t have to ask Alexia what she wanted to do. As the Opir and Enclave soldiers became aware of the approaching forces, she ran straight for Theron, so recklessly that no one on either side was prepared to fire. Damon reached the Bloodmaster a second after she did, and together they dragged Theron to the ground.

Sprays of bullets turned the wall behind them into confetti. The Opir troops lunged toward them.

Then there was a cry of horrified surprise, and another, and all shooting from the valley ceased. Damon, his arms spread wide to cover Alexia and Theron, barely had a chance to look up when a half dozen tall, pale figures appeared behind the Opiri and knocked them and their weapons to the ground.

The smell caught Damon just before he recognized what he was seeing. Lamiae, standing over the dazed Council soldiers, their attenuated bodies like ghosts stretched thin by the wind. One of them approached Damon and Alexia, bending low, its red eyes glowing with intelligence and purpose. Alexia raised her head to meet its gaze.

“Michael,” she murmured. She pressed her palm to her temple. “He’s talking to me,” she said in wonder. “He says...he has all the troops on both sides under guard by...by Orloks, a whole army of them. My God.”

Damon stared at Michael, barely able to wrap his thoughts around what was happening. Theron stirred, and Damon let him up.

“Lamiae,” Theron breathed, the same wonder in his voice.

“They’ve stopped the fighting,” Alexia said. “Michael says...we have to tell the troops to keep quiet, or they’ll be killed.”

She got to her feet, Damon helping her, and faced the valley. “Your voice carries better than mine, Damon,” she said. “Tell them not to struggle.” She touched her temple again.

“Michael says—” She didn’t finish, because the chopper was nearly overhead. A spotlight fell on the settlement walls and flowed down to catch Alexia, Theron and Damon in its bright circle.

“Agent Fox,” an amplified voice boomed down from the chopper. “Are you all right?”

“McAllister!” Alexia called. She raised her hand and swept it back and forth, then held her hand palm out to the chopper. The craft rose abruptly and hovered about fifteen meters overhead, its light still focused on Alexia.

That was when the new contingent of Council troops appeared, announcing their arrival with a volley of heavy fire at the chopper. It stopped before the bullets could do any real damage, and Damon heard grunts of surprise and pain.

“How many Lamiae are there?” he asked Alexia.

“I don’t know.” She turned to face him. “You’d better make the announcement.

There’s going to be a truce as of right now, or no one’s going to like what will happen.”

It was almost too easy. One moment the tension and hatred was as thick as congealing blood, and the next contingents from both sides were approaching each other, weaponless and ready to communicate. The strike force commander was one of the humans; he eyed Alexia with enough hostility that Damon had to remind himself that he was part of the cease-fire, too. He remained close to her as Theron and the Opir commander, who had come forward with three of his men, spoke with the humans, including the man Alexia had called McAllister.

“Damon,” Alexia said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

The soft, sad tone of her voice cut through the drone of the negotiations like fangs through tender flesh. Damon took Alexia’s arm and led her away from the others, turning the corner to the north side of the wall where the voices faded to a murmur.

“Alexia—” he began.

“Damon—” She chuckled low in her throat, met his gaze and sobered again. “You had something to say?”

Something to say. Where could he even begin? He saw this woman before him, this remarkable, brave, intelligent woman, and found his tongue hopelessly inadequate to the task.

“You did this,” he said at last. “It’s because of you that Theron is still alive and these people are talking to each other.”

“M-me?” she stammered, giving a quick shake of her head. “This is all because of Michael, because somehow he managed to get all these Orloks together and convinced them to intervene.”

Damon had too many things on his mind to argue with her. “How is that possible?” he asked. “Lamiae are beasts, killers, incapable of reason.”

“Are they, Damon?” She took his hand in hers and studied it as if she had never seen it before. “Michael isn’t only capable of reason, he’s capable of regret. Deep regret for what he did to try and start a war.”

If he hadn’t sensed a wrongness in Alexia’s partner from the beginning, Damon might have been surprised. “Why?” he asked.

“He was so filled with hatred. Hatred for both sides, Nightsider and human.” She dropped her gaze. “I never saw that side of him, Damon. I had no idea, until I read the message he left for me on the communicator. I didn’t even know it was there until you and the others went to the caves.”

“What did the message say?”

“It was because of his former partner, Jill. They loved each other, the way—” She broke off and continued in a near whisper. “About a year ago, they were sent into the Zone to meet a Daysider agent. Michael didn’t go into details, but he said it was some kind of secret mission to determine if operatives from both sides could work together.

They thought it might be some way to work toward peace on an individual level.”

“They?” Damon asked. “The Council and Aegis?”

She nodded. “Michael, his partner and the Daysider did meet, and things seemed to be going well when Michael was called back to the Enclave. Jill remained behind. When he was finally able to return to the Zone, he found Jill dead, killed by the Darketan.”

Damon felt a rising sense of dread. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“When Michael went to hunt down the Daysider, he met what he thought at the time was a Council agent, a Nightsider, who told him where he could find the Darketan.

Michael killed the Daysider, and then the Opir agent helped him get out of the area before someone from Erebus found the body. Before they parted, the supposed Council agent told him that both Jill and the Daysider had been part of an experiment, and not what Aegis had told him.”

She swallowed and looked up. “They starved the Darketan before they sent him out, Damon. He didn’t know it, but they were injecting him with drugs that leached all the nutrients out of the blood he’d been drinking. Both sides wanted to see how long he could work with an Aegis agent, under orders not to hurt her, before he was forced to take her blood. They wanted to see if she’d cooperate, and if she didn’t, if he would kill her.”

“Sires,” Damon swore. He cupped Alexia’s hand between his. “That was why he hated his own people as well as mine.”

“It gets worse.” Alexia closed her eyes. “When Michael returned to the Enclave, he made it his business to find out if what the Nightsider said was true. He learned that Aegis had sent Jill out with a defective patch so that the Daysider couldn’t find out about the drugs if he and Jill discovered a way to coexist without killing each other. She would have died even if the Darketan didn’t kill her.”

“That wasn’t quite the way it happened,” a familiar woman’s voice said behind Damon.

Alexia’s eyes widened, and Damon turned. Eirene stood a few meters away, Sergius nearly impaled on the muzzle of her rifle. The man Alexia had called McAllister stood a little distance from her, with Theron beside him. McAllister stared at the woman as if he were trying to silence her with his gaze alone.

“I learned almost by accident,” Eirene said, as much to the human as to Damon and Alexia. “Alexia, I first met you after I was sent to San Francisco as an object of study for Aegis, a gesture of goodwill and a spy. I was trying to escape when I found you, and gave you my blood.”

“I remember,” Alexia said in a hushed voice.

“You inspired me in a way I didn’t believe possible, Alexia,” she said. “I decided to stay, to cooperate with Aegis and find a way to work for peace. Because my blood put your illness in remission, they found a way to derive drugs from it that could work to counteract the genetic condition that prevented almost half your kind from digesting human food.”

Damon glanced at Alexia, wondering if she was as astonished as he felt. “You’re Eirene, aren’t you?” she asked, a catch in her voice.

“Damon didn’t tell you?” She sighed. “How did you know?”

Tensing for Alexia’s answer, Damon cursed himself for his blindness. Alexia had recognized Eirene as someone who had helped her long ago, but she must also have felt that there was something between him and the Darketan stranger. Somewhere along the way, she had put it all together. And he had done nothing to prepare her.

“I wasn’t completely sure until now,” Alexia said. “But Damon spoke of a woman he’d loved in Erebus, a woman who had been sent away on some kind of suicide mission. Other things you said, the way you acted...it all started to make sense.”

“Yes,” Eirene said softly, glancing at Damon. “As I told him, I made myself so much a part of the furniture at Aegis that I was able to learn things I never should have heard, about certain experiments they conducted with the Council’s cooperation.” She paused.

“That first experiment with Jill and the Darketan... Her patch wasn’t disabled because he might have discovered what it was. It was because they wanted to see if a starving Daysider and a dying dhampir could save each other.”

“And not just any Darketan,” Sergius said, his voice drawn in pain but still clear enough to express contempt. “One of that cursed mutant breed who never make the complete transition to Lamia, but carry the creatures’ propensity for extreme emotion and violence.”

He smiled at Damon. “Like you, Damon, he was driven by bestial urges but unable to understand why. The Council was also very interested in learning if he could control those urges in the presence of a food source. He and the female Jill would be entirely dependent on each other—she on his blood, he on hers. Just like you and Agent Fox.”

Damon was too stunned to speak. He heard Alexia gasp, a sickened sound, and then Eirene spoke again.

“Yes,” she said, “they chose a certain kind of Darketan, but not just to find out if he could control the Lamia side of himself. They also knew Damon was capable of the kind of emotion that would help him understand human, and dhampir, nature.”

Eirene shook her head sadly. “That first time didn’t work,” she said. “The Darketan killed Jill, and Michael killed him before the Council could send agents to retrieve him.

So they sent you two out for the same purpose, hoping for a different result.”

“And they got it,” Theron said. He moved to join Alexia and Damon, as if to lend his support in their time of trial. “You were able to build the bridge, and help each other survive.”

“Because there was something special about Alexia, too,” Eirene said. She hesitated, glanced away and looked back again with even greater sorrow than before. “When I gave Alexia my blood twenty years ago, I left a part of myself inside her, a trace of my signature that was never extinguished. Aegis chose Alexia for the experiment when they learned that I and Damon—” She swallowed. “When they, and the Council, realized that my previous connection to Damon might enable him to recognize that signature and be drawn to Alexia as he would be to no one else.”

The shock was so thick in the air that Damon could hardly breathe. He felt blindly for Alexia, desperate to make sure she was still breathing herself.

As if to prove his fears were unfounded, Alexia spoke again, though she almost seemed not to have heard what Eirene had just told them.

“Michael found out about the first experiment,” she said in a dazed voice. “Now it all makes sense. He managed to hide his knowledge so well that Aegis sent him in with me, even though his first partner had died under similar circumstances. He was supposed to leave me alone with Damon, but he had his own plans. He wanted to sabotage the second experiment, because he—” She nearly choked, and Damon reached out to steady her. His hand closed on empty air.

“He wasn’t the only one who didn’t want the experiment to succeed,” Sergius said, filling the unbearable silence. “The Expansionists also learned of it and determined to stop it by killing you and Damon. After all, were you to build the bridge Theron mentioned—” he nodded toward his former mentor “—it would scarcely benefit those who wanted war.”

“And Michael wanted war, as well,” Alexia said, her voice growing stronger, “no matter whom he destroyed in the process. He led the assassins to us. Lysander was one of them, and Michael made a deal that he’d deliver my patch to him as long as he and his men didn’t kill me. It all went as Michael planned, and he took my patch. But other operatives, presumably from the Council, killed two of the assassins before they could finish Damon off, and Michael fled.”

She met Damon’s gaze with a steadiness that surprised and humbled him. “Later, Lysander killed the Council operatives—the ones we found—and Michael came back to us with the intention of murdering you. By then, he’d already sent the message to Aegis.

He knew the colony was the other new hope for peace, and summoning the strike force would wipe that out, as well.”

“How did he learn the true nature of the colony?” Damon asked, resisting his desire to sweep Alexia into his arms and carry her to that place out of time they had once—oh, so briefly—found together.

“I told Lysander, of course,” Sergius said, “and he must have told Carter. How well it would have worked if he had not underestimated you, Agent Fox.”

“And Damon,” Alexia added, lifting her chin. “And Theron, and the colonists.”

“And the Lamiae,” Damon said. “Was that what made Michael decide to help us, Alexia? Changing into one of them?”

“He recorded his message to me before he became an Orlok,” she said. “At the time, he was fully committed to his course and wanted me to understand why he’d done it. But yes, something happened to him when he changed. Something that made him realize what a terrible mistake he’d made and inspired him to fix it in any way he could.”

“If he hadn’t,” Eirene said, “if Lamiae really were the monsters we always believed them to be, we wouldn’t be standing here now.” She met Alexia’s gaze. “What became of your patch?”

“We don’t know,” Alexia said, glancing at Damon. “We thought it might have been brought here, to the colony. But we realized soon enough that it couldn’t have been, and Sergius confirmed it. I’m sure Lysander thought they could gain some benefit out of the patch, maybe sell it to the Expansionists. But since it seems to have disappeared, we’ll never know.” She smiled. “And now that we’re all such good friends, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“You’re going to need a new patch,” Damon said.

“I should thing that the Enclave would be willing to provide you with one,” Eirene said.

“Agent Fox—” McAllister began, clearing his throat.

“Director McAllister,” she said, swinging around to face the older man. “What about you? What could have possessed you to send a strike force based on one agent’s word?”

The man had the grace to look ashamed. “I was not told about this so-called experiment,” he said, “and I was not informed about the deployment of the strike force until they had already left San Francisco. Certain members of the Enclave government acted without the approval of the Mayor or Congress. I was fortunate to learn what was happening before—” He broke off, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “The important thing is that a new war has been avoided, and we have begun talks to determine how this came about and what to do if something similar happens in the future.”

“And will I and Damon be part of these talks?” Alexia asked bitterly. “We did what Aegis wanted, didn’t we?”

“I know how much you sacrificed, Agent Fox, and if I had realized...” He folded his hands nervously across his groin. “It will not be forgotten, I assure you.”

“Sacrifice?” Damon said, baring his teeth. “Your Enclave had no right.” He walked away from Alexia and Theron, striding toward McAllister with fists clenched and head down.

“Damon!” Alexia cried, running to catch up with him. “Don’t you see? No matter what we had to go through, we proved something important. Darketans and dhampires can work together. They can care for each other. And someone like you can become more than a Nightsider or a Lamia.

“You can see things from the middle no one on either side can imagine. What you have, the ability to truly feel, is a gift.” She glanced at Theron. “The colonists have proved that humans and Nightsiders can live side by side in harmony. Isn’t that worth any sacrifice?”

Damon stopped, intensely aware of Alexia behind him, of Eirene and Sergius, of the Opiri and humans and Lamiae on every side.

Alexia was right. She had always been able to see things more clearly than he could.

And it wasn’t only hope for a lasting peace she gave him now, but hope for himself.

Hope that he could become what Alexia believed he could be. Hope that her faith in him would let him accept what he wanted so desperately to give her.

Abruptly he turned and took her arm. “If you will excuse us,” he growled, “Alexia and I have something to discuss. Privately.”

Striding past McAllister and the humans around him, he led Alexia back along the wall until he was certain not even the Opiri could hear them. Then he swung her to face him, trapping her face between his hands. “Alexia, I—” She gazed up at him, lips parted, eyes shining with tears. He realized that it was fear he saw in them, felt in the trembling of her body.

Fear of him. All those brave words she had spoken. They had been said for the benefit of her audience, not for him.

He dropped his hands. “I’m sorry, Alexia,” he said. “If I had known what they were trying to do, what they made me a part of—”

“I know,” she said with such overwhelming sadness that Damon felt his own eyes grow moist. “I’m sorry, too, Damon. You suffered so much. And all this time Eirene was alive. She was the one who saved me, who gave me the gift that helped us both survive.”

Her blood signature. The most devastating revelation of all, that Damon had been drawn to Alexia—come to care for her—because he had sensed Eirene all along.

“I’m glad for you, Damon,” Alexia said, her lips trembling in a smile. “For you and Eirene. After all this, I know they won’t keep you apart again. You can be free. Really free.”

Damon swallowed hard. “Is that what you want, Alexia?” he asked.

She took his hand. “I want you to be happy. You loved Eirene, even if you couldn’t admit it at the time. And she loves you. It was always her. I should have known—” Her voice broke, and her knees began to buckle. Damon bent to catch her and lifted her to face him again.

“Should have known what?” he asked. “That I couldn’t care for you unless your blood carried Eirene’s blood signature?”

“Not only that. They starved you, Damon. They took advantage of everything you are to make you turn to me. It was your own strength that kept you from hurting me, not anything I did or didn’t do. It was only natural, when we took each other’s blood—”

“Natural?” Damon’s anger roughened his voice, but he couldn’t hold it back. “Are you saying that what we feel for each other can’t be real?”

“What I feel doesn’t matter. Eirene—”

“Eirene was my salvation a long time ago. Yes, I loved her. But she knows that’s over, Alexia.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “The first time we spoke in the caves, she knew I loved you.”

Her gaze met his. “What?”

“I love you. ” He tried to smile. “You put me through Human Hell just to get me to say those words. And I won’t forgive you for it. I mean to make you pay for the rest of your life.”

“Damon—” She searched his eyes. “Do you mean—”

“I mean that I can’t live without you. I mean that you’re the most remarkable woman of either species I’ve ever met.” He kissed her chin. “They said I can see from the middle. But I can’t, Alexia. Not without you.”

“You’re wrong, Damon,” Alexia said, still refusing to believe him. “You’re more than just a symbol of peace. You can’t just forget what you represent to all of us.”

“A symbol doesn’t feel what I feel for you,” he said, kissing the side of her mouth. “It wasn’t the blood signature, and it wasn’t starvation that made me love you. That would never have been enough. It may have brought us together, but no one can force someone to love.”

He kissed Alexia lightly on the lips, but he felt her holding back. She was afraid.

Afraid that he was giving her what she wanted without regard for his own wishes.

“What can I do to prove myself to you?” he asked, stroking her cheeks with his fingertips. “I’d love you even if you became a Lamia, you little fool.”

Suddenly she burst into laughter. “I...I know what they’ve done for us,” she said, catching her breath, “but I’d rather stay just as I am, if you don’t mind.”

“Whatever you are, wherever you go, I’ll be with you. No matter what happens from now on, whatever agreement the Enclave and Erebus reach with or without our help, we won’t be parted again. We’ll do whatever we can to convince them that the peace has to be maintained.” He brushed her hair back from her face. “Maybe there’ll be a lot more work to do. But we’ll do it together.”

“I don’t know...Damon,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Then believe this,” he said. And he showed her with his mouth and his body and his heart until every last barrier fell and she was in his arms, loving him, his for all time.

Together they watched the dawning of a new day.

And a love that could never die.

* * * * *