Daysider

Chapter 3

Alexia smothered a cynical laugh. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

As much as he detested his own feelings, Damon couldn’t help but admire her. He had done so from their first meeting, when she’d played it so cool in the face of her partner’s intransigence.

All feigned, of course. Not her courage—he had no reason to doubt that—but certainly Carter’s fury. No trained agent of Aegis would be so flagrantly emotional when facing the enemy. It had all been an act for his benefit.

Just as he was putting on an act for the dhampires, doing his best to make them believe he didn’t hate everything they stood for.

But not Alexia herself. Lying so close beside her, he could inhale her scent, both floral and spicy, without the distraction of other smells. He breathed in deeply, tasting the air around her: the heat of her skin, the unique signature of the blood pulsing through her veins, and the faint female tang that stirred his body in a way he wanted very much to ignore.

Once again, as at the beginning, he was captivated by her beauty, her natural grace, the harmony of her movements. Not even the bulky camouflage fatigues could conceal how extraordinary she was. Her sleek, slender figure, strong and utterly female at the same time, was as perfect as that of the most beautiful Opir female. Her hair was the color of her namesake’s fur, her skin honey-warm in the light of the dying sun, her green eyes with their oval, almost catlike pupils vivid and fearless.

If it hadn’t been for all those compelling qualities and a hundred more uncounted, he might have continued to forget that he had once been capable of wanting a woman. But she had made it impossible for him to take any further comfort in that denial. Or in the solitude he had learned to embrace over the past two decades.

Lifting his head a little, Damon peered in the direction from which the shots had come.

The shooter wasn’t in the valley; Damon estimated that he or she must be hidden somewhere in the hills on the other side.

“Do you see anything?” Alexia whispered, unslinging her rifle from her shoulder.

Once again he found himself focused on her instead of the danger confronting them.

He remembered the first time he had met her gaze, the brief flash of uncertainty and surprise he had glimpsed in her eyes. It had been obvious that she, unlike her partner, had never met one of his kind before.

He had been careful to watch her reaction when he’d told her about the dead Council agent, hoping she would slip and reveal some knowledge of a previous Aegis mission to investigate the colony. In spite of her defiance, he could tell she knew nothing.

Perhaps she and her partner were the first. But he wasn’t foolish enough to believe she wouldn’t use her time with him to augment her agency’s knowledge of the Council’s activities in the Zone.

That was good. As long as Alexia was asking questions and he kept her satisfied with vague answers, she would be less likely to realize what he was doing. The fact that her partner had broken away was a problem, but not an insoluble one. Not as long as Damon kept his head.

And kept himself from feeling.

“Our would-be executioner is firing from the east,” he said, belatedly answering Alexia’s question.

“A single sniper,” she said. “From the colony?” She looked sideways at him, eyes narrowed. “It’s still light. Do they have any Daysiders down there?”

Damon was genuinely surprised at the question, though he had no intention of offering the real reason why that was virtually impossible.

“Unlikely,” he said.

“But a Nightsider would be taking a chance emerging so early,” she said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Even protective gear doesn’t ease most vampires’ fear of sunlight.”

She waited for Damon to answer, but he held his silence. She shifted her weight and rested her chin on her forearms.

“It wouldn’t be one of the colony’s humans unless he or she is under the direct control of a Bloodmaster,” she said. “You suggested the Nightsiders who founded the settlement were the kind who wouldn’t be missed leaving Erebus. Are you sure there are no Bloodmasters down there?”

“That is what I am here to find out,” Damon said.

A second round of shots pierced the air above them, almost close enough to graze Damon’s scalp. He grabbed Alexia and rolled them both down the slight incline behind them, fetching up against a clump of scrub oaks with Alexia’s chest and hips and legs atop his, her rifle trapped beneath him.

She lay panting in his arms for a moment, obviously surprised by his sudden action, and he felt the thumping of her heart through her clothing and the rush of her breath on his cheek. He was holding a woman in his arms, a woman like no other, and his body woke to furious life.

Damon had engaged in sexual intercourse with only three females in his brief three decades of memory: one a Bloodmistress named Jocasta, with whom he’d had a clandestine, lengthy affair; the second a human female “given” to him by the Council as a reward for good work; and the third the Darketan woman with whom he had shared the only happy year of his life.

The first relationship had begun because the Bloodmistress had been intrigued by the Darketans’ outsider status and their reputation for sexual prowess, and it continued so long because she had been pleased with his performance and he had been content to sate her considerable appetite. There had been little affection involved. The second had been a matter of some shame to him and had never been repeated. But the last...

It had begun as a means of easing loneliness, two equals coming together for mutual comfort in a world they could never fully be a part of. But it hadn’t stayed that way.

Damon had learned what it was to feel as the Opiri claimed no Nightsider could, a way no Daysider dared.

Eirene had returned his feelings, but she and Damon had been forcibly separated, and the Council had sent her on a solo mission to the Border. He had never seen her again.

From that day forward, Damon had been numb to his body’s sexual demands. But now the protective distance was gone, and so was his control. Every hair on his body was standing erect, and his heart seemed to thunder like the vast generators beneath Erebus.

As if she sensed—or felt—his arousal, Alexia rolled off him with a sound very much like a growl, yanked her rifle from under Damon’s back and dropped into a crouch two meters away. Damon got to his knees and raked his fingers through his hair, dislodging twigs, dun-colored grass and last autumn’s brittle leaves.

“Don’t do that again,” Alexia said.

“You mean save your life?” he snapped, struggling to regain his equilibrium.

They stared at each other, confusion and hostility warring for dominance in Alexia’s remarkable eyes. Oh, she’d felt it, too, that searing physical awareness, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it any more than he did.

He looked away. “We’ll have to fall back,” he said, “and find a way to lure the shooter into a trap so that we can question him. If he’s from the colony, he can give us valuable information.”

“And what if he’s not? You admit the Expansionists may have known about the colony before the Council did, even if they didn’t actually help found it. Maybe your war party has sent its own agents to stop you from reporting back.”

“Impossible,” Damon said. “All operatives answer to the Council, not to individual factions.”

“Are you so sure? Every government has its dissidents, those who work secretly against the ruling party.”

Of course she was right. But he knew that was not the case here, and even to consider that the Expansionists could send their own operatives into the field and so blatantly attack legitimate agents would suggest that the Independents’ hold on the Council was dangerously weak. If he believed that, anything he did now would ultimately be meaningless.

There was a part of him that wanted war with the Enclave. They had slaughtered thousands of Opiri, including his fellow Darketans. But he had made a promise to Eirene.

“Work for peace,” she had said just before their final parting. “For peace, and freedom.”

He met Alexia’s gaze. “You seem to be overlooking one other possibility,” he said.

“The shooter could be your partner.”

Alexia drew herself up, her shoulders rigid. “No,” she said. “I’ve already told you why that couldn’t happen. He would know he’d be as likely to hit me as you.”

Her denial was just a little too vehement, and Damon wondered if she thought it was possible...if Michael Carter had really been as angry and bitter as he had appeared. Angry enough to risk his partner’s life.

If he could encourage her to believe the worst about Carter, Damon could keep her off balance and make sure she never even considered the truth.

“It seems there is more than one possibility here,” he said, retrieving his pack, “and we won’t know which one is correct until we catch the shooter. If he wants us dead badly enough, he’ll keep firing and we can track his position.”

“That wouldn’t be too bright of him,” Alexia remarked, keeping low to the ground as she pulled on her own pack.

“It depends on how desperate he is and what his orders are, if any,” Damon said. “If he’s from the colony, he won’t want to be cut off from it.”

“If he’s from the colony, he probably isn’t the only one guarding it. They must know we’re coming. That’ll make it a little tricky getting close enough to observe.”

Naturally, Alexia would regard that as a serious problem, but to Damon it meant that everything was proceeding as planned. “Are you giving up?” he asked.

She grinned, revealing her very white incisors. “I’ll give up when you do.”

“Then I suggest our primary goal now should be to catch the shooter and stay alive in the process.”

Alexia studied him a moment longer, green eyes slitted like those of a deceptively lazy cat. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They started back down the other side of the hill, Alexia taking the lead. There were no more shots, no sound but the typical movements of small mammals and leaves sighing in the evening breeze. The sun was beginning to set, and soon, Damon knew, he would have to rely on Alexia’s superior ability to see in the dark. Darketans were by no means night-blind like humans, but Opir-like night vision was one of the few advantages dhampires had over his kind.

But his advantages over her—greater speed and strength—would come into play sooner or later, if they remained together. And he would make sure they did.

Perhaps it was time for a little reinforcement of Alexia’s decision to work with him. He would do so by telling her part of the truth.

As they turned south, hiking parallel to the valley, Damon caught up with her.

“There is something I should have disclosed earlier,” he said.

She stopped abruptly, her hand moving to the strap of her rifle. “What is it?”

“It was not my idea to join forces,” he said. “I was instructed to contact and work with any Aegis agents I encountered in the area of the colony.”

Her hand remained on the strap. “The Council ordered it?” she asked, frowning.

“Why?”

“For the same reasons I gave you when we met. I would not be surprised if your own agency had some part in it.”

Her frown deepened. “We were given no such instructions.”

Damon had never thought they had, but he had succeeded in planting the idea in her mind.

“Would it shock you to learn that Aegis and the Council were already in contact regarding the colony?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “As much as it would shock me if you defected to our side.”

A palpable tension vibrated between them, in some ways not unlike what Damon had felt when she had lain in his arms. Her words were a challenge, one she didn’t expect him to take up, and yet there was an undercurrent beneath the flatness of her voice that hinted of a strange, almost wistful regret.

As if, secretly, she wished he would shock her by saying yes.

“You’re right,” he said, setting off again with a long, ground-eating stride. “It’s impossible.”

She caught up with him, matching his pace in spite of her smaller frame and shorter legs. “What gave you the idea they might be working together?” she demanded.

“It was only speculation,” he said. “And perhaps a little hope.”

“Hope? That your Council would want to work with my people beyond the bare minimum necessary to keep the Armistice? Why would that matter to you?”

He glanced down at her. “We should be quiet now, Agent Fox, unless we wish to tell our shooter we’re coming.”

Alexia offered no further conversation, but Damon sensed that she was thinking through what he’d told her. She would be wondering if her own government was, in fact, secretly conferring with his own without the knowledge of their citizens, their operatives, or those who would gladly revert to a state of war.

It might even be true. Damon was too far from the circles of Opir power to know for certain, and the Council had no earthly reason to confide such matters to a Darketan.

Their business concerned him only so far as it affected his work. And his promise to Eirene.

But he didn’t think it was impossible. And if there was some new rapprochement over the illegal colony, the Council would never allow the Enclave government to learn any secrets that would endanger Erebus.

The humans would know that. Just as Alexia did.

Listening intently, Damon slowed his pace as the sun sank behind the hills to the west.

Alexia took the lead again. The landscape darkened, the details blurring in Damon’s sight. Alexia moved with assurance, certain of her path as they descended into a narrow hollow between two low hills.

But it was Damon who sensed the attack. The snap of a single twig beneath a booted foot warned him an instant before the bullets began flying.

He was just a second too late to push Alexia out of the way. Several bullets tore into her shoulder in rapid succession, spinning her to the ground. She went limp, curled on her side with her red hair fanned around her head.

Swallowing a howl of protest, Damon knelt beside her, broke the strap of her rifle between his hands and brought the weapon into position, spraying the hillside above them.

A drift of unfamiliar scent behind him sent him skidding around on his knees to take aim at the second shooter, but he got off only a dozen shots before a single large projectile struck him full in the chest. He continued to fire, ignoring the black burst of pain that filled his lungs with blood and flame. He heard a faint grunt that told him one of his bullets had found a mark, and then the gunfire ceased.

Gasping for air, Damon crouched over Alexia and pivoted on his feet, doing his best to cover every possible angle of attack. None came. He and Alexia would have made easy prey, but their enemies were leaving them alone.

It would have made perfect sense, all part of the plan, if the ones he’d expected hadn’t tried to kill both him and the dhampir agent he was supposed to keep by his side.

Something was very, very wrong. And Damon’s ability to grasp what had happened was rapidly fading. One of his lungs was collapsed, and there was blood filling his chest cavity. He could recover in healing stasis, but it would take time, and once he was unconscious he would be unable to protect Alexia.

And he had to protect her. He couldn’t risk being held responsible for an Aegis agent’s death when the situation was so precarious. At another time, he might have let her die.

So he told himself.

With the last of his energy, he shrugged out of his pack, bent over Alexia and tried to assess the damage. She was rapidly losing blood, and her eyelids fluttered in semiconsciousness. Fighting off waves of nausea, Damon removed her pack, worked her jacket off and fumbled inside his pack for the field dressing every Darketan carried in the Zone. He tore open the waterproof packet and applied the treated bandage to her wound, fixing it in place with the attached strip of fabric.

He was forced to lift her body to remove her bandage, and it soon became apparent that the dressing wouldn’t be sufficient to stop the bleeding. There were still bullets inside her, and though they would eventually be pushed out by her healing flesh, she couldn’t afford to lose too much blood or she wouldn’t be able to heal. He rooted inside her pack, found her med kit and unwrapped her field dressing.

Hardly able to catch his breath, Damon applied the second dressing. Alexia’s blood soaked through it almost before he had finished. He yanked the tail of his shirt from the waistband of his pants, tore the bottom half of the shirt into wide strips and folded them together, pressing the makeshift bandage over the soaked field dressings. He knew he wouldn’t be able to maintain the pressure once he was out, so he lay across Alexia’s slender body, using his own weight to hold the bandages in place.

“Hold on, Alexia,” he whispered. “Hold on.”

Then the last of his air ran out.

Alexia woke to throbbing agony that centered in her right shoulder and numbed her arm all the way down to her fingertips. In a flash she remembered the attack, and the bullets that had slammed into her flesh. She knew she had fallen, shocked by the blinding pain and the impact, and then there had been some kind of movement, a voice.

Then nothing. But now she was awake, and alive, and someone was lying on his belly beside her, his cheek pressed against a rough patch of dirt.

Damon. It had been his voice she’d heard, his hands working over her body and tying the bandage that had stanched her wounds. Now the bleeding had stopped, and though she was still very weak, she knew she wasn’t going to die.

But she couldn’t tell from her position if Damon had survived the attack. Her heart lurched. She rolled over on her right side, pressing her hand to her bandages, and watched for signs that he was breathing.

He was. She closed her eyes and sank onto her back again, sick with pain but too grateful to care. She didn’t understand why she should be grateful; Damon was still the enemy and had probably been lying about nearly everything he’d told her to advance his own agenda.

But he’d quite possibly saved her life by giving her body a chance to repair itself. He was probably in stasis himself, letting his own body do its work to heal whatever injuries he had sustained.

Hissing through her teeth, Alexia tried to sit up. It took her three tries, but she finally managed it, taking care not to risk damaging the tissue still knitting under the bandage or jog the bullets working their way out of her back. She scanned the hollow where they lay and the slopes of the hills to each side, but there was no sound, smell or sight of the enemy...whoever they had been.

Not Michael, she thought with relief. Not that she’d ever believed he was capable of turning on her. There had been at least two shooters this time, maybe more, and they had to be either Daysiders or leeches. Damon had denied there could be Daysiders in the colony, and given that their numbers were believed to be very limited, the shooters would almost certainly be vampires.

But were they from the colony, or Erebus? Damon had also dispelled the notion that the Expansionists had their own agents, but even if he believed that, she had no reason to take his word for it.

Alexia crawled over to Damon and touched his back. It rose and fell steadily. There was a hole in his jacket that marked where a large-caliber bullet had pierced his body.

Carefully she rolled him a little to the side and felt the front of his torn shirt. There was another hole that matched the first. A through-and-through, then. Thank God for that.

She shivered, quickly realizing that the state of her body, and Damon’s, left them both more vulnerable to the chill of the early autumn night. Getting to her feet, she retrieved her pack and jacket, which Damon must have taken from her after the attack. She draped the jacket over her shoulders, removed the tightly wrapped blanket from the pack, laid the blanket over Damon’s back and picked up the rifle lying about a meter away. It had recently been fired, and she was pretty sure Damon was the one who had done it. With luck, he’d taken down at least one of the shooters.

Her Vampire Slayer, however, was gone. That didn’t surprise her. But if the shooters had gotten so close and intended to do so much damage, why in hell had they left her and Damon alive?

She sat beside him and sipped from her canteen, drawing her knees up to her chest to combat the chill. There was no question of leaving him. They had become partners of a sort, and no field agent abandoned her partner.

Except Michael had. He’d gone far enough away from her that he hadn’t known she was being attacked.

Not good. Not good at all.

She dozed a little, chin on knees, unable to help herself. Some time later she jerked awake again, aware for the first time of another ache she hadn’t noticed before, camouflaged by the greater pain of her shoulder. She removed her jacket, wincing at the stabs of pain radiating out from her shoulder, and touched her left inner arm. Her shirtsleeve was crusted with dried blood.

Suddenly alarmed, she unbuttoned her shirt, pulled it open and slid it down behind her shoulders. There was a thick scab under her arm where her patch should have been.

It was gone. Someone had dug it out in a hasty, brutal attempt at surgery, leaving it to heal over.

Leaving her without the drugs she needed to survive.