The man who walked out from behind the bushes was tall.

That was the first thing Alexia noticed as she drew a bead on his chest directly over his heart. Then she looked up into his face. He was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Not beautiful like a woman, but in the perfect harmony of his features: the strong chin, straight nose, high cheekbones, expressive lips.

And his eyes. They were dark…not maroon like those of a Nightsider, but the deepest sapphire imaginable. His short hair was not white, like most vampires, but a hue somewhere between brown and gold, and his skin was deeply tanned.

Alexia swallowed. She had met her first Daysider at last, and he was so much…more than she had expected.

About the Author

SUSAN KRINARD has been writing paranormal romance for nearly twenty years. Her books include a number of novels for Mills & Boon. With Daysider she begins a series of vampire paranormal romances, the NIGHTSIDERS series, for Mills & Boon® Nocturne™.

Sue lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband, Serge, her dogs, Freya, Nahla and Cagney, and her cats, Agatha and Rocky. She loves her garden, nature, painting and chocolate…not necessarily in that order.

Daysider
Susan Krinard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With thanks to both “L’s” for their

patience and support.

The first known offspring of a voluntary union between a human female and a male Opir, aka “Nightsider,” was born in the San Francisco Enclave during the seventh year of the Opir-Human War, conceived during the brief period of the first Truce. The child, Jenna Donnelly, daughter of Special Forces Captain Fiona Donnelly and Opir refugee Kane, remained the only documented example of such a union until the last year of the War, when other hybrid children—christened “dhampires”—and their mothers, who were accused of willingly “consorting with the enemy,” were brought into the capital city of San Francisco.

In the final year of the War and immediately afterward, human soldiers sweeping the newly created Zone—otherwise known as “No-man’s land”—between Enclave and Opir territories discovered lost, abandoned dhampir children, as well as those in hiding with their mothers. Unlike the women of the first “wave,” these mothers had been impregnated by male Opir soldiers without their consent, and they were often unaware that they had conceived until weeks after the encounter.

Such women and their children were given full refugee status in the Enclave, though their acceptance among Enclave citizens was slow in coming. This acceptance was impossible in Opir society, where hybrid children were considered undesirable half-castes and even abominations. It was a common belief in the Enclave that any children born to human serfs in Opir territory, particularly the city of Erebus, were destroyed before birth—a credence that was largely refuted in subsequent years, though the practice was not unknown.

In spite of their awkward status within the Enclave, dhampires soon proved to be invaluable assets. With the ability to see clearly in the dark, along with keener senses, strength and speed than homo sapiens, these children were soon recruited by Aegis, the Enclave Intelligence agency responsible for Opir-Human relations.

On its face, Aegis studied Opir society and arranged ambassadorial visits between Erebus and the Enclave, but in practice it also ran covert infiltration, intelligence operations, espionage and counterespionage within the Zone, occasionally inserting specially trained moles, posing as serfs, into Erebus itself.

Though not required to undergo Aegis training, most dhampir youths eventually sought affirmation by serving the Enclave as covert operatives. The only complication in utilizing such resources lay in some dhampires’ need for blood, another trait they held in common with their Opir Sires.

With few exceptions, dhampires rejected the taking of blood from humans. While fully sixty percent of dhampires could survive on human food alone, the remaining forty percent, in addition to being immune to the bite of a full Opir, required a special drug to allow them to digest human fare.

In time, scientists developed a means of delivering the drug into the body through a subdermal patch. This allowed the “immune” dhampires to work in the field for extended periods without requiring blood.

But dhampir operatives faced yet another challenge: Opir scouts who, while dependent on blood for survival, were capable of sustained exposure to sunlight. These “Daysiders,” outcasts within their own rigid society, nevertheless served as counterparts to Aegis agents and hindered the gathering of intelligence and other clandestine operations within the Zone.

—from the Introduction to A Brief History of the Nightsider War, San Francisco Enclave

Prologue

San Francisco, California

Mommy was crying. Alexia knew it had something to with do the lady on the TV, talking in soft words that didn’t match the angry expression on her face.

Behind the lady was a picture of a city, a black, upsidedown bowl that gleamed like a beetle’s shell in bright sunlight. “Erebus,” the lady on the TV said. Alexia didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like a very bad word. And somehow, it was making Mommy sad.

Alexia got up from her seat on the thin carpet and went to Mommy, searching her face anxiously. There were dark blotches under Mommy’s eyes, and her nose was red.

“What is it, Mommy?” Alexia asked, reaching up to be taken into her mother’s arms.

Mommy picked her up and sat her on the couch beside her. “Nothing’s wrong, Lexie,” she said, trying to smile.

Alexia always knew when Mommy was fooling. It wasn’t just that she smelled different, or the way her voice got very tight, even though she was smiling. There was something wrong, and it made Alexia upset that Mommy was unhappy. Upset and angry.

“What are they talking about?” Alexia asked, pointing at the TV.

Mommy pulled Alexia close and stroked her hair. “It’s a city,” she said.

“Like San Francisco?”

“Not the same,” Mommy replied. She breathed in and out in a funny way that made Alexia’s heart hurt. “You remember when we talked about the Nightsiders?”

Alexia made a face. “They’re nasty. We had a big fight with them.”

“That’s right.” Mommy bent her head so her nose pressed against Alexia’s hair. “That is the city they built in what we used to call the Sonoma Valley. They made it all for themselves, where they don’t have to be in the sun.”

“Sun kills them,” Alexia said solemnly.

“That’s right.”

“And they used to kill people all the time, didn’t they? During the big fight?”

Mommy covered Alexia’s eyes as if she didn’t want her to see the TV anymore. “You shouldn’t know about that,” she said, a funny warble in her voice. “No child should know.”

“Don’t worry, Mommy.” Alexia pulled her mother’s hand away from her eyes. “The kids at school talk about the bloodsuckers all the time. I’m not scared.”

“Oh, God,” Mommy whispered. “Do they…Are the other kids…nice to you, at school?”

“Oh, they’re okay. Some of the girls are mean sometimes. They give me funny looks. The boys just stare at me a lot.”

Mommy cupped both her hands around Alexia’s face. “What do they say?”

Alexia shrugged the way she had seen grown-ups do when they were pretending something didn’t matter. “Silly things, about my eyes.” She touched her own eyelids. “They say I’m like a cat because I can see in the dark.”

“That’s right,” Mommy said in a completely different voice than before. “Like a cat. And cats are beautiful, aren’t they? So graceful and brave.” She smiled, moving Alexia to sit in her lap. “But you know what? I think you look even more like a fox. Remember the pictures I showed you?”

Alexia nodded. “It was red, like my hair.”

“And quick and clever. Like you.”

They were very nice words, but Alexia couldn’t help looking at the TV again, and at the ugly city with the scary name.

“The bloodsuckers aren’t ever going to come here, are they?” she asked, just a little bit scared after all.

“Lexie, that word—”

“Isn’t that what they are, Mommy?”

Mommy made a sound a little like a laugh, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Yes,” she said. “But you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’m not worried.” Alexia bit her lip. “We aren’t ever going to get in a big fight with them again, are we?”

“No.” She took a big, long breath. “I wish—”

Alexia wriggled free and looked up into Mommy’s eyes. “What do you wish, Mommy?”

“I wish things could be the way they were before…before the big fight.”

“When my daddy was alive?”

Mommy’s face seemed to crumple all at once. She sobbed, and Alexia knew it was because of what she had said. It was all her fault.

“It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, stroking her mother’s trembling hand and soft, wet cheeks. “I won’t ever talk about Daddy again.”

“Oh, my baby,” Mommy said, gathering Alexia up again so tightly that she could barely breathe. “I will never, ever let anyone hurt you. Not anyone. I’m going to keep you with me forever and ever.”

Alexia pressed her face to the pulse in Mommy’s neck. It was so warm and sweet. It made her feel safe.

But she didn’t want to just be safe. She wanted to find a way to make Mommy happy.

And keep those nasty bloodsuckers in their ugly black city from making anyone afraid, ever again.

Chapter 1

San Francisco Enclave, West Coast Region

“It may be fatal,” the Director said.

Alexia laughed. “Since when hasn’t that been true of every mission?”

Aegis Director of Field Operations Wilson McAllister regarded her without a trace of amusement. “This isn’t funny, Alex,” he said. “We’re talking about violating our side of the Treaty and striking deep into the Zone. Even the Mayor doesn’t know about it.”

“At least not officially,” Alexia said.

“Not officially enough to send someone to pull your ass out of the fire if you get caught.” The steel rims of McAllister’s glasses flashed as they caught the cold and sterile light from the overhead fixtures. “Your mission will be to learn everything you can about the Nightsiders’ illegal colony without doing anything to attract the Citadel’s attention. If you fail or are captured—”

“—Aegis will disavow any knowledge of our actions. I know the drill.” Alexia wandered to the window overlooking the glimmering waters of San Francisco Bay. From Aegis headquarters in the old Financial District, she could see a heavily guarded convoy of trucks carrying agricultural products from the Central Valley into the city. The Treaty meant that the Nightsiders were supposed to leave such convoys alone.

Usually they did. But there were always the terrorists, the ones who wanted to ignite a new War. On both sides. And that was what her team would be sent in to try to prevent.

Alexia drifted back into memory, of the year the Nightsiders had first appeared. Not that they’d been her memories, not exactly. But she’d seen the archived news vids, the looks of bewilderment and fear on the newscasters’ faces when the first reports came in: horror stories of vampires arising seemingly out of nowhere, some emerging from decades or centuries or even millennia of sleep in sanctuaries built far beneath the earth. No one knew—or at least the leeches weren’t telling—what had roused them, or why they had chosen that time to rise and claim the earth.

Ten years later—ten years of chaos and plague and terrible war, the time when Alexia’s mother gave birth to a halfvampire child—had led to the Treaty, and now most parts of the world were carefully divided into territories: vampire Citadels and human Enclaves, separated by the unclaimed regions known as the Zones.

Just outside the Enclave that embraced San Francisco and the area formerly known as the East Bay, the Zone comprised an immense semicircular region that had once held thriving suburbs, now abandoned and slowly crumbling back to the earth as new forests and fields absorbed stone and concrete, and animals—once driven away by human incursions—reclaimed their original habitats. Beyond the Zone, to the south and east in the regions of the Central Valley, lay the farmlands that produced sustenance for the Enclaves, each surrounded by its own Zone and patrolled by special military forces whose job it was to keep Nightsiders out and human workers safe from them. In theory, as per the Treaty, the workers were protected, and so were the routes to the Enclaves.

To the north, in the area once distinguished by its scenic fields of grapevines and boutique wineries, its rolling hills and towering redwoods, stood Erebus. The Citadel of Night.

Alexia remembered the images on the TV when the construction began. Very little had been known then, because the Zone had just been established, and rumor was more plentiful than fact. Human laborers…prisoners of war…had built the city by day, vampires by night. In a year the Citadel—all black, gleaming, windowless towers and paradoxically Gothic ornamentation—was large enough to hold a population of ten thousand, and that was only on the surface. It was speculated that the underground portion of the city could house five thousand more. Today, the Citadel was twice as big, with its own farms and fields to support its human inhabitants.

Slaves, Alexia thought with that burning anger that never diminished. Blood-serfs. The prisoners, the castoffs from the human Enclaves. The damned.

Like Garret.

“Ms. Fox?”

She turned back to McAllister, who was leaning over his desk with an ominous frown on his lean brown face. His sudden formality wasn’t a good sign.

“You aren’t listening to me,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

Alexia returned to stand before the desk, taking a formal stance that betrayed none of her emotions. “Yes, sir. More than up to it.”

“It’s only been a year since your brother was—”

“I haven’t forgotten, sir.”

He cleared his throat. “The Examiners say you may still harbor resentment against the Court for sentencing him to Deportation.”

Deportation. Such a nice way of putting it. “I know the Court weighed the evidence thoroughly, sir. It was a fair trial.”

The Director sighed and sank back into his chair. “Was it?”

Alexia knew it was another test, and one she had to pass. “The evidence was conclusive, sir.”

“Then you no longer believe it was self-defense?”

The same questions the shrinks had asked her, over and over again, ever since Garret had been sent to Erebus.

“Without the laws there would be chaos, and the Enclaves would die,” she said with perfect sincerity. “I blame the leeches, sir. Only them.”

“But do you blame them enough to lose your objectivity in an operation of such extreme delicacy? That is the question.”

“Have the Examiners suggested that’s the case, sir?”

McAllister smiled without pleasure. “If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But the final decision rests with me. If I’m making a mistake—”

Alexia straightened, staring hard at the framed mission statement hung on the wall behind the Director’s chair. “You aren’t, sir. When do we go?”

McAllister made a show of shuffling a few folders on his desk and slid one of them across the desk. “Tomorrow. You and Michael will be the only team for the time being, and your mission will be to observe, and observe only.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Call Carter and study the report. There’ll be a briefing at 1100 hours.”

Before Alexia could salute, McAllister was back to his computer, typing away as if she had already left the room. She knew he preferred it that way. And so did she.

She returned to barracks and the small apartment that she, as a highly valuable Aegis asset, was permitted to occupy alone. Alexia unlaced her boots and allowed herself a small glass of the rare and expensive Riesling she had bought with the better part of last month’s pay. After a short breather she buzzed Michael, and they synced their computers to study the report.

“Looks easy,” her partner said when they had gone over it a second time. “In and out.”

Alexia glimpsed her reflection in the computer screen, briefly blotting out the image of Michael’s habitual smirk: straight auburn hair cut at an efficient and regulation chin length, tilted green eyes, slightly pointed chin. New recruits sometimes thought themselves clever by suggesting how much her appearance matched her surname.

But even a fox might not sneak out of this one. Not even a highly trained dhampir agent like her. If she’d thought Mike was taking this as lightly as his words suggested, she might have been genuinely worried.

She knew better. Her partner was one of the survivors, an agent who had made it through ten missions with only minor wounds and the same partner until Jill had been killed a year ago. Since then, he and Alexia had been on three assignments together, and they’d worked as a perfect team. She trusted him more than anyone else in Aegis, even the boss.

Michael had been deep into the Zone several times, while she’d never gone much beyond the Border. She would be relying on his greater experience, but she intended to pull her full weight. This was her chance to prove just how good she was.

She glanced at her watch. “Briefing in fifteen minutes. See you there.”

Michael gave her a mock salute. “Don’t even think about finishing that wine. I plan to drink at least half of it when we get back.”

“It’s a deal.” Alexia signed off, laced up her boots and sipped the last few drops of the wine in her glass, wondering who would be drinking the rest if she and Mike didn’t make it back.

Craving some fresh air, Alexia took the elevator to the lobby and walked out into the busy morning street. Twentysix years ago, on the day she was born, no one would have believed that San Francisco could ever return to what it had been in the years before the Awakening.

It hadn’t, of course. Not completely. But the rhythms of human life had resumed after the Treaty had permitted regular farming, manufacturing and inter-Enclave commerce. There were bankers and office workers, reporters and shopkeepers, cops and financiers all going about their business much the same way they had in the twentieth century.

But Alexia could never venture out among the general public without knowing what had changed. Because when her eyes met those of an ordinary human on the street, she saw the suspicion. Suspicion, or fear, or hostility—all the same emotions most humans felt for Nightsiders, only a little less severe because they knew she wasn’t one of the enemy.

The existence of dhampir agents couldn’t be kept from Nightsiders or Enclave citizens. But neither she nor any of her fellow Half-bloods could pass for human. Not with eyes like those of a cat and teeth a little too reminiscent of a wolf’s.

Or a Nightsider’s.

As Alexia paused at a fruit stand to examine a fresh orange, just shipped in from the Los Angeles Enclave, she heard a child’s voice on the other side of the stacked crates.

“Look, Mommy,” the little girl said. “Is that a bloodsucker?”

Alexia tried to smile at the mother, hoping to express her understanding for the child’s mistake. The woman looked mortified, but she couldn’t hide her distaste.

“You mustn’t say such things, Jenny,” she said, jerking at the little girl’s hand. “It isn’t polite, and anyway, she’s on our side.”

Our side, Alexia thought as she returned to headquarters. Yes, her loyalties could never be in question. It was her late human mother who had raised her, not her unknown and reviled Nightsider father.

But for the dhampires, there would never truly be an “our.”

The ferry slid quietly away into the fog, its wake swallowed up in the choppy waves stirred by a brisk late-summer wind off the Pacific. Unless an observer were standing nearly on top of Alexia and Michael at the old Larkspur Ferry Terminal, he or she would hardly know a boat had ever been at the dock.

But then again, Alexia thought, this was still technically part of the San Francisco Enclave, and there shouldn’t be any leeches here. Which didn’t mean a damned thing. They were standing almost at the border of the Zone, where the Redwood Highway crossed over Mission Avenue in the crumbling city of San Rafael. It was an arbitrary border, like so many of them, but it was quite real. Broad daylight, more than any mere treaty, was what protected them now.

The abandoned stronghold of the former San Quentin Correctional Facility stood within view across the inlet to the southeast, and beyond it the twisted halves of the Richmond Bridge, separated by a kilometer of empty water, reached out from each side of San Rafael Bay like hands desperate to touch one last time before an eternal parting.

Alexia tightened the straps of her pack and nodded to Michael, who was already scanning the disintegrating ferry buildings for any sign of movement. She watched him for a moment, grateful that she’d never felt the slightest romantic interest in him in spite of their close partnership. It would have made things very complicated, and fraternization was against Aegis policy in any case. But with his rugged good looks, heavily muscular build and sun-streaked blond hair, he had plenty of female admirers.

“All clear,” Mike said, oblivious to her inspection. He checked his weapons, traditional XM30 assault rifle and VS120 “Vampire Slayer” pistol and combat knife. The XM30 was powerful enough to slow a vampire down, even stop one for some time when used by an expert marksman, but the Vampire Slayer was the only weapon that could kill a leech. And it was to be used as a very last resort, because the damage it inflicted on a vampire, as well as any other creature unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end, couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what it was. It almost literally blew its target apart.

After checking her own weapons, Alexia instinctively touched the underside of her arm, tracing the raised shape through the heavy fabric of her uniform jacket and the shirt beneath. The patch was exactly where it should be, attached to her skin by a thin graft of synskin that held it in place and continuously fed the necessary drugs into her bloodstream. It was new, replaced only yesterday, and would remain effective for up to a month.

Without the drugs, she—like approximately forty percent of dhampir agents—would be unable to take nourishment from human food, and since Half-bloods never fed on blood, death was the inevitable result. At least she, unlike the other sixty percent, was immune to any risk of conversion by a vampire’s bite.

And that was a horror far worse than death. Michael noticed her gesture and touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll have this over and done within a week.”

Alexia quickly dropped her hand. There were eleven hours of daylight left, but it was a good thirty miles northeast across the Zone. If the garbled reports were correct, the illegal colony was just west of the old city of Santa Rosa, on the other side of the Sonoma range and at least three miles from the eastern border of the territory claimed by Erebus.

And the closer they got to Erebus, the more likely they were to run into the Citadel’s own agents, both Nightsiders and the elusive Daysiders… . That is, if they managed to make it past the mutant creatures even the Nightsiders wouldn’t allow near their city.

Without exchanging another word, Alexia and Michael set off toward Highway 101.

Damon crouched at the crest of the hill, looking down into the valley below. From this elevation, the abandoned city was a maze of streets and decaying buildings, empty of human life. Rusting automobiles caught the sun’s light—brief, glaring beacons that appeared and vanished in a matter of seconds like the signals of an unknown code.

But he knew the emptiness was only an illusion. Somewhere, nestled at the foot of these hills, was a society that shouldn’t exist.

He smiled, though there was no one to see. It wasn’t as if the Council hadn’t known about the colony. They hadn’t shared that fact with their field agents, but those the humans called Daysiders, despised minority that they were, had their own secret channels of communication within Erebus. Certain powerful Bloodmasters had simply failed to acknowledge the “problem”…as long as the humans, other than the serfs in the colony itself, didn’t know about it. After all, it was to Erebus’s benefit if the Opiri gained a strong foothold in the Zone. One step here, another there, testing the waters, seeing just how far they could push.

But the colony wasn’t a secret any longer. Word had come that the Enclave knew something was up, and at this very moment Aegis operatives were on their way to investigate.

And that could mean war. A new war the Expansionists would be eager enough to encourage, if the humans would be cooperative enough to instigate it. Some believed the Expansionists had established the colony themselves for that very purpose.

Even if they hadn’t, Damon had no doubt that the conservatives were secretly giving the settlement their full support, perhaps even providing serfs for the colonists. Not so the ruling Independent. They still controlled the Council, and they had no intention of letting the fragile Armistice be destroyed.

But they faced a problem that wasn’t likely to be solved without significant conflict. Damon knew the establishment of the illegal colony had been motivated by a very simple instinct shared by both Opiri and humans: the need to survive.

For Opiri, survival meant not only blood but room to live as their very biology demanded. Erebus was beginning to outgrow itself. Opiri were not meant to dwell in close proximity to each other like humans or rabbits, squeezed into apartments stacked like blocks under a single roof. Though Bloodmasters and many Bloodlords were accorded their own towers to accommodate their many serfs and vassals, there was little room in the Citadel for upward mobility. And Freebloods needed blood as much as any other Opir.

Sooner or later, the pressure to increase their territory would incite certain Opiri to violence. The only thing to be done was to delay the inevitable until some new bargain could be reached with the human government…or the Expansionists found a way to break the power of the Enclaves forever.

Damon had no personal stake in the colony’s fate one way or another, and his opinions were of no consequence except where they related directly to his work. He belonged to no Bloodmaster. He served only the Council, and Erebus. Because that was his nature, and his destiny.

To be forever alone. Neither human nor Opir, too valuable to be discarded like the Lamiae, too different to ever fully integrate into Erebusian society. But vital to the Citadel nevertheless, and free in a way no vassal could ever be.

Squinting against the lowering sun, Damon started down the slope, his feet deftly finding their way among stones and tough, hardy shrubs scattered like spots over the hillside pelt of summer-gold grass. He would not be approaching the colony; his job was both more dangerous and much simpler.

He reached the foot of the hill and opened his senses. He smelled nothing but the sharp scent of spice bush and the musk of a fox, heard only the rustle of fleeing mice and the distant cry of a hawk. As long as he traveled by the sun, he was not likely to be detected by the Opir colonists, whose own powerful senses would be muted by their retreat into daytime shelter. As for the human serfs, they might as well be blind and deaf.

That left only the dhampires. It was not a matter of if they were coming, but when.

And he would be ready.

Chapter 2

The person, whoever or whatever it might be, was coming closer.

Flashing the hand sign that meant he was about to circle around behind the approaching stranger, Michael left Alexia to watch and wait. It was morning—the third since they’d left the ferry—so Alexia knew the one they were about to meet couldn’t be a Nightsider. Silent as they were, even vampires couldn’t move very quietly bundled up in the kind of protective gear they had to wear in daylight.

No, this was either human or one of the others. And while the stranger was making no particular attempt to sneak up on them, his “noise” was about as loud as the sound of a feather landing on a down pillow. Humans just didn’t move like that, not even the most highly trained agents.

The one coming toward them could be only one thing: a Daysider. And whatever he or she intended…

He, Alexia decided, breathing slowly through her nostrils. Definitely male.

She checked the VS120 strapped to her pack and adjusted her grip on her assault rifle. He couldn’t be stupid enough to think he could just stride up to an Aegis operative and dispatch her after all but announcing his presence. Not that agent deaths on either side were acknowledged by the respective governments, but that hardly meant they didn’t happen. Enclave agents had been operating in and around the Zone too long not to have a very respectable reputation, even among vampires.

But if the Daysider wasn’t planning to attack…what was he planning?

All Alexia’s muscles tensed as the thicket of toyon bushes in front of her rustled, the slightest movement of leathery leaves that might have heralded the passage of a rabbit or some other small animal. She aimed the XM30.

The man who walked out from behind the bushes was tall, lithe and yet imposing. That was the first thing Alexia noticed as she drew a bead on his chest directly over his heart. Then she looked up into his face, knowing that an enemy’s eyes—even a Daysider’s—would give him away before he made the slightest movement.

The Daysider looked back at her without a trace of concern. His features were quite extraordinary… . That she had to admit, in spite of the situation. He was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Not beautiful like a woman, but in the perfect harmony of his features: the strong chin, straight nose, high cheekbones, expressive lips.

And his eyes. They were dark…not maroon like those of a Nightsider, but the deepest sapphire imaginable. The pupils almost swallowed up the blue. His short hair was not white, like most vampires’, but a hue somewhere between brown and gold, and his skin was richly tanned.

Alexia swallowed. She had met her first Daysider at last, and he was so much…more than she had expected.

The Daysider glanced down at the assault rifle. “There is no need for that,” he said mildly.

His English was unaccented, bearing no hint of the ancient language all Nightsiders, whatever their origins, spoke among themselves. His voice was a pleasant baritone.

Alexia’s finger hovered over the trigger. “Put your hands up,” she commanded.

He did so, slowly and without alarm. “I am not here to hurt you,” he said.

She scanned him again the way she should have done the first time, looking for telltale bulges in his tan-and-brown uniform. She could identify no weapons, but if all she’d heard of Daysiders was true, they were just as good at concealing whatever they needed as the agents of Aegis.

“I am no threat to you,” he said.

Alexia didn’t even bother to reply. “On your knees. Hands clasped behind your head.”

He obeyed, each muscle working in such perfect harmony that suddenly he was on the ground without her having even noticed how he got there.

“You see,” he said in that same reasonable tone, “you have nothing to fear from me. It’s generally accepted that Half-bloods are only a little inferior in strength and skill to my kind, so you seem to have the adva—”

The butt of a rifle slammed into the Daysider’s temple, and he slumped to the ground. Michael turned the gun around and aimed it at the Daysider’s head. He was already stirring, only temporarily stunned by the blow.

“Are you crazy?” Michael demanded, glaring at Alexia. “Chatting with a Daysider as if he wouldn’t bite your throat out the second you blinked?”

Alexia knew she had no call to be angry with Michael. He was right. She’d let her curiosity about her first Daysider dangerously compromise her training. And her sense.

“Shoot him if he moves,” Michael said, crouching behind the enemy operative. He unfastened a pair of steel cuffs from his belt and bound the Daysider’s hands behind him. Then he rolled the man over, patted him down and removed a wicked-looking knife and a small pistol of a type unfamiliar to Alexia. He tossed them into the bushes, pushed the agent back onto his stomach and jabbed the muzzle of his XM30 into the Daysider’s spine.

“Sit up,” he said.

The Daysider rocked to his knees and blinked as a thin trickle of blood dripped from his forehead into his left eye. In a few more seconds the bleeding had stopped, the small wound closed by the accelerated healing powers dhampires and Daysiders shared, and the agent was studying Alexia as if nothing had happened.

“That wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I have come to offer a truce.”

“A truce?” Michael scoffed. All the good nature he displayed at home, the charm that drew so many women to him—even the human ones—was lost in hatred. The very emotion Director McAllister had warned her about. “You?” he said. “You have the authority to make a truce for your masters?”

Not by the slightest flicker of expression did the Daysider acknowledge that Michael could sever his spine at any moment. “Not for Erebus,” he said. “For myself.”

Alexia stared into those remarkable sapphire eyes and had to fight off a shiver. “Explain,” she said harshly.

“We have both been sent on the same mission,” the Daysider said. “If your people were not aware of the colony, you would not be here, so close to the Citadel’s border. We both know that the settlement is illegal under the Armistice, and that human serfs are being held within it, but the Council has no desire to see new conflict break out between our peoples. They have assigned me to observe the colony for Erebus and gather information that will help them determine what should be done to prevent such hostilities.”

The Daysider was so straightforward compared with the average leech that a normal human might actually have been taken in by his story.

Michael wasn’t. “‘Hostilities,’” he said mockingly. “Your leaders should have thought of that before you broke the Treaty.”

“They did not,” the Daysider said. “That is why it is necessary to—”

“Liar,” Michael snarled. “Freak. You were sent here to kill us.”

The Daysider tilted his head as if he were listening to Michael, but his gaze never left Alexia’s. “I had the discretion to kill you if it would have served my mission, but you know as well as I that your unexpected deaths in the Zone would likely be counterproductive.” He paused. “I think we all want the same thing, and that is to maintain the peace.”

Michael spat into the brown grass at his feet. “There will never be peace until every last one of you is—”

“Carter,” Alexia interrupted. Michael glanced at her, took a deep breath and calmed down. She didn’t know what had gotten into him, but his uncharacteristic loss of control didn’t exactly make either one of them look strong in the eyes of the enemy.

She and Michael were at least going to have to pretend they were considering the truce the Daysider had offered. Just as she would continue to act as if she didn’t despise this leech even more than Michael did. And despise herself for feeling nearly overwhelmed by his sheer, undeniable masculine power.

His. She didn’t want to know anything more about him than she absolutely had to, but it was going to be damned inconvenient to keep thinking of him as “the Daysider.”

“What is your name?” she asked him.

He inclined his head as if to acknowledge her civility. “Damon,” he replied.

Appropriate, coming as it did from the ancient Greek word for “demon.” But what interested her more was that he had no Sire-name to indicate which Bloodmaster or Bloodlord claimed his vassalage.

It was true, then, what Aegis taught…that Daysiders lived outside the strict hierarchy of Nightsider society. No one in the Enclaves was completely certain of how they had come into being. The ongoing question was whether or not they had “awakened” years ago along with the regular Nightsiders, or if they had been created since.

“I’m Agent Fox,” she said, “and this is Agent Carter.”

“Ms. Fox,” Damon said, arching a brow. Alexia wondered how close he was to comparing her to her animal namesake. What did he remind her of?

A leopard. Sleek and swift, well-defined muscle sliding under golden skin and mottled olive-brown uniform, dappled with shadow.

“Agent Fox,” she corrected him. “Let’s not waste any more time. What exactly are you proposing?”

Damon moved his shoulders as if he were stretching against the pull of the cuffs. It almost looked as if he could snap the reinforced steel like the thinnest plastic.

“I propose that we work together,” he said, “pool our skills and our knowledge. Learn what we can about the colony without engaging the colonists, and then go our separate ways.”

“That’s insane,” Michael burst out.

Alexia was inclined to agree. But she also wasn’t too blinded by hatred to see the possibilities inherent in Damon’s suggestion.

“Why would you encourage your enemies to learn more about a settlement founded by Nightsiders?” she asked him bluntly. “Wouldn’t that be against your handler’s best interests?”

“Since Aegis will eventually obtain the information in any case,” he said, “it is my judgment that our working together would be very much to the Citadel’s advantage.”

Michael spun to face Alexia. “Can’t you see he intends to lead us along the garden path and annihilate us at the end of it?” he said.

Alexia let his anger pass over her. “Why should we trust you?” she asked Damon.

The Daysider’s eyes, already so dark, grew darker still. “Your partner wants to destroy me,” he said. “I am in no position to stop him. There are two of you, and I am alone. Yet I am offering this truce because I know that the distraction of fighting each other will lose us valuable time.” He leaned forward. “You understand the delicacy of the situation. Even the smallest misstep—”

“Are you trying to tell us that your Council didn’t encourage this colony from the beginning?” Michael interrupted.

“Yes.”

“And your masters don’t see this setup as a way of getting a foothold in the Zone, or provoking a new war they think they can win?”

Damon blew out his breath in a brief sigh. “Your agency is well aware of the way my government is organized,” he said. “The Expansionists have minority status at this time. I serve the Council as a whole, which wants to keep the balance just as it is.”

“So you say,” Alexia murmured.

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “If your agency believed the Expansionists were in ascendance, this new settlement would be the least of its concerns.”

He made perfect sense, Alexia thought. Too much sense, in fact.

She rose, keeping the rifle leveled at Damon’s head. “My partner and I will have to discuss this privately,” she said.

“Of course.” Damon shrugged his shoulders again. “It’s unlikely I’ll be going anywhere.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” Michael grunted. “Lie on your stomach.”

Damon did as he commanded, and Michael made quick work of cuffing his ankles. Maybe the Daysider could break free of them eventually, but Alexia didn’t plan to be away more than a few minutes.

She and Michael retreated into the brush, backing away with their weapons still fixed on Damon. Once they were a good thirty meters away, Alexia pressed the skin of her throat over the subcom implanted beside her larynx and adjusted her earpiece.

I think we should do it, she said, speaking soundlessly through the subcom.

Mike touched his own highly sensitive earpiece, which picked up their subvocalizations as if they were spoken aloud. He’ll kill as soon as our backs are turned.

You think I don’t hate him as much as you do? she asked. But we have to find out how much he knows, if he’s really working for the Independents.

Independents, Michael repeated, the scorn evident in his words. You know even they would enslave or slaughter all of us if they could find an excuse.

So let’s not give them one, Alexia said. Look, there are useful things we can learn just by observing him. Maybe he’ll slip and give us a clue about his real agenda.

Then you’re assuming he’s lying, too, Michael said.

We don’t have to trust him. He may be stronger and faster, but we’re pretty well matched in acuity of smell and hearing—and there are two of us. One can stay with him while the other keeps watch from a distance. That way we’ll have someone free to report back if there’s any treachery.

Forget it, Michael said. We stay together. That’s Aegis policy, and—

We can break policy if we judge it necessary. And I think it is, Mike.

He gave her a look she’d never seen on his face before, one uncomfortably like mistrust. But when he spoke again, there was only resignation in his expression.

Okay, he said. Who do you propose stays with him?

I will, she said without hesitation. I’m better at handto-hand, and you’re the better marksman.

Once we split up, he’ll know what we’re doing, Michael said.

Then he’s not likely to try anything, is he?

After a long moment of silence he nodded, briefly and not at all happily. Alexia frowned. It just wasn’t like him to be so grim. I guess the best thing to do is pretend to have an argument, she said.

Michael pulled a face. He’ll never fall for it.

Probably not, but he’ll be even more suspicious if we don’t try to make it sound convincing.

Michael signaled agreement, and they switched back to audible voice, still whispering to make it seem as if they were trying to prevent Damon from listening in. Michael was extremely persuasive in his refusal to go along, and Alexia found it easy to work up the appropriate anger. She’d already been troubled by Michael’s open protests before, and Damon wasn’t likely to think their exchange this time any worse than the previous one.

Once Michael had “stomped” off, vowing to let her learn from her own mistakes, Alexia returned to Damon. He was sitting up again, head cocked as he watched her approach. He wasn’t smiling, but she could feel his amusement at her and Michael’s little game.

“It seems your partner doesn’t agree with your decision,” he said.

She crouched a safe distance from him, her gun loose in her hands, and met his gaze. “We work together, but we’re not chained at the ankle. He’ll see reason eventually, and until then you won’t be able to complain that we aren’t on equal footing.”

Damon’s eyes reflected a shaft of sunlight breaking through the rustling canopy of oak leaves above them. “I don’t remember complaining,” he said, “but I’m gratified that one of you has seen the benefit in my proposition.”

Something in the way he said the words, the way he looked at her, made Alexia feel unaccountably warm. He was so damned agreeable that she found she had to remind himself what he was and whom he worked for.

And she didn’t dare make the mistake of believing that this mild behavior wasn’t just a cover for savagery that would reveal itself the instant she let him think she trusted him.

“I don’t expect you to trust me,” Damon said, as if he’d been reading her mind—an ability she was pretty sure not even full vampires possessed. “But we can do nothing if you don’t release me.”

Alexia wasn’t in any hurry to follow his pointed suggestion. “First I want to know exactly what you plan to do.”

He shifted as if he were trying to make himself more comfortable, but Alexia could see the tension in every line of his hard, lean body—tension that belied his easy manner. “I suggest we approach the settlement together,” he said, “and once we’re close enough to observe the colonists’ activities, we’ll separate. At the end of a set time we rendezvous and pool our information.”

Too simple, Alexia thought. Much too simple. “Why do you think we’ll come up with different information?” she asked.

“Because we are different, you and I.”

She knew that technically that wasn’t as true as she wanted it to be. Over the years Aegis had determined that Daysiders and dhampires were much alike in their speed, strength and senses, with one or the other holding slight advantages in a few areas. Neither was as strong and fast as a Nightsider, but both held the advantage of being able to move freely in daylight without suffering the deadly burns that afflicted full vampires.

The only comfort Alexia took from the comparison was that dhampires were, without exception, on the side of law and decency, while Damon’s kind served an evil, corrupt society of unrepentant killers. And while they lived on blood like their masters, no dhampir would ever give way to that sick, unnatural hunger.

“Yes,” she said coldly. “We are very different.”

He stared into her eyes again, and she felt as if she could fall right into that spellbinding blackness and never come out again. “But not so different that we cannot understand each other,” he reminded her. “And in one way we are very much alike.”

“What way?”

“We are both outsiders in our worlds.”

Alexia wasn’t about to admit how true that was, but Damon had freely offered information that seemed a little too personal to share with an enemy. It had to be part of a plan to get her off guard.

“Have you ever met a dhampir before?” she asked.

“I have only observed from a distance.”

Once again his candidness surprised her, though he could, of course, be lying.

“You don’t allow the birth of my kind in Erebus,” she said, testing him.

“Such matters are the province of the Bloodmasters.”

“Do they kill my kind when they’re born, or before?”

“Such conception is forbidden.”

“Funny how that didn’t stop vampire males from impregnating human females during the War. But then again, they didn’t have any part in raising the children they created. None of our mothers had much choice about conceiving, but at least they didn’t discard us.” She paused, remembering to breathe. “We have a unique place in the Enclaves, and a purpose. What about you?”

“If I had no purpose, I would not be here.”

“So even though you’re an outsider, you’re loyal to your masters.”

“As loyal as you are to yours.” His expression, previously so mild, went cold. “Tell me, how much choice did you have in becoming an agent of your city, risking your life every time you leave it?”

“How much choice were you given to be what you are?”

They stared at each other. Eventually Damon shook his head.

“I have suggested a course of action,” he said. “Do you intend to release me?”

Alexia shouldered her gun and crossed the space between them, every sense alert. She used her own key to unlock the cuffs. The moment he was free she jumped well out of his reach. He stretched his long legs and rubbed his wrists just as if he could feel pain and discomfort as much as any human being.

“What about your partner?” he asked, gathering himself to rise. “Do you expect him to rejoin us, or is he likely to move on his own?”

“If you mean will he attack you, no. He won’t endanger me.” She watched him intently as he got to his feet, her eyes drawn once more to the litheness of his body and the assurance of every move he made. Why, in God’s name, wasn’t she feeling the disgust and contempt she should have felt at the mere sight of him?

Because it was something else she was experiencing, both physically and emotionally. Something she couldn’t begin to understand.

She hated it.

“What about your people?” she asked before her emotions could escape her rigid control. “Do you expect me to believe that Erebus hasn’t sent more than one operative to observe the colony?”

“It seems likely,” Damon said, “but as we generally work alone, I would not know the nature of their assignments.” He brushed the dirt from the front of his pants. “I would advise you to tell Agent Carter not to compromise your mission by approaching the colony alone.”

“You know wireless communication is forbidden in the Zone,” she told him.

Which wouldn’t have made any difference to agents from either side, except that both the Enclave and the Citadel scrambled all signals outside their borders. She might be able to get through to Michael, but the odds were against it. He’d have to find a way to keep close enough to help her if she needed it, but far enough away to avoid making Damon too nervous.

“May I collect my weapons?” Damon asked.

Back to that damned politeness. Alexia jerked her head in permission, though every instinct was screaming in protest. Damon searched among the bushes, found the knife and pistol, returned the knife to a sheath at his back and tucked the pistol into some inner pocket of his uniform jacket.

“That’s it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “You must have other weapons.” He straightened and zipped up his jacket, though the weather was warm and he probably didn’t react to changes in temperature any more acutely than she did.

“I left them some distance from here, along with my pack,” he said. “I will retrieve them on the way to the colony.”

“I assume you know the way?”

He stood facing her, unmoving, legs braced slightly apart. “Don’t you?” he asked.

Now he was testing her. “Let’s not play games. You’ve tried to make us believe that your Council hasn’t known about the settlement all along, but that’s a little difficult to believe given that it’s less than two klicks away from the Citadel’s western border. It’s not exactly hidden, is it?”

“I see you do have some information already,” he said, deflecting her question. “Perhaps Aegis has sent other operatives before you.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“The first concrete intelligence on the colony was provided to the Council by an operative less than a month ago.” He hesitated, frowning with what appeared to be uncertainty. “It is possible the Expansionist Faction were aware it existed before that time.”

Alexia didn’t believe for a moment that he hadn’t rehearsed that line very carefully. “Hasn’t it occurred to you the Expansionists also set it up right under your Council’s noses?” she said.

“No. This was done quietly, by those who did not expect to be noticed. Or missed.”

“Like your Freebloods and the cast-off human serfs no one in Erebus wants. But you’ve admitted the Council has been aware of the colony for a month, and they still haven’t done anything about it.”

An inscrutable look flitted across his face. “The first agent was able to tell us very little. He died soon after he made his report.”

“That’s unfortunate,” she said with false regret.

“He was fatally injured in the Zone by an unknown assailant. The one who attacked him was a professional and used a weapon forbidden in Erebus.”

Alexia stiffened. “What are you suggesting?” she asked. “That one of our people killed him?”

“The weapon was the one you call ‘Vampire Slayer,’ such as the one you carry strapped to your pack,” he said, his eyes locked on hers.

“The killing of hostile agents isn’t permitted except in cases of self-defense,” she retorted.

“Yes,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “We are only spies, after all, tasked to make certain the buffer zone is maintained. But it would not be the first time an agent of either side has died between the Borders.”

Not the first time, Alexia thought, and certainly not the last. There had been at least one dhampir fatality in the Zone each year since the Treaty had been signed, the latest Michael’s former partner. Such facts could not be openly acknowledged by either side. But dhampir agents were hardly a renewable resource, and they weren’t casually sent on missions to assassinate enemy operatives for no good reason.

“Even if I believed one of ours did it,” she said, “I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I wouldn’t expect it,” he said. “Just as you won’t expect to learn anything from me that my superiors don’t want you to know.”

So he was confirming that everything he said to her was calculated to achieve a certain goal. Not that she’d ever doubted it.

She smiled back at him, baring her teeth. “I guess we understand each other,” she said. “After you…”

Without a word he turned and set off north, moving almost soundlessly now that he had no need to be heard.

Alexia followed close on his heels. He was giving her the chance to shoot him in the back, but nothing in his posture suggested that he was worried. She kept half an ear out for Michael, but he must have decided to stay out of range of her senses, or Damon’s. Just as well.

They traveled quickly over once-occupied land that was gradually reverting to its original state, hiking up and down oak-studded hillsides and avoiding the valleys with their decaying suburbs and open streets. Damon picked up his rifle and pack after they’d gone a few miles, securing the weapon to the back of his pack as a sign of “good faith.” There was no further sign of human or vampire presence until they reached the summit of a hillside overlooking what had once been known as the Bennett Valley.

Most of the fields and vineyards below had long since become overgrown with native grasses, shrubs and scattered trees, but there wasn’t any mistaking the nature of the several green rectangles that marked out the deliberate cultivation of crops. They had not been created for Nightsiders, who had no need to rely on such food sources, but for their human “property.” At the opposite side of the valley, tucked up against the foot of the low Sonoma Mountains, stood a high, rectangular wall guarding a compound of buildings—twelve or thirteen according to Alexia’s count, suggesting the presence of as many as a dozen Nightsiders and perhaps three or four times as many humans.

The sight both chilled and infuriated her. She glanced at Damon, who crouched beside her with his own binoculars in hand, almost as if she expected the same reaction from him.

Of course that was ridiculous. He was from Erebus. What disgusted her would be perfectly natural for a leech. This was only a job to Damon. There was nothing personal in it.

She couldn’t afford to make it personal, either. Not if she wanted to keep her head…and her life.

Alexia pulled off her pack, and Damon did the same. “How do you want to do this?” she asked him. “If we split up here, you can go around from the north and I’ll approach from the south.” She glanced up at the sky, noting the angle of the sun. “We don’t have much daylight left. Let’s rendezvous tomorrow morning at 0900 hours on that hill directly east of the colony, by the rock formation. Whoever gets there first will wait for the other. Agreed?”

Damon lowered his binoculars. “Agreed,” he said. He met her gaze, his own unreadable. “I trust you’ll keep your partner from killing me if he rejoins you?”

“I already told you. He won’t do anything rash, unless you—”

The report of an automatic weapon cut her off, and she flung herself flat on the ground. Damon was down beside her a second later. Bullets whizzed over their heads and struck the tree trunk just behind them.

“Someone,” Damon said, “does not want us here.”

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.

Chapter 4

Alexia closed her eyes, breathing deeply to control her panic. Calm, she told herself. You have choices. Think.

But she really didn’t have choices at all.

Damon shifted slightly, a low groan catching in his throat. That was a positive sign…the only good news she had to cling to at the moment, aside from the fact that she could feel the bullets in her shoulder emerging from the skin of her back. She loosened the bandage and ran her hand across the exit wound, dislodging the nearly scoured bullets and brushing them off like dead ticks.

She moved the bandage back into place and rose to her feet, determined to stay awake. She paced the little hollow, measuring out its width from the base of one hill to the other. By the time she sensed the coming dawn, her legs would barely carry her.

It wasn’t just lack of sleep and her body’s need to heal. The effect of the drugs in her bloodstream would already be diminishing. She’d be able to get through a few days—a week, maybe, if she was lucky—before she began to starve.

Dropping down beside Damon again, she took one of the bags of field rations out of her pack and withdrew a dense nutrient bar. She ate it slowly as misty light crept into the hollow. Soon her ability to digest solid food would be seriously compromised, and so she had to use all her rations while she could.

She had just finished her third bar when Damon opened his eyes. He looked at her through slitted lids and tried to lift himself on his elbows. Her blanket slid from his back.

Alexia hurried to his side, intending to tell him that he was moving much too soon. But he was already pushing his body up, though stiffly, and rolling onto his knees. He grimaced and sat there with his hands braced on his muscular thighs. His skin was still extremely pale, almost as light as a Nightsider’s. Even though he was recovering from a serious wound, the change in color seemed almost unnatural, considering the darkness of his tan the previous day.

He spoke before she could. “You’re all right,” he said, his voice rasping with pain. “How long have I been out?”

“I don’t know,” she said, crouching to hand him his canteen. “I remember going down almost as soon as we were attacked. That was around sunset. Considering it’s almost dawn, I’d say we were both dead to the world all night.”

Damon drank with a nod of thanks, set down the canteen and raised his hand to pluck at the front of his bloody shirt. Alexia realized for the first time that the garment was in tatters, the hem ripped off almost to the level of his pectorals.

“They shot me soon after you fell,” he said grimly. “I didn’t know if you had—”

“I’m fine,” she lied. “The shooters haven’t come back.”

Damon nodded and dropped his hand from his chest. “They let us live.”

“Yes. Considering how badly they wounded us, that’s a little surprising. Any idea why?”

“None.”

“You didn’t see anything? Recognize any scents?”

“I could not identify them. But I don’t think they are the same as the first shooter.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A feeling.” He said the word almost mockingly, as if he recognized how ridiculous a reason it was. “Did they take anything?”

“One of my weapons.” She hesitated, wondering how much she should tell him about her real state. She knew what she had to do to survive: abandon the mission and return to the Border.

But there was something else at stake besides her life. Someone—vampires, either from Erebus or the colony—had stolen her patch. Aegis had always assumed that the Nightsiders didn’t know about the inherent weakness in a percentage of Enclave agents, or they would have exploited it long ago.

Apparently Aegis had been wrong. The shooters had obviously known what to look for. That meant the Nightsiders must already be aware of the patches and that they had some essential purpose, even if they’d never been able to get their hands on one before.

Maybe Damon knew about them as well. If he did…

Keeping her face perfectly still, Alexia reconsidered what she’d assumed about his motives. He had outright admitted that the Council had sent him to join her. Sometimes telling part of the truth was more effective than an all-out lie. Had their “partnership” been part of the plan to get her patch? Had he lulled her suspicions just enough to leave her vulnerable?

Had they caught Michael and done the same thing to him?

She examined Damon’s face covertly, feeling such a conflicting jumble of emotions that she could hardly think straight. She had almost begun to trust him, forgetting all her rigorous training, because he’d sounded so reasonable. And, if she were honest with herself, because she had felt drawn to him in ways that defied logic. In the brief time she’d known him, they had forged enough of a bond that she’d been sick with worry that he might be fatally injured, or already dead.

That was all in the past now. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. But the question remained: If Damon had been assigned to take her where the Nightsiders could get to her, why would they try to kill him? Or had they deliberately aimed their shot so that he would be able to heal?

Somehow she had to find out what he was up to. The colony wasn’t her only priority now; she had to discover just how much the Nightsiders—including Damon—knew about the patch and the drugs in it.

Since she had no way of knowing when she’d meet up with Michael again, she had to proceed on the assumption that she would be working alone. And if she didn’t succeed very quickly—quickly enough so that she could still make it to the Border in a condition to report whatever she’d learned—she would die here in the Zone.

In the meantime, she would have to pretend she accepted whatever Damon chose to tell her. That they were still on the same side.

“Which weapon?” Damon asked.

She shook herself, realizing she had been silent for an uncomfortably long time and he must be wondering why.

“My VS120,” she said quickly, unwilling to dwell on the subject. She rummaged inside her ration kit and pulled out the last nutrient bar.

“You’d better take this,” she told him. “You need nourishment to heal properly.”

He stared at the bar, and she sensed he was aware that her offer was another test. Aegis knew that Daysiders could go for long stretches without blood—much longer than a Nightsider—but they weren’t certain if the Citadel operatives could digest “human” food as dhampires could. That would be an extremely useful thing to know.

After a long period of silence, he shook his head. “You keep it,” he said. “I had sufficient nourishment before I left Erebus.”

Of course, he’d lie anyway if he knew what he’d taken in Erebus wasn’t enough to fuel his healing. But if his job was done…

All the anger she’d been suppressing burst like a suppurating wound inside her chest. “I suppose if you need more, you’ll take it from me?” she asked.

“No,” he said firmly. “Never.”

“Why not? It’s not as if you’d have to kill me.”

“We are partners, Agent Fox,” he reminded her. “That makes us equals, does it not?”

“And I wouldn’t be your ‘equal’ if we weren’t? What if I were human? Would that make me fair game?” She leaned toward him, her breath fanning his neck. “Tell me…does it work the same with Daysiders as it does with leeches? Could you make me do whatever you want? Would I become your serf?”

Damon’s expression hardened, but Alexia almost didn’t notice. As the first beams of sunlight pierced through the trees on the hill above them, touching Damon’s face, his skin began to darken. Within a minute it had returned to its previous tan, transforming like the pelt of a leopard that had suddenly changed from black on gold to gold on black.

If Damon had glimpsed her surprise before she concealed it, he didn’t give any sign. “Fishing for information, Agent Fox?” he mused with a faint, ironic smile.

She returned the smile. “Didn’t you hope you’d gain useful intelligence from working with an Enclave field agent?”

He inclined his head, acknowledging her point. “But I would not have you constantly worried that I might tamper with your mind,” he said. “Only some Bloodmasters and Bloodlords are capable of what you suggest, and Darketans can’t do it at all.”

“That’s comforting,” she quipped.

“As is the fact that we seem to have very similar healing abilities.”

“You’re telling me Erebus didn’t have that information before?”

“Did Aegis?”

She snorted and bit into the ration bar. “I didn’t know a Daysider’s skin changes color with the light.” Damon rubbed his jaw. The shadow of a beard had darkened it overnight. that was a very human characteristic, one that male dhampires shared.

“Aegis must be aware that Darketans have a natural adaptation that makes the melanin content of our skin alter in accordance with the level of illumination.” He dropped his hand back to his knee.

“What is ‘Darketan’?” she asked. “I’ve never heard the word before.”

“That is what we call ourselves.” He climbed carefully to his feet. “It’s a name from ancient legend.”

“What legend?”

Instead of answering, he bent to retrieve her blanket, folded it neatly and handed it to her. “Thank you for keeping watch,” he said.

“Should I thank you for saving my life again?”

“Since I was ordered to work with you, it would hardly appear to my advantage if I were to let you die.”

“Of course.”

And that was that. she hadn’t expected him to answer any differently, though part of her had hoped…

She cut off that line of thought and focused on her own body. Though it was early yet, she was just beginning to feel a faint crawling sensation under her skin, a twitching of certain deep muscles, an ache in her bones. It wasn’t likely to get much worse for some time, but she had to conserve her strength, and she needed sleep.

But she also wanted Damon to reveal his plans. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“You need rest,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

Alexia had to remind herself again that there was nothing remotely personal in his concern. “We can’t stay here,” she told him.

Damon scanned the hollow in every direction. “I think the shooters are gone, at least for the time being.”

“Then you don’t think they’ll attack again if we move?”

He cast her a probing glance, undoubtedly wondering why she was asking him what he couldn’t possibly know.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said. “If you want to risk it.”

Gingerly, Alexia shrugged into her pack and secured her rifle. “We’d have to leave sooner or later,” she agreed. “No reason to sit around healing if we’re going to die, anyway.”

His dark, piercing gaze continued to hold hers. “We are not going to die,” he said.

She nodded without comment as he removed his jacket, rummaged in his pack for a fresh shirt, and put on the new one. She quickly turned away from the sight of his bare, muscular chest and started up the hill to the south. There were no more bullets, nor did Alexia sense anyone else, vampire or otherwise, in the vicinity. It seemed the shooters had, indeed, accomplished their mission. With or without Damon’s help.

She was panting by the time they reached the third hilltop. Damon took her arm and herded her into the shade of a large, stately oak.

His touch seared her skin, but all at once the crawling sensation was gone. She worked her arm loose from his grip and sank onto the patchy grass among the oak’s thick roots.

“Rest now,” Damon said, helping her remove her pack. “We’re at a good vantage point, and I’ll know if anyone approaches.”

Alexia didn’t want to sleep with Damon standing over her, but she wouldn’t last even twelve more hours without it. By the time she woke up the shakes could be worse, and it would take concentration to keep Damon from seeing them.

Maybe, when she was well rested, she might even figure out why he thought he could keep her alive if he had any idea just how desperately she needed the patch.

Maybe he doesn’t know, she thought. Maybe Erebus is still in the dark…for now.

“Sleep,” Damon said, his voice soft with what almost sounded like concern. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

She was trying to figure out what he meant when her bone-deep exhaustion carried her away.

There was something wrong with her.

Damon crouched over Alexia as he had when she’d lain injured in the hollow, the same unbidden emotions crowding his chest and filling his throat.

It wasn’t just her injury. Soon after she’d fallen asleep, he had carefully checked her wound and found it nearly healed under the bandages, enough so that he was able to remove most of them to let her skin breathe.

Yet in spite of the healing, he had seen her get subtly but steadily worse since they’d begun hiking again, though she did her best to hide it. The smell of dried blood was still strong on her clothing, but there was another scent now, a mingling of chemical odor and the scent of illness that any Opir—or Darketan—could detect from a kilometer away.

Damon had no idea what it was. He had never come closer to a dhampir than shooting distance; though he wouldn’t have disobeyed an order to kill any Enclave agent who stood in the way of an assignment, he had been forbidden those missions that might involve such acts.

Now that he wanted to keep a dhampir alive, his ignorance about Alexia’s kind was no longer a minor inconvenience. The Council had provided no information about dhampir illnesses; that was no surprise, since the breed was believed to be as hardy as Darketans. Perhaps this was something that also afflicted humans, but his instincts told him otherwise. Even a mild sickness might become deadly to one as weakened as Alexia was.

And though he’d told her that he didn’t think the shooters would attempt another assault, he knew nothing of the kind. Either the original plans had drastically changed, or some other party had been involved.

After the first sniper’s attack, Damon had been quick to deny any possibility that the opposing faction might send operatives to stop him and the Enclave agents. The gunman had been a good shot, too good to miss unless it was deliberate. Damon could well believe he had been carrying out his or her part of the mission as planned.

But these last shooters had been out to kill or incapacitate Damon and Alexia—or send a powerful warning. They could have been colonists. That still seemed by far the most likely possibility.

If the attack had been meant as a warning, it might explain why the shooters hadn’t killed him and Alexia. Murdering sanctioned operatives would be making a move too provocative to be ignored by the Council or Aegis. Surely the shooters would realize that.

Just the attack alone was provocation enough.

Damon rose and paced back and forth under the gnarled branches of the grandfather oak. Once again he was faced with a crucial decision: leave Alexia under cover while he tried to find the shooters, or stay with her and wait until she was recovered enough to continue. He couldn’t imagine her agreeing to stay behind; she’d drive herself into her grave first.

He stopped to gaze down at her, wondering if it was his imagination that her breathing was much more labored than it had been even an hour ago. She had become steadily weaker since the attack, and he could easily overpower her if he had to.

But then he would have to tie her down, and she’d be helpless. With a curse Damon began to circle around the oak, noting every detail of their location: the number of nearby trees and shrubs, the various angles of potential attack, the approaches and avenues of escape.

Still no sign of the shooters. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there, just beyond Damon’s senses.

Making his decision, he knelt beside Alexia and carefully gathered her up in his arms. She moaned as he carried her to a thicket of low shrubs just outside the circle of shade and laid her down again under the entangled branches. He searched her pack and found the small, thin blanket she had covered him with before, laid it over her, and then began to gather twigs, fallen branches, rotting leaves—anything he might use to camouflage her while he was gone. When he was finished, he knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. Her skin had become so feverish that he could feel the heat through her shirt and jacket.

“Alexia,” he said.

Her lips parted, soft lips that seemed to beckon him now that they were no longer stiff with suspicion. Her eyelashes fluttered.

“Damon?” she murmured, lifting one hand toward him. “What is it? Is it time to go?”

She sounded like a child, innocent and trusting, certain that the one who loved her would make sure everything was all right. It must be the fever talking, he thought. A delirious, fever dream.

“Not yet,” he said gently, taking her hand in his. “I have to leave for a short time, to make sure we’re safe here. I need you to stay under cover while I’m gone.”

Her eyes opened, searching for his as if she couldn’t quite make out his face. “I’m going with you,” she said.

He stroked her fingers, aware of a painful and inexplicable wave of tenderness that threatened to dissolve the foundation of everything he had worked so hard to build since Eirene’s death. “You aren’t in any shape to help now,” he said. “The best thing you can do is rest until I return.” He laid her hand on her chest, picked up his canteen and held it to her lips. “Drink.”

Alexia did as he asked without protest, though she wouldn’t take more than a few drops. Her eyelids grew heavy again.

“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. A small vertical line had formed between her arched brows, suggesting an inner struggle of which she was hardly aware. Damon smoothed it out with his thumb.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Promise you’ll stay here.”

“I…” She shivered and subsided, the muscles of her neck and shoulders relaxing. “I promise.”

Then she was asleep again, and Damon covered her with the assembled leaves and twigs until she resembled no more than a pile of forest debris blown against the bushes by a gust of wind. He hesitated long after he was finished.

He didn’t want to leave her. Not even for a minute. And that was all the more reason he had to.

Moving almost soundlessly, Damon began to work his way down the other side of the hill, weaving back and forth to and from any small cover he could find. Once he’d reached the bottom of the hill, he walked around it, pausing to listen every few steps. Then he climbed very slowly, circling as he went.

Still nothing. It seemed their attackers really had left them—completed their task, whatever it was, and gone on their way.

Or they were lying in wait somewhere between here and the colony.

Damon reached the top of the hill, assured himself that Alexia was still safely hidden, and then continued to canvass the area, placing each step with infinite care as he turned northeast toward the colony.

He’d gone about four hundred meters and was descending the last of the hills overlooking the valley when the shots came, pelting the underbrush around his feet and shredding leaves overhead. He ducked and fell to his stomach, rolling sideways until he was behind an outcrop of rock thrusting out of the slope.

A heartbeat, two, three, ten. No further attack. Damon rose to his knees, waited, and then got to his feet. Silence. He took a step back, in full view of whoever was doing the shooting. Still no shots. But when he took a step forward…

The bullets tore a very clear line in the ground three centimeters from the toes of his boots.

He backed away, staying well back from the invisible line, and made his way a little farther to the north. When he moved east again, the bullets erupted again, tracing out that very distinct line between him and the valley.

It was a clear and unmistakable boundary. This was as close as he and Alexia would be allowed to approach the colony. But that still didn’t tell him who was doing the shooting, or even if these gunmen were the same as in the last two attacks.

None of this made any sense to him yet. But as long as the snipers didn’t go any further than trying to keep him and Alexia away from the colony, he could still carry out his mission. In fact, considering that the two of them had been left alive, the current circumstances would make his task even easier.

Provided there really wasn’t anyone out to kill them.

Damon retraced his steps toward the temporary camp. No bullets assailed him. He was back at Alexia’s hiding place in less than an hour. She was still there, still safe.

But the mild shivers he had noted earlier had become so violent that she’d shaken off most of the leaves and branches heaped around her body. He dropped to his knees beside her and felt her forehead. It was no longer hot, but icy cold and clammy to the touch.

“Alexia,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

She thrashed her head from side to side, muttering words he could barely understand.

“Garret,” she cried. “No. Don’t…” Her teeth began to chatter. “I won’t let them take you.”

Damon leaned closer, his lips nearly brushing her cheek. “Who is Garret, Alexia?”

Tears broke from beneath her lids and slid across her temples. “I can’t…I can’t stop them.” Abruptly her eyes opened, and for a moment they fixed on Damon’s so directly that he was certain she was fully aware again. “You’ll save him, won’t you?” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”

He stroked her auburn hair away from her forehead. “Save whom?” he asked softly.

“He didn’t deserve it. You must see that.”

“What did he do, Alexia?”

Without warning she flung off the blanket and reached for him, locking surprisingly strong arms around his neck and pulling him down to her. Her lips brushed his, her tongue feathering over his mouth like moth’s wings.

Then she kissed him. There was no doubting her intent, or her will. It wasn’t sickness he smelled now on her skin and in her breath, but Alexia’s living blood, relentlessly tugging at him like a full moon at the tide.

The blood of a dhampir.

Damon pulled back, clinging to his rapidly fragmenting thoughts. Alexia was no human serf, or a Bloodmistress who deigned to let him taste the nectar that flowed through her veins.

Alexia was his peer. His equal, as much as anyone from the Enclave could be, though they were enemies and kept themselves alive by different means. He’d said he would never take her blood, and he had meant it.

But now it was as if he were falling under the influence of an addiction, one that had once ruled his life and been forgotten until this moment.

And Alexia was the drug.

He stared down into her half-open eyes. He saw hunger in them—physical lust and the craving for pleasure, almost as if she, too, were experiencing the euphoric effects of some unknown narcotic agent.

She wasn’t herself. He knew it, and he was ashamed of his own forbidden thoughts, his own struggle to maintain discipline and self-control that should have been second nature to him…and had been, until now. But Alexia held him there, demanding, refusing to let him go, and he forgot she was ill—forgot he could feel nothing for her—forgot his mission.

He worked her mouth open with his and slipped his tongue inside. She sucked him in eagerly, grinding her hips into his pelvis, stabbing her fingers into his hair. Her small incisors grazed the inside of his lower lip, and he felt a brief stab of pain.

She’d bitten him. He jerked back, probing the tiny wound with his tongue. He knew that dhampires were forbidden to take blood of any kind. That they were taught to loathe the very taste of it, even though it could sustain them as well as it could any Opir or Darketan.

Yet she had bitten him. Had she forgotten who and what she was? Was she reverting, becoming something a lifetime among humans had suppressed?

She pulled him down again, putting a quick and decisive end to Damon’s speculation. This time she used her own tongue to tease his into her mouth. He felt the sensation of it all the way down into his belly, and his cock swelled until the ache exceeded anything he’d suffered in the hollow when he was fighting to survive.

Alexia couldn’t have missed the pressure of his groin in the cradle of her thighs, but she didn’t stop. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist, rocking and thrusting as if they were both naked and she was begging him to enter her.

Damon groaned. This couldn’t be happening. Nothing about this was sane, or right. But the more desperate his need, the less rational he became.

It was instinct, pure and simple. This couldn’t end until he was inside her, thrusting deep, hearing her gasps and moans of pleasure. And surrender.

As if her own thoughts had merged with his, Alexia began to tear at his shirt. She managed to unbutton it without ripping it to shreds and clawed at his undershirt, seeking flesh. Her fingers brushed his chest, scraping him with her nails as if she wanted his heart, as well.

Damon took more care with her shirt, some remnant of sense guiding his hands, but Alexia wouldn’t allow it. She tore it open herself and ripped her close-fitting tank from neckline to hem, baring her breasts.

They were perfect, like the rest of her, but Damon was too hungry to admire them for long. He bent to take one nipple into his mouth. Alexia arched upward, letting her head fall back, gasping as he suckled her, hard and fast, with no attempt at gentleness. His teeth grazed her tender flesh, accidentally drawing her blood as she had drawn his.

It was sweet. Incredibly sweet, like the taste of her mouth or the way he imagined the rest of her would be.

But he had not forgotten his vow never to take her blood. A vow that seemed increasingly impossible to keep. For it was as if, somehow, a part of his blood already flowed through her veins.

No, not his blood. He had never taken dhampir blood before, and it was to be expected that its signature would be utterly different from anything with which he was familiar. But this was much more subtle than the unique amalgamation of strains that came of her mixed heritage. It was so muted that he couldn’t identify it, but it had the effect of releasing the last, pitiful scraps of his reason.

He moved to her other breast, licking and nipping, raising himself high enough to work his hand under her waistband. He found her undergarment, damp with perspiration, and reached beneath.

She was wet and hot and ready, pushing up against him with an uninhibited boldness that took his breath away in spite of all she’d already done to him. He stroked her, distantly aware of her moans of pleasure as she found his cock and rubbed it through his pants, tracing its contours and molding it with her fingers. He closed his eyes and groaned when she began to unzip him. Only moments now. A few quick movements to free themselves of their clothes, and then—

The muzzle of a gun barrel came up hard against the side of Damon’s head.

“Get off her,” Michael snarled, “before I blow your frickin’ bloodsucker brains out.”

Chapter 5

Alexia heard her partner’s voice as if through muffling layers of gauze that seemed to fill her head and keep her thoughts from comprehending what was truly happening. Her body throbbed—not with pain, but pleasure—and her breasts ached as if she had scratched them on the sharp little branches of the manzanitas growing nearby.

She opened her eyes. It took her a moment to recognize what she was seeing: two faces, both male and as pitiless as the Court that had condemned Garret to a lifetime of servitude.

“Cover her up,” one of the men said—Michael, his blond hair mussed and his face smudged with dirt. The other man, the one whose scent still bathed her skin, laid something on top of her…his jacket, still warm from the heat of his body.

“Alexia,” Michael said, staring down at her. “Are you all right?”

No. Not all right. The pleasure was beginning to fade, replaced by a sense of something profoundly wrong with her body. She began to remember what had happened since Damon—yes, that was the other man—had left her alone, hot and shivering and barely aware that he had gone away.

Then there had been brief moments of lucidity between much longer spans of darkness, the consequences of the illness raging inside her body. When Damon had come back for her, she had been half out of her mind. More than half. She had known she needed something, something important, that only Damon could give her.

Garret. She had said something about Garret. And then she’d forgotten about her half brother, forgotten everything, and…

She felt frantically under the borrowed jacket. Her uniform shirt and undershirt were torn wide open. The bandage was gone, and her shoulder wound was nothing but a patch of puckered skin, cool to the touch. She brushed her lips with her fingers. They were bruised and sore.

God. What had she done? What had he done?

“I can kill him now if you want me to,” Michael said, his voice ringing with hatred. He held the muzzle of his gun to Damon’s temple, just as when they’d first met. Damon looked steadily at Alexia.

She tried to sit up, but a surging tide of dizziness forced her back down. The borrowed jacket slipped to the ground, and she pulled her own jacket closed over her breasts as she fought to clear her mind.

“No,” she said, as steadily as she could. “It wasn’t what you thought, Michael.”

“Then what was it? It looked to me like he was about ready to tear your chest open.”

Was that what he’d seen? Which would be worse—his believing that Damon meant to take her blood or that they were having sex in the middle of a dangerous mission?

Sex with a Daysider. And she’d been willing. More than willing.

“He didn’t hurt me,” she insisted. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Mike scowled at her, contempt in his eyes. Not only for Damon, but for her. Judging her, even before she had a chance to get him alone and explain.

How could she ever do that when she didn’t understand it herself?

“Where were you, Michael?” she asked.

He shifted his weight and looked away. “Scouting. I didn’t leave you, Alexia. I—”

“Did you know Damon and I were attacked?”

He blinked at her sudden question, hearing the anger in her voice. And she was angry. At him, at Damon, at herself most of all. Herself, and the sickness that was stealing her mind and will and body bit by bit. Her bizarre behavior had tempted the predator in Damon, Darketan or not. If he looked chastened now, if there was any regret in his eyes, she doubted that it had anything to do with shame.

Had he taken her blood? She could find no sign of it, but then again a small enough bite would heal quickly, and chemicals in Nightsiders’ saliva both sterilized and closed the small incisions created when they fed.

A vague memory of tasting blood hovered on the edges of Alexia’s mind, and she nearly gagged. I couldn’t have, she thought. It isn’t possible.

“We were shot at by unknown assailants,” she said, forcing the image out of her mind. “Possibly from the colony. You didn’t hear the gunshots?”

“No.” Michael’s skin had paled beneath the dark smears across his face. “Were you injured?”

“How does it appear to you?” Damon asked him scathingly.

Michael made a threatening gesture. Despising her vulnerable position, Alexia tried to sit up again. Damon reached for her. She flinched away, and Michael’s finger twitched on the trigger.

“I’m fine,” she said, pretending to ignore Damon even though her flesh felt as if a million tiny circuits were sending bursts of electricity racing through every nerve. “But because of the attack, we haven’t been able to get close to the colony.”

“It’s worse than that,” Damon said quietly. “They’ve set up a defense perimeter between us and the settlement. We aren’t getting anywhere near it now, not without a fight.”

“Then the colonists saw you,” Mike said, glaring at Damon.

“Or they were expecting intruders,” she said.

Damon craned his neck to look up at Michael, forcing the rifle’s muzzle away from his cheek. “How did you get through?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Michael growled.

“It’s a good question,” Alexia said, wondering why, after what had just happened, she could take Damon’s side against her partner’s. “Were you able to observe the colony, Michael?”

“While I was reconnoitering, I discovered that there was another enemy agent in the vicinity.”

“Nightsider?” she asked, trying to sit up again.

“He was wearing heavy clothes, so that’s a good bet.” Michael nudged Damon with the rifle again. “You didn’t say anything about other Erebus operatives running around out here.”

“He told me it was likely there were,” Alexia said, “but he didn’t know who or what their assignments would be.”

“That’s convenient.” Michael said, staring down at Damon. “Think any of them could have been sent out to get rid of us while you were keeping us distracted, leech?”

“I would have been informed were that the case,” Damon said.

“Oh,” Michael said, sarcasm turning his words almost sickeningly sweet. “That’s all right, then.”

“What happened to the Nightsider you were following?” Alexia asked, cutting in before Michael could work himself into another rage.

“I tracked him most of the night, but he never went anywhere near the settlement.”

“He didn’t hear you?”

“No.” Mike’s voice turned defensive. “I thought seeing what he was up to was worth my staying away a little longer. Obviously I made a mistake.”

More than you know, Alexia thought grimly. “Why did you stop?” she asked.

“I lost him. He could be anywhere right now.”

“And we can’t assume he wasn’t one of the shooters.” She raised her hand to forestall Damon’s protest. “We can’t eliminate any possibility. He could have been from the colony. We need to get through that perimeter to find out what’s going on. Now that you’re back, Michael, we can work out a plan to create a diversion so that one of us can get closer to the settlement.”

“Are you including him in this plan?” Michael asked, prodding at Damon’s neck.

Damon’s next move was almost too swift to follow. He literally turned on himself, striking Michael’s gun aside as he twisted his body in a way Alexia wouldn’t have believed possible. In three seconds he had Michael pinned to the ground like a rabbit between a leopard’s paws.

“The question,” Damon said through his teeth, “is whether or not you

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