Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  “Because we quarreled?”

  “I was wrong to interfere between you and the Freeblood. And I have no excuse for saying what I did about your motives for helping your fellow Freebloods. But my son must come first.”

  “Then nothing has changed,” Artemis said, feeling another jolt of his worry and pain. “The most logical route to Portland is also the shortest, but there is still no guarantee that the rogues have not chosen the same route.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So we continue to parallel Interstate 5 for the time being.”

  She shrugged into her pack and returned to the path, leaving the young Freeblood to the elements and the scavengers that would return him to the earth.

  * * *

  Three days’ cautious travel brought them to Oceanus’s southern boundary. They crossed the Willamette River at Albany and continued north, roughly paralleling Interstate 5, to the rural city of Salem—which, like most other pre-War human cities, was a mishmash of half-fallen buildings and bare foundations, overgrown parking lots, cracked streets and patches of woodland that filled every available space in between. The river and a long line of hills stood between them and the western half of the valley and the Coast Range.

  Patrols of Opiri and Daysiders from Oceanus would have to cross those hills to find them, Garret thought, and the presence of such a patrol on their side of the Willamette would be a matter of very bad luck.

  At the moment, he and Artemis were observing from the edge of what had been a wide street bordered by parking lots and the remains of large, warehouse-style buildings. The woods ended here, replaced by scattered, smaller trees and shrubs, and resumed a thousand feet to the northeast.

  Artemis rose from a crouch, shaking her head. “Nothing new,” she said.

  Garret concealed his frustration. Artemis had been vigilant; as they’d traveled, varying the hours between night and day, she had found numerous indications that Freeblood packs had passed this way. The “when” was more difficult to pin down, and there had been no clear signs of the presence of a human child.

  He’s still alive, Garret told himself. He’s a fighter. And they must have a reason for taking him so far.

  “Garret.” Artemis laid a gloved hand on his shoulder, her dark eyes catching reflected light under the shelter of her hood. It was the first time they’d had any physical contact since they’d left Pericles, and suddenly he was immersed in the warmth of her body and the indescribable scent of her skin drifting out from beneath her heavy cloak. His heart began to race as it had when she had taken his blood, triggering the same startling current of desire and longing he had felt before and had struggled to ignore ever since.

  Her fingers began to shake, and she withdrew her hand. “It’s still early,” she said. “We can be halfway across the territory before night falls.”

  “How long since you’ve taken blood?” he asked, breathing deeply to slow his heartbeat and suppress his arousal before it became too obvious. “You haven’t hunted for yourself since you took mine, have you?”

  She shook her head in a distracted way that worried him. He’d expected her to hunt at least once during the times they’d stopped to rest, but he’d begun to suspect that she’d neglected herself because of his eagerness to keep moving.

  “Go now,” he said, “I can wait as long as it takes.”

  “Later,” Artemis said. With an abrupt, almost clumsy motion, she hitched up her pack and headed north toward the next patch of forest. Garret jogged to catch up, and then strode ahead of her. He could see far better in daylight than she could, and though the chances of ambush seemed small, he wasn’t prepared to risk her walking into one. The Vampire Slayer, though still hidden in his pack, was close enough at hand that he could pull the segments out, assemble them and fire in less than a minute.

  Sooner or later Artemis would find out about the weapon. He just hoped it wasn’t because he had to kill a Nightsider right in front of her eyes.

  They cleared the ruins of Salem by midday and began to travel in a more northeasterly direction, moving well away from the river and mountains to the west. Garret kept a constant eye on Artemis, watching for any sign of weakness that would indicate an urgent need for blood. But she continued to behave as if everything were normal, and he knew that forcing the issue wouldn’t do anything to gain her cooperation.

  At last they crossed the old six-lane freeway, passing through former pastures, farmland and orchards that had given way to mixed conifer and deciduous forest. Several times Artemis detected the scent or tracks of Opiri moving in groups, but again there was no indication that they carried a human prisoner. They met no patrols from Oceanus. It seemed to be going almost too smoothly until, soon after sunset, Artemis began to weave and stumble again.

  Garret was looking for shelter where she could safely rest when she jumped the thicket of wild roses that stood between them and barreled into him, dragging him to the ground. Her hood barely stayed over her head.

  “Opiri!” She flung her body across his as if to prevent him from rising.

  His pack—and the VS—were trapped beneath him. He lay still as her breath puffed against his cheek, the gentle curves of her body seeming to fit against his like a missing piece of a puzzle falling into place.

  “How close?” he asked.

  Artemis turned her head, her lips inches from his. “Close,” she said. “It is fortunate that the wind is with us.”

  “Patrol? Or rogues?” he asked.

  “I believe they are Freebloods. I think there is a human with them, but—”

  “Timon!” Garret began to rise, but she held him back with all her obviously waning strength.

  “Don’t be a fool!” she said. “If they have him, it won’t do us any good to rush right up to them and try to take him.”

  Closing his eyes, Garret worked to regain his composure. Artemis was right. God knew what the Freebloods might do with Timon if they felt threatened. If it even was Timon.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m all right.”

  She stared into his eyes for a long moment and then rolled off. Keeping low, he got to his knees and looked over the top of the thicket.

  “You won’t see them,” Artemis said, kneeling beside him. “They are some distance ahead.” She slid him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “You know I have a far better chance of getting near them without alerting them.”

  “Not when you haven’t fed,” he said.

  “I am well,” she said.

  “You’ll have to take my blood again.”

  “No.”

  “You’re being irrational, Artemis.”

  “I will not do it.”

  “Then you’ll have to stay here while I scout, or you could get both of us killed.”

  “I tell you I am well!” she said, her voice nearly rising from a whisper.

  He took her face between his hands, though he knew what it might do to both of them. “Are you so disgusted by what happened between us that you’d ignore your own health and risk your life?”

  The moment he finished speaking, he realized how desperately he wanted her to say no.

  Chapter 6

  Her breath caught, and so did Garret’s. Fear and desire surged through his body, and it almost seemed as though they were her feelings as well as his. She was afraid of him, and of herself. Afraid she would take, and give, too much. She sensed that he was desperately afraid for her. Not because she could help him find Timon, but—

  Artemis pulled away, her face paler than it had been a moment before. “When we know whether or not your son is with these Opiri,” she said, “I will do whatever is necessary. For the moment, you must let me go ahead.”

  “No,” he said. “We go together.”

  “So that you can protect me?”

  He
knew how she would react if he admitted the truth. Yes, he wanted to protect her, as much as he’d ever wanted to protect Roxana. And he’d been in a far less advantageous position to help Roxana in the Citadel where he’d been a serf and she his mistress.

  “If you’re not in your right mind, you’ll need my protection,” he said. He glanced up at the sky. “It’s nearly sunset. In a few minutes you won’t need your heavier clothes, and you’ll be able to move faster. But don’t make a move without me, Artemis. I mean it.”

  She gave him a scathing glance. “And to think I had thought you a human male without undue pride in his own abilities.”

  “It’s your pride I’m worried about. Let’s go.”

  Bent nearly double, they ran northeast, Artemis pausing twice to get her bearings. A quarter mile on, she stopped again and threw back her hood. Only a trace of pink light lingered over the hills to the west.

  “The Opiri are somewhere beyond those trees,” she said, pointing at a wide stretch of mixed woodland. As she began to move forward, Garret knelt to check the VS parts in his pack.

  He rose again and trotted after Artemis as she slipped from tree to tree as lightly as a leopardess. She was nearly crawling when they reached the border of the woods. He dropped to his belly behind her. An area of nearly unbroken grassland stretched ahead as far as he could see.

  “Do you see the rogues?” he said, squinting into the darkness.

  “No, but I know where they are.” Her voice held a new note, and the hair prickled at the back of Garret’s neck. “They are camped less than two hundred yards from here. There are seven, perhaps eight, of them, and—”

  “Timon?”

  “I...sense that there is more than one human in the area.”

  He tensed to move again. “We have to get closer.”

  “Wait.” Her nose wrinkled. “These Opiri are ready to fight. They are expecting to attack or be attacked.”

  “Attacked by whom?”

  “The humans, perhaps,” she murmured. “Whoever they may be, they are remarkably foolish to venture within the Citadel’s borders.”

  “And my son could be caught in the middle of whatever’s about to happen.”

  She turned to meet his gaze. “If the Freebloods have protected him so far, they will not let him be hurt. And if the humans should win...”

  “We can’t stand by and let this—”

  “We must. If we die, who can save Timon?”

  Clenching his teeth, Garret tried to weigh the options objectively. Artemis was right. Whoever the humans were, they would want to help a human child, and in a fight, the rogues would keep Timon out of the way. He and Artemis would probably have a better chance of grabbing Timon when the battle was decided one way or the other.

  “I know this is against your every instinct,” Artemis said. “I am sorry. I will go ahead, and see if—”

  “No,” he said, pulling her down when she attempted to move. “Can we get any closer without the Nightsiders sensing us?”

  “No. In fact we have to go back to be safe,” she said.

  She retreated. Garret lingered a moment, listening, but his human senses were not acute enough to gather any additional information. Reluctantly, he followed Artemis to a point well within the shelter of the woods but close enough to the grassland that she could monitor what was happening there.

  They waited as the long minutes went by, sitting a long arm’s reach apart from each other. Garret was constantly, painfully aware that Artemis was very near but not quite close enough to touch, and that he badly wanted to touch her. Even in the midst of so much uncertainty, those feelings refused to go away.

  An hour passed in silence, and then another. Artemis’s head began to droop, and her breathing grew shallow. Garret moved closer to her. He noted a new transparency to her pale skin, a dullness in her hair and a deepening of the shadows under her cheekbones and closed eyes.

  “Artemis,” he said, carefully touching her shoulder.

  She jerked awake, her body snapping into a defensive posture far more slowly than it should have. She blinked, recognized him and clambered to her feet.

  “What has happened?” she demanded.

  “Nothing, as far as I can tell,” he said. “But you were falling asleep.”

  “I wasn’t—” She broke off and strode away through the trees. Garret waited ten minutes and then got up to follow her.

  He found her at the edge of the woods. “Nothing has changed,” she said as he crouched beside her.

  “That’s right,” he said. “You still need what you need. We have to be ready to move quickly.”

  “You will become weak if I take too much.”

  “I trust you to take only as much as is safe for both of us.”

  They stared at each other, and Garret could see her struggling with arguments he knew she didn’t want to make. Arguments that had nothing to do with her fear of his becoming weak. But she knew he was right, and she was the first to look away.

  “Very well,” she said. “But we should use the other wrist.”

  Garret hesitated, reexamining the decision he’d made. He couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t a risk in giving her much more intimate access to his blood.

  But she would derive nourishment from his throat more efficiently than she would by taking blood from his wrist. And if he couldn’t trust her now, he might as well let those Opiri in the field kill him themselves.

  He led her back to their camp, removed the blanket from his pack and laid it down at the foot of a tall pine. Then he removed his coat and unbuttoned his shirt. Her gaze flew to his hands, watching his progress with apparent fascination, and he found himself suddenly self-conscious. He could sense her need as if it were his own.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a slightly strained voice.

  “Just what we agreed,” he said.

  Removing his shirt, he folded it and laid it on the ground behind him. He rested his palms on his thighs and settled into the calm, detached state that had always served him well when he had worked with the human Underground in Erebus. He would need all that detachment to treat this feeding like any other.

  He tilted his head back, took a deep breath. “I’m ready,” he said.

  “You are...” Artemis stammered. “You expect me to...”

  “It’s fast, and it’s practical,” he said, staring up into the green boughs overhead. “The sooner we’re finished, the sooner we’ll both be ready to take whatever action is necessary.”

  “How many times have you done this?” she asked.

  “Often enough to know what I’m doing.”

  He waited, holding himself ready, until he felt the heat of her body close to his, her breath sighing over his skin, her lips brushing his throat.

  “Are you certain?” she asked softly.

  “Look at me, Artemis.”

  Whatever she saw in his eyes apparently frightened her, and she almost bolted. But he grabbed her hand, and she settled down again, panting and trembling. Her teeth penetrated his flesh. She moaned as his blood began to flow, and he felt desire take hold exactly as he had prayed it wouldn’t. He reached out to clasp his hands around her waist. He found the hem of her tunic and slipped his fingers beneath, sliding his palms over the skin below her ribs.

  Then he paused, because she hadn’t asked for his touch, because he knew that she was not Roxana. But Artemis gripped his wrist and held his hand where it was.

  She was too far gone to stop. And so was he.

  * * *

  The moment Artemis tasted his blood, she knew it was too late.

  She felt his warm breath stirring her hair, heard the rapid drumming of his heart, smelled the surge of his lust and only drank the more deeply, caught up in an ecstasy more overwhelming than any she had
known before.

  Even the last time he had given his blood, it hadn’t been like this. She’d underestimated the impact of taking it directly from his throat. An intimate act, she’d thought when she’d first met him, one he surely wouldn’t share with her.

  And yet here she was, and her body and mind were opening to Garret, abandoning all caution, renewing the intense emotional connection she had wanted so badly to extinguish. She had forgotten what it could be like, how quickly one could lose control with the right partner. And she had never taken blood during what humans called “making love.”

  But now, when Garret touched her bare skin, she felt his excitement as well as her own. She was being carried away by a current she couldn’t stop, delirious with feelings and sensations that superseded mere arousal or the sensual stimulation that so often accompanied feeding.

  She wanted him. She wanted to possess him, to be possessed by him, to join in complete physical union. What happened afterward...

  No. The unraveling thread of her sanity begged her to remember what she could lose, what she could do to Garret. Once she stepped onto this path, she might never find her way back again. A single reckless act might finally shatter any hope she had of closing the gate against Garret Fox.

  But sanity had no hope when Garret’s fingertips discovered her nipples and teased them into firm, sensitive peaks. His blood soothed her tongue. Erotic images shaped in Garret’s mind slipped into hers as his fingers slid down her belly and to the waistband of her pants. He unfastened the fly and dipped inside. Callous skin touched tender flesh. She shifted her body, urging him to explore as she continued to drink.

  Garret stroked her with one hand while his other worked at the buttons of her shirt. Cool air washed over her breasts, and she straightened as his emotions told her what he wanted to do. Acting entirely on instinct, she sealed the bite and leaned back, giving him complete access to her breasts.

  When he took her nipple into his mouth, she moaned at the incredible sensation of his reaction as well as her own, desire doubled and redoubled as he suckled her hungrily. His other hand found its way between her thighs and grazed the tight little bud where pleasure was almost like pain. She gasped, and he gasped with her.