Twilight Seeker: Daybreaker #1

by DaCosta, Pippa

  A child’s laughter bubbled out of the dark, bright and careless and thoroughly wrong. Goosebumps spritzed across my skin. Something hunted me. My heart thumped, urging me to run, but running out here was always bad. I’d learned that with the phantom. The monsters didn’t stop until their prey was dead, or they’d gotten whatever they wanted.

  Damn Jack. Damn him to whatever hell vampires feared. He’d left me in the dark alone.

  I kept moving forward over gnarled ankle-breaking roots. Fog seeped between ghostly trees, its wetness on my lips. Maybe it would hide me? I kept on moving. More steps, more clambering over uneven ground, trying not to make a sound, not to run.

  Laughter to my left, far away. Farther away was good.

  Then it sprang up close to my right, and the fog swirled, something moving inside it. Something close. Something hungry. Sweat slickened my grip on the knife.

  “Hello.” A girl appeared in front of me, dressed like the dolls my brother and I had found in one of the Night Station’s many secret rooms. Tiny wooden things with overly large smiles and too many painted-on teeth. Kensey had sworn their glass-eyed stares had followed him. Then, when they’d started showing up around the station, we’d rammed them in a chest, padlocked it, and stuffed it down a laundry chute. We hadn’t seen them again, but they were still down there… wherever that chute went. This girl had the same little blue dress, flared at the hips, and white pop socks. She did not belong here.

  “It’s polite to say hello back,” she suggested, her voice as sweet and sickly as too much candy.

  “Hello,” I croaked. I had my knife out. The little-girl act wasn’t fooling me. She was wrong on every level, and whatever she was, she probably wanted to devour me in some hideous way.

  “Will you play with me?

  Her image spluttered, like a lamp about to snuff out, and then she was closer, her outline swelling until she stood as tall as a man. Her mouth yawned. Her pink tongue lashed. Her pretty blue dress shimmered, turning to scales. And I knew what she was: a rakshasi, a shape-shifting flesh-eater.

  She reached for me. I slashed wide, hoping to zip open something of her form enough to slow her down, but her claws grabbed my arms. Gnarled roots conspired around my boots, sending me sprawling. The rakshasi snapped at my neck. I shoved, writhed, and got a kick in, launching her backward.

  I was on my feet and running, knowing I shouldn’t. There were worse things than her here and they’d hear my retreat, but prey ran, and I was prey.

  A snake the size of me slithered into my path and reared up, its jaws wide, fangs extended. The rakshasi. Its hiss surrounded me like a storm. My heart slowed, or time did. I skidded, trying to slow, but leaves and twigs upset my footing. I was on the ground again, scrabbling backward, with the enormous snake slithering toward me.

  It reared up, my death in its serpentine eyes, and struck.

  Heat sizzled up my arm, through my veins, and drove rods through my heart, delivering a shock of something not me. The knife flew from my hand and plunged into the creature’s right eye. Its scream lit up the night, shattering the silence and sending out a beacon to every Dark One nearby to come and feast on the human who had dared hurt one of them.

  I had the stake in my hand next. There were no thoughts, just movement, and fear, and strength. So much strength. I stood, distantly aware that this wasn’t entirely under my control.

  The rakshasi thrashed its head from side to side and then saw me. My knife was still lodged in its bleeding eye. Its hiss filled my ears and buzzed through my bones, and then it struck again. I thrust a hand up, jolting its jaw high, and thrust the stake into its scales. The beast slumped forward, slamming into me, and for a terrible moment, as I lay beneath its weight, I thought it had pinned me down, and now it would eat me; every single inch of Lynher Aris would dissolve in its belly.

  But it wasn’t moving. And I was still breathing. Not dead. Not yet.

  I shoved and heaved its mass of warm scales off me, rolled aside, then turned back to see if it might rise up and slither after me again. But it stayed still.

  Had I killed it? Had I done that?

  The station’s mark on my arm sizzled, and as I pulled my sleeve back, its glowing edges settled back to their dormant state. It shouldn’t have come alive out here—it only worked close to the station—but this had been different. I wasn’t sure what it had done, but its remnants buzzed through my veins. I’d been so much stronger, brighter, fearless.

  “Let’s keep moving.”

  I jumped and twisted to find Jack watching, one hand casually braced against a tree.

  He’d left me.

  He’d gone.

  Now he was back.

  Bastard.

  I snatched the knife from the rakshasi’s eye and whirled, ready to fling it at his heart.

  “Do that and you’ll never find your way home.”

  He’d been watching the entire time. He could have killed the rakshasi with a flick of his wrist.

  “Why didn’t you help?” I pulled the stake free, wiped the congealing blood on the forest floor, and warily eyed the overseer.

  “You had it in hand.”

  I’d been fighting for my life. At no point did I have it in hand. Tucking the stake home against my back and the knife in my pocket, I straightened up to him. He straightened too, and there we stood, eyeing each other. He was right—I couldn’t get home without him—but if he would conveniently disappear every time something tried to eat me, I wouldn’t get home at all. “Why didn’t you help?”

  His jaw worked, as though he were chewing over an answer, but instead of voicing it, he turned and started through the brush. “The railroad tracks are this way…”

  I wanted to repeatedly stab my knife into his back until answers fell out. Throwing one last look back at the dead rakshasi, not quite believing I’d brought it down, I started after Jack.

  “Keep up, Miss Aris,” he called. “The road is long and the journey has just begun.”

  Chapter 17

  Day

  The tracks pierced the heart of the ruined buildings and swept out the other side, toward toothy mountains. The station was beyond those. And as we walked alongside the iron rails, the distance between us and home seemed too big to think on.

  Once again, we talked little and Jack’s limp became more pronounced as the sun arced through the sky. He wilted beneath its rays but stayed on the tracks with me instead of veering off into the never-ending forest. It cost him physically.

  At dusk, he grunted something about going to feed and told me to continue walking on the tracks; apparently, the iron deterred most minor beasties, and the sky was still too light for anything bigger to come hunting.

  He returned later with two dead rabbits, told me to sit on a fallen tree, and set about creating a campfire. I kicked off my boots and rubbed my feet while he worked. He cleared the ground, gathered kindling and moss, and lit the fire with a click of his fingers. I hadn’t known vampires could do that kind of magic—or that anyone could spark a flame like that. I’d only managed it in the station because it listened to me and knew the click meant light. Out here, only darkness listened.

  “Can all vampires do that?”

  “No.” He crafted a brace out of sticks and held his hand out. “The knife?” At my hesitance, he sighed. “Your rumbling stomach is driving me to distraction. You’ll get the knife back once you’ve eaten.”

  I handed it over and again watched as he prepared the rabbits, stripping them of their fur and guts for roasting. For someone who only needed blood, he knew how to prepare his meat in other ways too.

  Overseers were always different than most in the VG. Although obviously the queen’s slaves, they could think for themselves. The queen wasn’t omnipotent. She needed a hierarchy to control her vast army, and so she’d created vampires who thought and behaved more like individuals. Overseers. The only other overseer I’d met was the one from the farm, and while he too had seemed autonomous, Jack was on another le
vel, one perhaps unique to him. Maybe it had something to do with all those tattoos?

  The rabbit was delicious, and I was so ravenous I didn’t care how Jack openly watched me eat.

  “How well do you know your Etienne friend?” Jack asked when I was done with the meal. He’d propped himself on his side. The firelight stroked over his long limbs, warming all that darkness. He almost looked harmless again.

  “I thought I knew him better than most.” I sat across the fire from him, watching the vampire through flame and smoke.

  Darkness and cold crept in. We were close enough to the tracks that Jack seemed content to stay the night, but I felt exposed. The trees alongside the tracks were thin, kept small by the trains thundering past. We hadn’t seen any of the engines and carriages yet, but we would eventually.

  “Was his locking you in the carriage with me out of character?” he asked.

  I chuckled dryly. “Etienne would never… Well, I thought he wouldn’t. He only recently began working with me, but I’ve known him for years.” My brother had. I’d known of Etienne, but it was Kensey who really knew him. Or we’d thought we’d known him. How had we both gotten it so wrong?

  “You saw him close the door?”

  I nodded.

  “It was no mistake.”

  “He had a reason to do what he did. I just need to speak with him. As soon as we get back, I’ll—”

  “He knew the train’s cargo and destination, yes?”

  I nodded. “He overheard enough to put the pieces together.”

  Jack’s fine eyes narrowed. “Then he believes you’re dead.”

  And so would my brother. Oh Kensey… Hold on. I’m coming home. Without me, he might leave, or he might come looking for me, like he always had when I’d wandered off. But he had to know he’d never survive outside the station. He had to know that.

  Jack watched my face, trying to decipher all the thoughts in my head.

  “Did you tell him about the high-value cargo?”

  I dropped my gaze to the fire. “He knew.” Someone had gotten to him. It could only be the VG. What if Jack—the infamous Ghost, known for his cruelty and cunning—had convinced Etienne to lock me in? “Why was the train empty, Jack?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Maybe because you wanted me on that train. Maybe because I was your high-value cargo?”

  Firelight warmed his smile. “You belong in that station. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to remove you.”

  I didn’t pretend to know what he meant. “How do I know you didn’t orchestrate everything?”

  “You witnessed our reception at the farm. They were not expecting us.”

  “They were not expecting me to hold a knife to your throat, no.”

  He laughed softly and touched his neck where my blade had kissed him. No mark remained, but the blade had cut. Did he remember how that had felt, to be cut by a bloodbag? “I was not due to be on that train,” he admitted, and the laughter fell from his eyes, turning them dark again. “I wasn’t due to be at your Night Station either, although I hear the resident VG learned of my arrival at the last moment.”

  “So why did you grace us with your presence?” I chanced, not expecting an answer.

  “The same reason I’m returning.”

  “Sanctuary?”

  He breathed in and sighed heavily. “Indeed.”

  “I know why most people need sanctuary, and it usually has something to do with the VG. So why does an overseer need sanctuary from his own people?”

  He looked up, but there were no stars tonight, so what did he see in the darkness high above? “There’s a big world outside your station, Miss Aris. A great many monsters, some worse than me.” His smile had lost some of its luster, like he was trying to convince himself of his lies as well.

  Monsters worse than him? If he was trying to make me feel sorry for him, it would never happen. “So if you weren’t meant to be at my station, you weren’t involved with the high-value cargo?”

  “I knew of it. Such things are under my remit. I chose to use its arrival as cover for my travel arrangements. Felipe was—” He cut himself off, his gaze flicking to me.

  “An asshole?”

  He laughed, and a traitorous smile found its way onto my lips. Gods, he had a lovely laugh, the deep kind, too honest and true to be his. He must have stolen it from someone.

  “He really was an arsehole,” he said, his accent adding an r. “I’ll not be mourning his loss.”

  While he’d played his games, I had bowed to that asshole, and would have done worse had it come to it. My next question came out hard too. “Do you care, Jack? About anything besides yourself?”

  He kept smiling, his gaze on me, but both had sharpened. “What does my answer matter? You already believe you know everything about me. I am your villain, am I not? Your convenient source of all vampire crimes?”

  “I know the truth, yes.”

  “Do you?” Light caught the silver in his eyes and highlighted his wooden smile.

  “What is there to know? You’re an overseer. You hunt and kill my kind. It’s what you were made to do. You already admitted it. I don’t need to know anything else about Just Jack.”

  “Such an enlightened life you live.” Leaning back, he tucked a hand under his head and stared at the sky. “Gerome was quite the teacher. Did he bounce you on his knee while he told you all about the vampire scourge that tore through human lands?” He turned his head, and I saw how his smile had gained a new edge.

  “You are not fit to speak his name.”

  “Gerome wasn’t a saint, Lynher.”

  “Stop calling me Lynher. My name to the likes of you is Miss Aris. You didn’t know Gerome. He was worth a thousand of you. You’re little more than a grunt. Dress you up, make you walk and talk, but you’re still a mindless drone like all the others.”

  “If I were a mindless drone, I’d have killed you in that carriage or a hundred times since then, as I suspect your friend Etienne planned when trapping us together—”

  “So, you have some free will? Just enough to make you think you’re in control. When you die, and you will die, Jack, a hundred others will be waiting to take your place. You really are a ghost, because nothing and nobody cares about you. You don’t even have a proper name—”

  He leaped to his feet, and I had my knife out in the next breath, but he wasn’t focused on me. Head tipped skyward, he asked, “Did you hear that?”

  I couldn’t hear a damn thing over my racing heart.

  Jack kicked leaf litter and dirt over the fire, grabbed my free hand, and pulled me into a run, down the bank and into the spindly tree cover.

  I heard it then, a sound like a heartbeat but a thousand times bigger, coming from above.

  Trees sprang up all around, looming out of the dark. We tore through them and burst out onto an area of flat land. Dry ground crunched and cracked under my boots. Jack yanked, almost pulling me off my feet, and whirled, snatching the knife from my hand so fast my fingers burned. He shoved me back, yelling, “Run!” and dashed toward the noise.

  I saw something then, but struggled to understand what. Its size, hanging in the dark sky, was almost too big to comprehend, with two enormous sheets stirring the night either side of its bulk. Wings. So big, with trailing, tattered edges and hooked hinges.

  The creature opened its maw and roared.

  The wyvern.

  The VG had let it off its leash.

  And Jack was running toward it, seeming ridiculously small in its shadow.

  The wyvern wasn’t watching him. Its red-eyed glare had fixed on me.

  My carved stake wouldn’t cut it.

  I twisted on my heels and bolted, head down, legs pumping. There was no cover, just shadow upon shadow in every direction. Jack had pulled me into a killing field.

  That bastard.

  Every damn time… He really was using me as bait.

>   The wyvern roared so close and so loud overhead that I stumbled and clutched my hands over my ears to keep my skull in one piece. It sailed past, whipping up a storm of dust beneath its wings, and then banked ahead, coming around for a second go.

  Oh gods, there was nowhere to hide, and I couldn’t outrun it.

  I slowed to a jog and then a complete stop and looked the wyvern in its mean eyes, recognizing it. It didn’t think or reason; it had been created to end old towns, and it wasn’t even of this world. The mark on my arm sizzled to life, but what good would that do me? I’d burn its tongue while it swallowed me whole?

  Lower, it sailed.

  Faster.

  Its jaws opened.

  Its eyes burned.

  Then my knife flashed overhead. So tiny a thing, but it struck true, popping the creature’s right eye. But instead of pulling up, the wyvern’s head dropped. Its chin snagged the ground, pulling it out of the air, and then it was rolling, wings flailing, coming in like a mountain about to tumble right over me.

  A wrecking ball slammed into my left side, swiping me off my feet and driving me into the ground. I knew it was Jack when he tucked me into his chest the same way he had when we’d gone over the cliff. He smelled warm and welcoming, like an open fire, and as the tumbling beast thundered nearer, I clutched him as hard as he clutched me, buried my face against his shoulder, and held on.

  Like before, when the wyvern had flipped the car, there wasn’t any discernible noise or sensation, just a terrible assault of thunder and pain and dust. The ground shuddered like it was coming apart, and then it was over. I panted, wrapped in Jack’s arms and not caring.