Eternal Dawn

by Kerrion, Jade;

  “I’m here.” Her voice anchored him. “I won’t leave you.”

  Hold me.

  Her arms cradled him, protecting him until a new sensation intruded on his expanding awareness. The air shifted in response to the beat of massive wings.

  Daevas.

  In Siri’s arms, Rafael tensed and made a choking sound as she pulled away. Her gaze swept over him. He was transforming into a predator, one able to take on even a winged daeva, assuming he survived the process.

  His fingernails lengthened, sharpened, and turned an iridescent white hue. His lips parted to reveal elongated incisors. The other changes, Siri knew, were subtle, but even more profound—increased strength, enhanced agility, accelerated self-healing.

  Why was he transforming so quickly? Was it something in her tainted blood?

  The vibrations in the air intensified from the beat of approaching wings.

  Rafael was not ready for a fight, and she could not let the daevas reach him. The passageway in the roof of the cave would funnel the daevas’ approach and give her a fool’s hope of winning the fight.

  Tera, and even Ashra, her dainty white gowns notwithstanding, were far better suited for physical battles, but Siri had wings, fangs, and claws too. She would put them to good use.

  More importantly, she had a reason to fight.

  She ripped through the scrawny throat of the first daeva who rushed through the entrance, and tore off the next daeva’s right arm. Her stomach churned with nausea, but she closed her ears and heart to the daeva’s whimpering sobs. The daevas were young—scarcely more than a few decades old—and no match for a three-millennia-old icrathari.

  Why would the immortali send such young daevas into battle? Surely it must have known that they stood no chance against an ancient icrathari.

  Siri yanked her claws through a third daeva’s stomach. Its blood spilled, golden, upon the pebbled ground.

  “No!” a voice screamed. The immortali plunged through the entrance and threw itself between Siri and the injured daevas. It shouted something in the guttural language of the daevas. The incomprehensible jumble of words was vaguely familiar, as if drawn from remnants of a human language. Its dark eyes flashed with fury, and it leapt to attack.

  The immortali’s strength and agility was equal to hers. Flight offered her no advantage in the low-ceilinged cave. It took Siri only a moment to realize she could not win.

  She fought anyway. She had to buy Rafael as much time as possible to complete the transformation. The immortali’s backhanded blow caught her full in the face and flung her against a wall. It lunged forward, but she ducked. Its fist smashed into the cave wall. Debris and limestone dust rained down on her head.

  Her kick knocked out one of its legs from under it. It collapsed on one knee and used the momentum to roll forward, under her defenses. A wicked grin flashed over its face as it trapped her wrists in its hands and slammed her against the wall. Its upper lip pulled back, revealing glistening incisors, and it surged forward for the kill.

  Siri could feel the warmth of its breath against her throat a fraction of a second before a violent force slammed against its side, ripping it away from her.

  The immortali and the elder vampire crashed into the far wall in a tangled heap of limbs.

  Or at least Siri hoped Rafael was an elder vampire. She sagged, her chest heaving with the effort of her physical exertions. In a corner, the injured daevas curled together for safety, their soft whimpers lost in the sounds of battle.

  Rafael’s hazel eyes—thank the Creator—were cool and focused as he parried the immortali’s attacks. He was not a trained warrior like Jaden and Talon, but the transformation to elder vampire made him a predator. His killer instincts were as honed as the blood that transformed him was ancient, although the battle would not be won quickly or easily. Rafael and the immortali were too closely matched.

  The immortali realized it too. A look of desperation surged into its eyes. It leapt away from Rafael, threw itself in front of the wounded daevas, and flung out a hand. “No.”

  Rafael was too recently a human to not respond to a plea for mercy.

  The immortali took advantage of Rafael’s momentary hesitation to pull the daevas into its arms. With a surge of strength, it leapt up into the passageway and escaped with the three young daevas.

  Siri blinked. What had that been about?

  Rafael looked as confused as she felt. He turned to her and their gazes met across the room. His throat worked and he looked away. Despair broke through his stoic façade.

  Slowly, she closed the distance. “Rafael?”

  He stared at his hands as his talons retracted. The silence between them shattered with his sharp inhalation of air and a shuddering release of his breath. “Why?” he whispered.

  Siri heard his disbelief. She fumbled for the right words, and realized there was none. “What do you mean?” Her voice caught on the question.

  Rafael closed his eyes, the gesture stretching the distance between them. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.”

  Siri stared at Rafael. What did he mean? Too late for what?

  His eyes opened. The raw pain in them drew her back to her first meeting with him, the day after Stefan had been taken from him. She had spent three months purging his grief, and in an instant, she had returned it to him, several fold.

  He turned away from her and looked up at the passageway in the roof of the cave. “We need to warn Jaden and Talon.”

  His words yanked her back into reality. They were still in danger. She had to focus on something other than the heart-wrenching regret in Rafael’s voice or his sense of loss would cripple her too. “It could be a trap,” Siri said after a glance around the cavern. “Here, we can take out the daevas one at a time as they come down to us. Up there, they’d swarm us from all sides.”

  “We can’t stay here forever.”

  “No, we can’t—” Siri’s gaze fell on the painting on the wall. Her mouth dropped open. “What is this?”

  “Cave art, of sorts.”

  “It’s beautiful.” She traced the outline of Malum Turris, and of the icrathari. “It’s Tera,” she said, wonder in her voice.

  “What?” Rafael strode over to her.

  “Doesn’t this look like a braid?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yes, it does.”

  “I don’t remember him, though, which is odd.”

  “The immortali?”

  Siri nodded. “I’ve documented all our attempts to create elder vampires, and I’m good with faces. I don’t recall his case number. Besides, he’s an artist. We would never have selected an artist for an elder vampire.”

  “Or an herbalist?”

  Siri heard the rancor in Rafael’s voice. Anger stiffened her spine. The snap of her voice was sharper than she intended. “I saved your life.”

  Rafael turned his back on her, walked to the passageway that led out of the cave, and peered up. “Stay here until I call for you. If there’s trouble, at least you’ll be safe.” He crouched, and then leapt, vanishing into the tunnel.

  Siri pressed her lips together. An ache pulsed through her chest. She had not even realized how much his friendship meant to her until she lost it.

  “It’s clear out here.” His rich, deep baritone drifted down to her.

  She cast a final glance around the immortali’s cave. Something white fluttering in a corner caught her eye. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. Plastic? She hadn’t seen anything like it in nearly a thousand years. She smoothed it out and studied the black words imprinted on the torn plastic.

  Her breath caught. But—how could it be?

  “Siri?” Rafael’s voice, edged with concern, drifted down to her. “Are you all right?”

  Her wings pressed close to her back, she darted up the passageway and reemerged into the large cavern with its underground lake.

  Rafael was kneeling by the side of the lake, placing jars of plant specimens into h
is knapsack.

  Siri looked down the tunnel where Talon had disappeared in search of Jaden. “This way.”

  He nodded. “I suppose returning without Jaden isn’t an option.”

  “Not unless you want to spend the rest of your unnatural life justifying the decision to Ashra.”

  He grinned, and for a moment, the Rafael she knew—the one who could see the wry humor in almost any situation—was back. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a crushed sprig of lantana leaves and set a brisk pace down the corridor, occasionally brushing the leaves against the cave wall. Several minutes later, he stopped to tear a strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt.

  Siri stared curiously as he wrapped it around his neck and tied it like a bandage. “What are you doing?”

  “Just as a precaution.”

  “Against what?”

  He did not resist when she unwound the cloth. Her eyes widened. She reached up but caught herself before she made contact with the wound that seeped blood. The jagged tear inflicted by the immortali had not fully closed. “Rafael—” She looked up at him with growing horror as the truth sank in.

  “It appears I’ve inherited aconite blood poisoning, too.”

  “I…you—”

  “And you saved me for this?”

  I’m sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt. But how could words be enough? Her heart ached so badly she thought it would burst out of her chest. Her lips moved, but she could not get the words past the lump in her throat.

  For a moment, he stared at her, waiting for a response, but when she said nothing, he turned his back on her. The gesture could not have hurt more if he had slashed her throat.

  She drew sarcasm around her like armor. Her snicker was a mocking sound. “At least I know you’ll be highly motivated to find the cure.”

  He spun around in disbelief. Pain ripped hard and fast through his eyes before he averted his gaze.

  Oh, blessed Creator. If only she could take back the words. Rafael did not deserve it. He had identified the poison that inflicted her, created a salve that closed her surface wounds, and had worked himself to exhaustion trying to develop an herbal cure. Presumably, he had also left the safety of Aeternae Noctis to seek out the antidote for her.

  All his effort he had spent, all the risks he had taken, had been for her.

  Siri swallowed hard against the leaden weight of guilt. “Rafael, I—”

  He shook his head. “The immortali was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “About you.”

  “What about me?”

  Rafael did not respond. He did not trust himself to speak without striking out. He dragged his fingers through his hair. His sharp fingernails scratched against his skull. If only he could pull her taunting echo out of his head. “At least I know you’ll be highly motivated to find the cure.”

  To love them is to be cursed. He should have trusted the immortali who spoke with the voice of cold and bitter reason. All he had been to Siri was a means to the cure for aconite poisoning.

  She stared at him, the expression in her violet eyes indecipherable.

  Rafael looked away. He thought he had known her. He had admired her strength and courage. He enjoyed her company, their easy conversations, and valued what he had imagined was her friendship. If he loved her, it was on his own terms, without any expectation that his love would be reciprocated. After all, she was an icrathari and he was human. The relationship would have ended with his death mere decades away.

  Not anymore.

  Rafael’s hands clenched into fists; his fingernails cut into the palms of his hands. He had no one to blame but himself. He had left the safety of Aeternae Noctis and placed himself in danger. He had damned his soul for an icrathari who thought nothing of him.

  Death was now an eternity away, and Siri was as much an enigma as she had always been.

  She was a Night Terror, and now, he was one too.

  Chapter 12

  A warren of tunnels led through caverns large and small. An underground river, glowing with blue bioluminescence, wound through the caves. The stream occasionally plunged beneath piles of rocks and reappeared, bubbling out of the ground several caverns later. Paths worn into the ground by the tread of many feet provided the only evidence that daevas had ever inhabited these caves. Mushrooms and ferns, nestled in beds of moss, grew in dank corners. Rafael stopped to examine the plants, occasionally adding another to his collection.

  “Have you found what you need?” Siri asked, peering over his shoulder. Her voice was casual as if nothing between them had changed.

  Rafael could not allow himself to be consumed by the knowledge of how little he meant to her, not when the blame was partially his. He should have known better than to trust an icrathari.

  The only thing he could still do was keep moving. He had to stay ahead of the pain or it would crush him. Rafael fell back on the emotional defense he had utilized when he had first met Siri, the day after he lost his son. Coolly professional, he nodded without looking at her. “No, but I’ve found many others I didn’t expect.” He knelt and transplanted another mushroom species into one of his collection jars. “There is life down here.”

  “Could humans live here?”

  Rafael looked around. Could they? The caverns were spacious, and the people would have access to water. Bioluminescence offered light, of sorts, and the temperature was stable, if a little cool. The people would be safe from the sun.

  “What would they do for food?” he asked.

  Siri’s gaze swept the breadth of the cavern. “Terraforming can alter the mineral content of the cave floor, make it suitable for plants. I can install light columns for the crops.”

  “How would you power the columns?”

  “Solar energy cells. I’ll place charging stations on the Earth’s surface. The people would have to replenish the cells each night when it’s safe to emerge from underground.” Siri shrugged; he could tell that she was thinking aloud as she paced the large cavern, mentally sketching the layout of the new outpost. “The settlement wouldn’t be pretty. It wouldn’t be the same as living on the surface, enjoying the sunlight from beneath the protection of the dome, but there would be space to expand and allow families to grow.”

  He glimpsed a hint of desperation in her gaze, although he could not imagine why. The settlement, for whatever reason, meant a great deal to her. “And the daevas?” he asked.

  “The one hitch in the grand plan,” Siri admitted. “The outpost—and I wouldn’t start with mass migration—would need to be protected by vampires. We’ll never outnumber them, so we’re going to have fight smart. I’d have to dig up the twenty-second century weaponry I stashed away and figure out what we can use against the daevas without bringing down the caves around us.”

  He pushed to his feet and dusted his hands off on his pants. “I’ll stay here.”

  Her head snapped up. “What?”

  “I’ll stay here, with the new outpost. You’ll need an elder vampire, in case the immortali returns.”

  She gave him a steady, inscrutable look.

  Rafael’s hands clenched into fists. She had expected him to volunteer. Was the underground settlement her way of sending him away? Perhaps she realized, as he did, that it was for the best. He had mistaken proximity for friendship and even love once before. He did not intend to make that mistake again. The distance between them would guard against it.

  Rafael glanced up at the sound of footsteps moving rapidly toward Siri and him. He caught the whiff of familiar scents—Jaden and Talon—and braced for their shock.

  The two elder vampires stopped so quickly they all but skidded on the sandy ground of the cave. Jaden’s jaw dropped. “Rafael?”

  Rafael did not feel all that different, but he supposed that the difference between a human and an elder vampire would be obvious to Jaden and Talon.

  Talon released a hoot of laughter. “Looks like the sales pitch worked after all.”

 
Jaden wore a slight frown as he walked forward. “Rafael, are you…?” He spared Siri a quick, uncertain glance. “I know you did not want this.”

  “The decision is made. There is no undoing it.” Rafael released his breath, his shoulders sagging on a silent sigh. “I’ll get by somehow.” He shifted the knapsack. It was full, but he did not notice its weight. “We need to get back.”

  Jaden nodded. “Talon said he sensed the presence of an immortali.”

  “There is indeed an immortali,” Siri confirmed. “But he’s not anyone I recall, which is odd.” She shook her head. “I have to talk to Ashra and Tera about the immortali. If they’re breeding, somehow—”

  Rafael cut in. “The immortali said he came from Aeternae Noctis. He said he was discarded, buried outside the city.”

  “Discarded? He’s definitely crazy, then,” Siri said. “We debriefed all the elder vampire hopefuls thoroughly. I gave them detailed instructions on what was going to happen to them, and what to do if they survived the transformation. Talon made it, but that was before Aeternae Noctis, and then nothing for a thousand years, until Jaden.”

  “And now Rafael,” Talon added with a grin. “I’m glad you made it, although I never had any doubts.”

  “Then you had more faith in me than I had in myself.”

  Talon shrugged. “That’s usually the way it works. Welcome to eternity.”

  A crude stone slab building with leaning walls and a slanted roof stood by the banks of what had once been a river. Within the structure, a hidden hatch on the ground rattled and then lifted slowly. A pair of violet eyes peered out through the narrow slit and squinted against the rays of sunlight pouring through the open doorway of the stone building.

  Scowling, Siri closed the hatch. Her wings folded against her back as she dropped to the ground to rejoin the three elder vampires. “We missed our window to return to Aeternae Noctis. We probably have ten or more hours of daylight to kill before we can head out again.”

  “Oh, good.” Talon’s grin bared his fangs. “We’ve got time to pick a fight. We can kill daevas and time. How’s that for efficient?”