Eternal Dawn

by Kerrion, Jade;

  “We’re not here to fulfill your private vendetta over your five-hundred-year imprisonment.”

  “Private vendetta? Oh no, this is a social good…a public responsibility to wipe out all ancient winged creatures with bad attitudes, present company excluded, of course.”

  Jaden shook his head. His sigh was laced with amusement. “Ashra would have ripped out your guts for that comment.”

  Talon grinned. “Yeah, and Tera would have skewered me. Those two ladies have no sense of humor. But really, I’m constitutionally incapable of doing nothing for ten hours—”

  “So says the vampire who was imprisoned for five hundred years.” Jaden laughed.

  Rafael cut in. “We could explore. Find a suitable place for the new outpost.”

  Jaden and Talon’s wide-eyed gazes shuttled between Rafael and Siri. “What new outpost?” Jaden asked.

  A smile spread across Siri’s face, and she began talking.

  For several minutes, Rafael listened to Siri’s explanation and then wandered away from the group, seeking solitude and the quiet of his own thoughts. Jaden and Talon’s reactions were what he had expected—Jaden was cautiously optimistic and Talon had doubled over with incredulous laughter.

  Yet Talon had made excellent points.

  The caverns were wretchedly dark.

  True, though Rafael’s vampire eyesight allowed him to extract every bit of light from his surroundings. The caverns that had been pitch black before were now grayish-blue, like the final breath of twilight or the first kiss of dawn. Pinpricks of color emanated from bioluminescent algae, plants, and insects. Light danced through the darkness, transforming the caves into a mystical wonderland. It was not sunlight, but it was still beautiful.

  The caverns were damp and smelled of rot.

  True, though only living things could rot. By implication then, the caverns possessed enough life to be plagued with death. Besides, the dampness affected only the caverns where the underground river bubbled to the surface, and life thrived in those caverns. Mushrooms and ferns flourished in the dark soil of the riverbank.

  Rafael knelt and ran his fingers through the earth. It smelled richer than the potting soil he used for his most delicate herbs and was loaded with nutrients and minerals. If he had access to solar generators and light columns, he could create an amazing greenhouse. The vision took shape: plots of medicinal herbs in that corner, edible plants and flowers beside them. The poisonous plants would be in a separate area, individually potted; the plot fenced to keep children out.

  His garden in Aeternae Noctis had been fenced too, but Stefan had needed no such guidance. Rafael and Stefan had spent hours together working in the herb garden, pruning the fragile leaves and transferring seedlings into larger pots. He had taught his son his trade; Stefan had learned how to distinguish the dangerous plants from the ones that were safe. He had known that Stefan could be culled at the age of five, but he had refused to ration his love. He had focused—gambled—on the future. And he had lost.

  He had gambled yet again, this time on his inexplicable fascination with Siri and on his compulsion to help her. And he had lost again.

  The caverns were dull.

  True, they were quiet and lonely, blessedly so. They provided exactly what he needed; time and space to learn how to live with the silence and the emptiness inside of him. He could find contentment, if not happiness in here.

  What happened to his soul? Did it perish, as the people of Aeternae Noctis believed it did, the moment he became a vampire? Had he traded his promised afterlife with Ariel and Stefan for an eternity of nothing?

  He shuddered. Eternity was too long to contemplate, especially for a man who had, until recently, counted down each hour of each day only to spend each hour of each night tossing in bed. For a while, Siri had given him fresh purpose, but he now knew it was little more than an illusion.

  New surroundings and a fresh start were exactly what he needed.

  A quiet whimper reached him. He frowned and tilted his head to listen.

  Something rustled. It might have been large leather wings.

  The sounds ricocheted in tiny echoes off the curved walls, making the source hard to pin down, but he walked in its approximate direction. It occurred to him that, hours earlier, he would have retreated into the safety of Talon, Jaden, and Siri’s company.

  Apparently, a healthy caution on maintaining his distance from strange sounds had perished along with his humanity.

  What else about him had changed? Did he really want to know?

  He walked toward a cluster of rocks. Tension rippled across the breadth of his shoulders. Something was behind the rocks, though he could not say how he had known. Perhaps scent, sound, and the way the airflow shifted—changes too subtle to be detected by a human, but obvious to a vampire.

  Motion exploded. A flurry of wings blurred his line of sight.

  Rafael swung up his arms to block the claws that swiped at his face. He swatted the daeva away, hurling it against the cave wall.

  It hit the wall and crumpled to the ground. The small-framed demon curled into a fetal ball. Its left hand pressed against the bleeding stump of its right arm. Rafael stared. Its blood was golden, its nails pearlescent. It was no taller than an icrathari, and those wings—the ten-foot wingspan, the smooth black leather…

  The daevas—creatures that Rafael had considered demons—were related to the icrathari.

  She never told me.

  He inhaled deeply. A faint scent teased his senses.

  Carefully, he approached the cowering creature. The creature tried to swat him away, but Rafael was stronger. He caught the daeva’s wrist and held the creature’s face still as he leaned in close and drew another breath.

  The daeva’s yellow eyes blinked at him.

  Movement swished behind him. Rafael spun around. Talons slashed across his jaw. Sharp nails scored his cheek. The attack sent him tumbling to the ground. He rolled with the momentum and pushed to a battle crouch.

  A low voice snarled. “Stay away from her.” The immortali pulled the injured daeva into its arms and raced away into the depths of the unmapped caverns.

  Rafael bit back a grunt of pain as he pushed to his feet. He reached into his knapsack for yarrow leaves and pressed them to his torn flesh. Would it help? Who knew? Everything was going to be a journey of discovery for him. The flesh tickled and twitched. The bleeding slowed and halted, but the injury did not close.

  “Rafael!” Talon’s voice rolled in echoing waves through the caverns. Moments later, he burst into the cave. His eyes narrowed. “What happened here?”

  “Found an injured daeva. The immortali came back, smacked me, and took her away.”

  “Looks like it more than smacked you.” Talon caught Rafael’s chin and twisted his head to the side so that Talon could better examine the wound. “Why isn’t it closing?”

  “Because I have aconite blood poisoning.”

  Talon let go of Rafael’s chin and took a step back.

  “It’s not infectious,” Rafael said. The bitter tone in his voice surprised him. “As long as you don’t bite me and drink my blood.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Talon frowned. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Find a cure. The aconite poison was born here, in these caverns. Our best chance of finding a cure is also in here.”

  “Is that why you’ve volunteered to start the settlement and protect it?”

  Rafael nodded.

  Talon stared at Rafael. “The fact that the plan works exceptionally well at keeping Siri at a distance wouldn’t have anything to do with your decision, would it?”

  Rafael shrugged as he tied the remnants of his shirt loosely around his neck to conceal the wound. “Coincidence?”

  Talon’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to die from that, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” Rafael said. “Everything’s new. The only thing I know is that I’m not human anymore. Everything else I’m lear
ning the hard way.” He paused. “The daevas—are they related to the icrathari?”

  Talon nodded. “No one really talks about it, but I’ve heard that four icrathari chose not to enter Aeternae Noctis. Megun, the daeva who wounded Siri, was one of them.”

  “So the icrathari evolved from exposure to the sun and became daevas? What other elements of their physiology changed?”

  Talon shrugged. “How should I know?”

  “Didn’t they hold you captive for five hundred years?”

  “Yes, but we didn’t chat much during that time.”

  “What happened to Megun?” Rafael asked.

  “Ashra killed her after she and Elsker led an attack on Aeternae Noctis.”

  “Ashra killed Megun in Aeternae Noctis? What happened to Megun’s body?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because there could be trace elements of the poison on her nails, or claws, or whatever you call them.”

  Talon examined his pearlescent fingernails. They extended with a slither into curved, razor-sharp implements of death. “How about talons?” He laughed at his own joke. “I don’t know what happened to her body, but Siri probably does.”

  “What do I know?” Siri’s voice cut in as she and Jaden strode into the cavern. She raised her head and drew in a deep breath. She probably smelled blood. Her gaze sharpened and narrowed on him. “Were you in a fight?”

  “With the immortali.”

  “What?”

  “I found a daeva, and I wanted to take a closer look—”

  “You what?” Siri, Jaden, and Talon asked in unison.

  Rafael looked at Siri. “She was bleeding. You’d ripped her arm off—”

  “So why didn’t you rip off the other one?” Talon demanded. “Or better yet, tear her head off her shoulders?”

  With effort, Rafael kept his voice even. “Because I’m an herbalist. People come to me for help, and I help them. Not hurting people is a bad habit I picked up along the way.”

  Talon shook his head. He looked at Jaden. “We’ve got a long way to go with this one.”

  “The immortali knocked me aside, picked up the daeva, and ran away.”

  Talon and Jaden exchanged glances. “We should check it out,” Jaden said.

  Talon nodded.

  “Pay attention to where you go,” Siri ordered. “We need to map out the caverns if we’re to seal it off for the settlement.”

  Rafael picked up his knapsack, slung it over his shoulders, and followed the two elder vampires.

  Siri kept pace beside him. “How badly hurt are you?” she asked, her voice lowered.

  “I can keep up,” Rafael said before changing the topic. Keeping the conversation focused on practical matters helped him stay ahead of the wrenching heartache of being around her. “I wanted to ask you about Megun.”

  “What about her?”

  “Where’s the body?”

  For a moment, Siri looked confused. “Oh, Megun, the daeva, not the daeva-icrathari child.”

  Rafael’s eyes widened. “There’s a hybrid?”

  “The child born to Megun and Elsker. Ashra and Jaden are raising her.”

  His jaw dropped. “Not common knowledge, is it?”

  “Not something we tell the humans, no,” Siri agreed. “So, what about Megun’s body?”

  “Did anyone run an autopsy?”

  “Why would we? We know how she died. Ashra slashed her throat and ripped out her stomach.”

  “Did anyone check her fingernails—talons—for traces of aconite?”

  Siri’s eyes widened. “No, we didn’t. It never occurred to us. We can do that when we get back. We froze her body.”

  “It’s in the ark?”

  She nodded. “How will it help your research into the cure?”

  “I’m not sure,” Rafael said. “I just need to check something out.” His brow furrowed as he tried to work through facts that did not align. He frowned. “The daeva I helped…I smelled aconite on her breath.”

  Chapter 13

  When Siri, Rafael, Jaden, and Talon returned to Aeternae Noctis ten hours later, they did not expect a warm welcome. Even so, they had underestimated the depth of Ashra’s ire.

  To say that Ashra was furious would have been an understatement. The thrill of gaining an elder vampire did not take the edge off her anger. Jaden’s safe return scarcely assuaged her. Siri did her best to stay out of the way; not difficult with Ashra’s anger focused, rightly, on Jaden and Talon. “Unthinkably juvenile,” was the kindest thing she said. It deteriorated quickly after that. Four thousand years of existence gave Ashra an extremely wide repertoire of curses in multiple languages.

  “I found something in the cave,” Siri cut in. Her gaze swept over Ashra, Tera, Rafael, Jaden, and Talon, before she took out the piece of plastic and smoothed it over the table.

  Ashra’s fingers lightly traced the black script on the nearly translucent plastic. “It looks…fresh.”

  “It’s decomposable plastic. It wouldn’t last more than fifty years after it was made. Can you read the words?”

  “Can’t you? You’re our resident genius.” Ashra frowned, as if trying to identify the dark letters. “Indo-European. North Germanic.”

  “Close. It’s Norwegian,” Siri said. “Svalbard Global Seed Vault.”

  Ashra’s head snapped up. “What?”

  Siri stabbed her finger at the plastic. “This wrapper is less than fifty years old, bears the markings of the seed vault and trace evidence of soil.”

  “The seed vault…” Tera murmured. “But the sun would have destroyed it.”

  Siri shook her head. “They had time. The seedbank is inside a mountain buried in permafrost. They were locked in the middle of winter when the humans incinerated the atmosphere. Their location, farthest from the sun’s rays, saved them, at least for as long as it took the Earth to rotate around to unleash summer. The humans at Svalbard would have had six months to prepare.”

  “For what? Death?”

  “Life.” Siri snatched the plastic out of Ashra’s hand and waved it in Tera’s face. “Don’t you see? There is something out there at Svalbard. Somehow, the daevas found it.”

  Ashra’s wings ruffled a breath of wind. “How is the installation of the solar panels coming along?”

  “On track to complete in forty-eight hours. I’ve already calculated our route to Siberia. After that, we’ll swing by Svalbard.”

  Tera frowned. “My recollection of Earth’s geography is a thousand years old, but I don’t recall those places being within spitting distance of each other.”

  “Svalbard’s too remote to be within spitting distance of anything, but with the solar panels installed and without the need to outrun the sun, we can get anywhere, eventually.”

  “Which begs the question—” Jaden spoke up. “How could the daevas have traveled to Svalbard?”

  “I don’t know. That’s a question we’re going to have to ask them, or the immortali with them.”

  Tera cut in. “What’s this about immortali? Are they in the caves as well?”

  “At least one is,” Siri said. “But he’s not any of the ones we officially transformed.”

  “There are unofficially transformed immortali out there?” Ashra asked.

  “Ah…” Siri had the good sense to choose her words carefully. “Only one that we know of.”

  “What do you know about him?” Ashra asked.

  “Not much. He’s an artist.”

  Tera’s head snapped up. “What?”

  “An artist,” Siri said. “He painted a gorgeous mural of Aeternae Noctis on the limestone walls.”

  “What was his name? How long has he been an immortali?” Tera asked.

  Siri looked at Rafael.

  He shrugged. “He didn’t say. He implied it had been quite a while.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall and thin. Blond, I think. Blue eyes.”

  The icrathari warlord drew in a tremulou
s breath.

  Siri frowned. “Tera?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing’s doing a great job of unnerving you.”

  Ashra’s chin tilted up. “You transformed him, didn’t you, Tera? Without authorization. Who was he?”

  “A poet and artist.” Tera’s voice was subdued. “It happened during the last citywide rebellion—about two hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “The one led by Yuri.”

  Tera nodded. She paced the breadth of the chamber. Her wings rustled as she moved. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was caught up…injured in the fight. He was dying. So I transformed him.”

  Siri’s eyebrows arched. Surely huge chunks of the story were missing. She and Ashra exchanged a glance. “Humans die all the time. Why didn’t you let him die?”

  Bat wings flared. “He was different.”

  Different. Siri knew how that word could mean nothing and everything. Rafael was different, too, and being different in a world anchored around perpetual warfare was compelling.

  Even so, there was something else in Tera’s voice. Something more than just memory.

  “What was his name?” Ashra asked.

  “Erich Dale.”

  “Really?” Siri asked. “Yuri’s mother was a Dale.”

  “They’re cousins.” Tera shook her head. “I didn’t realize he’d survived the transformation, although I suppose he didn’t, since he’s an immortali.”

  Rafael spoke up. “I’ve only met one immortali. I don’t know what an insane immortali is supposed to look like, but Erich did not seem insane. Bitter and angry, but not insane.”

  “He saved the daevas I injured,” Siri said. Perhaps those young daevas, like Erich, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had not seemed equipped for battle. But if they had not entered the cave with the intention of fighting Rafael and her, they must have entered it in search of the immortali—yet more evidence of a partnership between the immortali and the daevas.

  Jaden spoke up. “Could he have been the immortali I saw in the cave when I escaped?”

  “I hope so,” Siri said. “I don’t think we could survive a partnership between multiple immortali and the daevas. Didn’t you say that that immortali commanded them?”