Common ground vanished a thousand years prior. Any hope for peace perished shortly thereafter. Centuries of war over the control of Aeternae Noctis had torn their species apart.
On the ground, Tera’s vampire army fought in groups of three—two to hold the daeva’s attention, the third to strike the killing blows. Ashra needed no such distraction. Daevas scattered out of her flight path, flapping madly as she spun into a dive. She snatched a daeva from the air. It screeched, howling with pain as she ripped through its stomach. Its scream faded into silence when she tore its head from its shoulders. Her wings unfurled to their full ten feet as she soared up and hurled the daeva’s head and body into another winged demon.
The daeva swiped the grisly missiles away, baring fangs at her. Moonlight danced across a thin silver ring on its left hand. With a snarl, the daeva lunged up at her.
Ashra smirked as she shifted into a dive. Her upper lip pulled back, exposing her elongated incisors.
They collided in midair, tussling. Its talons cut through her skin, scoring vertical lines through her upper arm. Pain, foreign because it was so rare, flared through her. The daeva was older than the youngsters she had dispatched with ease. Its golden eyes fixed on her. In them, hatred gleamed—hatred spurred by memory.
She stared into its unrecognizable features. It had once been an icrathari. It had been born before the apocalypse, and survived. She had once known it by name.
No matter. Her irrational flash of compassion passed. The daeva had attacked her home, and endangered her vampires and the humans under her protection. Ashra slashed out, raking her talons across its face. Its darkened skin parted, and tiny rivulets of golden blood trickled down its cheek.
It screeched and reached over her shoulder to grasp her wing. Its hand closed around the bone that traversed the length of her left wing and clenched into a fist. Bone pulverized beneath its grip.
Shafts of pain pulsed down Ashra’s back, tearing a scream from her. Her other wing flapped, beating at the air, trying to keep her aloft. A fall from that height would not kill her, but injuries were inconvenient. In desperation, she caught the daeva’s wrists in her hands when it would have soared away from her.
It made a sibilant sound. Apparently responding to its summons, two other daevas dove toward Ashra, their clawed arms outstretched.
In spite of her crippled wing, Ashra twisted in midair. Her greater strength spun the daeva around, forcing the two attacking daevas to flap back desperately, but it was too late. The two daevas, accelerating for the kill, had too much momentum. Bat-like wings tangled in a flurry of claws and fangs that struck out indiscriminately.
“Ashra!” Elsker dove into the melee. With a violent shove, he pushed the ancient daeva away from Ashra. Panic smashed through Ashra as she tumbled through the curtain of bat-like wings and plummeted to the ground.
Moments from impact, the air around her trembled, vibrating as a flurry of black wings swept toward her. Tera snatched her up two feet from the ground. Tera’s forward momentum sent them both crashing into a gaggle of wide-eyed vampires. The icrathari warlord’s face was grim with suppressed anger when she pushed to her feet. Tera surged up toward Elsker, but the daevas broke away from their tussle with the male icrathari and fled, leaving their injured and dead behind.
Their wings crippled and escape rendered impossible, the injured daevas were slaughtered. The vampires prowled the battlefield, ostensibly tending their wounded and burying their dead. No one made any move to return to the city.
Ashra cast the vampires a narrow-eyed glance, and concealed the knowing smile. Vampires were innately curious about their icrathari masters, most especially when their masters disagreed.
“You fool.” Tera’s voice, though pitched low, carried clearly through the quiet night. She hovered several feet above Ashra, her gray eyes locked on Elsker’s face. “I told you to pull Ashra away from the fight and to leave the daevas to me. Instead, you charge in and tackle them. You could have gotten her killed.”
Elsker cast Ashra a distraught glance. “I was trying to draw their attention away from her.”
“You leave that to me. I could have killed them. Now they’ve gotten away!”
The male icrathari flushed. “I just—”
“I am Ashra’s Blade. You are just her Voice—”
Ashra cut in. “Enough, both of you. I need my Voice as much as I need my Blade, and my Hand,” she said, referring to Siri. She looked toward the west; the domed city, carried aloft by its massive repulse engines, was already a mile away, always racing away from the deadly glow on the eastern horizon. The longer they lingered on the surface of the planet, the farther they would have to carry their injured to catch up with the city.
She gritted her teeth as she flexed her injured wing. Torn muscles tugged around the healing bone, uncomfortable but no longer painful. Ashra looked at the vampires. “Return to the city. Elsker, Tera, and I will be along shortly.”
The vampires darted a glance at Tera. The warlord nodded at her second-in-command, a female vampire named Yuri. “No side trips,” Tera said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Tera,” Yuri said, a smirk appearing on her usually unsmiling face. She tossed her head, swinging her red braid over a shoulder, sheathed her swords, and leaned down to help one of her injured teammates to his feet.
Ashra waited until the vampires, Dana among them, vanished into the distance.
Tera broke the silence first. With a scowl on her face, she paced the cracked ground. “I know what you’re going to say, Ashra. We need to appear united in front of the vampires, and all that damned nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense, but that’s not what I was going to say. The daeva I fought…it’s ancient. It is as old as we are.”
Elsker scoffed. “That’s absurd.” He threw a hand out in a sweeping gesture across the scorched landscape. “How could anything have survived out here for a thousand years? The odds are—”
“No higher than that of Rohkeus’s soul reborn in a human,” Ashra said, “and even that happened.” She turned to Elsker. “You’ve traveled with the scouts on occasion. Have you never seen that daeva before?”
“No, we’ve never really gotten close to the daevas. They’re much less common than they appear to be,” Elsker said.
Tera snorted. “And yet they’ve attacked Aeternae Noctis seven times now, always within hours of the full moon when we’re distracted processing the humans we’ve culled from the city. Each time, the daevas attack in larger numbers, and each time, we meet them with fewer vampires. Six months ago, I would never have needed the two of you to aid in the defense of the city, but now I do.” She paused, shooting Ashra an accusing glance. “Our defenses have grown thin.”
Ashra arched, stretching her back muscles. The leathery wings twitched as bone repaired itself and tendon and muscle stitched together. “We cannot take more than we need. The humans are petrified of us.”
“Would they rather be petrified or dead?” Tera demanded. “You have coddled the humans for far too long, Ashra. They need to know the truth.”
Ashra turned her back on Tera and Elsker. The memory returned unbidden, of Jaden’s face, of the hate in his eyes as he spat out that damning word, “Demon.” If the man, possessed of the soul of an icrathari, looked at her with such hate, how could she expect any less from the other humans?
She shook her head and sighed, the sound inaudible. “They can’t handle the truth.” She spread her wings and tested their strength as they lifted her into the air. A muscle pulled, but even that dull ache soon passed. “I want that daeva, Tera. Find it for me.”
Elsker took to the air, hovering at eye level. His brow furrowed. “I lead the scouts. That’s my job.”
Ashra arched an eyebrow. “You said you rarely see daevas.”
“Our scouts have farther range and the training to survive if they’re caught out in daylight. Our warriors need to stay close to protect the city,” Elsker protested.
“They’l
l protect the city as effectively by ending the threat of daeva attacks.” She looked at Tera, and the warlord nodded, a smile on her lips. “I want you to find their sanctuary and burn it out from under them. How many warriors do you have left?”
Tera cast a glance at the burial mounds on the ground. “Twelve now.”
“The ten humans we took yesterday are yours, Tera,” Ashra said.
“But the scouts…” Elsker protested. “We must replenish their ranks too. We lost four to the immortali. All I have left are Dana and two others.”
“The remaining scouts will join the warriors and report to Tera.” She shot Elsker a warning glance when he opened his mouth to protest. “That is my decision, Elsker.”
“You cannot—”
Her wings carried her forward. Scarcely six inches separated her from Elsker. She stared him down. “I told you to track them after their first assault on Aeternae Noctis seven months ago. You haven’t found them, and their attacks have escalated. It’s time to try something else before the city is truly imperiled.”
“You’d employ brute force over diplomacy?” Elsker asked, his voice as taut as his expression was pained.
“I’d do anything to protect the city, Elsker,” she said. Her voice rose in challenge. “Wouldn’t you?”
She turned her back on him when he did not respond. The city was farther still, though the distance was nothing to an icrathari. She spread her wings, reveling in the night. Unfettered, she soared into the sky. Her jet-black leather wings bore a soft sheen, and the small gold-tipped horns that capped each wing joint glittered in the silver light of the moon.
The moon was unchanged. The Earth, as ancient, was no longer the same. The land the humans saw from beneath the dome—the Earth that they yearned after, of endless meadows and lush forests resting in the shadow of snow-capped mountains—was an illusion, an image created and sustained by the powerful projectors that encircled Malum Turris like a ring of light.
The Earth, the true Earth, was a barren wasteland, its surface parched and cracked beneath an unforgiving sun. In the new world, the icrathari were the unchallenged masters—the only immortals to have survived, unchanged, from the apocalypse. She would never allow their dominance to wane.
With Tera and Elsker beside her, Ashra soared toward Aeternae Noctis. She swooped under the city, skimming between the powerful repulse thrusters, and up through the opening carbon steel doors.
Dana stood inside the entrance, her face distraught. “He’s gone,” she burst out. “Jaden’s gone.”
Chapter 5
Ashra leaned against the cool walls of the chamber, her arms folded across her chest, while her icrathari companions and Dana hovered around her in various stages of alarm.
“Why in the Creator’s name did you leave him out in the corridor?” Siri demanded. “We have holding cells for a purpose.”
“He was unconscious, and I underestimated his resilience. Can you find him?” Ashra asked.
Siri spread her hands. “Lucas is tied up with the new vampires who are still feverish from blood sickness. Phillip is busy processing the children we culled last night.”
“What about remote surveillance?”
“Only in the holding cells and at all entry points into Malum Turris. The chances of us catching a glimpse of him are slim.”
“And your engineers?”
“Engineer. Singular, not plural. I can’t pull Xanthia away from her work. She’s the only thing keeping the engines churning and the damned city afloat.”
Dana stepped forward. “I’ll find him.”
Siri shook her head. “You’re underestimating the size of the tower. Even with the ark, we use scarcely a fraction of it. There are sections of the tower I’ve never seen, and I’ve been exploring in my free time—mapping it out—for a thousand years.”
“You have?” Ashra asked, her eyebrows arched.
“Yes, of course.” Siri huffed. “And before anyone calls me something rude that will force me to shove your words and your tongue down your throat, I’ll have you know that knowledge is a weapon.”
“Of course it is. Where is your map of the tower?”
Siri tapped the side of her head.
Ashra rolled her eyes. “What is the point of knowledge if it is not accessible?”
Siri chuckled. “It’s accessible to me. Let’s think about this.” She paced the length of the room, the flowing red gown molding to her curves. “Where would he go? He’d try to escape from the tower, so it stands to reason, he’d stay on the lowest level, seeking a way back to the city.”
“Will he?” Ashra’s brow furrowed. Turning her back on her companions, she walked to the window, each step slow and measured. Jaden’s memories, reaped from his soul, flashed through her mind—images of a girl child smiling and laughing, at play, secure in the knowledge that she was loved and protected. Jaden’s half-sister—a fundamental and irrevocable part of his world—would likely never have been born if the icrathari had not taken Dana twenty-three years earlier. Dana’s grieving husband, believing her dead, had eventually remarried.
Oh, the troubles we bring upon ourselves. “Jaden will not leave without his sister.”
Siri sighed.
Ashra glanced at her. “What is it?”
“It’s a shame; he’ll probably die of starvation before anyone comes across him. He was our best chance at connecting with the humans.”
“What?”
Siri shrugged. “You have to admit that he had possibilities. A human with the soul of an icrathari—we couldn’t have picked a better person to bridge the gap with the humans.”
“The gap cannot be bridged.”
“We’ve never tried.” Siri looked away. Her shoulders sagged. “Each month it gets harder to do what we’ve done for a thousand years. What’s going to happen when the icrathari…the immortal icrathari begin counting down the days?”
Ashra’s eyes narrowed. “Siri?”
The voluptuous icrathari sighed. “I’m tired, Ashra. We all are. A thousand years with no end in sight.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if we can do this for another thousand years.”
“And how will bridging the gap with the humans make it any different?”
“I don’t know.” Siri shrugged. “At this point, I’m up for trying anything. How can it possibly be any worse than everything else we’ve tried so far? Twenty-five vampires maintain and defend this city—and this includes our newest recruits—down from five hundred in the days following the apocalypse. Each month, we bury more vampires than we add to our ranks.”
“This isn’t about the numbers, Siri.”
“No,” Siri said. “It’s about survival, and we’re losing our edge, an edge that not even the technology and defenses of Aeternae Noctis can compensate for. At some point, we will be overrun, and then what? You have to stop coddling the humans, Ashra. You have no choice.”
“Would you risk them all going mad?”
Siri shook her head. “No, of course not, but—”
“Every human who has found out the truth has gone mad and lost his will to live. Have you forgotten how close humanity skimmed to the edge of extinction immediately after the apocalypse? We lost them by the thousands. Hundreds of them died every day through suicide or simply because they had lost the will to live.”
Tera snorted. “After what they had done to the planet, who could blame them?”
Ashra turned on the warlord. “They were fixated on the past when they should have focused on the future.”
Elsker interjected. “It’s beyond them. The humans can’t deal with their present, let alone their future. Even some of the Chosen whom we selected for their mental and emotional resilience, couldn’t handle the facts. How many newly turned vampires did we lose to suicide when they discovered the truth about the planet? Too many to count.” He shook his head. “Why do we keep defending the humans?”
Because it’s what Rohkeus would have done. It’s what Rohkeus would have wanted u
s to do.
She closed her eyes. An image of Rohkeus rose from her memories. He would have frowned at them in his inimitable way, and made it seem simple, obvious. “We are the firstborn of the Earth, the only true immortals. If we do not protect the Great Mother and the life she cradles, who can or will?”
However, no one else felt the same way, Siri least of all. Siri, upon whom Ashra depended to manage the engineering, medical, and scientific functions of Malum Turris and Aeternae Noctis, apparently no longer believed in Rohkeus’s vision for a restored Earth.
Far worse, she had no response for Siri, Tera, and Elsker. Ashra was willing to trudge through eternity, driven by duty and the memory of a lost love, but how could she subject others to the same?
She turned her back on the three icrathari. “I’m going to talk to Lucas and check the progress on the latest batch of humans.”
“And what should we do about Jaden?” Siri asked.
Ashra shook her head. “He will have to live or die by his own ingenuity.”
“He won’t make it,” Siri said. “We’ve kept the city in the seventeenth century; in the tower, he is a man out of his time. Think about it—artificially intelligent technology, biometric identification, and remotely controlled devices. He’ll never find his way around the thirty-second century.”
“The twenty-second,” Tera corrected quietly.
Siri arched an eyebrow.
“It is the thirty-second century,” Tera conceded. “But we haven’t made any real progress in science or technology since the twenty-second century, since the apocalypse.”
Siri shrugged. “No matter. More progress was made in the five hundred years prior to the apocalypse than in any age prior to that. I stand by my assessment. He’ll be stuck at the first locked door he finds.”
Deep in the bowels of Malum Turris, Jaden traced the outline of the door, differentiated from the wall only by the seams around three of its edges. What kind of sorcery kept the door sealed? What magic did the icrathari command, and how could he, a human, possibly hope to challenge it?
Eternal Night Page 4
