Her blood, ancient and immortal, trickled down his throat, healing him, changing him.
“Transform,” she whispered. “And be with me forever.”
His eyes flashed open. He pulled away.
They stared at each other across the narrow expanse of the bed.
He broke the silence first. “I can’t.”
Ashra’s lips moved, but no sound emerged.
He shook his head. “I want to stay human.”
“But, Rohkeus—”
“I’m Jaden,” he said, his voice sharp. He pushed up from the bed. “I’m not the icrathari inventor-prince who died a thousand years ago. Perhaps there are fragments of Rohkeus in me, but I’m more than that. My life here and now is all that matters, as a human, as Dana’s son, as Khiarra’s brother.”
She turned away before heartache flickered through her eyes.
He reached for her hand and tugged her around to face him. “I want you, but not as Rohkeus. When you think you can accept a human—”
“You’ll die.”
“Not for awhile.”
She flung out her hand. “What is a human lifespan compared to eternity? When you’re dead, I’ll be alone. Again.”
He flinched.
“You’re human,” she continued, grinding the words out through gritted teeth. “Everything’s a short joyride for you. You risk your life as if it doesn’t matter; it is going to end anyway, sooner or later. It isn’t as simple for me. Long after you’re gone, I’ll still be here, defending the city.” Her delicate hands clenched into fists. “You can afford to follow your whims. I have to make choices I know I can live with for eternity.”
“And those choices don’t include me?”
She closed her eyes. Her throat worked. “They can, if you choose to be a vampire.” Her eyes flashed open and locked on him. “I cannot take all the risks, Jaden. We have to meet halfway.”
“I…” He shook his head.
“We are not monsters. I wish you could understand that.”
“I do.”
“But you will not become what we are. Why?”
Jaden managed a faint smile. “Let me show you. Come with me.”
In silence they dressed.
Jaden walked up to her. He wrapped a dark and heavy cloak around her shoulders, and pulled the hood over her head.
“Is this supposed to be a disguise?” Ashra demanded. “It’s pathetic.”
“We won’t get close to others. Besides, it’s not the full moon. No one’s going to be on the lookout for vampires and icrathari.”
“Are we that predictable?”
“You have been for a thousand years.”
He led her to a cottage at the edge of the town, set far back from the fields and the busy marketplace. The home was larger than most, a sturdy brick structure with slate roofs that hinted of wealth. He knocked on the door, and a young girl admitted him. “I’m here to see your great-grandmother,” he said.
She frowned but stepped aside. “She’s tired. You can’t stay long. Who’s that?” She nudged her chin at Ashra.
“A friend,” Jaden said. He ushered Ashra into the house and up the stairs to the gable bedroom.
Beneath the steep slope of the ceiling, a woman, frail and wrinkled, presided from a bed swamped with pillows and heavy quilts. She looked up, her eyes cloudy. “Who is it?” her voice wavered.
“Jaden Hunter.” He closed the door behind him.
“Ah, my boy.” She beckoned to him with a trembling hand. “Come closer, and—” She raised her face as if to sniff the air. “—your companion.” Reaching out, her shriveled hands grasped Ashra’s cloak.
Ashra held her ground as the groping hands caressed her face.
“Who is this young woman scented with jasmine? No…” The curiosity on the old woman’s face transcended into reverence. “Too flawless to be human. An immortal.” Her hands slid around the back of cloak and fumbled when she grasped the horned wings. “An icrathari.” She collapsed against the safety of her pillows, her ancient face ashen.
“I am Ashra.”
“You rule Aeternae Noctis.” It was not a question.
“Yes.”
The old woman raised her face, as if searching for Jaden. “The eternal night, has it ended?”
“No.” Jaden shook his head. The bed sank with his weight as he sat beside the old woman. He reached for her outstretched hand. “There is no end to the night. The problem is not as simple as it appears.”
The woman cackled. “The solution is rarely as difficult as you imagine. You have already accomplished the near-impossible, Jaden Hunter. You have met the icrathari, and they have not yet killed you.”
“I contemplated it a few times,” Ashra confessed.
The woman’s laughter hooted through the gable room. “He was trouble, from the start, the last child I blessed before my vision darkened. I still see his eyes, those endless emerald depths, as if they had seen eternity.”
Ashra threw Jaden a thin smirk. “Ah, yes, those troublesome eyes.”
The old woman turned her face to Jaden. “Why did you come?”
“You lead us, Mater Matris—”
The woman’s lips parted in a toothless grin so delighted and infectious that both Jaden and Ashra smiled in response. “No, I do not lead, I only celebrate.”
Ashra’s brow furrowed. “What do you celebrate?”
“Life, in all its transient glory. This morning, Shaun Gallagher and Brenna Toole asked me to bless their engagement. They won’t stay married long; he is too fickle, she is too needy, but for a time, they will be happy. Not an hour later, Nicole Harris brought a child, her fourth, for my blessing. She still misses the two who were taken from her after their fifth birthday, but for a time, her heart has stopped bleeding.” Her unseeing eyes drifted to the window. “Soon, I suspect, John Teeter will storm in here to end his marriage to Beth. She has wandered too often, and his pride is too hurt to salvage their relationship. The end will bring sorrow and guilt, but it will fade to relief. In time, they may even recall with affection the early years they shared, when they lived and loved with fierce joy. I am too old now to leave my bed to attend funerals, but when life ends, the people gather, not to talk about death but to celebrate life. It’s all we can do; it’s all we have, these few precious years.”
“It does not have to be few,” Ashra murmured.
“Ah,” the old woman said, as if she understood. Her cloudy eyes flicked back to Jaden. “But is it life if it never ends, if the promise of death does not infuse every moment with its priceless life-giving breath? It ends, it always does, but if you lose sight of the end, each moment matters less.”
Ashra’s golden eyes narrowed. She shook her head and turned her back on the old woman. “Come, Jaden. We are done here.”
She stalked from the wise woman’s house. The strength and certainty of her stride did not betray the confusion that pitched in her stomach. She scarcely waited until she and Jaden were enveloped once more in the privacy offered by solitude before turning on him. “Is that how you see my life? Meaningless and without joy?”
“It’s different when you have forever. Without the urgency, the need to make each moment count—”
“You understand nothing. Every decision, every moment counts for me.” She crossed her arms across her chest to ward off the sudden chill. “You stupid, arrogant human! Do you think that because your life ends, it has meaning?”
“Duty doesn’t offer meaning. Each day is a burden to you.”
Her jaw dropped. “What do you, a twenty-eight-year-old human, know of responsibility? Your willingness to stand between your murderous sister and an icrathari is more a statement of your irrationality than your commitment to duty. What are you compared to the vampires who have labored for centuries to defend the humans who hate and fear them?” She jabbed a finger at his chest. “Until you choose to defend more than your own pitiful and judgmental species, until you step into the line of fire to uphold a vision you disagree wit
h just for the sake of love, you have no right to judge me.”
A dull throb pulsed through her head. Her eyebrows drew together, and she glanced up at the tower. “Siri activated the emergency beacon. Something’s happened; I have to go.” She shrugged off the cloak, spread her wings, and took to the air.
“Ashra!”
She threw a glance over her shoulder. Her wings beat down on the air, the slow rhythm keeping her aloft.
Jaden reached a hand out to her. “Take me with you.”
She scowled. “Why? We have nothing more to say to each other.”
“We haven’t even begun to talk.”
“We can’t bridge the gap between us.”
“We haven’t even tried.”
“You did, by trying to shame me into despising the four thousand years of my life.”
“No, that’s not—”
“I don’t care if that’s what you intended to do. It’s what you almost succeeded at doing.” The angle of her wings shifted, spinning her around in midair.
He called after her. “I want to show you how humans are different, how it’ll be better for us both if you let me love you as a human.”
Love.
His words jolted her. Her wings folded against her back. She landed without a sound and stalked up to him. “Better? Knowing I could lose you any day?”
“Not even vampires or icrathari are immortal.”
“But we live until we are killed. We don’t age or die of sickness. Infinity is within our grasp. All you have is eighty years, maybe less.”
“Eighty years, lived with purpose, with joy, is enough for me.”
She shook her head. “Not for me.”
He seized her hand. She let him, knowing she could tear it off at a moment’s provocation. How much more of herself did she hold back from him, from this weak and fragile human who presumed that his meager lifespan and the temporal love he offered would be sufficient for her? The alarm pulsed through her skull yet again. She twisted her wrist out of his grip, caught him around the waist, and pulled him into the air.
“This discussion isn’t over,” she warned.
“Of course not.” He offered her a deceptively amiable smile. “We can chat about it on and off for the next fifty-two years.”
A sharp pang pierced her heart. For Jaden, eighty years was not too far away, if he even lived that long. Her wings beat down, carrying them up to the tower.
Within moments, they arrived at her suite. Ashra released Jaden and walked to her desk. She hit the communicator. “What is it?”
“Meet me at engine one.” An undercurrent of panic laced Siri’s voice. The soft blur of static from the communicator fizzled into silence.
Ashra turned toward the door. “Come, Jaden.”
He did not move. “Do you ever ask, or do you just command?”
Her golden eyes narrowed into slits. “If you intended to come anyway, does it matter if it was a question or a command?”
His laughter rang with amused resignation.
She wrapped an arm around his waist. Her wings spread and beat down, lifting them both into the air. She carried him down the central shaft and deposited him on the lowest level, which ran the entire length of the city.
Twelve large engine rooms dominated most of the floor space, and holding cells clustered around the perimeter. Ashra led the way through the maze of corridors to engine one, which was located on the western edge.
Siri met them outside the double doors of the engine room. Her large wings flared and twitched with her quick, nervous motions. “Come in.” She ushered them into the room and then locked the door.
The vampire Xanthia peeked out from behind a large cylindrical engine. Her breath huffed out of her in a sigh of relief. “Good, it’s you two. This way.” She led the way through the room, weaving past the massive engine that spun superheated air out through rotating blades. The air gushed out of the vents in an invisible torrent, keeping the city aloft.
Xanthia stopped in front of an unmarked door. “This is where we stored our energy capacitors,” she said before pushing the door open.
“Stored?” Jaden asked, apparently picking up on the past tense.
“I came in a half hour ago to load a fresh capacitor, but—” Xanthia waved her hand at the ruined capacitors, each as large as a human torso.
Ashra’s eyes narrowed. She leaned in to examine the damage on one of them. “Are these claw marks?”
Siri nodded. “Looks like it, though I can’t tell if it’s vampire or icrathari. If it’s a vampire, it would have to be one of the older ones to have so easily ripped through steel.”
“Was the door forced? Who has access to the room?”
“The door was secure,” Xanthia responded to Ashra’s question. “And the only ones with access to the storage room are the four icrathari and me.”
Sabotage. Ashra gritted her teeth and refocused her attention on the immediate crisis. “Can anything be salvaged?”
Xanthia wrung her hands. “No, they can’t. We—”
“How much more energy do we have?” Ashra asked.
“Only what’s left in the current capacitor, and it’s running low. It won’t last the night.”
“And how far to the closest solar charging station?”
Siri cut in. “We can get within twelve miles, but it’ll be two hours to dawn—”
“That should be enough time for a team of scouts to swap out the capacitors.”
“Just barely, considering they will be weighted down by capacitors, and that’s assuming the solar charging station isn’t damaged as the previous ones have been. The slightest delay and we’ll be caught out in the sun with no cover for miles around.”
“What will happen to the city if it’s trapped in the daylight?” Jaden asked.
“I don’t know,” Siri said. “We’ve never been, and I’d rather not find out. We have charging stations set up every hundred miles, but lately, the daevas have targeted them. Last week, they destroyed the ones at markers 107 and 210. We had to stop the city to fix the stations, and then burned fuel to stay west of the sun. Our energy reserves were thinned, and now this.” She looked at Ashra. “What do we do?”
“We travel as far as we can and then send the scouts out to bring the capacitors back.”
Jaden glanced at Siri. “What do these solar charging stations look like?”
Siri walked to a console, tapped a few commands, and an image of large silver-color panels supported by a squat windmill-like structure appeared on the screen. “The panels capture the heat and light of the sun, and the transformer beneath loads the energy into capacitors that we swap out each time we pass by the charging station.”
Jaden nodded. “I’ll help. Tell me what the capacitors look like and what I need to do.”
Xanthia nudged Siri away from the console. Her fingertips traced lines on the screen as she spoke. “You’ll need to check for external damage before you unscrew and open the panel. The last thing you want is to deal with leaking stabilizer fluid.”
For a few moments, Ashra observed their quiet exchange, and then drew Siri away to a corner of the room. She stared at Siri—Siri who wore her hair cut short in an elegant bob that framed her face.
The icrathari Ashra had caught a glimpse of at the cave was short-haired.
Siri, Ashra’s Hand…she controls much of Aeternae Noctis. Could she have betrayed me and betrayed the city?
Yet lack of evidence held back the accusations on the tip of Ashra’s tongue. What she needed was a test and confirmation of Siri’s loyalty. “I want you to make sure there’s enough energy in the remaining capacitor to maintain the city’s shields and keep the city aloft while I’m out.”
Siri nodded. “Yes, of course. We’ll have full sensors, full defenses.”
“You’re in charge while I’m out. I’ll make sure Tera and Elsker understand. I want you to seal the city. No one goes in or out.”
Siri shook her head. “I don’t think you sh
ould go. Tera and her warriors—”
“No. The city’s too vulnerable. You need Tera here, just in case. I’ll take Jaden, Dana, and Harrod.”
“But Jaden’s human.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“He can’t keep up.”
Ashra threw a glance over her shoulder at the man who could have been so much more, but wanted to stay human. “He’ll try, regardless. How long do we have before we stop? Two hours?”
“About that.”
Ashra nodded, almost certain that the deep coil of panic nestled in her stomach did not show on her face. “We’ll be ready.”
Chapter 15
Ashra leaned down to tug on a pair of leather boots, before turning to examine her reflection in the mirror. Tera’s dark brown leather armor fit Ashra perfectly, leaving only her face and hands uncovered. The thin steel plates built into the high neckline and the chest piece, though uncomfortable, provided a measure of protection and a constant reminder that even the immortal could die.
She gathered her long hair into a tight knot, inserting narrow pins to hold the silky strands in place. The woman in the mirror who stared at her was not one she recognized. Ashra was the queen of Aeternae Noctis, who flitted through the city in flimsy white gowns and sandals, not this stern-faced creature dressed for war. She looked like Tera.
However, times were desperate, and their needs were great.
There was no greater evidence of it than when a fragile human was tasked to do what vampires would typically have done.
She glanced across her suite at Jaden, who stood with his back to her staring out of the window at the sleeping city. Tera had found a set of leather armor to fit him, and he cut a dashing figure in it, though his bronzed skin betrayed his humanity. His twin blades were sheathed in scabbards that crossed on his back.
Apparently sensing her gaze, he turned to her, a faint smile of appreciation curving his lips. “You look amazing.”
“Is Tera more your type?” she asked, her voice tart.
He grinned. “I like women in leather and in silk.” He strode over to her, tipped her chin up, and leaned down. His warm breath teased her skin before his mouth sought hers. She closed her eyes, sinking into the kiss and the sensation of his arms tight around her. Desire coiled in the pit of her stomach, rippling through her spine and ruffling her wings.
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