Daysider n-1

by Susan Krinard

  Daysider

  ( Nightsiders - 1 )

  Susan Krinard

  Human/vampire relations are in turmoil in a stunning new series by New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Susan Krinard.

  Tensions between human and vampire factions are escalating. Peace hangs in the balance. And like two ill-fated stars, Alexia Fox and Damon are destined to collide. She's a seductive human operative on a mission to infiltrate an illegal vampire colony. He's a vampire and represents everything she loathes—and all that she desires. Their attraction is scorching, immediate…and could explode like the fragile truce they've both been fighting independently to preserve. Now the world's last hope hinges on their ability to work together. As enemies they are doomed, but as allies they just might save the world.

  Daysider

  Nightsiders 1

  by

  Susan Krinard

  Prologue

  San Francisco, California

  Mommy was crying. Alexia knew it had something to with do the lady on the TV, talking in soft words that didn’t match the angry expression on her face.

  Behind the lady was a picture of a city, a black, upside-down bowl that gleamed like a beetle’s shell in bright sunlight. “Erebus,” the lady on the TV said. Alexia didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like a very bad word. And somehow, it was making Mommy sad.

  Alexia got up from her seat on the thin carpet and went to Mommy, searching her face anxiously. There were dark blotches under Mommy’s eyes, and her nose was red.

  “What is it, Mommy?” Alexia asked, reaching up to be taken into her mother’s arms.

  Mommy picked her up and sat her on the couch beside her. “Nothing’s wrong, Lexie,” she said, trying to smile.

  Alexia always knew when Mommy was fooling. It wasn’t just that she smelled different, or the way her voice got very tight, even though she was smiling. There was something wrong, and it made Alexia upset that Mommy was unhappy. Upset and angry.

  “What are they talking about?” Alexia asked, pointing at the TV.

  Mommy pulled Alexia close and stroked her hair. “It’s a city,” she said.

  “Like San Francisco?”

  “Not the same,” Mommy replied. She breathed in and out in a funny way that made Alexia’s heart hurt. “You remember when we talked about the Nightsiders?”

  Alexia made a face. “They’re nasty. We had a big fight with them.”

  “That’s right.” Mommy bent her head so her nose pressed against Alexia’s hair. “That is the city they built in what we used to call the Sonoma Valley. They made it all for themselves, where they don’t have to be in the sun.”

  “Sun kills them,” Alexia said solemnly.

  “That’s right.”

  “And they used to kill people all the time, didn’t they? During the big fight?”

  Mommy covered Alexia’s eyes as if she didn’t want her to see the TV anymore. “You shouldn’t know about that,” she said, a funny warble in her voice. “No child should know.”

  “Don’t worry, Mommy.” Alexia pulled her mother’s hand away from her eyes. “The kids at school talk about the bloodsuckers all the time. I’m not scared.”

  “Oh, God,” Mommy whispered. “Do they... Are the other kids...nice to you, at school?”

  “Oh, they’re okay. Some of the girls are mean sometimes. They give me funny looks.

  The boys just stare at me a lot.”

  Mommy cupped both her hands around Alexia’s face. “What do they say?”

  Alexia shrugged the way she had seen grown-ups do when they were pretending something didn’t matter. “Silly things, about my eyes.” She touched her own eyelids.

  “They say I’m like a cat because I can see in the dark.”

  “That’s right,” Mommy said in a completely different voice than before. “Like a cat.

  And cats are beautiful, aren’t they? So graceful and brave.” She smiled, moving Alexia to sit in her lap. “But you know what? I think you look even more like a fox. Remember the pictures I showed you?”

  Alexia nodded. “It was red, like my hair.”

  “And quick and clever. Like you.”

  They were very nice words, but Alexia couldn’t help looking at the TV again, and at the ugly city with the scary name.

  “The bloodsuckers aren’t ever going to come here, are they?” she asked, just a little bit scared after all.

  “Lexie, that word—”

  “Isn’t that what they are, Mommy?”

  Mommy made a sound a little like a laugh, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Yes,” she said.

  “But you don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I’m not worried.” Alexia bit her lip. “We aren’t ever going to get in a big fight with them again, are we?”

  “No.” She took a big, long breath. “I wish—” Alexia wriggled free and looked up into Mommy’s eyes. “What do you wish, Mommy?”

  “I wish things could be the way they were before...before the big fight.”

  “When my daddy was alive?”

  Mommy’s face seemed to crumple all at once. She sobbed, and Alexia knew it was because of what she had said. It was all her fault.

  “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, stroking her mother’s trembling hand and soft, wet cheeks. “I won’t ever talk about Daddy again.”

  “Oh, my baby,” Mommy said, gathering Alexia up again so tightly that she could barely breathe. “I will never, ever let anyone hurt you. Not anyone. I’m going to keep you with me forever and ever.”

  Alexia pressed her face to the pulse in Mommy’s neck. It was so warm and sweet. It made her feel safe.

  But she didn’t want to just be safe. She wanted to find a way to make Mommy happy.

  And keep those nasty bloodsuckers in their ugly black city from making anyone afraid, ever again.

  Chapter 1

  San Francisco Enclave, West Coast Region

  “It may be fatal,” the Director said.

  Alexia laughed. “Since when hasn’t that been true of every mission?”

  Aegis Director of Field Operations Wilson McAllister regarded her without a trace of amusement. “This isn’t funny, Alex,” he said. “We’re talking about violating our side of the Treaty and striking deep into the Zone. Even the Mayor doesn’t know about it.”

  “At least not officially,” Alexia said.

  “Not officially enough to send someone to pull your ass out of the fire if you get caught.” The steel rims of McAllister’s glasses flashed as they caught the cold and sterile light from the overhead fixtures. “Your mission will be to learn everything you can about the Nightsiders’ illegal colony without doing anything to attract the Citadel’s attention. If you fail or are captured—”

  “—Aegis will disavow any knowledge of our actions. I know the drill.” Alexia wandered to the window overlooking the glimmering waters of San Francisco Bay. From Aegis headquarters in the old Financial District, she could see a heavily guarded convoy of trucks carrying agricultural products from the Central Valley into the city. The Treaty meant that the Nightsiders were supposed to leave such convoys alone.

  Usually they did. But there were always the terrorists, the ones who wanted to ignite a new War. On both sides. And that was what her team would be sent in to try to prevent.

  Alexia drifted back into memory, of the year the Nightsiders had first appeared. Not that they’d been her memories, not exactly. But she’d seen the archived news vids, the looks of bewilderment and fear on the newscasters’ faces when the first reports came in: horror stories of vampires arising seemingly out of nowhere, some emerging from decades or centuries or even millennia of sleep in sanctuaries built far beneath the earth.

  No one knew—or at least the l
eeches weren’t telling—what had roused them, or why they had chosen that time to rise and claim the earth.

  Ten years later—ten years of chaos and plague and terrible war, the time when Alexia’s mother gave birth to a half-vampire child—had led to the Treaty, and now most parts of the world were carefully divided into territories: vampire Citadels and human Enclaves, separated by the unclaimed regions known as the Zones.

  Just outside the Enclave that embraced San Francisco and the area formerly known as the East Bay, the Zone comprised an immense semicircular region that had once held thriving suburbs, now abandoned and slowly crumbling back to the earth as new forests and fields absorbed stone and concrete, and animals—once driven away by human incursions—reclaimed their original habitats. Beyond the Zone, to the south and east in the regions of the Central Valley, lay the farmlands that produced sustenance for the Enclaves, each surrounded by its own Zone and patrolled by special military forces whose job it was to keep Nightsiders out and human workers safe from them. In theory, as per the Treaty, the workers were protected, and so were the routes to the Enclaves.

  To the north, in the area once distinguished by its scenic fields of grapevines and boutique wineries, its rolling hills and towering redwoods, stood Erebus. The Citadel of Night.

  Alexia remembered the images on the TV when the construction began. Very little had been known then, because the Zone had just been established, and rumor was more plentiful than fact. Human laborers...prisoners of war...had built the city by day, vampires by night. In a year the Citadel—all black, gleaming, windowless towers and paradoxically Gothic ornamentation—was large enough to hold a population of ten thousand, and that was only on the surface. It was speculated that the underground portion of the city could house five thousand more. Today, the Citadel was twice as big, with its own farms and fields to support its human inhabitants.

  Slaves, Alexia thought with that burning anger that never diminished. Blood-serfs. The prisoners, the castoffs from the human Enclaves. The damned.

  Like Garret.

  “Ms. Fox?”

  She turned back to McAllister, who was leaning over his desk with an ominous frown on his lean brown face. His sudden formality wasn’t a good sign.

  “You aren’t listening to me,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  Alexia returned to stand before the desk, taking a formal stance that betrayed none of her emotions. “Yes, sir. More than up to it.”

  “It’s only been a year since your brother was—”

  “I haven’t forgotten, sir.”

  He cleared his throat. “The Examiners say you may still harbor resentment against the Court for sentencing him to Deportation.”

  Deportation. Such a nice way of putting it. “I know the Court weighed the evidence thoroughly, sir. It was a fair trial.”

  The Director sighed and sank back into his chair. “Was it?”

  Alexia knew it was another test, and one she had to pass. “The evidence was conclusive, sir.”

  “Then you no longer believe it was self-defense?”

  The same questions the shrinks had asked her, over and over again, ever since Garret had been sent to Erebus.

  “Without the laws there would be chaos, and the Enclaves would die,” she said with perfect sincerity. “I blame the leeches, sir. Only them.”

  “But do you blame them enough to lose your objectivity in an operation of such extreme delicacy? That is the question.”

  “Have the Examiners suggested that’s the case, sir?”

  McAllister smiled without pleasure. “If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But the final decision rests with me. If I’m making a mistake—” Alexia straightened, staring hard at the framed mission statement hung on the wall behind the Director’s chair. “You aren’t, sir. When do we go?”

  McAllister made a show of shuffling a few folders on his desk and slid one of them across the desk. “Tomorrow. You and Michael will be the only team for the time being, and your mission will be to observe, and observe only. ”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Call Carter and study the report. There’ll be a briefing at 1100 hours.”

  Before Alexia could salute, McAllister was back to his computer, typing away as if she had already left the room. She knew he preferred it that way. And so did she.

  She returned to barracks and the small apartment that she, as a highly valuable Aegis asset, was permitted to occupy alone. Alexia unlaced her boots and allowed herself a small glass of the rare and expensive Riesling she had bought with the better part of last month’s pay. After a short breather she buzzed Michael, and they synced their computers to study the report.

  “Looks easy,” her partner said when they had gone over it a second time. “In and out.”

  Alexia glimpsed her reflection in the computer screen, briefly blotting out the image of Michael’s habitual smirk: straight auburn hair cut at an efficient and regulation chin length, tilted green eyes, slightly pointed chin. New recruits sometimes thought themselves clever by suggesting how much her appearance matched her surname.

  But even a fox might not sneak out of this one. Not even a highly trained dhampir agent like her. If she’d thought Mike was taking this as lightly as his words suggested, she might have been genuinely worried.

  She knew better. Her partner was one of the survivors, an agent who had made it through ten missions with only minor wounds and the same partner until Jill had been killed a year ago. Since then, he and Alexia had been on three assignments together, and they’d worked as a perfect team. She trusted him more than anyone else in Aegis, even the boss.

  Michael had been deep into the Zone several times, while she’d never gone much beyond the Border. She would be relying on his greater experience, but she intended to pull her full weight. This was her chance to prove just how good she was.

  She glanced at her watch. “Briefing in fifteen minutes. See you there.”

  Michael gave her a mock salute. “Don’t even think about finishing that wine. I plan to drink at least half of it when we get back.”

  “It’s a deal.” Alexia signed off, laced up her boots and sipped the last few drops of the wine in her glass, wondering who would be drinking the rest if she and Mike didn’t make it back.

  Craving some fresh air, Alexia took the elevator to the lobby and walked out into the busy morning street. Twenty-six years ago, on the day she was born, no one would have believed that San Francisco could ever return to what it had been in the years before the Awakening.

  It hadn’t, of course. Not completely. But the rhythms of human life had resumed after the Treaty had permitted regular farming, manufacturing and inter-Enclave commerce.

  There were bankers and office workers, reporters and shopkeepers, cops and financiers all going about their business much the same way they had in the twentieth century.

  But Alexia could never venture out among the general public without knowing what had changed. Because when her eyes met those of an ordinary human on the street, she saw the suspicion. Suspicion, or fear, or hostility—all the same emotions most humans felt for Nightsiders, only a little less severe because they knew she wasn’t one of the enemy.

  The existence of dhampir agents couldn’t be kept from Nightsiders or Enclave citizens.

  But neither she nor any of her fellow Half-bloods could pass for human. Not with eyes like those of a cat and teeth a little too reminiscent of a wolf’s.

  Or a Nightsider’s.

  As Alexia paused at a fruit stand to examine a fresh orange, just shipped in from the Los Angeles Enclave, she heard a child’s voice on the other side of the stacked crates.

  “Look, Mommy,” the little girl said. “Is that a bloodsucker?”

  Alexia tried to smile at the mother, hoping to express her understanding for the child’s mistake. The woman looked mortified, but she couldn’t hide her distaste.

  “You mustn’t say such things, Jenny,” she said, jerking
at the little girl’s hand. “It isn’t polite, and anyway, she’s on our side.”

  Our side, Alexia thought as she returned to headquarters. Yes, her loyalties could never be in question. It was her late human mother who had raised her, not her unknown and reviled Nightsider father.

  But for the dhampires, there would never truly be an “our.”

  * * *

  The ferry slid quietly away into the fog, its wake swallowed up in the choppy waves stirred by a brisk late-summer wind off the Pacific. Unless an observer were standing nearly on top of Alexia and Michael at the old Larkspur Ferry Terminal, he or she would hardly know a boat had ever been at the dock.

  But then again, Alexia thought, this was still technically part of the San Francisco Enclave, and there shouldn’t be any leeches here. Which didn’t mean a damned thing.

  They were standing almost at the border of the Zone, where the Redwood Highway crossed over Mission Avenue in the crumbling city of San Rafael. It was an arbitrary border, like so many of them, but it was quite real. Broad daylight, more than any mere treaty, was what protected them now.

  The abandoned stronghold of the former San Quentin Correctional Facility stood within view across the inlet to the southeast, and beyond it the twisted halves of the Richmond Bridge, separated by a kilometer of empty water, reached out from each side of San Rafael Bay like hands desperate to touch one last time before an eternal parting.

  Alexia tightened the straps of her pack and nodded to Michael, who was already scanning the disintegrating ferry buildings for any sign of movement. She watched him for a moment, grateful that she’d never felt the slightest romantic interest in him in spite of their close partnership. It would have made things very complicated, and fraternization was against Aegis policy in any case. But with his rugged good looks, heavily muscular build and sun-streaked blond hair, he had plenty of female admirers.

  “All clear,” Mike said, oblivious to her inspection. He checked his weapons, traditional XM30 assault rifle and VS120 “Vampire Slayer” pistol and combat knife. The XM30 was powerful enough to slow a vampire down, even stop one for some time when used by an expert marksman, but the Vampire Slayer was the only weapon that could kill a leech. And it was to be used as a very last resort, because the damage it inflicted on a vampire, as well as any other creature unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end, couldn’t be mistaken for anything but what it was. It almost literally blew its target apart.