“You have already taken something from one of my kind,” he said. “And shared something much more personal.”
“I told you that didn’t mean anything,” she said. “It was the illness.”
“And now you have a chance to rid yourself of that illness. If you can set aside your prejudice.”
“Prejudice?” She faced him eye to eye, passionate with defiance. “Your breed came into our world and ignited a war so you could make every human a slave to your needs.
We were...are...cattle to you, and you expect us to regard you as anything but tyrants and murderers?”
“You may rest assured that I do not regard you as livestock, or an inferior.”
All the fire in Alexia’s eyes winked out as if his simple statement had smothered every spark of hatred in her heart. “It doesn’t matter,” she said wearily. “I can’t do it. I won’t.”
She sank down again and lay on her side, turning her back to him. A furious desperation began to eat away at Damon’s control. He had sworn he wouldn’t let her die.
Nothing had changed. If she wouldn’t cooperate, he would force her to accept his help.
Even if he had to tie her down, puncture his own flesh and drip his blood into her mouth.
“Is this it?” he demanded. “Is this all Carter’s death means to you, that you lie down and surrender?”
“Better than drinking blood and becoming like you.”
“Better to stay alive and fight for what you believe in.”
She rolled over to face him. “Why do you give a damn, Damon? We’re still on opposite sides. Why have you fought so hard to keep me alive?”
“Because I...” He stopped, knowing full well what he was about to admit aloud was the culmination of every forbidden emotion he had fought against since he had met her.
Once he had spoken the words, there would be no going back. Not until his mission was complete and they were parted forever.
“I care about you,” he said, forcing the words through gritted teeth.
As much as Carter’s death and the revelation about the patch had shocked Alexia, he had expected disgust, rejection, perhaps even derision. But she only gazed at him as if he had told her that the sun set in the west.
“I wouldn’t believe you,” she said quietly, “if you hadn’t—” She broke off, biting hard enough on her lower lip to draw blood.
“Hadn’t what?” Damon asked, trying to ignore his sudden and disconcerting interest in the crimson bead at the corner of her mouth.
“Behaved so...irrationally.”
He winced. “It was not my intention to...to allow my reason to be compromised.”
“Is that what you call caring about another person?” she asked with a sad, weary smile.
That she could smile at all was what humans might call a miracle. “I am surprised you think I am capable of it at all,” he said.
She pulled herself into a sitting position. “I said I did, didn’t I?” She took in a deep breath. “You said you wouldn’t let me die. You practically ordered me to stay alive, remember? Not even Carter did that.”
“You never thought I had a motive other than your personal welfare?” Damon asked.
“Of course I did. You said that was part of your mission, didn’t you? I would have been crazy to think otherwise. But now...” She rubbed her hand across her face. “Part of me believed you really did kill Michael. I don’t think that anymore.”
Damon’s heart began to pound under his ribs like heavy surf battering the shore. “And now that you do not,” he said, “how do you regard me?”
Her frank gaze wavered and then fixed on his again as if she knew she couldn’t escape the truth, no matter how unpalatable it was to her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how to define what I feel. But I have found some reason to admire you, to...recognize your good qualities.”
“My ‘human’ qualities?”
Her lips twitched. “If you like.”
“Yet you still insist what happened between us was meaningless?”
“I told you—” She sighed. “Even if I’d known what I was doing, it was only sex.”
Damon’s throat felt as if he had swallowed his own knife. “You have had sex before,” he said.
She pulled the edge of the blanket up over her legs without any apparent realization that she was doing it. “I’m no virgin, if that’s what you mean.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” She cast him a glance that was an uneasy combination of amusement and profound discomfort. “Making love is a normal part of human existence.”
Her answer didn’t release the knot in Damon’s stomach. “Making love,” he said. “A strange phrase to suggest a sexual relationship. Is it such a casual thing among humans?”
She shrugged. “It can be.”
“But what you call love is not.”
Her expression changed, shadowed with thoughts she clearly found disturbing. “Why don’t you tell me what it’s like for Daysiders? Do you force yourself on humans the way your masters do?”
Memories of the single human he had taken in his youth silenced his protest. He hadn’t forced himself on her. She had come to him knowing her duty, unafraid.
But not wanting. Not free. Just as he had never been truly free with, even though he had told himself their relationship was as much by his choice as hers.
“I can speak only for myself,” he said. “I would never take a woman unwilling, no matter what her kind.” He caught Alexia’s gaze, turning the tables again. “Did you have intercourse with Carter?”
“What?” She blinked at him, her expression transforming from surprise to outrage.
“Carter was my partner. I cared about him, but I didn’t sleep with him. Clear enough?”
Not clear at all, Damon thought. There were still too many things about human and dhampir emotions he didn’t fully understand. But knowing Carter had never been with her that way...
Damon closed his eyes. The very thought of what might have happened if Carter hadn’t interrupted him and Alexia sent a fierce shock of desire through his body. He imagined Alexia’s breasts bared to him, his mouth on her nipple, his skin naked against hers. His cock stiffened, throbbing with a deep ache that could end only one way.
But if he ever gave in to that lust, he would drive Alexia away for all time. If he didn’t lose her to her own stubbornness.
“What is clear,” he said, “is that you promised me you would stay alive.”
She turned her back on him again. “I think we’ve covered that topic.”
“Evidently not thoroughly enough. You gave me your word. Are you breaking it?”
She sat up and met his gaze. “Do you remember my exact words, Damon?” she asked intently.
It was a strange question, but when Damon tried to recall the conversation he couldn’t remember when or how she’d made her promise.
“Are you denying you said it?” he pressed.
Alexia heaved herself to her feet and reached down for her pack. “I have to go bury Michael. I’m not going to let scavengers tear him apart.”
Damon blocked her path. “Carter is beyond caring what becomes of his body,” he said.
“He deserves to be laid to rest.”
“That is foolishness.”
“I’ll give him a proper burial.” She pushed him aside with her healed shoulder and strode away. Damon went after her, seized her arm and swung her around to face him.
He bared his teeth.
“Don’t make me tie you up,” he said. “I will if you try to leave.”
“Then that’s what you’ll have to do.”
Chapter 8
Without hesitation Damon herded her back to the blanket, compelled her to kneel and pulled his pack close with his free hand. He unfastened one of the outer pockets and withdrew a carefully bundled length of cord. In spite of its thinness, it was easily strong enough to bear a large Darketan’s weight or ke
ep a dhampir firmly bound.
Alexia struggled, but her excursion to look for him and Carter had taken a severe toll on her body. Damon pinned her down, caught both her wrists in his free hand and lashed the cord around them. He let her go just long enough to secure the cord and then helped her sit up.
There was nothing but cold contempt in her eyes.
“You won’t like what happens when I get free,” she snapped.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Alexia lapsed into silence, and after a while her chin began to sink to her chest as she gave way to her body’s demands. Damon wasn’t deceived. She might be too weak to resist him now, but he knew she wouldn’t give in, even with her last breath.
So he waited her out, keeping watch over her and looking for any sign that she might be worsening. He removed the remnants of his shirt and undershirt, leaving his torn jacket spread over a bush to air out.
The night was cool and silent save for the usual animal sounds, and Alexia fell asleep sitting up within fifteen minutes. Gently Damon laid her down and pulled half the blanket over her. She didn’t awaken at his touch.
He knew he shouldn’t postpone the inevitable, not even for another hour. Yet when it came down to the decision of forcing her to drink his blood, he couldn’t do it. She had to be willing.
As “willing” as she had been before? Or fully conscious of her choice?
He had no answer, and so as the long night dragged on, Damon paced the hilltop until he had memorized every twig, every rock, and every leaf on every bush. Still Alexia slept. A few hours before dawn he lay down beside Alexia, his back to her chest, and forced himself to relax. Even if he fell into the twilight sleep Darketans and Opiri used to regenerate, he would still be fully capable of sensing danger.
But sleep wouldn’t come. He rolled over and studied Alexia’s quiet face. Her features were soft again, revealing that strange innocence that her years as an agent had erased from her conscious mind. Her lips were slightly parted, and her lashes brushed her cheeks like fine strands of silk.
Slowly he reached for her, brushing his fingertips across her chin. She sighed and curled toward him.
Her body did what her mind could not. It trusted him.
Damon let his fingers trail across her lips, move up to trace her brows and brush back the hair that had fallen across her forehead. He couldn’t bear it, this strange tenderness, this desire that was so much more than physical. How could he justify the way he had taken her dignity by trussing her like a steer bound for the serfs’ table?
Rising silently, Damon walked around her and knelt to free her hands. He tossed the cord aside, settled her arms in a more natural position and rested his hand on her back. It was like touching a smoldering fire. A shiver worked its way through her body, and Damon knew she was sinking into fever again.
She would be vulnerable now, as vulnerable as she could ever be. But Damon knew he couldn’t steal her will and dignity again.
Even if I must let her die? he thought.
No. He’d let her keep her pride until her body and mind failed, until there was no hope left. And then...
He stretched out beside her again, cradling her against his chest. Her breath hitched and released, but she was no longer shivering. Damon rested his face against her hair, breathing in the fragrant scent that days of hardship hadn’t erased. He pressed his lips to her neck, feeling her thready pulse and the sluggishness of her blood. He nuzzled her shoulder, her ear, her jaw, drawn into a memory of Eirene lying in his arms on his narrow cot in the Darketan dormitory.
The image froze and Damon stopped, arrested by the recognition of a change in himself he had never expected. Until this moment, his thoughts of Eirene had been acutely painful, laced with hatred, grief and guilt he thought he would carry until the end of his days.
But suddenly those feelings had receded into shadow, driven away by the remarkable woman he held now. He could remember Eirene’s smile, her courage, the warmth and gentleness even a Darketan’s rigorous training hadn’t diminished. He could remember and not despise himself.
It was almost as if he were free—not of the memories of Eirene’s death, but of the blackness it had left festering inside him.
The blackness that would come roaring back to life when Alexia died.
But not yet.
“You would have liked Eirene,” he murmured against Alexia’s ear. “She was not afraid of what all Darketans fear most.” He brushed his knuckles across Alexia’s cheek.
“She cared for me, and I lost her. But now...”
Alexia shivered again. “Now,” she echoed. She pushed her back against Damon’s chest, compelling him to loosen his hold, and rolled over to face him. The first, thin light of false dawn filtered through the darkness, deepening the shadows under her lower lids and beneath her cheekbones, but there was a kind of peace in her eyes. No fear, no anger, only acceptance.
“Now is all we have, you and I,” she said. “It was all we ever could have, even if I still had my patch.”
Damon berated himself for having spoken his thoughts aloud. He had never meant Alexia to know about Eirene, or anything else about his life in Erebus.
But it was too late to take back his confession. And what did it matter? Alexia was right. Even if she hadn’t been condemned to a painful death...
“Yes,” he said. “There could never be anything else.”
Alexia bowed her head and examined her wrists, unbound and unmarked. “You let me go,” she said. “Why?”
“I could not take your choice from you,” he said. Hesitantly he touched the moisture gathering under her eyelids. “I didn’t know that dhampires wept like humans.”
She gave a husky laugh. “Don’t rub it in.” She scraped her palm across her cheeks.
“Do Darketans? Cry, I mean?”
It was an absurd conversation under the circumstances, but he had already exposed the worst of his weaknesses to Alexia. One more would hardly make a difference.
“Yes,” he said, keeping his expression carefully neutral. “Darketans are capable of it.”
She searched Damon’s face. “Who was Eirene?”
He reached for the canteen and offered it to Alexia. “Drink,” he said.
Without taking her eyes from his, Alexia took the canteen from his hand. Her arm trembled so much that Damon had to help her lift the vessel to her lips. He watched her uneasily as she swallowed the stale water, half afraid she might choke, but she finished without difficulty and let him take the canteen away.
“Thank you,” she said, brushing moisture from her cracked lips. “I’ve never been so thirsty.”
Nor, Damon realized, had he. But not for water. A short time ago he’d seen Alexia bite her lip and tried to ignore his immediate reaction to the sight, dismissing it as a brief aberration. He had taken nourishment just before he had left Erebus, and that had been only been a few days ago.
But now, all at once, he began to realize that his lapse then hadn’t been just a passing impulse. It seemed his need for blood had come on him far more quickly than it should have. If he concentrated, he could trace this new and unexpected hunger to the moment when he had tasted Alexia’s blood during their interrupted embrace and had detected that
“other” in its signature.
Whatever had brought it on, there was nothing he could do about it. Not without leaving Alexia.
“Tell me about her,” Alexia asked softly. “Talk to me, Damon. I don’t want to be alone in my head just now.”
Alone in her head. How many times had Damon felt the same, knowing how few Darketans would understand?
Eirene had.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the lightening sky. “She was Darketan,” he said quietly. “One of the best operatives Erebus has ever known.”
“You said she cared for you, and you lost her.” She hesitated, her voice dropping to a murmur. “I’m sorry.”
Damon didn’t let himself respond to her gentleness. “It
was long ago.”
“Not long enough for you to forget.” He heard her shift to lie on her back, sharing his study of the heavens. “What wasn’t she afraid of, Damon? Emotion?”
It was impossible for Damon to answer. Not with her, in this place, at this time. Alexia accepted his silence for a while, but she wasn’t finished.
“You aren’t a Nightsider,” she said. “We know they aren’t capable of feelings as we understand them. You’ve proven that doesn’t hold true for Darketans. Why do your people fear it?”
Damon clenched his fists, welcoming the bite of his nails into flesh. “Are Enclave operatives not discouraged from letting emotion interfere with duty?” he asked.
“Of course we are. But sometimes it can’t be helped. I’m proof of that. So is...was Michael.” She laid her forearm across her face as if she didn’t want him to glimpse whatever might lie in her eyes. “I guess that’s what makes us...” She sucked in a breath.
“What makes us human.”
And what had sent Carter rushing to meet his inevitable downfall.
“Eirene wasn’t human,” Alexia said, “but she wasn’t afraid. And you weren’t afraid to care for her.”
“It was a mistake,” Damon said flatly. “It cost her her life.”
“How?” She lowered her arm and turned on her side to face him, her weight resting on one elbow. “How, Damon?”
The concern in her voice made it even more difficult for him to speak. “It is forbidden for agents to become personally involved,” he said. “Sex is allowed, but only for recreational purposes. To go beyond that is a grave transgression that must be punished.”
“The way Nightsiders punish their serfs for disobedience?”
Damon sat up, stung by her question even as he acknowledged how accurate it was.
“If we were serfs,” he said, “we would not be permitted to move freely in the Zone.”
“They don’t think you’ll try to escape,” she said.
“Why should we wish to?”
“You just told me why.” She rested her hand on his thigh. “They did punish Eirene, didn’t they?”
Her question lodged inside him like the projectile from a Vampire Slayer, sending tiny, razor-sharp slivers outward from his chest to sever his spine and slice through his brain.
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