“They are in the area. I discovered what they planned just before they left the Enclave, and escaped in the hope that I could warn you and Alexia in time.”
“Warn...us?”
“I made myself so much a part of Aegis over the years that they became less careful about what they let me hear and observe. I knew about the colony, and that Alexia and Agent Carter were sent to observe it. But I also knew you had been told to meet them, and that both of you would be in the area when the strike force arrived.” She took his hand. “I know what they were sent to do, how Agent Carter lied to them so he could get them to help start a new war.”
Agent Carter. Michael.
“What lies?” Damon asked, fighting against the drowning weight of exhaustion threatening to plunge him back into darkness.
“He sent a message to Aegis claiming that the colony was being used as a laboratory to experiment on humans, alter their minds to make them completely obedient to Opiri. I knew that many in Aegis didn’t believe that could go on without their knowing about it, but there are certain parties in the Enclave government who want war as much as the Expansionists. They pressured the government to send the strike force to attack the colony and free the humans.”
Suddenly, out of the tangle of bizarre events over the past few days, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. “The colony...” he said. “Theron wants peace. Equality for humans.”
“Then it’s worse than I thought,” Eirene murmured. “And they’re planning...” She broke off. “There’s nothing we can do now, Damon. You’re too weak. You could die if you try to move too soon.” She squeezed his hand tight. “Alexia is a brave woman. But she always was, even when I gave her my blood.”
“You...gave—”
“I have so much to tell you, but not until you and Alexia are together again. You are both unwittingly involved in an experiment approved by factions in San Francisco and Erebus. The truth has to come out, and I’m going to help make sure it does.”
Now nothing she said made sense. But one thing did, and it was all that mattered now.
Alexia was in danger, and he had to save her.
Levering himself up on his elbows, Damon pushed Eirene aside. She tried to hold him back, but the shadow-thing inside him was taking over again—not mindless, not savage, but driven by a purpose that would not be denied. His wounds were far from completely healed, but he hardly felt the pain, and they couldn’t keep him from his objective, even though part of him knew that Eirene had reason to fear for his condition. He clambered to his feet, strode past the humans whose ghostly faces looked after him in astonishment, and found his way to the entrance of the caves.
“Damon!” Eirene called after him.
He forgot she had spoken the moment he stepped out into the night.
* * *
“It’s a lie,” Alexia said, crouching opposite the strike force commander under the cover of a dense stand of madrones. “The colony isn’t conducting any experiments. They want peace, and freedom for humans.”
The commander, his gray eyes unyielding, showed no sign of softening. “Where is Agent Carter?” he asked.
“I’ve already told you. He’s dead, killed by an Orlok. You have his communicator. He left me a message, and—”
“We can find no message,” the commander interrupted. “The communication Aegis received from Agent Carter claimed that your drugs had been taken by the Opiri, and you admit your patch has been removed.”
“Michael also told you I was left for dead by the same Opiri, Commander, and as you can see I’m very much alive.”
“Who were you waiting for when we found you, Agent Fox? Who are you protecting?”
“As I also told you, I’d already encountered hostile Nightsiders, presumably Expansionists operatives. I expected them to attack again, and—”
“Who took the patch, Agent Fox?”
“Michael did,” Alexia said, holding on to her anger by her trembling fingertips. “He admitted it in the message he left me, and sooner or later you’re going to figure out how to access it. Michael had his own reasons for wanting you here to destroy what Theron worked for and to provoke the Council into stopping you.”
“Because he wanted to take some personal revenge by fomenting open war between Erebus and the Enclave? You expect me to believe this of a seasoned, loyal operative, Agent Fox?”
“I couldn’t believe it myself, but—”
“You have no proof for your claims, Agent Fox. Since you’ve confessed to having disobeyed your own orders and contacted the colony, your loyalty to the Enclave is in question.”
“Do you think I went over to Erebus?” she asked, letting her scorn color her voice. “A vampire raped my mother. I have no love for them, and never will.”
“Then tell me where to find the Daysider who was sent to work with you.”
“I told you, he didn’t know anything more about the colony than I did.” Alexia chose her next words carefully, knowing she was withholding the truth of Damon’s original mission. “The Council was still investigating the settlement when he was given his assignment.”
“Your partner claimed that this Damon deliberately diverted you from your assignment, tried to kill him several times, stole your patch and left you—”
“—to die. I know. But we’re back to the fact that I’m alive, and telling you Damon didn’t do any of those things. If your mission was to ‘rescue’ the humans in the colony, you’re wasting time with this line of questioning.” She gave him a pointed look. “Do you think your presence here is going to go unnoticed much longer? Odds are that Erebus is already sending troops to meet you.”
“Because the colony has contacted the Citadel?”
“That’s not what I said. The colony has broken off from Erebus. Theron has founded a new philosophy that allows humans and Nightsiders to live as equals. If you go in there, guns blazing, you’ll destroy it, and probably end the Armistice, as well.”
The commander searched her eyes, his own flat and cold. “I was instructed to carry out a mission,” he said. “I am not here to negotiate. If experimentation on human beings is occurring in the target location, Erebus will have already broken the Armistice. We will do whatever is necessary to free the convicts and remove them from the area.”
“And if you’re wrong? Do you think the Council will just accept an apology for your
‘mistake’?”
“That is a matter for Aegis and the Mayor’s Office,” the commander said. “We have our orders, Agent Fox.”
Orders. Orders of the kind Alexia would once have followed without question.
“Let me go to Theron,” she pleaded. “Let me talk to him. I know he wants to talk to you, but the others won’t let him out if there’s a chance he’ll be slaughtered the second he steps outside the walls. Give me your word you’ll hold fire until I’ve brought him to you.”
“How do I know you won’t join him, Agent Fox?”
The man was clearly immune to reason, and Alexia knew she had no more time to argue with him. She hadn’t wanted to tell him that the humans were already outside the settlement, since there was a chance he might decide to attack the colony and kill everyone left inside the walls. Now she knew she had no choice.
“Listen to me,” she said. “The humans are no longer in the colony. They were evacuated hours ago. I can take you to them.”
“And lead us into an ambush?”
“I am on your side, Commander!”
For a few tense moments the commander was silent, and then he gave a hand signal to someone concealed in the brush. A soldier, his rifle trained on Alexia, emerged from cover.
“You will take Operator Willis to the human evacuees,” he said. “He has orders to shoot if he suspects deceit, or if you try to escape. Is that understood, Agent Fox?”
“It’s understood, as long as you give your word you won’t move on the colony before you receive confirmation that the humans are safe.”
“I
am not authorized to give you my word, Agent Fox. I will act as I deem necessary.
If you are still one of us, your only concern will be for the safety of our people.”
Alexia hadn’t expected him to say anything else, and she had never intended to take Operator Willis to the caves where they would find Damon and Eirene. The only thing she could do now was get Theron out of Eleutheria before the situation exploded.
“All right,” she said. She got to her feet under Operator Willis’s watchful eye, nodded to the commander, and then started off in the general direction of the caves. Willis, like most of the Special Forces, was human; if the strike force had dhampires with them, they would be acting as scouts on the lookout for Nightsider operatives or troops.
But that didn’t mean Willis would go down easy. He wore the standard infrared visor, and he’d be watching for the smallest false move on her part. She didn’t want to hurt him any more than was strictly necessary. It was going to take split-second timing.
“This way,” she said, gesturing for the man to follow her. He did, keeping his distance, and she could feel the eye of his rifle fixed relentlessly on the center of her back.
The instant before she turned to attack, she smelled the Opiri.
“They’re here!” she hissed. “Nightsiders! Get down!”
The soldier didn’t move, but he wasn’t stupid. Even without looking at him she knew he was listening, aware that she might be telling the truth.
The rattle of rapid gunfire came from the direction of the colony. Alexia spun and lunged for Willis’s rifle. He got off half a round before she shoved the weapon aside, but it was enough to tear off a good chunk of flesh from her upper right arm.
That wasn’t about to stop her. But Willis was good at his job. As she grappled with him, he pulled his combat knife and was about to plunge it into her side when some force of nature ripped Alexia away and held her suspended about a meter above the ground.
Damon, bare-chested and trailing bloodstained bandages like party streamers.
Alexia didn’t ask him why he was there, why he’d left the sanctuary of the caves and ignored the fact that he wasn’t in any shape to be rescuing anyone. She didn’t have the chance. He set her down on her feet and went straight for the soldier.
The man would be dead inside of five seconds if she didn’t do something.
Without another moment’s hesitation she leaped onto Damon’s back and wrapped her arms around his neck. His muscles, swollen with rage, tensed to fling her off.
“Damon!” she shouted in his ear. “He’s not the enemy!”
He froze, his hand around the soldier’s neck, teeth bared to bite and tear.
“We have to get Theron,” she said, pressing her face into his shoulder. “If there’s any chance of stopping what’s about to happen, we’re going to need him.”
He released his breath, his body loosening just enough for Alexia to know she’d reached him. He dropped the soldier and took a step back.
“Operator Willis,” Alexia said, keeping her tight hold on Damon, “you’d better get back to your commander and tell him Nightsiders are coming. I don’t know if they’re Council or Expansionists, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. If he has the sense to realize what a new war is going to do to all of us, he’d better sit tight and hold fire.” She grabbed the rifle she had taken from the soldier’s hand. “Move!”
A single glance at Damon’s savage expression convinced the soldier to do as she ordered. Running low to the ground, he melted into the brush.
Alexia moved in front of Damon and met his eyes, which were still nearly black with the darkness seething inside him.
“Are the others all right?” she asked.
He nodded and touched her face. “Alexia,” he rasped.
“I’m fine.” She looked him up and down, fighting an almost physical sickness at the sight of his partially healed wounds. Someone had treated his injuries, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly enough to care that he looked like a madman.
More than a madman, she thought. Given what was going on, she doubted he’d be back to “normal” anytime soon. It wouldn’t do any good to send him back to the caves—
she’d been foolish to think anyone could keep him there—and she was the only one who could hope to control his shadow-side.
“We’ve got to get through to Theron, Damon,” she said. “Maybe it won’t do any good, but he’s the symbol of everything decent in Eleutheria, and maybe we can get somebody to listen.”
“Yes,” Damon said.
“Let’s go.”
Together they ran southwest toward the colony, Damon moving much more slowly than usual but never faltering. There was another burst of gunfire somewhere ahead, but they didn’t slow down until they were just behind the last tree at the foot of the lowest hill descending into the valley.
They were too late. A dozen Nightsider Council troops, wearing black uniforms and armed to the teeth, had formed a barrier around the settlement’s front wall, facing outward across the valley. Even as Alexia watched, someone fired on them from the cover of a broad-trunked valley oak about three hundred meters to the southwest. The Nightsiders returned fire, and then silence fell again, as peaceful as the aftermath of a level-seven earthquake.
Whatever motive the Nightsiders had for defending the colony—whether it was because they actively meant to protect it or simply wanted to keep the Aegis soldiers away—the upshot was the same. The strike force wasn’t going to leave until they’d
“rescued” the supposed human guinea pigs, and the Erebus troops would never let them get anywhere near the walls. Since the Council obviously knew something unusual was going on, it was only a matter of time before they sent a larger force to deal with the human incursion.
“We’ll have to try to get in from the back,” Alexia said in an undertone. “I’m sure they’ve got it guarded, too, but it’s the only chance we have.” She grabbed Damon’s hand. “Whatever happens, remember that you are still Damon. Use your shadow to protect, not to kill.”
His eyes were almost clear now, reflecting starlight like indigo pools too deep to fathom. “You go in,” he said. “I’ll cover you.”
She closed her eyes, grateful that he was himself in what might be their final moments together. She wanted to tell him what she had never quite said, not the way she’d wanted to say it. But she remembered the Darketan woman’s lovely face, the look on Damon’s face when he’d seen the woman with her Nightsider prisoner. Alexia refused to burden him with emotions that would only make things more difficult for both of them if they survived.
“All right,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Good luck, Damon.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her roughly and just as abruptly let her go. Alexia turned and started back up the hill toward the rear wall of the colony, her lips throbbing and her heart throwing itself against her ribs like a fox in a cage. Damon followed so quietly that only the scent of dried blood and the tang of the local flora on his skin told her he was behind her.
The Nightsider guarding the back wall never stood a chance. Alexia made only a small, token effort to get past him, and as he was about to shoot her Damon took him down from behind. She didn’t wait to see how Damon would deal with the man or the other Nightsiders she knew had to be nearby, but continued down the hill to the eastern battlements and the row of sharpened stakes that rose a good two meters above her head.
The Nightsider colonists hadn’t left this wall unguarded, either. A dozen bullets from above whistled past Alexia’s ear, and she dropped into a crouch at the foot of the wall.
“It’s Alexia!” she cried. “I’m coming in!”
There was no response, but Alexia didn’t wait. She half ran, half slid the rest of the way down the hill to the postern gate, where she heard heavy objects being dragged around inside the wall. The door opened the width of an Arm
istice dollar and the sliver of a Nightsider’s face appeared behind the crack.
“Get Theron,” Alexia commanded. “Damon and I are here to take him to safety.”
“You can’t,” the Nightsider said. “He—”
“I know he doesn’t want to come, but someone’s going to kill him if he sets foot outside the front gate. If we can keep him alive, there’s still a chance he can—”
“You can’t help him,” the Nightsider said in a harsh whisper. “He thinks he can reason with them. He’s about to walk out.”
Alexia’s shock lasted exactly as long as it took for her to draw a single breath. She turned and sprinted back up the hill, using her hands to pull herself along.
Damon was waiting for her, standing guard over two Council troops with a nasty little Nightsider pistol in one hand and an Erebus model assault rifle in the other. Both Nightsiders were bloodied but alive, wearing daygear but still protected by the darkness.
“Theron is already leaving,” Alexia said to Damon. “I’m going to be there when he walks out that gate.”
Damon nodded, the shadow crouching behind his eyes, waiting to be summoned again. Alexia knew he was deciding whether or not to kill the troops, but he knew as well as she did that any chance he might have to talk to the Council would end if he took their lives.
“Surrender,” one of the Nightsiders told Damon, “and you may be permitted to live.”
Damon didn’t answer. He dropped the pistol, tossed the rifle to Alexia, picked the Nightsider up by the back of his protective suit and charged down the hill the way she had come. She heard a low grunt, a cry of alarm and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground some distance away. The second Nightsider began to rise, but Alexia was ready, and he was in no position to resist when Damon came back for him.
“What did you do?” she asked when Damon returned.
“Over the wall,” he said, grinning in a way that would have made even a Nightsider’s blood run cold. “The colonists can deal with them.”
Alexia returned his grin. She didn’t wait to see if he was planning to kiss her again, though she wanted to feel his arms around her one last time. Moving as fast as the slope permitted, she plunged down the hillside parallel to the settlement walls and didn’t stop until she reached the valley floor.
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