Not what we believed, the Independent double agent had told her. If that information had reached the Council, there was no telling what they would do about it.
And Aegis? Wouldn’t this colony’s mere existence force them to change their assumptions about Opiri and their approach to Erebus? If there was even a chance the settlement could be a basis for a new kind of civilization...
For the first time since she’d arrived, Alexia was struck by the full recognition of what Eleutheria could become. A symbol, not only of equality and friendship, but of the hope of peace founded not on mere truce but true understanding. Understanding that could end the deportation of convicts from the Enclave. That could bring people—people, not Nightsiders and humans—together as she and Damon had come together.
“Are you all right?” Damon asked with a worried frown.
Belatedly Alexia realized that they hadn’t talked since he had taken her blood. She could imagine the thoughts racing through his mind: he had taken advantage of her, he had behaved like a savage, he had hurt her. She could feel those fears as if they were her own.
She went back to the cot and perched on the edge, hands braced on the frame and gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly.
“About what?” Damon asked, hesitantly reaching out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Did I do something wrong? Did I...” His fingers stopped, and she heard his teeth clench. “Did I hurt you?”
She turned to catch his hand and pressed his palm to her mouth. “No, Damon. If you had, I wouldn’t be sitting here, wishing we could start all over again.”
His expression relaxed all at once. He took her hand between his and brought it to his chest. His heart was beating strongly, and his dark eyes were warm with relief.
“I didn’t know what I was doing last night,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you did.” She spread her fingers across his chest. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you were extremely good at it.”
He ran his thumb gently across the places where he had bitten her. “No discomfort?” he asked.
“No. Should there be?” She smiled. “There was never any pain, Damon. Only the most indescribable—”
She broke off, knowing she could never explain. Knowing if she did, she’d only want it again and again, like an addict who had no idea when to quit.
Damon’s lips brushed her neck. “It was indescribable for me, as well,” he murmured.
His voice had a little growl in it, provocation and promise, but Alexia didn’t fall into his trap. “Does it always happen that way?” she asked, leaning back. “Between Nightsiders and their vassals and humans?”
He sat up cross-legged on the cot, the blanket still draped across his lap. “I know only what I have been told,” he said, his voice roughening. “With vassals, it is said to be mutually pleasurable, but there is always an imbalance of power. With serfs...” He worked his fists into the sheets. “Whether or not they receive pleasure is of no interest to the Opir who owns them.”
“Except in this place,” she said. “If it was unpleasant, I can’t imagine the humans in Eleutheria would be so ready to provide blood at the drop of a hat. Like that woman last night.”
Damon shifted. “I apologize,” he said, a little stiffly. “When I find the woman, I will ask her forgiveness.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to look for her yourself,” Alexia said hastily, wishing she hadn’t raised the subject. “Emma planned to introduce me to some of the other colonists once we finished our business with Theron. I’m sure I can pass on your apology.”
Damon looked up. “You have no reason to be jealous, Alexia.”
“Jealous? Because you were going to take her blood without asking me if I was willing?”
“I was incapable of discussing it at the time.”
“You could damned well have told me what was happening before it got so bad,” she shot back. “If you were so out of control, you could have hurt that woman. I know you would never have hurt me, no matter how far gone you were.”
“She knew how to react without fear or provocation,” Damon said, utterly serious. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”
“Nothing happened, Damon,” she said, resting her hand on his knee. “Everything is all right now.”
“Is it?” Damon stared blankly into the darkness. “Opiri can lose control like that if they’re starving, literally on the edge of death. But I wasn’t dying, Alexia. I was insane.”
Chapter 17
Alexia went very still. She had known the time would come when the subject of his “spells” would arise, even if she had to introduce it herself. But now that it was here, she wanted to tuck the entire matter away into some forgotten corner where it could never disturb either of them again.
“You fell, Damon,” she said. “You were sick. Even Theron recognized your condition.”
“No,” he said, setting his jaw. “You asked why I didn’t tell you what was happening before. That was because I couldn’t acknowledge it. The Hunger should not have come so soon. Something caused this to happen, something unnatural for my kind.”
Oh, God, Alexia thought. She reached out to take the hand he had clenched in the sheets and opened his fingers, lacing hers through them. “Tell me,” she said.
“I have felt this before,” he said. “Not this level of Hunger, not so quickly. No. But the savagery...the rage...” He met her gaze. “What did I look like when I left Theron’s house, Alexia? A monster?”
“Is that what you felt like?” she whispered, beginning to shiver.
“I don’t know.” He disengaged his fingers from hers. “Answer me, Alexia.”
“You never looked different,” she said, careful not to glance away.
“But I was different,” he said. “Wasn’t I?”
She couldn’t answer the pain in his eyes. They went distant with some ugly memory.
“Until I nearly killed Lysander,” he said, “I didn’t realize that there was a pattern. But the first time I felt it was in Erebus. The first time I fought him.”
“The first—” Alexia couldn’t forget a single brutal moment of the battle in which he and Lysander had almost killed each other. She had known then that there had been something very bitter between them. Lysander had compared her to Eirene. “Spirited,” he’d said. As if he had known the Darketan woman. Very well.
“You fought over Eirene,” she said, trying to keep her feelings from her voice. “You both wanted her.”
She expected Damon to bolt from the cot and begin striding around the small room, agitation translating into frantic motion. But he remained where he was, blank-faced and emotionless.
“After the Master of Agents discovered my relationship with Eirene and separated us,” he said, “Lysander tried to claim her. No Opir had ever attempted to claim a Darketan before, but he convinced the Master to give her to him rather than sending her away. She was forced to go with him.”
Alexia imagined the scene, the depravity of it, the pain and fear. Darketans had a kind of freedom—freedom from service to anyone but the Council and the Citadel. Eirene had had that taken from her after being forcibly parted from the man she had—
Loved. As Damon had loved her.
“I was kept confined for a week,” Damon continued. “When I was released, I obtained permission to enter the Citadel proper. I was planning to break in on Lysander in his quarters, but I found him on the Grand Concourse instead, parading Eirene around and showing her off to the other Opiri as if she were a valuable serf.”
“But she was, wasn’t she?” Alexia said, longing to reach out to him. “And you couldn’t bear it.”
“No. I attacked him on the Concourse. I remembered almost nothing except sinking my teeth into his neck. And rage. Boundless rage.”
The kind, Alexia thought, that would make him equal in strength to a full-blooded Nightsider.
“When I woke, I was in a cell,” Damon said. “I w
as told Eirene was being sent on a solo mission, and that it would be highly dangerous. I was also told that in spite of my actions, I was too valuable to Erebus to be expelled from the Citadel.”
“Expelled?” Alexia said, momentarily distracted from the tragedy of his story.
“Criminal acts by those of rank, Bloodmasters and the most powerful Bloodlords, are seldom punished by execution. Doing so would instigate more problems than the criminals themselves. That is why most who break the law are sent outside the walls.”
“To die in the sun, or of starvation?” she asked.
“Yes. Or to be changed.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Changed?”
“As those humans selected to become vassals are changed. Only our criminals are not as fortunate as humans. They become something both our peoples fear and despise.”
All at once Alexia understood. He was talking about Orloks. Aegis had speculated that the creatures were in some way like Nightsiders, capable of converting humans into blood-drinkers like themselves.
But now Damon was saying they were Nightsiders. And Michael had become one of them.
“But how?” she asked, tears thickening her voice. “We never saw these creatures before the Armistice. How did the first ones come to be?”
“Mutations,” Damon said. “Grotesque reflections of Opiri. Like Darketans.”
“Not like Darketans. You can’t possibly think you’re anything like an Orlok.”
But he had asked her what he’d looked like when he had left Theron’s house. As if he’d almost expected...
She couldn’t complete the thought. “You aren’t a monster,” she said.
“They are mindless creatures who attack both humans and Opiri indiscriminately,” Damon said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “But recently it had been reported that most Lamiae had left the region. That was why when the thing attacked Michael and me, I—” He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “I wasn’t prepared.”
And Michael had never guessed what might happen to him. But he’d spoken to her, after. Warned her. He hadn’t been mindless at all.
“If you had been expelled,” she asked dully, “would the change have happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “No Darketan has ever faced that particular punishment. But I asked for it, after Eirene left Erebus. I begged them to throw me into a pack of Lamiae. Either the creatures would kill me, or I wouldn’t care any longer.”
Care. The one thing Darketans were not supposed to do. Damon’s punishment had been worse than any death or transformation.
He hadn’t been sent out to become an Orlok, but the savagery he claimed they possessed was part of him, too. If she hadn’t seen that shadow inside him before he and Michael had been attacked, she might have had reason to believe that he had also been affected by his contact with the Orlok.
But he had said he’d felt it in Erebus. It had already been there when she and Michael had met him.
She became aware that he was staring at her, his gaze fixed on her face with a kind of obsessive dread.
“You have seen it before, haven’t you?” he asked. “This is not the first time.” He edged farther away, ready to swing his legs over the side of the bed. “Was it when I fought Lysander?”
Lying, even evading his questions, was no longer possible. “Yes,” she said, holding his gaze. “It happened then, and once before.”
“When?”
“When you first swore you wouldn’t let me die. When you made me swear to stay alive.”
He closed his eyes. “Did I threaten you?”
“No! No. Nothing like that. Damon—” She reached across the cot for his hand. He jerked away, but she managed to grab hold again. His muscles twitched under her fingers. “Damon, whatever this is, you’re not alone. If we can be rational about this—”
“I knew where you were concerned I wasn’t rational,” Damon said. “I wanted you from the start, and I knew...if I gave in to those impulses, I would be no different than an Opir with his serfs.”
“You’re not a Nightsider, and I’m not a serf. I was never helpless, Damon. And I wanted you from the beginning, too. I just refused to let myself believe it.”
“Your feelings have nothing to do with it,” he said harshly. He opened his eyes, and she saw despair so great she couldn’t begin to touch it. “It is my feelings.”
Fast as a striking cobra, Damon seized her shoulders in his hands and dragged her toward him, lifting her until her face was level with his. “Emotions,” he said. “The trainers have always forbidden them, from the earliest part of our lives. We are little more than children when we come to the Master of Agents.”
“Children?” Alexia repeated in astonishment. “But you said you’re mutations! Nightsiders don’t convert children!”
“So they say. None of us remembers what came before, except one thing. We are not to shame ourselves with emotion.”
Tears spilled from Alexia’s eyes. “Because Nightsiders don’t understand it. They have no real feelings.”
“And whatever mutates Darketans, makes us what we are, gives us too many. Every day of our lives we are reminded that we are like humans, inferior, driven by primitive sentiments that have no value in the Opir world. They must be beaten out of us before we are worthy to serve.” His gaze revealed his inner torment. “They should have been beaten out of me, as they are out of most Darketans. But Eirene—”
He broke off, and Alexia was grateful. Because she was remembering how difficult it had been for Damon to admit he “cared” for her, how much he had fought against it. Not only because of what had happened with Eirene, but because he had been raised from childhood to despise emotion as weakness. He had been abused, both emotionally and physically. He had been made to believe what his masters wanted was the only thing that gave him worth.
Irrational impulses. Lysander had taunted him about them, said that he had been sent to join the Enclave agents because of them. And she still didn’t know why.
Anger pushed aside Alexia’s anguish for Damon. “They didn’t beat it out of you,” she said. “You beat them. You were never just a pawn, Damon.”
His mouth contorted in a bitter smile. “Humans believe in souls, do they not? I would have sold mine to destroy that part of myself that was never anything but a slave to these feelings.”
“No.” She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “Do you believe humans are inferior, Damon? That we are weak for daring to feel for each other, for caring about justice and equality and freedom?”
“No,” he said, his breath hitching as he let it out. “I no longer believe that. If I hated the Enclave—” He covered her hands with his own. “In this place I’ve seen another way. A good way.”
“If you’ve recognized that after only a few hours, some part of you must always have believed the Nightsiders were wrong about humans all along. And that meant they were wrong about you.”
His hands slid down her arms and dropped to the cot. “They weren’t wrong, Alexia. I know now that every time I care, I change. I cared too much for Eirene, so I attacked Lysander. I care for you—” He stared into some hell of his own creation. “These emotions are the triggers that turn me into a monster.”
“Because your mind was twisted,” Alexia said. “You were abused as a child and an adult. It probably isn’t any coincidence that you don’t remember the time before you went into training.” She squeezed her hands together in her lap to keep from touching him again. “I’m no shrink, but even I can see that the psychological trauma you suffered in denying your feelings could push you to extremes your conscious mind would never permit.”
“Others endured the same,” he said, “and did not change.”
“How do you know? Have you spoken to every other Darketan in Erebus?” She leaned toward him, praying he was listening. “You can be helped, Damon. Not in Erebus. Not by Nightsiders, but by people who understand—”
&nb
sp; “When it happens,” Damon said, looking through her, “I can’t control it. What if I had killed your partner, Alexia? I wanted to do it more than once. You make excuses for me, but it doesn’t change what I could do if it happens again.”
Even as he spoke, Alexia knew she was losing him. Losing him to despair, to resignation, to death. Because he cared, he would do anything to keep her, or any other innocent, from suffering what his rage might unleash.
“I know what you’d like to do,” she said with quiet intensity. “You’d like to hole up somewhere out there where you’ll either let yourself starve or become an Orlok. Well, forget it. I won’t let you.”
He focused on her again and brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “If emotion is what awakens this thing inside me, then I must be away from anything that provokes it.” He lifted his thumb to his mouth and tasted her tear. “From anyone. You must see that, Alexia.”
“I see that you’re giving up without any real understanding of what this thing is and how to fight it.” She heard her voice begin to rise in desperation. “You said Theron was a Bloodmaster. Maybe he’s heard of this condition, or even seen it. You don’t know it can’t be cured. How can you make any decision without more information?”
For one precious moment there was a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. The shadow of hope.
“Perhaps,” he murmured.
“I won’t lose you, Damon. I lost Michael to something I didn’t understand, and I won’t let it happen again.”
“Michael—” Damon began.
“Michael wasn’t...killed,” she said slowly. “He was changed. Into an Orlok.”
She expected to see shock on Damon’s face, but he hardly reacted at all. “I know,” he said. “And I know you were keeping this from me, and that I should wait until you felt safe enough to tell me.”
Daysider (Nightsiders) Page 21
