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She nodded without comment as he removed his jacket, rummaged in his pack for a fresh shirt, and put on the new one. She quickly turned away from the sight of his bare, muscular chest and started up the hill to the south. There were no more bullets, nor did Alexia sense anyone else, vampire or otherwise, in the vicinity. It seemed the shooters had, indeed, accomplished their mission. With or without Damon’s help.
She was panting by the time they reached the third hilltop. Damon took her arm and herded her into the shade of a large, stately oak.
His touch seared her skin, but all at once the crawling sensation was gone. She worked her arm loose from his grip and sank onto the patchy grass among the oak’s thick roots.
“Rest now,” Damon said, helping her remove her pack. “We’re at a good vantage point, and I’ll know if anyone approaches.”
Alexia didn’t want to sleep with Damon standing over her, but she wouldn’t last even twelve more hours without it. By the time she woke up the shakes could be worse, and it would take concentration to keep Damon from seeing them.
Maybe, when she was well rested, she might even figure out why he thought he could keep her alive if he had any idea just how desperately she needed the patch.
Maybe he doesn’t know, she thought. Maybe Erebus is still in the dark…for now.
“Sleep,” Damon said, his voice soft with what almost sounded like concern. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”
She was trying to figure out what he meant when her bone-deep exhaustion carried her away.
There was something wrong with her.
Damon crouched over Alexia as he had when she’d lain injured in the hollow, the same unbidden emotions crowding his chest and filling his throat.
It wasn’t just her injury. Soon after she’d fallen asleep, he had carefully checked her wound and found it nearly healed under the bandages, enough so that he was able to remove most of them to let her skin breathe.
Yet in spite of the healing, he had seen her get subtly but steadily worse since they’d begun hiking again, though she did her best to hide it. The smell of dried blood was still strong on her clothing, but there was another scent now, a mingling of chemical odor and the scent of illness that any Opir—or Darketan—could detect from a kilometer away.
Damon had no idea what it was. He had never come closer to a dhampir than shooting distance; though he wouldn’t have disobeyed an order to kill any Enclave agent who stood in the way of an assignment, he had been forbidden those missions that might involve such acts.
Now that he wanted to keep a dhampir alive, his ignorance about Alexia’s kind was no longer a minor inconvenience. The Council had provided no information about dhampir illnesses; that was no surprise, since the breed was believed to be as hardy as Darketans. Perhaps this was something that also afflicted humans, but his instincts told him otherwise. Even a mild sickness might become deadly to one as weakened as Alexia was.
And though he’d told her that he didn’t think the shooters would attempt another assault, he knew nothing of the kind. Either the original plans had drastically changed, or some other party had been involved.
After the first sniper’s attack, Damon had been quick to deny any possibility that the opposing faction might send operatives to stop him and the Enclave agents. The gunman had been a good shot, too good to miss unless it was deliberate. Damon could well believe he had been carrying out his or her part of the mission as planned.
But these last shooters had been out to kill or incapacitate Damon and Alexia—or send a powerful warning. They could have been colonists. That still seemed by far the most likely possibility.
If the attack had been meant as a warning, it might explain why the shooters hadn’t killed him and Alexia. Murdering sanctioned operatives would be making a move too provocative to be ignored by the Council or Aegis. Surely the shooters would realize that.
Just the attack alone was provocation enough.
Damon rose and paced back and forth under the gnarled branches of the grandfather oak. Once again he was faced with a crucial decision: leave Alexia under cover while he tried to find the shooters, or stay with her and wait until she was recovered enough to continue. He couldn’t imagine her agreeing to stay behind; she’d drive herself into her grave first.
He stopped to gaze down at her, wondering if it was his imagination that her breathing was much more labored than it had been even an hour ago. She had become steadily weaker since the attack, and he could easily overpower her if he had to.
But then he would have to tie her down, and she’d be helpless. With a curse Damon began to circle around the oak, noting every detail of their location: the number of nearby trees and shrubs, the various angles of potential attack, the approaches and avenues of escape.
Still no sign of the shooters. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there, just beyond Damon’s senses.
Making his decision, he knelt beside Alexia and carefully gathered her up in his arms. She moaned as he carried her to a thicket of low shrubs just outside the circle of shade and laid her down again under the entangled branches. He searched her pack and found the small, thin blanket she had covered him with before, laid it over her, and then began to gather twigs, fallen branches, rotting leaves—anything he might use to camouflage her while he was gone. When he was finished, he knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. Her skin had become so feverish that he could feel the heat through her shirt and jacket.
“Alexia,” he said.
Her lips parted, soft lips that seemed to beckon him now that they were no longer stiff with suspicion. Her eyelashes fluttered.
“Damon?” she murmured, lifting one hand toward him. “What is it? Is it time to go?”
She sounded like a child, innocent and trusting, certain that the one who loved her would make sure everything was all right. It must be the fever talking, he thought. A delirious, fever dream.
“Not yet,” he said gently, taking her hand in his. “I have to leave for a short time, to make sure we’re safe here. I need you to stay under cover while I’m gone.”
Her eyes opened, searching for his as if she couldn’t quite make out his face. “I’m going with you,” she said.
He stroked her fingers, aware of a painful and inexplicable wave of tenderness that threatened to dissolve the foundation of everything he had worked so hard to build since Eirene’s death. “You aren’t in any shape to help now,” he said. “The best thing you can do is rest until I return.” He laid her hand on her chest, picked up his canteen and held it to her lips. “Drink.”
Alexia did as he asked without protest, though she wouldn’t take more than a few drops. Her eyelids grew heavy again.
“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. A small vertical line had formed between her arched brows, suggesting an inner struggle of which she was hardly aware. Damon smoothed it out with his thumb.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Promise you’ll stay here.”
“I…” She shivered and subsided, the muscles of her neck and shoulders relaxing. “I promise.”
Then she was asleep again, and Damon covered her with the assembled leaves and twigs until she resembled no more than a pile of forest debris blown against the bushes by a gust of wind. He hesitated long after he was finished.
He didn’t want to leave her. Not even for a minute. And that was all the more reason he had to.
Moving almost soundlessly, Damon began to work his way down the other side of the hill, weaving back and forth to and from any small cover he could find. Once he’d reached the bottom of the hill, he walked around it, pausing to listen every few steps. Then he climbed very slowly, circling as he went.
Still nothing. It seemed their attackers really had left them—completed their task, whatever it was, and gone on their way.
Or they were lying in wait somewhere between here and the colony.
Damon reached the top of the hill, assured himself that Alexia was still safely hidden, and then continued to canvass the area, placing each step with infinite care as he turned northeast toward the colony.
He’d gone about four hundred meters and was descending the last of the hills overlooking the valley when the shots came, pelting the underbrush around his feet and shredding leaves overhead. He ducked and fell to his stomach, rolling sideways until he was behind an outcrop of rock thrusting out of the slope.
A heartbeat, two, three, ten. No further attack. Damon rose to his knees, waited, and then got to his feet. Silence. He took a step back, in full view of whoever was doing the shooting. Still no shots. But when he took a step forward…
The bullets tore a very clear line in the ground three centimeters from the toes of his boots.
He backed away, staying well back from the invisible line, and made his way a little farther to the north. When he moved east again, the bullets erupted again, tracing out that very distinct line between him and the valley.
It was a clear and unmistakable boundary. This was as close as he and Alexia would be allowed to approach the colony. But that still didn’t tell him who was doing the shooting, or even if these gunmen were the same as in the last two attacks.
None of this made any sense to him yet. But as long as the snipers didn’t go any further than trying to keep him and Alexia away from the colony, he could still carry out his mission. In fact, considering that the two of them had been left alive, the current circumstances would make his task even easier.
Provided there really wasn’t anyone out to kill them.
Damon retraced his steps toward the temporary camp. No bullets assailed him. He was back at Alexia’s hiding place in less than an hour. She was still there, still safe.
But the mild shivers he had noted earlier had become so violent that she’d shaken off most of the leaves and branches heaped around her body. He dropped to his knees beside her and felt her forehead. It was no longer hot, but icy cold and clammy to the touch.
“Alexia,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”
She thrashed her head from side to side, muttering words he could barely understand.
“Garret,” she cried. “No. Don’t…” Her teeth began to chatter. “I won’t let them take you.”
Damon leaned closer, his lips nearly brushing her cheek. “Who is Garret, Alexia?”
Tears broke from beneath her lids and slid across her temples. “I can’t…I can’t stop them.” Abruptly her eyes opened, and for a moment they fixed on Damon’s so directly that he was certain she was fully aware again. “You’ll save him, won’t you?” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”
He stroked her auburn hair away from her forehead. “Save whom?” he asked softly.
“He didn’t deserve it. You must see that.”
“What did he do, Alexia?”
Without warning she flung off the blanket and reached for him, locking surprisingly strong arms around his neck and pulling him down to her. Her lips brushed his, her tongue feathering over his mouth like moth’s wings.
Then she kissed him. There was no doubting her intent, or her will. It wasn’t sickness he smelled now on her skin and in her breath, but Alexia’s living blood, relentlessly tugging at him like a full moon at the tide.
The blood of a dhampir.
Damon pulled back, clinging to his rapidly fragmenting thoughts. Alexia was no human serf, or a Bloodmistress who deigned to let him taste the nectar that flowed through her veins.
Alexia was his peer. His equal, as much as anyone from the Enclave could be, though they were enemies and kept themselves alive by different means. He’d said he would never take her blood, and he had meant it.
But now it was as if he were falling under the influence of an addiction, one that had once ruled his life and been forgotten until this moment.
And Alexia was the drug.
He stared down into her half-open eyes. He saw hunger in them—physical lust and the craving for pleasure, almost as if she, too, were experiencing the euphoric effects of some unknown narcotic agent.
She wasn’t herself. He knew it, and he was ashamed of his own forbidden thoughts, his own struggle to maintain discipline and self-control that should have been second nature to him…and had been, until now. But Alexia held him there, demanding, refusing to let him go, and he forgot she was ill—forgot he could feel nothing for her—forgot his mission.
He worked her mouth open with his and slipped his tongue inside. She sucked him in eagerly, grinding her hips into his pelvis, stabbing her fingers into his hair. Her small incisors grazed the inside of his lower lip, and he felt a brief stab of pain.
She’d bitten him. He jerked back, probing the tiny wound with his tongue. He knew that dhampires were forbidden to take blood of any kind. That they were taught to loathe the very taste of it, even though it could sustain them as well as it could any Opir or Darketan.
Yet she had bitten him. Had she forgotten who and what she was? Was she reverting, becoming something a lifetime among humans had suppressed?
She pulled him down again, putting a quick and decisive end to Damon’s speculation. This time she used her own tongue to tease his into her mouth. He felt the sensation of it all the way down into his belly, and his cock swelled until the ache exceeded anything he’d suffered in the hollow when he was fighting to survive.
Alexia couldn’t have missed the pressure of his groin in the cradle of her thighs, but she didn’t stop. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist, rocking and thrusting as if they were both naked and she was begging him to enter her.
Damon groaned. This couldn’t be happening. Nothing about this was sane, or right. But the more desperate his need, the less rational he became.
It was instinct, pure and simple. This couldn’t end until he was inside her, thrusting deep, hearing her gasps and moans of pleasure. And surrender.
As if her own thoughts had merged with his, Alexia began to tear at his shirt. She managed to unbutton it without ripping it to shreds and clawed at his undershirt, seeking flesh. Her fingers brushed his chest, scraping him with her nails as if she wanted his heart, as well.
Damon took more care with her shirt, some remnant of sense guiding his hands, but Alexia wouldn’t allow it. She tore it open herself and ripped her close-fitting tank from neckline to hem, baring her breasts.
They were perfect, like the rest of her, but Damon was too hungry to admire them for long. He bent to take one nipple into his mouth. Alexia arched upward, letting her head fall back, gasping as he suckled her, hard and fast, with no attempt at gentleness. His teeth grazed her tender flesh, accidentally drawing her blood as she had drawn his.
It was sweet. Incredibly sweet, like the taste of her mouth or the way he imagined the rest of her would be.
But he had not forgotten his vow never to take her blood. A vow that seemed increasingly impossible to keep. For it was as if, somehow, a part of his blood already flowed through her veins.
No, not his blood. He had never taken dhampir blood before, and it was to be expected that its signature would be utterly different from anything with which he was familiar. But this was much more subtle than the unique amalgamation of strains that came of her mixed heritage. It was so muted that he couldn’t identify it, but it had the effect of releasing the last, pitiful scraps of his reason.
He moved to her other breast, licking and nipping, raising himself high enough to work his hand under her waistband. He found her undergarment, damp with perspiration, and reached beneath.
She was wet and hot and ready, pushing up against him with an uninhibited boldness that took his breath away in spite of all she’d already done to him. He stroked her, distantly aware of her moans of pleasure as she found his cock and rubbed it through his pants, tracing its contours and molding it with her fingers. He closed his eyes and groaned when she began to unzip him. Only moments now. A few quick movements to free themselves of their clothes, and then—
The muzzle of a gun barrel came up hard against the side of Damon’s head.
“Get off her,” Michael snarled, “before I blow your frickin’ bloodsucker brains out.”
Chapter 5
Alexia heard her partner’s voice as if through muffling layers of gauze that seemed to fill her head and keep her thoughts from comprehending what was truly happening. Her body throbbed—not with pain, but pleasure—and her breasts ached as if she had scratched them on the sharp little branches of the manzanitas growing nearby.
She opened her eyes. It took her a moment to recognize what she was seeing: two faces, both male and as pitiless as the Court that had condemned Garret to a lifetime of servitude.
“Cover her up,” one of the men said—Michael, his blond hair mussed and his face smudged with dirt. The other man, the one whose scent still bathed her skin, laid something on top of her…his jacket, still warm from the heat of his body.
“Alexia,” Michael said, staring down at her. “Are you all right?”
No. Not all right. The pleasure was beginning to fade, replaced by a sense of something profoundly wrong with her body. She began to remember what had happened since Damon—yes, that was the other man—had left her alone, hot and shivering and barely aware that he had gone away.
Then there had been brief moments of lucidity between much longer spans of darkness, the consequences of the illness raging inside her body. When Damon had come back for her, she had been half out of her mind. More than half. She had known she needed something, something important, that only Damon could give her.
Garret. She had said something about Garret. And then she’d forgotten about her half brother, forgotten everything, and…
She felt frantically under the borrowed jacket. Her uniform shirt and undershirt were torn wide open. The bandage was gone, and her shoulder wound was nothing but a patch of puckered skin, cool to the touch. She brushed her lips with her fingers. They were bruised and sore.
God. What had she done? What had he done?
“I can kill him now if you want me to,” Michael said, his voice ringing with hatred. He held the muzzle of his gun to Damon’s temple, just as when they’d first met. Damon looked steadily at Alexia.
She tried to sit up, but a surging tide of dizziness forced her back down. The borrowed jacket slipped to the ground, and she pulled her own jacket closed over her breasts as she fought to clear her mind.
“No,” she said, as steadily as she could. “It wasn’t what you thought, Michael.”
“Then what was it? It looked to me like he was about ready to tear your chest open.”
Was that what he’d seen? Which would be worse—his believing that Damon meant to take her blood or that they were having sex in the middle of a dangerous mission?
