Daysider (Nightsiders) (10 page)

Alexia sank back on her heels. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she whispered, the heat of anger draining away with her sigh. “It was part of the Treaty, a system developed so the leeches wouldn’t be driven to raid and kidnap citizens to feed their hunger. Can you justify the way Nightsiders live?”

Damon could hardly bear the raw pain in her voice. He understood that in spite of Alexia’s hostility toward the Opiri, the hatred she had expressed for their way of life, she believed in something better than the fragile Armistice that kept Opiri and humans from each other’s throats. Her sincere question was a revelation to him, an admission of hope.

Hope Eirene had shared.

“You and I,” he said thickly, “can have no effect on the decisions of those we serve. It is beyond our power.”

“Is it?” She placed her palm on his chest. “Why
do
you still serve them, Damon? You hate what they did to Eirene. From what you’ve said, they’d do the same to any Darketan who cared for another. Why doesn’t all your kind leave and start your own society?”

“Like the illegal colony?” he asked.

“No. It would be different, because
you
are different.” Her eyes were no longer dull with illness or dark with anger. They shone with the reflection of excitement, as if she could see what she envisioned as surely as she could see his face. “What if there’s a way to create what you need, the same way the Enclave used Darketan blood to create the drugs?”

He looked down at her small hand, so delicate in spite of its strength, wondering if she could feel how hard and fast his heart was beating. “Even if that were possible,” he said, “why do you think any Darketans would wish to leave?”

“If they’re like you—”

He pulled out of her reach. “You don’t know me, Alexia,” he said harshly. “Eirene
was
different. But most of my kind would never consider what you suggest. It wouldn’t even occur to them. They know only one way to live.”

“
You
could teach them. Damon—”

“We would never be allowed to leave Erebus permanently.”

“Because they’re afraid of you,” she said, as if she had finally understood some great mystery.

“The Opiri have nothing to fear from us,” he said bitterly. “But we are rare mutations, so—”

“Mutations?”

“You didn’t know?”

“We’ve all heard the rumors and theories, but if Aegis knew, they didn’t see any reason to tell us.” Her mouth tightened. “How does it happen?”

Damon closed his eyes. “During the Awakening and the War after,” he said, “when the Opiri were converting many humans to become their soldiers, it sometimes happened that the process failed to complete. It was believed to be a result of an allergic reaction to Opir blood, which resulted in unforeseen genetic changes.”

“Was?”

“It happens rarely now, since few humans are permitted to convert.”

She leaned toward him again, reaching out to stroke the tense muscles under his ribs. “How long ago were
you
converted?”

The distraction of her intimate touch almost robbed him of his ability to speak. “I don’t remember,” he said, his voice roughening. “Loss of memory is another side effect of an incomplete conversion.”

Her fingers worked into the waistband of his pants. “The eldest Nightsiders claim they were always on Earth, even before humans,” she murmured. “But
you
were human once. And now you’re something else, with insights and abilities they don’t have. That’s why they’re afraid of you, and why you have to leave Erebus, go far beyond any vampire’s reach.”

Flattening his hand, Damon pressed his palm over her fingers and held them still. “That would be to the benefit of the Enclave, would it not?” he said. “They would be pleased to see the Darketans abandon the Citadel.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But you know that’s not why I said it.”

“Would the Enclave welcome us if we went to them?”

She lowered her gaze and didn’t answer. Damon hardly noticed. His desire for her was devouring him, a forbidden temptation that made him crave not only her body but her spirit, the unique spirit he had met in only one other in all the course of his existence. It was all he could do to keep from pulling her into his arms, forgetting her bizarre ideas and existing only in the “now” Alexia had spoken of before this pointless discussion.

But he couldn’t. He respected her too much. He began to rise, but Alexia gripped his pants and pulled him back down. She slid her hand up to his collarbone and curled her fingers around the back of his neck.

“When I’m gone,” she said, “I want you to promise me to think about what I’ve said. It’s almost all I have to give you.”

Despair and defiance rose like a tempest in Damon’s chest. He caught Alexia’s face between his hands. “I said I would not let you die.”

Her smile was sad. “You’re not a god.”

“There must be something—”

“Let’s not talk about it now,” she said. “There are other things we could be doing....”

Sires help me,
Damon thought. “Let me go to the Enclave,” he said. “There is still a chance—”

“You’d never make it in time.”

“Then I’ll track down the Opir your partner was following. He may have the patch, or know where it is.”

Alexia put a finger to his lips. “I want only one thing of you, Damon. Let’s finish what we started.

“Make love to me.”

Chapter 9

T
he fire rose hot in Damon’s eyes, and Alexia knew she had won.

Not her life. That she had already lost. But something almost as precious, something she could take with her into the darkness, the memory of becoming one with the man she—

No.
That word meant nothing to Damon, or to her. She held his gaze, asking him again with her silence.

“It isn’t safe,” he said hoarsely.

“No one has come near us since you went on recon,” she said. “If they’d wanted to come after us, they would have by now.”

“And the Lamia?”

“I’m willing to risk it, if you are.”

Maybe it was asking too much of him after all. He was so still that she thought he was going to refuse. But then the fire in his eyes claimed his body, and he pulled her to him, seizing her mouth with his.

Alexia had been kissed before. Not often, because of what she was; there was nothing to prevent dhampires from having relationships with each other, ranging from casual sex to cohabitation, but few humans felt comfortable in an intimate relationship with them. The few dhampir lovers Alexia had taken had been friends, no more; her one human lover had left her when he couldn’t cope with her vampire blood, even though she never so much as grazed him with her teeth.

With Damon, none of that mattered. For the first time, as his lips claimed hers, she felt a barrier between them crumble, one so deep inside her that she hadn’t even realized it existed. It wasn’t just because of the closeness of their bodies, or how they would soon be closer still. It was more than mere emotion. It was oneness with another being, for the first time in her life.

She opened her mouth to welcome his tongue, feeling his hand work its way down her side to the waistband of her pants, tugging the tail of her shirt free and sliding his palm over her stomach.
He rubbed her skin with slow, almost lazy strokes and began to explore the rest of her face with his lips: brow, cheeks, chin, jawline. He suckled the lobe of her ear, provoking shivers that began at the top of her head and ended just below his caressing hand. He grazed her with his teeth, just for an instant, and licked along the ridge of her collarbone.

At the same time, he had managed to undo nearly all the buttons of her shirt and was working on the last as he kissed her lips again. He rested his hand on her right breast, cupping it through the thin fabric of her undershirt. Alexia gasped as he began to massage her, rolling her nipple between his fingers without baring her skin.

Then his mouth was on her breast, wetting the fabric with his tongue while his fingers found the fly of her pants. When he had unbuttoned her pants and unzipped them, he pushed her undershirt up above her breasts and resumed kissing and suckling them with a hunger she knew was as potent as her desire. He flicked his tongue over the tips of her nipples and then kissed his way down, between her breasts and below the arc of her ribs. He pushed the waistband of her pants down to her hips, and she arched her body so that he could pull the pants all the way off.

Then he stopped.

“Damon?” she whispered, lost in a haze of pleasure.

His eyes, when they met hers, were almost those of a stranger. But not a dangerous one, not like what he had been before he had left with Michael.

The emotion was there, yes—passion laced with lust and bewilderment, as if he had as much trouble believing this was happening as she did.

“It’s all right, Damon,” she said, pulling him down again. “I’m all right, and I want this. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

Whatever had made him hesitate, her words broke the spell. He bent to kiss her navel and continued below, working toward the powerful ache that only he could cure. He reached her tight nest of curls and slid his tongue into the tender depression beneath.

Alexia moaned as he tasted the soft, moist flesh, stroking and exploring. She tangled her fingers in his thick hair, urging him to drink deeply. He licked his way to her entrance and dipped in, just for an instant, before working back up to her clitoris. He took it between his lips and sucked, drawing Alexia to a nearly unbearable pinnacle of need. Pleasure became pain, pain pleasure. She began to throb and tremble, balancing on the brink of a fall that would never end.

But when she stepped over the edge, Damon was there to catch her. She felt herself pulse wildly against his mouth, felt him lick the moisture from her swollen lips as if it were the only sustenance he would ever need.

But he wasn’t finished, and almost as soon as it was over she felt a renewed ache between her thighs—an overpowering need to be filled with everything Damon could give her.

He licked his lips, savoring the sweet taste of Alexia’s body. He was not ignorant of the many flavors of a woman, but never had he experienced it this way before. Not even with—

He pushed the memories away. Alexia deserved everything he had to offer her, and he needed to be inside her as much as he needed blood to stay alive.

Positioning himself over her, he unzipped his fly, too impatient to remove his pants. She spread her thighs wide to accommodate him, and he settled between them, his cock briefly resting between her stomach and his. Then he lifted himself, shuddering as her hand found him and guided him in.

His need was too intense to control. With a long, slow thrust he entered her, listening to her gasp of surprise and moan of pleasure as she felt him begin to move. She was tight and very wet, and he knew for all her casualness about sex that she hadn’t been with a man for a long time.

But she didn’t ask him to be gentle, and for all his efforts to move slowly, his hunger continued to drive him. He thrust deeply and pulled out, thrust hard again, and all the while Alexia gripped his shoulders and urged him on. Her head rolled back and her eyelids fluttered. She cried out his name.

When she finally came again, pulsing hard around his cock, he followed her quickly, pumping fast to fill her with seed that could never create life. He released his breath and buried his face in her neck, still tucked inside her, reveling in the scent of her perspiration and the hot femininity of her sex.

But this wasn’t only about his pleasure, his need. He lifted himself up again so that he could see her face. It was flushed and relaxed, but when her eyes opened and her lips parted to display her teeth, he knew she wasn’t really seeing him. She wasn’t aware what was happening when her incisors grazed his neck, pressed gently down and pierced the skin. She had no idea that she was saving herself as she licked up the blood and sucked it from his veins, but for him it was pleasure even beyond pushing deep inside her body, and he knew it was the same for her.

He wasn’t forcing her. Her own body was doing what instinct told it to do. She was keeping her promise to him, and he wasn’t going to stop her, not even if she hated him afterward.

A strange feeling overwhelmed Damon, and it was so unfamiliar that he didn’t recognize it until he heard his heart beating in time with hers.

It was joy. And as he felt Alexia’s tongue trail over his skin and his blood flow into her mouth, he knew this moment, this emotion, would never come again. When she jerked again beneath him in a third orgasm, her thighs locking around his waist and her gasps of pleasure mingling with his, he thanked whatever gods might be that they had found each other for this brief moment in time.

* * *

When Alexia woke, everything had changed.

She felt it first in her heart, beating strong and steady for the first time since her patch had been stripped from her skin. Next she noticed that the pain under her arm was gone, and when she felt the wound she found it cool and dry to the touch, hardly even a trace of a scab remaining. Her whole body hummed with energy and an inexplicable happiness.

Breathing in a lungful of late-morning air, Alexia realized that all her senses had been renewed, sight and smell and hearing, as if she had taken one of the illegal drugs that were said to create a sense of oneness with the world that could change a human’s experience for a lifetime.

But the only drug she had ingested was her joining with the man beside her, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, his expression so relaxed that she realized just how much he had suffered trying to protect her and keep her alive. Here he had no masters, no ugly memories...only peace, for a few precious hours.

She had new memories now—
good
memories of lying beside Damon, quivering with excitement as he found all the most sensitive spots she’d forgotten, tasting her breasts and farther below, where his tongue had searched out the very center of her need.

And she remembered him moving inside her, fitting so perfectly that she could imagine it was her first time, her first lover, and there could never be another. She remembered her own moans and cries as he thrust deeper, harder, carrying her into a white-hot sun of pleasure beyond description.

After that...Alexia sighed, closing her eyes as the warmth of the rising sun, creeping over the hills to the east, bathed her face and shoulders. There had been those few moments of utter bliss at the end, an explosion of sensation that had blotted out all thought and consciousness, everything but that eternal moment of ecstasy. She could still feel her body humming with it.

Had Damon felt the same thing? Did it really matter? They had comforted each other, giving and taking in equal measure. That was all anyone could ask.

More than
she
had ever asked for. Or could ever expect to come again.

Unwilling to wake Damon, Alexia rose silently and went for her pack and canteen. Her balance had returned, along with the strength in her legs. She knelt to pick up the canteen and realized it was nearly empty. So was Damon’s. Almost certainly he had given her most of the water when she’d been ill, but she was pretty sure even Daysiders needed to drink something other than blood.

There was a creek within two kilometers of their current location, but it lay at the foot of the hills to the east, at the edge of the very same valley where the illegal colony stood. Even though she and Damon had been left alone for over twenty-four hours, Alexia had no illusions about the risk they would be taking just to replenish their supply of water.

The very idea that she could be thinking of taking a hike through the hills startled Alexia. She paused to take stock of her body again, listening to the even throb of her heart, the clean feel of air in her lungs, the healthy hunger that reminded her how long ago she’d eaten.

Her first thought had been right. It was exactly as if she’d taken a drug. The most powerful drug anyone could imagine.

The canteen dropped from Alexia’s hand. She touched her mouth. The taste was faint, almost imperceptible, but it was there.

Blood.

She shook her head fiercely, but the idea would not be dislodged. Surely it was impossible. She couldn’t have done it without being aware of it.

But she hadn’t been fully aware the first time she had offered herself to Damon, when she’d been too ill to know what she was doing. And there was that blank spot in her memory at the very pinnacle of the night’s lovemaking.

Could sex with Damon have so completely erased her inhibitions, everything she believed in?

How many other things you once believed have you abandoned?
she asked herself numbly. Would it be so incredible that her body, in a state of ecstasy and abandon, should seek what it needed...especially if the one who could fulfill that need was not only willing, but eager to give it?

She turned to look at Damon, struggling with the urge to shake him awake and demand an answer. His face was still peaceful, as innocent as any Daysider’s could be. Almost content.

Was he content because he had finally gotten her to do exactly what he wanted without forcing her? Had he taken something else for himself in the process?

Probing her neck and shoulders with her fingertips, Alexia could find no tenderness that would indicate the presence of a bite. No, Damon hadn’t bitten her. But that didn’t mean
she
—

Alexia dropped her head into her hands. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t really one of the forty percenters after all. Her illness had been temporary, and she would have recovered, anyway.

But she knew in her heart that wasn’t true. Because of the “nice lady,” who had saved her life so long ago.

Recognizing the danger of letting herself fall into her own dark thoughts, she pulled on her pack and considered what she had to do. She couldn’t afford to forget that the shooters were probably still out there, even though they’d left her and Damon alone all night. But if the Daysider was right, the colonists would attack them only if they approached the settlement.

As long as she could walk and fire a gun, she would finish this mission, no matter how hard it was to accept what she had done to keep herself alive. What Damon had let happen.

And she could finally see Michael to his rest.

For a few moments she watched Damon intently. She could see he was sleeping lightly now, and that meant he would be able to smell or sense any enemy who intruded on the camp. She had to trust he would be safe. She untied Michael’s VS130 from her pack and set it down at Damon’s side along with the pistol he had given her the previous day.

Turning away with a heavy heart, she picked up the faint trail she had followed yesterday, working her way back to the place where Michael had died. The scrapes in the ground that marked the struggle were still there, and so were the spatters of blood, now crusted over and disintegrating into the soil.

But Michael’s body was gone.

Alexia shrugged out of her pack, dropped it at her feet and rushed to the place where her partner had lain. There were more marks in the soil but no additional blood, no indications that someone—or some
thing
—might have dragged his body away. No sign that the Orlok, or others like it, had returned to finish off what it had killed.