Eternal Day

by Kerrion, Jade;

  An elderly man from Haven waved Erich over. “He speaks too quickly,” he said in the language of Haven. “What is he saying? Do you understand?”

  “Hey!” The antagonistic man from Aeternae Noctis shook his fist in Erich’s face. “This is a conversation for people. There is no place for vampires here.”

  Erich shrugged. “I’m not a vampire. I’m not even an elder vampire. I’m an immortali.”

  The man blanched. Blubbering in terror, he fled toward the vampires standing by the entrance. The people of Aeternae Noctis gaped at Erich, as if expecting to be attacked and slaughtered. The people of Haven looked bewildered, but unafraid.

  What am I? Enemy or friend?

  Erich glanced over his shoulder and saw Tera chuckle. Her gray eyes shone, a phenomenon that happened far too rarely. Her smile jolted loose a memory of a private moment shared on a moonlit night. She had idly flipped through his art portfolio, and for an instant, that smile had touched her lips.

  After she had left, he had searched his portfolio for the drawing that inspired her smile. One seemed likely—a charcoal sketch of two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands, gazing out at a river—but why would something so simple move the icrathari warlord?

  Because it’s not all she is.

  Erich grimaced. With effort, he refocused his attention on the excited little boy beside him. Anders’s new home was located in a tall building. The marvelous contraption—the elevator—carried them up to one of the highest floors and opened into a corridor of closed doors. One of those doors led into an apartment with a large living room overlooking the park. During the day, the sunlight would enter the dome and flood the apartment with light.

  “It’s a wonderful space,” Erich said.

  “It is.” Jorgen cast Marta a quick glance. “What did it cost?”

  Erich tensed at the sudden anxiety in Jorgen’s voice. “I don’t understand.”

  “After we left Haven, the daevas attacked the domed city—the one that moves.”

  “Aeternae Noctis?”

  Jorgen nodded. “They came, again and again, but the icrathari and vampires drove them back. Were the daevas looking for us? Were they trying to save us from the icrathari?”

  Erich hesitated. “I…don’t know.”

  Marta wrung her hands. “The icrathari have been kind to us, but the daevas have protected us for generations, ever since the last war. Life wasn’t easy in Haven, but at least we understood our enemy was the heat of the sun. Here, we’re in the middle of a war; we’re pawns in a conflict we don’t understand. What’s going on, Erich? Tell us.”

  He turned away to pace their living room, filled with comforts that he had seen neither in Aeternae Noctis nor in Haven. Erich struggled to find the right words. “The icrathari and the daevas both believe their calling was to save mankind.”

  Jorgen frowned. “If they share a calling, why are they at odds?”

  “Probably because they don’t agree on how to attain it.”

  Anders tugged at Erich’s shirt. “Is Canya going to die?”

  The child’s innocent question dug claws into Erich’s spine. “What do you mean?”

  “We heard the angel with the long braid say that now that all the people were here in Callisto, and that you were here too, Canya would come for us.”

  Erich’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  Jorgen nodded. “I heard Tera say it too. Something about trapping Canya between land and sky.”

  “But…” Erich’s brow furrowed. “Between land and sky…between the two domes—Callisto on the ground, and Aeternae Noctis in the air. They’ll burn her alive in the superheated air that propels Aeternae Noctis.”

  “But why?” Marta demanded. “Canya is our protector.”

  “Canya is Tera’s enemy and the last of the daeva leaders. If she dies, daeva society falls apart.”

  “What would it mean?” Jorgen asked.

  “That the icrathari will rule, unchallenged.”

  “But what does it mean for us?”

  “I don’t know, but the trap…Tera—” The trap won’t work. Tera has no idea how many daevas Canya can unleash. “I must warn Canya. I can’t let her spring the trap.”

  Jorgen grabbed Erich’s arm. “But you’ll betray the icrathari, Tera. You…” He suddenly faltered, his face paling as he stared at Erich’s lengthening fangs.

  “I...what?”

  Jorgen turned his face away. “I’m sorry. It is not my place, but the way you looked at her, I thought—”

  Erich swallowed painfully through the tightness in his throat. Had his fighting instincts flared at the thought of his daeva friends losing their lives, or of Tera losing hers? Thoughts careened into each other like birds terrified into flight. I don’t know what I’m doing, or why. I don’t know who I’m trying to save. Nothing in my head or heart makes sense…

  But I have to do something. “Do you know of any way out of Callisto, apart from that main entrance?”

  Jorgen shook his head. “No. How will you get past the vampires?”

  Erich glanced down at the moonlight-drenched town, and then up at the sky. “Tera said that on the night of the full moon, the citizens are allowed to travel to other cities, escorted by vampires. Do you have a hooded cloak?”

  Jorgen chuckled under his breath. “I have a jacket with a hood.”

  Jacket? Erich brushed over the unfamiliar word. “Will it conceal my face?”

  Jorgen hurried away into his bedroom and returned with a short coat of questionable style, but it fit Erich, and he drew the hood down to conceal most of his face.

  He was about to walk out of the door when Jorgen spoke quietly. “Are you certain of what you are about to do? You will break her trust.”

  “Tera’s?”

  Jorgen nodded. “Whatever her reasons for transforming you, she is showing you favor now, inviting you into Callisto like an honored guest instead of a prisoner. If you betray her—”

  Erich braced against the memory of the venom and fury in Tera’s voice as she railed against Elsker’s treachery. She took betrayal personally. She did not forgive lightly. What little respect she might have garnered for him from their joint rescue of the people of Haven, he would demolish with the choice he was about to make.

  He spoke slowly, quietly. “Canya and the daevas saved me when Tera abandoned me to die. They welcomed me and gave me a home in the caverns without motive or demand. They protected you without enslaving you. The choice is obvious.” He drew a deep breath through the clawing pain in his chest. “I owe Tera nothing.” But I have to save her. I have to stop Canya from attacking with her daeva armies.

  Jorgen nodded. “Should I come—?”

  “No. I will move faster on my own.” Erich managed a faint smile. “Be safe, and keep watch over your own.”

  “Will you come back?” Anders asked, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

  Erich shook his head. “I don’t think I can.”

  He left the apartment and made his way to the steel gate, where a long line of people, dressed in their warmest clothes, waited and grumbled softly. “What’s taking so long?” he asked quietly of the woman in front of him.

  “Someone probably didn’t have his authorization in order.”

  “Authorization?”

  “To leave the city.” The woman huffed. “Do you think Siri would ever allow an unorderly migration? Of course not. The documentation took forever to complete—where am I going, is the stay temporary or permanent?” Her eyes narrowed. “You completed your documentation and received approval, right?”

  Erich’s gaze traveled along the line of people. A young man at the front opened his eyes wide as a vampire stepped up to him and held a small metal device close to the man’s eyes. Moments later, the vampire nodded. “You’re clear to leave. Next in line.”

  He grimaced as he stepped out of the line. Leaving Callisto would not be as simple as he had hoped.

  Less than a half hour later, Jorgen, Marta, a
nd Anders joined the line, waiting patiently until they arrived at the checkpoint. Smiling and using a wretched mangling of languages that neither group could comprehend, Jorgen’s family gestured to the outside.

  “No, we can’t let you out.” A vampire scowled at him. “You need permission to leave—”

  “Please,” Jorgen said in both languages. “Walk.” He emphasized the word with gestures.

  “Are you crazy?” The vampire rolled his eyes. “Absolutely not. The hills are crawling with daevas. We have elder vampires on the ground, three icrathari in the air, but that’s nothing compared to the numbers the daevas can marshal if they attack en masse.”

  “Short walk.” Jorgen beamed, apparently having understood none of the vampire’s tirade. “Pretty night.”

  “Take a walk in the park.” The vampire pointed over Jorden’s head. “Damn it, is there anyone here who speaks this man’s language?”

  The man standing behind Jorgen glowered. “Get him out of the way. We’re wasting time, and we’ve got a long way to go.”

  “All right. Move aside.” The vampire put a hand on Jorgen’s shoulder to usher him away, but Jorgen jolted and stumbled. His fists flailed into the man behind him, shoving the man into a young woman.

  She shrieked, and the beefy man who accompanied her grabbed her accoster by his shirt. Cloth ripped in his hand. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hey, hey, break it up!” The vampire waded into the bickering crowd. He grabbed the offending humans by the scruff of their neck and tossed them, not too gently, out of the fight.

  From the shadows of a nearby building, Erich leaped off the ledge and out of the door. As he vanished into the darkness outside the dome, he heard the vampire’s annoyed voice. “Vampirism was supposed to be glamourous, not this inane business of crowd control.”

  A muscle twitched in Erich’s cheek. He hoped the vampire knew that inane crowd control was better than dying brutally in a vicious fight—one that he had to prevent.

  Perhaps Tera aspired to entrap Canya, but Canya would sacrifice anything and everything to win, especially if she thought she were trapped and had no choice. She would throw everything she had into the battle. How could three icrathari, three elder vampires, and their vampire army stand against the uncountable hordes of daevas?

  They could not.

  Tera was setting a trap for an enemy she could not take down.

  “And he’s off…” Siri words, spoken softly, were like a stake through Tera’s heart. The three icrathari stood in the chamber in Malum Turris; Siri hovering over her monitors, Ashra pacing the room, and Tera, standing silently in a corner.

  Tera did not need to study the screens to know that Erich was heading straight for the mountains. He was returning to the daevas, returning to Canya.

  His actions did not surprise her. The fact that it hurt did.

  Siri continued. “He’s quick-thinking, yet more proof of his non-insanity. If you’re lucky, our scheme will play out as predicted. He’ll run straight to Canya to warn her of the trap. Canya, true to form, will come charging in to spring it, playing right into our hands. Your plan is brilliant, Tera, and it gives me a chance to test the laser defense system I installed on the four cities. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work.”

  Why did it give her such little comfort, then?

  Because the plan was based on him choosing Canya over me. Betraying me.

  Which he did.

  Tera ground her teeth but only succeeded in spreading the tension from her jaw into her shoulders.

  Sound riffled through the chamber; the air pressure altered subtly as Ashra spread her wings. “We did not have to use Tera’s plan. We could have found another way.”

  Tera stiffened. “You charged me with finding and bringing Canya in. Siri says my plan is likely to work. What’s the problem?”

  “The cost,” Ashra said. “To you and to him.”

  To Erich? “There is no cost.”

  The icrathari queen shook her head. Her long, silver curls rippled down her back. “Don’t you think I know what it is like to be torn between duty and love?”

  Love? Tera chose her words carefully. “I don’t feel any conflict.”

  “You did not have to make that sacrifice. We have to find Canya, but it does not have to be right now, or any time in the immediate future. The domes will keep the human population content for a while.”

  “Until they run out of room.” Siri shrugged and waved off Ashra’s glare. “But that’s not going to happen for a few decades, unless they breed like rabbits.”

  Tera cut in. “There is no sacrifice. Besides, the humans, and those formerly human, don’t understand time the way we do. They feel urgency. They think in minutes, hours, and weeks, instead of decades, centuries, and millennia.”

  “A serious flaw—it’s probably genetic,” Ashra acknowledged. “Jaden feels it too.”

  “And Rafael,” Siri added.

  And Erich.

  “But really, they’re wrong,” Siri continued with another flick of her wrist. “This thousand-year desolation is a sliver in Earth’s natural history. In the grand scheme of things, it is but a blip—not even a speed bump, as they used to say back in the twenty-first century. What everyone lacks is perspective.”

  “The humans have only eighty years—if they’re lucky—to accomplish something with their lives. Each second weighs on them…” As it has on Erich—each second of the two hundred and fifty years he spent hating me. How can I overcome three lifetimes of hatred?

  I can’t. I don’t even know how to begin.

  “Tera?” Siri called softly.

  Only then did Tera realize her voice had trailed into silence, her thoughts into abstraction. The other two icrathari were staring at her curiously. Time to head that off. “I have work to do, with your permission.”

  Ashra tilted her head and studied Tera with a cool expression. Their several-millennia-long friendship probably deserved the courtesy of a heart-to-heart conversation, but Tera had neither the time nor capacity for it.

  Not when her brilliant plan had ripped out her heart.

  Erich betrayed me for Canya. His choice is made, as is mine.

  Tera’s chest clenched against unbelievable pain—pain that made her want to retreat into a dark, quiet place to hide her injuries from those who knew her best.

  But she did not have time for that either. Her task lay before her. She owed it to all the humans, Siri, Ashra, and ultimately, the Great Mother.

  “Very well.” Ashra’s wings rippled before folding against her back. The light in the room crowned her, glittering off her gold-plated wing tips. “Prepare for war.”

  Chapter 12

  Erich leaped from rock to rock, easily scaling the mountainside as he had done so many times in the past. Every handhold was exploited as the strength and grace of his immortal body propelled him up and forward.

  He clambered onto a ledge and turned. Far below, four domed cities glittered in the night. Aeternae Noctis, like a dark angel, hovered between them—the nerve center and beating heart of all life on Earth.

  He had to protect Aeternae Noctis for the sake of the people it protected. A muscle twitched in his cheek. His hands curled into fists, his nails digging into the palm of his hand. He had to protect Tera, even if it meant he could never return.

  The caves welcomed him back. Erich smiled tightly. This, here, was home. Two hundred and fifty years. It had felt like infinity to him. What’s another two hundred and fifty years? Another five hundred? Another thousand?

  Nothing.

  I lived it without her. I can live it without her.

  Yet even his mental voice trembled from the lie.

  His eyes quickly adjusted to the dim light and his body to the cool temperatures as he sprinted through the caves, choosing paths that would lead him past major daeva colonies.

  The first one he found was empty; it had not been occupied for a while. Frowning, he followed the winding path
deeper into the mountains until he was beneath the earth. The sound of running water beckoned him through narrow tunnels and vast underground caverns—sometimes softening into a steady drip, sometimes expanding into a deafening roar.

  He paused to take a sip of the cool, clear water for pleasure rather than out of necessity. Daevas and immortali did not need water, yet there was so much water down here where it was of no use to anyone.

  Familiar scents wafted, scarcely discernable. The air pressure changed subtly.

  Wings.

  He spun around, instinctively bringing one of his arms across his throat and the other over his stomach.

  Canya’s talons tore through his forearms.

  The smell of fresh blood purged out subtler scents. More potent than adrenaline, it shot straight into his brain and flooded his nervous system. He snarled, his incisors lengthening into fangs as he lunged.

  Erich’s superior weight slammed Canya to the ground, but she was older and stronger. She twisted out from under him. “You sold them out. You murdered them all!”

  He grabbed her wrists to keep her from clawing out his eyes. “No! They’re alive. They’re in Callisto. Haven collapsed—you know it was on the verge of collapse for years. They would have died, all of them, if not for Aeternae Noctis.”

  “The humans?” Canya suddenly stiffened. Something flicked through her eyes, the change of expression too quick and subtle to decipher. “What about my daevas? They’re dead.”

  Erich’s heart clenched. “I know. I passed abandoned colonies.”

  “We lost hundreds—especially the young and the old who could not fly fast enough to escape the sunlight. Tera killed more with a single scream than she ever could with her claws and wings.” Canya’s voice vibrated with fury.