Twilight Seeker: Daybreaker #1

by DaCosta, Pippa

  I reached the line of vampireguard. They were all watching the carriages, blocking my path. “Step aside, please.”

  “And you are?” Like all vampires, this one looked down his nose at me and saw bloodslave. Those thoughts were as clear as day in his cold, silvery eyes. He’d slaughtered many. If he’d served in the war, as most had, he’d killed unchecked, and here I was, a cow asking a king to move aside.

  “Excuse me?” My words were polite, but my tone was not.

  The vampire beside him nudged him in the arm. “You’ll want to step aside, Caine. That’s Miss Lynher Aris.”

  My name was usually enough to settle things, but Caine’s gaze reflected none of the respect it should have. His attention trawled lower and lingered on my neck. My high-necked jacket was buttoned up tightly, preventing him from seeing my pulse beat, but he heard the thump of my blood all the same. For all their rules and profound sense of loyalty to their queen, Caine, like the rest, was a creature driven by need. Had he been able to see my delicate neck and the blood pumping beneath, he’d have fixated on it. While he’d be a fool to try to take me, some didn’t possess enough control to resist the bloodcall. Perhaps he wasn’t one of the old guard, but one of the new, hence his inability to rein himself in.

  I switched my glare to his comrade, who posessed more sense.

  “Get your shit together,” Caine’s friend said. He grabbed his forearm, snapping him out of his thrall. “Now is not the time to start trouble.”

  Caine grunted and rolled his shoulders, shaking off the hunger. He yanked out of his companion’s grip, baring a hint of sharp teeth.

  He could posture all night, but I had a guest to greet. With Caine’s glare burning between my shoulders, I stepped into the space the vampireguard had opened and faced the carriage, trying not to think about how a dozen of the guard, those like Caine, stood within striking distance. I wouldn’t see an attack coming. A few drops of their venom would see me lost to their control. But they wouldn’t attack, not here. The Night Station’s delicate balance assured my safety, as long as I stayed behind the platform’s white line.

  The train engine huffed, the iron beast restless to be chomping up the rails once more, but it would wait. If this passenger was Ghost, the whole damn world would hold its breath and wait.

  A figure moved inside the carriage. Just one. Alone. I expected an overseer to be neck-deep in guards but quickly reassessed my assumption. Having guards would make him appear weak and unable to protect himself. No. Ghost would be alone because nobody dared to touch him. Not here. Not anywhere.

  I’d never entertained an overseer.

  In two years, no one and nothing had tested me like this.

  A vampire stepped into the carriage doorway. The station lamps tried to warm his face and failed. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t… him. He looked chiseled from stone. Sharp cheekbones accompanied sharper eyes. His mouth was a cruel, pink slash across pale skin. His dark hair, cropped short at the sides and slightly longer on top, spoke of his cutting edges and angles. He appeared no older than me, but vampires didn’t age. He could be twenty-three or twenty-three hundred. Some—nay, most would call him handsome, even pretty with those cheekbones. All I saw was a beast with the blood of a billion people on his hands—hands clad in silk gloves. This beast commanded legions. He made rivers of blood flow. A flick of his wrist and thousands died.

  Rage heated my veins. The vampires would all sense it on me, but combined with my pinned smile and coy glances, they’d assume I was aroused. And I was, but not the way they all took for granted.

  He descended the three carriage steps and paused on the platform to straighten his cuffs. His black shoes gleamed. His expertly tailored suit fit his tall, imposing frame, wrapping the vampire in sophistication and poise. Did he feast on his tailors after they’d dressed him?

  His gaze lifted and silence befell the platform. Even the train’s hissing faded into the nowhere space between one moment and the next.

  I should have looked down, should have knelt and averted my eyes, but I made a mistake. I stared back. His gaze ravaged mine, as though he had somehow buried himself inside my mind without so much as crossing the platform to greet me. The most powerful of vampires couldn’t read minds, but they could sense strong emotions. He already knew how I seethed.

  His lips curved into a thin smile.

  My pulse thumped its siren, alerting every vampire here to my fear. Still, I stared and felt myself falling, coming undone. No vampire had dared charm me since I’d become a host. This one walked a thin line. An overseer he might be, but we had rules he must abide by, just like the rest of my guests. His silver-touched eyes shimmered and his touch on my mind daggered deeper. A test, to see if the rumors about me were true. Oh, I knew those rumors. Some said I was bewitched. Some called me whore. Some called me temptress. Because, like me, vampires didn’t like surprises, and I was definitely a surprise.

  I shut my eyes, shattering his charm, and lowered my gaze. He didn’t rock on his feet like most vampires did when I slapped away their charms, but he’d have felt the whiplash just the same. Now he knew I could resist him. He’d wonder what else I could resist. He’d wonder many things about Miss Lynher Aris and the Night Station my home.

  Fool. I shouldn’t have let the game go on for so long.

  He stepped forward. Light smoothed over his glossy black shoes. As I glanced up, he flicked a hand and the train whistled, signaling its departure. I was right. The world had waited.

  “Kneel.”

  I dropped, striking my knees on the cold platform. This was not the time to fight.

  His gloved fingers sank into my hair and clenched, locking into place. He yanked my head back, and I glimpsed Etienne behind the vampireguard, fear and fury alive on his face. He would need to learn to hide his emotions before they got him killed.

  “Next time, you kneel before my arrival.”

  “Yes, Overseer.”

  “If there is a next time.” He tore his hand free and stroked a silk-clad finger down my cheek. “You must know my name?”

  “Your name? No. But at the Night Station, we know you as Ghost.”

  “Indeed.” Straightening, he scanned the station frontage and the gathered people, again appearing to be searching for something. “I require three nights’ accommodation and a loyal bloodslave. I trust my needs will be met, Miss Aris?”

  Another finger flick and I rose to my feet. “Everyone is welcome at the Night Station.”

  He tilted his head, perhaps wondering if he’d heard a challenge in my tone or if he’d imagined it. He would soon learn I had my own ways of charming vampires, even those as vicious as him. “And the entertainment?” he asked.

  My smile uncoiled. “That can be arranged, sire.”

  “Good.”

  He walked around me as though I were nothing more than a rock in a stream. I fell into step behind him, as was my place, but my hidden blades burned cold against my flushed skin. I could plunge one through his spine and strike at his heart before the guards could stop me. But afterward, as his ashes and mine fell, everything else would fall apart too: the Night Station, my beloved staff, and the countless human lives relying on me to save them.

  No.

  There were other ways to kill an overseer, and I had three days to make it happen.

  Chapter 2

  Night

  I tore off my jacket. My heart thumped as fast as my boots struck the corridor floorboards. I needed to breathe, to think, to clear my head. I couldn’t disappear in the middle of my night shift. Especially as the Dark Ones would be watching more keenly with an overseer among us. My staff needed reassurance. Everyone needed reassurance. Not even the Dark Ones were immune to an overseer.

  Plucking a small piece of paper from a hidden pocket in my dress and a pencil from another, I scrawled a note. I returned the pencil to its snug hiding place and folded the piece of paper into a tiny square. There had been a time when messages had been
sent and received via electronic devices, but old technology didn’t work so well in the new worlds, and those that did were liable to be hacked. In the new beginning, the vampires had used human inventions against us, and so we’d sabotaged our communication networks.

  Gerome had once told me of how satellites had fallen to Earth, streaking across the sky like hundreds of falling stars. Those falling stars had signaled the end of the old world and the beginning of the new, where pen and paper were safer.

  I nodded at a couple gliding down the corridor, smiled at a gentleman, careful to keep my gaze from the forked tail poking out from under his coat, and kept on walking the corridor. Some parts of the Night Station weren’t open to guests. Some parts weren’t on any maps and didn’t have doors to reach them. Hidden parts. Secret parts. Walls with eyes. Spiraling passages to nowhere. The station was known to devour unwanted guests, their bodies never found. I wasn’t visiting any of those places now. I had another destination in mind. But first…

  I lifted an old pitcher on its display pedestal in an alcove, set the small piece of paper on the stand, and replaced the jug, taking no more than two seconds to complete the drop.

  People crowded the corridor, wall to wall, outside the old library—now my office. They weren’t in uniform yet. Out of the purples and blacks, they appeared so vulnerable. I wanted to gather them up and hold them close.

  “All right, I assume you’ve all heard. The arrival of an overseer need not be cause for concern.”

  “Is it true, Lynher? Is it Ghost?” a young woman, one of the most recent orphans to find her way to me, asked. The vampires had made orphans of us all.

  I nodded and let them gasp and chatter before gesturing for them to settle. “Quiet now. You are all here because you know how to do your jobs, and we will continue to function exactly as we always do. For fifty years, the Night Station has straddled both worlds with grace and professionalism. We will continue that tradition.” My words echoed Gerome’s, and I fought back the memories before tears pricked my eyes. “The overseer is with us for three nights. After that, he will move on”—or disappear inside these walls forever, I silently added—“and everything will return to normal.”

  Hands clutched at one another. Teeth worried lips. I trusted these people like I trusted my own blood. I knew every single soul, because the Night Station had saved them, same as it had saved me twenty-three years ago as a babe.

  “We are protected,” I reminded them. To prove it, I lifted my forearm and pulled my sleeve down, revealing the embellished x-shaped tattoo. We all had the same mark, put there by the Night Station itself after it had claimed us. Some glanced at their wrists, taking comfort in the simple symbol that meant so much. “For the next three days, we operate to the best of our ability. Bee will see to your daily queries, while I… while I entertain the overseer.” If they’d heard the hitch in my voice, they didn’t show it.

  Slowly, they filtered back through the station corridors. I watched them go, lingering outside my door to answer any questions. They asked none.

  Thirty staff managed the Night Station with me.

  Thirty lives in my hands. It was my duty to protect each one.

  From a third hidden pocket, I plucked my skeleton key and clunked the library lock over. The door gave with a familiar groan and allowed me inside. Almost instantly, the pressure of having to constantly act the part fell from my shoulders. The library’s gloom felt safe and quiet and warm. It felt like home.

  I clicked my fingers. Tiny flames puffed to life on half a dozen wall-mounted candlesticks, chasing the dark into the farthest corners.

  Two steps in I jerked to a stop.

  A man leaned against my desk.

  I blinked. He was still there.

  Not real. Not possible.

  I had the only key, still in my hand. The door had been locked.

  I looked at the key, wondering if I’d been tricked, and then looked back at the man.

  He folded his arms and waited like he had all the time in the worlds, like his presence was perfectly acceptable and not utterly inappropriate and wrong on an entirely different level to everything else I’d seen tonight.

  A cane rested against the desk beside him, and something about it made me want to snatch it up, snap it across my knee, and set it on fire. Then maybe I’d throw the ashes onto the tracks and wait for a train to thunder by, tossing those ashes far and wide.

  The cane plucked a memory to the surface. The man from Platform One. The one who had stood in my way and then vanished in my wake.

  His gaze snagged mine. I lifted my chin. Was he a magician? He had to be something to have gotten through locked doors.

  Silver flashed in his eyes. Or had the dancing candlelight tricked me? Because now his eyes appeared to be a less vampiric shade of hazel. Was he a vampire, or was I grasping at any explanation for having found him inside my personal space, behind my locked door?

  “Hello, Miss Aris,” he said. I hadn’t noticed his accent on the platform, but in the library’s muffled quiet, a definite hint of foreign, perhaps English, hit my ears. As the station was situated on the outskirts of the old world’s ruined city of Boston, I mostly heard some mix of American on my guests’ tongues.

  I should reply, I realized. If I’d learned anything over the years, it was to never let anyone see you on your back foot. Weakness killed. “Hello, Mister…?”

  I moved forward, maintaining my poise and grace, as though his being here were a pleasant surprise and not something that would feed new nightmares. As I slipped around the desk, I discreetly popped the key back into one of many hidden pockets.

  “Jack,” he said, turning to follow my path.

  The desk was the size of a dining table, with clawed feet and scrolled edges. Like everything inside these walls, it had always been here. I used it like a safety barrier.

  “Mister Jack?” I added a teasing lilt, turning on the charm and hoping he hadn’t noticed the seconds after I’d entered where I’d completely lost the ability to speak.

  “Just Jack.” He tucked a charming smile into his cheek.

  Well, wasn’t he a peach. Now that I was closer and my shocked thoughts had stopped falling over themselves, I got a good look at Jack. He’d worn a tailcoat in the platform, but it was missing now. Rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed bronze-skinned forearms. That sunbaked skin belonged to the West Coast, but something about the attire felt off, just like his name felt off—because it was a lie. I’d seen his black pants and how they hugged a tight ass on my cruise around my desk. No lace, no velvet, no embellishment. His dark hair, long enough to run his fingers through and sweep out of his eyes, hung loose. He was underdressed for the Night Station. He was, in fact, unremarkable. I wasn’t buying it. Nobody unremarkable broke into my office. Nobody unremarkable stepped in front of me on Platform One. And nobody wore unremarkable so damn well.

  “As you can imagine, I’m exceedingly busy. I only have a few moments before I must return to my duties. So, what can I do for you, Just Jack?” I spread my fingers on the desktop and looked him in the eyes.

  Old vampires could hide behind a human mask, but it was frowned upon. Pretending to be human was beneath them. Besides, Just Jack wasn’t exhibiting any of the classic vampire attributes, like being a child-murdering, sociopathic, psychotic mass murderer. But there was still time for that.

  “Well…” He tucked his hands into his pockets and wandered backward to admire the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind me. “I was looking for the washroom when I happened upon your open door.”

  No vampire was this shit at lying. “So you thought you’d wait in the dark for someone to come along instead of turning around and continuing your search?”

  “The door closed behind me.” His eyebrow arched, as though questioning whether I believed him.

  “It did, did it?” Unfortunately, his story had the potential to be true. The Night Station played its games just like the rest of us. It could have taken a liking to Just Jac
k and sent him on a merry chase. If that was the case, he was lucky he hadn’t stumbled upon the less savory aspects of the building.

  I smiled my sweetest smile, came out from behind my desk, and offered him my hand. “I’m sure I can escort you to the washroom, sir.”

  He hesitated, which struck me as odd. He didn’t remove his hands from his pockets and didn’t step forward to take my hand. In fact, he looked at me as though I’d told him I’d take him to his death. Something withered behind his gaze, and his smile lost its hold on his face. “Are you well, sir?”

  “Of course.” He snapped himself out of his reverie and folded my hand into his. His touch was warm, if not rough. Worker’s hands, I assumed. But like on the platform, my instincts prickled. Did he need help? Was that why he was here?

  “What brings you to the Night Station?” I asked, guiding him back into the hallway.

  The library door clunked closed behind us.

  “I’m just passing through.”

  “Everyone is just passing through, sir,” I said in a way that might summon his smile again, but something had changed in him. He seemed disinclined to smile, and his gaze had drifted far down the corridor.

  Had the station deliberately brought him to me? It would fit with his story about being guided to the library and shut inside, and it wouldn’t be the first time either. Those who were lost became found again in our walls.

  Back in the main hall, heads turned toward me, as they always did. The weight of that same attention fell onto my companion as well. Jack stiffened.

  “You are a wanted individual, Miss Aris.” He plucked his hand from my grip and dipped his chin. “I must beg your leave.”

  He retreated into the crowd, but before he could escape, I called, “Jack…” He pulled up short. “Are you staying with us?”

  He hesitated, his back to me, and then turned his head. “I am,” he admitted, his jaw firm.

  “For how long?”

  “For as long as it takes.” He left, and nothing else I could say would keep him here.