He looked like he’d fallen out of bed and into that chair. He didn’t need to care about his appearance. He didn’t need to put on an act to survive each night. His life wasn’t like mine. Like our roles dictated, we were as different as night and day, but he needed me and I needed him. There was no Lynher Aris without Kensey Aris. I was his secret and he was mine.
“I got your note.” Worry pinched his dark brows. He set his boots down and leaned forward. “Are you all right?”
Was I all right? I’d spent all night entertaining a creature infamous for genocide and he was asking if I was all right? I waved off his concern, dumped my jacket on the desk, unlaced my boots, and kicked them off, leaving them where they’d fallen. From behind an old book title, I pulled a tarnished bottle of whiskey and poured myself a glass, then took the glass and the bottle to the desk. I didn’t drink. Just stared.
“Did he hurt you?” my brother growled.
I turned my head and regarded his scowl. His gaze dropped to my neck, now exposed, looking for bruises or swelling. If Ghost had hurt me, there was nothing Kensey could do about it.
“Say something,” he urged.
“No, he didn’t hurt me.” Yet, I added silently. “I’m dealing with him.” I picked up the glass and downed the drink in one gulp. The burn radiated through my chest, making me feel some way to human again. I needed to get out of these clothes, needed to eat, to sleep, to do all the human things the Dark Ones didn’t need. I needed to fall into a bed and wrap myself in safety so I knew there was something worth getting up for every night.
“Can we get to him?” Kensey asked. His eyes had hardened, turning cold.
“I think so.” I poured another drink. “But there’s more. In two days, he’s expecting a train with high-value cargo.”
Kensey’s face crumbled. He stood, stole the drink from my hand, threw it back in one, and hissed as it scorched his middle.
High-value cargo meant only one thing to the vampireguard.
Kids. Carriages full of them. Orphans. Just like Kensey and me.
He handed the glass back, still wincing from the heat of the old alcohol. “We’re stopping that train.”
“Yes, we are.”
His gaze tracked to the windows where dust danced in the warm sunlight. I knew what he was thinking. All the times we’d failed, all the trains that had passed through without stopping, reaching their final destinations—the numbers we hadn’t saved were like those dust motes: too many to count. In a world oppressed by the Dark Ones, we couldn’t save them all. It was never enough, but saving just one was better than none. We made a difference. For all his faults, his recklessness, his freedom, I loved my brother for his heart.
He reeled me into a hug, tucking me in close. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to feel safe until that very moment. I sighed and melted against him. Layers of armor peeled away, one by one. Everything I’d endured in the hours before fell off me, and in my brother’s arms, I was just Lynher again. Just a girl in a world gone wrong.
“We can do this,” he whispered. “It’s just you and me. We only have each other. We can do this.”
I nodded, fearing the knot in my throat might break any words I tried to speak. As more layers fell away, the truth of me rose to the surface. I did not have any power, not really. No human did.
“We’ll get them back for taking Gerome,” he said. “For taking everything.”
I clutched him close. He’d always been there. When I’d run too far from the station platform as a child and gotten lost in the dark, where monsters ate lost little ones, he’d found me. When I’d fallen from a rickety balcony and broken my arm, he’d wrapped my shattered bones and made the pain go away. When I screamed and cried because I couldn’t do the same at night, he listened. Every morning he was here, waiting. And through it all, I did the same for him, picking him up when he fell, holding him down when he tried to do something foolish. Family. The two of us alone in the big world of monsters. Always. Kensey and Lynher. We saved each other, day after night, night after day. If we could save ourselves, how hard could it be to save the world too?
* * *
If it wasn’t for exhaustion, I wouldn’t sleep at all. With day came a reprieve from the Dark Ones and a chance for me to be me again. I fell into bed and slept longer than I should have. When the station didn’t wake me by chiming the grandfather clock outside my room, Kensey appeared with a breakfast tray. He perched himself on the edge of my bed as I bit into the toast, savoring the sweet jam. The station gifted us treats like jam. I’d asked Gerome once where all the food came from, and he’d laughed and told me it was from the same place as everything else, which answered nothing. Answers were a rare commodity at the station.
“How’s Etienne?” Kensey asked.
I chewed and considered Etienne’s first shift. “Still alive.” As first shifts went, outside of Ghost’s arrival, everything had gone smoothly. Happy guests made our lives easier. I was beginning to think Etienne might do all right.
“Well, that’s something. I wasn’t sure he was ready—”
“He’s not.”
Kensey frowned, and like always, his emotions showed in his eyes.
“You can’t be ready for the night shift,” I explained, but he’d never fully understand.
Gerome had prepared us for very different roles. Kensey didn’t encroach on my territory, and I didn’t encroach on his. He dealt with rehabilitating refugees. He ferried them far from the edge of the world and to new lives by way of his contacts spread across the land, and quietly, carefully, he threaded those we saved into a relatively peaceful existence. I found those who needed help and got them to him. He moved them on. Neither of us asked the other how we did what we did. It was safer that way, should one of us be compromised—or so Gerome had taught us. Sometimes, I’d want to know what happened to those we’d saved, like the little girl who’d smuggled her ratty old teddy onto the train with her. I’d washed the teddy and discovered it was pink, not gray. She’d laughed. There were many like her. Faces I’d never forget. But I couldn’t know their fates. I was not infallible. All it would take was someone like Ghost to find a crack in my armor.
I pushed the tray aside.
“What’s he like?” Kensey asked what he’d been dying to ask since waking me.
“Horrible. He made a very public display of having me kneel on the platform.”
Kensey opened his mouth.
“There’s nothing you can do.” I threw back the covers and pulled on a dressing gown. “When his games crossed the line, the station protected me.” My sleeve had pulled up and exposed the cross on my wrist. A simple but powerful mark. I pushed the sleeve back down and headed for the shower. “He knows he needs me to facilitate his people trafficking. He won’t try it on again.”
“You don’t know that…” My brother’s voice followed me, muffled by the shower-room door closing. “He’s not used to anyone standing against him. He might decide you’re worth losing a delivery of kids for.”
That wasn’t likely and Kensey knew it. Vampires needed kids for their bloodfarms. They’d rear them in cages, breed them, and bleed them until they were all used up. Then they’d be slaughtered for meat. A carriage of kids was as precious to vampires as air was to humans.
I stepped into the shower, and hot water pounded on my head, neck, and shoulders, massaging away the aches and the remnants of the overseer’s touch.
Kensey and I had been destined for such a farm. We’d likely be dead now had the station not delivered us to Gerome. “Human stock” didn’t live much beyond twenty years old.
“I heard from my European connections,” Kensey continued. “There’s a rumor of a rebellion…” He left the sentence hanging, and I wondered what I was supposed to do with that knowledge. I hadn’t heard of any such rebellion. Had there been an uprising, I would know. The VG didn’t talk—they were too obedient—but others loved gossip, which meant any uprising had failed or was about to.
&
nbsp; “I have connections near New York. It’s too late now, but if we’d gotten word of the overseer’s arrival, we could have planned ahead, gotten more help, and orchestrated an attack—”
“That’s precisely why we didn’t hear ahead,” I said, talking over the sound of the water.
“I just…” My brother trailed off. I thought he’d gone, but then he added, “I want to do more. I know we can do more.”
Doing more meant leaving the safety of the station. Stepping over the white line left us vulnerable, and if he was caught…
Kensey had been gone before. He’d vanished for five days right after Gerome’s murder. Five mornings when he hadn’t greeted me after the night shift, when I’d thought him dead, when I’d feared I was suddenly alone.
I shut off the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and opened the door. Kensey stood at the window, bathed in sunlight, thoughtfully gazing through the grubby glass.
“Maybe the European rebellion will succeed and we’ll learn from that,” I told him. I didn’t believe it, but he needed hope to keep him moving forward, and I needed him for that same reason. I’d lie to him all day, every day, if it kept him here, doing what we did best. This was our place. Not outside, but inside, saving every single human we could. And we were damn good at what we did. Changing things was too much of a risk.
“Maybe,” he replied.
I gathered day clothes, and when I looked for my brother to ask what he had in mind for the day, he’d gone.
* * *
The station in the day was a very different beast from the station at night. Kensey ran a small number of staff. The halls only ever bustled with life after we’d free a delivery of human slaves. Kensey housed them here, and with the station’s help, he fed and watered them, cleaned them up, helped them manage their trauma, and worked to rehabilitate them. Etienne had been one such person, but he hadn’t wanted to move on to a new life; he’d wanted to do more, as some often did when they learned how the station was different. We declined most help, but Kensey had taken a liking to Etienne. A strong liking. They were near the same age. Etienne had been full of tales of the outside, igniting Kensey’s wandering spirit. If I hadn’t accepted him on my staff, Etienne’s tales might have lured my brother’s desires into the wider world. Once the station had marked Etienne, the decision had been made for us anyway.
The halls were empty now. We hadn’t saved any cargo since Gerome’s death. That made my brother restless, made him feel as though he was failing. If he could see what happened at night, he’d know our work continued, but he couldn’t, and so he rattled around these sunlit empty hallways, killing time. The high-value cargo had come at the right time to keep my brother occupied.
I stood at a huge arched window and admired the empty world outside. Overgrown and forgotten, the tracks were hidden among thick brush. Beyond that, empty skyscrapers clawed at a blue sky. It looked so… peaceful, in the way the dead look peaceful. There was no human life out there. Plenty of monsters, but nothing with a human heart lived free.
It seemed impossible that humans had once filled those huge towers from top to bottom, that humans had once streamed through the streets.
Heat fizzled at my wrist. I lifted my arm and watched the edges of the cross shimmer red. Trouble.
My night shift was starting early.
Chapter 5
Night
Trouble was too small a word for what I saw in the Grand Hall.
I should have expected the overseer to retaliate, and I had, but I’d expected it after dusk, not before the night shift had yet to start. Apparently, he was an early riser.
The dead succubus hung limp and doll-like from the Grand Hall’s main chandelier. The fact she was naked wasn’t a surprise, but the fact she was dead was. Her leathery wings hung open, their clawed tips dripping blood the long way down to the marble floor, where it gathered in a shiny pool. It took a great deal to shock me. A dead succubus hanging from my chandelier succeeded.
I grasped the balustrade on the landing atop the sweeping staircase. The position of the succubus put her at eye level, about fifteen feet out of reach, and forty feet from the floor below.
Ghost had taken up a spot by the foot of the stairs, the same spot we’d had our little altercation the previous night. Lounging in a chair, legs crossed at the ankle, a glass of blood in his hand, he smirked up at me like the monster he was. I could guess the origin of the blood he was drinking.
It was early. The Dark Ones were still rising. The news would spread like wildfire, but at least he’d produced this display when I had a chance to clean it up. I just needed to get the body down and fast.
The overseer raised his glass to me in a silent toast and drank. He clearly had no intention of moving from that chair while I worked.
He lowered the glass, and blood painted his lips. He licked them clean, never taking his eyes off me. The message was clear: if he couldn’t get to me physically, he’d make my life difficult in other ways, and a dead demon did make my life difficult. I was supposed to protect every guest here, and he’d just pissed all over my authority.
“Ma’am…?” Etienne hovered to my right, studiously not looking at the body.
“I want you to pay a visit to Room C-Forty-Six,” I said. “Tell them I sent you. Tell them…” I met Etienne’s gaze. “… I need to call in my favor.”
“Aren’t the… the fae in residence in that room, ma’am?” he asked.
“Elves, and yes, they are.”
“Oh… all right. I just… I mean… I’ve heard—”
Had Kensey not taught him anything? “Don’t take anything they offer you. Don’t enter into any conversations with them. Don’t let them touch you. Just relay my message. Can you do that?”
He cleared his throat. “Yes. I can do that.” And off he went.
Ghost’s smirk told me he’d observed it all. Fucking vampires. Now I’d have angry demons to contend with as well as the overseer.
As for how he’d gotten to the succubus while inside my station, the answer was simple: he hadn’t. He’d lured her outside the white line. It wouldn’t have taken much for a vampire like him to charm her, and while I wasn’t responsible for stupid demons, the fact he’d strung her up in my Grand Hall sent a clear message to all. He thought he had control here. If that message reached too many ears and others fancied pushing back against the rules, I’d have more trouble on my hands than one overseer.
Filling my lungs for the confrontation to come, I turned and stepped straight into Jack. I hadn’t heard him approach, and his fingers wrapped around my wrist, the sudden touch startling the breath out of me.
“Ask him if he got her name.”
“What?”
He freed my wrist and moved on, the whole exchange having taken less than a second. For any onlookers, it could have appeared as though he’d merely bumped into me and stopped me from teetering in my heeled boots.
I whirled and watched the man walk away, his cane back in his hand, tapping against the floorboards. Who on earth was he, and what was his interest in this? A glance down at Ghost revealed an arched eyebrow. He’d probably heard the exchange too or at least seen something pass between Jack and me.
I descended the curved staircase and planted myself next to Ghost. “There are rules, Overseer. Perhaps you have forgotten them?”
“I make my own rules, Miss Aris.” He gestured across the table. “Sit. Won’t you have a drink with me?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a succubus hanging from my chandelier. I’d like to see her body removed before drinking with you, sire.”
He leaned forward in the chair and looked up. He kept his face blank, which made his next words cold. “I hear the derision in your tone. I sincerely hope you’re not suggesting I had something to do with that creature’s death.”
“Of course not.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
With a gesture, he dismissed the dead demon. “Keeping succubae around vampires is likely to result
in this. It’s a foolish mistake on your part. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if the rumors of your”—he raked his glare over me—“professionalism are overrated.”
“And I see rumors of yours are not.”
His gold-touched dark eyes flicked up and narrowed. “Be careful how you address me, or you may find Etienne’s carcass hanging from the next chandelier.”
Oh, to threaten human life with such a silver tongue. I’d be sure to cut that tongue out when the time came. The daggers against the small of my back warmed at the thought. I thought of Kensey too. He saved people. In his heart, he was good. In mine, darkness coiled, waiting to strike. A large, ruthless part of me wanted to see the overseer hanging from that chandelier. If it were up to me, he would hang, but there were too many here relying on my so-called professionalism to keep them alive. If I strung up an overseer, the VG would come down on me and the station, leaving nothing standing.
I sighed through my nose while Ghost watched me struggle to rein back my desire to stab him in the heart. Plucking a smile out of my armory, I plastered it to my face and stepped closer, deliberately brushing my knee against his thigh. As he remained seated, I looked down on him. “You look at me, sire, and you see weakness. That is a mistake. We’ll call your indiscretion a mistake also. Young succubae can’t resist vampires. They really should know better than to seek one out, especially one such as yourself. I trust, next time, you’ll control your bloodlust in a manner becoming of your position.”
He downed the thick syrupy blood, set the glass down, and got to his feet, bringing him almost chest to chest and eye to eye with me. “What happens when it is you who steps over the white line, Miss Aris?”
Rage only covered so much. Fear snatched at my breath, and he heard.
“I thought so.” He smiled and stepped out from our discussion, intending to leave.
Twilight Seeker: Daybreaker #1 Page 4