Eternal Dawn

by Kerrion, Jade;

  The list was as short as she could make it.

  To the people of Aeternae Noctis, it was sixty-two names too long.

  Furthermore, her experiment on inviting families into the ark to make their final goodbyes had been a disaster.

  The calm announcement of names in the city square was an improvement upon the one thousand years of terror when vampires stormed the houses and tore screaming children away from their parents. Yet the process was still so inhumane, so cold.

  She tried to do better for the people of the city.

  She had failed.

  Except for that one man who had skillfully and lovingly put his son to sleep, the process had been a nightmare of hysterical parents and panicked children. It had dragged on for hours. In the end, the children had to be wrenched from their parents’ arms anyway. She had to call on Tera, the icrathari warlord, and her vampire army to quell the uprising of devastated parents.

  She would never hear the end of it from Tera.

  Siri scowled. The slight motion jostled through her wounded body. She swallowed the gasp of pain; it burned like acid going down her throat.

  Great Creator. Would she never heal?

  The door of the ark slid open behind her.

  Ordinarily, she might have glanced over her shoulder or even spun around, but injured, she moved with careful deliberation, debating the necessity of the action against the pain it would generate.

  “Siri.” A familiar voice acknowledged her.

  “Hello, Jaden.”

  Jaden Hunter, the elder vampire and consort of the icrathari queen, Ashra, moved forward to stand beside her. Tall and dark-haired, he possessed the lean, muscular build of a warrior and the unearthly sinuous grace that only elder vampires and icrathari could claim.

  Siri inhaled deeply. She would have to be careful to hide her pain and discomfort from him. It would be difficult; vampires, natural predators, were attuned to the weakness in others. Fortunately, the icrathari were the greater predators, and she was a practiced liar. More than anyone else, she had woven the intricate web of lies around the human population of Aeternae Noctis.

  “The council meeting is about to begin,” he said. “We’re waiting for you.”

  Siri shrugged. “Things took a little longer today.”

  “So I heard.” Jaden’s green eyes flashed across the ark, once again restored to its pristine and silent state.

  Her shoulders sagged on a sigh as she recalled the chaos and cacophony hours earlier. “It was a disaster.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  “Tera wouldn’t agree.”

  “Tera is slow to change, but we need to change, and quickly. The people will not settle for the status quo much longer. Now that they know the truth about Aeternae Noctis, they look to us to provide solutions.”

  Siri chuckled, the sound ironic. “Life was easier when all I had to do was manage the problem as opposed to solve it.”

  Jaden grinned. “Change is inevitable. If we’re not growing, we’re dying.”

  Siri managed a twisted half-smile in response. Jaden had no idea how damnably predictive his words were. The icrathari were ancient and ageless, effectively immortal. The three thousand years of her life stretched far into the past. Her future, however—

  Tension ruffled her black wings. The unhealed wounds in her throat and stomach sent ripples of agony through her as she followed Jaden from the ark.

  Despair shrouded her future. She was dying.

  The council meeting took place on the uppermost floor of Malum Turris, the administrative center of Aeternae Noctis. Its palladium glass windows offered an unparalleled 360-degree view of the city. The black walls were unadorned, the metallic floor bare, and florescent lights emanated from clear panels set in the ceiling. A network of supercomputers, the apex of twenty-second century technology before the human’s last war decimated the atmosphere and scorched the Earth, spread along the length of the far wall.

  The rest of the council had gathered. Tera nodded at Siri as she entered the chamber with Jaden beside her. The smirk the warlord wore, however, was wicked and more than a little amused. For a moment, Siri contemplated the possibility of acting offended, but with thousands of years of friendship between them, the option seemed patently absurd.

  Besides, the fiasco at the ark had offered her a rare glimpse of one man’s strength and grace under pressure.

  A handful of vampires had also gathered. Xanthia, a middle-aged female vampire, led the teams of engineers who maintained the city of Aeternae Noctis. Lucas, likewise middle-aged and distinguished by his full beard, headed the medical team and oversaw the transformation of humans into vampires with a blended cocktail of icrathari and vampire blood.

  Yuri, whose red braid mirrored Tera’s silver braid, was a female vampire transformed in her early twenties. She was Tera’s second-in-command, a position that had recently come under question with the return of Talon, an elder vampire imprisoned by the daevas for nearly five hundred years.

  Talon, like Jaden, was differentiated from the vampires by his superior strength and grace. The elder vampires, the firstborn of the icrathari, were transformed by a full infusion of pure icrathari blood. The process of transformation was dangerous, and more likely to fail than not. Few humans were capable of embracing the change. Elder vampires were therefore rare and treasured, equal to the icrathari in all but flight. Tera had not publicly altered her line of command, but it was clear to all that Talon was a vital element of Aeternae Noctis’s military defenses.

  Jaden, on the other hand, led a small team of vampire scouts tasked with finding safe passage for the city. Their missions often took them from Aeternae Noctis for several days, a fact that did not sit comfortably with Ashra.

  Ashra was significantly changed. She remained as devoted to her endless duty, but there was lightness to her spirit that had not existed for a thousand years. Her love for Jaden had gentled her stern edge, and her rare smiles had become commonplace. Ashra glanced up at Jaden and Siri’s approach. “I heard about what happened at the ark today.”

  Siri cast Tera a sour look. “A mistake I won’t repeat.”

  “It was well-intentioned—”

  “The humans aren’t going to tolerate losing their children for much longer. They’re restless. They’re looking for the next miracle.”

  Talon scoffed. “The first miracle was a thousand years in coming. They might want to give the second a bit more leeway.” He looked at Jaden. “Do you have any more tricks up your sleeve?”

  Jaden shook his head. “Fresh out of magic. I have found several promising places for new settlements, but we can’t do anything without palladium glass to create new domes.”

  Ashra looked at Siri. Her eyebrows arched.

  Siri shrugged. “I don’t have a secret stash of palladium in the basement.”

  “Where can we find palladium, then?”

  “A thousand years ago, the answer would have been in Norilsk-Talnakh in Siberia and the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa. There were also smaller palladium deposits in Canada and the United States. Now, who knows?”

  “We can swing the city around to check out those sites, can’t we?”

  Siri shook her head. “It’s too risky to deviate from our plotted route. We need fuel to travel, and our solar recharging stations are set up along a specific path. We could store the fuel needed to make the journey, but we’d need more fuel canisters than we currently have. It shouldn’t take long for the 3D-printers to deliver what we need, but to actually stash the fuel we need, it’d be…” She paused for a quick mental calculation. “Sixteen months before we can get to Siberia and back.”

  “Not long in the grand scheme of things,” Talon said.

  “The humans don’t have the lifespan and the perspective we do,” Siri said.

  Ashra raised her chin. “I’m not going to jeopardize a thousand years of security just because the humans don’t have the patience to do things right.” She glanced at T
era. “The humans may be under the impression that things have changed because they’ve discovered the truth of the city, but things haven’t changed that much. I rule Aeternae Noctis. Rebellion is not tolerated under any circumstances, and I am inclined to return to the way things were if the humans prove difficult.”

  Siri frowned. Surely Ashra was not contemplating returning to a rule of terror rather than one of mutual cooperation and benefit? She cast Jaden a quick glance. His expression revealed nothing, but his eyes were troubled. Clearly, human relations was a topic on which Ashra and Jaden were not reconciled. Jaden was inclined to favor the humans. He was the vessel of Rohkeus’s soul—the icrathari prince and creator of Aeternae Noctis—but until six months ago, he was also human. More than anyone, he had bridged the gap between humans and the Night Terrors—the vampires and the icrathari. He would be loath to destroy the progress they had made.

  Jaden stepped forward. “There’s no point dragging the city all the way to Siberia, wherever it is, if the deposits are no longer there. I’ll travel ahead while you stock up on fuel. It shouldn’t take me more than a few months to get there and back.”

  “Alone? Absolutely not,” Ashra cut him off. “Siberia is too far, the journey too dangerous.”

  “I’m the only one you can spare,” Jaden insisted.

  Siri stifled a chuckle. How wrong you are. You’re the only one she can’t spare.

  “We will discuss this later,” Ashra said.

  “All right. Meanwhile, I’ll review the old maps and plot out a possible course,” Jaden said. “In advance of our discussion.”

  That time, Siri barely managed to disguise the chortle of laughter with a cough. Irresistible energy meets immovable force. Jaden and Ashra’s relationship, although anchored in love, had enough friction points to provide the inhabitants of the tower a great deal of entertainment.

  The council meeting ended shortly thereafter. The icrathari and vampires dispersed. Siri, however, remained at the control panel to monitor the status of the city. Lucas, too, lingered behind.

  He waited until they had the chamber to themselves. “How are you coping?” he asked.

  “Fine.” Just barely. Lucas alone knew the extent of her injuries and the fact that she had not healed from the daeva attack. She tapped the screen to bring up a report on the city’s fuel levels. “Do you have more of the salve you gave me?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was all I had left over from the jar Dana picked up from the herbalist when Jaden was injured. Did it help?”

  “Some.” She scanned the report and then moved on to another. “I’d like more of it.”

  He nodded. “I’ll send one of the vampires into the city for it.”

  “No, just find out who the herbalist is. I’ll take care of it.”

  Lucas inclined his head, the stiff gesture lacking his habitual grace. “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Not for now.” Siri flipped her fingers, dismissing him.

  He stalked from the room without another word.

  Siri frowned. What was wrong with him? Vampires had an increased predisposition for melodrama—heightened emotions accompanied their heightened senses—but Lucas had always been the steady type.

  Apparently, not anymore.

  Chapter 3

  A full day passed before Siri found the time to venture into the city. She waited until nightfall; granted, the icrathari were no longer perceived as the Night Terrors, but their presence was still regarded with a fair degree of trepidation. Siri saw no need to unnecessarily alarm people with the appearance of an icrathari in broad daylight.

  The faint heat of the day gave way to the cool of the evening. The thin layer of salve she had applied to her wounds dulled the edge of pain when she soared from the tower and made her way to a small cabin on the outskirts of the city. The cottage bordering the forest was framed by gardens filled with flowers and herbs. The fragrance was staggering—so complex and exotic that even her enhanced senses struggled to tease apart its components.

  She inhaled deeply, drawing the perfume deep into her lungs. It surged into her head, and for a few moments, drew her mind away from her pain-wracked body. A grateful smile crept across her face; she had forgotten what it was like not to dread the next breath. She walked across the flagstones in the pebbled walkway that led from the road to the house. Her rap on the wooden door jarred the quiet of the night.

  Moments later, the door opened.

  Siri’s eyes widened, as did the herbalist’s.

  The herbalist was the man who had told his son a final bedtime story in the ark.

  His face, a mask of grief, paled. His mouth moved soundlessly until he found his voice. “I…”

  She held up the empty jar. “Did you mix this salve?”

  The matter-of-fact query jolted him. With obvious effort, he schooled his expression into professional calm, but could not purge the heartache from his eyes. His hands trembled as he reached for the jar and unscrewed its lid. He sniffed the remnants of its contents. His voice, a rich baritone, was unsteady. “Goldenseal and myrrh. Yes, I prepared this.”

  “Do you have another jar available?”

  He looked up and met her gaze. His eyes were hazel, a swirl of green and brown, flecked with gold, reminding her of a forest at the breaking of dawn. His symmetrical features rendered him pleasant in appearance but otherwise unremarkable. Something flashed across his face—anger, perhaps even hate—but he did not slam the door. His eyes reflected his fierce internal struggle, but when he finally spoke, he surprised her with professional courtesy. “Not on hand, but I have the ingredients for it. I’ll need an hour to prepare another jar. If you’d like to come back—”

  “I’ll wait for it.”

  He looked startled. After a moment, as if recalling his manners, he stepped aside. “Would you like to come in and wait?”

  The offer was more than she had expected. She was curious to see how things had changed since she designed the eighteenth-century-styled interior of Aeternae Noctis a thousand years earlier. His home consisted of two tiny bedrooms flanking a large living area that included the dining room and kitchen. The room, lit by small lamps, was warmed by the fire in the hearth. The wooden furniture was old but carefully maintained, the scuffs and nicks smoothed beneath the polish. Glass jars and earthenware containers stacked on kitchen shelves, each labeled with a neat script. Copper pots and pans hung from hooks in the low ceiling, and the large mortar and pestle on the kitchen table showed extensive signs of use.

  A wooden toy cart lay in a corner of the room, beside a door. Through that open door, Siri caught a glimpse of a child’s bedroom painted a pale blue. She wandered closer. In a single glance, she took in the colorful quilt that decorated the small bed and a stuffed bear with one missing eye and a raggedy heart sewn over its chest.

  The room smelled of a small child. It also smelled of the man.

  The pillow she picked up was damp and scented with his tears.

  Startled by the matching ache in her chest, Siri looked around the child’s bedroom. A chest at the foot of the bed contained clothes, not new but clean. Mud-stained shoes lay on their side, carelessly kicked off by a child. The room pulsed still with memories, with life. It was not yet empty, but soon it would be. Its heart had been ripped out.

  She set the pillow down on the bed and returned to the living room. The man stood over a boiling pot at the stove, his back to her.

  She broke the silence first. “You have children.”

  “Just one. Stefan.”

  She heard the underlying quiver in his voice. “Only one?” As a rule, the icrathari culled from families with more than one child. The algorithms were programmed into the supercomputer; genetic diversity kept the population healthy. How had Stefan’s name come up in spite of the program’s rules? “We do not take from single-child homes,” she said.

  His shoulders tensed. “But you cull the sick and weak. Stefan was not strong, but he was getting better. In time, he
would have been fine, but he…didn’t have time.”

  As he spoke, he worked with a quiet sureness, reaching for jars on the kitchen shelves. He was careful, too, checking the labels and sniffing at the contents before adding them to his mixture.

  Siri did not need to ask about his wife. She had heard his bedtime story. His house confirmed it. The cottage was bereft of a woman’s feminine touch, but he had made it a home and infused it with laughter and love.

  With the inclusion of Stefan’s name on her list, Siri had destroyed it.

  “Stefan is not dead,” she murmured. It was all she could think of to say, something to alleviate his deep grief. As she uttered the words, she realized how banal they sounded. Dead or not, his only son was lost to him. Likely forever.

  His only response was a sigh. He did not speak again, not for the entire hour it took to create the salve she had requested. When he finally turned to her with a filled jar, its contents still warm, his face was composed. “Do you think you will want more of this salve later?”

  She nodded as she took the jar from him. Their fingers brushed.

  His eyes met hers. “I’ll have a fresh batch ready next time, then.”

  She could almost hear his unspoken words. That way, I don’t have to spend any more time than necessary around you. He did not fear her—which was, in itself, surprising—but he despised her, just as all humans had despised the Night Terrors for a thousand years.

  Her wings ruffled with irritation. His opinion of her should have meant nothing to her. “What do I owe you for this?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Siri’s eyes widened. Why had she expected him to demand his son’s release? Because it was the one thing that meant everything to him?

  She must have been staring at him. He seemed bemused at her reaction, but continued in an even tone. “There is nothing you have that I need. Just take it and go.”

  She glanced down at the precious jar in her hand. Each application of the salve against the wounds in her throat and stomach would buy her an hour or two of relief. Used sparingly, it would last two weeks, keeping enough of the pain at bay for her to remain functional and hide her condition from the others.