She glared at him. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Have you forgotten that I know as well as the Expansionists do that Aegis would investigate your disappearance?”
“And that’s always been your motive, hasn’t it?”
“No,” he said in a very low voice. “I once said I would never harm you, and I swear by the Blood of the Sires that is still true.”
“Oaths. Promises.” Alexia turned away, feeling as though her bones had melted and her body was filled with air, ready to collapse like a balloon pricked by a pin. “They mean nothing.”
“You no longer believe...I care for you?”
“What do you think, Damon?”
For an endless span of time all she could hear was his breathing, harsh and heavy. “I’m sorry, Alexia.”
Sorry. What idiot had thought up such an inadequate word? “Maybe it is time we parted ways. I’ll continue with my mission, and you can do whatever it is you think you need to.” She released a sharp, angry breath. “I guess that would be reporting what you’ve learned back to Erebus, since you won’t have me to worry about. That is, of course, unless you intend to stop me. Just be aware that I’ll try to kill you if you do.”
“Alexia.”
She wanted to hold her hands over her ears and babble like a child. “There’s nothing more to say.”
“There is. We have no idea how long the effects of my blood will continue to sustain your body. If you go it alone, you may find it suddenly betraying you.”
Alexia swung around to face him, eyes wide. “Are you actually suggesting we should do it again?” She nearly choked when she realized what she had just said. “Take your blood, I mean?”
The ghost of a smile crossed his shadowed face. “Surely you had already considered that possibility, Agent Fox,” he said.
Oh, yes. It had crossed her mind, and she’d quickly erased it again.
“Maybe the one time was enough,” she said quickly. “Maybe I’ll find the patch.”
“Alone?”
He was right, of course. The odds were incalculably against it. She didn’t know her way around this part of the Zone, and they were probably surrounded by enemy agents.
“There is no telling how long your current condition will last,” Damon said, pushing his advantage. “Are you as prepared to die as you were before?”
He was taunting her now. Somehow he knew that her life had become important to her again, something to be guarded and cherished.
“I’m prepared to take my chances,” she said, pulling her arms tight across her chest.
“Even though your mission may die along with you?”
As useless as it was, she longed to hit him again, smash his handsome nose and bloody his lip. But then she saw the healing gashes on his face, the wrist he still moved so gingerly, and was deeply ashamed.
“What do you want?” she asked, turning her back on him.
“I propose a truce.”
“Like the one you offered when we met?”
He cleared his throat. “I will not lie to you again.”
“Never?”
His silence told her all she needed to know. She went to gather her things.
“Never, Alexia,” he said quietly.
She stopped. This was the moment of decision. She knew she should never trust him again, that just being with him would create an open wound that could never heal.
That was her problem. But what about his? What about his shadow-self? It was still a complete mystery to her. She had no idea how long it had been part of him, if his masters knew about it, when it would arise again. He didn’t seem to remember his spells, but she had seen the pain and confusion in his eyes after they were over.
Could she find some way to help him if she stayed with him? Or would she only make it worse? How could she possibly know?
Only by refusing to leave him. Accepting that he lied to her over and over again.
Lowering her arms, she felt the bulge of something under her jacket and remembered what she had hidden there.
What about your lies? she asked herself. The communicator seemed to burn like a hot coal inside her jacket, though it gave off no warmth at all. She still didn’t know why Michael hadn’t told her about it before he’d left. Why had Aegis entrusted it to him, and not her?
Signal, he’d said. Was he saying he’d received a signal, or had sent one? Did he want her to complete some task his transformation had made impossible? Had he been part of a plan to remove all the humans in the colony? Was Damon’s theory really so crazy after all?
If it was true, then she had been much more a pawn than she ever could have imagined. But she didn’t dare take the time to try to track Michael down and see if she could communicate with him again...if he was even willing to be found.
I’m sorry, Michael, she thought. So very sorry.
But she wasn’t sorry about keeping this secret from Damon until she felt she could trust him again. If that was even possible.
“What did you have in mind as the next move?” she asked.
If Damon was relieved by her reasonable tone, he didn’t let on. He bent to retrieve the sheath of his knife, flexing his wrist in a way that suggested it had nearly healed, and slid the blade in.
“The center of everything is the colony,” he said, his voice turning brisk and businesslike. “We could hunt for other Expansionist agents and attempt to learn more from them, but there is no guarantee we would find them, or be able to defeat them if we did. We cannot go to Erebus. If we are to obtain useful information, we must approach the settlement directly.”
“You’re suggesting making a move without instructions from your Council,” she said. “Up until now, everything you’ve done could conceivably be justified as being within the parameters of your assignment, even telling me what you were really sent to do. But what you’re proposing isn’t anywhere in those orders, is it?”
She meant the question to mock him, hurt him...if he could be hurt by something as small as her words. But when he spoke, his voice was unmistakably humble.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t. Nor, as you have said, is it in yours. Perhaps it is time these pawns became knights.”
Slowly she turned to face him, caught unaware by a foolish and very dangerous undercurrent of pride. And yearning.
More than mere yearning. It was the need to be with him again, in every way. To feel him on her, inside her, just as if nothing had changed.
But if she gave in again, if she let herself be driven by passion, she would almost certainly pay a price she could never afford.
“There’s still a good chance that at least one set of gunmen was from the colony,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “Even if they didn’t steal the patch, they may still be shooting at anything that moves.”
“That is the risk, of course,” Damon said, studying her intently as if he had heard her highly inappropriate thoughts. “But I believe there is a way to obtain entrance to the colony without dying to achieve it.”
Alexia braced herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“I know the man who founded it.”
* * *
Damon experienced Alexia’s shock as if they were attached by thousands of tiny cables that conveyed every emotion directly into every nerve in his body. He had felt that shock time after time in the past few hours: Alexia’s grief, her suspicion, her hurt and sense of betrayal. Each one had destroyed a piece of his heart...the treacherous heart that could reduce a rational being to extremes of violence and tenderness all in the course of a moment.
He gazed at Alexia’s calm face, amazed all over again at her resilience. He had asked—demanded—so much of her, and not once had she broken. She was capable of setting aside her intense feelings when indulging them became an obstacle to her mission; she could speak with complete poise and rationality even after he had repeatedly provoked and betrayed her.
In many ways she was so much stronger than he was. She could leave him without a se
cond glance if it was necessary. But he...
Damon remembered the horror that had curdled in his belly when he’d seen Alexia with Lysander and realized his old enemy was loose in the Zone, claiming to be working for the Council. He remembered realizing that Lysander was trying to deceive both him and Alexia, an attempt ruined by the Opir’s mocking words about Eirene, and Alexia’s worth as a dhampir in Erebus.
What he didn’t remember was what had happened afterward. He had attacked Lysander, and they had tried to kill each other. But the details were like a hole in his mind filled only with blood, rage and pain.
He thought it had happened before. It seemed as if he’d woken from a bizarre nightmare—the kind only humans were supposed to have—and quickly found the details burning away in the light of the sun, as if his mind refused to accept that he had somehow lost his ability to control his every thought.
But until Alexia, with such worry in her eyes, had asked him what he remembered of the fight, he hadn’t really understood that something dark inside him had claimed his mind, a darkness he couldn’t see when he was normal. If he had ever been “normal” at all.
What the Lamia had done, interfering in the fight and killing Lysander, was far from normal. Nor was what Damon had sensed when the creature had looked into his eyes with an intelligence and purpose none of its kind had ever revealed before.
Protect, it had said in his mind. Save. And an image of Alexia had filled his head, shaded with emotion no Lamia should have been capable of feeling.
That was when he had known what the creature was. Who it was. And knew, too, that Alexia had recognized the truth before the creature had killed Lysander, and kept it from him.
He had told Alexia truths he had never meant to share, revealed his original mission, exposed inner thoughts and feelings he had once rejected with all his will. He had wounded her, turned her against him, flinched at the agony in her eyes.
Irrational impulses. Lysander had recognized that weakness in Damon far too well. But Damon hadn’t known the Council had chosen him to work with the Aegis operatives because of that weakness. Or how well it would blunt his intellect and competence. Lysander had taunted him about that, too.
Since Eirene died. But it wasn’t just Eirene. It was Alexia. He would have given his life gladly to spare her one more moment of pain.
But he had no right to spare her any truth that might keep her alive. Thank the First Sires that his suspicions of Michael’s involvement in the theft of the patch were no longer relevant to that purpose.
If only—
“Theron?” Alexia said, breaking his silence. “You know him?”
Damon shook himself out of his dark thoughts. “From Erebus,” he said. “He was a Bloodmaster, and one of the few Opiri who treated Darketans as equals and believed they should have full representation in the government.”
Alexia remained very still, barely breathing. “A Bloodmaster,” she said. “Are you saying he was your friend?”
Damon remembered the long, philosophical discussions with Theron in his tower apartments, the only span of time in which Damon was free to speak, feel as he chose without consequences. It had all been so much illusion in the end.
“Friendship is not a concept easily understood in Erebus,” he explained. “Darketans cannot advance in Opir society, and any relationships not based on alliances for power are considered deviant.”
“Like your relationship with Eirene,” she said.
There was no malice in her question, but Damon still felt the blow. “Yes,” he said, “but Theron had sufficient influence to circumvent the restrictions placed on Darketans in Erebus. He had many unpopular ideas, including the concept of establishing what you would call more democratic methods of government. He did what he could to further the rights of Darketans and vassals, even though his stance put him in some danger from more conservative Opiri.”
“The Expansionists,” Alexia murmured. “Did Theron believe in human equality, too?”
Damon had known the question was coming. He had considered Theron far more than a friend; the Bloodmaster had been like a benevolent Sire as far back as Damon’s memory reached, when he had discovered that Damon was one of the few Darketans unable to suppress his emotions with the rigid discipline imposed on all his kind.
But Theron had still been a Bloodmaster. He would never have considered that humans could be equal to Opiri of any rank. That would require setting them free, and losing access to the blood every citizen of Erebus must have to survive. Such a radical concept would shake the very foundations of Opir belief and society. It could destroy Erebus, and every Citadel like it.
“No,” Damon said softly. “He did not.”
Alexia was quiet for a while, but when she spoke again her voice held no trace of anger. “Is that why he decided to establish outside Erebus?” she asked. “To implement his philosophy?”
“So it appears. I was not privy to his plans to do so. The Council would have prevented it if they had known, so he must have worked subtly to evade their notice.”
“So subtly you didn’t know anything about what your ‘friend’ was doing?”
Damon smiled grimly. It was so much like Alexia to cut straight to the heart of the matter, like a surgeon with a scalpel.
“Theron disappeared from Erebus a year ago,” he said. “I had no idea what had happened to him. Apparently neither did the Council.”
“So you were led to believe.”
He inclined his head to acknowledge her scathing comment. “Yes.”
“But if the Expansionists knew about the colony early on and supported it, at least secretly, didn’t they know that Theron’s ideas went against everything they believed in?”
“Either they were unaware Theron himself was in charge,” Damon said, “or they believed they could manipulate or force him into furthering their cause. Knowing what I do of him, I doubt Theron would have hesitated to deceive them as to his purpose if it would further his goals.”
Alexia sighed sharply. “All right,” she said. “But you’re sure that your past connection will get us into the colony now, even though your ‘friend’ didn’t bother to tell you what he was doing or invite you to join his experiment?”
“As sure as I can be.”
She pushed her bangs away from her forehead as if she were brushing away her doubts. “Doesn’t he know you’re working for the Council?”
“He always knew.”
“If he shot at us...”
He frowned. “I can’t believe snipers from his colony would have known exactly who they were shooting at.”
“They might not give you a chance to tell them who you are. You’re taking a big chance, Damon.”
“So are you,” he said, hating the need for what he was about to say. “I told you about the potential worth dhampires have to Opiri. It will be impossible to disguise your eyes. The colonists will know what you are at once.”
“And that means?”
“I will have to lay claim to you as my serf.”
Chapter 14
Alexia pulled back, her eyes unreadable. “How is this going to work when they’ll know Darketans don’t have serfs of their own?”
“Ordinarily, they would not. But there is nothing ordinary about what Theron has apparently attempted to do. Assuming he has enough control over his people that there will be no open challenges—which would make his entire philosophy untenable—I may be able to keep you with me. But I don’t know how he deals with serfs at all. He might—”
He stopped, wondering how he could make what he was about to say remotely palatable. “He might keep them in common for the use of all Opiri in the colony, as is the case in the Darketan dormitories.”
“What would you do in that case?” she asked as if the answer were nothing more than a matter of idle curiosity.
“I would fight for you.”
Her eyes widened. “That would be a very bad idea.”
Remembering how it had been with Ly
sander, Damon couldn’t have agreed more. “Normally, a Darketan is no match for an Opir in a head-to-head fight,” he said. “And there is also the complication of your nature as a dhampir. That may create conflict where there might have been none.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
He stared at her. “I don’t think you understand me.”
“Oh, I understand just fine. We go in, I’m your slave, someone decides they want me and challenges you, a fight ensues...what then?”
“If I win, I keep you. If I lose...”
“But this whole challenge thing might not happen at all.”
“There is no way of knowing. It is possible that, in recognizing you as a dhampir, they will realize you are an Enclave agent and will leave you alone, or even let you go.”
“Maybe they would answer our questions without all this playacting.”
“I would not risk a direct approach with so little information to go on. But your danger would be great, either way. That is why I must ask again that you return to the Enclave—or, failing that, remain under cover until I return from the colony.”
For the first time since this painful conversation had begun, there was a real light in her eyes, a vivid reflection of the life and spirit that had drawn him to her from the very beginning like a bee to a blossom.
“Do you think I’ll let you have all the fun?” she asked with an impish grin.
“Alexia—”
“When do you want to leave?”
It was quite hopeless. He knew that, and though part of him wanted to rage at her and threaten her into submission, he knew she would never be cowed by him again.
“We will leave tomorrow afternoon,” he said, “after I have fully explained the situation to you and you understand what you must do.”
She adjusted the strap of her VS130 on her shoulder, her smile fading. “Do you want to do anything with those bodies back there?”
“They died in the course of their duties,” Damon said. “They may yet serve to make the enemy believe any direct threat posed by Council agents has been eliminated.”
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