Hunting Daylight (9781101619032)

by Maitland, Piper

  He’d forgotten how pretty his wife looked in sunlight. He watched her rise from the sand, dress billowing around her long legs. She’d gotten pregnant before he’d become a vampire, and their baby was the very last part of him that was human. Caro had loved him enough to embrace the night. Not once had she mentioned the cost of procuring his blood. Nor had she complained about the shabby dresses she and Vivi wore. A burning sensation moved behind his eyelids, but he had stared at Caro until his vision narrowed to a pinpoint. He’d groped his way back to the bathroom. Even though he hadn’t been able to see a bloody thing, he’d released a breath that he hadn’t known he was holding, and something had eased inside him.

  Now he stretched out in the tub and listened to the small, irreplaceable sounds that made up their lives. The distant grind of a diesel generator. Wind chimes on the veranda. The clink of pottery and silver in the plastic drainer as Caro washed dishes.

  The kitchen stove was on the other side of the bathroom wall, and he smelled buttered prawns and matata, a peanutty clam stew. Cinnamon drenched the air, and he knew she’d made a green maize pudding, Vivi’s favorite. He caught another scent, metallic and salty—Caro had prepared him a going-away drink, blood ice frappé.

  He heard footsteps in the hall, and a moment later the bathroom door opened. Caro walked in, blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, her cotton dress backlit from the hall sconce. Jude’s gaze swept over the faint outline of her legs, and then he looked up at her face. God, those cheekbones. She had never looked more beautiful.

  “I’m worried about the generator,” she said. “It’s making that funny noise again.”

  “I’ll check it before I leave.” He got out of the tub. “Where’s Vivi?”

  “Napping.” Caro lit a candle and set it on the counter. The flame cast a burnished glow over her hair, sending up a dazzle of gold light. “We’ve got a little time before she wakes.”

  He was hoping she’d say that. He lifted a pile of blankets and pillows, dropped them on the floor, then turned on the faucets. While the tub filled, he gently pressed Caro against the wall and kissed her. She tasted of salt and mango. He cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding through her hair. Her body pushed against him, making his breath come faster and faster.

  In the candlelight, her pupils were huge, showing an edge of silver-blue irises.

  He looked down at her. “Are you still my girl?”

  “For now,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice.

  Since they’d gotten married, this question and answer had become a teasing invocation, a lighthearted litany that moved between them like music.

  He helped her undress, and then his clothes came off just as fast. They climbed into the tub, water sloshing around them, and eased down into the steam. Low inside him, a tight knot of pleasure loosened.

  She reached for the soap. “I packed you some sunblock and—”

  He silenced her with another kiss, and the soap she was holding thumped against the porcelain bottom of the tub. The heat from her body seeped into his chest and surged into his belly. A small humming sound began in her throat, and her breath hit his shoulder in warm spurts. He wasn’t inside her, but she was already coming, the way she always did. One of the lovelier side effects of his vampirism—and her hybridism—was the one Caro loved best: transcendent sex.

  She pulled back a little, her breasts bobbing in the water, nipples taut. “A bathtub has so many functions,” she said a little breathlessly. “It’s a place to wash. And a place to sleep.”

  “That’s true, lass,” he said, emphasizing the last word, a Yorkshire endearment that never failed to make her smile.

  “A tub is also a place to make love.” Her lips curved as she slipped her hand under the water and found him. A tingle rippled through his flanks. He shut his eyes, concentrating on the pressure of her fingertips. He loved how she gave her full attention to a task, whether it was making love, squeezing a lemon, or theorizing about heretics in the medieval church; history had been her passion before she’d gotten mixed up with vampires.

  She dipped her shoulders under the water, and her damp hair floated around him like gilded seaweed. She was a mermaid who’d slipped out of her glossy sheath, her legs long and graceful, beckoning him to swim inside her. When he entered her, she drew in a mouthful of air, as if she were learning to breathe for the first time.

  A long while later, while the tub refilled, Jude’s keen hearing picked up sounds in Vivi’s room. He heard her whimper, and then the mattress squeaked beneath her tiny body.

  “Vivi’s having another nightmare,” he said.

  “Poor baby.” Caro got out of the tub and dried off.

  “Why is she having so many bad dreams?” Jude asked.

  Caro didn’t answer. As she slipped on her dress, three lines cut across her forehead. Then she hurried out of the bathroom. A few moments later, Vivi settled down.

  Jude pulled the stopper out of the drain and lay back, listening to the water swirl down the pipe. Vivi’s nightmares had begun two weeks ago, right after he accepted that job. Was there a connection? Many hybrids had prescient dreams, including Caro, but it was impossible to know if Vivi had inherited this alarming talent.

  When Caro had gotten pregnant, her half-immortal chromosomes had collided with Jude’s then-mortal ones, and they’d produced a quarter-vampire baby. Some immortals believed that a hybrid baby was mixed up in an eighth-century prophecy. Images had been found in worldwide frescoes and cave drawings, all of which had been created hundreds of years apart. The art was always the same: a war between humans and skeletons and a baby in a gilded cage. Ancient codices, including one that had been excluded from the Bible, predicted that a one-quarter-vampire baby would be instrumental in the salvation or destruction of the immortals. A small, fanatic group of vampires believed that Vivi was this child.

  One baby, two opposing concepts, two possible outcomes. Either way, Jude couldn’t decide if this prophecy referred to God’s judgment on a subspecies or if it meant that a subspecies would pass judgment on an innocent child.

  No parent wanted to hear this. Jude and Caro certainly hadn’t. Three years ago, on a sweltering night in Manhattan, Vivi had been born prematurely. She’d been rushed into the neonatal intensive care unit at Lenox Hill Hospital. A valve in her heart wouldn’t close, and each time she cried, her blood flowed in the opposite direction, turning her body a dusky purple-blue.

  Jude and Caro had stood next to the NICU window, watching their baby scream in the oxygen tank, her fists and feet the color of ripe plums. Wires and tubes snaked around her tiny body. Jude had already received death threats from a group of immortal Egyptian monks—the brothers of the Sinai Cabal had turned Jude into a vampire, and in return, they’d forced him to belong to their guild. But they’d really wanted to steal his then-unborn child.

  The nurses had let Caro hold Vivi for a moment. “She can’t be the only quarter-vampire in diapers,” Caro had whispered, her hand caught around the baby-shoe necklace.

  “Let’s hope not,” he’d whispered back. But he wasn’t sure; hybrids were so rare.

  “Did my genes cause the heart defect?” Caro’s eyes filmed with tears.

  “No, honey.” He put his arm around her, trying to think of a nonscientific way to explain Vivi’s condition. Patent ductus arteriosis wasn’t all that uncommon. Before birth, the fetus’s blood flows in one direction, thanks to a valve that stays open. This valve closes within three days after the baby is born. But Vivi’s hadn’t. Her blood flowed the wrong way when she cried, and that was why she was so blue.

  After a moment, he said, “A valve in our baby’s heart was supposed to close after birth. Sometimes it takes longer with preemies. Let’s don’t give up yet.”

  That night, their vampire friend, Raphael Della Rocca, flew in from Italy to be with them. He was tall, blond, and fine looking. Richer than the pope. As Vivi’s godfather, Raphael had brought in security guards and a world-famous pediatric ca
rdiologist. Dr. Attenburg had admitting privileges at Lenox Hill, and he was sympathetic to the Barretts’ need for privacy.

  But Vivi’s heart valve didn’t close. When she was six days old, she underwent open-heart surgery, followed by an extended stay in the neonatal unit. Vivi’s blood showed an increased amount of monoclonal antibodies, a protein that acts like warriors in the immune system. The human pediatricians fretted over various diseases, but Dr. Attenburg told Jude not to worry.

  “Hybrid children often have benign blood conditions,” he said. “Besides, Vivi’s hematocrit and white blood cell count values are normal. She’ll be fine.”

  A few weeks later, Jude and Caro brought home a pink, healthy baby and an astronomical hospital bill—it is nearly impossible for vampires to obtain health insurance, since the forms require sensitive information. However, Jude and Caro had started their marriage with several million euros, and they’d settled the bill. Far more worrisome was the Sinai Cabal. Jude always expected an undead version of Rumpelstiltskin to appear at his and Caro’s Upper East Side apartment, demanding they surrender l’enfant terrible, the cabal’s rude dysphemism for Vivi.

  The Barretts left New York and flew to Prague, where they stayed with Caro’s beloved uncle Nigel, an undead archaeologist. Uncle Nigel was jovial and sensible. He never failed to make Caro laugh, and he was the only one who could soothe Vivi’s colic.

  But a few months later, threatening letters from the Sinai Cabal started to jam Uncle Nigel’s mailbox. The Barretts moved to Amsterdam. A few months later they flew to Brussels.

  They always traveled at night, and sometimes the airports and cities ran together. Madrid, Lisbon, Santiago, Auckland, Kyoto, Stockholm, Vienna, San Francisco, Zürich. Caro spoke all of the Romance languages, including some Bulgarian, and Jude knew enough German and Russian to get by, so they could negotiate with landlords and taxi drivers. However, it required money to be fugitives, especially when one of them required expensive black market blood. The Barretts had literally flown into a financial maelstrom. Jude couldn’t shake the feeling that they were moving in other ways, too, further and further from the tranquillity that Caro had craved.

  For now the money problems are over, he told himself, sinking lower into the claw-foot tub, thanks to the Al-Dîn Corporation.

  The bathroom door opened again, and Caro tiptoed inside.

  “Vivi’s fine,” she said. “She was dreaming about bats. I wish they wouldn’t roost outside her window.”

  He frowned. “Is she all right?”

  “Yes. She went right back to sleep.”

  Jude switched off the taps. Then he opened his arms. “Come here, beautiful.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Caro

  While the water splashed around us, I snuggled against Jude. A tiny ribbon of blood trailed down my neck and curved around my breast.

  “Are you all right, lass?” Jude asked, pulling me closer.

  “Mmm-hmm.” I smoothed my finger over his throat, where scabs were already starting to form around the tooth marks I’d made. Sometimes when we made love, he couldn’t resist giving me a nip. And sometimes I bit him. There’s just an undeniably erotic connection between vampires and teeth.

  There’s one catch, though: Vamps and hybrids are allergic to each other.

  Just to be clear, this is not a widely known fact. Jude says that many scientists haven’t made the connection, mainly because hybrids are uncommon. A few years ago, a pharmaceutical company was doing research on this very subject, but its maniacal CEO, Harry Wilkerson, died in an Egyptian prison. His company went bankrupt. A fire wiped out his laboratory in Romania, and the research was scattered into the Carpathian Mountains.

  I’m skimming over a lot of history, but I don’t allow myself to think about Wilkerson. Ever. As a result, few people know what lurks in a hybrid’s blood: an antigen.

  A vampire will not have a physical reaction the first time he or she bites a hybrid; but the immortal’s super immune system will immediately start building antibodies to a hybrid’s antigen. The second bite will cause the vamp to suffer an allergic reaction. Small amounts of blood will cause respiratory distress, flushing, and hives. However, if the vampire drinks a lot of hybrid blood, it can cause a fatal anaphylactic reaction.

  Conversely, vampires possess a neurotoxin that causes an allergic reaction in hybrids—if bitten, the hybrid will experience a fleeting numbness and paralysis. The vampy neurotoxin that causes trouble for hybrids is excreted in semen as well. Fortunately, when Jude was first transformed, his blood had zero toxins. It took a long time for them to build up in his system. That gave me time to develop a resistance to the neurotoxin. As Jude always said, “Hybrid-vampire immunity works on the same principle as allergy shots. But you were inoculated with a penis, not a needle.”

  Now if I ever got attacked and bitten by a homicidal vampire—and they do exist—the vamp would turn blue and gasp for air, if, of course, he’d been exposed to my antigens. Thanks to my resistance to the vamp neurotoxin, though, I wouldn’t go numb. It’s like a built-in defense system. Which would give me time to run.

  However, the second time Jude bit me, I almost had to take him to the emergency room. We were so caught up in the moment that we forgot about the antigen in my blood or how it would affect him. At first, we didn’t know anything was wrong; after all, heavy breathing and flushed skin are symptoms of intense sexual arousal. But he was in mild anaphylactic shock. Until he developed antibodies to my blood, he took fifty milligrams of Benadryl prior to sex.

  As the steamy water plunged into the tub, I rinsed the dried blood off my neck and gave silent thanks that Jude no longer required antihistamines.

  Life is good, I thought. But I wished he hadn’t taken that job.

  Jude leaned back in the tub, and I rested against him. I traced my finger over his wedding band. We’d bought it when he was thinner. In recent years he’d filled out, and he couldn’t move the band over his knuckle. Not that he would try, but I missed seeing the inscription: To J love the Lass.

  “Do you remember the night we got married?” I asked.

  “Every detail.” He put his arms around me. “We were in Monaco. Raphael must have bought a case of white rice. I think it’s still in my hair.”

  “And mine.”

  Jude wrapped my hair around his wrist. “I drove slowly down the road. Cars were honking and passing us.”

  “But you had to drive carefully. The Moyenne Corniche is notoriously twisty. All those drop-offs.”

  “It was a lovely night, wasn’t it?” Jude smiled. “Clear and starry. You put a Sinatra CD into the player. A snappy tune—”

  “‘Luck Be a Lady,’” I said, finishing his sentence, the way we so often did. “Perfect for romance on the Riviera, considering we’d just left the casino.”

  “Until I tried to turn up the volume on the CD player,” he said. “But I accidentally pressed the wrong button and—”

  “The sun roof zoomed open.”

  He laughed. “Your veil flowed up and out of the car. It streamed through the darkness like an angel.”

  “Or a tablecloth,” I said.

  Jude hugged me closer. “Oh, Caro. I’m going to miss you.”

  A trembly place moved in my chest. “Tell me about this expedition.”

  “The Al-Dîn rep made me swear that I wouldn’t discuss it.” Jude’s mouth turned up at the edges, and I could tell that he was holding back a smile.

  I traced my finger over his bottom lip. “But you’ll tell me everything, right?”

  He playfully bit my finger. “It’s a scientific mission. Archaeologists, chiropterologists, a virologist, entomologist, microbiologist. Some of the scientists are already in the bush.”

  I dropped my hand to his neck, feeling his pulse thump against my finger. “Doing what?”

  “They’re looking for a way for vampires to walk in daylight.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Probably not. But Al-Dîn th
inks so. Their archaeologists are studying the Lolutus—that’s an extinct tribe of day-walking vampires. I’ll be working with bats.”

  “Seriously? You don’t have to leave home to study them.”

  “Yes, but Al-Dîn isn’t paying me to analyze the DNA of loud, quarrelsome fruit bats. Apparently the team found a new species in Gabon, one that has the RH1 gene. Better known as the dim-light vision gene.”

  “A what?”

  “The bats we’re looking for aren’t nocturnal.”

  “How can Al-Dîn afford to hire all of these experts?”

  “Apparently, the corp owns diamond mines in South Africa. An expedition is spare change.”

  I fell silent. The last few nights, I’d dreamed about bats, carnivorous fish, and flying wolves. Had those images also invaded Vivi’s dreams? Sometimes my dreams are laden with portents, but the imagery can be confusing. Jude usually talks me through them, but I didn’t want to worry him. He was leaving that night, facing God knew what in the bush.

  I found the soap and began washing his chest, spreading bubbles along his black, glossy hairs. “What if I need to reach you?” I said. “Will your cell phone work in the jungle?”

  “Al-Dîn advised me not to bring it. But they’ll issue a netbook. I’ll e-mail.”

  I glanced away, hoping he hadn’t seen my quick frown, and put the soap in the dish. Our budget didn’t include wireless Internet, but the island’s motels and cafés offered free Wi-Fi, so I could take our laptop to a hotel lobby or Café Companhia.

  Jude splashed water over his chest. “Al-Dîn has your cell phone number if there’s a problem. I also gave them Father dos Santos’s number as a backup.”

  “But he’s a local priest.” I turned back to him. “Shouldn’t you have given them Uncle Nigel’s number? Or Raphael’s?”

  “Isn’t Nigel excavating relics in Ecuador? And Raphael would think I was mad. He’d arrive with a bucketful of money and ten thousand lawyers to get me out of this expedition.”