Dayhunter

by Jocelynn Drake

  Sighing softly, I folded my arms over my chest. What was I left with? Let Jabari kill me when I finally grew useless so the balance on the Coven would remain. Not exactly my first choice. If I killed Jabari, would I have to take a seat, and spend the rest my existence butting heads with Macaire until he finally had me killed? Should I try to warn Our Liege? Other than the fact that he was trying to destroy us all now, he was an improvement over Macaire. Of course, the whole story could be a lie.

  To add to it all, I had never met Our Liege. I didn’t know where he was or how to contact him if I wanted to warn him. Not to mention that there was no telling if he would actually believe such a ridiculous tale. As it had been pointed out on more than one occasion, I wasn’t the most popular creature among my kind.

  But all of that was secondary to the greater, more immediate problem: What was I going to do when I got to Crete? The command to kill Rowe wasn’t a particular problem. I couldn’t see any benefit to leaving him alive, since he either wanted to use me or kill me. Yet, allowing them to complete the sacrifice would allow them to open the door at a later date. If there were any mistakes when the door was opened, all of the naturi could come rushing back into the world along with Aurora. A very bad thing.

  On the other hand, if the door never opened and Aurora was never killed, then the naturi would never fulfill their promise to assassinate Our Liege. While I might not want him dead, I definitely didn’t want him to send us into a war with all the other races just to stop the Great Awakening from happening ahead of schedule. Another very bad thing.

  It seemed I only had two choices: war with the naturi or war with creatures I had once called friends.

  Shuffling back toward the hotel with a silent Danaus, my mind a jumble of thoughts, I realized that I missed my original plan. It had been a good, solid plan.

  1. Kill Nerian.

  2. Find Jabari or some other Elder.

  3. Tell Elder of the naturi plan.

  4. Return home.

  Oh, and kill Danaus.

  But even that had gotten fouled up along the way. To hell with plans. In less than twenty-four hours I was going to be standing in the remains of a place I had once called home, surrounded by the naturi. I doubted another one of my brilliant plans was going to see me through. May the fates forgive me, what I needed was to talk to Jabari

  TWENTY

  My skin crawled. I stepped onto the tarmac of the runway at the Nikos Kazantzakis Airport in Heraklion and my stomach lurched and churned within me. Clenching my teeth, I paused at the foot of the stairs leading down from my jet and wrapped my arms around my middle as if I could protect myself from the memories that seemed to rise up from the dead in the back of my brain.

  I might never have lived in this town—my family had lived in a small house to the south of Chania, a port town west of Heraklion—but I was home. After standing on the runway for less than a minute, the familiar smells were already teasing at my mind. The wind swept up from the south, running over the island before finally reaching me. The warm breeze had skimmed through the valley and over the mountain ranges that bisected the island, carrying with it the rich scents of Jerusalem sage, Cretan bee orchid, and dark Cretan ebony from where it clung to the cliffs down at Siteia. Mixed in was the heady scent of olives and lamb roasting on a spit. Oh God, I was home.

  Since leaving Crete as a young woman, I’d never looked back, never set foot on her sandy shore. My mother died when I was twelve and my departure to the mainland left my father alone in Chania. Laying under the stars in Greece, I cursed myself more than once for leaving my father, wishing I’d had the strength and courage to convince him to come with me. I should have demanded that he leave Crete behind and join me on the mainland. There had been nothing left for either of us on this island. But he returned. He went back to the same house I’d been born in, the house he’d been born in, because it was the only place he could ever call home.

  “Mira?”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped at Danaus before I even thought about what I was saying. Straightening my spine, I resettled my bag on my left shoulder and took a few steps away from the jet so he could finish descending the stairs. “Do we have company?”

  “There’s a vampire headed this way, but other than that, I don’t sense anyone else in the area,” Danaus replied, coming to stand beside me. His bag of clothes and weapons was slung over his right shoulder. None of his usual weapons were visible, but I knew he had something lethal within quick reach.

  During the short flight, we’d discussed possible scenarios that could occur at the airport when we landed. The naturi would expect us to show up at the Palace of Knossos, after I had stopped them at Stonehenge just a few nights ago. We would continue to thwart their every move until they finally gave up or we were all dead. I wasn’t in the mood to contemplate which would happen first.

  The night air was surprisingly quiet. I had expected them to attack us as soon as we stepped off the plane. The flight would leave us stiff and somewhat disoriented as we struggled to acquaint ourselves with our new surrounding. It was one of their best opportunities. Of course, the prime time to attack was going to be sunrise, and I still needed to come up with a good plan for that eventuality. A part of me wished I could climb back on the plane and fly to Greece, where I could spend my daylight hours in peace. I didn’t want to sleep here. Were there stories of me in Crete? Old folklore of a demon child born with hair the color of Hell’s fires? Were the children taught to fear me like other nightmarish creatures? Damn, I wanted to be gone from this island and her memories!

  Forcing myself to concentrate, I scanned the area and picked up two nightwalkers, but only one was approaching us. This was not what I had expected. There were only two in the entire region. The palace was not far from the city. The whole area should have been teeming with nightwalkers. Two vampires was all the Coven had thought to send? Bastards. Every last one of them.

  The nightwalker slowly sauntered across the tarmac from the nearby hangar, her heels clacking loudly on the hard surface. A wealth of black hair spilled over her left shoulder and down her back while a secretive smile played across her mouth. As she approached, her eyes never left Danaus. I couldn’t decide what had caught her attention: his dark attractive looks or any of the rumors that had leaked from Venice.

  “Who sent you?” I demanded before she could draw enough of a breath to speak. I was already on edge about being in Crete, and we still needed to come up with a plan to defeat the naturi. We were running out of time. Our flight out of Venice had been delayed, and it was now nearly 4:00 A.M. Dawn was drawing close.

  “The Coven,” she said, her lips twisting in a frown as she looked me over. My clothes were rumpled and wrinkled, appearing as if I had wadded them up in a tight ball before bothering to put them on. I looked like a lost vagabond next to her neat cream-colored slacks and pale blue blouse.

  “My name is Penelope. Macaire requested that I meet you and aid you against the naturi.”

  “Where are the others?” I barely resisted the urge to run my hands over my dress in a senseless attempt to smooth out some of the wrinkles.

  “Hugo waits at a distance, watching to make sure we are safe,” she replied.

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  I had a few choice words to say about Macaire and the rest of the Coven. This was ridiculous. There was no way Danaus, a pair of nightwalkers, and I could defeat all of the naturi lurking on this island. With odds like these, the naturi were going to have little trouble breaking the seal, and I was going to get staked in the process. However, before I could vent my growing irritation, Danaus spoke up.

  “We need to get moving.” His deep voice pushed aside my anger. He was right. We were easy targets standing out in the middle of the landing strip.

  Without any further discussion, Penelope led the way out of the airport and to a taxi she had waiting. At one time or another all three of us looked over our respective shoulders. It hung
unspoken in the air. The naturi were out there and they were watching us. I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t attacked yet, and a part of me didn’t want to know the answer.

  Penelope took us to a small square house she was renting. The exterior was painted white and the roof was flat. It looked like there might be some kind of awning covering part of the roof, offering tenants a place to rest at the end of the day and look out over the city. Even after all the centuries, Venetian influence was still visible in most of the buildings. For a time, Crete had been controlled by the Venetians, who left behind their form of art and architecture as a pervading influence. The cities such as Heraklion and Chania still glowed with the beauty of that dying city.

  The interior of the house was the typical Cretan structure, with windows along only the front wall, while the other walls were covered in colorfully woven cloths and painted plates. A rounded archway led from the main living room into the kitchen and dining room, while the bedrooms were at the back of the house, off the kitchen. A window air-conditioning unit filled one of the few windows, growling softly as it put out a steady stream of cold air. The evening air had cooled to the low seventies, but the house retained most of the balmy afternoon heat.

  It was a considerably larger house than the one I’d grown up in, and obviously more modern, but there were too many similarities in the design and the use of color. My hands trembled and a knot seemed to be permanently lodged in my throat.

  Dropping my bag of clothes on the floor, I once again tried to push the little reminders that I was in Crete out of my mind and focus on why I had come to the island now. “How long have you been here?” I asked, trying to sound polite despite my raw nerves and growing frustration.

  “I arrived on the island a few hours after sunset,” Penelope replied. She was watching me warily from the opposite side of the room. She stood underneath the tall archway, her arms folded over her chest. “I have been living in Athens for almost a century and I come to Crete during the summer season for the tourists.”

  “Does this Hugo belong to you or did Macaire send him too?” I walked over to sofa that faced a corner fireplace made of small stones placed in an interesting mosaic. I leaned against the back of the sofa so I could face the nightwalker, crossing my left ankle over my right.

  “Macaire sent him,” Penelope replied. “Is it true that you stopped the naturi at Stonehenge?” She made no attempt to hide her skepticism when she fired back at me before I could continue to interrogate her.

  I smiled at her and rubbed the knuckles of my right hand on the front of my dress as if shining my nails. Holding my hand out in front of me, my fingers instantly became engulfed in blue fire. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.” As I had expected, Penelope took one step backward, but she quickly stopped herself and returned to the spot she’d been standing, determined not to be bullied.

  “You’re going to need it,” Danaus remarked.

  “How many?” I asked him, instantly extinguishing the fire. My fun was over. We needed to get back down to business. We needed to figure out exactly what we were up against and how to defeat them.

  Danaus’s power brushed past me as it moved out of the house and across the island. His eyes remained opened as he searched Crete, but his focus was not on anyone in the room. “A couple dozen. Less than England,” he said.

  I was surprised. They had staged an enormous attack on the Themis Compound, throwing more naturi at us than I thought had lived on the entire earth. Had we seriously depleted their numbers to the point that they could no longer risk such a significant assault, no matter the importance of the event? One could only hope.

  “Where are they?”

  Danaus’s gaze focused as he leveled his blue eyes on me. “I don’t know this island.”

  “Would a map help?” Penelope inquired in a voice so sweet it grated on my nerves.

  “Yes,” I snapped before Danaus could answer. “Find one.”

  After throwing a nasty look at me, Penelope stomped out of the room, disappearing into the kitchen as she headed toward the back of the house. A snort from Danaus caused me to look back over at him.

  “What put you in such a mood?” he asked.

  “I just want to get this done and get the hell out of here,” I snarled, no longer even trying to control my temper.

  To my surprise, his expression softened. It annoyed me. I didn’t want to see sympathy or pity from the hunter. I wanted him angry or annoyed or any of the other moods I had grown accustomed to seeing on his face. A moment later I felt a faint touch in my brain, like a hand feeling blindly about in the darkness.

  Maybe it’s time you faced your past. The sound of Danaus’s thoughts echoed in my mind. He was getting too good at speaking to me telepathically. Just over twenty-four hours had passed since he had last pushed his powers into me, but our connection grew stronger each time he did it.

  To hell with my past. This isn’t the time to go all Freudian on me. We find the naturi and stop them. That’s it, I mentally flung back at him.

  Danaus didn’t reply, but I could feel him laughing at me, some silent chuckle rumbling through his mind and slipping into mine.

  But the feeling ceased at the sound of the front doorknob turning. A knife seemed to magically appear in Danaus’s hand as he twisted around to face whoever was entering the house. I stood, my knees slightly bent, ready for anything. We both scanned the house at the same time to find the other nightwalker. However, neither of us relaxed when he stepped into the room with hands up and palms out and open.

  Hugo was built like a freaking refrigerator. The nightwalker could have caused a lunar eclipse if he happened to step in front of the moon. His shoulders were wide, tapering down to a narrow waist and hips before splitting into legs that resembled tree trunks. He could have easily palmed a basketball with one large hand. I would have taken a step backward if my left thigh wasn’t already pressed against the back of the pale yellow sofa. I’d never seen a vampire as big as Hugo. The only relief I felt was the fact that he wasn’t very old; less than a century.

  “Hugo?” I asked in a hard voice.

  “Ja,” he grunted, lowering his hands.

  A curse rose up the back of my throat but I swallowed it down again. I spoke only a sprinkling of German and it had been a long time since I had last tried. “Sprechen Sie Englisch?”

  “Ja,” he replied, to my immediate relief. “Mira?”

  “Ja,” I said, trying to match his low growl and not quite pulling it off. I guess I needed a set.

  “Hunter.” Hugo’s mouth twisted into a sneer as he looked over at Danaus.

  “I’m glad we’ve got the introductions out of the way. Now, if we can get back to business, we—”

  The sound of Penelope’s heels clicking across the floor as she returned to the kitchen halted me. She opened what appeared to be a travel guide for the island of Crete and unfolded a colorful map from the back.

  “Have either of you seen or encountered the naturi since coming to the island?” I asked as I walked over to where she’d spread the map out on the table.

  “No, but neither of us has been on the island that long,” Penelope said, shaking her head, her black hair flowing down around her face, nearly blocking her eyes. For the first time since meeting her, I saw a flicker of fear cross her face.

  “Danaus,” I called, looking over my shoulder at the hunter so I didn’t have to look at Penelope any longer. I put my finger over Heraklion, which was on the northeastern part of the island. “This is where we are. Where are the naturi hiding? In the city or farther away?”

  He moved behind me so he could see the map, but at the same time he didn’t have his back completely turned toward Hugo. I didn’t particularly want to turn my back to the enormous vampire either, but if Hugo knew that I was unnerved by his great hulking mass, he’d never follow my orders. And right now I needed him to follow me without question.

  Once again Danaus’s powers flowed out of his body, passing through
me like a warm wind, threatening to sweep my soul out of my body and drag it across the entire island. “Farther away,” he murmured. “None are in the city right now.”

  “He—He can sense them?” Penelope asked, her voice wavering.

  “Mmmm…he knows all kinds of nifty tricks.” A dark smile lifted the corners of my mouth. The nightwalker took a step back from the table, the fingers of her left hand curling into a fist. She glanced over her shoulder at Hugo, but I didn’t catch his expression. Danaus had lifted his right hand, moving it from Heraklion toward the west.

  “They’re all gathered in one place,” he continued, his hand hovering over a relatively broad part of the island.

  I leaned in close to read the tiny print on the map. “Can you get a sense of the region? Does it have a green feel? Mountainous?”

  “Mira, my powers aren’t that exact,” he bit out as his hand moved back a little, toward the west. “I don’t sense the earth, just the naturi.”

  “What about humans?” Penelope inquired, taking a tentative step closer again. “If they are in the Amari Valley, there are other villages there. People would be close to the naturi.”

  “No, there are no humans. Not for a good distance.”

  “Then they are on Mount Idi,” I said, straightening from where I was bent over the table. I looked up at Penelope as she straightened as well, a frown flattening her full lips into a thin line.

  “That entire area is dotted with caves,” she stated, waving one hand over that part of the map. “The naturi could be hiding anywhere, and it would take us several nights to flush them all out.”

  “We won’t need to flush them out,” I said. “They’ll be at the Palace of Knossos in two nights.”

  “You want us to wait for two nights and then take on all the naturi at once?” Hugo asked from where he was still standing in the living room. “I was told that I was to kill a naturi called Rowe. How am I to get to him if he is surrounded by his brethren? There are only four of us.”