Dayhunter

by Jocelynn Drake

  Hugo’s German accent was incredibly thick and it wasn’t helped by his growing anger. It had actually taken me a couple seconds to figure out what he was saying.

  “Wait! You mean, this is it? No one else is coming?” Penelope shouted, slamming both her open palms on the table. “I never agreed to a suicide mission. The tales of the battle at Machu Picchu told of hundreds of nightwalkers. Why are we the only ones?”

  “Don’t know. You piss off Macaire or the rest of the Coven recently?” I asked. I was about to say more but my cell phone started ringing, stunning everyone into silence. Stepping away from the rest of the group and walking into the living room, I hiked up my dress and got my phone from where it was strapped to my leg. No pockets.

  The little LCD screen revealed that it was my home phone number back in Savannah. There were only a couple of people who could be calling me from that number. “Who is it?” I demanded.

  “Gabriel said you wanted me to call,” replied a soft voice that instantly made my hands begin to tremble in relief. It was Tristan. He was awake and safe. For once, something had gone right.

  I turned my back to the group and hunched my shoulders as if I could disappear from their view. I even went so far as to lower my voice, though I knew they could all clearly hear me. It didn’t matter. I needed this private moment with Tristan to settle my own nerves.

  “Are you okay? Did Gabriel show you around?” I asked, cringing at my own questions. I sounded like a worried, overprotective mother. I sounded like Sadira.

  “He said he would after I called you. Are you still in Venice? What about the naturi? I can still—”

  “No, I’m in Crete,” I interrupted, and instantly wished I hadn’t used such a harsh tone. “We should have this all cleaned up in a few nights. I’ll be home in three or four nights, and then we can…find a more…permanent arrangement for you.”

  A heavy silence filled the air. I couldn’t guess at what he was thinking. He either doubted that I would be back at all or was insulted by the idea that I was already looking to unload him like a pile of unwanted baggage. I had never wanted a family for this very reason. I didn’t want anyone underfoot and didn’t know what to do with someone once he was in my life.

  “I should let you go,” Tristan murmured.

  “Wait! I…If you don’t hear from me within the next week, I…I want to you seek out a nightwalker called Knox. He…sort of helps me out and…” I stumbled awkwardly. It was like telling my next of kin where to find my will. I had no provisions set aside, no preparations made for Tristan should something happen to me. He would be on his own in a foreign country. But at least for now he’d be away from Sadira and the Coven.

  “I understand. I’ll be fine. Take care of Rowe,” he said, then hung up before I could say anything truly idiotic.

  After returning the phone to its place on my leg, I turned back around to find everyone staring at me. Hugo looked a little stunned, while Penelope was outright smug. On the other hand, Danaus’s expression was blank. But then, he knew who had called. He knew why Tristan was half a world away.

  “As I was saying,” I stated, trying to ignore the blush that I was sure stained my cheekbones, “we don’t need anyone else. The naturi numbers are fewer. We’re chipping away at their ranks and we’ll continue to do so until we finally get to Rowe.”

  “But—”

  “We’ll plan a series of incursions for tomorrow night based on their location,” I pressed on, cutting off Hugo before he could argue. “We can try to wipe them out before the new moon.”

  “I can do some scouting during the day,” Danaus offered. I opened my mouth to argue when my phone rang again.

  “By the gods, Mira,” sneered Penelope. “Hire a babysitter.”

  I turned my back to her, refusing to comment as I grabbed my phone. However, the number was different this time, not one I remembered seeing before. Few had my number, and those who did knew to only call in an emergency.

  “Who is this?” I demanded.

  “Mira?” answered a startled voice. “This is James. James Parker. We met a few days…er…nights ago. I’m with Themis.”

  “Yes, I remember you, James,” I said as I turned to look at the only other Themis member in the room. I didn’t have to ask how James had gotten my number. Danaus had used my phone to call him days ago. “I’m a little busy right now.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Danaus. You see, we’re here and we need to know where—”

  “What?” I exclaimed, my thoughts coming to a screeching halt. “What do you mean ‘here’? Where’s ‘here’? And who’s this ‘we’?” That’s when I felt it. The first tear in the night. We had less than an hour before sunrise and I still needed a safe place against the daylight and the humans. “Never mind.” Stalking across the room, I slapped the phone into Danaus’s open hand.

  Leaning against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest, I watched as he slowly paced away from us. The hunter quickly gave his assistant instructions to get settled in a hotel and told him he would go there after sunrise. We were all eavesdropping on the conversation. There was no such thing as privacy when a nightwalker was in the room.

  I was shocked to hear that James had traveled to Heraklion with the intention of helping Danaus. We had contacted him before leaving Venice, wanting Themis to confirm that Crete would be the next location of the sacrifice, since I didn’t trust the Coven to tell the truth. It was part of the reason we had delayed our flight, waiting for the little research society to hear from all its field operatives at the twelve locations.

  But I was speechless when James revealed that Ryan had come to Crete as well. The gold-eyed warlock was trouble. I might have temporarily escaped the scheming and torture of the Coven, but I was now faced with an extremely powerful human with an agenda I had yet to understand.

  “What’s this Themis?” Penelope asked softly, taking a couple steps closer to me.

  “The help you were looking for.” My gaze returned to Danaus as he ended the call. I’d been with the hunter every moment since we had spoken with Macaire, heard both of his conversations with James. He had not yet spoken of the Coven’s pact with the naturi. But he was now planning to meet with Ryan without me.

  Will you tell him? I asked when his fingers brushed against my hand as he returned my phone.

  I have to.

  Don’t. Not yet. Telling him will only start a war.

  And if I don’t, we could all be in danger, he argued, frowning at me. However, the look in his eyes told me a different story. He was worried and unsure. I could see it, and feel the emotions beating between us.

  Just give me one more night.

  Why?

  I need more time to think. There has to be a better way. Please.

  Postponing won’t help us.

  It buys us one more night without war among all the races. Isn’t it enough that we’re fighting the naturi?

  After a moment, Danaus softly grunted and walked away from me. I had bought one more night. I trusted him to keep his word, even though he had not actually spoken at all. Chaos was swirling around us and we needed to tread carefully if we had any hope of protecting what we had all come to value in this world. And I had a dark suspicion that I would get only one shot at this.

  TWENTY-ONE

  No one was happy the next night when we finally left Ryan’s hotel. Danaus didn’t want me alone with Ryan; Ryan didn’t want Danaus paired with Penelope; Penelope didn’t want to be left alone with the hunter; and James didn’t want to be left behind at the hotel. Only Hugo wasn’t verbally complaining, but by his expression, I could tell he didn’t want to go at all. By the time the bickering stopped, I was ready to leave them all behind. However, I wasn’t that insane just yet.

  After waiting for Ryan to change from his dress slacks into a pair of worn blue jeans, the warlock and I set out in a tiny taxi to the Palace of Knossos. Danaus had already confirmed that the naturi left the mountains and were approaching the c
ity. However, due to his lack of familiarity with the area, he couldn’t tell whether they had arrived yet at the Minoan ruins.

  I rubbed my eyes, trying to push aside some of the tension humming through me. I didn’t feel rested. Crete was eating away at my peace of mind. My sleep had been filled with nightmares of running from an angry mob, my father fighting to save me, only to be killed himself. To add to it, I knew very little about the warlock who sat beside me. We had met only a few nights earlier at the Themis Compound back in England. Sure, we were technically on the same side now, but he’d ordered Danaus to kill me some time ago. I wasn’t completely confident that the order had merely been put on hold until this little naturi mess was cleaned up.

  I was more than a little curious to discover why Ryan had come to Heraklion himself. Of course, from what I’d gathered during my brief visit to the Compound, Themis wasn’t exactly crawling with magic users. He might have been the only one with enough power and skill to be of real aid—not that this made me feel any better. But for now I had a more pressing questions beating against the back of my brain.

  “What possessed you to bring James along?” I asked him, trying not to sound too snide.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Ryan asked, positively oozing faux innocence. His perpetual smile grew on his lips, mocking me.

  “He’s not like us. You’re putting his life in danger,” I bit out in a low voice. There was no doubt that the taxi driver could hear us; I was just hoping his English wasn’t that good. Or at the very least, that he thought we were a pair of crazy tourists. “He doesn’t need to be here.”

  “That’s surprisingly sweet of you, Mira,” Ryan said, his facade of innocence never wavering. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  “Oh, shove it, Ryan!” I snarled, flashing my clenched teeth at him. “You’re not this dense.”

  The smile remained on his lean, ageless face, but it faded from his golden eyes as they danced over my features. He watched me with a frightening intensity before he finally drew in a breath to speak. “I brought him for three different reasons. First, he is the assistant to both Danaus and me. He will be aiding us in any matters that we are unable to address while we are looking into our current problem.”

  It was a reason. I didn’t think it was a particularly good reason. Charlotte Godwin was my human assistant back in Savannah and she took care of the day-to-day problems of managing my financial interests and seeing to my travel arrangements—things that generally needed to be addressed during the daylight hours.

  “Second, James has been with Themis for several years,” Ryan continued, “but he has had very little field experience. I thought this would be a good opportunity.”

  “You could have started him out on something a little less dangerous,” I criticized, shaking my head at him. As we stopped at an intersection, I scooted forward in my seat so I could address the taxi driver. “How far to Knossos?” I inquired in broken Cretan Greek. Despite all the years I’d been gone, my knowledge of the language hadn’t faded from my brain, as I would have expected. However, my dialect was archaic. It was unlikely anyone would be able to understand me. After listening to others, however, I’d picked up enough to get by. Undoubtedly, I sounded like a tourist.

  “Less than a kilometer,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me. He was an older gentleman with white hair and a lined face weathered by time and the sun.

  “Let us out here,” I said, pulling a few euros out of the front pocket of my leather pants. I had converted the last of my Egyptian pounds into euros at the Cipriani before Danaus and I flew out. I didn’t have much on me but figured it would get me through the next couple of nights. Beyond that, I had to survive our next encounter with the naturi before I worried about my cash flow.

  The driver seemed about to argue, but swallowed his comment when he heard Ryan already getting out of the car. He hadn’t been too sure about us heading to the palace at this late hour, but with a slight mental push, I managed to convince him to take us anyway.

  We had left the city of Heraklion behind and entered into the hilly countryside filled with vineyards and olive orchards. From a quick scan of the region, I was relieved to find very few humans in the area. I didn’t have to worry too much about being discovered or anyone stumbling into a deadly battle. The problem with many of the so-called holy sites was that they were now major tourist attractions, leaving the area thickly surrounded by shops, restaurants, and hotels for weary travelers burdened with far too much cash.

  Ryan and I silently waited in the darkness until we saw the taxi driver head back toward Heraklion and the relative safety of the city before we turned and headed down the empty lane toward the Minoan ruins. Danaus and Penelope had taken a taxi ten minutes before us, to head south of the palace before getting out and walking back toward the ruins. Hugo took a separate cab and would be arriving at the palace from the east. If we couldn’t stop them, our goal was to at least herd the naturi back toward the caves of Mount Idi and away from any of the large cities and towns in the immediate area. It was a temporary solution at best if we couldn’t destroy them all.

  For the first time since I’d become a nightwalker, the darkness felt like a physical weight pressing on my shoulders, rather than the soothing presence it had always been, Dark violent memories of fear and hatred lurked behind every tree. My mother’s death, the men I killed—all ghosts waiting for a moment of weakness before they would strike. With my fists clenched at my side, I struggled to stay focused on the task that loomed before me and the potential adversary beside me.

  “You said there were three reasons for bringing James,” I said to Ryan, resuming our earlier conversation from the car after we’d walked in the dark for a few minutes. “What was the third reason?”

  He remained silent for a long time, until I was sure he wasn’t going to tell me at all. He drew in a deep breath and his hands stopped swinging loosely at his sides. “Something has happened, and James—being the responsible fellow that he is—feels he should be the one to tell you.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you don’t want him to tell me?”

  “At the very least, I’d rather he not tell you in person. I fear that you’re the type to shoot the messenger,” Ryan stated, cocking his head to the side as he looked down at me.

  “I didn’t kill Danaus when he told me of the naturi. I would think that would be proof enough.” I shoved my hands in my back pockets, my eyes sweeping away from the warlock beside me to the rows of trees and hills that rose up around the winding road. I had the Browning that Danaus had given me in a holster at my lower back, and I was ready if anything so much as twitched. The only one in the immediate area who I could sense was Ryan, and it was driving me crazy. The air was still, redolent of the earth and wildflowers. It felt as if the world was holding its breath in anticipation of the inevitable battle.

  “You needed Danaus alive,” Ryan countered. “Besides, I’m not entirely sure you could kill him.”

  I bit back the first sharp comment that rose to mind and pushed on. He was trying to distract me, but there was no reason to jump at the bait. “Are you going to tell me or do I have to drag it out of James later tonight?”

  “Michael is missing,” Ryan softly said.

  I sighed softly, the sound barely rising above the scuff of my boots along some loose gravel on the road. “Michael isn’t missing. He’s dead.”

  “Yes, I know. Gabriel told us.” Ryan stopped walking and I looked up at him. The tall man’s white hair framed his narrow face, creating a strange outline to the shadows that filled the hollows of his cheeks. “We can’t find his body.”

  My temper instantly flared and I took a step toward him. It was a struggle to keep my hands from closing around his throat, but I succeeded. There was a tingle of magic in the air coming from my powerful companion, and I had no doubt that he could send my flying across the road without blinking an eye.

  But this horrible news diminished the danger of the warl
ock. Michael had been one of my guardian angels for several years. He’d been an able, dedicated bodyguard; a sweet, gentle man; and a considerate lover. He had watched over me during my daylight hours and stood with me against the naturi, who physically took his life. Recently, I realized that I’d been slowly stealing his life on another level, and the naturi had stolen away my chance to ever make it up to him.

  But now this? Lost? A dead body lost?

  “What do you mean? The night of the attack, I left him in the front hall. What did you do with him?” I shouted, not caring if I caught the attention of every naturi in the area. Michael deserved better than this. I needed to take him home where he could finally rest.

  “We couldn’t find him. I met him. James knew him. Gabriel was there. We searched every inch of the manor and all the area surrounding the Compound. He’s not there,” Ryan calmly said. He laid his large hands over my shoulders, squeezing lightly. The small comfort eased some of the tension from them, but I couldn’t unclench my jaw.

  “Who?” I whispered in a choked voice. “Who has him?”

  “Mira…” Ryan paused again and licked his dry lips. “The naturi were all over the first floor of the manor—”

  “No!” I jerked away from him, walking to the other side of the road while shaking my head in denial. My hands were shaking. The very idea of any naturi touching Michael’s lifeless body fueled a mindless, irrational fire within me. “Absolutely not! No! They don’t need his body. Why would they do it?”

  “To get at you.”

  “No, I don’t believe you. You have him.”

  “Why? So I can point the finger at the naturi and get you to hate them more?” he argued, his voice growing firmer. “That’s impossible. According to Danaus, your hatred of the naturi is boundless and eternal. There’s nothing I could do to increase that.”

  I paced back across the road toward Ryan, my fingers clenched into shaking fists. The urge to set the surrounding fields on fire was overwhelming, like a boiling kettle of water begging to blow off some of the steam before it overflows. “Why?” I growled.