Dayhunter

by Jocelynn Drake

“Danaus! Stand down!”

  “I won’t let you kill humans,” Danaus said. His grip on the sword shifted, tightening. It was my last warning.

  Time slowed down and I sat on the ground, one hand on Hugo, frozen. Danaus swung his sword twice; first plunging it into Penelope’s chest, then removing it and swinging it in a wide arc, slicing off her head. I watched it happen, unable to bring a single word of protest from my throat as he moved in a flawless, fluid swing. Shock halted any useful thoughts. In a span of just a few seconds everything had spiraled completely out of control.

  The spray of Penelope’s blood washed over all of us. With her death, the humans woke up from the trance she had been holding them under to keep them calm and quiet. Their screams rang through the valley, bouncing off the nearby mountains and waking me from my own morbid thoughts. The old man and woman stared down at their blood-covered hands and clothes, screaming and shaking. They had woken up to find themselves standing outside with two blood-covered bodies on the ground and three soaked, scary figures looming before them. Looking into their wide, horrified eyes, I briefly wondered what Our Liege was thinking when he decided to move up the Great Awakening. It was madness.

  “Ryan!” I shouted, my voice shaking. Hugo was stirring, a new moaning rumbling through his brain. Danaus was denying him his only chance at survival. Fear had gripped the nightwalker, and I didn’t want him to try to move, reopening wounds that had begun to heal.

  “I’ve got it.” The warlock’s voice was remarkably calm despite the insanity reigning around us. With a wave of his hand, the two humans grew instantly silent. A dull, unfocused stare returned to their faces. They were no longer aware of where they were or what was going on. I had thought Ryan would know such a trick. We all had to learn to hide in the open and control the minds of others if we were going to survive in a world that demanded we keep such a big secret.

  With a growl, I finally turned my attention to Danaus, who was putting his sword back to the scabbard on his back. “What the hell were you thinking? She was only trying to save Hugo. How could you kill her, you heartless bastard?” My voice was choked and broken, struggling to push past the lump in my throat.

  “She was going to let him kill both the humans,” Danaus said. “You know she was. She was going to sacrifice two humans in hopes of saving him.” I looked up again to find him staring down at me, his blue eyes narrowed on my face. “I won’t let you kill humans to save yourself.”

  “Yes she was! But did you ask me what I was planning? Did you ever wonder if I would allow such a thing to happen?” I had to close my eyes to keep the tears from falling. I felt so betrayed. Not until that moment did I realize how much I’d come to depend on Danaus. I had wrongly thought that he’d started to trust me, that he believed in me to do the right thing.

  But even the idea of the right thing had begun to blur. Was sacrificing two humans such a bad thing when it came to trying to save the entire human race from the naturi? Keeping Hugo alive would give us one more fighter against the naturi. As it stood now, Penelope was dead and it was highly unlikely that Hugo would last the rest of the night. Any other nightwalker wouldn’t have thought twice about draining those two humans dry, but I’d hesitated. No longer sure.

  “I don’t kill humans when feeding,” I said in a voice that sounded broken and beaten. “And I won’t allow those around me to do it either. I thought you knew that. You didn’t think and you’ve damned us all.” Shaking my head, I looked up at Ryan, who was standing next to the humans. “You and Danaus take the humans. Wipe their memories and send them home. Leave me the car. I’ll take care of Hugo.”

  “But—”

  “Just go,” I interrupted Ryan before he could argue further. “I’ll clean up here.”

  I sat still on the ground next to Hugo, my hand still pressed to his stomach as if it was my only anchor to sanity in this world. For the first time since becoming a nightwalker, I could feel the night pull in around me and a deep emptiness filled my chest. Even when I was being held captive by the naturi, I didn’t give up hope that Sadira or another nightwalker would come to my rescue. But with one nightwalker dead by the hand of a man I had come to rely on, and another dying in my arms, I couldn’t find any hope to cling to. The naturi would crush us all.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I sat with my back pressed against the stone wall of the mausoleum I hid in during the daylight hours. Exhaustion had settled deep within my bones, making it hard to even move, let alone crawl into the crypt so I could hide from the approaching dawn. Too much had happened in the past few hours, which left me struggling to find some good to cling to in the end.

  When I moved Hugo to the car, I discovered that he had also been stabbed in the back, puncturing his heart, which explained why he was so weak. Stopping at the edge of Heraklion, I summoned a dozen inhabitants from their warm, comfortable beds. Hugo fed briefly from each of them before I sent them blindly back to bed again. The drain on my powers was enormous, forcing me to feed as well before I could deposit a sleeping Hugo in a dark crypt in a cemetery between Heraklion and Knossos. When I dropped him off, only the worst of his wounds was slowly seeping blood. I hoped he would last the day.

  After leaving him, I returned to the palace ruins, where I burned the bodies of the naturi and Penelope. Guilt gnawed at me for burning her with the naturi, but I no longer had the strength to maintain several fires, and I didn’t want to take any chances being so close to the swell of energy rising up from the earth. I’d been burned once; I couldn’t afford for it to happen again. What bones I couldn’t destroy were buried in a shallow grave. It was the best I could do. Daylight was approaching.

  With all evidence of our existence eliminated from Knossos, I cleaned the blood and fingerprints off the car and left it in the heart of Heraklion. I checked on Hugo one final time before finding my own crypt, not far from his.

  Now as I sat in the dark, my mind numb, I felt someone approaching me. I pulled the Browning from the holster at the base of my spine and laid it on the ground beside me, partially hidden in the shadows cast by my body. A quick scan revealed that my visitor was Danaus, but I was surprised when I found that I didn’t want to put the gun away. I didn’t trust him any longer. If push came to shove, I knew I wouldn’t try to kill him with a gun. I’d just try to slow him down enough so I could rip his heart out with my bare hands.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I murmured wearily when the hunter finally came into view. He was still several yards off, but his hearing was nearly as good as mine. He heard me.

  “I came to talk,” he said in a low voice, as if he was afraid of waking some other graveyard occupant.

  I snorted, but still loosened my grip on the gun at my side. My fingers didn’t completely uncurl from around the butt, but stayed close just in case. “I can’t image we have much to talk about. Everything has been cleanly laid out.”

  Danaus walked around the last tree separating us in the cross-dotted garden, coming into full view. From what I could see, he was completely unarmed. Both his guns were missing, along with the sword on his back and the two knives usually attached to his leg and waist. Even his leather wrist guards were missing. He stood before me as vulnerable as it was possible for him to be. Could he still kill me in a heartbeat? Without a doubt. He could boil my blood as quickly as I could set him on fire, but he was trying to come before me without weapons.

  “I—I came to apologize,” he admitted.

  I sat in stunned silence for a moment before finally shaking my head to clear it. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. You should be apologizing to Penelope for taking her head off. You should be apologizing to Hugo for stealing away his one chance at survival,” I bitterly snapped.

  “I’m apologizing to you because I should have trusted you,” he corrected, standing before me with his legs spread wide, his hands shoved in his pockets. I gazed up, my frown matching his. “I know you. You wouldn’t have let Hugo kill those two people. But Penelope
would have. Hugo would have. They wouldn’t have thought twice about it, and I can’t forgive them for that.”

  “You can’t forgive them for wanting to survive?” I demanded, my hand reflexively tightening around the gun as my other hand balled into a fist in the dirt.

  “I can’t forgive them for killing innocent people,” he said. What sympathy and compassion he may have felt drained from his voice, leaving it cold and hard like Siberian permafrost.

  “But you have no problem with him dying for these people that you protect,” I said, gritting my teeth as I sat up. “We’re allowed to fight for them and die for them, but we’re not allowed to do anything that might save our own lives.”

  “It’s not like that,” he said, hesitant. He took an unsteady step backward with one foot then shifted it forward again.

  “Yes, it is.” I rose to my feet in a boneless manner, using my powers instead of my muscles for the sole purpose of unnerving him and underscoring my otherness. I did nothing to hide the act of putting the gun back in the holster at my lower back. “You and I work great together so long as you forget what I am. When it’s just you and me against the world with sword in hand, we work great together. But if I need to feed or give you some other small reminder that I’m a nightwalker, then you freak out. You can’t understand that I’m something beyond what I am.”

  “Forget?” he said in a louder voice. “How could I ever possibly forget what you are? I sense you more clearly than I have ever sensed any vampire. When you’re hungry, the feeling burns through me like a fire in my veins. When you use your powers, it’s like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. You’re in my head and I’m in yours. Do you think I didn’t feel your horror and disappointment tonight? What am I supposed to do? I’m a hunter! I’m supposed to protect humanity from threats like nightwalkers.”

  “Maybe it’s time to get a new job,” I said, feeling myself softening toward him. I hadn’t realized how strong our connection had been for him. I didn’t want to forgive him. I didn’t want to understand his point of view. I wanted to hold onto the anger so I could easily walk away from him when we finally finished our business with the naturi.

  “Enough, Mira,” he said in disgust. I had given him similar advice in the past, but this time I was serious.

  “Do you believe in fate?”

  “What?”

  “Fate. That great cosmic force that leads us down particular paths during our existence to—”

  “Yes, I know what fate is. No, I don’t believe in it.”

  “Maybe you should,” I suggested, sliding my hands into the back pockets of my leather pants. “I’m beginning to wonder myself. Maybe fate brought you to this point not to be a nightwalker hunter but a hunter of naturi. You have the strength, the speed, and the ability to sense them. You have an edge over every nightwalker in existence. Maybe it’s time to stop saving humanity from my kind and start saving them for the naturi.”

  “And who will protect mankind from you?” he demanded, shaking his head at me.

  A weak smile twisted one corner of my mouth as I looked up at him. His hair fell forward around his face, hiding his features in dark shadows. “Nightwalkers? No one will need to. It looks like we’re on the path to extinction without your help at all.”

  In fact, my people were on the fast track to extinction. Just on the off chance that we did succeed in stopping the naturi from opening the door and flooding the world with their kind so they could start a massive war, there was still Our Liege’s plan. Pushing the Great Awakening ahead of schedule was going to start a war with every lycanthrope, warlock, and witch on the planet. The war would leak out and humans would discover us ahead of schedule in the darkest light. They would join Danaus in the hunt for nightwalkers. Our nights were numbered.

  Danaus shocked me when he reached up and gently moved some hair from where it had fallen in front of my face. I looked up to find him faintly smiling down at me as two of his fingers rubbed a lock of my hair as if memorizing the feel. “Rowe won’t get you. Remember, we still have to finish our dance. I won’t let some dirty naturi kill you when I’ve promised myself that honor.”

  “We’re overdue for that dance,” I said, smiling back up at him.

  He shrugged his large shoulders and dropped my hair, letting his hand fall limply back at his side. “Things have gotten in the way. There’s still time.”

  “Is there? What have you told Ryan about the bargain?” I asked, abruptly changing topics. I knew this might have been my only chance to question the hunter while we were completely alone. I had to know if the warlock was looking for a way to stick a knife in my back at the first opportunity.

  “Against my better judgment, I’ve said nothing to him.”

  “Really?” There was no hiding my surprise. I couldn’t begin to fathom Danaus. He did trust me in some strange fashion, just not when it came to controlling the baser needs of my kind. I was beginning to wonder exactly what he felt when he sensed my hunger.

  Danaus shoved both of his hands through his hair as he paced a few steps away from me. “I thought you might have a plan to stop this from turning into a war among the races. Ryan is viewed very highly among the warlocks. If he says one word about what is going on in Venice, there will be no stopping the war.”

  “I have been thinking about it, and no matter what we do, we’re screwed. If we let the door open, so we can get our shot at Aurora, the naturi will spill out. There’s going to be no hiding them or the war they start. The Great Awakening will happen regardless of anyone’s wishes.” I leaned back against the small crypt, folding my arms over my chest.

  “And if we break the bargain?”

  “Assuming we can, we stop the sacrifice and kill Rowe. Once that’s done, I imagine that Macaire will hunt me down and cut my head off after he’s done torturing me. The Great Awakening will happen within the next year and there will be war among the races, but then, I think we’re building toward that already, considering we saw a witch and a lycan traveling with a Coalition member.”

  “One war or two. That’s what we face. Fighting a war on one front or on two.”

  My head snapped up and I stared silently at him. I didn’t need to read his mind to know that he was thinking of the same thing I was. At some point that war was going to put us on opposite sides. He would fight with my kind against the naturi, but he would fight against nightwalkers if it meant protecting humans from us.

  We had gotten accustomed to being on the same side. We fought well together, like two dancers in an intricate tango.

  “We break the bargain,” I said at last, shattering the growing silence. “No bargain should be made with the naturi. We may still find a way to stop Our Liege from pulling back the veil so early. The only problem is, how do we convince the naturi faction that the bargain has been broken?”

  “Besides stopping them from breaking the seal?” Danaus said, walking back toward me.

  I shook my head, shifting from one foot to the other. Night was wasting away and I was exhausted. I had fed enough, but I needed my rest. Unfortunately, we needed to have this settled before we went into battle tomorrow. “It needs to be more than that. There has to be no doubt in their mind that we are the enemy and they are not going to be permitted to open the door for any reason. They need to know that we won’t allow anything to happen to Our Liege.”

  “You could kill the naturi we saw in Venice,” Danaus suggested. “That could be pretty convincing.”

  “A little late for that now that we’re in Crete. I can’t go running back—”

  “She’s here,” Danaus interrupted. “I saw her tonight and I noticed that she wasn’t among the dead. She’s here with Rowe. Apparently, she’s making sure everything goes according to plan.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me.” I nodded, then moved my head to one side, cracking my neck. “Now get out of here so I can get some rest. We’ll come up with a more definite plan tomorrow when we have Ryan with us.”

  “Hugo?�
�� he asked hesitantly.

  “Resting for now. If he’s lucky, he’ll make it through the day, but he won’t be with us tomorrow.”

  Danaus nodded but didn’t move from where he stood staring at me. “I can stay.”

  And a part of me desperately wished he would stay. While trapped at Themis, he’d sat outside the room where I slept helplessly throughout the day while surrounded by his brethren. He had hovered close on so many occasions while I slept that I now hated the idea of him not being there when the sun broke above the horizon. Danaus was my only sense of security in this world that was changing too fast. He threatened to destroy everything that I believed in and everything that I protected. But at the same time, he seemed to be the only one left trying to protect me.

  “Get out of here. You’ll attract too much attention. I’ll be fine,” I said, waving him off.

  He hesitated a moment before turning around and wandering out of the cemetery back the way he had come in. I concentrated on him with my powers until I felt him just on the edge of the city, well away from the graveyard.

  My whole body ached and felt like a giant bruise. I needed some rest, but even now with the approaching dawn, I wasn’t tired. In fact, I was wide-awake with a new frightening thought. Killing the naturi wasn’t going to be enough to convince the faction that some rogue nightwalker had the power to break a promise made by the Coven. I knew what had to be done. The only problem was, I needed either Jabari or Macaire’s help to accomplish it.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I didn’t want the sun to set. The dawn had finally brought on a blissful peace, sweeping me away from death, Danaus’s betrayal, and the wars that were brewing. By the time I had settled into the windowless crypt, I was trembling from exhaustion that reached down to my very core.

  Lying in the stone crypt at nightfall, ignoring the sound of bugs crawling around me, I tried to focus my thoughts. I needed to know how old the night was. I needed a plan for how to deal with the naturi. But instead I got the feeling I wasn’t alone in my tiny mausoleum. I scanned the immediate area but didn’t sense anyone—not human, vampire, or warlock. Regardless, I still couldn’t shake the feeling.