Together, they knelt to search the floor. Yuri found a latch and tugged on it. A portion of the floor pulled up, but the stones remained attached to the wooden trapdoor. With a frown, Ashra plucked a pebble off the trapdoor and stared at the underside of the tiny stone. She sniffed and licked it. “Blood. Daeva blood.” She tossed the pebble aside and chuckled, the sound without humor. “If we ever run out of duct tape to hold the city together, we’ll harvest daeva blood for glue.”
Beneath the trapdoor, darkness yawned up at them. Even with her enhanced vision, she could not estimate the distance of the drop. Ashra glanced over her shoulder at the safety of the night. The smart thing would have been to return to Aeternae Noctis, gather the vampires and the other icrathari, and come back to storm the daevas’ hideout.
But Rohkeus—Jaden might not survive that long.
She glanced at Yuri. “Go back to the city. Tell Siri to bring Aeternae Noctis around. I’m going in for Jaden, and when I come back out, I don’t want to have to chase down the city with a horde of angry daevas on my tailwind.”
Yuri shook her head. “Ashra, I don’t think—”
“Do it.”
Yuri scowled. With a toss of her head that sent her red braid swinging, she spun and sprinted in the direction of the city.
By Ashra’s estimates, she had less than three hours before the city came back around. At that point, Tera and her small army of vampires would certainly want a piece of the action.
She would have to time Jaden’s rescue well.
With her wings folded against her back, Ashra leapt into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
Dark haze rolled over Jaden’s consciousness like fog over a meadow, but motion jostled spikes of pain through his body and pushed the darkness back. He skimmed on the far edge of awareness; a guttural conversation teased him with words that hovered on the brink of comprehension.
Fragments of memory taunted him—flashes of grotesque faces, bared fangs, and gleaming yellow eyes. Demons. No, daevas—related to the icrathari, although the only apparent similarities were their heights and bat wings.
He opened his eyes. Pitch black shifted into shades of gray, and then resolved into shapes. Dimly, he could make out the ground and the spindly legs of the daevas who carried him across their shoulders.
Where were they taking him?
He twisted, but their grips tightened around him.
A low voice snarled.
A warning; he did not need a translator to interpret the sound.
The familiar weight on his back assured him that his swords were still in their sheaths. He considered his options and ground his teeth. Five against one. The odds weren’t good, not when he had lost the first time around.
He was certain that the only reason he wasn’t dead was Ashra’s blood. The jolting travel through a series of caves should have been agonizing, but as the interminable minutes passed, his body ached less. The ribs that the daevas had cracked no longer caused his breath to hitch with each motion. The sting of rough hands against his open wounds slowly faded even though the hands were no less rough.
He could not necessarily win a fight against the daevas, though Ashra’s blood was assurance that he would survive it.
But survive it to what end?
The daevas paused. Stone grated against stone.
Shoulders heaved in unison. Jaden tumbled off and hit the ground. His head spun, and he closed his eyes against the sudden vertigo. By the time he opened his eyes again, the stone door was back in place. Jaden bit back a groan and dragged himself upright. Grains of sand shifted beneath his fingers.
A low chuckle emerged from the darkness, its timbre resonant—a vampire.
Jaden twisted in the direction of the sound. His head throbbed in protest as he tried to focus through the layers of darkness.
An emaciated figure hunkered over him.
His heart pounding, he retreated until his back hit a wall.
The vampire made no move toward him. “What is a human doing outside Aeternae Noctis?”
“Where am I?” Even to his own ears, his words sounded rushed, panicked.
“Sperare, home to the daevas.”
Jaden bit back a curse. “How do I get out of here?”
“You can’t. It’s a maze of tunnels. I was unconscious when I was brought in here. I’ve escaped from this cell several times, but I’ve never found my way out of the caves.”
In the darkness, he could scarcely make out the vampire’s features. He met the piercing black gaze. “You’re also from Aeternae Noctis?”
“Many years ago. Do the icrathari still rule?”
“Yes.”
“What year is it?”
Jaden frowned, but he answered. “3125, as humans measure time in the city.”
The vampire sighed. “Time flies, even when you’re not doing anything.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Four hundred and ninety-eight years.”
“What?”
The vampire chuckled. “I am—how should I put it—tenacious of life. I haven’t always been alone. Many vampires have come through these doors. Some even survived for several years, but eventually, the concept of an eternity of imprisonment was too much to bear, and they faded away.”
As the vampire talked, Jaden explored the cell with his hands and feet. The ground was dry and sandy, the rounded walls of the cell hewn out of rock. The “door” was a stone slab that appeared as likely to open if he pushed on it from the inside. As cells went, it was a pitiful excuse, but as the vampire had indicated, the true prison was the cave outside, not the cell.
Still, that was no reason not to look. Jaden braced his shoulder against the stone slab and pushed.
The stone shifted.
“Careful,” the vampire said. “The daevas don’t like their cattle running away. When they catch you, they’ll beat you within an inch of your life.”
“Cattle?”
The vampire laughed. “Why do you think the daevas take prisoners? Like the icrathari, daevas are true immortals. A mature daeva does not need sustenance, but its young do.”
“The young daeva have fed on you for nearly five hundred years? But you’re a vampire—”
“An elder vampire.”
“What?”
“The firstborn of an icrathari. My creator was an icrathari called Rohkeus.”
Jaden’s eyes widened. “Rohkeus?”
The vampire was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice trembled with an emotion Jaden could not decipher. “You’ve heard his name before.”
“Yes.”
“But how? Rohkeus died a thousand years ago. He never entered the city. How could a human know of him?”
Jaden shook his head. The vampire would never believe it. “What happened when he created you?”
The vampire relaxed, squatting several feet from Jaden. A ragged pair of pants, held up by a rope belt, shifted on his thin frame. “I touched eternity.” His voice was low, reverent. “Nothing can describe the rush of power when icrathari blood floods a dying human body. Humans consider it death—worse than death—but nothing could be further from the truth. Icrathari blood makes the world come alive. You hear sounds you have never heard before, distinguish unique scents in a medley of aromas, see things that were once too minute to notice.” The vampire’s shoulders moved with a shrug. “The assault on the senses drives many of the firstborn insane. It’s a rare person who can embrace the transformation with grace, without fear of becoming a monster.”
“And you were not afraid?”
“No. If there is fear—any hint of fear—the transformation fails. The result is an unthinking monster with the physical power of an elder vampire, but without the wits to control his power or himself.”
“An immortali,” Jaden said, recalling the conversation he had overheard between Ashra and the vampire Lucas.
“Yes.” The elder vampire rose, the movement graceful, like a predator shif
ting into motion. “You know a great deal about the icrathari and vampires. When did Ashra change her policy on keeping humans in the dark?”
The vampire lunged.
Instinct and reflexes honed by Ashra’s blood threw Jaden into a forward roll. The vampire leaped over Jaden’s head, but instead of smashing into the wall the way a human might have, the vampire landed with silent grace, his hands and feet pressed against the rock wall in defiance of gravity.
Jaden’s jaw dropped. His eyes flared wide. Elder vampire, indeed.
The vampire leapt off the wall, his talons extended. Jaden dropped down on his back and slammed both feet up into the vampire’s stomach moments before the creature's claws would have torn through his neck. The attack broke the trajectory of the vampire’s leap, flipped him over Jaden’s head, and slammed him onto the ground. The immortal grunted. Jaden scrambled to his feet and reached over his shoulder to draw his sword, but an ice-cold hand closed around the back of his neck and propelled him forward, slamming him face-first into the wall.
The impact punched the air out of Jaden’s lungs. His vision flashed white.
“Good fight,” the vampire hissed. “But you’re not good enough, human.” His grip shifted. A hand pressed against Jaden’s shoulder, and the other pulled Jaden’s head back.
Jaden gasped at the sharp pain as fangs sank into the vein at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. The toxin in the vampire’s fangs was fast acting. An anti-coagulant and intoxicant, it kept the blood flowing while lulling the victim into dreamlike lethargy. Jaden’s eyes fluttered as he struggled against the toxin flooding through his veins.
With a hiss, the vampire pulled back. “You have icrathari blood in you.” He swung Jaden around so that he could look into Jaden’s eyes. He shook Jaden hard. “You’re not an elder vampire. What are you? A human-icrathari hybrid?”
Jaden shook his head. The words felt clumsy on his tongue. “Ashra…saved my life. Her blood—”
“The cold bitch saved you?” The vampire laughed without mirth. “She sentences vampires to death for challenging her, but saves the life of a human? What kind of hold do you have over her?”
“I don’t know.”
The vampire lowered Jaden to the ground. “I better not toy with her chosen, then.” His tone, however, was sardonic instead of reverent. “What is your name, Ashra’s chosen?”
Jaden scrambled away. The vampire’s words tumbled, an incoherent jumble, through his head, competing with the rush of blood in his ears and the pounding of his heart.
The vampire kept his distance. “I won’t hurt you.” He laughed, a low, amused sound. “At least not permanently. Who are you?”
Jaden knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he answered anyway, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. “Jaden.”
“I’m Talon.” The vampire stepped forward.
Jaden recoiled. The curved wall of the cave blocked further retreat.
Talon paused and held up his hands, as if to assure Jaden that he was no threat. His claws, like those of the Aeternae Noctis vampires, possessed a pearlescent sheen. They retracted until they seemed as harmless as Jaden’s fingernails. Talon’s gleaming incisors vanished behind a self-mocking smile. He dragged a hand across his mouth to wipe away a streak of blood.
Even in the sparse light, Jaden could see that the crimson was subtly shaded with gold.
Talon’s smile widened. “How did you escape from Aeternae Noctis?”
“My sister and I were in Malum Turris. We were trying to find our way back to the city. I didn’t know…didn’t realize what lay outside.”
“The icrathari have gone to great extremes to keep you humans in the dark, literally and figuratively.”
“Why?”
Talon slid down the length of the wall to sit cross-legged across from Jaden. “In the early days of Aeternae Noctis, humans committed suicide by the thousands when they realized what they had done to the planet and that they had damned themselves to eternal night. To save humanity from extinction, the icrathari seized the children and cryogenically froze them until all the adults who entered Aeternae Noctis had died. When all who were left were the icrathari and vampires, Siri redesigned the interior of Aeternae Noctis and plunged it back into the seventeenth century. She also designed the hologram that reflects off the inner dome. Only then, did Ashra have the children released from their sleep.” Talon chuckled. “For many years, the vampires were babysitters and nursemaids. We built the houses, tended the fields. We taught young men and women the trades of masonry and carpentry. When Ashra decided that the humans were old enough to fend for themselves, she ordered us to pull back to the tower. Over time, the humans forgot that we were once their protectors and defenders. We became the Night Terrors.”
“Why would Ashra—?”
“Fear keeps humans from the greater sin, curiosity.”
“But—”
“Would you be here, Jaden, if you were not curious?”
“I was trying to save my sister.”
“Perhaps for you, love is greater than fear.” His thin shoulders moved in a shrug. “Most humans can’t see past their fear. It consumes them, focuses their hatred on the icrathari and the vampires. People who hate rarely pause to understand.”
Jaden’s eyes narrowed. Comprehension emerged in a rush of insight. “They’ll spend all their resources fighting the icrathari and vampires, smashing themselves against immortal creatures who will always be faster and stronger, and they’ll never uncover the truth of Aeternae Noctis.”
“Exactly.” With a sardonic smile, Talon waved a hand to encompass their surroundings. “The unvarnished truth behind the eternal night plunges people into despair. It has even driven newly turned vampires to suicide. Ashra once said, ‘If the truth gets in the way, then the truth be damned.’ And she’s right. We’ve worked too hard and too long to salvage humanity’s remnants to lose them to human foibles.”
Jaden inhaled sharply. Talon had added depth and detail to the scant facts Ashra tossed his way. The truth be damned. He could easily imagine Ashra speaking those words with cold indifference.
Except that cold indifference was the furthest thing from the emotions and thought processes that had inspired Ashra’s decision.
He stared down at his fisted hands. How could he reconcile a thousand years of his people’s imprisonment within the dome with Talon’s assertion that the icrathari and vampires were humanity’s defenders and protectors? His mind quavered, surrounded by a quicksand of truths, partial truths, and lies. There was no middle ground, no safe path that would allow him to reconcile all he had known with what he had learned.
Something had to give, but what? How would he know what was real, what truly mattered?
Ashra.
He jerked, startled by the immediacy of his instinctive response.
What was wrong with him? She was an icrathari.
Night Terror. Demon.
Defender. Protector.
Perhaps the more important question was, what was he? Was he just another human, steeped in fear, too swamped by hate to understand, or could he be the first to listen with an open heart and mind?
An open heart and mind…and a soul that was not his own.
Memories, in the guise of dreams, jolted into place, the fragments piecing to a single coherent image of Ashra.
He knew her. He knew her as she had been. He knew her in a way no one else did.
With a snap, emotions coalesced; the unending love of a former life blended with the inexplicable attraction of his present life.
Jaden blinked, startled by the relief that flooded him. Was their love—human and icrathari—meant to be?
The stone slab groaned and slid back. Six daevas, their yellow eyes glowing, stepped into the cell. They shoved the vampire into a corner of the room and pulled Jaden to his feet.
“They’re careful harvesters,” the vampire shouted after Jaden. “Don’t fight. Don’t panic. It’ll be all right.”
; Don’t panic?
Did Talon have any idea how ridiculous the advice was to a human on the lowest rung of a large and growing totem pole of supernatural creatures? Jaden forced down his fight-or-flight instincts, and focused on counting his steps and memorizing the path through the warren of tunnels.
The narrow tunnel opened into a space twice the size of the cell. The daevas forced Jaden down on a stone slab and rolled up his sleeves, exposing his wrists. In battle, with their talons extended and upper lips drawn back to reveal sharp fangs, the daevas had appeared monstrous, but in that moment, the creatures he had mistaken for demons of legend were not harsh, nor were they as hideous as they had seemed. They had no hair on their heads, and their dark skin appeared shriveled like raisins left too long in the sun, but their features were delicate and not unlike an icrathari’s.
Two daevas entered, each carrying a fluttering infant. One of the daevas looked Jaden over and nodded. At her cue, the daevas who had escorted Jaden through the tunnels locked him down; two held his feet, two others his arms, and another his head.
He trembled from the cold of the stone slab seeping into his bones.
Two daevas drew sharp fingernails over his wrists, slicing open his veins. He bit back a gasp of shock and pain, and inhaled sharply when small mouths attached to the open wounds. Bat wings quivered on the tiny bodies pressed against his wrists. The infant daevas suckled with feverish abandon. Jaden closed his eyes against the rushing and chilling sensation of blood drawn from his body. He tried to keep track of the minutes, but the effort grew harder with each passing moment. Jaden roused himself from his dazed lethargy when one of the daevas lifted her mewling infant from his wrist. The infant screamed in protest and attempted to latch back onto Jaden. Blood trickled from its mouth; crimson tinged with hints of gold.
The daevas exchanged alarmed glances. They pried the infants off, and one of the daevas bent her head to taste the blood that still flowed freely from his veins. Her head snapped up, her yellow eyes wide. A rapid conversation followed, the sounds guttural but distinct. The daevas released him and stepped away from the stone stab.
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