Daysider

“There’s nothing to be done,” Michael said, rubbing at his temple. “Not unless I can get her back to the Border and into a hospital.”

Alexia tried to laugh. “That isn’t going to happen,” she said. “I thought about it. But I’m a lot weaker than I expected to be at his point.”

“What else?” Damon asked Michael as if she hadn’t spoken. “There must be another way.”

Mike stared straight ahead, his jaw working. “I might be able to reach the Border in time to get her another patch.”

“Then that is what you must do.”

Implacable hatred still burned in Michael’s eyes. “Why do you care? What have you to gain? Another chance to screw her while she’s helpless? Drain her dry?”

“Michael!” Alexia said, jerking on his arm to silence him before Damon decided to do it himself. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let you risk it. We’ve been shot at twice, and at least one unknown Nightsider is probably still at large in the area. You’ll be killed.”

“But the defensive perimeter was clearly established to prevent us from going near the colony,” Damon said, staring at Michael with death in his eyes. “They would surely allow a retreat.” He backed away, letting Michael get up. “You will return to the Enclave and acquire one of these patches. I will provide cover in the event that you are attacked.

Are we agreed?”

Michael glanced down at Alexia, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. What she didn’t understand was why he was still acting like an untrained novice who hadn’t learned to keep personal emotions out of the job.

And that was why she had to let him go. Her own emotions told her to protect him, but he had to get back to Aegis, not for her sake, but to tell them about the patch. There was nothing else she could do to keep him from harm or prevent him from attempting what she knew he had in mind.

“Agreed,” Michael said to Damon, avoiding her eyes. “You’ll have to return my weapons.”

Damon waved his hand. “Take them.” He bent to help Alexia to a sitting position, but Michael got between them and did it himself. He rested his hand possessively on Alexia’s

“good” shoulder and faced Damon with head high and shoulders drawn back in defiance.

“Are you sure you can’t make it, Alexia?” he asked without looking at her. “You know you can’t trust him. Even if he didn’t have any part in stealing your patch, he’ll still do whatever his masters tell him to. You don’t have the strength to fight him now. If they tell him to kill you, he will.”

“They gave no such orders,” Damon said, holding Alexia’s gaze.

“But you’d destroy anyone who stood in the way of your mission,” Michael said.

“Even if it meant your own death.”

“And we would do the same,” Alexia said before Damon could answer. “I’m not afraid, Michael. Not of Damon, and not of dying.”

Michael swore and walked away. He retrieved his weapons and returned to set his VS and a box of ammunition on the ground beside her.

“Take this,” he said. “And take care of yourself, Alex.” He cast Damon a scathing glance and strode to the other side of the oak to wait.

“Alexia,” Damon murmured, kneeling beside her.

His nearness set her nerves to jangling again. She had to be tough now. She couldn’t afford any vulnerability when she was completely in his power and sick enough to lose her head the way she had just before Michael’s arrival.

“If you’re going to go, go,” she said, struggling to pull her jacket up again.

He helped her, though she shook him off once the jacket was safely closed over her chest. “If I had known —” he began.

“Do you think I’d admit that kind of weakness to an enemy?”

She could have sworn he flinched. “I would never harm you,” he said softly.

“Don’t lie for my sake. Michael was right. We may have worked as a team and saved each other’s lives for the sake of expedience, but you’ll kill me if you thought it was necessary to protect your people.”

“But it is not,” he said. “Quite the contrary.” He picked up his jacket and pulled it on.

“You are being irrational. As I told you before, if I’d been sent to kill you, you would be dead. As your partner must know, if he could look beyond his hatred.”

She met his gaze again. “Don’t you hate us just as much?”

“My personal opinions are hardly relevant.”

“I know what hate is, and I see it in your eyes when you look at Michael. I’d say that was pretty personal.”

His mouth tightened. “My judgment of your partner changes nothing. I won’t let you die.”

“You might not have any choice.”

He leaned over her, bracing himself on his muscular arms. “I forbid it.”

“I’m not one of your harem serfs.” Her face grew hot, and she hardened her will. “Or do you think we have some...connection because of what happened before Michael showed up? That was my sickness, not me.”

“I was not ill,” Damon said huskily.

“But you have your instincts. You may be an outsider among your own people, but you’re still a predator under your civilized exterior, just like the rest of them. I was vulnerable, and you thought you could take advantage of that, one way or another.”

“And you wanted something from me, Alexia,” he said, “or was that your sickness, as well?”

“I was crazy. If you think I wanted to have sex with you—” He drew back, his expression going blank. “I will not trouble you again.”

Because I’ll kill myself first, Alexia thought, though her cheeks burned under his gaze.

She took herself in hand and released her breath. “Do you really intend to get Michael to safety?”

The light flickering between the oak’s branches shifted, pulling new shadows from Damon’s face. “I wasn’t lying.”

“But you have an idea what losing the patch can do to a dhampir, and you can guess the likely consequences once Aegis finds out that Nightsiders have one, colonists or not.

If you work for the Council and they want to keep the peace, you might think it would be better not to let Michael make his report.”

Damon’s pupils constricted to pinpoints, lost in a deep and turbulent sea of blue. “If I killed him, I would have to kill you.”

“Yes. Because if I live, I’ll eventually make the same report. But if you kill him, I won’t survive, anyway.”

Something happened to Damon then, an unfurling of the rage she had glimpsed once or twice before when he’d sparred with Michael, but multiplied a hundredfold. His eyes narrowed, his lips drew back and his body seemed to expand and broaden like the hood on a striking cobra.

She knew that was illusion. But what she saw in his terrible gaze was not, and suddenly he was far less human than animal—some kind of animal she didn’t recognize, a creature neither Nightsider nor Daysider nor dhampir.

Because there was no rationality in that stare, in that expression, only pure, raw emotion. Whatever moved him now was nothing like what anyone dealing with vampires had ever reported before. Mindless savagery turned his face into a caricature of a man, lost to reason or even the leeches’ twisted morality.

The face of a killer that no rules, no weapons, no will could stop. A monster she had somehow awakened with her careless words, her bitter accusations.

It wasn’t some kind of act meant to scare her. It was terrifyingly real. Damon was going insane before her eyes, and she didn’t know how to stop it.