Breathing raggedly, Carter looked wildly in every direction. “Your bullets hardly had any effect,” he whispered.
“They heal even more quickly than we do,” Damon said. He watched the creature’s face, seeking some indication of what it would do next. But its mouth continued to work, bringing forth low grunts and growls that almost sounded like words.
“It’s trying to talk.” Carter’s face blanched. “What in hell—” Damon fired again, but he was not fast enough. The Lamia charged past him, straight at Carter. The dhampir went down in a flurry of striking limbs and blood.
Aiming with swift precision, Damon peppered the Lamia’s back with a dozen bullets in rapid succession. The creature barely seemed to notice. It bent over Carter, its serrated teeth at the dhampir’s throat.
Damon threw his rifle aside and drew his knife. He flung himself at the Lamia, stabbing down between the creature’s shoulders. It shook him off without even turning around. Damon tried again, grabbing hold like a tick on a dog’s back and bringing the knife around to the Lamia’s throat.
The blade bit into tough flesh, and the Lamia hissed in pain. For a moment it forgot about the dhampir sprawled beneath it and twisted around to claw at Damon’s head and shoulders.
Holding fast, Damon adjusted his grip and pulled the blade across the Lamia’s throat a second time. With a gurgling roar, the creature fell away from Carter and rolled onto its back, nearly crushing Damon beneath it. In a matter of seconds the Lamia would turn and tear him apart.
But Damon had something it didn’t have: the ability to reason. He let himself go limp, waited until the Lamia had lifted itself to its haunches, and lunged up to drive his knife into the creature’s chest. He felt the blade skitter against bone and drive deeper, reaching the heart at last.
With a hiss like air escaping a valve, the creature fell hard, flailing in its death throes.
Only when Damon was sure it was truly dying did he crouch beside Carter, quickly checking the extent of injuries.
Carter was still alive, but barely. His throat had been slashed, and though his body worked to mitigate the damage, it could do little against the severing of veins and arteries except slow the loss of blood. Bright and dark, it pumped slowly out of his wound, and Carter stared at the sky without seeing.
Still with half an eye on the dying Lamia, Damon went after Carter’s pack, tore it open and found the agent’s field dressing. He knew it would only slow the dhampir’s death, but there were things he still needed to know. Perhaps now Carter would tell him.
He pressed the bandage against Carter’s throat. The dhampir tried to move his head, and his lips parted.
“Can you speak?” Damon asked.
Carter tried to grin. “What...do you want now?” he rasped.
“Who are you working for?”
“No time,” Carter said. “Alexia...”
Red froth bubbled up from the agent’s mouth. Damon bent his head close to Carter’s face. “What about her?” he asked urgently.
“You can help her.” Carter choked and tried to swallow. “The patch... Drugs were derived from Daysider blood. If you let her...” His breath rattled. “Let her drink, and she...may survive.”
Damon pushed aside his shock. “Who has the patch?” he demanded.
But Carter’s eyes were already glazing over. “If you care...about her,” he said, “save her.”
Then he closed his eyes, shuddered once and died.
Damon rocked back, remembered the Lamia and reached for the rifle.
The creature was gone. It had left multiple trails of blood, but somehow it had managed to skulk away on two feet, surviving its terrible injuries as Carter had not.
It would not be returning anytime soon. Unless it brought back others of its kind.
Damon looked down at Carter’s body. He almost felt pity for the man. He had died an ugly death, and yet Damon’s conviction that the dhampir had been partly culpable for the stealing of Alexia’s patch hadn’t diminished in the slightest.
Nor had his astonishment at Carter’s claim about the nature of the drugs in it. The implications were staggering. The only way such a thing would be possible was if Aegis and the Enclave had had access to a Darketan after the War. It suggested that there could be some connection between dhampir and Daysider no one had ever suspected.
And it made perfect sense that someone from Erebus—Colonists, Council or Expansionists—would want to get their hands on the patch, since it could be used not only to increase Opir knowledge of dhampir weaknesses but as a foundation for sanctions against Aegis, setting off a potential wave of political consequences Damon couldn’t begin to imagine.
But for the moment, for Damon, this knowledge meant that he wouldn’t have to leave Alexia and go to the Enclave in Carter’s place. Her partner’s death didn’t mean she would die, too.
Damon could save her himself. And he couldn’t waste any more precious minutes brooding over what Carter had told him, certainly none to see to his body according to either human or Opir custom. If the Lamia returned to finish him off, so be it.
Retrieving Carter’s pack, weapons and his own bloody knife, Damon focused on clearing his mind. He had to decide quickly how much to tell Alexia. The knowledge of Carter’s death might further weaken her, but eventually she would learn the truth. She would wonder why he’d kept it from her, and any trust she might have begun to feel would—
“Michael!”
Gasping for air, Alexia stumbled toward Carter’s body and fell to her knees, her hands hovering over her partner’s face.
“Michael,” she said, her voice breaking.
Damon started toward her. “Alexia! What are you doing here? I told you—”
“You told me?” She looked slowly up at Damon, the grief in her eyes turning to accusation. “You killed him.”
Damon was utterly unprepared for her arrival and had no ready answer. He dropped the knife and began to move in her direction again, but she pulled the gun he had given her from her jacket and pointed it at his head.
“I didn’t kill him, Alexia,” he said. “And you should not have left camp.”
“That’s funny,” she said. “I thought Michael would try to kill
“I didn’t.” Damon crouched some distance away, trying to catch her eye. “We were both attacked by one of the creatures you call Orloks.”
She met his gaze again, her body trembling with shock and anger. “Orlok? Are you telling me some monster did this?” She balled her other fist and punched at the ground.
“Where is it?”
“It got away,” Damon said. He indicated the area around him, where the creature had torn up the earth in its struggles and left trails of its blood. “It attacked me first, and then it went for Carter. I tried to stop it.” He sighed, very much aware of the racking grief Alexia was trying so hard not to let him see. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” she asked. “Do you still deny that you hated him?”
“His death was unnecessary, and it has caused you pain. That is enough to make me regret it.”
“What about the Orlok?” She stared at him as if he were something far worse than Carter’s supposed murderer. “We know they come from Erebus. Some believe they have been created and bred to hunt down and kill any human or dhampir they find in the Zone. Is that true?”
He shook his head vehemently. “They are monsters even to the Opiri. They cannot be controlled.”
Damon felt her absorbing his words, taking him in, noting the fresh, blood-rimmed slashes that had reduced what was left of his shirt and jacket to tatters. It was not something Carter could have done, even with a knife.
“You have blood on your face,” she said.
He lifted a hand to rub at his jaw. Dried blood flaked off in patches and fell to the ground like scarlet
