dyed cloth shed in the battle, Damon arranged the bodies, wiped the handle of his knife on his pants and put the weapon in the first Nightsider’s hand.
He stood up, scraping the back of his good hand across his face without taking notice of the still-raw gashes. “Anyone who comes is going to know an Orlok’s been here, anyway,” he said. He glanced sideways at Alexia. “That was unbelievable luck.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. “What about the clothes you’re still wearing?” she asked, dropping the wad of bloodstained fabric at her feet. “They’re saturated. If you think someone might find the bodies and come looking for us, you’ll have to do something about them. You’ll leave a trail even a human could find.”
Immediately Damon went to work on his belt. Hard muscle bunched and flexed under the night-pale skin of Damon’s arms, chest and ridged stomach as he stripped one-
handed out of his trousers and underwear and bundled them into a loose ball, setting them on the ground beside the wad of bloodstained cloth Alexia had gathered. He bent to remove his boots, tied the shoelaces together—not an easy task with only one working arm—and placed his socks on top of the rest of his clothing.
“Do you have a lighter?” he asked.
Alexia bent to her pack and opened one of the many small interior pockets. She withdrew a pen-size lighter made to quick start a fire for cooking or any other use an operative might require in the field.
“Burn the clothes,” he said.
“The smoke—” she began, trying not to look at his naked body in all its magnificent splendor.
“It isn’t likely to make the situation more dangerous than it already is. Do you have any water left?”
“A little.” She handed him her canteen, still averting her gaze, and crouched to set fire to the clothing. Damon had kept a relatively unstained strip of his pants, which he wetted down with the remaining water and used to wash the blood off his skin.
It was a hopeless task—there was too much blood and not nearly enough water. But when the fire was going and Alexia glanced up again, Damon no longer looked like the walking dead.
She gripped the lighter tightly in her fist, doing her best to pretend Damon wasn’t there at all. After everything that had happened since she’d woken up to find she’d taken his blood, when she’d been so angry with him and so disgusted with herself, she shouldn’t have been capable of admiring the powerful symmetry of Damon’s body, the way even his slightest move evoked the grace of a hunting beast in its natural environment.
He had been a beast, all right. She ought to remember that, and not be thinking of how much she wanted to touch that body, soothe his injuries, press up against him and feel his big hands on her—
“We’ll have to get fresh water soon,” Damon said, gazing in the direction of camp as if he were totally oblivious of her stare and the thoughts behind it.
“When we know we’re not being hunted,” Alexia said, watching the flames consume Damon’s clothing.
He tossed the cleaning rag into the fire. Alexia rose, brushing dirt off the knees of her pants.
“Do you have a spare set of clothes?” she asked.
He picked up his boots and slung the tied laces over his shoulder. “In my pack back at camp,” he said.
Busying herself with her own pack, Alexia clipped on her empty canteen and made sure everything was in place again. Then she kicked the ashes of the fire, mingled with blackened scraps of cloth, into the dirt and thoroughly covered both. The burned smell did a good job of obscuring Damon’s scent, and hers.
If only disposing of all their other problems could be so easy. How this was all going to end—how she was going to settle things with Damon, and with herself—she didn’t know. The only thing she could still be sure of was her duty to protect the Enclave, its people and all humanity.
And perhaps she could be certain of one other thing: Damon’s commitment to her, which she could no longer deny. But just how deep was hers to him? When it really came down to it, how could she deal with his violently unpredictable shadow-side, and the knowledge that he refused to consider turning on his Opir masters in spite of his treatment at their hands?
If—when—they found themselves on opposite sides again...
“Are you ready?” Damon asked, glancing back at the bodies one last time.
“Wait a minute,” Alexia said. She pulled her own spare shirt out of her pack and rigged it into a sling, gingerly slipping it over Damon’s shoulder and easing his broken wrist into the cradle of cloth. “That should hold you until it heals.” He looked at her hand lingering on his shoulder and then met her gaze. “Thank you,” he murmured.
Hastily Alexia dropped her hand and stepped back. “Let’s go,” she said.
Damon fell in beside her, and they set off for the temporary hilltop camp, moving in a random zigzag pattern to throw off potential pursuit and listening to every rustle of leaf and patter of tiny feet as birds and animals fled their approach. Naked as he was, Damon seemed little more than a ghost, sometimes ahead of her, sometimes behind, his skin absorbing what moonlight reached them as they kept to any cover they could find.
The deceptive quiet made what they found halfway back to the camp an ugly shock.
Damon stopped abruptly, head lifted, and gestured to Alexia. Within seconds she smelled what he had, and the two of them crept under the trees to the source of the stench.
The first corpse was a Daysider, his head nearly severed from his body, a pool of black blood soaking the earth underneath. Alexia guessed he’d been dead for at least six hours, probably longer. Damon crouched beside the body and touched the Daysider’s shoulder, his jaw clenched hard.
Alexia knew it was too risky to speak, so she let Damon examine the body and then went with him to find the second one. It lay a good dozen meters away—a female Nightsider, dressed in vampire daygear. Her helmet was missing, leaving her beautiful face exposed. A rash of burns pocked her skin, but they were not as severe as those of the double agent. She had been killed before the sun could complete its work, and the large, scorched hole in the chest of her suit made clear how she had died.
Damon studied her for a few moments, nodded to Alexia, and set off again. Neither of them spoke; there was far too much to say, and they were still in a very vulnerable position. By the time they reached camp—which was untouched, and still apparently safe —Alexia had managed to sort a dozen questions into some semblance of order.
She wiped her dry mouth with the back of her hand and paced in a circle around the hilltop, VS at the ready, trying to steady her emotions and buy a little more time while Damon dropped his pack and began unfolding his spare set of clothes. He seemed as reluctant to begin the conversation as she was.
“Who were they?” she asked at last.
“Council operatives,” he said, laying a neatly folded shirt, pants and socks on the top of his pack. His voice held no emotion, but Alexia had begun to learn how to read in it what might not be evident to anyone else.
He was angry, perhaps even grieved that his fellow agents had been slaughtered. It didn’t take much guesswork to figure out who was responsible.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Lysander?”
“He wasn’t the only one.”
That wasn’t a very comforting answer, but it didn’t surprise her, either. God knew how many of them were running around the area now, setting up their little scheme to wipe out the colony.
Busy killing any and all opposition they could find.
“Did you know them?” she asked.
He gave short nod.
“Were they the other agents you mentioned when we met?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they were looking for enemy operatives when they were killed?”
“It is possible.”
Alexia knew he wasn’t going to say anything more about it, at least for the time being.
And they were still in grave danger.
Alexia’s grim reflections were cut short by Damon’s next words. “You should never have left camp alone,” he said.
The tension, uncertainty and violence of the past few hours had left Alexia with only the merest thread of control to hang on to, and now it snapped.
“Did you expect me to ask for your permission?” she demanded.
