Daysider

remained unsolved. “It was gone when I got there.”

“I’m sorry,” Damon said. His voice turned gruff. “I should have seen to it earlier. It was still foolish for you to go out alone.”

“I felt fine. And if I hadn’t, I never would have had the chance to talk to the first Nightsider before Lysander killed him. I wouldn’t have been so much on my guard when Lysander gave me the line about stopping a traitor from deceiving me and getting me on his side.”

“And since Lysander was almost certainly lying or twisting the facts most of the time, everything the first Opir told you must have been the truth. What exactly did he say?”

She repeated what the man had told her. Damon hissed sharply through his teeth.

“Drugs,” he said. “The patch. He knew about it.”

“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t think he took it. I think he knew who did, and tried to tell me he knew where it was. He spoke of the colony in the same breath.”

“Interesting,” Damon murmured.

“Isn’t it? Lysander heard the first Nightsider mention the drugs before he killed the poor bastard, but he himself never once referred to them. I think he was trying to avoid the subject, because he had something to do with stealing the patch. I know he thought I was too stupid to notice.”

Damon smiled, displaying the tips of his incisors. “Arrogance. It’s a common failing among the Opiri. I wonder if he knew the nature and effects of the drugs and expected you to be weak and helpless without them.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but Lysander made a couple of other mistakes. He said the Expansionists want to destroy the colony because they expected the colonists to support their policies, and that wasn’t happening. But he also clearly implied that the Expansionists already had the plans in place, even though the man he killed hadn’t yet reported back to his masters.”

“Lysander already knew what they were going to do,” Damon said, echoing Alexia’s earlier conclusion. “In the past, he appeared to support the Sophist Faction, but his behavior was never in keeping with their desire for peace. He aspired to become a Bloodlord with his own harem, but he knew there are already too many in Erebus. He could never advance himself until Opir territory expands.”

Alexia nodded. “And so it would make perfect sense that he’d support the faction that would risk war to grab more turf.”

Damon crouched by the pack again and withdrew a pair of sturdy socks. “Maybe Lysander was originally sent out by the Council, but they don’t know he’s betrayed them.”

“Whatever they know or don’t know, I’m sure Lysander was involved with whoever was shooting at us before, even if he wasn’t one of the snipers himself. His surprise was just too off to be believable. And then there was that bit about not seeing Michael. That might be possible, but I think it’s far more likely that either he or the dead guy was the one Michael was following.”

Damon’s face settled into grim lines as he used his good hand to pull on his socks.

“Either he was unaware that your partner was dead, or he was lying about that, as well.”

At least I know he couldn’t have killed Michael, Alexia thought with a rush of sadness.

“We still don’t know if all the shooters were the same,” Damon said, “or if they had different motives. There are plenty of those to go around.”

“Michael raised a good point about the colony probably not having the tech to do anything with the patch,” she said. “Unless, as he also suggested, they were trying to buy freedom from Erebus by selling it to them.”

Damon untied the laces of his boots. “You said the colony wanted equality for all Opiri, regardless of rank.”

“That’s what Lysander told me.”

“Did he say who established the colony?”

“Someone named Theron, I think.”

Either it was her imagination, or Damon suddenly went unnaturally still all at once, like a vid caught between one image and the next.

“You know the name?” she asked.

He continued with his boots as if nothing had happened. “It is familiar,” he said. “But such a philosophy, if viable, would be anathema to all of Erebus, including the Council.”

Alexia searched his face. Was he admitting that the Council would be just as hostile to the colony as the Expansionists? Maybe enough to want it destroyed, too?

“We still can’t be sure how much of what Lysander said about the settlement or the Expansionists’ plans were lies,” she said.

Damon put on his boots, unfastened one of the outer pockets of his pack and withdrew a spare knife, smaller than the other but every bit as nasty-looking. “The first Opir’s warnings seem to confirm at least some of it was the truth. There must be a great deal more Lysander didn’t tell us.”

“And none of this explains why none of the shooters killed us.”

“Indeed.”

Alexia went to join Damon, aware in every nerve of the heat of his body, the smell of his skin, the planes and angles of his face. As crazy as it was under these very dangerous circumstances, in spite of the matter of the blood, she wanted him again.

From the way Damon’s muscled clenched up, Alexia had an idea he was thinking the same thing she was. She could almost feel his desire, like static electricity raising all the hair on the back of her arm. His nostrils flared and the corner of his mouth twitched.

But he resisted his body’s demands. Even without moving, he seemed to lean away from her, putting more space between them.

It hurt. But Alexia was glad. Whatever Lysander had said, they could still both control their “irrational impulses.”

“We know Lysander was lying about your new ‘orders,’” she said, “unless you think the Council would really change your mission right after you left.”

“Unlikely,” he said, staring into the darkness clotted among the branches of the old oak.

“Then why would Lysander pretend that the Council wanted you to escort me back to the Border when he knew I’d report my suspicions to Aegis?”

Damon balanced the knife’s blade on one extended finger. “The orders Lysander gave me are not what he told you,” he said. “They instruct me to take you and Michael back to Erebus, where we would be met secretly by Council Security. They claim this is to protect you from the Expansionists, but I believe members of the Expansionists would be the ones to meet us, and probably before we ever reach the Citadel. They wouldn’t risk taking us too close to Erebus.”

“So they just want us to walk into a trap so they can kill us? What would be the purpose, considering how many times they’ve had a chance to do it already?”

“I don’t know.” He stabbed the knife’s tip into the dirt between his feet with enough force to bend the blade. “I think they’d keep you alive, if possible. You have too much potential value to them.”

“Why? Why me in particular?”

He shoulders hunched as if to ward off her question. “It would be too much a risk to take you for such a reason.”

“What is the reason, Damon?”

Damon turned the blade from side to side, catching the moonlight so that the metal seemed to burn with cold fire. “As you once noted, the offspring of Opir and human are forbidden in Erebus. There are no dhampires there. But sometime during the War, an Opir was said to have discovered that dhampir blood acts as a stimulant and aphrodisiac on the Opir system.”

Alexia lost her balance, dropping from a crouch to her knees. “You mean like the drug that keeps my kind alive?”

“This one is purely recreational.” His teeth flashed in a humorless smile, bright as the blade. “To many, it is only a myth. You probably know better than I how many dhampires have disappeared in the Zone since the