Daysider

Chapter 2

The person, whoever or whatever it might be, was coming closer.

Flashing the hand sign that meant he was about to circle around behind the approaching stranger, Michael left Alexia to watch and wait. It was morning—the third since they’d left the ferry—so Alexia knew the one they were about to meet couldn’t be a Nightsider. Silent as they were, even vampires couldn’t move very quietly bundled up in the kind of protective gear they had to wear in daylight.

No, this was either human or one of the others. And while the stranger was making no particular attempt to sneak up on them, his “noise” was about as loud as the sound of a feather landing on a down pillow. Humans just didn’t move like that, not even the most highly trained agents.

The one coming toward them could be only one thing: a Daysider. And whatever he or she intended...

He, Alexia decided, breathing slowly through her nostrils. Definitely male.

She checked the VS120 strapped to her pack and adjusted her grip on her assault rifle.

He couldn’t be stupid enough to think he could just stride up to an Aegis operative and dispatch her after all but announcing his presence. Not that agent deaths on either side were acknowledged by the respective governments, but that hardly meant they didn’t happen. Enclave agents had been operating in and around the Zone too long not to have a very respectable reputation, even among vampires.

But if the Daysider wasn’t planning to attack...what was he planning?

All Alexia’s muscles tensed as the thicket of toyon bushes in front of her rustled, the slightest movement of leathery leaves that might have heralded the passage of a rabbit or some other small animal. She aimed the XM30.

The man who walked out from behind the bushes was tall, lithe and yet imposing. That was the first thing Alexia noticed as she drew a bead on his chest directly over his heart.

Then she looked up into his face, knowing that an enemy’s eyes—even a Daysider’s—

would give him away before he made the slightest movement.

The Daysider looked back at her without a trace of concern. His features were quite extraordinary.... That she had to admit, in spite of the situation. He was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Not beautiful like a woman, but in the perfect harmony of his features: the strong chin, straight nose, high cheekbones, expressive lips.

And his eyes. They were dark...not maroon like those of a Nightsider, but the deepest sapphire imaginable. The pupils almost swallowed up the blue. His short hair was not white, like most vampires’, but a hue somewhere between brown and gold, and his skin was richly tanned.

Alexia swallowed. She had met her first Daysider at last, and he was so much... more than she had expected.

The Daysider glanced down at the assault rifle. “There is no need for that,” he said mildly.

His English was unaccented, bearing no hint of the ancient language all Nightsiders, whatever their origins, spoke among themselves. His voice was a pleasant baritone.

Alexia’s finger hovered over the trigger. “Put your hands up,” she commanded.

He did so, slowly and without alarm. “I am not here to hurt you,” he said.

She scanned him again the way she should have done the first time, looking for telltale bulges in his tan- and-brown uniform. She could identify no weapons, but if all she’d heard of Daysiders was true, they were just as good at concealing whatever they needed as the agents of Aegis.

“I am no threat to you,” he said.

Alexia didn’t even bother to reply. “On your knees. Hands clasped behind your head.”

He obeyed, each muscle working in such perfect harmony that suddenly he was on the ground without her having even noticed how he got there.

“You see,” he said in that same reasonable tone, “you have nothing to fear from me.

It’s generally accepted that Half-bloods are only a little inferior in strength and skill to my kind, so you seem to have the adva—” The butt of a rifle slammed into the Daysider’s temple, and he slumped to the ground.

Michael turned the gun around and aimed it at the Daysider’s head. He was already stirring, only temporarily stunned by the blow.

“Are you crazy?” Michael demanded, glaring at Alexia. “Chatting with a Daysider as if he wouldn’t bite your throat out the second you blinked?”

Alexia knew she had no call to be angry with Michael. He was right. She’d let her curiosity about her first Daysider dangerously compromise her training. And her sense.

“Shoot him if he moves,” Michael said, crouching behind the enemy operative. He unfastened a pair of steel cuffs from his belt and bound the Daysider’s hands behind him.

Then he rolled the man over, patted him down and removed a wicked-looking knife and a small pistol of a type unfamiliar to Alexia. He tossed them into the bushes, pushed the agent back onto his stomach and jabbed the muzzle of his XM30 into the Daysider’s spine.

“Sit up,” he said.

The Daysider rocked to his knees and blinked as a thin trickle of blood dripped from his forehead into his left eye. In a few more seconds the bleeding had stopped, the small wound closed by the accelerated healing powers dhampires and Daysiders shared, and the agent was studying Alexia as if nothing had happened.

“That wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I have come to offer a truce.”

“A truce?” Michael scoffed. All the good nature he displayed at home, the charm that drew so many women to him—even the human ones—was lost in hatred. The very emotion Director McAllister had warned her about. “You?” he said. “You have the authority to make a truce for your masters?”

Not by the slightest flicker of expression did the Daysider acknowledge that Michael could sever his spine at any moment. “Not for Erebus,” he said. “For myself.”

Alexia stared into those remarkable sapphire eyes and had to fight off a shiver.

“Explain,” she said harshly.

“We have both been sent on the same mission,” the Daysider said. “If your people were not aware of the colony, you would not be here, so close to the Citadel’s border.

We both know that the settlement is illegal under the Armistice, and that human serfs are being held within it, but the Council has no desire to see new conflict break out between our peoples. They have assigned me to observe the colony for Erebus and gather information that will help them determine what should be done to prevent such hostilities.”

The Daysider was so straightforward compared with the average leech that a normal human might actually have been taken in by his story.

Michael wasn’t. “‘Hostilities,’” he said mockingly. “Your leaders should have thought of that before you broke the Treaty.”

“They did not,” the Daysider said. “That is why it is necessary to—”

“Liar,” Michael snarled. “Freak. You were sent here to kill us.”

The Daysider tilted his head as if he were listening to Michael, but his gaze never left Alexia’s. “I had the discretion to kill you if it would have served my mission, but you know as well as I that your unexpected deaths in the Zone would likely be counterproductive.” He paused. “I think we all want the same thing, and that is to maintain the peace.”

Michael spat into the brown grass at his feet. “There will never be peace until every last one of you is —”

“Carter,” Alexia interrupted. Michael glanced at her, took a deep breath and calmed down. She didn’t know what had gotten into him, but his uncharacteristic loss of control didn’t exactly make either one of them look strong in the eyes of the enemy.

She and Michael were at least going to have to pretend they were considering the truce the Daysider had offered. Just as she would continue to act as if she didn’t despise this leech even more than Michael did. And despise herself for feeling nearly overwhelmed by his sheer, undeniable masculine