Daysider

within an inch of his life. Damon looked up from the Opir’s slack face. Alexia, gag gone, was standing with Emma and a human male, rifles trained on four Opiri sprawled in a heap at their feet. The humans crowded around them, looking very much as if they would appreciate being given the chance to tear the Opiri limb from limb.

Alexia, Damon thought. Alexia is safe.

He met her gaze, and she smiled. But as he rose, she looked past him at someone approaching from the south. Damon stiffened and turned.

An Opir, one of those Damon had taken down earlier, was stumbling toward him, hands raised, prodded along from behind by a rifle in the hands of a slim, light-haired Darketan woman, her skin pale in the darkness.

Damon knew her, just as he had known her scent, and her voice.

Eirene.

* * *

Three breaths was all the time it took for Alexia to recognize the woman who had come out of nowhere to help her take down Sergius’s henchmen.

The “nice lady.” The Darketan woman who had saved Alexia’s life twenty years ago by sharing her blood.

Alexia’s fingers went numb on the rifle, and she had to concentrate to make them work again. The woman was pushing one of Sergius’s men, liberally splashed with his own blood, toward the other captured Opiri, and as she came she was looking at the Daysider who stood over Sergius’s limp body.

Damon didn’t move. He, too, had been badly injured, and it seemed a miracle to Alexia that he was still alive. But he seemed unaware of any pain as he stared at the woman, and Alexia could feel something almost tangible pass between them, more than recognition, more than wonder, more than joy.

“Who is she?” Emma asked.

“A friend, it seems,” Alexia said. She swallowed and stared down at the Opiri, who were wounded badly enough not to cause any more trouble, at least for the time being.

“We still have to get to the caves as quickly as possible.”

Emma glanced at Hera’s body. “She died for us,” she said, her voice thick with sorrow. “I wish we could take care of her.”

“Maybe we can come back for her,” Alexia said, silently offering thanks to the fallen Opir woman. “Right now I think she’d want us to make her sacrifice worthwhile.”

“What about them? ” Emma asked, gesturing at the Opiri with hatred in her eyes.

Alexia barely heard her question. She was watching the Darketan woman walk past Damon and Damon turning to stare after her as she urged her Opir prisoner to join the others on the ground. As the Freeblood sank to his knees, the Darketan stepped back and smiled at Alexia, her lovely face warm with approval.

“You must be Alexia,” she said. “You’re even more beautiful than you were as a child.”

“Do you know her, Alexia?” Emma asked, staring at the stranger.

“Yes.” Alexia shouldered her rifle and offered her hand. “I remember you,” she said.

“You haven’t changed.”

“Oh, but I have,” the woman said. “In more ways than you can imagine. And so much of that is because of you.” She turned to look at Damon, who was still standing over Sergius. “I think Damon is in need of help right now.”

Shaking off her paralysis, Alexia told Emma to shoot the Opiri if they moved and ran to Damon’s side. His knees began to buckle as she reached him, and she eased him down, her heart in her throat.

The Darketan woman came up behind her. “He’s injured, but not dying,” she said, kneeling beside Damon. His eyes were dazed and unfocused, but he glanced at her and then at Alexia with a deep bewilderment even his pain couldn’t hide.

Alexia joined the other woman on the ground. “Damon, can you hear me?” she asked.

His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Alexia had the terrible feeling that he was keeping himself conscious by sheer instinct alone.

“I’ve never seen him this badly hurt,” the Darketan woman said, the anxiety in her voice perfectly expressing Alexia’s own unspoken emotions.

“How did you... Do you know him?” Alexia asked.

“It was a very long time ago,” the Darketan woman said.

There was no time for Alexia to ask all the questions that crowded her mind, acknowledge the suspicions that were quickly becoming certainties. “I’ve seen him this bad,” she said. “He recovered. But we need to get him to the caves, along with the others.” She met the Darketan woman’s eyes. “I don’t how much you know about the situation here, but we’re still in danger. A war is likely to start any minute.”

“I know,” the woman said. “I’ll help you get to these caves.” She looped her arm under Damon’s shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Alexia let the woman handle him, knowing she had her own responsibilities that couldn’t be pushed aside because of her personal concerns. She returned to the others, unslung her rifle and punched Sergius in the chest with the muzzle.

“I know you’re not fatally injured,” she said. “Get up, or I’ll make sure you are.”

Sergius rolled onto his knees with a grunt of pain. “This is only a temporary victory, dhampir,” he muttered.

“It’s good enough for me,” Alexia said. “Move.”

None too gently urging Sergius ahead of her, Alexia returned to Emma and the humans. “We can’t take the Opiri with us,” she said. “We’ll have to—”

“Let us kill them,” Emma said. The other humans murmured agreement.

“No time to make sure they’re dead,” Alexia said. “But we can make sure they can’t get up for a while.”

Without waiting for further instructions, Emma trained her rifle on the nearest Opir and systematically shot him in both knees and both arms. Alexia didn’t stop her until she had done the same with all the groaning Opir, leaving Sergius for last.

“Where are my betters now, Sergius?” she asked, lifting the rifle again.

Sergius laughed and turned his head to watch Damon and the Darketan woman approach, Damon leaning heavily on her arm but still on his feet. “You were lucky,” he said, “that you found an unexpected ally.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Alexia said, following his gaze. “You were too arrogant, Sergius. And you underestimated Damon.”

“Underestimated him?” Sergius coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I know him far better than you do, little dhampir. I know what he is, and why he has been allowed to live in spite of his unstable nature.”

A fist of dread knotted inside Alexia’s stomach. “I’m not interested in what you think you know,” she snapped. “Emma, I’ll take care of this one myself.”

“Ask yourself why a Darketan is more powerful than a full-blood Opir,” Sergius said with a twist of his lips. “Ask yourself who, and what, released that power.” He seemed to run out of breath and waved his hand. “Finish your business, dhampir. I grow weary of this conversation.”

Driven by fury that went beyond her hatred of Sergius and those like him, Alexia prepared to fire. Then she lowered her weapon again.

“I think we’ll take you with us, Sergius,” she said. “Who knows, you may be useful.”

She shot him in the shoulder and watched him writhe. “Would you mind tying him up, Emma?”

As the human woman went to work, grinning with savage pleasure, Alexia returned to Damon.

“Is he holding up okay?” she asked the Darketan woman.

“Yes,” she said, meeting Alexia’s gaze with her own dark turquoise eyes. “But it may be too late to get away. I hear them coming.”

Alexia listened. Others were coming, though she wasn’t sure at first who they were.

“Aegis,” the woman said. “I got here ahead of them, but just barely.”

The fist in Alexia’s stomach tightened its grip. “Where did you come from?” she whispered.