“Operator Willis,” Alexia said, keeping her tight hold on Damon, “you’d better get back to your commander and tell him Nightsiders are coming. I don’t know if they’re Council or Expansionists, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. If he has the sense to realize what a new war is going to do to all of us, he’d better sit tight and hold fire.” She grabbed the rifle she had taken from the soldier’s hand. “Move!”
A single glance at Damon’s savage expression convinced the soldier to do as she ordered. Running low to the ground, he melted into the brush.
Alexia moved in front of Damon and met his eyes, which were still nearly black with the darkness seething inside him.
“Are the others all right?” she asked.
He nodded and touched her face. “Alexia,” he rasped.
“I’m fine.” She looked him up and down, fighting an almost physical sickness at the sight of his partially healed wounds. Someone had treated his injuries, but
she’d been foolish to think anyone could keep him there—and she was the only one who could hope to control his shadow-side.
“We’ve got to get through to Theron, Damon,” she said. “Maybe it won’t do any good, but he’s the symbol of everything decent in Eleutheria, and maybe we can get somebody to listen.”
“Yes,” Damon said.
“Let’s go.”
Together they ran southwest toward the colony, Damon moving much more slowly than usual but never faltering. There was another burst of gunfire somewhere ahead, but they didn’t slow down until they were just behind the last tree at the foot of the lowest hill descending into the valley.
They were too late. A dozen Nightsider Council troops, wearing black uniforms and armed to the teeth, had formed a barrier around the settlement’s front wall, facing outward across the valley. Even as Alexia watched, someone fired on them from the cover of a broad-trunked valley oak about three hundred meters to the southwest. The Nightsiders returned fire, and then silence fell again, as peaceful as the aftermath of a level-seven earthquake.
Whatever motive the Nightsiders had for defending the colony—whether it was because they actively meant to protect it or simply wanted to keep the Aegis soldiers away—the upshot was the same. The strike force wasn’t going to leave until they’d
“rescued” the supposed human guinea pigs, and the Erebus troops would never let them get anywhere near the walls. Since the Council obviously knew something unusual was going on, it was only a matter of time before they sent a larger force to deal with the human incursion.
“We’ll have to try to get in from the back,” Alexia said in an undertone. “I’m sure they’ve got it guarded, too, but it’s the only chance we have.” She grabbed Damon’s hand. “Whatever happens, remember that you are still Damon. Use your shadow to protect, not to kill.”
His eyes were almost clear now, reflecting starlight like indigo pools too deep to fathom. “You go in,” he said. “I’ll cover you.”
She closed her eyes, grateful that he was himself in what might be their final moments together. She wanted to tell him what she had never quite said, not the way she’d wanted to say it. But she remembered the Darketan woman’s lovely face, the look on
“All right,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Good luck, Damon.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her roughly and just as abruptly let her go. Alexia turned and started back up the hill toward the rear wall of the colony, her lips throbbing and her heart throwing itself against her ribs like a fox in a cage. Damon followed so quietly that only the scent of dried blood and the tang of the local flora on his skin told her he was behind her.
The Nightsider guarding the back wall never stood a chance. Alexia made only a small, token effort to get past him, and as he was about to shoot her Damon took him down from behind. She didn’t wait to see how Damon would deal with the man or the other Nightsiders she knew had to be nearby, but continued down the hill to the eastern battlements and the row of sharpened stakes that rose a good two meters above her head.
The Nightsider colonists hadn’t left this wall unguarded, either. A dozen bullets from above whistled past Alexia’s ear, and she dropped into a crouch at the foot of the wall.
“It’s Alexia!” she cried. “I’m coming in!”
There was no response, but Alexia didn’t wait. She half ran, half slid the rest of the way down the hill to the postern gate, where she heard heavy objects being dragged around inside the wall. The door opened the width of an Armistice dollar and the sliver of a Nightsider’s face appeared behind the crack.
“Get Theron,” Alexia commanded. “Damon and I are here to take him to safety.”
“You can’t,” the Nightsider said. “He—”
“I know he doesn’t want to come, but someone’s going to kill him if he sets foot outside the front gate. If we can keep him alive, there’s still a chance he can—”
“You can’t help him,” the Nightsider said in a harsh whisper. “He thinks he can reason with them. He’s about to walk out.”
Alexia’s shock lasted exactly as long as it took for her to draw a single breath. She turned and sprinted back up the hill, using her hands to pull herself along.
Damon was waiting for her, standing guard over two Council troops with a nasty little Nightsider pistol in one hand and an Erebus model assault rifle in the other. Both Nightsiders were bloodied but alive, wearing daygear but still protected by the darkness.
“Theron is already leaving,” Alexia said to Damon. “I’m going to be there when he walks out that gate.”
Damon nodded, the shadow crouching behind his eyes, waiting to be summoned again. Alexia knew he was deciding whether or not to kill the troops, but he knew as well as she did that any chance he might have to talk to the Council would end if he took their lives.
“Surrender,” one of the Nightsiders told Damon, “and you may be permitted to live.”
Damon didn’t answer. He dropped the pistol, tossed the rifle to Alexia, picked the Nightsider up by the back of his protective suit and charged down the hill the way she had come. She heard a low grunt, a cry of alarm and the thump of something heavy hitting the ground some distance away. The second Nightsider began to rise, but Alexia was ready, and he was in no position to resist when Damon came back for him.
“What did you do?” she asked when Damon returned.
“Over the wall,” he said, grinning in a way that would have made even a Nightsider’s blood run cold. “The colonists can deal with them.”
Alexia returned his grin. She didn’t wait to see if he was planning to kiss her again, though she wanted to feel his arms around her one last time. Moving as fast as the slope permitted, she plunged down the hillside parallel to the settlement walls and didn’t stop until she reached the valley floor.
Damon ran up behind her, his breath stirring her hair, his body a wall of heat against her back. A Nightsider in Council blacks stepped right in front of them. Alexia dove for his legs while Damon went for his rifle and knocked him unconscious with a blow that might have felled one of the massive oaks in the woods above them.
An instant later they were running again, still alongside the wall and headed for the corner where it turned to face the open field. Someone shot at them as they raced toward the gate, but they didn’t stop until they could clearly see what lay between them and Theron.
He stood just outside the closed gates, hands raised above his head. Behind him and to each side, Nightsider troops held him pinned under their weapons like a beetle on a display board. Half a kilometer across the valley, Alexia could make out the moonlit glint of more weapons and the motionless figures of Enclave soldiers, lying prone in the long grass and waiting for the signal to attack.
Humans and Nightsiders were so intent on each other that none of them noticed Damon and Alexia until
