“I didn’t kill him, Alexia,” he said. “And you should not have left camp.”
“That’s funny,” she said. “I thought Michael would try to kill you, but I didn’t really believe—” She swallowed and glanced at Carter’s face. “I didn’t think you’d go through with it.”
“I didn’t.” Damon crouched some distance away, trying to catch her eye. “We were both attacked by one of the creatures you call Orloks.”
She met his gaze again, her body trembling with shock and anger. “Orlok? Are you telling me some monster did this?” She balled her other fist and punched at the ground.
“Where is it?”
“It got away,” Damon said. He indicated the area around him, where the creature had torn up the earth in its struggles and left trails of its blood. “It attacked me first, and then it went for Carter. I tried to stop it.” He sighed, very much aware of the racking grief Alexia was trying so hard not to let him see. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” she asked. “Do you still deny that you hated him?”
“His death was unnecessary, and it has caused you pain. That is enough to make me regret it.”
“What about the Orlok?” She stared at him as if he were something far worse than Carter’s supposed murderer. “We know they come from Erebus. Some believe they have been created and bred to hunt down and kill any human or dhampir they find in the Zone. Is that true?”
He shook his head vehemently. “They are monsters even to the Opiri. They cannot be controlled.”
Damon felt her absorbing his words, taking him in, noting the fresh, blood-rimmed slashes that had reduced what was left of his shirt and jacket to tatters. It was not something Carter could have done, even with a knife.
“You have blood on your face,” she said.
He lifted a hand to rub at his jaw. Dried blood flaked off in patches and fell to the ground like scarlet rain.
No wonder Alexia had assumed he had killed Carter. He could have ripped the dhampir’s throat out almost as easily as the Lamia if the hunger was on him.
But it wasn’t. And he still hadn’t convinced her of his innocence.
“There was a great deal of blood,” he said. “His jugular...” He hesitated, unwilling to burden Alexia with the ugly details.
Alexia leaned over Michael again, the muzzle of her gun beginning to drop, and she touched the bandage at Carter’s throat with her other hand. “You did this?” she asked, her green eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Yes.”
“If I’d been here—”
“You could have done nothing,” Damon interrupted. “And now you risk your own life. Carter would never have wanted that.”
As if to prove his point, Alexia’s fingers spasmed in pain. She dropped the gun and made no attempt to pick it up again.
Damon stood. “You must lie down,” he insisted, starting toward her again.
Alexia raised both hands and leaned away as if to fend him off, and he stopped.
“Alexia,” he said, “I did not kill him.”
Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, and her shoulders sagged. “Did he...say anything before he died?” she asked, her voice breaking.
Once again Damon was faced with the dilemma of how much to tell her. There was no good reason to assume that only her partner knew about the origin of the drugs in the patch; she could easily have been concealing that knowledge from him just as Carter had.
But why would she, if she knew he could save her simply by sharing his blood? No, he was certain her behavior toward him would have been different if she’d known the source of the medication that kept her alive.
Still, it now seemed much more significant that Alexia had attempted to seduce him—if it could be called seduction, seemingly subconscious as it had been—and had tasted his blood. True, she’d taken no more than a drop, if that, but something inside her had known that in that blood lay something she must have to stay alive.
Alexia would have to be made to understand how important it was that they act on Michael’s information immediately. But Damon still had no proof that Carter had betrayed her. Or why he would. Even suggesting such a possibility would be the surest way of turning Alexia against him once and for all.
Damon dropped to his haunches. “He told me how to keep you alive.”
She looked up from Carter’s still face. “There was only one way he could have done that,” she said. “I would never have bought my life with his.”
“Getting a new patch isn’t the only way,” Damon said. “He told me more about it.
What makes it work.”
“What does that matter now?”
“Because he said the drugs in the patch are derived from the blood of my kind.”
She froze. Her muscles locked, and even the tears on her cheeks seemed to harden like crystal.
“Your kind?” she said. “Darketans?”
“Yes.”
“My God,” she whispered.
Her shock wasn’t feigned. She was genuinely astonished, and perhaps even more than that—horrified.
“He didn’t say where your Enclave obtained the blood,” Damon added, “but if the patches have been in use for years...”
“Since ten years after the Treaty,” she said, looking away.
She knew as well as Damon what that meant, though being from the Enclave, she might see some of the implications he had missed. Her face remained an expressionless mask.
“I don’t understand how that is supposed to keep me alive,” she said.
“Your partner suggested that taking my blood might save you.”
She stood abruptly and headed back the way she had come, her legs jerking with every step. Damon glanced down at Carter one last time, gathered up packs and weapons, and followed her, watching carefully to ensure she didn’t stumble or fall.
“Do you understand?” he asked, catching up to her. “You have a chance to live.”
Alexia continued to walk without glancing in his direction. It was obvious that she was pushing herself to stay on her feet, and the farther she went the more she slowed down.
Damon had to resist the compulsion to take her in his arms and carry her the rest of the way.
Moving at an extremely slow pace with many stops to allow Alexia to rest, they reached their camp several hours later. By then it had been dark for some time, and Alexia was walking with her arms wrapped around her stomach, her skin almost yellow and her body racked with wave after wave of severe tremors.
Ignoring the risk, Damon took her arm and forced her down onto the blanket. She resisted, but even in full health she was not as strong as he was. As soon as she was on the ground, she jerked her arm away.
Damon remained standing, trying not to loom over her. “You can’t go on like this much longer,” he said softly. “We will have to attempt it.”
Her jaw set. “Forget it.”
“Why? Have you no desire to complete your mission, if only for Carter’s sake?”
She picked up a twig and scraped jagged lines through the dirt as if she were inscribing her refusal in some ancient, arcane language.
“The price is too high,” she said.
The price. What price was worth more than her life? “You don’t want to live?” he asked, hearing the anger in his voice.
She jabbed the stick into the ground with such force that it snapped. “We do not drink blood.”
The very fact that she objected so fiercely confirmed Damon’s belief that she had no memory of tasting his blood before. But he was not about to let the matter rest at that.
“Why not?” he asked.
“We don’t drink it,” she repeated, holding herself tightly as if she feared she might shatter into a million pieces.