Alexia sank back on her heels. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she whispered, the heat of anger draining away with her sigh. “It was part of the Treaty, a system developed so the leeches wouldn’t be driven to raid and kidnap citizens to feed their hunger. Can you justify the way Nightsiders live?”
Damon could hardly bear the raw pain in her voice. He understood that in spite of Alexia’s hostility toward the Opiri, the hatred she had expressed for their way of life, she believed in something better than the fragile Armistice that kept Opiri and humans from each other’s throats. Her sincere question was a revelation to him, an admission of hope.
Hope Eirene had shared.
“You and I,” he said thickly, “can have no effect on the decisions of those we serve. It is beyond our power.”
“Is it?” She placed her palm on his chest. “Why do you still serve them, Damon? You hate what they did to Eirene. From what you’ve said, they’d do the same to any Darketan who cared for another. Why doesn’t all your kind leave and start your own society?”
“Like the illegal colony?” he asked.
“No. It would be different, because you are different.” Her eyes were no longer dull with illness or dark with anger. They shone with the reflection of excitement, as if she could see what she envisioned as surely as she could see his face. “What if there’s a way to create what you need, the same way the Enclave used Darketan blood to create the drugs?”
He looked down at her small hand, so delicate in spite of its strength, wondering if she could feel how hard and fast his heart was beating. “Even if that were possible,” he said, “why do you think any Darketans would wish to leave?”
“If they’re like you—” He pulled out of her reach. “You don’t know me, Alexia,” he said harshly. “Eirene was different. But most of my kind would never consider what you suggest. It wouldn’t even occur to them. They know only one way to live.”
“You could teach them. Damon—”
“We would never be allowed to leave Erebus permanently.”
“Because they’re afraid of you,” she said, as if she had finally understood some great mystery.
“The Opiri have nothing to fear from us,” he said bitterly. “But we are rare mutations, so—”
“Mutations?”
“You didn’t know?”
“We’ve all heard the rumors and theories, but if Aegis knew, they didn’t see any reason to tell us.” Her mouth tightened. “How does it happen?”
Damon closed his eyes. “During the Awakening and the War after,” he said, “when the Opiri were converting many humans to become their soldiers, it sometimes happened that the process failed to complete. It was believed to be a result of an allergic reaction to Opir blood, which resulted in unforeseen genetic changes.”
“Was?”
“It happens rarely now, since few humans are permitted to convert.”
She leaned toward him again, reaching out to stroke the tense muscles under his ribs.
“How long ago were you converted?”
The distraction of her intimate touch almost robbed him of his ability to speak. “I don’t remember,” he said, his voice roughening. “Loss of memory is another side effect of an incomplete conversion.”
Her fingers worked into the waistband of his pants. “The eldest Nightsiders claim they were always on Earth, even before humans,” she murmured. “But you were human once.
And now you’re something else, with insights and abilities they don’t have. That’s why they’re afraid of you, and why you have to leave Erebus, go far beyond any vampire’s reach.”
Flattening his hand, Damon pressed his palm over her fingers and held them still.
“That would be to the benefit of the Enclave, would it not?” he said. “They would be pleased to see the Darketans abandon the Citadel.”
“You’re right,” she said. “But you know that’s not why I said it.”
“Would the Enclave welcome us if we went to them?”
She lowered her gaze and didn’t answer. Damon hardly noticed. His desire for her was devouring him, a forbidden temptation that made him crave not only her body but her spirit, the unique spirit he had met in only one other in all the course of his existence. It was all he could do to keep from pulling her into his arms, forgetting her bizarre ideas and existing only in the “now” Alexia had spoken of before this pointless discussion.
But he couldn’t. He respected her too much. He began to rise, but Alexia gripped his pants and pulled him back down. She slid her hand up to his collarbone and curled her fingers around the back of his neck.
“When I’m gone,” she said, “I want you to promise me to think about what I’ve said.
It’s almost all I have to give you.”
Despair and defiance rose like a tempest in Damon’s chest. He caught Alexia’s face between his hands. “I said I would not let you die.”
Her smile was sad. “You’re not a god.”
“There must be something—”
“Let’s not talk about it now,” she said. “There are other things we could be doing....”
Sires help me, Damon thought. “Let me go to the Enclave,” he said. “There is still a chance—”
“You’d never make it in time.”
“Then I’ll track down the Opir your partner was following. He may have the patch, or know where it is.”
Alexia put a finger to his lips. “I want only one thing of you, Damon. Let’s finish what we started.
“Make love to me.”
Chapter 9
The fire rose hot in Damon’s eyes, and Alexia knew she had won.
Not her life. That she had already lost. But something almost as precious, something she could take with her into the darkness, the memory of becoming one with the man she
—
No. That word meant nothing to Damon, or to her. She held his gaze, asking him again with her silence.
“It isn’t safe,” he said hoarsely.
“No one has come near us since you went on recon,” she said. “If they’d wanted to come after us, they would have by now.”
“And the Lamia?”
“I’m willing to risk it, if you are.”
Maybe it was asking too much of him after all. He was so still that she thought he was going to refuse. But then the fire in his eyes claimed his body, and he pulled her to him, seizing her mouth with his.
Alexia had been kissed before. Not often, because of what she was; there was nothing to prevent dhampires from having relationships with each other, ranging from casual sex to cohabitation, but few humans felt comfortable in an intimate relationship with them.
The few dhampir lovers Alexia had taken had been friends, no more; her one human lover had left her when he couldn’t cope with her vampire blood, even though she never so much as grazed him with her teeth.
With Damon, none of that mattered. For the first time, as his lips claimed hers, she felt a barrier between them crumble, one so deep inside her that she hadn’t even realized it existed. It wasn’t just because of the closeness of their bodies, or how they would soon be closer still. It was more than mere emotion. It was oneness with another being, for the first time in her life.
She opened her mouth to welcome his tongue, feeling his hand work its way down her side to the waistband of her pants, tugging the tail of her shirt free and sliding his palm over her stomach. He rubbed her skin with slow, almost lazy strokes and began to explore the rest of her face with his lips: brow, cheeks, chin, jawline. He suckled the lobe of her ear, provoking shivers that began at the top of her head and ended just below his caressing hand. He grazed her with his teeth, just for an instant, and licked along the ridge of her collarbone.