“The Lamia,” Damon said suddenly, catching her off guard. “Why did it kill Lysander, and not us? Have you seen it before?”
“No,” she replied, lying before she could think about it.
“But it recognized you.” Damon worked his body into a crouch that brought his face very close to hers. “How is that possible?”
Alexia knew she was going to have to tell Damon about what had happened to Michael and what he’d said to her, but not here. Not now.
“I don’t know,” she said, reaching down to help Damon to his feet. Still cradling his broken wrist close to his chest, he limped over to the double agent’s body.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“I may have seen him once in Erebus, but I do not recognize him as a Council operative.” He turned his gaze to Lysander. “Few Darketans have ever attacked an Opir and lived, and none has ever killed one.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” Alexia said, coming up behind him. “And anyway, this one deserved it.”
His shoulders rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “I would have killed him if you hadn’t interfered.”
Alexia refused to take his words as a reproach. He couldn’t be thinking straight yet.
She touched his bare shoulder lightly. “We should go now. We don’t know who, or what, might be attracted to the smell of blood.”
“Yes.” He examined both bodies with a slight frown. “We will attempt to make it appear as though the Opiri were fighting each other,” he said.
“They were fighting each other,” Alexia said. “It was just pretty one-sided.”
“Then we must hope that we do a convincing job of suggesting they were more evenly matched.” He reached for Lysander’s body with his good hand. Alexia got in his way.
“Maybe you should leave moving them to me,” she said. “Your wrist is broken, and you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
She was waiting for his response not only because she was worried about him pushing himself, but because she wanted to see if he’d react to her mention of losing blood.
Lysander had suggested he would need nourishment soon, and that worried her greatly.
Damon hadn’t reacted at the time, so maybe Lysander had been trying to scare her just for the hell of it, figuring she would be threatened by the idea of Damon taking her blood. And the Daysider hadn’t made any attempt to actually drink any of Lysander’s blood, which would have made perfect sense if he were in need.
“I’m fine,” Damon said. “These wounds aren’t as bad as they look.” He smiled, a wry expression obviously meant to reassure her. “As long as I can avoid another fight within the next few hours, I will recover.”
“Damon—” He turned his back on her, and Alexia realized he wasn’t going to accept her help, let alone admit that he needed rest and nourishment. While she gathered up her pack, the weapons and the scraps of red-dyed cloth shed in the battle, Damon arranged the bodies, wiped the handle of his knife on his pants and put the weapon in the first Nightsider’s hand.
He stood up, scraping the back of his good hand across his face without taking notice of the still-raw gashes. “Anyone who comes is going to know an Orlok’s been here, anyway,” he said. He glanced sideways at Alexia. “That was unbelievable luck.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. “What about the clothes you’re still wearing?” she asked, dropping the wad of bloodstained fabric at her feet. “They’re saturated. If you think someone might find the bodies and come looking for us, you’ll have to do something about them. You’ll leave a trail even a human could find.”
Immediately Damon went to work on his belt. Hard muscle bunched and flexed under the night-pale skin of Damon’s arms, chest and ridged stomach as he stripped one-
handed out of his trousers and underwear and bundled them into a loose ball, setting them on the ground beside the wad of bloodstained cloth Alexia had gathered. He bent to remove his boots, tied the shoelaces together—not an easy task with only one working arm—and placed his socks on top of the rest of his clothing.
“Do you have a lighter?” he asked.
Alexia bent to her pack and opened one of the many small interior pockets. She withdrew a pen-size lighter made to quick start a fire for cooking or any other use an operative might require in the field.
“Burn the clothes,” he said.
“The smoke—” she began, trying not to look at his naked body in all its magnificent splendor.
“It isn’t likely to make the situation more dangerous than it already is. Do you have any water left?”
“A little.” She handed him her canteen, still averting her gaze, and crouched to set fire to the clothing. Damon had kept a relatively unstained strip of his pants, which he wetted down with the remaining water and used to wash the blood off his skin.
It was a hopeless task—there was too much blood and not nearly enough water. But when the fire was going and Alexia glanced up again, Damon no longer looked like the walking dead.
She gripped the lighter tightly in her fist, doing her best to pretend Damon wasn’t there at all. After everything that had happened since she’d woken up to find she’d taken his blood, when she’d been so angry with him and so disgusted with herself, she shouldn’t have been capable of admiring the powerful symmetry of Damon’s body, the way even his slightest move evoked the grace of a hunting beast in its natural environment.
He had been a beast, all right. She ought to remember that, and not be thinking of how much she wanted to touch that body, soothe his injuries, press up against him and feel his big hands on her—
“We’ll have to get fresh water soon,” Damon said, gazing in the direction of camp as if he were totally oblivious of her stare and the thoughts behind it.
“When we know we’re not being hunted,” Alexia said, watching the flames consume Damon’s clothing.
He tossed the cleaning rag into the fire. Alexia rose, brushing dirt off the knees of her pants.
“Do you have a spare set of clothes?” she asked.
He picked up his boots and slung the tied laces over his shoulder. “In my pack back at camp,” he said.
Busying herself with her own pack, Alexia clipped on her empty canteen and made sure everything was in place again. Then she kicked the ashes of the fire, mingled with blackened scraps of cloth, into the dirt and thoroughly covered both. The burned smell did a good job of obscuring Damon’s scent, and hers.
If only disposing of all their other problems could be so easy. How this was all going to end—how she was going to settle things with Damon, and with herself—she didn’t know. The only thing she could still be sure of was her duty to protect the Enclave, its people and all humanity.
And perhaps she could be certain of one other thing: Damon’s commitment to her, which she could no longer deny. But just how deep was hers to him? When it really came down to it, how could she deal with his violently unpredictable shadow-side, and the knowledge that he refused to consider turning on his Opir masters in spite of his treatment at their hands?
If—when—they found themselves on opposite sides again...
“Are you ready?” Damon asked, glancing back at the bodies one last time.
“Wait a minute,” Alexia said. She pulled her own spare shirt out of her pack and rigged it into a sling, gingerly slipping it over Damon’s shoulder and easing his broken wrist into the cradle of cloth. “That should hold you until it heals.” He looked at her hand lingering on his shoulder and then met her gaze. “Thank you,” he murmured.