of low shrubs just outside the circle of shade and laid her down again under the entangled branches. He searched her pack and found the small, thin blanket she had covered him with before, laid it over her, and then began to gather twigs, fallen branches, rotting leaves—anything he might use to camouflage her while he was gone. When he was finished, he knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. Her skin had become so feverish that he could feel the heat through her shirt and jacket.
“Alexia,” he said.
Her lips parted, soft lips that seemed to beckon him now that they were no longer stiff with suspicion. Her eyelashes fluttered.
“Damon?” she murmured, lifting one hand toward him. “What is it? Is it time to go?”
She sounded like a child, innocent and trusting, certain that the one who loved her would make sure everything was all right. It must be the fever talking, he thought. A delirious, fever dream.
“Not yet,” he said gently, taking her hand in his. “I have to leave for a short time, to make sure we’re safe here. I need you to stay under cover while I’m gone.”
Her eyes opened, searching for his as if she couldn’t quite make out his face. “I’m going with you,” she said.
He stroked her fingers, aware of a painful and inexplicable wave of tenderness that threatened to dissolve the foundation of everything he had worked so hard to build since Eirene’s death. “You aren’t in any shape to help now,” he said. “The best thing you can do is rest until I return.” He laid her hand on her chest, picked up his canteen and held it to her lips. “Drink.”
Alexia did as he asked without protest, though she wouldn’t take more than a few drops. Her eyelids grew heavy again.
“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. A small vertical line had formed between her arched brows, suggesting an inner struggle of which she was hardly aware. Damon smoothed it out with his thumb.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Promise you’ll stay here.”
“I…” She shivered and subsided, the muscles of her neck and shoulders relaxing. “I promise.”
Then she was asleep again, and Damon covered her with the assembled leaves and twigs until she resembled no more than a pile of forest debris blown against the bushes by a gust of wind. He hesitated long after he was finished.
He didn’t want to leave her. Not even for a minute. And that was all the more reason he had to.
Moving almost soundlessly, Damon began to work his way down the other side of the hill, weaving back and forth to and from any small cover he could find. Once he’d reached the bottom of the hill, he walked around it, pausing to listen every few steps. Then he climbed very slowly, circling as he went.
Still nothing. It seemed their attackers really had left them—completed their task, whatever it was, and gone on their way.
Or they were lying in wait somewhere between here and the colony.
Damon reached the top of the hill, assured himself that Alexia was still safely hidden, and then continued to canvass the area, placing each step with infinite care as he turned northeast toward the colony.
He’d gone about four hundred meters and was descending the last of the hills overlooking the valley when the shots came, pelting the underbrush around his feet and shredding leaves overhead. He ducked and fell to his stomach, rolling sideways until he was behind an outcrop of rock thrusting out of the slope.
A heartbeat, two, three, ten. No further attack. Damon rose to his knees, waited, and then got to his feet. Silence. He took a step back, in full view of whoever was doing the shooting. Still no shots. But when he took a step forward…
The bullets tore a very clear line in the ground three centimeters from the toes of his boots.
He backed away, staying well back from the invisible line, and made his way a little farther to the north. When he moved east again, the bullets erupted again, tracing out that very distinct line between him and the valley.
It was a clear and unmistakable boundary. This was as close as he and Alexia would be allowed to approach the colony. But that still didn’t tell him who was doing the shooting, or even if these gunmen were the same as in the last two attacks.
None of this made any sense to him yet. But as long as the snipers didn’t go any further than trying to keep him and Alexia away from the colony, he could still carry out his mission. In fact, considering that the two of them had been left alive, the current circumstances would make his task even easier.
Provided there really wasn’t anyone out to kill them.
Damon retraced his steps toward the temporary camp. No bullets assailed him. He was back at Alexia’s hiding place in less than an hour. She was still there, still safe.
But the mild shivers he had noted earlier had become so violent that she’d shaken off most of the leaves and branches heaped around her body. He dropped to his knees beside her and felt her forehead. It was no longer hot, but icy cold and clammy to the touch.
“Alexia,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”
She thrashed her head from side to side, muttering words he could barely understand.
“Garret,” she cried. “No. Don’t…” Her teeth began to chatter. “I won’t let them take you.”
Damon leaned closer, his lips nearly brushing her cheek. “Who is Garret, Alexia?”
Tears broke from beneath her lids and slid across her temples. “I can’t…I can’t stop them.” Abruptly her eyes opened, and for a moment they fixed on Damon’s so directly that he was certain she was fully aware again. “You’ll save him, won’t you?” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”
He stroked her auburn hair away from her forehead. “Save whom?” he asked softly.
“He didn’t deserve it. You must see that.”
“What did he do, Alexia?”
Without warning she flung off the blanket and reached for him, locking surprisingly strong arms around his neck and pulling him down to her. Her lips brushed his, her tongue feathering over his mouth like moth’s wings.
Then she kissed him. There was no doubting her intent, or her will. It wasn’t sickness he smelled now on her skin and in her breath, but Alexia’s living blood, relentlessly tugging at him like a full moon at the tide.
The blood of a dhampir.
Damon pulled back, clinging to his rapidly fragmenting thoughts. Alexia was no human serf, or a Bloodmistress who deigned to let him taste the nectar that flowed through her veins.
Alexia was his peer. His equal, as much as anyone from the Enclave could be, though they were enemies and kept themselves alive by different means. He’d said he would never take her blood, and he had meant it.
But now it was as if he were falling under the influence of an addiction, one that had once ruled his life and been forgotten until this moment.
And Alexia was the drug.
He stared down into her half-open eyes. He saw hunger in them—physical lust and the craving for pleasure, almost as if she, too, were experiencing the euphoric effects of some unknown narcotic agent.
She wasn’t herself. He knew it, and he was ashamed of his own forbidden thoughts, his own struggle to maintain discipline and self-control that should have been second nature to him…and had been, until now. But Alexia held him there, demanding, refusing to let him go, and he forgot she was ill—forgot he could feel nothing for her—forgot his mission.
He worked her mouth open with his and slipped his tongue inside. She sucked him in eagerly, grinding her hips into his pelvis, stabbing her fingers into his hair. Her small incisors grazed the inside of his lower lip, and he felt a brief stab of pain.
She’d