Dayhunter (16 page)

When I finally spoke again, I was surprised at how tired my voice sounded. As if the long centuries had been condensed into a single sound. “You’ve walked this earth for more than a millennium. How can you still cling to the idea that concepts like these are black and white?” I turned to look at him. He still stood near the head of the aisle, as if afraid to enter this place. “Good and evil are not black and white. Human doesn’t automatically equal good and vampire doesn’t equal evil. You’ve spent a lifetime slaughtering my people. Have you never paused for half a second to wonder if we really are what you want us to represent?”

“Once.” His voice was little more than a summer breeze through a maple tree, soft and soothing.

“When?” He didn’t answer me, but I knew when as soon as I asked the question. It had been the first night we met. He hesitated that night when we fought. I’d believed it was because of Nerian and the naturi, but there had been something else brewing in the back of his mind. “And what did you decide?”

“I don’t have an answer. I don’t know! For some reason, you throw everything into confusion. You make me question all the answers I thought I had,” he raged, taking an angry step toward me. His powers surged out from him, hitting me in the chest with enough force to make me take a steadying step backward.

“There’s nothing wrong with asking questions,” I said with a half smile. The anger and frustration I felt earlier had dissipated, leaving only a fine trembling in my muscles.

“But these questions take away hope,” he said. I could feel the anger draining out of him, to be replaced by a bone-deep despair that threatened to crush us both. For just this brief moment in time he looked lost, and it was my fault. Before meeting me, he had purpose and direction, he had a light to sail by, but I had destroyed that. I didn’t like him killing, but I also didn’t believe in taking away another creature’s hope.

“I want to call in my debt,” I announced after a heavy silence had filled the air.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me what you are.” He turned and started to walk out of the church without a word. “Stop, Danaus. I’ve thought about this since I first laid eyes on you. You’re at least part human, that can’t be mistaken, but you’re not a warlock or a lycan. I’ve mentally gone through the laundry list of every creature I’ve encountered and nothing seems to fit. What is it that you are so desperate to hide?”

“Let’s go,” he said. The hunter stopped walking but was still facing the entrance.

“Not until you tell me. What’s so horrible? Can it top the fact that I am a monster among my own kind? Or that I can be used as a weapon by my enemy to destroy both naturi and nightwalkers? This secret is destroying you and my kind. You have to tell someone.” I was grasping at straws but knew that his twisted outlook on the world had to be rooted somewhere. After more centuries that I cared to count, Danaus’s mind and identity were still mostly human, but the secret of his existence was tearing him apart and destroying far too many of my own kind in the process. It also left him vulnerable to creatures such as Ryan, who were all too happy to use Danaus’s desperation and confusion to their advantage.

“Why you?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me.

“Because us freaks got to stick together,” I replied, flashing him a wicked grin.

He made a strange noise, almost like a strangled laugh, and shook his head. “Bitch,” he muttered under his breath, but in the quiet church it was like he had shouted it.

“I pray you’re not just figuring that out,” I said blandly, but then quickly turned serious again. “What is this burden on your shoulders?”

Danaus turned around, resting one hand against the doorjamb as if to steady himself. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough, making me wonder how many times he had spoken these words aloud. “My mother was a witch. Before I was born, she made a deal with a demon to gain more power.”

“And the price?” Those three words escaped my lips in a rough and ragged whisper. I already knew the answer. There was always a price for more power. I knew that personally. For my amazing abilities, I traded in my ability to be awake during the day and gained a complete dependence on blood for survival.

“Me.”

My knees buckled and I landed on my butt on the edge of one of the marble steps leading up to the altar. Panic screamed in my brain as I struggled to comprehend the words he had uttered. A fierce shaking started in my hands and a sharp, biting chill swept through my body. There were no such thing as demons—not as humans comprehended them—but back in the beginning, when the world was young, there were two guardian races, the naturi who watched over the earth and the bori who watched over all souls.

The bori were an immensely powerful race that had come to represent both angels and demons in human mythology. And while the naturi had the ability to force all lycanthropes to do their bidding, the bori could easily subjugate the entire nightwalker race. The naturi wanted to destroy us, but the bori wanted to rule us. It was why both races had been banished from this world. Yet, something was off. While we all knew some naturi were left on earth after the seal had been made, supposedly none of the bori remained. All the bori had been locked away for centuries. Had Danaus’s mother found a way to partially summon a bori back to earth?

I couldn’t raise my gaze to look at him, not when I knew my horror was clearly written across my face. My world was crumbling around me at an alarming rate. Jabari could control me, Rowe wanted to use me to permanently free Aurora, and Danaus, with his link to the bori, could use me to destroy both the naturi and the nightwalkers.

Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath as I pushed down the rising wave of panic filling my chest. I needed to think clearly. “You’re a demon?” I finally said, lifting my gaze to look down the long aisle at the creature that had saved me on more than one occasion.

Danaus narrowed his beautiful blues, closely examining my face for my reaction to the news. “Half. Like you said, part of me is still human.”

But it wasn’t that simple. The bori weren’t demons, and I had never heard of anyone being half bori. There was no cross-breeding with humans. The closest mix between a human and a bori was a nightwalker, and I knew without a doubt that Danaus was not one of us.

It sounded as if the bori that made the deal was more of a parasite attached to Danaus’s soul, lending him power as the bori bided his time. And while the naturi clung to twelve wells of power from the earth, Danaus had potentially become a walking doorway for the entire bori race. They just had to figure out how to unlock him.

And yet, Danaus had never used the term bori. He didn’t know, didn’t understand, their long history. He was just clinging to the ancient definition of what a demon was and making his decisions based on that. He had no idea what he was.

“So you’re trying to save your human half by ridding the world of evil, namely vampires,” I said, trying to quell my rising panic before he sensed it. What could I tell him? That it wasn’t a demon that owned a part of his soul, but something nastier and more complicated? I didn’t have any answers for him. And what information I could give him would only make it worse. I needed time and more information before I opened my mouth.

“I have no desire to spend eternity in Hell because of my mother’s need for revenge,” he coldly said, taking a few steps toward me.

I ran a shaking hand through my hair, pushing it away from my eyes. “How do you know that is your destination?”

“It is the destination of all demons,” he simply said. He stopped when he was a couple feet away from me, his eyes on the ground.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve not seen any proof to sway me one way or the other.”

“Have you known any demons?”

I could only smile weakly at my companion. There was nothing I could say that would help him. I hadn’t had any personal encounters with the bori. My experiences in this lifetime had been limited to battling the naturi, which had always been more than enough for me.

“They’re evil,” he continued when I remained silent.

“Most probably are,” I conceded, rubbing my hands together to brush off some dirt. “But every creature that slinks across this earth is given a choice. You’ve chosen not to be evil. You’re also part human. That has to throw something into your favor.”

Danaus slowly lifted his gaze, staring deep into my violet eyes, searching for something. He wanted to believe me. He truly wanted to grab onto the lifeline I was tossing him as he struggled out in the dark abyss, but he was also fighting centuries of religious theory and conditioning. He wasn’t about to toss aside his faith so easily because it eased his mind and conscience.

“I’m not asking you to believe everything I’ve said. Just think about it. These ideas you’ve clung to are man-made ideas. They’re narrow-minded and flawed. Earlier tonight we were discussing the Great Awakening. Mankind’s concepts of God and redemption didn’t take our kind into consideration,” I said, threading a lock of hair that had come loose behind my left ear. “If you survive this nightmare, go talk to Ryan. I have a feeling you’re willing to believe him a little more than me.”

“You’ve lived longer. How could he know more?” he countered.

I didn’t trust Ryan, but the white-haired warlock was a potential source of information. He represented a starting point for Danaus. And if I survived this mess as well, I hoped to do a little digging around myself. “Ryan’s spent his life studying the other races and religions. I’ve picked up what I can along the way. A lot of it is myth and rumor. You sift through it as best you can and keep an open mind.”

“And then what?”

“Nothing,” I said with a shrug. I rose to my feet in my boneless manner. “You keep moving. Let’s go.”

I stepped around him and strolled down the aisle in my usual breezy, happy-go-lucky way, but my mind was churning. A bori. Well, a half bori sort of. That was not something I had expected. I had thought maybe he was a strange half warlock, half lycan mix that couldn’t shift. No, Danaus was a half bori that had the ability to control me. It was enough to send shivers down my back, but somehow I had to bury my terror deep inside my chest. Of course, if I had lost it in front of my dark companion, Danaus would have been out the door.

“Mira…” he slowly called, sounding hesitant.

“Yeah, I know. It’s a deep, dark Danaus secret,” I said, spinning around so I could look at him as he walked up the aisle behind me.

“So you can read my mind now?”

“Not quite. It’s the type of thing I would request. Beside, it’s not like I want you bragging to your little cult about your nifty new Mira marionette.”

“It seems we’re on equal ground,” he said, extending his hand to me.

“Always have been,” I replied, slipping my hand into his. I was surprised that I didn’t hesitate to take his strong hand in mine after the last three times we had touched. There was no rush of power pushing to enter my body this time, no thoughts that didn’t belong to me. Just his usual warmth washing over my skin, soaking in and heating me like the sun. Despite what he was and the heritage that haunted him, Danaus still had a choice and still had his honor.

Standing in the silence of the church holding his hand, a dark thought flitted through my brain before I could stop it. Had I promised to protect something more dangerous to my kind than the entire naturi horde? Wasn’t death better than an eternity of slavery? For a reason I had yet to understand, the Coven had struck a pact with the naturi, offering up some type of protection. I’d brought Danaus into the center of our civilization, a creature that was part bori and a vampire hunter. Despite my best intentions, had I betrayed my kind in the same way?

“Of course, you realize that this conversation won’t stop me from hunting vampires,” he coldly said, releasing my hand.

I forced myself to laugh as I turned to leave the church. “I wouldn’t dream of stopping you,” I replied, pushing open the heavy wood door. “I just want you to think about why.” There was no forcing Danaus to do anything he didn’t believe in. However, with enough time and knowledge, I believed he would choose to stop hunting nightwalkers.

We casually strolled back through the weed-infested main
campo
. Looking out across the Lagoon toward the glow of Murano and Burano, I could sense the other nightwalkers going about the usual nightly activities. They were hunting and feeding and laughing. Despite their dead bodies, they were as alive as the humans that surrounded them. I couldn’t believe we were evil. Or more specifically, that I was evil. Would I still be mourning the loss of my angel if I was evil? Would I still cherish my sweet Calla and the life I once had if I was evil? In the gathering darkness with Danaus at my side, those questions were all I had left to cling to.

ELEVEN

A
slow hiss slipped between my clenched teeth as I paused at the edge of the grassy courtyard. Jabari was playing a game. First, he demanded I come to Venice, where I was almost guaranteed to discover the Coven’s plot with the naturi, and now this. We were no longer alone. My focus had been so completely locked on Danaus and our conversation that I didn’t notice Nicolai until he stood watching us from the second floor window of a vacant building.

He was early. I hadn’t expected Jabari to send his assassin at least until after the next sacrifice. Of course, this meant that the Ancient had broken his promise that he wouldn’t send one of the court flunkies to see to my demise. But I knew Jabari’s goal wasn’t to kill me there. I was too old and experienced to be taken out by a lycanthrope. He wanted something else. Nicolai was simply a pawn that had been moved into play. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the opponent Jabari was playing against; I was just another one of his game pieces. What was I supposed to accomplish in fighting Nicolai? Did Jabari expect me to kill the werewolf? Was he more important than I knew? I wanted to scream. Second-guessing myself and trying to predict Jabari’s next move was going to get me killed.

Standing in the deep shadow thrown down by the building the werewolf occupied, I shoved my hand into my pocket and withdrew the silver ring that held the key to the boat. The little slip of metal jingled before I closed my fingers around it. “Take the boat back to the hotel,” I murmured, not looking over at Danaus as he came to stand beside me.