Dayhunter (31 page)

“No!” he shouted. “I would never help the naturi. I know what they’ve done. I know what they’re capable of.”

“Then why did Jabari want you?” I demanded, jerking my wrists from his grasp.

Nicolai pushed up so he was leaning back on his forearms and elbows. “There were three naturi sympathizers in my pack. Somehow Jabari found out and threatened to tell the other packs. Everyone in my pack would have been killed, no questions asked. Instead he killed two of the sympathizers immediately and wanted to keep the third as a pet. I bargained with Jabari to take me instead of her.”

I sat back on my heels, hating his words, despising the fact that I sympathized with him. Of course, if I had been in Jabari’s place, I have no doubt that I would have destroyed the whole pack without a second thought, and not feel an ounce of remorse about the deed. In this war, it was us against the naturi. There was no room for sympathy or betrayal. But betrayal seemed to surround me when it came to the naturi. Trust was a withering corpse in the sun. Vampires and lycans were siding with the naturi. Witches and lycans were with the Daylight Coalition. And I stood alone with a bori half-breed at my back.

“Girlfriend?” I asked after a long moment of silence, pondering the “her” he had mentioned.

“She was my sister,” he softly replied.

With a growl, I climbed off the bed and strode back over to the window, my arms once again folded tightly under my breasts, as if to protect myself against the very idea. There was no questioning the “was” in his statement. We both knew his former pack would have killed his sister the second Jabari departed with him. She had betrayed not only her own kind, but also the pact made by all the other creatures to fight against the naturi. When given the choice between what could be a long, painful existence in servitude to a nightwalker and a quick death, Nicolai stepped in to give her the more merciful option. Would I be so forgiving of someone I loved?

I roughly ran my right hand through my hair, pushing it away from my eyes, trying not to think about the answer that came so quickly to mind. Despite my so-called noble actions in regard to Tristan, I didn’t like myself much when it came to my dealings with the naturi. The blood flowed too easily and the joy too sweet.

What was also eating away at me was the idea that Jabari had discovered this betrayal within the United States. It wasn’t my domain, but it felt too close. The Elders never came to the New World, and there only a handful of Ancients in the region. The idea that Jabari had come and gone without my knowledge had left me feeling…violated. Maybe the others were right. Maybe I had begun to see all of the New World as mine. Or at the very least, safe from direct interference of the Coven.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. We both knew her betrayal had left her with no other fate, but that knowledge did little to ease the pain of loss. “I have to get you to my domain,” I said when the silence began to grow between us again. Turning away from the window, I walked over to the nightstand by the bed and picked up my cell phone. Nicolai covered my hand with his before I could pick up the phone, dragging my eyes to his face.

“You’ll still protect me?” he asked, confusion furrowing his brow.

“I promised to protect you. I keep my word,” I said solemnly with a nod of my head. “But I can’t do that here. I have to get you and Tristan to my domain back in the United States. As repayment for this protection, you must guard Tristan during the daylight hours as you travel to my home. You must promise to guard him with your life.”

“I swear I will. No harm will come to him.” Nicolai squeezed my hand as he made his vow. I tried to smile at him, reassure him, but I couldn’t. I believed him. He would die before he allowed anyone to lay a hand on Tristan, and that was reassuring. Yet when I looked at him, my mind now wondered if he had known what his sister was doing. Did he try to hide her actions? Protect her the same way he protected her from Jabari?

“Get some sleep. I have to make some arrangement. You’ll be flying out in the morning.” Picking up my cell phone, I wordlessly walked out of the bedroom into the main living area and shut the door behind me.

It was four hours until sunrise and I needed every minute of it to make my plans. I spent nearly an hour on the phone arguing with Barrett, the Alpha of the werewolf pack in Savannah. He was less than pleased with the idea of me bringing an unknown lycan into his territory; not that I could blame him. Naturally, I couldn’t tell him the real reason as to how Nicolai came to be in my care. It didn’t help matters that the Savannah pack was very peculiar since most of those in it were actually related by blood or marriage, and outsiders were very rarely permitted to move into the region. I think Barrett finally caved in to my request only because I promised him that it would not be a long-term arrangement.

Other than the brief, heated argument, it felt good to talk to him. Since leaving Savannah a week ago, the naturi had disappeared completely from my domain. There were no more attacks, no more deaths. Prior to my traveling to Egypt with Danaus, the naturi had attacked a human nightclub and a private nightwalker club, resulting in several deaths—some at the hands of werewolves being controlled by the naturi. Tension was still running high, but the area was otherwise quiet.

With Barrett reassured, somewhat, it was then on to my human assistant Charlotte, who would make the arrangements for the private flight from Venice to Savannah. She had received enough bizarre phone calls like this one to know not to ask too many questions. After talking to her, I contacted my bodyguard Gabriel, still recuperating in England following our last battle with the naturi. A lump grew in my throat at the sweet sound of his familiar voice. Closing my eyes, I could see his crooked smirk. Gabriel had protected me for years, knew my secrets. He would also grab a flight tonight and be waiting in Savannah when Tristan and Nicolai arrived. My angel would see to it that Tristan was properly taken care of when he arrived in my domain.

I wanted to call Knox. While relatively young, he had proven capable and intelligent enough to manage the region when I was out of town. I wanted to hear his voice, the touch of dry humor that laced his every comment. I needed to know from him that all the nightwalkers I had left behind in my domain were still safe. But Tristan and Danaus returned as I ended my call with Gabriel and sank into the soft cushions of the sofa, forcing me to put aside my phone.

The nightwalker had been considerate enough to go hunting while I occupied myself with Nicolai. Neither said anything about how I had spent my evening because Tristan got it into his head to argue with me for the next hour over whether he would travel with me to the site of the next sacrifice and battle the naturi.

In the end I won and he agreed to travel to my domain. He had suffered enough, and I wasn’t willing to lose him to the naturi. I prayed it was the start of a series of smart choices on my part.

NINETEEN

I
f I had been human, I would have tossed and turned, twisting the smooth cotton sheets. I would have stared up at the ceiling as the minutes crawled by, imagining the hundreds of threats and dangers Tristan could potentially face while he lay helpless during the daylight hours. I would have laid there hating Danaus and Nicolai, fearing they would betray my desperate trust. Hell, if I was human, I would have accompanied Tristan’s lifeless form down to the airport and personally secured him on the private jet.

But I wasn’t human, and at times I wondered if I had ever been human, considering my horrid past. I was a nightwalker. When the sun finally tore at the horizon and the night gave its last shuddering breath, consciousness left me no matter how badly I wished to remain awake. There were no thoughts of Tristan, no bits of safeguard I could offer him. There was only the desolate blackness and an emptiness from which I could not pull away. In those last seconds, I hated the dawn and my weakness, not for the first time since being reborn.

Yet, my daylight hours weren’t completely filled with undisturbed nothingness. In my final hour before waking, images of Tristan filled my brain, flashing in my mind like a demonic slide show. This was not like the nightmares I suffered in Egypt and England. Those grim plays had been a mix of my own memories and growing fears.

These garish images were from Macaire’s memories of the night when Tristan was tortured by the court. But there was no order to the images, no linear progression. The Elder’s memories flickered in my brain like a reel of film that had been badly spliced together. One moment Tristan was hunched over covered in blood, his back raw and his limbs trembling in pain. Yet, in the next moment, he was standing unharmed, surrounded by his kind as he anticipated his fate.

The only thing about the nightmare that was linear was Tristan’s thoughts. They whispered through my head like a ghostly soundtrack, going from disbelief that his beloved maker would abandon him to his fate, to broken pleading for her to save him. Save him from the pain. Save him from the blackness that was swallowing up his hope. In the end his fragile, fractured mind clung to a single, unwavering word: Mira. He knew I would come and end the pain.

When I was finally released from the hellish nightmare and awoke, my body began trembling and I choked back a sob. Rolling onto my side in the bed, I curled into the fetal position as I waited for the shaking to pass. My thoughts were sluggish, as if a thick, tarlike film covered them, a disgusting residue left behind by Macaire’s mental touch.

When I could finally unclench my fingers, which were twisted in the sheets, I mentally reached out for Tristan, but came up with only dead air. Instantly lurching into a sitting position on the bed, legs bent before me and eyes tightly closed, I concentrated again. All of my energy poured into the single act of touching his thoughts, being able to feel his presence. I needed to know he was safe.

When the sun had risen that morning, Tristan was laying beside me. Danaus and Nicolai had agreed to get him safely aboard the chartered jet. Either one of them had ample opportunity to stake him while he slept.

No.
Shaking my head at the thought, I knew Danaus wouldn’t kill a nightwalker when he or she slept. The hunter might hate my kind, but his sense of honor ran deeper than that. If he wanted Tristan dead, he’d take care of the matter while the nightwalker was awake and able to defend himself.

Nicolai, I didn’t trust. He could have been lying. Maybe he was a naturi sympathizer and I’d left Tristan at his mercy. Damn it! I was an idiot.

Twisting on the bed, I snatched up my cell phone from the nightstand and pulled up Gabriel’s number. My bodyguard answered after the second ring, and some of the tension in my stomach slowly unknotted at the sound of his voice.

“Do you have Tristan?” I quickly demanded, inwardly wincing at the harshness of my voice.

“Yes. Are you in trouble?” he asked.

I ignored his question. I was in all kinds of trouble, but there was nothing he or Tristan could do about it. “Let me speak to him.”

“Mira,” Gabriel started hesitantly, “he’s still asleep. It’s about two-thirty in the afternoon.”

Falling back against my pillows, I gave a breathless chuckle, laughing at my own stupidity. All the chaos flying about me had scattered my thoughts. I was so worried about Tristan’s safety that I forgot about the six-hour time difference.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“He’s safe,” Gabriel reassured me, his voice growing soft. “Both he and Nicolai landed around one.”

“Is Nicolai with you?”

“No. You didn’t say anything about him staying with you, so I left him at your town house. He wasn’t happy about it.”

The thought brought a faint smile to my lips. Nicolai possibly didn’t trust Gabriel with a vulnerable Tristan, but I had told the lycan that Gabriel was my bodyguard.

“I had to agree to have Tristan call Nicolai the second he was awake,” he continued.

“Have you actually seen Tristan?”

“I opened the trunk after I pulled into the garage at your place. He’s curled up with head and heart in their right places,” he teased, and I couldn’t blame him. My paranoia was worse than usual. “I won’t leave him until he’s in the house and knows how to set the alarms.”

“Thank you, my angel,” I sighed, letting my eyes drift shut. The security system for my house wasn’t quite Fort Knox, but it would deter most humans and give Tristan enough warning if another creature was near at night. There was also a vault in the basement with a separate security system, which would keep him safe during the daylight hours. Not even Gabriel knew how to disarm the locks on the vault. I had given Tristan those codes before he fell asleep that morning.

“How bad is it?” Gabriel inquired when a comfortable silence had grown between us.

“Bad enough.” I didn’t want to say more. It would take too long and serve no good purpose. “Have you healed?” I asked, changing the subject. The last time I saw him, he had sustained a wound to his side and thigh, and was still nursing an injured arm from a fight in Egypt.

“Enough to be a threat.” I could imagine one of his rare smiles flitting across his lips as he spoke.

As my own smile faded, I gave him instructions to contact my assistant, Charlotte, and have her arrange for a chartered jet to be ready to leave Venice that night. The new moon was in two nights. We had enough time to be at whatever location would be the site of the next sacrifice. Enough time to face the naturi for what I hoped would be the last time.

Rolling out of bed, I showered and dressed. Unfortunately, I was down to my last clean garment—a sleeveless cotton dress that hung down to my ankles. I had hoped to wear it in Egypt as I wandered around the decaying monuments, listening to the sound of the Nile splashing between its banks. The breezy, navy blue skirt would only hinder me in a fight, but I knew I wouldn’t be fighting Macaire when he finally decided to appear. The Elder might be seriously pissed at me, but he also understood the value of a good weapon. And if I had proved anything during the long years, it was that I was an efficient killer.