Pray for Dawn

SEVEN

James was gone, but my duffel bag had been repacked and the weapons bag sat open beside it. James knew that I had several weapons stashed in secret locations around the room in case I suddenly found myself under attack. He had obviously not attempted to search out all the hiding places, leaving me to the final task of gathering up my toys.

Within five minutes, I had the last of my weapons packed and the bag zipped. I shoved my hands through my hair as I stared down at the leather jacket that lay across the bed. It wasn’t my usual duster, but a softer one that fell only to my thighs. James had left a note saying that he was having the duster mended after the attack in Spain and that he had replaced some of my worn clothes with fresh. So much for a break from the fighting.

But I had had my chance. After returning from Peru in September, Ryan had offered to let me rest and recover from the massacre at Machu Picchu, but I didn’t take it. I couldn’t sit still, had to keep moving, anything to push back the thoughts humming in my brain. So the warlock sent me out to hunt the naturi and vampires on the Continent, still moving, still hunting, but close at hand should he need me.

In Berne, Switzerland, I found an earth naturi wreaking havoc in one of the local hotels. The owner had initially blamed the chaos of broken dishes, upset furniture, and over-r grown gardens on a poltergeist. I was there only two nights before I spotted the lithe creature. Standing barely above four feet and dressed in all red, it resembled a sapling willow tree with long, slender arms that ended with sharpened fingernails. It took me another week of stalking the spindly little monster through the quiet courtyard garden before I finally disposed of it.

In a lonely town south of Liege, Belgium, I encountered an animal clan naturi. In English mythology, the creatures are often referred to as will-o’-the-wisps or hinky punks. The creature was leaving a trail of corpses through the outskirts of the forests of Ardennes. The naturi would often take the form of a large black dog, pretending to be lost or wounded as it lured its prey deeper in the woods. I had initially thought it was a werewolf gone mad without its pack, but the naturi soon proved me wrong.

Then the South of France, to track down a creature that was leaving behind a number of bodies that had been drained of most of their blood. Most had been an assortment of animals like large cats and dogs, but then two children and one adult went missing on three separate occasions. I passed more than a month in the region searching for the vampire that continued to kill even though I was in its current hunting ground. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sense the undead creature.

Dawn had just begun to creep over the horizon one cool morning when I felt the naturi lurking nearby. It was another week before I discovered that I was hunting a naturi from the wind clan. The four-foot, bony creature had bat-like wings that it wrapped around its thin frame when it walked on the ground. It was an odd mix of human and dog with its long, narrow snout and fangs poking just over its bottom lip. This strain of the wind clan had started the old popular fairy tale of the streghe, from the island of Corsica. This one either had moved farther north in search of better hunting grounds or had come through one of the doors that had opened in Europe and was on its way to Corsica. It never made it. I could only guess that it was trying to frame a nightwalker for its crimes against man by taking the blood, since it had no use for it. After two weeks of hunting, I finally destroyed the creature shortly after midnight near the Mediterranean shore.

I had forgotten about Mira until that moment. I had successfully pushed her to the furthest reaches of my mind, burying her under centuries of memories that I never wanted to recall again. Yet, after incinerating the body of the wind naturi, I wandered down to the rocky shore and washed my hands in the warm waters that clapped softly in darkness. Mira had once said that I smelled of the wind and the sea. I had been born in a small village near the sea and could only guess that some part of that beginning was imprinted on my being. And she could smell it, sense it when no one else could.

Up until my travels with Mira, my experiences with vampires had been extremely limited. In fact, they generally didn’t extend much past a few dark threats of torture and death. None had told me about how my powers felt or that I smelled of the sun. For countless nightwalkers, I had been death.

But my relationship with Mira would always be different. More than three months ago, we had bonded in a way neither of us had thought possible. We joined powers and destroyed countless naturi across England. And while she managed to remain sarcastic and indifferent, I could taste her fear that night like stomach acid in the back of my throat.

Both our worlds had changed that night. She became a threat to her own kind and I now had a deep connection to a creature I had sworn to kill. Even now, I could sense her emotions with very little effort. While the emotional world of the vampires had always been open to me, it had been somewhat thin and hazy compared to Mira. Her emotions entwined with my thoughts and soul in such a way that it became difficult to distinguish hers from mine. If I wanted, I could let her wash over me until I was drowning in her. Yet I fought the temptation, erecting mental walls to keep her out, but not before I took a small taste. She was walking down the hall toward my room. She was worried—worried and scared.

My only warning was a soft knock at the door before the lock clicked and Mira walked in. I guessed that she had gotten the room key from James. She had changed out of her blue jeans and into a pair of tight-fitting black pants and dark blue silk shirt that buttoned up the front. Mira paused beside me, looking down at my two bags before walking over to the windows and pulling open the curtains. The view was nothing spectacular, just the front of another building looking down on Bay Street, but for Mira, I don’t think it mattered. She was home.

“I spoke to Ryan about Thorne’s death,” Mira suddenly announced. Her voice was just a pale ghost drifting through the room toward me, soft and ethereal. I jerked at her sullen tone, almost surprised that she had broken her silence.

Standing at the end of the bed, I could see only her profile. Mira leaned forward, touching her head to the glass as her eyes fell shut. I folded my arms over my chest and strengthened the walls around my own thoughts. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want her slipping into my brain, but there was something in her emotions, some chaotic quality that I didn’t want leaking into me either. “What did he say?”

I was stunned she even wanted to discuss Thorne. We had been sent to protect Thorne so that he could replace his maker in the triad. Unfortunately, he was killed shortly after we found him, poisoned with naturi blood. By the tension in her shoulders, the failure continued to haunt her.

“Ryan located the witch coven that killed Thorne. A naturi had contacted them that night and had told them to kill me,” she said, the words stumbling to me. “They hadn’t even been hunting him. He was probably killed because that witch couldn’t be sure which mug I would drink from, so she spiked them all.”

The guilt lacing her tone was unmistakable. She had blamed herself for not protecting him when she first met him and now she blamed herself because he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite her general blasé attitude about life, she took each task assigned to her seriously.

On the other hand, I couldn’t muster an ounce of guilt when it came to the death of the nightwalker. I hadn’t known him beyond the fact that he was a vampire living “out in the open.” In truth, if I had known about him prior to meeting Mira, I probably would have killed him for the danger he posed to the people of London.

“What happened to the witch coven?”

“Ryan said it looked like three of the original eight had been in the club that night and were killed by the fire. Two more were gutted, their hearts stolen,” she said, counting off each one. She didn’t need to go into any more detail than that. They had been killed by the naturi they served and their hearts harvested for spells.

“And the remaining three?” I prompted when she paused.

“Ryan says disbanded and scattered.”

My arms loosened and my hands slipped into my pockets. “You’re not hunting them?”

Mira cracked one eye open and turned her head slightly without lifting it from the glass to look at me, a grim smile quirking one corner of her mouth. “Why bother? The naturi will finish them. Let them die at the hand of those they serve.”

What she wasn’t saying was that she was confident that whatever death the naturi meted out, it would be slow and painful. What more could we ask for?

“Danaus?” The sound my name on her lips drew my narrowed gaze back to her face. For a moment, she sounded hesitant and even little lost. It was a foreign sound coming from her. Mira exuded strength and confidence in whatever she did, even when she hadn’t a clue, and her weakness made me wish for a knife, to defend her against whatever threat had caused the slight tremor in her voice.

“James said that you’ve been out hunting naturi throughout Europe,” she said then suddenly stopped, seeming to wait for me to comment. Placing her hand against the glass, she lifted her head and stared down at the city, her jaw tight.

“Since the door opened, they’re everywhere and they’re not limiting themselves to the woods,” I replied. “They’ve been creeping into the cities, killing humans and vampires when they can do it quietly. They don’t seem to want to be noticed at this point.”

“Aurora is still plotting,” Mira murmured. “She has her sisters to deal with now besides me.”

The queen of the naturi did have more than a few problems in her lap now that she was running free on Earth. Her younger sisters now stood opposed to her plans to destroy the human race, causing the naturi race to splinter into two factions. Where she had probably thought her only resistance would be the nightwalkers, Aurora now faced her own kind as well.

“It’s only a matter of time before she makes her move,” I said, but Mira shook her head.

“No, she’ll want to solidify her claim as queen first, bring her people back together and crush her sisters. She’s going to need as many of the naturi at her disposal as possible if she is going to destroy both the nightwalkers and the humans. We’ve got some time.”

Mira let her eyes sweep over the room, her fists balled at her side, but I don’t think she actually saw any of it. “Do you sense any more in the city?” she suddenly snapped, glaring at me.

“No. There are no more naturi in the immediate area,” I said.

Mira gave me a jerky nod and directed her gaze back out the window. The anger and frustration seemed to slowly ooze from her body. Yet when she spoke again, a cold chill crept up my spine and coiled like a snake around my neck.

“We have to get rid of them, Danaus. You have to help me. You may hate my kind, but we are no great threat to the humans you protect. The naturi will wipe us all out if we don’t act. You have to help me.”

“Have you spoken to the coven?” I inquired. Mira’s narrowed gazed darted back to my face and she took a small step backward so that her right shoulder touched the window behind her. The coven was the ruling body for all vampires under their liege, and last I heard, Mira ranked just behind the naturi, in their “least liked” category.

“What does that have to do with the naturi?” she demanded, her tone sharpening.

“I would like to know if I’m protecting you from just the naturi or if members of the coven are hunting you as well.”

“Your job is not to protect me. Your job is to help me with the investigation. If we can kill some naturi along the way, all the better. The coven is my business.”

“Is Jabari hunting you?” I pressed. Jabari was not only a member of the coven, but at one time the vampire Elder had been very close to Mira. The Egyptian vampire had been her savior more than five hundred years ago at Machu Picchu and then had tried to kill her just a few months ago in England.

“No, he needs me alive. He still has a use for me.” Mira looked away from me for a moment then looked back, lifting her chin a little, her lavender eyes narrowed. “I don’t know the coven’s plans and I don’t want to know. I have no doubt they would all rather see me dead, but the Elders have all seen more than a thousand years slip by them. Time means nothing to them. If they wish me dead, they will not rush it.”

“Don’t trust Ryan.” The words slipped out, surprising me. I hadn’t meant to say it. What did I care what she planned with the warlock? But I believed in a fair fight. I believed in knowing your enemy and honor and duty; things I knew that Mira believed in as well. She was being hunted by both the naturi and the coven because of her abilities. And for his own reasons, Ryan was aiming to use her for his own means. She at least should be aware of what she faced.

Mira pinned me with a surprised gaze, one corner of her mouth quirking in a smile. She tilted her head slightly to the left, sending her hair falling over her shoulder like a cascade of liquid rubies.

“If he has to choose between the support of the rest of the coven and you, he will betray you in a heartbeat,” I continued, when she refused to speak.

The nightwalker chuckled and took a couple steps closer to me. The scent of lilacs rose up around me as I sucked in a steadying breath. Her powers brushed against me in an almost nonexistent caress, leaving me wondering if I had actually felt something. “I have not lived this long trusting powerful creatures. I know Ryan will not hesitate to stab me in the back. It is how he learned to survive in my world.”

“It’s just that when I saw you in his office earlier tonight it looked like…” The words trailed off in the back of my throat. What was I supposed to say? That it looked like I interrupted a rather intimate moment between those two. That they looked like they were already lovers?

Mira just smiled a secretive little smile as she stared up at me. “Yes,” she purred. “Well, that was something else. Don’t worry, my handsome protector. I don’t trust your fearless leader in the least.” She extended her right hand toward me and I instinctively jerked backward out of her reach. She patiently waited until I had stopped moving and she slowly ran her fingers through my hair, moving it from my eyes.

“You’ve let your hair grow,” she said in an almost absent manner. “I like it, but it hides your face. I can arrange for you to see my stylist when you’re in town.”

“Don’t bother,” I spit out between my clenched teeth, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart. She was mocking me now, her dark mood lightening. I jerked my head to the side, moving an inch out of her reach.

Mira shrugged, returning to her usual unflappable manner. “As you wish.”

A knock at the door broke us apart, sending Mira back to her previous spot by the window, while I walked over to see who had interrupted us. James smiled at me when I jerked open the door. He was wearing a heavy wool coat, appearing for all the world as if he were preparing to go out for the evening. Stepping backward, I let the man enter and then followed behind him after shutting the door.

“Are we ready to go?” James inquired eagerly.

“We?” I demanded.

“Ryan wants me to tag along with you during the investigation. I will be able to provide you with valuable research information,” James replied, his smile crumbling as he spoke. “I’m guessing that he didn’t mention it to you.”

“No, it must have slipped his mind,” I said, frowning. My first reaction was to deny the researcher the opportunity to go hunting around the city with Mira and me for the killer, but I swallowed the words. The initial part of the investigation would be checking out the girl’s apartment and the body—two things that were unlikely to present any kind of significant danger to the human. Besides, James was looking to get more experience in the field, and it was better if he was at my side than wandering around at night alone down vampire-infested streets.

“He must have been more concerned about the senator,” James said, directing his gaze to Mira, who was standing with her back to us, staring out the window. “Ryan was wondering if you’re going to take care of the girl’s family personally or send someone.”

“What does he mean ‘take care of’?”

“The senator and his wife are making too much noise about the unfortunate death of their daughter. It’s drawing too much attention to us,” Mira said, crossing her arms over her stomach. She turned toward us, leaning one shoulder against the glass. “We can’t do anything about the press, but we can adjust the memory of the senator and his wife, make them more…accepting of what the coroner has to tell them about their daughter. They will also be more effective in placating the press so that this all finally blows over.” She looked out the window once more as she paused, chewing her bottom lip in thought for a second before directing her cold gaze back at James. “When you talk to Ryan again, tell him I’m sending someone I trust. I need to focus my attention on the investigation, and the nightwalker I send may need to stay with the family for a couple nights.”

Someone she trusted. In Mira’s world, those people were few and far between. I had a feeling that she intended to send Knox, her second-in-command within her domain. Not only was he old enough to handle some mental manipulation, but he was also one of the only ones that Mira trusted to get the job done to her satisfaction.

“I am assuming that since I’m packed, I’m being moved out of the hotel,” I said, changing the subject.

“Oh, I guess he didn’t mention that either,” James said, a faint blush stealing up his cheeks as his eyes darted away from me to Mira.

“You’re staying in my town house,” Mira announced.

“Why?” I demanded.

Mira pushed off the window she had been leaning against and turned to completely face me. “Your presence in my domain tends to draw attention and cause problems. Staying at my town house will hopefully bypass some of those problems.”

In other words, my presence in Savannah would have Mira’s unspoken seal of approval if I were once again staying at her town house within the historic district. I didn’t like it, but unfortunately, I could see the sense in it. The lycanthropes had already pulled me aside once in fear that I had done something to the keeper of the domain. If we were going to hunt down the killer of this young woman quickly, we couldn’t afford more distractions.

“And James?” I inquired.

“I’m staying at the hotel for another night or two. I don’t attract attention like you do,” James said with a little smirk.

“Ryan?”

The smirk dissolved almost instantly and he shrugged. “I don’t know his plans. He’s given me no indication that he plans to stay. I’m sure others have begun to once again show up at the Compound looking for him.”

I nodded and then grabbed my coat. Ryan wasn’t one to tarry too long from the comfort of his perch at the Themis Compound. It was easier for him to collect information from all his various sources if he was sitting in his office back in England.

Mira silently stepped around me and stopped beside my two bags at the end of the bed. Grabbing the strap of one, she looped it over her shoulder and smiled at me. “Let’s get out of here. The warlock says we’ve got work to do.”

With a sigh, I grabbed the second bag and my jacket before following Mira out of the hotel room with James close behind us. For nearly two thousand years, I had hunted vampires, werewolves, and other dark creatures that threatened the safety of the lies humans told themselves. Up until a couple years ago, I knew without a doubt that all nightwalkers were evil killing machines. Before meeting Mira, I knew that all nightwalkers were agents of the devil. And now, for the second time in several months, I was walking beside Mira, protecting her because I knew that she was the only one who could protect us all.