Dawnbreaker (2 page)

The wind naturi with the light brown hair paused a few feet from Amanda and raised one hand up into the air as if reaching to pull down a piece of the heavens. Amanda watched him, her hands trembling from exhaustion and possibly fear. She had no idea what she faced. I did and it wasn’t pretty. I had seen Rowe take the exact same stance just before a hailstorm of lightning bolts pelted the ground.

Digging my feet into the ground, I launched myself at her, tackling her to the ground just before a lightning bolt sizzled to the earth exactly where she had been standing only a moment earlier. Pain sliced through my abdomen, but I ignored it as I forced Amanda to roll several feet as we searched for safer ground. Once on my side, I directed a fireball at the offending wind naturi, bathing him in orange and yellow flames before he could call down another bolt.

With the naturi burned to a blackened crisp, I lay back on the ground and closed my eyes in relief. The naturi were dead and no one was seriously hurt.

Mira!
Tristan shouted telepathically at the same time more gunshots rang out.

Twisting to look up, sending a fresh stab of pain through my abdomen, I saw three more naturi running toward us. Somehow I had missed them in my count—or they had run from the woods when I crashed to the ground with Amanda, trying to take advantage of a vulnerable moment.

Amanda pushed to her knees, moving in front of me in an effort to protect me, but I grabbed her elbow and pulled her to the side. I couldn’t have her block my field of vision. Lifting one shaking, bloody hand, I tried to set them on fire, but I struggled. Each movement of my body sent a fresh sliver of pain screaming through my frame, shattering my concentration. The naturi were gaining ground, faster than Tristan or Knox could. With a snarl, I dug deep, reaching past the pain, searching for the fire that burned bright where my soul was supposed to reside.

The three naturi slid to a halt a few feet away from me. Their gurgling cries filled the nearly silent night air. Dropping their weapons heedlessly to the ground, they clawed at their skin, which had begun to undulate strangely.

It was then that I felt the familiar touch of warm power in the air. I knew before turning my head that Danaus was there. Finally distracted from the pain and the fear, I waved my hand at the three naturi that were being boiled from the inside out and set them on fire. They were instantly incinerated under our combined power.

“Oh, God! Mira!” gasped Amanda beside me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…it’s just…you tackled me…I didn’t—”

I looked down at where she was staring with a horrified look. The handle of a knife stuck out of my stomach. Blood was soaking into my shirt and beginning to fill the waistband of my jeans. That explained the sudden slice of pain when I’d crashed into Amanda. I impaled myself on the knife she had been holding.

“Figures,” I grumbled as I slowly pulled the blade out of my stomach with a low hiss of pain. I escaped being wounded by a naturi only to be hurt by one of my own. The embarrassment was worse than pain in my stomach as my body struggled to heal itself.

A whisper of running footsteps told me that Tristan and Knox were fast approaching to make sure that we were both safe. Refusing to allow them to see me wounded by Amanda’s blade, I pushed into a sitting position, wincing at the pain it caused.

“Are you all right?” Tristan demanded before coming to a complete stop.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m fine,” I quickly interrupted.

“You’re bleeding,” Knox countered.

“I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.” If he had seen some of the “scratches” I’d had in the past, he would have fainted dead away.

“But—” Amanda tried to continue, but a familiar rumble cut her off.

“She’s fine,” Danaus said with a smirk as he extended his hand to me to help me off the ground.

A matching wry smile touched my lips as I grabbed the hunter’s wrist with my left hand and hauled myself back to my feet. While painful, this was a little bit of nothing. “Go gather up the bodies and throw them on the car. We need to destroy the evidence before someone finds them,” I directed as I handed Amanda back her knife.

It took only a few minutes for us to gather up the bodies that I hadn’t completely incinerated. The cloaking spell we had all thrown over the fight, and the fact that it was three in the morning, helped hide the scuffle from the eyes of humans, but we still needed to get rid of the evidence that the naturi existed.

Once we were all settled in the car again, I set the Ford Mustang on fire. I must have managed to hit the fuel tank because the whole thing went up in this beautiful ball of fire. We lingered long enough to be sure the bodies were completely incinerated before driving back toward the city, with Danaus following us in the other car. No one had yet commented on his sudden appearance, though the questions hung in the air like a pink elephant suspended by fishing line.

Knox was the first to break the silence weighing on the occupants of the car, using his ubiquitous dry sense of humor. “While I enjoy a night out with you as much as the next nightwalker, I assumed you had something else in mind besides playing with the naturi.”

“Can we please not talk about them?” Amanda said in a shaky voice from the backseat. I was stunned by her soft, almost broken tone. Nothing had ever rattled her as far as I knew, but then, this had been her first run-in with the naturi, and she’d barely survived. She had also managed to stab the Keeper of the domain she inhabited. Amanda wasn’t having the best night.

“I didn’t call you together to talk about the naturi,” I said with a sigh. “I wanted to invite you both to be a part of my family.”

Only now I was beginning to question the wisdom of it.

Two

T
he study in my private home was a classic Old World library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three of the walls. Lighted curio cabinets were interspersed among the shelves, holding odds and ends. This was the first home I had maintained for more than a couple of years, and I had begun to allow myself to collect things since I no longer feared the need to pick up and run. Savannah was my home, and I was prepared to defend it.

Leaning against the front of the desk, I found Tristan watching me with hooded gaze as he lounged in a high-backed leather chair. He had grown more comfortable living within my domain during the past month, but then, we were still slowly trying to work out our own relationship of mistress and…child. I had stolen him from our maker, Sadira, in an attempt to protect his life. I’d made no plans for such a thing. I had never intended to create my own family, especially with one of the children that once belonged to my hated maker.

Yet, Tristan needed me. Sadira had created and kept him weak so he could never escape the way I had. When he had tried to escape, Sadira tricked me into returning him to her. I knew what it was like to be under her evil, twisted control and I understood his need to finally be free. While in London, I promised to help him find a way to do that, but never expected to become his mistress as part of the bargain.

Once I returned to Savannah from Crete, it had been on the tip of my tongue to set him free; to renounce my ties to him and let him live his own life as a nightwalker. But my conscience wouldn’t let me. He was still weak, making him easy prey for anything that set its sights on him. I wouldn’t let him get himself killed the first minute he was away from me. For a century Jabari trained me to protect myself, and taught me what it meant to be a nightwalker. I could at least pass along some of that knowledge to my newfound ward.

For now, Tristan seemed content to stay. But there were times when I would find him watching me, a sad look in his eyes. I wondered if he was staying for an entirely different reason. Was he looking for a way to protect me?

Danaus was also there, sitting in one of the high-backed chairs before the desk, his eyes never leaving me, like a lean jungle cat watching its intended prey. Both he and Tristan had fought the naturi beside me in London and again at the Themis Compound, and Danaus stood with me when the seal was broken in Crete. While I’d known both Amanda and Knox longer, I felt a strange closeness to the two newcomers to my domain.

Amanda and Knox wandered slowly around the room, their footsteps echoing in the silence as they stepped from the thick Persian rug to the dark hardwood floor. It was the first time either of them had been in my home outside the city limits. I kept a town house within the city, which was where I held some of my meetings and social gatherings, but the house outside the city was for my own private use. It was also where I spent the daylight hours. Gabriel, my bodyguard, was familiar with my home, and now Tristan, because it was his home as well.

“Mira,” Knox murmured, his gaze still taking in the room for a moment before settling on me. “I’m honored that you’ve brought us here.”

I smiled at him, appreciating his Old World charm and manners. He was more than a few centuries old and had been raised by an Old World nightwalker named Valerio, whom I admired and detested in nearly equal amounts.

“You can repay me by promising to never drive my car again,” I said with a smirk. He smiled in return, knowing I was not entirely serious. He had done what was necessary to keep us alive. And while I loved my car, it was still just an object.

“I’m guessing you’re serious about what you said in the car,” Amanda said, turning from a curio cabinet that held a series of daggers from the twelfth century. “About joining your family.”

I nodded once, my gaze shifting from Amanda to Knox.

“Then I acc—”

“No!” I said, holding up my hand and halting Knox before he could complete the thought. I pushed off the desk and stood with my hands out and open to both of them, wishing for a moment to be able to find the words to express both my fears and my gratitude adequately. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Knox, but I don’t want either of you to accept or deny this blindly, particularly in the name of loyalty.”

“Besides, this isn’t your typical family,” Tristan interjected, drawing my gaze to him. A wicked smile tweaked the corners of his mouth, but he was just needling me, trying to break the tension that had drawn the muscles in my shoulders taut.

A family among nightwalkers was usually an arrangement where an elder nightwalker agreed to protect a small flock of nightwalkers. Typically, the elder nightwalker had created the others, but not always. Living in a family was a source of protection, like living within a particular mob family. However, life within the family could be just as brutal if not fatal. And in most cases there was no leaving the family alive once you were accepted.

“My arrangement with Tristan is different than what I am offering you,” I started, leaning against the desk again in an attempt to resume my relaxed posture. “My arrangement with Tristan will always be different because of the circumstances. That is no one’s business but ours. The same goes for his future here in Savannah.”

“We have no problem with Tristan,” Amanda said with a shrug. “He’s welcome here.” I didn’t miss the tiny smile she shot him over her shoulder before looking innocently back up at me.

Something in my stomach twisted and I reflexively clenched my teeth. That would not do. A pairing of Amanda and Tristan wouldn’t be a good thing, would it? I mentally shook my head at myself and my silly thoughts. I was acting like a protective mother hen with Tristan. After what had happened with Sadira and the court of the Coven in Venice, I was wary of anything that could potentially harm my ward. He was still healing from his latest trauma, and I didn’t see Amanda as the best influence or the sanest choice for a love interest. But then, such a thing had to be Tristan’s choice, not mine.

“We’re getting off topic,” I sighed, briefly trying to remember what the topic was as I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. “The world is changing, as you’ve obviously seen tonight. The naturi are openly hunting us now. For the most part, they are searching for me, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take down any nightwalker they run across along the way. As a result, there is a good chance the order that we have established here may begin to fray.”

“Like following the attack at the Dark Room,” Knox said. He leaned up against one of the bookshelves, folding his arms over his broad chest. The blond-haired nightwalker had been there when a pair of naturi and several lycanthropes ripped through the exclusive nightclub in search of me. Ever since, tension had been running high between the shifters and the nightwalkers.

“And the Docks,” Danaus added solemnly. Several humans had been killed at the human nightclub that evening as the naturi attempted to track down Danaus and myself.

“Yes.”

“But things have gotten better,” Amanda countered.

“It’s not enough, and things are going to get a whole lot worse in the coming months,” I said. Crossing my arms under my breasts, I resisted the urge to pace the Persian rug. “What I am offering is the protection of my name, in a sense. In an unspoken way, you both have been my representatives within the city, but by joining my family, it makes it more official. If you are a part of my family, your actions are the same as what my actions would be. Your words are my words. But by that same token, if you do something in my name that I don’t approve of, I will rip out your heart. No hesitation. No quarter. No questions asked.”

I paused and looked at Amanda and Knox. Both seemed to shrink back from my gaze, but they said nothing. I didn’t expect either to ever cross such a line, but then, the words had to be said. The warning had to be allowed to hang ominously in the air, if only to give them reason to pause when in the middle of a somewhat questionable act.

“Besides that, being in my family changes nothing else. You will not be required to sleep within this house—”

“Not like that would be such a bad thing,” Amanda muttered. I tried to glare at her for the interruption but failed rather miserably. My home was a beautiful, antebellum three-story house, with rich dark woods and a grand winding staircase. It was magnificent, and it was a shame that I spent more than half my hours of the day locked within the basement.