Dayhunter (34 page)

Danaus stepped close. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel the warm brush of his powers against my bare arms. It was like a soothing embrace. “And what exactly do you want me to accomplish?” I bit out when I finally got control of my emotions again.

“Allow the naturi to complete the sacrifice,” Macaire replied. “The seal must be broken if they are going to be able to open the door.”

“Then why send me?” I demanded, taking a step closer to him. His unique brand of logic was starting to drive me crazy. “Why send anyone? If we take on the naturi again, there’s a good chance we’re going to end up dead.”

A grim smile graced his lips, and he stepped closer, in no way intimidated by me or my reputation. “Because I need you to kill Rowe. He’s their leader. He has the best chance of stopping us when we attack Aurora. He also has the best chance of keeping the naturi organized. The remaining naturi will most likely scatter and die off without a strong leader like Aurora or Rowe.”

“Do your new business partners know about this part of the plan?” I inquired sweetly.

“No, but they have been made aware that it is very likely many will be killed during this campaign.”

I nodded and took a step backward, my shoulder bumping into Danaus’s chest. Very neatly done. I had trouble believing the Coven would agree to anything that would allow the naturi to walk away and live in peace. The hope was that if we wiped out those who comprised their monarchy, it would eventually result in the complete destruction of their race.

“Will Jabari and Sadira be joining us in Crete?”

“No.”

“Are any others being sent?”

“A few others have been summoned and sent on ahead. They will be arriving tonight. They have been instructed to stay away from the site of the sacrifice and remain hidden until you have contacted them with the plan of attack. Remember, you can’t act until after they complete the sacrifice,” he instructed.

I frowned, staring off into the darkness. I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Not that I had that much choice in the matter. I was just the weapon. While I agreed that we would all be better off with Aurora dead, it was a great risk to allow the door to open. The only other wild card in this disaster waiting to happen was Danaus, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom what his thoughts would be on the situation.

“You have to bring that hunter to heel, Mira,” Macaire said, not caring that Danaus was standing right behind me. He had obviously been listening in again. I wanted to laugh. Danaus wasn’t controlled by anyone, least of all me.

“I’ll do what I can. Danaus does as he pleases,” I warned.

“We can’t afford mistakes.”

“I know,” I whispered, but when I looked up at him, I discovered that he was gone. Bastard. I hated it when the Ancients did things like that.

As I started to shuffle out of the plaza, I paused and looked back at the stage where the five chairs loomed over the large stone square. Jabari kept the balance on the Coven, protected the calm. If I killed him, there would be no stopping Macaire, except possibly Elizabeth. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about her. In my experience, she had always been like Tabor, a silent partner who enjoyed a little entertainment from time to time but kept to the shadows for the most part. Did she actually believe this scheme would work, or was she worried that she would be crushed like Tabor?

I wished I could talk to her for a few minutes; find out if she stood with Our Liege or Macaire. But after I played doctor with Gwen, I didn’t foresee that conversation being particularly productive. I also feared she wouldn’t be willing to speak for fear of being heard by Macaire. After seeing Jabari’s willingness to shake up the agreement with the naturi last night, I knew he wasn’t too keen on this plan either. That would also explain why Jabari remained in constant hiding. It meant neither Macaire nor the naturi could find him.

Sighing softly, I folded my arms over my chest. What was I left with? Let Jabari kill me when I finally grew useless so the balance on the Coven would remain. Not exactly my first choice. If I killed Jabari, would I have to take a seat, and spend the rest my existence butting heads with Macaire until he finally had me killed? Should I try to warn Our Liege? Other than the fact that he was trying to destroy us all now, he was an improvement over Macaire. Of course, the whole story could be a lie.

To add to it all, I had never met Our Liege. I didn’t know where he was or how to contact him if I wanted to warn him. Not to mention that there was no telling if he would actually believe such a ridiculous tale. As it had been pointed out on more than one occasion, I wasn’t the most popular creature among my kind.

But all of that was secondary to the greater, more immediate problem: What was I going to do when I got to Crete? The command to kill Rowe wasn’t a particular problem. I couldn’t see any benefit to leaving him alive, since he either wanted to use me or kill me. Yet, allowing them to complete the sacrifice would allow them to open the door at a later date. If there were any mistakes when the door was opened, all of the naturi could come rushing back into the world along with Aurora. A very bad thing.

On the other hand, if the door never opened and Aurora was never killed, then the naturi would never fulfill their promise to assassinate Our Liege. While I might not want him dead, I definitely didn’t want him to send us into a war with all the other races just to stop the Great Awakening from happening ahead of schedule. Another very bad thing.

It seemed I only had two choices: war with the naturi or war with creatures I had once called friends.

Shuffling back toward the hotel with a silent Danaus, my mind a jumble of thoughts, I realized that I missed my original plan. It had been a good, solid plan.

1.      Kill Nerian.

2.      Find Jabari or some other Elder.

3.      Tell Elder of the naturi plan.

4.      Return home.

Oh, and kill Danaus.

But even that had gotten fouled up along the way. To hell with plans. In less than twenty-four hours I was going to be standing in the remains of a place I had once called home, surrounded by the naturi. I doubted another one of my brilliant plans was going to see me through. May the fates forgive me, what I needed was to talk to Jabari

TWENTY

M
y skin crawled. I stepped onto the tarmac of the runway at the Nikos Kazantzakis Airport in Heraklion and my stomach lurched and churned within me. Clenching my teeth, I paused at the foot of the stairs leading down from my jet and wrapped my arms around my middle as if I could protect myself from the memories that seemed to rise up from the dead in the back of my brain.

I might never have lived in this town—my family had lived in a small house to the south of Chania, a port town west of Heraklion—but I was home. After standing on the runway for less than a minute, the familiar smells were already teasing at my mind. The wind swept up from the south, running over the island before finally reaching me. The warm breeze had skimmed through the valley and over the mountain ranges that bisected the island, carrying with it the rich scents of Jerusalem sage, Cretan bee orchid, and dark Cretan ebony from where it clung to the cliffs down at Siteia. Mixed in was the heady scent of olives and lamb roasting on a spit.
Oh God, I was home.

Since leaving Crete as a young woman, I’d never looked back, never set foot on her sandy shore. My mother died when I was twelve and my departure to the mainland left my father alone in Chania. Laying under the stars in Greece, I cursed myself more than once for leaving my father, wishing I’d had the strength and courage to convince him to come with me. I should have demanded that he leave Crete behind and join me on the mainland. There had been nothing left for either of us on this island. But he returned. He went back to the same house I’d been born in, the house he’d been born in, because it was the only place he could ever call home.

“Mira?”

“I’m fine,” I snapped at Danaus before I even thought about what I was saying. Straightening my spine, I resettled my bag on my left shoulder and took a few steps away from the jet so he could finish descending the stairs. “Do we have company?”

“There’s a vampire headed this way, but other than that, I don’t sense anyone else in the area,” Danaus replied, coming to stand beside me. His bag of clothes and weapons was slung over his right shoulder. None of his usual weapons were visible, but I knew he had something lethal within quick reach.

During the short flight, we’d discussed possible scenarios that could occur at the airport when we landed. The naturi would expect us to show up at the Palace of Knossos, after I had stopped them at Stonehenge just a few nights ago. We would continue to thwart their every move until they finally gave up or we were all dead. I wasn’t in the mood to contemplate which would happen first.

The night air was surprisingly quiet. I had expected them to attack us as soon as we stepped off the plane. The flight would leave us stiff and somewhat disoriented as we struggled to acquaint ourselves with our new surrounding. It was one of their best opportunities. Of course, the prime time to attack was going to be sunrise, and I still needed to come up with a good plan for that eventuality. A part of me wished I could climb back on the plane and fly to Greece, where I could spend my daylight hours in peace. I didn’t want to sleep here. Were there stories of me in Crete? Old folklore of a demon child born with hair the color of Hell’s fires? Were the children taught to fear me like other nightmarish creatures? Damn, I wanted to be gone from this island and her memories!

Forcing myself to concentrate, I scanned the area and picked up two nightwalkers, but only one was approaching us. This was not what I had expected. There were only two in the entire region. The palace was not far from the city. The whole area should have been teeming with nightwalkers. Two vampires was all the Coven had thought to send?
Bastards
. Every last one of them.

The nightwalker slowly sauntered across the tarmac from the nearby hangar, her heels clacking loudly on the hard surface. A wealth of black hair spilled over her left shoulder and down her back while a secretive smile played across her mouth. As she approached, her eyes never left Danaus. I couldn’t decide what had caught her attention: his dark attractive looks or any of the rumors that had leaked from Venice.

“Who sent you?” I demanded before she could draw enough of a breath to speak. I was already on edge about being in Crete, and we still needed to come up with a plan to defeat the naturi. We were running out of time. Our flight out of Venice had been delayed, and it was now nearly 4:00 A.M. Dawn was drawing close.

“The Coven,” she said, her lips twisting in a frown as she looked me over. My clothes were rumpled and wrinkled, appearing as if I had wadded them up in a tight ball before bothering to put them on. I looked like a lost vagabond next to her neat cream-colored slacks and pale blue blouse.

“My name is Penelope. Macaire requested that I meet you and aid you against the naturi.”

“Where are the others?” I barely resisted the urge to run my hands over my dress in a senseless attempt to smooth out some of the wrinkles.

“Hugo waits at a distance, watching to make sure we are safe,” she replied.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

I had a few choice words to say about Macaire and the rest of the Coven. This was ridiculous. There was no way Danaus, a pair of nightwalkers, and I could defeat all of the naturi lurking on this island. With odds like these, the naturi were going to have little trouble breaking the seal, and I was going to get staked in the process. However, before I could vent my growing irritation, Danaus spoke up.

“We need to get moving.” His deep voice pushed aside my anger. He was right. We were easy targets standing out in the middle of the landing strip.

Without any further discussion, Penelope led the way out of the airport and to a taxi she had waiting. At one time or another all three of us looked over our respective shoulders. It hung unspoken in the air. The naturi were out there and they were watching us. I wasn’t sure why they hadn’t attacked yet, and a part of me didn’t want to know the answer.

Penelope took us to a small square house she was renting. The exterior was painted white and the roof was flat. It looked like there might be some kind of awning covering part of the roof, offering tenants a place to rest at the end of the day and look out over the city. Even after all the centuries, Venetian influence was still visible in most of the buildings. For a time, Crete had been controlled by the Venetians, who left behind their form of art and architecture as a pervading influence. The cities such as Heraklion and Chania still glowed with the beauty of that dying city.

The interior of the house was the typical Cretan structure, with windows along only the front wall, while the other walls were covered in colorfully woven cloths and painted plates. A rounded archway led from the main living room into the kitchen and dining room, while the bedrooms were at the back of the house, off the kitchen. A window air-conditioning unit filled one of the few windows, growling softly as it put out a steady stream of cold air. The evening air had cooled to the low seventies, but the house retained most of the balmy afternoon heat.

It was a considerably larger house than the one I’d grown up in, and obviously more modern, but there were too many similarities in the design and the use of color. My hands trembled and a knot seemed to be permanently lodged in my throat.

Dropping my bag of clothes on the floor, I once again tried to push the little reminders that I was in Crete out of my mind and focus on why I had come to the island now. “How long have you been here?” I asked, trying to sound polite despite my raw nerves and growing frustration.

“I arrived on the island a few hours after sunset,” Penelope replied. She was watching me warily from the opposite side of the room. She stood underneath the tall archway, her arms folded over her chest. “I have been living in Athens for almost a century and I come to Crete during the summer season for the tourists.”