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  Eternal Day

  Aeternae Noctis #3

  Jade Kerrion

  Copyright © 2017 by Jade Kerrion

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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  Eternal Day/ Jade Kerrion—1st ed.

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  Cover Design by Covers by Combs

  Contents

  Eternal Day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Urban Fantasy and Science Fiction entwine in the world of the DOUBLE HELIX

  Other Science Fiction and Fantasy novels by Jade Kerrion

  The Aroused Collection

  The Ensnared Collection

  The Inflamed Collection

  The Maligned Collection

  About the Author

  Other Books By Jade Kerrion

  Eternal Day

  Aeternae Noctis #3

  The only chance at survival demands an impossible reconciliation…

  Erich Dale was once a poet, an artist, and in love with the night. Now, he’s an elder vampire cursed into insanity by the icrathari warlord, Tera. Trapped in the fragments of his shattered mind is the key to healing a scorched and devastated Earth.

  Only Tera can unlock his secrets, but she is a destroyer, not a nurturer. Erich, consumed by hatred and a desire for vengeance, will not be soothed. Together, they can end the thousand-year reign of eternal night, but unless there is forgiveness, there can be no reconciliation. Without reconciliation, hope perishes.

  She created her worst enemy, and now, his hate will damn all humanity, forever…

  Chapter 1

  Two hundred and fifty years earlier...

  Darkness sliced, swift and precise, across the amber curve of the full moon.

  The flame in his lamp flickered. Shadows danced over the rough-hewn stones of his low seat beside the fountain in the city square. Erich Dale lifted his quill from the parchment balanced on his lap and raised his gaze to the sky. An easy smile creased his face as he visually traced the spread of the bat-shaped wings across the back of the slender, humanoid form soaring over the city.

  His breath caught; his throat closed around the gasp of awe. Too lovely.

  The icrathari’s beauty—perfect and pure—evoked matching emotions. His chest ached as tears pricked at his eyes.

  A pity he was the only human to witness the icrathari’s flight. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the city of Aeternae Noctis. Its cobblestone streets were empty; its homes and shops darkened, a defense against the pale-skinned vampires who roamed the city each night of the full moon.

  His people’s defense was psychological, not physical. Vampires did not need light by which to see. Erich had watched them for years—long enough to understand their strengths, of which there were many, and their limitations, of which there were few. Vampires who inhabited a city of eternal night had nothing to fear from the sun.

  They were, however, curious about how openly he observed them from his favorite seat by the bubbling fountain. Several months earlier, one of the vampires had stopped to ask him, in the politest manner possible, why he was not cowering in the shadows, hiding like the other humans.

  Erich had laughed and shrugged. “I’m a poet, not a warrior. The people of Aeternae Noctis tell me I’m of no earthly use to man or beast. I don’t think the vampires will take any interest in me either.”

  The vampire’s chuckle was low and amused. “I suppose not.”

  He was right. The vampires paid him no attention other than to nod in acknowledgment when they walked past him.

  On his part, he made no move to defend the struggling humans the vampires dragged from their homes. He did not attempt to save the weeping five-year-old children seized from their mothers’ arms and carried into the vampires’ stronghold, Malum Turris, the black tower that cast its cursed shadow over Aeternae Noctis.

  Like a man transfixed, he waited only for glimpses of the icrathari, the vampires’ overlords.

  There were, he knew, more than one, but the one who entranced him wore her hair in a braid. From the moment he laid eyes on her several months earlier, he could think of little else. Her predatory grace proclaimed her a monster, but the indefinable expression in her eyes declared otherwise.

  Erich shook his head, his smile wry. As a poet, words should not have eluded him, but they did. He knew only that her eyes were not the eyes of a demon. He looked up, searching the sky for her.

  The gust of chill wind heralded the silent beat of massive wings. Shadows flickered through the air and unfurled to reveal an ethereal creature. Scarcely five feet tall, it was so slender it seemed almost delicate. Its skin was pale, and its silver hair woven into a long braid it wore down its back. Large gray eyes slanted upward in a finely featured face that mirrored the murals of angels in the cathedral. Bat-like wings stretched ten feet from wing tip to wing tip, and the horn-shaped bones that emerged from each juncture between the flaps of the black leathery wings were encased in studded metal. Dressed in a leather bustier, pants, and matching boots, the icrathari strode past silent vampires to stand in front of him.

  “Beautiful.”

  He had not realized he had spoken aloud until the icrathari’s lips curved in a smile.

  “Who are you?” His voice sounded thin even to his own ears. Did courage or stupidity inspire his question? There wasn’t much difference between either in the presence of an icrathari who commanded hundreds of vampires with a wave of her hand.

  Her eyes narrowed, but she answered. “Tera.” The husky and rich timbre of her voice did not match her seemingly fragile appearance. She glanced at the parchment on his lap. “And you’re an artist, Erich Dale.”

  He tilted the piece of paper to catch shards of light from the pale glow of the moon. Black ink captured in stark relief the curve of the impenetrable glass dome that separated the city of Aeternae Noctis from the outside world and trapped it in eternal night. Within the dome, an icrathari spread its wings in flight. The painstaking detail of the icrathari contrasted with the crude sketch of the dome. Erich held the parchment up to Tera. “I’m a poet, an artist. Beautiful things inspire me.”

  She accepted his gift. “You do not fear the night, and you do not fear me.”

  He rose. At six feet, he towered over her, but he did not doubt for a moment her superior strength. Several months earlier, he had seen her flip her wrist, sending an attacking human flying through the air. The man crashed into the wall of the smithy. He stumbled to his feet and shook off his disorientation. With a snarl, spittle forming on his lips, he seized the blacksmith’s heavy hammer and charged at Tera.

  Her calm expression did not change. She reached out and caught him around the neck. Her fingers tightened.

  Bone snapped. The hammer toppled from the man’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Tera’s grip loosened, and the man collapsed in a crumpled heap. She turned away, but not before Erich caught a
glimpse of the regret that flashed through her eyes.

  She’s not a demon.

  A panicked cry of a child recalled him to the present.

  Erich turned his head at the desperate wails that shattered the silence of the night. Five-year-old children screamed and flailed in the unyielding arms of the vampires who carried them across the drawbridge into the tower.

  He closed his eyes and wrapped his mind around the certainty he knew in his heart. The icrathari are not demons even though they take our children from us. Even though they have imprisoned us in eternal night.

  The people of Aeternae Noctis perceived the icrathari and vampires as more than captors; the inhuman tormentors were the Night Terrors—demons who possessed the power to block out the light of the sun.

  In the fields surrounding the city, crops thrived beneath artificial light emanating in twelve-hour intervals from the tall columns interspersed in the fields, but humans were less resigned to darkness even though no one could remember any differently after centuries and generations of imprisonment. Sunlight was a story whispered to children at bedtime, a tale repeated by drunks in taverns, but it was also fact. Sunlight was the hope, the certainty that kept his people strong through the despair that should have otherwise consumed them.

  Beyond the dome, everyone knew that sunlight blessed the Promised Land, cradling it within its benevolent warmth.

  The chill of the eternal night cut through his thin cotton shirt, and he shivered. Erich understood the hate and fear that swamped his people, but standing face-to-face with Tera, he could not find those emotions in himself. Sunlight be damned. He would endure an eternity of darkness for the privilege of looking upon her. What was that look in her eyes? Deeper than loneliness. More profound than sadness. Why couldn’t he find the right words?

  “I’m not much of a poet,” he confessed.

  She turned to survey the silent city. “What in Aeternae Noctis could possibly inspire you?”

  His jaw dropped. Couldn’t she see that inspiration lay all around? Erich lifted his face to the sky—the pale perfect circle of the moon; an endless parade of stars, each one a distinct sparkle in the dark of the night. Aeternae Noctis glowed beneath the moon’s eternal orbit; the polished stone walls of its buildings and cobblestone streets glistened like living silver. The stained glass in the cathedral shone with ghostly light, as if the radiance emanated from within.

  “I find inspiration in the unaffected beauty of the night,” he whispered. “In the peace and silence.”

  “Which is why you come out here, every night of the full moon.”

  He nodded. “The night is most beautiful then. The city is silent.”

  “But not at peace.”

  “No.” How many adults and children had the vampires taken this night? How many families wept, brokenhearted, in their homes, their choking cries stifled against further discovery or retribution from the vampires? His shoulders rose and fell on a quiet sigh. “Necessity compels you, but you’re not at peace either.”

  Her eyes flashed wide and then narrowed into slits.

  “Isn’t it true?” he asked.

  “No one has ever dared say so.”

  “I know more about the Night Terrors than my people do. I see more. The vampires ignore me. Instead, they seize the most talented humans—our most skilled warriors and hunters, our scientists and engineers. The useless ones—our poets and artists—are left unscathed. You take with purpose, which implies a necessity at work. I see it, even if I don’t understand it.”

  Tera tilted her head, the gesture challenging. “And the children?”

  “I don’t understand why you take some five-year-old children and leave others behind, but there is a purpose too, isn’t there?”

  Her wings ruffled. She nodded, her jaw tense.

  He shrugged. “You don’t owe me an explanation, although others would say that the truth is ultimately inevitable.”

  “You don’t care to know much.”

  “I care to know only what matters to me. My poetry, my art. Beauty.” You. “The truth will come in its own time. Everything else is irrelevant.”

  She frowned. “Even though you’re trapped in the city with others of your kind.”

  He turned and followed her gaze beyond the curve of the dome. Outside the glass dome, moonlight washed over waterfalls cascading from cloud-enshrouded mountain crags. The few trees that claimed the mountain’s highest ledges expanded into the abundance of pine forests before thinning as forests gave way to lush fields scattered with wildflowers. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the crash of water and smell the fragrance of pine and cedar. His fingers twitched, instinctively reaching for the rough bark of the trees and the velvet softness of wildflower petals.

  His eyes flashed open. Reality smashed his vision into pieces, but enough fragments remained to keep the smile on his lips. “It’s beautiful out there.”

  A flicker of guilt danced across Tera’s face. Her gaze darted to the pale glow that encircled the uppermost level of Malum Turris like a bracelet.

  Erich’s eyes narrowed. Why?

  He returned his attention to her. He opened his mouth to ask the question, but his voice trailed into silence. Once again, his breath caught at the flawless perfection of her features. Tears stung his eyes. Compared to her, the most stunning human was scarcely more than a gargoyle. He quashed his curiosity. He did not need answers. The magnificent beauty of nature lay beyond the dome, but the greater beauty stood in front of him. “It’s far more beautiful in here.”

  She turned back to him. After several moments of silent study, she said, “You are content.”

  “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “No human has learned to be content, not in the seven hundred and fifty years of Aeternae Noctis’s existence.”

  He laughed. “There’s always a first.”

  Her expression remained skeptical.

  He waved his hand to encompass his surroundings. “I have everything I need here. Quill, parchment, the quiet of the night, and inspiration.”

  “You love the night.”

  Erich nodded. “Yes, I do.” Acknowledgment of that simple fact flooded him with peace.

  She smiled, radiant beneath the moonlight. “Be blessed by the night.” Her wings spread, beat down, and lifted her into the sky. For a moment, she hovered above him before turning away, darting like an arrow toward Malum Turris.

  After that first midnight encounter, Erich saw Tera often—at least once each night of the full moon. She did not offer reasons for her presence in the city. Surely it could not be to watch over the vampires’ activities; his people feared the vampires too much to put up a fight. She seemed approachable, even friendly, but her reputation warned him to keep his distance. Vampires gave her a wide berth, though Erich sensed their distance was inspired by respect rather than fear. Regardless, she lingered for an hour or two by the fountain in the city square, reading his poems, or far more often, watching him draw.

  Even she, he realized with a self-mocking irony, had no appetite for his poetry. Apparently, no one—human, vampire, or icrathari—did. He was obviously as fine a poet as he was a skilled warrior. Yet who needed poetry when his muse was present? When she was with him, words failed him; he could not write. Instead, his quill danced across parchment in an attempt to immortalize her. He ached to touch the silver strands that escaped her braid to frame her face. Was her skin as soft as he imagined in his sleep each night? What would her voice—the now-familiar breath of silk over steel—sound like when roughened by desire?

  Erich could not get her out of his mind and lived only for each night of the full moon, when he could see her again.

  He had only hours to wait, he realized when he glanced up at the sky late one night—or whatever passed as night in a city of eternal darkness. With a smile, he looked down at the parchment in his hand. He had never fancied himself an artist, but perhaps, he had lacked only the right inspiration. A detailed image of her face with its
solemn eyes and unsmiling mouth stared back at him. It was beautiful because it was too flawless to be otherwise, but her expression made it enchanting. It married hope with despair, a poignant reminder that the heights of one could not exist without the depths of the other.

  It still fell short of the indescribable expression she habitually wore, but it was close. He would, he knew, spend the rest of his life attempting to capture it.

  A flurry of motion skimmed across his peripheral vision. Strong hands seized him and dragged him to his feet.

  His parchment fluttered to the ground.

  “What is this?” a deep male voice taunted. Gerald, the blacksmith, picked up the piece of paper. “It’s the icrathari.” He tossed the parchment aside and spit on it.

  Erich twisted but could not break free from the unyielding grip of the two men who held him. “Give it back to me.”

  “You’re surprisingly coherent, for a blood slave.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Blood slave?” He shook his head, his denial frantic. “I’m not a blood slave.”

  “The demon didn’t force its blood down your throat and turn you into an unthinking, worshipful zombie? Of course it did. Why else would you consort with it?”

  “Tera’s not a demon.”

  “Tera?” a female voice cut in. A young woman in her mid-twenties, scarcely older than Erich, pushed past the men who surrounded him. A cascade of flame-colored curls framed her face. Her green eyes were narrow slits. “And so it has a name. Does it know yours? Will it come when we make you scream its name?”