Eternal Day Read online

  “Yuri,” Erich pleaded with his cousin. “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what? Don’t fight back? It’s better than cowering. Better than living with guilt. I couldn’t protect them.” Her voice cracked with pain. “They took Jana and Jack last month. They took my babies.”

  “Oh, Yuri…” His heart broke for her and for her bright-faced twins who had just turned five.

  “The vampires and the icrathari…they’ll pay. I’ll make them.” Her lips twisted into a grimace. “And you’ll help me.”

  Against Tera?

  His affection for his cousin, for family, warred against his instinctive need to protect his muse. Tera was not human, but neither was she a demon. She was not the monster they believed her to be. Turmoil churned through him. He shook his head. “No.”

  A sneer crossed Yuri’s face. Her chin tilted up, and she glanced at Gerald. “You handle Erich. I’ll make sure the others are ready.”

  Erich caught a glimpse of several men holding a net, its corners weighed down with stones.

  An image of Tera, coiled helplessly beneath a net, flashed through his mind. Fear surged adrenaline through him. “Yuri, no!” He lunged forward, breaking free, but Gerald’s companions pulled him back and tightened their grip on his arms.

  The blacksmith leered at him. “Yuri wasn’t too specific on what not to do to you. By the time we’re done, you’ll be singing anything we tell you to.”

  He gritted his teeth. Like hell he would.

  Gerald drew back his heavy hand and backhanded Erich. Bone snapped from the impact. Pain exploded across his face. He gasped. Tears swam into his eyes, blurring his vision against his tormentors.

  If only it were that easy to escape the agony that followed. He did not cry out when Gerald drove ham-sized fists into his face and stomach, or when the repeated blows bludgeoned him face-first to the ground. The blacksmith’s voice boomed through his aching head. “You’re not so pretty anymore. Go on, Erich. Scream for the demon. Maybe it will come to save you.”

  No, don’t come. He bit down on his lip until it was bloody.

  Gerald scoffed. “Stretch his arms out. Both of them.”

  Dazed with pain, Erich stared at the ground as Gerald’s massive shadow loomed over him. A gray mouse scurried across the pavement, darting from light into darkness. Shadows shifted into the distinct shape of a large hammer. Gerald swung the hammer over his head. “Your last chance, Erich. Call for her or you’ll never write—never hold anything—ever again.”

  Erich closed his eyes. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth to stain the streets. The cobblestones felt smooth and cold beneath his fingertips. His voice trembled, but he spoke without hesitation. “Go to hell.”

  The hammer swung down. Iron smashed against stone, crushing fragile bones between them.

  Anguish—raw and brutal—shredded him. Erich screamed then, only once. He was scarcely conscious when Gerald brought the hammer down on his other hand. His eyes fluttered open. As if in a dream, he stared at the bloodied, mangled pulp where his hands had been. Oh, God. No…

  His gaze traveled beyond his ruined hands to lock on the parchment carelessly tossed to the ground. Tiny splatters of his blood marked the edges of the parchment, but his precious drawing of Tera’s face stared solemnly back at him. Despair and hope. In that moment, he knew only despair. Don’t come. It’s a trap. Don’t save me.

  An inhuman war cry—part siren, part harpy—pierced the night. The people cowered, reflexively huddling into fetal balls. Four silver-haired icrathari, pale against the dark walls of Malum Turris, streaked down into the city square. Their black wings stirred the air into a vicious vortex. Claws and fangs ripped through the humans. Blood sprayed. The water in the fountain turned crimson.

  His people, bleeding and dying, faded into his peripheral vision. Their screams became white noise. Erich crawled forward, dragging his injured body an excruciating inch at a time across the cobblestones. He had to protect Tera’s portrait. It was all he had left, the last work he would ever produce.

  He placed a shattered hand on the edges of the parchment and held it in place against the panic and terror flooding the city square. Heavy, booted feet trampled over his body in desperate haste to escape the fury of the vampires and icrathari. Frequently, a dying gasp heralded the low thud of another body falling lifelessly to the bloodstained streets.

  Erich closed out a world pulsing with pain and withdrew to a place in his mind where he could share the night—quiet and peaceful—with Tera. They exchanged no words, but none was needed. They were united by a love for beauty in its myriad shapes and forms—both human and icrathari. It was the only world he understood, the only world he craved.

  He lingered in that dreamlike state when delicate yet strong hands turned him around and gathered him up. The touch was gentle but he fought it, reaching down for the portrait on the ground. Another pale hand picked up the parchment, folded it, and tucked it into his shirt. With a quiet sigh, he pressed his crushed hands against his shirt, against Tera’s portrait, and closed his eyes.

  “Erich,” Tera’s voice recalled him. “Focus on my voice.”

  She was moving, each rapid step jolting shards of pain through his broken body.

  He did not want to move. He just wanted to stay with her until the end. It would not be much longer.

  A chill, colder than anything he had experienced, shivered through his body. The steady rhythm of Tera’s booted feet tapped against steel, not stone. He forced his eyes open and stared without comprehension at the black walls closing in around him. Straight lines of corridors flowed into perfect curves of corners before straightening once more. Seamless construction. Smooth, flawless surfaces.

  Was he in Malum Turris? It was like no place he had ever seen. Its use of steel, its impossibly perfect construction, and sterile, otherworldly appearance placed the tower beyond human skill and knowledge, beyond their time, perhaps even beyond their world.

  Tera stepped over a threshold. Steel whispered against steel. In front of her, the floor yawned apart. Hot air rushed through the opening and thickened into steam as it collided with the cold air within the tower.

  Nonchalant, she stepped into the void. Moments later, he was falling, though still cradled in Tera’s arms. Her wings flared out, controlling the speed of their descent. Uncomfortable warmth enveloped him. Even the air smelled different. It grated in his lungs, as if infused with a million tiny particles.

  His lips trembled as he tried to shape words, but injury and exhaustion stole his voice. Where are you taking me?

  The searing breath of heated air became near unbearable, and he closed his eyes.

  Hell. You’re taking me to hell.

  But the heat passed. When he opened his eyes, he lay on parched soil. Tera leaned over him, her lovely face cast into shadow by the massive domed structure that hovered several hundred feet above the ground, carried aloft by powerful gusts of air. Within the curve of the dome, he could see the cathedral, the city hall, and the buildings of Aeternae Noctis. Beneath the apex of the dome, seemingly anchoring the dome to its platform was Malum Turris.

  His mind reeled. It was impossible! Aeternae Noctis was built on the ground. How often had he pressed against the curve of the dome and stared at the unchanging splendor of the world outside the dome. The eternal mountains, the endless cascade of the waterfall over pine forests and lush fields?

  Erich closed his eyes slowly, deliberately, and willed his senses to return. He willed the nightmare away.

  When he opened his eyes, the domed city of eternal night was farther still, racing away from the distant glow on the horizon.

  But how? And why?

  He recalled Tera’s guilty glance at the ring of light emerging from the uppermost floors of the black tower. The unchanging perfect world outside the dome was an illusion cast and sustained by Malum Turris.

  It did not answer the question why.

  He looked back at Tera. His lips shaped the word he
no longer had the strength to utter aloud. Why?

  “Trust me,” she murmured. She turned his face to the side, exposing the length of his neck. With a slither of bone against flesh, her pearlescent fingernails extended into curved talons, and she drew its sharp edge against his tender flesh, severing his jugular vein.

  Blood spilled out of him and vanished, sinking into the thirsty earth, leaving dark stains. A deep chill expanded from a place deep within him and crept out to his extremities. His vision shrank as darkness closed in. The sound of his slowing heartbeat thumped between his ears, the gap between each beat longer, each beat softer.

  He would die in her arms. No better place. Erich was too weak to smile, but he sank with gratitude into her embrace and closed his eyes.

  He was not prepared for the flood of thick liquid into his mouth—like honeyed wine, but richer and far more intoxicating. It flowed without resistance down his throat, driving the chill and the darkness away.

  His eyes flashed open as Tera pulled away. Blood, the color of gold, trickled from a cut in her wrist. As he watched, her pale skin closed flawlessly over the cut. Her eyes were far more troubled than he had ever seen her.

  Her lips shaped a soundless whisper. “Live. Live forever.”

  Bright lights flashed through his head, blinding him. The slightest sound seemed to echo in his skull and ring through his bones. Tera spoke of life, but the scent of the earth, pungent with death, rose to fill his nostrils.

  His senses reeled from the bewildering and dazzling overload, spinning his mind into panic.

  What is happening to me?

  She turned away.

  No, Tera. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me.

  His body sweated and trembled. Everything…too loud, too bright. Too much.

  Tera returned. Desperate, he reached for her, the anchor of his dissolving sanity. Her presence held the terror, the fear at bay. His mental voice sobbed with relief. You came back. I knew you would.

  Gently, she picked him up and deposited him into a shallow opening she had dug in the soil. It took him a moment to realize that it was a grave.

  For a moment, her hand lingered on his face before she pulled away. The wrenching ache in her eyes steeled into resolution.

  She stood and stepped back. Dirt flew into his face. It covered his body, burying him.

  A voice, animallike, devoid of sanity, maddened by terror, rent the night.

  His voice, he realized stunned. No, no, no! Don’t leave me! I need you!

  His unheard screams went on and on, roiling through his skull, even as the world around him fell silent.

  Minutes passed. Hours. Perhaps even days.

  Time had little meaning beneath the earth. When Erich finally found the strength to push the dirt aside and drag himself from his shallow grave, he rose to a world that was nothing like the world he had seen from within the safety of the dome. No lofty mountains graced by crashing waterfalls. No pine forests or fields blessed with an abundance of wildflowers.

  Instead, a barren wasteland welcomed him—a world without water. The parched earth cracked into jagged lines that widened into crevices.

  The truth of the world beyond the domed sanctuary of Aeternae Noctis—a city of limited resources, where children were regularly culled for the sake of the community’s survival—was like a stake through his heart. Above him, stars glittered in a cloudless sky growing light with impending dawn.

  He stared at the brightening glow on the horizon. Fear pitched in his stomach. He was a creature of the night—he had been even as a human—but he had never feared the light before.

  Now he did, his terror instinctive, primal.

  Transfixed, he watched as the band of sunlight consumed all in its path, wringing pitiful drops of moisture from the soil and setting aflame anything that could still burn.

  His only salvation lay in the domed city of Aeternae Noctis, which raced through eternal night, but it was nowhere in sight.

  Day crept closer, ushering death in its wake.

  Erich drew in a shuddering breath. Despair crushed hope. The sunlight for which his people had yearned was the source of death. The paradise beyond the dome of which his people had dreamed was hell.

  His muse had cursed him and abandoned him to eternal life in hell.

  His bloodcurdling scream rose to the heavens, but could not drown out the sound of his breaking heart. Erich Dale, once human, now a vampire, turned and ran from the light of day. There was nothing left to do, nothing more he could do, except mourn the eternal night Tera had stolen from him.

  Chapter 2

  Present day…

  Distorted voices rumbled toward Tera, bouncing off the cave’s curved granite walls, roiling like waves.

  “This way,” Yuri sounded waspish.

  “No, thataway,” was Talon’s insouciant reply.

  Irritation ruffled Tera’s wings. Yuri, the vampire, and Talon, the elder vampire, made it a point never to agree on anything. Unfortunately for Tera, she had chosen both of them to accompany her into the daeva caverns, a decision she had since come to fully regret. Her black leather wings rippled, unfurling to their ten-foot span. The steel-encased bone tips tapped against the cave walls. A muscle twitched in her cheek; the gift of immortality did not include immunity to a migraine.

  Yuri and Talon were still squabbling like peevish children when Tera stalked past them. She shook her long braid back over her shoulder and drew a deep breath. The moist air, pungent with rot, concealed subtler scents that might have provided clues as to the location of the daevas.

  Or of an immortali.

  The icrathari queen Ashra’s orders had been clear. End the millennium-long war with the daevas by finding someone empowered to negotiate a truce.

  Tera still wasn’t certain how that someone turned out to be the immortali Erich Dale.

  Until a few weeks earlier, she had not even realized he had survived his transformation. Their reunion had bared both fangs and claws. Erich harbored a grudge two hundred and fifty years old, and he was insane. She had barely won—even with strength, speed, and flight on her side.

  The potent combination of insanity and hatred was, after all, the great equalizer.

  Ashra wanted exhaustive peace negotiations.

  Frankly, Tera would have settled for “hello.”

  “Well?” Talon asked.

  Only then did Tera realize that Yuri and Talon were staring at her, waiting for her decision. She frowned. Her preternatural senses did not favor one path over the other. “This one,” she said, picking Yuri’s choice, if only to tweak Talon’s nose out of joint.

  Yuri, once the leader of a human rebellion and now a vampire warlord, smirked at Talon. She, too, wore her red hair in a long braid. She flipped it over her shoulder, making certain it swiped against Talon’s face, before shouldering past him to stride into the dark tunnel.

  Talon’s attention lingered on Yuri’s shapely, leather-clad buttocks, his smile appreciative. The smile transformed into an unrepentant leer when he noticed Tera watching.

  Tera chuckled. Talon was the only one of the three elder vampires created before the apocalypse a thousand years earlier. His playful, irreverent streak distinguished him from both Jaden Hunter and Rafael Varens, both of whom—in Tera’s opinion—took life entirely too seriously.

  But then again, being born into eternal night and an endless struggle for survival could permanently darken a man’s perspective.

  Talon rolled his shoulders as he followed Yuri. “This escapade is turning out to be something of a fool’s errand.”

  “We’re on a mission, not an escapade,” Yuri corrected frostily. “Perhaps the problem is only in your head. We’re deep in enemy territory, and you’re treating it like wonderland.”

  “If we’re so deep in enemy territory, where are they?” Talon asked. “Five days and not so much as a single daeva to liven things up.”

  “We’ve seen their settlements.”

  “Abandoned settleme
nts. Rags. Crude utensils. Stone tools.” The elder vampire snorted. “Not quite the bastion of civilization.”

  Yuri arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t the daevas hold you captive for five hundred years?”

  To Talon’s credit, he did not even flinch. “The large boulder they rolled across the entrance of their pathetic cells didn’t define the prison. It’s the labyrinth of caves beyond. I don’t think of movement in three dimensions; probably because I don’t have wings, but in these caves, there are at least as many paths up and down as there are on either side.”

  “You always have a good excuse, don’t you?” Yuri mocked.

  He smirked at her. “It comes from being older, smarter, and wiser than you.”

  Yuri laughed. “One out of three isn’t bad.” She continued down the tunnel, her drawn sword held in a relaxed grip. The caves, which would have been pitch black to a human, separated into shades of gray for vampire eyes.

  “How much longer are we going to hang out in the caves?” Talon directed the question to no one in particular.

  “Until we get sleepy or run out of food,” Tera said crisply.

  He frowned. “But we don’t sleep or need food.”

  “We’ll be in here for a long time, then.”

  Talon huffed. “And they said you have no sense of humor.”

  Tera shrugged. She was a warlord and the protector of Aeternae Noctis. A sense of humor was not part of the job requirements.

  Developing an infatuation for a human was definitely out of the scope of my responsibilities.

  Transforming him without adequately preparing him—that blame is mine alone.

  “Do we know where we are?” Yuri asked.

  “Right here.” Talon grinned.

  “We’re headed north,” Tera interjected in an attempt to cut off the banter between Yuri and Talon.

  “How can you tell?” Talon asked.

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what? The magnetic poles?”