Jocelynn Drake - Dayhunter

“We have to leave,” Danaus said irritably.

“I’m not traveling like this,” I shouted over the noise of the falling water. “Five minutes.”

Danaus grunted, leaving me to assume that he accepted my decision and was going to wait “patiently” in the other room. The hunter was a puzzle I was positively itching to work on, particularly with his informative, monosyllabic replies guiding me. Yet, for all his irritation and threats, I was becoming accustomed to his presence.

“Wait!” I called out when I heard him turn the door handle to leave. With my left hand, I grabbed a handful of the mauve shower curtain and pulled it back just enough to poke my head out. I cracked one eye as water ran down my face. Danaus stood half turned toward me, with the bathroom door partially open so he could beat a quick retreat if he needed to.

“What do you know about the Daylight Coalition?” I asked, running my right hand over my face to get some of the water out of my eyes.

Danaus released the door handle and gave the door a little push shut. Folding his arms across his broad chest, he leaned his hip against the white marble sink. “Just humans hunting vampires. Sounds like a good cause to me.” His hard face was expressionless but his sharp eyes were intent upon my face.

Throwing one last scowl at him, I jerked the shower curtain closed and moved back under the water. As I grabbed the washcloth to resume scrubbing, Danaus laughed. Actually, the hunter didn’t make a sound, but I could feel him laughing on the inside. He was teasing me, trying to get under my skin.

Earlier in the evening he had touched my hand and sent his powers through me. Our connection was still strong when we were in close proximity. We had killed the naturi and survived, but we were still working out all of the repercussions. I couldn’t quite make out his thoughts, but his emotions flowed easily to me. And I had a feeling he could just as easily pick out my emotions.

“Bastard,” I grumbled, scrubbing my right forearm. I did not doubt that he heard me over the water. I didn’t know what Danaus was, but he wasn’t human. At least, not all of him. He felt human, but his hearing appeared to be as keen as any nightwalker’s. He had the speed and agility of a lycanthrope, but not their strength. He couldn’t cast spells like a warlock, but had a dark ability that allowed him to boil a creature’s blood within its skin. At the very least, this combination had taught me to be wary of him.

“They’re fanatics,” Danaus said after a moment. His voice sounded tired, worn down to a smooth murmur. “They’ve killed as many humans as they have actual vampires. Why?”

“Tristan and I encountered a trio tonight,” I said. I soaped up the washcloth again and ran it over my stomach, relieved to find the hideous gash I received that night was completely healed. “No, that’s wrong. We encountered a member of the Coalition, a lycan, and a witch.”

“Traveling together?”

“Yes. The man had been sent to fetch the witch and lycan.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Danaus!” I shouted, my fist tightening around the wet washcloth.

“Did you?”

Throwing down the washcloth, I turned and pulled back the shower curtain again so I could look at him. “Does it matter that they attacked us first and they were trying to kill us?” I snapped.

“No.” While his face and voice were calm when he replied, I felt the flutter of something else in his chest. A flash of anger and frustration. Maybe a bit of fear. But he had his emotions back under tight wrap before I could clearly identify any of the swirling maelstroms within his mind.

“The human is still alive,” I said between clenched teeth, jerking the curtain back into place, the metal rings holding up the divider letting out a little squeal. “I broke the man’s hand and knocked him out. The witch disappeared after trying to flambé Tristan and me.”

“And the werewolf?”

“The lycan is dead,” I bit out. Werewolves can heal from a lot of things, but a bullet in the head while you’re low on blood isn’t something you come back from. “He broke our law. If I hadn’t, he might have told the Coalition about us all.” I said the words and believed the rationale, but something knotted in my stomach for a second time. It was my complete lack of remorse. The fact that I hadn’t even hesitated in my decision to kill him. Knox, my assistant in Savannah, once called me a mindless killing machine. The description had been kind.

I stood under the hot water, trying to wash away the memory of the encounter and Danaus’s words. Our occasional teasing and joking meant nothing to him. My respect for his skill and his sense of honor were worthless. In the end he wanted all of my kind dead. He wanted me dead because he saw me only as a killer

“Damn it, you’re missing the point,” I said into the water.

“No, I’m not.” His words were softer than they had been. “A witch and a lycan were traveling with a member of the Daylight Coalition. I’ll call Ryan and see if he knows anything. Do you know the name of the witch?”

“Caroline Buckberry,” I sighed. “That might be an alias, but I’d wager she’s a local. Or at least, her mentor is.”

“Why?”

“I think she used a charm to disappear, and judging by the amount of power I felt in the air, I’d guess she didn’t travel far. She’s a novice.”

“I’ll check with Themis. Ryan might know something.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, not caring if he heard me over the water.

“I understand why you did it, Mira,” he said. I hadn’t heard him move, but he sounded closer, as if he were just on the other side of the shower curtain. “You did it to protect us all. I understand it, but I don’t have to like it.”

I listened to the sound of the door opening and closing, a frown pulling at my lips. Bracing both of my hands against the wall in front of me, I closed my eyes and put my face into the water, wishing it could drown out my thoughts.

But I couldn’t. It was the “us” that caught my attention. It was the first time I had ever heard Danaus include himself with the other races, admitting for a brief moment that we were linked in some strange way. The knot in my stomach eased.

With a sigh, I returned to the task of washing off a layer of dried blood from the earlier battle at Themis and Stonehenge.

In the grand scheme of things, the Daylight Coalition was a minor annoyance. For now, I would leave it to Ryan and his people at Themis to investigate—that was what they did. Themis was a bunch of gray-haired librarians who studied all the races that were different from humans and wrote down their findings in thick, leather-bound volumes.

Of course, Themis also had its group of hunters; trained assassins dispatched for the sole purpose of killing my kind and anyone else who stepped out of line. Ryan had smiled at me and said that it was all in the interest of maintaining the secret, protecting mankind from the knowledge that vampires and werewolves were real. But I trusted the warlock about as far as I could throw him. Probably less.

With a frustrated groan, I turned off the water and quickly dried off. Rubbing my hair to dry as much of the water as possible, I stepped out of the bathroom and into the master bedroom, where I pulled open my bag. Clean clothes. Sometimes it’s the little things in this life that can pick up a person’s mood. I had worn my last outfit through my meeting with James Parker at the Themis town house, Thorne’s death, my fight with Jabari, my fight with the naturi, and the naturi encounter at Stonehenge. I tossed the pants and shirt into the trash can, resisting the urge to set them on fire. Burning the clothes wouldn’t purge the memory of the past two nights.