LITMIR.BIZ

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her own eyelids. “They say I’m like a cat because I can see in the dark.”

      “That’s right,” Mommy said in a completely different voice than before. “Like a cat. And cats are beautiful, aren’t they? So graceful and brave.” She smiled, moving Alexia to sit in her lap. “But you know what? I think you look even more like a fox. Remember the pictures I showed you?”

      Alexia nodded. “It was red, like my hair.”

      “And quick and clever. Like you.”

      They were very nice words, but Alexia couldn’t help looking at the TV again, and at the ugly city with the scary name.

      “The bloodsuckers aren’t ever going to come here, are they?” she asked, just a little bit scared after all.

      “Lexie, that word—”

      “Isn’t that what they are, Mommy?”

      Mommy made a sound a little like a laugh, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Yes,” she said. “But you don’t have to worry about that.”

      “I’m not worried.” Alexia bit her lip. “We aren’t ever going to get in a big fight with them again, are we?”

      “No.” She took a big, long breath. “I wish—”

      Alexia wriggled free and looked up into Mommy’s eyes. “What do you wish, Mommy?”

      “I wish things could be the way they were before…before the big fight.”

      “When my daddy was alive?”

      Mommy’s face seemed to crumple all at once. She sobbed, and Alexia knew it was because of what she had said. It was all her fault.

      “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said, stroking her mother’s trembling hand and soft, wet cheeks. “I won’t ever talk about Daddy again.”

      “Oh, my baby,” Mommy said, gathering Alexia up again so tightly that she could barely breathe. “I will never, ever let anyone hurt you. Not anyone. I’m going to keep you with me forever and ever.”

      Alexia pressed her face to the pulse in Mommy’s neck. It was so warm and sweet. It made her feel safe.

      But she didn’t want to just be safe. She wanted to find a way to make Mommy happy.

      And keep those nasty bloodsuckers in their ugly black city from making anyone afraid, ever again.

       Chapter 1

       San Francisco Enclave, West Coast Region

      “It may be fatal,” the Director said.

      Alexia laughed. “Since when hasn’t that been true of every mission?”

      Aegis Director of Field Operations Wilson McAllister regarded her without a trace of amusement. “This isn’t funny, Alex,” he said. “We’re talking about violating our side of the Treaty and striking deep into the Zone. Even the Mayor doesn’t know about it.”

      “At least not officially,” Alexia said.

      “Not officially enough to send someone to pull your ass out of the fire if you get caught.” The steel rims of McAllister’s glasses flashed as they caught the cold and sterile light from the overhead fixtures. “Your mission will be to learn everything you can about the Nightsiders’ illegal colony without doing anything to attract the Citadel’s attention. If you fail or are captured—”

      “—Aegis will disavow any knowledge of our actions. I know the drill.” Alexia wandered to the window overlooking the glimmering waters of San Francisco Bay. From Aegis headquarters in the old Financial District, she could see a heavily guarded convoy of trucks carrying agricultural products from the Central Valley into the city. The Treaty meant that the Nightsiders were supposed to leave such convoys alone.

      Usually they did. But there were always the terrorists, the ones who wanted to ignite a new War. On both sides. And that was what her team would be sent in to try to prevent.

      Alexia drifted back into memory, of the year the Nightsiders had first appeared. Not that they’d been her memories, not exactly. But she’d seen the archived news vids, the looks of bewilderment and fear on the newscasters’ faces when the first reports came in: horror stories of vampires arising seemingly out of nowhere, some emerging from decades or centuries or even millennia of sleep in sanctuaries built far beneath the earth. No one knew—or at least the leeches weren’t telling—what had roused them, or why they had chosen that time to rise and claim the earth.

      Ten years later—ten years of chaos and plague and terrible war, the time when Alexia’s mother gave birth to a halfvampire child—had led to the Treaty, and now most parts of the world were carefully divided into territories: vampire Citadels and human Enclaves, separated by the unclaimed regions known as the Zones.

      Just outside the Enclave that embraced San Francisco and the area formerly known as the East Bay, the Zone comprised an immense semicircular region that had once held thriving suburbs, now abandoned and slowly crumbling back to the earth as new forests and fields absorbed stone and concrete, and animals—once driven away by human incursions—reclaimed their original habitats. Beyond the Zone, to the south and east in the regions of the Central Valley, lay the farmlands that produced sustenance for the Enclaves, each surrounded by its own Zone and patrolled by special military forces whose job it was to keep Nightsiders out and human workers safe from them. In theory, as per the Treaty, the workers were protected, and so were the routes to the Enclaves.

      To the north, in the area once distinguished by its scenic fields of grapevines and boutique wineries, its rolling hills and towering redwoods, stood Erebus. The Citadel of Night.

      Alexia remembered the images on the TV when the construction began. Very little had been known then, because the Zone had just been established, and rumor was more plentiful than fact. Human laborers…prisoners of war…had built the city by day, vampires by night. In a year the Citadel—all black, gleaming, windowless towers and paradoxically Gothic ornamentation—was large enough to hold a population of ten thousand, and that was only on the surface. It was speculated that the underground portion of the city could house five thousand more. Today, the Citadel was twice as big, with its own farms and fields to support its human inhabitants.

      Slaves, Alexia thought with that burning anger that never diminished. Blood-serfs. The prisoners, the castoffs from the human Enclaves. The damned.

      Like Garret.

      “Ms. Fox?”

      She turned back to McAllister, who was leaning over his desk with an ominous frown on his lean brown face. His sudden formality wasn’t a good sign.

      “You aren’t listening to me,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

      Alexia returned to stand before the desk, taking a formal stance that betrayed none of her emotions. “Yes, sir. More than up to it.”

      “It’s only been a year since your brother was—”

      “I haven’t forgotten, sir.”

      He cleared his throat. “The Examiners say you may still harbor resentment against the Court for sentencing him to Deportation.”

      Deportation. Such a nice way of putting it. “I know the Court weighed the evidence thoroughly, sir. It was a fair trial.”

      The Director sighed and sank back into his chair. “Was it?”

      Alexia knew it was another test, and one she had to pass. “The evidence was conclusive, sir.”

      “Then you no longer believe it was self-defense?”

      The same questions the shrinks had asked her, over and over again, ever since Garret had been sent to Erebus.

      “Without the laws there would be chaos, and the Enclaves would die,” she said with perfect

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