LITMIR.BIZ

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Alexia murmured.

      The corner of his mouth quirked up. “If your agency believed the Expansionists were in ascendance, this new settlement would be the least of its concerns.”

      He made perfect sense, Alexia thought. Too much sense, in fact.

      She rose, keeping the rifle leveled at Damon’s head. “My partner and I will have to discuss this privately,” she said.

      “Of course.” Damon shrugged his shoulders again. “It’s unlikely I’ll be going anywhere.”

      “I’ll make sure of that,” Michael grunted. “Lie on your stomach.”

      Damon did as he commanded, and Michael made quick work of cuffing his ankles. Maybe the Daysider could break free of them eventually, but Alexia didn’t plan to be away more than a few minutes.

      She and Michael retreated into the brush, backing away with their weapons still fixed on Damon. Once they were a good thirty meters away, Alexia pressed the skin of her throat over the subcom implanted beside her larynx and adjusted her earpiece.

      I think we should do it, she said, speaking soundlessly through the subcom.

      Mike touched his own highly sensitive earpiece, which picked up their subvocalizations as if they were spoken aloud. He’ll kill as soon as our backs are turned.

      You think I don’t hate him as much as you do? she asked. But we have to find out how much he knows, if he’s really working for the Independents.

      Independents, Michael repeated, the scorn evident in his words. You know even they would enslave or slaughter all of us if they could find an excuse.

      So let’s not give them one, Alexia said. Look, there are useful things we can learn just by observing him. Maybe he’ll slip and give us a clue about his real agenda.

      Then you’re assuming he’s lying, too, Michael said.

      We don’t have to trust him. He may be stronger and faster, but we’re pretty well matched in acuity of smell and hearing—and there are two of us. One can stay with him while the other keeps watch from a distance. That way we’ll have someone free to report back if there’s any treachery.

      Forget it, Michael said. We stay together. That’s Aegis policy, and—

      We can break policy if we judge it necessary. And I think it is, Mike.

      He gave her a look she’d never seen on his face before, one uncomfortably like mistrust. But when he spoke again, there was only resignation in his expression.

      Okay, he said. Who do you propose stays with him?

      I will, she said without hesitation. I’m better at handto-hand, and you’re the better marksman.

      Once we split up, he’ll know what we’re doing, Michael said.

       Then he’s not likely to try anything, is he?

      After a long moment of silence he nodded, briefly and not at all happily. Alexia frowned. It just wasn’t like him to be so grim. I guess the best thing to do is pretend to have an argument, she said.

      Michael pulled a face. He’ll never fall for it.

      Probably not, but he’ll be even more suspicious if we don’t try to make it sound convincing.

      Michael signaled agreement, and they switched back to audible voice, still whispering to make it seem as if they were trying to prevent Damon from listening in. Michael was extremely persuasive in his refusal to go along, and Alexia found it easy to work up the appropriate anger. She’d already been troubled by Michael’s open protests before, and Damon wasn’t likely to think their exchange this time any worse than the previous one.

      Once Michael had “stomped” off, vowing to let her learn from her own mistakes, Alexia returned to Damon. He was sitting up again, head cocked as he watched her approach. He wasn’t smiling, but she could feel his amusement at her and Michael’s little game.

      “It seems your partner doesn’t agree with your decision,” he said.

      She crouched a safe distance from him, her gun loose in her hands, and met his gaze. “We work together, but we’re not chained at the ankle. He’ll see reason eventually, and until then you won’t be able to complain that we aren’t on equal footing.”

      Damon’s eyes reflected a shaft of sunlight breaking through the rustling canopy of oak leaves above them. “I don’t remember complaining,” he said, “but I’m gratified that one of you has seen the benefit in my proposition.”

      Something in the way he said the words, the way he looked at her, made Alexia feel unaccountably warm. He was so damned agreeable that she found she had to remind himself what he was and whom he worked for.

      And she didn’t dare make the mistake of believing that this mild behavior wasn’t just a cover for savagery that would reveal itself the instant she let him think she trusted him.

      “I don’t expect you to trust me,” Damon said, as if he’d been reading her mind—an ability she was pretty sure not even full vampires possessed. “But we can do nothing if you don’t release me.”

      Alexia wasn’t in any hurry to follow his pointed suggestion. “First I want to know exactly what you plan to do.”

      He shifted as if he were trying to make himself more comfortable, but Alexia could see the tension in every line of his hard, lean body—tension that belied his easy manner. “I suggest we approach the settlement together,” he said, “and once we’re close enough to observe the colonists’ activities, we’ll separate. At the end of a set time we rendezvous and pool our information.”

      Too simple, Alexia thought. Much too simple. “Why do you think we’ll come up with different information?” she asked.

      “Because we are different, you and I.”

      She knew that technically that wasn’t as true as she wanted it to be. Over the years Aegis had determined that Daysiders and dhampires were much alike in their speed, strength and senses, with one or the other holding slight advantages in a few areas. Neither was as strong and fast as a Nightsider, but both held the advantage of being able to move freely in daylight without suffering the deadly burns that afflicted full vampires.

      The only comfort Alexia took from the comparison was that dhampires were, without exception, on the side of law and decency, while Damon’s kind served an evil, corrupt society of unrepentant killers. And while they lived on blood like their masters, no dhampir would ever give way to that sick, unnatural hunger.

      “Yes,” she said coldly. “We are very different.”

      He stared into her eyes again, and she felt as if she could fall right into that spellbinding blackness and never come out again. “But not so different that we cannot understand each other,” he reminded her. “And in one way we are very much alike.”

      “What way?”

      “We are both outsiders in our worlds.”

      Alexia wasn’t about to admit how true that was, but Damon had freely offered information that seemed a little too personal to share with an enemy. It had to be part of a plan to get her off guard.

      “Have you ever met a dhampir before?” she asked.

      “I have only observed from a distance.”

      Once again his candidness surprised her, though he could, of course, be lying.

      “You don’t allow the birth of my kind in Erebus,” she said, testing him.

      “Such matters are the province of the Bloodmasters.”

      “Do they kill my kind when they’re born, or before?”

      “Such

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