Night Quest. Susan Krinard

nearly double, they ran northeast, Artemis pausing twice to get her bearings. A quarter mile on, she stopped again and threw back her hood. Only a trace of pink light lingered over the hills to the west.

      “The Opiri are somewhere beyond those trees,” she said, pointing at a wide stretch of mixed woodland. As she began to move forward, Garret knelt to check the VS parts in his pack.

      He rose again and trotted after Artemis as she slipped from tree to tree as lightly as a leopardess. She was nearly crawling when they reached the border of the woods. He dropped to his belly behind her. An area of nearly unbroken grassland stretched ahead as far as he could see.

      “Do you see the rogues?” he said, squinting into the darkness.

      “No, but I know where they are.” Her voice held a new note, and the hair prickled at the back of Garret’s neck. “They are camped less than two hundred yards from here. There are seven, perhaps eight, of them, and—”

      “Timon?”

      “I...sense that there is more than one human in the area.”

      He tensed to move again. “We have to get closer.”

      “Wait.” Her nose wrinkled. “These Opiri are ready to fight. They are expecting to attack or be attacked.”

      “Attacked by whom?”

      “The humans, perhaps,” she murmured. “Whoever they may be, they are remarkably foolish to venture within the Citadel’s borders.”

      “And my son could be caught in the middle of whatever’s about to happen.”

      She turned to meet his gaze. “If the Freebloods have protected him so far, they will not let him be hurt. And if the humans should win...”

      “We can’t stand by and let this—”

      “We must. If we die, who can save Timon?”

      Clenching his teeth, Garret tried to weigh the options objectively. Artemis was right. Whoever the humans were, they would want to help a human child, and in a fight, the rogues would keep Timon out of the way. He and Artemis would probably have a better chance of grabbing Timon when the battle was decided one way or the other.

      “I know this is against your every instinct,” Artemis said. “I am sorry. I will go ahead, and see if—”

      “No,” he said, pulling her down when she attempted to move. “Can we get any closer without the Nightsiders sensing us?”

      “No. In fact we have to go back to be safe,” she said.

      She retreated. Garret lingered a moment, listening, but his human senses were not acute enough to gather any additional information. Reluctantly, he followed Artemis to a point well within the shelter of the woods but close enough to the grassland that she could monitor what was happening there.

      They waited as the long minutes went by, sitting a long arm’s reach apart from each other. Garret was constantly, painfully aware that Artemis was very near but not quite close enough to touch, and that he badly wanted to touch her. Even in the midst of so much uncertainty, those feelings refused to go away.

      An hour passed in silence, and then another. Artemis’s head began to droop, and her breathing grew shallow. Garret moved closer to her. He noted a new transparency to her pale skin, a dullness in her hair and a deepening of the shadows under her cheekbones and closed eyes.

      “Artemis,” he said, carefully touching her shoulder.

      She jerked awake, her body snapping into a defensive posture far more slowly than it should have. She blinked, recognized him and clambered to her feet.

      “What has happened?” she demanded.

      “Nothing, as far as I can tell,” he said. “But you were falling asleep.”

      “I wasn’t—” She broke off and strode away through the trees. Garret waited ten minutes and then got up to follow her.

      He found her at the edge of the woods. “Nothing has changed,” she said as he crouched beside her.

      “That’s right,” he said. “You still need what you need. We have to be ready to move quickly.”

      “You will become weak if I take too much.”

      “I trust you to take only as much as is safe for both of us.”

      They stared at each other, and Garret could see her struggling with arguments he knew she didn’t want to make. Arguments that had nothing to do with her fear of his becoming weak. But she knew he was right, and she was the first to look away.

      “Very well,” she said. “But we should use the other wrist.”

      Garret hesitated, reexamining the decision he’d made. He couldn’t pretend that there wasn’t a risk in giving her much more intimate access to his blood.

      But she would derive nourishment from his throat more efficiently than she would by taking blood from his wrist. And if he couldn’t trust her now, he might as well let those Opiri in the field kill him themselves.

      He led her back to their camp, removed the blanket from his pack and laid it down at the foot of a tall pine. Then he removed his coat and unbuttoned his shirt. Her gaze flew to his hands, watching his progress with apparent fascination, and he found himself suddenly self-conscious. He could sense her need as if it were his own.

      “What are you doing?” she asked in a slightly strained voice.

      “Just what we agreed,” he said.

      Removing his shirt, he folded it and laid it on the ground behind him. He rested his palms on his thighs and settled into the calm, detached state that had always served him well when he had worked with the human Underground in Erebus. He would need all that detachment to treat this feeding like any other.

      He tilted his head back, took a deep breath. “I’m ready,” he said.

      “You are...” Artemis stammered. “You expect me to...”

      “It’s fast, and it’s practical,” he said, staring up into the green boughs overhead. “The sooner we’re finished, the sooner we’ll both be ready to take whatever action is necessary.”

      “How many times have you done this?” she asked.

      “Often enough to know what I’m doing.”

      He waited, holding himself ready, until he felt the heat of her body close to his, her breath sighing over his skin, her lips brushing his throat.

      “Are you certain?” she asked softly.

      “Look at me, Artemis.”

      Whatever she saw in his eyes apparently frightened her, and she almost bolted. But he grabbed her hand, and she settled down again, panting and trembling. Her teeth penetrated his flesh. She moaned as his blood began to flow, and he felt desire take hold exactly as he had prayed it wouldn’t. He reached out to clasp his hands around her waist. He found the hem of her tunic and slipped his fingers beneath, sliding his palms over the skin below her ribs.

      Then he paused, because she hadn’t asked for his touch, because he knew that she was not Roxana. But Artemis gripped his wrist and held his hand where it was.

      She was too far gone to stop. And so was he.

      * * *

      The moment Artemis tasted his blood, she knew it was too late.

      She felt his warm breath stirring her hair, heard the rapid drumming of his heart, smelled the surge of his lust and only drank the more deeply, caught up in an ecstasy more overwhelming than any she had known before.

      Even the last time he had given his blood, it hadn’t been like this. She’d underestimated the impact of taking it directly from his throat. An intimate act, she’d thought when she’d first met him, one he surely wouldn’t share