Dayhunter

With a shake of my head, I raised my left hand high in the air and snapped my fingers while my right hand dropped back to the arm of my chair. A server instantly appeared and placed the bill in my hand. I scratched out the name of an account on the bill and handed it back. It was the name of the Coven account and was known to all business operators across Venice. The bill would be sent to that account and immediately taken care of. I’d learned that trick when I started doing little odd jobs for the group not long after leaving Jabari. If you were going to do the dirty work of the Coven, they were willing to supply some basic perks while you were staying in Venice.

“With that said,” I continued when the server walked away, “I still believe you should go to London for the next few days.”

“You know I can’t, Mira,” she said, standing at the same time as Danaus and I.

I grabbed her elbow and squeezed it. “Don’t go to them, Alex,” I warned, dropping my voice so it was low and firm. The tone would leave my words burrowed into her brain like a swarm of ticks. I wanted those words to resonate within her mind during the coming months, hoping they would protect her against the siren song of the naturi. “I’ve enjoyed our friendship, but I won’t hesitate.”

Alex looked up at me with sad eyes. She knew that if she stood between me and the naturi, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Once she answered to the call of the naturi, she would be under their complete control.

“Just promise to make it quick,” she said, a halfhearted smile lifting one corner of her mouth. “I don’t want to think about being under the control of those bastards.”

“I understand,” I whispered, and pressed a kiss to her temple. “When it’s over, come to Sava

Pausing beside the table, I looked down at Nicolai, still lounging in his chair, his glass of wine in his hand. We would meet again. Jabari might order the lycanthrope to kill me before I left Venice, and Nicolai would do it. Not because he bore any hatred for me and my kind, but because Jabari was holding something over him.

“It’s been a pleasure,” I said with a little smirk. Nicolai smiled in return and raised his glass to me. We both knew that we would meet again. It was a shame that it would be on opposite ends of the battlefield.

“Good luck, Mira,” Alex whispered, grabbing my cool hand in both of her warm hands and squeezing it tightly.

I chuckled as I walked away, my hand slowly slipping from her grasp. “I don’t need luck,” I called, turning and walking backward so I could look at her as I departed. “I’m the Fire Starter.”

I just wished I had a plan.

TEN

Danaus and I wandered down the dark streets in silence, slowly heading back to the speedboat. The sound of water lapping at the stone sides of the canal followed us throughout the winding city. The night was still in its infancy and I wasn’t particularly eager to go back to the hotel suite where Sadira and Tristan were most likely cuddled. I paused on the sidewalk next to our boat and stared across the canal at the lights of the Doge’s Palace and Piazza San Marco. The air was cluttered with the various thoughts and emotions of the people out enjoying the warm summer night.

“When was the last time you were in Venice?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at Danaus. He was also watching the lights reflect off the undulating waves.

“I’ve never been to Venice,” he said. It was on the tip of my tongue to demand how that was even possible. He was Italian, or at least Roman, and more than a thousand years old. How could he have not visited the canals? But I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer. He was still stingy about personal information regardless of the fact that he had popped into my thoughts on more than one occasion.

“Come on,” I said, jumping onto the boat we had borrowed from Roberto. “I want to show you something.” With a somewhat skeptical look, he climbed onto the boat and sat down while I started the engine. I rushed back out into the Lagoon, away from the bright lights and crowded canals. We cruised away from the tourist hot spots and the quaint neighborhoods, as I took him across the Lagoon and between the islands of Burano and Murano to the tiny island of Torcello.

I slowed the boat as I carefully maneuvered us past the swamps that surrounded the island. Navigating the laguna morta would have been treacherous at best during the middle of the day, let alone during the black of night when the moon had waned to a slender sliver in the sky. But I knew these waters and marshes. Torcello was my hidden sanctuary within the dark heart of the nightwalker world.

We glided down the main canal and pulled up near one of the few bridges that spa

“Where are we?” he asked as we left the boat and wandered down the disintegrating fondamenta along the canal, toward the only cluster of buildings rising up in the darkness.

“The birthplace of Venice,” I said. My voice hovered at a whisper, as if anything loud would break the spell. Lights began to appear as we reached the edge of the campo that was now more dirt and gravel than the original stonework. Grass crowded close to the road and weeds pushed their way between the cracks in the remaining paving. The main square was overgrown, with only a few bits of broken column and statues left to adorn the area like tombstone markers for the city that once was.

“The island is nearly deserted, but they say that this is where the Venetians first settled in either the fourth or fifth century,” I said, ru

“It’s nice,” he whispered. Danaus wandered over and stood before an odd chunk of white stone that resembled a chair. The locals referred to it as the throne of Attila the Hun, but no one actually believed he had ever sat on that hunk of rock. A light breeze stirred the leaves in some nearby trees, sending up their soft song into the night. Not far from the square, lights from the only restaurant on the island glowed in golden patches, but even they were begi

“This city is almost as old as you, Danaus. Its memory is nearly as long as yours,” I teased.

A faint smile lifted his features as he looked around the empty plaza. “A lot of Europe is,” he reminded me. His voice was gentle, losing its usual gruff, angry edge. It was as if he had forgotten for a brief moment that I was a nightwalker; the enemy.

“True.” I nodded, clinging to my smile though it was starting to fade. “I think it’s one of the drawbacks to living in the New World; too new.”

“No sense of history or identity,” he murmured.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got something else to show you.”

I led him across the square and past the external colo