Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (3 page)

Almost there, buddy. One more inch.

The din invaded his skull. Barbed, leaden objects thronged around him, drilling into his shoulders, buttocks, the backs of his thighs. A force wrenched him off the ground, and he kicked out his leg, hoping to snag his boot on a rock. His foot sliced through air. Bodies surged and rippled around him. He shoved his hands through
the warm, squirming mass and created a wedge. When he looked down, he saw just how high they’d taken him. And they were still moving.

Air rushed into his mouth and clogged his windpipe, as if a dirty sock had been jammed down his throat. He was going to die, really and truly die. Far below, his flashlight got smaller and smaller. A dank wind scraped around him, flattening his hair, pushing him up into blackness, past blade-sharp stalactites.

Then he saw what was waiting. A high-pitched noise burst out of his throat and ricocheted through the chamber, then morphed into an inhuman sound, nothing he’d ever heard before, as if the darkness itself were screaming.

REPUBLIC OF SÃO TOMÉ, AFRICA

All I ever really wanted was true love and a calm life, but those things are mutually exclusive when you’re married to a vampire. In many ways, Jude and I are a typical couple, except that my grocery list includes fresh blood. And I shop in dodgy places, not a supermarket.

It was late afternoon when I turned my Jeep into the deserted parking lot at the São Tomé port. The muggy February air hinted that a cooling rain was on the way, bringing a reprieve from the sweltering tropical heat. I hoped it would also lighten the turmoil and anxiety that dominated our lives.

I got out of the Jeep, pulled a thick envelope from the glove compartment, then walked toward the pier. A small cargo boat had already docked, and two men unloaded
containers to the platform. Behind the vessel, the shallow blue waters of Ana Chaves Bay spread out like a wrinkled ball gown.

A lovely day to buy black market groceries
, I told myself.

Months ago, right after my twenty-ninth birthday, Jude and I had fled to this little island off the coast of West Africa. We thought São Tomé would be safe, especially since it hovered right above the equator. Twelve hours of daylight would surely act as a deterrent to the sun-hating vampires who’d hunted us.

This ship’s captain, Stefanov, veered around a tall metal container, his sandy hair ruffling in the breeze. He was a lean, weather-beaten man, dressed in a white cotton uniform. His forearms were tanned and vascular, sheened with perspiration. The sharp pleats on his trousers suggested a passion for order and an inner inflexibility.

“I have your goods,” he called.

Come on, Caro
, I firmly told myself.
Give him a confident, don’t-bullshit-me smile.

My lips remained in a firm line as I handed him a thick envelope. “Your payment.”

He opened the flap and counted the banknotes, then looked up, his pale blue eyes narrowing. “This is only fifteen hundred euros.”

I frowned. “That’s what we agreed on.”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “It’s two thousand euros.”

“The last time you were here, you wrote down the price,” I said. “The notepad is in my car. Shall I get it?”

“I have expenses from my end.” He shrugged. “If you want the shipment, bring the rest of the money.”

“But I don’t have more.”

“You bring all the money, or the cargo stays on the ship.”

As I looked up at him, something fell inside me. I’d promised Jude that I wouldn’t call Raphael again, a wealthy Italian vampire, and the godfather to my three-year-old daughter. But I was perilously close to breaking that promise.

“I’ll pay you next time,” I told Stefanov.

“No.” He shook his head.

I started to make a fuss when the port official walked up, a hard-boned man in khakis and an orange vest. Stefanov pulled a wad of banknotes and handed them to the official. The man’s aloof gaze passed from Stefanov to me.

My heart pushed against my ribs. Bribery was common in Africa, but I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of it. I cast a longing glance at the boat. The massive hull was scabbed with barnacles, rust bleeding through the call sign’s white letters. Inside that clunker was my husband’s only source of nourishment: a foam chest that contained dry ice and B negative bags, each one plump and frosted, like shrink-wrapped beefsteaks. Each unit of packed red blood cells cost a small fortune. Jude needed one bag a day, but he was struggling to get by with less.

The port official strolled off, stuffing the notes into his hip pocket. I jerked my envelope out of Stefanov’s hand, then slogged toward my Jeep. I had no choice but to phone Raphael. He would FedEx a few units to São Tomé, and Jude wouldn’t have to know.

“Lady, wait,” Stefanov called. “We can still cut a deal.”

I turned, and the wind sent my hair flying. I pushed it back, and long blond strands wrapped around my elbow. “What?” I said irritably.

“I like your necklace,” he said. “Give it to me, and we shall be even.”

My hand closed on the gold chain. Dangling at the end was a small charm, a diamond-encrusted baby shoe. Jude had put it around my neck three years ago, the night Vivi was born. She’d been premature, and her little heart valve wouldn’t close. Emergency surgery had saved our daughter, but I still thought of the necklace as a talisman.

“No way,” I told Stefanov. “This was a gift from my husband.”

“And now you give him a gift, yes?”

Fifteen minutes later, I drove back to Praia Lagarto Beach and parked in front of our pink stucco cottage. I carried the cooler toward the veranda, wondering how much longer we could afford to buy blood.

As I walked beneath the cacao trees, the limbs shook violently, and raucous shrieks pierced the air. Somehow the turmoil in our lives had invaded our yard. It wasn’t a tranquil place, because a colony of fruit bats had roosted in our trees. During the day, they picked fights with each other. The flying fur rarely stopped before dusk, at which point the colony would rise from the trees, and as the echolocation clicks faded, a blessed hush would engulf our cottage.

Gripping my arms around the cooler, I pushed open the screen door with my hip, then went straight to Vivi’s room. She was sleeping, curled up like a baby shrimp, her arm flung around her stuffed elephant. She always slept
during the day so she could spend more time with her father. Jude was in the windowless bathroom, the only spot in the cottage where he was safe from daylight. Until sunset, he took refuge in the huge claw-foot tub, nestled with blankets and pillows and books. When I wasn’t running errands, I stayed with him, but neither of us got much sleep.

I turned into the kitchen and set the cooler on the table. It was a cozy room, the shelves crammed with yellow pottery dishes, and the window over the sink overlooked the sparkling Gulf of Guinea. The last occupant had been a diplomat, and he’d left a blender, an espresso machine, and a set of copper cookware. I’d added less appealing touches. Next to the blender lay a pile of unpaid bills. Then I saw a thick book,
The Survival Guide to Illumination
. It was the heaviest volume in Jude’s library, roughly the size and weight of a waffle iron.

My throat tightened as I stepped closer. He’d been reading about the dangers of zero latitude. Here on the equator, the light fell straight down, blasting twelve hours a day. Because it passed through less atmosphere, ultraviolet rays were brutal, even during the rainy season. Dusk and dawn fell frighteningly fast. An early-morning swim could end in scorched flesh, blindness, or death.

I smoothed my hand down the page, feeling the indentions where Jude had made notes in ink. He’d bought this manual after we were married, and whenever we moved, which was all the time, the book went with us.

At the last airport, the Lufthansa ticket agent had frowned at Jude’s bulging backpack, but it had met the requirements for carry-on luggage. That was fortunate,
because Jude would never have allowed baggage handlers near his backpack, mainly because he wanted to protect the book. Not only had it gone out of print, it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

I remembered that night in the airport so clearly. In Jude’s human life he’d been a rugby player, and immortality had made him even stronger. But as he moved down the corridor, the bag dropped lower, as if it had attracted more than poundage, his shoulder dipping to one side, as if he were carrying daylight itself.

At dusk, I was still staring down at the book. Why had Jude been reading it? He only pulled it out when we got ready to move to a new place, to study the region’s lighting quirks and conditions.

I heard noises on the other side of the wall, which meant he was getting out of the bathtub. A few minutes later, the door creaked open, followed by the distinct tap-
tap
-tap of his footsteps in the hallway.

I turned. Jude walked toward me, smiling. When he was mortal, he’d been a biochemist with pallid, British skin. Now he was even paler. His eyes were butane blue and so hypnotic, I forgot that he’d been reading the survival guide.

“Caro,” he said, whispering my name like a prayer. “I missed you.”

I drew in a breath when his hand slid inside the collar of my dress, and his cool fingers brushed over my collarbone. Then his smile dimmed. Some vampires have telepathy—I have a smidgen because I’m half-immortal—but Jude never developed it. However, he has a photographic tactile memory, and he knows every detail of my
body, from the half-moon scar on my palm to the mole on my right shoulder.

As his fingers slid around my throat, I knew he was looking for the necklace.

“It’s gone,” I said. “Captain Stefanov raised the price of the blood.”

Jude frowned. “That bastard.”

I glanced at the cooler. “We should find another supplier.”

“That won’t help.” He sighed. “We’re broke. I’m taking that job in Gabon.”

The Al-Dîn Corporation had offered Jude a thirty-day job in the Birougou rain forest. The expedition was high tech and high pay. I drew in a breath. Now I knew why Jude had been reading his survival guide. He’d been studying about lighting conditions in an equatorial rain forest.

“Don’t do it, Jude,” I whispered. “We’ll get by.”

“I’d be crazy to turn down one hundred thousand euros.”

I shook my head. “That’s just it. Why so much?”

“I don’t have a choice. We have enough cash for two more months on this island. And that’s not including blood.” He paused. “I’ll have to live on rodents—or worse.”

From outside, the chattering noise stopped, and the bats rose from the cacao trees, swarming up into the leaden dusk, leaving behind a strange calmness. It pressed in around me, dense and smothering, as if I were caught beneath a shroud.

Two weeks had come and gone since Jude signed on with the Al-Dîn Corporation. In just a few hours, right after dusk, the company jet would pick him up at the São Tomé airport and fly him to Gabon.

Jude sank down in the claw-foot tub and folded a pillow behind his head, trying to shake the feeling that he’d left something undone. Al-Dîn’s first payout had already been deposited in his and Caro’s joint account at the Swiss Volksbank in Berne. Now if anything happened to him—not that it would—she wouldn’t be broke. Because it had been impossible for him, a fugitive vampire, to get life insurance.

A pulse thrummed in his neck as he listened to her move around the kitchen. He wanted to press his mouth
against the nape of her neck and smell the powdery sweetness that always lingered in her hairline; but he couldn’t go to her just yet. The sun would not set for another two hours, and the equatorial light was dangerous.

He knew this all too well. Shortly after they’d arrived in São Tomé, he’d come out of the bathroom too soon, and the light had blinded him for three hours. But it had been worth it. He’d walked through the sunny living room and squinted through the arched windows. His wife and daughter were playing on the beach. The sun cast a bronze patina on Vivi’s pigtails as she skipped along the water. Caro was hunkered in the sand, the wind tugging her long blond hair, her turquoise dress churning around her knees. She lifted a shell, her palms cupped as if she held a baby dove.